by Tanya Chris
I willed myself to relax, to enjoy it, to stop waiting to not enjoy it. His mouth worked, strong and unhesitating. He gripped me with masculine confidence, no timidity, no reticence, sucking me deep into his throat and rubbing his tongue hard against the underside of my cock.
I arched my back, thrusting my hips up, not worried about overpowering my partner for once. His hands stroked me, running everywhere over my balls and shaft and head as that wide mouth slid wetter and wetter up and down. I moaned and grabbed for his head. I heard him echo my moan, felt it vibrate around me.
“Do that again,” I ordered. Between my legs, Joshua moaned louder and his pace became more frenzied, his hands gripping more firmly, his mouth nipping, licking, sucking, twisting as it moved.
I surrendered to the joy of being manhandled, to that delicious powerlessness of knowing that my pleasure was in someone else’s hands. Someone else’s very capable hands. I threw my head back and pulled at his, urging him onward. His short curls felt like the soft side of Velcro beneath my fingers and his mouth felt like wild fury on my cock.
“Joshua,” I whispered, and for some reason that made him moan again. “Oh, please. Please.” And for some reason that made him slow down.
He intended to spin it out, I realized, to push me higher before he let me fall. I loved that.
“Mm, yes.” My hands stroked and stroked over the fuzz on the top of his head, over his ears and his jaw.
His mouth slid languorously up and down now, pausing to suckle at the top of each stroke, his tongue a rush of sensation against the head of my cock. And then that slow slide back down. And then a hand. And then his mouth again. Nudging me, bit by bit, back up to the edge.
“So good,” I murmured. I wanted to bend down and kiss the top of his head, the way I sometimes did with Sherry, to show him how much I appreciated this loving application of pleasure, but a sliver of self-consciousness held me back. Instead, I propped myself up on my elbows so I could watch. How weird was it to see a man’s head bringing me this pleasure?
Not so weird, I decided, until Joshua flicked his eyes up and a surge of mixed emotions flooded me.
Right? Wrong? Fuck. I didn’t know. I closed my eyes again.
“Do it,” I begged, needing to be brought back to mindlessness. He picked up the pace, driving me relentlessly now to a place self-consciousness couldn’t reach. I let go. One hand on the back of his head, the other arm flung over my eyes, I released myself into the warm mouth surrounding me.
“Josh—” was all I could choke out before the second spasm hit, stronger than the first.
He held me firmly, swallowing it all, then rode me gently down, licking lightly at the base of my cock until I softened. Then he pulled himself up to lie by my side. I took my arm from over my eyes and looked at him.
And now it was awkward.
“Thanks,” I said.
“My pleasure. Really.” He smiled the way he always did when he teased me about his attraction, but I found it hard to smile back.
From the corner of my eye—though I couldn’t bring myself to look directly—I saw that he had an erection. If all of this were right, were normal, I’d have been doing two things now: kissing the person who’d just given me an orgasm and working up the energy to return the favor.
“Well, good night,” I said, doing neither of those things.
“Good night.” His smile faded. He clambered over Sherry and lowered himself down on her other side. She was asleep. She hadn’t even watched. It hadn’t been a threesome. It had been a guy giving another guy a blowjob.
I rolled onto my side away from them and closed my eyes. Somewhere behind me, Joshua clicked off the light.
Chapter 15
I woke with a start, my hand on my cock and my mind filled with the memory of Joshua going down on me. I took my hand off my dick and rolled over into Sherry, reaching for her naked body under the sheet. The room had a chill that spoke of early morning and a bed not as crowded as it had been. Without looking, I knew that Joshua wasn’t on her other side.
I could finish jerking myself off, but I needed some other image in my mind to do it to. I’d been playing back my last orgasm because I had morning wood, that was all.
Sherry didn’t respond when I nuzzled against her back and cupped her breast. I pressed into her more obviously and got a reaction, but not the one I’d hoped for. Her hand swatted back at me and she grunted and rolled onto her stomach.
