by S A Sommers
Dawn Romano thought that food solved all problems. While it didn’t, not really, I was not one to turn down the pure country gourmet of her chicken pot pie.
Pure country gourmet meaning about four thousand calories a bite. It had been my go-to in high school for bulking up. I didn’t need that anymore, but there was more to it than calories. There was love, and caring, and mouthfuls of pure deliciousness.
We sat around the table, scooping out the deliciousness on to our plates, and my mother pulled out three beers and put them in front of each plate. “We all need those,” she said, sitting down.
“We sure do,” I said, swiping it and taking a hardy gulp.
She pushed her chicken, carrots, and crust around the plate. “Chase, I spoke to my husband when I got back here earlier and we’d like to work out a repayment schedule with you for the lawyers.”
“Nope,” he said, simply.
“Chase, this is a lot of money. We had to bond our house last time. I know what—”
“No. No repayment. This is me taking care of my boyfriend,” he said, and put the fork down. “It’s not going to dent the bank account. At all. Let me pay for it.”
“Chase,” I said, “I appreciate that, but I agree with my mother. We need to work out a repayment schedule.”
Casually chewing his dinner, he pulled out his phone and flipped to some app deep in the folders and collections on the screen. He popped it open, and tapped in a few numbers, navigating through the information. Finally, he settled on something and dropped the phone face up between me and my mother.
I looked at the screen, and then up at Chase, to my mother, and back to the screen.
“That’s a fucking load of numbers, Chase…” I whispered.
“A load of them,” my mother echoed. “All in front of a decimal.”
He pulled it back. “That’s just my money market. Would you like to see the checking? The savings? The stocks?” Fingers flew over the front closing things and opening others.
I slipped my hand over the screen. “Stop, Chase.”
“I don’t need the money back,” he said. “I don’t even need to work. But what the hell am I going to do with my free time? Coke and whores?”
Choking on the carrot I was trying to chew, I stared at him wide eyed. My mother started laughing.
“Was that actually an option?”
“No, not really. I was too busy trying to figure what the hell to do with all the money,” Chase said.
“Where did it come from?” I asked. “I mean, your parents’ farm is fantastic, and does well, but it’s not a money maker. Not like that.”
Chase put his fork down and flipped through his phone again. “When I first got here to the city I had no money, no friends, and a scholarship to Cooper Union. That was it. So I took a job as a home health aide. I did the evening shift, and I was assigned to a man named Martin Marsden. He was an older man, with advanced ALS and a serious bug up his ass. But I stuck it out. I needed the money and he would always need an aide.”
He put the phone down and turned it so we could look at it. It was an old picture of an older man with a ton of white hair and a laugh on his face, sitting in a very advanced looking wheelchair.
“I eventually broke through his shit attitude and started to get to the real Martin. He was a nice guy, dealt a shit hand in life. Only child of only children, he’d lost his wife young. There were no children. He’d had a lot of friends over the years, but he was it now. Once the ALS had started to steal his life, he got pissed and curled in on himself.
“He hired me on full time, and contracted with a day nurse to help me while I was in school. But I moved in with him and we basically became each other’s family. He was a good guy and once we started to get to know each other I dragged him to Central Park and a few museums and I made sure that we ate out once in a while. About once a week.
“But finally, toward the end of my junior year, it was clear that the ALS was getting the better of him. We had to move him out of his apartment into a nursing home. I was still there, every day, checking on him, talking with him.
“Before he went in, he created a living will, stating that when he was no longer able to breathe on his own, he didn’t want to be dependent on the vent. He agreed to go on it, but when it was clear that it was only the vent keeping him alive, he wanted to be taken off.
“And within a few months of moving into the place, he was moved to the vent full time, and he made me remind them of his will. He wanted it carried out. He was only on the vent for two weeks when the judge agreed that the will stood.”
I saw Chase let out a breath. He’d really been this guy’s family when he needed it. And Martin had been there for him when he had nothing.
“It was me, two nurses, and one of his very old coworkers at his funeral. That was it. He really had no one. I made sure he was buried with his wife, and went back to the apartment we’d shared to button it up and move out. I’d already found this place—” he waved his hand around “—at a decent price. I’d planned to have a roommate.
“The lawyer called me the next week, to come to his office. I had no idea. I thought maybe I had screwed up somehow or I had to be out of the apartment before my new place was ready.”
I scooped up a bit of the chicken pie. “That wasn’t it at all, was it?” I shoved the spoon in my mouth.
“Not even close,” he said. “Martin Masden had been a high-powered Wall Street broker in the mid-80s, through the death of his wife in 1995. He made a metric shit ton of money. He invested wisely, conservatively, and broadly. And by the time he died, he had nearly fifty million dollars to his name.
“And he left it all to me.”
“Shit,” Mom said.
“Yeah.” Chase nodded. “I’ve left it basically untouched. I use some of it to pay for this place, because let’s face it, graphic designers at my level aren’t rolling in cash but I adore what I do. Otherwise…it just sits there.”