Yeah, Sherry wasn’t really a morning sex kind of person. I knew that. She didn’t wake up with a cock raring to go. She woke up with a headache and a grudge.
I needed to get out of bed anyway. I’d promised Lissie I’d help her with the lights, not realizing she would set the unreasonable starting time of eight a.m. Nobody did theater at eight a.m.
I dressed in the beat-up clothes I’d packed for working at the theater, different from the intentionally beat-up clothes I’d worn to sing in the night before.
These jeans had earned their distressed look through years of building sets and putting up dry wall. They had holes, yes, but only where you’d expect them to be—in the knees and back pockets, not mid-thigh as though a rodent had been chewing at my legs. And they weren’t artistically faded so much as filthy—splattered in paint with a darker blue-brown in the places where the dirt never washed out all the way.
I pulled on a t-shirt and walked barefoot to the bathroom. Brushing my teeth, I checked myself out in the mirror and found the same old Nate looking back at me, nothing about the eyes or mouth that said, ‘a guy gave me a blowjob last night and I liked it.’ Yesterday’s Nate hadn’t wanted a guy to give him a blowjob, so if I was the same Nate ...
Joshua would be in the kitchen, of course. Sitting at the table, probably. Drinking coffee and doing a crossword. I could walk in and pour myself a cup of coffee and sit next to him like nothing had changed. Last night there’d been a sex act in a bedroom, sure, but bedrooms were full of sex acts. You couldn’t take them all seriously. You’d drive yourself crazy if you did.
But I wasn’t going to sit down next to Joshua with a cup of coffee this morning. Because I needed to get to the theater, that was why. Not because sitting next to him would be some kind of admission. Not because I was avoiding it.
In the bedroom, I pulled on my shoes and leaned over Sherry to drop a kiss on the back of her head. The bed smelled like sex and bodies and Sherry, like a blanket fort I could crawl into and be safe, except that I had to go out and be a grownup instead.
In the kitchen, Joshua was exactly where I expected him to be, his brows furrowed with perplexity over the square of neatly-folded newsprint. He said crosswords weren’t right on a device, that they required the commitment of ink on paper.
I watched his profile, struggling to define how I felt towards him. He was the same man he’d been yesterday. And something different. And something more. And something ... unnerving.
“I won’t bite you,” he said after a moment. “Unless you’ve developed a taste for it.” Joshua calling me out for being unnerved was Joshua being exactly Joshua.
“Good morning.” I walked deeper into the room where he could see me.
“You want breakfast?”
“I have to get to the theater. I told Lissie I’d help with the lights. I’ll swing by Dunkin on my way there.”
“Mm, donuts. Breakfast of champions. Gym later?”
“I don’t know.” I found myself standing a step farther away than I normally would, my responses to his questions working their way through some new filter that hadn’t been there yesterday.
Joshua put down his pen and swung around to face me. “You OK?”
“Still processing.”
“OK.” He ran a hand over his hair. “That’s fair, I guess. I feel like I should apologize.”
“Why?”
“You’d been drinking and you were ... excited. I took advantage of your lowered inhibitions.”
“I hadn’t drank that much.”
&nbs
p; “If I asked you right now if you wanted me to go down on you, what would you say?”
“No. No, thank you,” I corrected, trying to make it lighter. But even as my mouth said no, my cock stirred. With the right provocation, I’d say yes again. The thought ran through my mind that, unlike the woman in the next room, Joshua was a morning person. He’d be happy to help. “It wasn’t the alcohol.”
“Just caught up in the moment?”
Caught up in the moment and wanting to stay there—not just in that single moment but in all the moments the three of us had shared and could share.
“Sherry told me guys give the best blowjobs.”
“And you wanted to find out?”
“I don’t know. I don’t know what it was exactly.” It was being horny and drunk and curious and happy.
“But whatever it was, it wasn’t because you’d changed your mind about ... men.”
“No.”
“Well.” He picked up his pen and looked down at the jumble of inky squares in front of him. “Good to know.”
Me. That was what he’d started to say. It wasn’t because you’d changed your mind about me. And I hadn’t.
Before the blowjob, I had liked, respected, needed Joshua, and none of those feelings had changed. Last night I’d gotten an extra rush of pleasure out of our relationship, but so what? It was a gift, another way he took care of me. I couldn’t leave him feeling rejected in return.
“Come with me.” I took the step that closed the distance between yesterday and this morning. “Lissie could use an extra pair of hands.” Because I still saw hurtful doubt in his eyes, I went further. “It would be more fun with you there.”
“I can always go to the gym later.”
“Lifting those lights is kind of a workout anyway.”
“For your puny arms, maybe.”
“Hey, my puny arms lift things every day. This is your daily routine—” I mimicked fingers flicking at a keyboard.
“Come with me to the gym after and we’ll see who can lift what.” Joshua stood up. “Let me grab a quick shower and I’ll meet you there. Chocolate glazed is da bomb.”
“Yeah … uh?”
“Donut, dude. You can get me a chocolate glazed donut. Did you think I was making some kind of ‘once you go black, you never go back’ sex joke?”
“That’s the direction my brain was working in,” I admitted.
“You have such a dirty mind. It’s kind of irresistible.” Then he smiled a mocking, dangerous sort of smile, and lowered his mouth to my ear. “So, was Sherry right?”
I could pretend I didn’t know what he was driving at but then he’d just spell it out for me. “I’m not saying it was the best blowjob I’ve ever gotten, but it was the best blowjob I’ve ever gotten from a guy.”
Joshua laughed. “I’ll take that for now. See you at the theater, sweet pea.”
For now, my mind echoed. Both promise and threat.
Chapter 16
Running late, I struggled to juggle coffee, donuts, and my toolbox in one hand as I opened the backstage door with the other. I walked in to find Lissie waiting, as expected, and oh, good God, Deb.
Of course Deb would be there. Lights were what she did and if Lissie—pregnant and still learning—was working on lights, why wouldn’t Deb be there with her? Hell, I’d suggested she ask Deb for help my own damn self. Not that I cared how much sense it made. I still didn’t want her there.
“Hey, Nate,” Deb greeted me. “Lissie said you were coming down to help. That’s nice of you to offer.”
OK, so we were still in truce mode. I dropped my toolbox on a work table and offered around the box of donuts.
“Joshua’s coming too,” I told Lissie, making sure she and Deb hadn’t taken all the chocolate glazed ones.
“Cool. Should go fast then.”
Lissie had an organized stack of charts and drawings. She showed me how to cross-reference the type of lighting device to the position on the bar. Deb, not needing the extra guidance, was already up on a ladder hoisting a fixture into place. I positioned a ladder beneath a light bar and dragged an instrument to the top of it.
“Is this right?” I’d helped with lights a time or two before, but not recently.
Lissie gave me a thumbs up. “Not that I really know. The icons look nice on the graph paper, but I have no idea if they’re in the right place or not.”
“Yes, you do,” Deb said, “and it’s no crime if we have to adjust them later. Don’t think I never move my lights after I hang them.”
I admired Lissie from the top of my ladder, flushed with the thrill of pushing her boundaries. It made me want to hop down and kiss her.
When she’d first come to Central Playhouse, she’d been nervous about simple jobs like pulling nails out of scrap wood, never mind designing lights. She’d never had an orgasm with a living partner, never given a more than half-hearted blowjob, never been in bed with two guys at once. She’d been opening herself up to new experiences ever since. Something like I’d opened up last night.
Speaking of new experiences, Joshua came in, clean and fresh and bright in a red t-shirt and a sleek pair of jeans. Lissie organized us into two teams—her and Joshua, me and Deb, playing matchmaker again no doubt.
Reluctantly, I ceded my ladder to a donut-munching Joshua and joined Deb at hers. Since she had the expertise, I let her stay up in the air and acted as her assistant, fetching and carrying while Lissie did the same for Joshua. We made quick work of the light bar we’d been assigned, Deb joking with me in a way she hadn’t since those first few weeks after we’d met.
“Let’s take a break before we start on the next bar.” She stretched out her shoulders from her position on the top rung of the ladder with that total ease she had in high places.
I visited the donut box for an extra burst of energy, then the men’s room to take a piss and wash my frosting-sticky and dust-covered hands. As I finished my business at the urinal, the door swing open behind me. I turned, still tucking and zipping, expecting to find Joshua, but what I found instead was Deb.
“Um?” I moved around her to get to the sink.
“I figured it was the only way to get you alone without your bodyguard. You and Joshua are kind of glued together these days.”
“We’re friends.” I turned to the paper towel dispenser, avoiding her eyes in the mirror. My initial instinct had been right. Deb being here this morning was a setup.
“Could you stand still and talk to me for a second?”
“About what?”
“I haven’t been drinking.”
“I know. It’s great. I’m proud of you.”
She frowned at me. “Don’t make out like it’s huge deal. I made a mistake that night, drinking at rehearsal. It snuck up on me, but why does it have to be a huge deal? Like you’ve never had a few too many and embarrassed yourself. It happens to everyone.”
I thought about that extra shot of tequila last night, about lowered inhibitions. I’d told Joshua the alcohol had nothing to do with it because blaming an external force felt cheap and easy, but would I have agreed to that blowjob sober?
“I don’t know what Joshua’s been telling you about me—” Deb started
“You know he’s just trying to help.”
“Well, I don’t really need his help. I’m not like him.”
“Deb, you told me this stuff yourself, way back when I first met you. About your Dad and your—” what had she called it? “—genetic predisposition. You weren’t drinking when I met you, remember?”
She’d given it up for Lent, she’d told me on one of those few dates we’d had before the Carol incident and the lockdown on public contact. When I asked her why alcohol? why Lent? she’d explained that her father was an alcoholic who’d been in and out of rehabs her entire life.
“I have a genetic predisposition,” she’d told me. “That means that since I’m related to an alcoholic there’s a higher chance that I’m an alcoholic too.”
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sp; “Are or could be?”
“I guess it depends on who you believe. I’ve been able to manage it so far, so maybe I’m fine, but I keep an eye on it: how many drinks a night, how many nights a week. Sometimes I give it up altogether for a while, like for Lent. Just to prove I can.”
Even then something had struck me as wrong. I’d never felt the need to give up alcohol to prove I could. But then Deb did everything in a controlled manner, as though her life were a series of mastery tests.
“I don’t deny that I let it get a little out of control,” Deb admitted now. “But I can quit anytime, like I always have.”
“Fine, it’s not a huge deal. Why barge into the men’s room to tell me about it then?”
She lowered her eyelashes, feigning shyness.
“What?”
“I came in here to— Oh, never mind. Now we’re all angry at each other. Why do we always have to be angry at each other when you know we don’t want to be? That’s what I came in here to say. I’m not drinking. I’m doing what you wanted. So let’s not be mad at each other anymore.” She stepped closer to me, only inches separating us now. “Please, tiger? I miss you.”
I wanted space but my back was already at the sink so I made my chest big and met her eyes calmly. “Not a good idea, Deb.”
“Why not? I promise I’ll stay sober.”
“It has nothing to do with you drinking or not drinking. You know why it’s a bad idea.”
“OK, look. I’ll get over it. I’m not thrilled about the whole community Nate-sharing program, but I’ll try, OK?”
“Wouldn’t work.”
“I’ve never even tried before, have I?”
No, she never had. We’d always done this crazy dance where I refused to promise not to see other women and she refused to be OK with my seeing other women.
“This is a new offer I’m making. You can do ... whatever, and I won’t ask you about it, and if I catch you at it, I’ll just … pretend I didn’t see it. Like Lissie was doing.”
“Lissie acknowledged me in public.”
“I’m not agreeing to that. I won’t let you make me look like that.”