My mother whacked my arm. “You put 1500 miles on my car when you could have rented a Lear jet to Illinois.”
“How the hell was I supposed to know the guy was a millionaire?”
Chase laughed. “I’ll buy you a new car.”
Mom turned and pointed at him. “Don’t you dare. You take care of my son. If you’re willing to spend that money on him, then you do that, keep him out of jail and safe, and pay for my oil change.”
I stared down at the ankle monitor and its once-a-minute blinking green light. I hated it, but at the same time, it was my stay out of jail for now card.
Chase climbed into the bed and snuggled against me.
“Stop staring at it. We’ll have it off soon. Roberts is a piece of shit, and we’ll be able to prove that he was lying.”
“Those pictures are pretty convincing,” I mumbled.
“Plain old rough sex could do that,” he said. “You can trust me on that.”
“Mm. Yeah, I know.”
He snorted. “Yeah. There’s always that one.”
“Jeeze, yes. The experimenter,” I answered. “Balls deep no lube. I was ready to buy a hemorrhoid donut the next day.”
Chuckling, his fingers circled on my skin, dipping below the waist of my boxers. “You’re lucky. I know what I’m doing.”
“Oh, do you?”
“I do,” he whispered. “Would you like a demonstration?”
“Perhaps I do,” I answered.
He leaned up and kissed the side of my mouth with clear intent. “Your ass is mine, Marc. Tonight, it’s my turn, and you need someone to take care of you.”
“I—”
He put a finger over my lips. “I told you I switch, and I want to make you feel good.” Moving his finger, he leaned down and kissed me—languid and without demand. It was so careful and so full of love, it almost scared me.
Because every drop of love he gave to me, I gave back. This man had my heart.
He leaned to the nightstand and grabbed the condom and lube and dro
pped them on the blanket next to us.
“Let me play?” he asked quietly.
“Of course,” I answered. I regretted the allowance almost immediately because in seconds I thought the man was going to kill me as he sucked one of my nipples into his mouth and rolled the other in his fingers.
And then I nearly died when I felt his finger graze over my hole. He stroked carefully, softly, a feathery touch that had me squirming and gasping and grabbing his hair.
He nibbled and licked his way down my body, twirling his tongue around my cock, licking his way up, and over and down, all while that finger teased me.
The man had me shaking and sweating.
He swallowed me whole and hummed while I was deep in his throat, forcing a stuttering gasp out of me that I had never heard before.
But instead of continuing there, he let me pop out of his mouth with a dirty sound, and went back to his journey down my body. His fist wrapped around my erection instead of playing at my nipples, but it wasn’t a hard grip, and not very serious.
Because in the next moment, his tongue circled around my balls and pulled one delicate orb into his mouth. He hummed again and it became very clear to me why all this was called a hummer.
Hot summer lightning raced up my spine and spiked in my brain. The climax was growing—and he had me leaping ahead when he switched to the other side of my sac.
“Shit,” I managed to hiss.
He pulled away and I wanted to beg him to come back and finish me. My dick was aching it was so hard, and I needed the relief.
And then he made me slap my hands over my mouth to keep the scream from echoing in the building—his tongue found the sensitive skin of my hole and danced over it. I could feel his smile on my skin, his lazy hand on my erection.
Chase feasted on me. I wanted more. I wrapped my hands around the back of my knees and pulled myself up and open for him.
“Greedy,” he whispered, the sensation of his hot breath making me gasp again.
“Fuck yes I am,” I answered, but I wasn’t sure that’s what came out of my mouth. I was pretty sure it was a line of incomprehensible gobbledygook.
He teased me, tracing over me time and again and then dipped inside me. I had to let go of one of my legs and cover my mouth again. This man was determined to make me scream and wake the building.
The cap on the lube snapped open and I was ready to tell him to call 911, because I was having the best death ever.
His tongue moved out of the way of his finger as he slipped it inside. There was a little burn, but he managed to find my prostate right away. I was near tears from the pleasure.
“No—Jesus, Joseph and Jehoshaphat, get your dick in me, Chase!” I cried.
His hand was gone from my cock and I heard the foil rip as he looked up at me. “You sure?”
“Oh, shit in Shinola, if you don’t get in me, I’m going to blow without you.”
“I should take more time…”
“No, Chase, no, fuck me already!”
He smirked as he rolled the condom on, spreading some more lube on himself and drizzling a few cold drops on my hole. Before I could yell at him again, he pressed himself against me and pushed lightly.
I should have let him stretch me more, but I just needed to feel him inside. The burn was uncomfortable, but he was slow, steady, and careful as he pushed in. He stopped when I grimaced, without me saying a thing, and finally, I felt his plump balls pressed against the flesh of my ass. He felt so fucking good, and I felt so fucking full of Chase.
Leaning forward, he pressed his lips to mine, and I could taste the faint dusky remains of me on his lips. I had never really liked that before, but this time…it was Chase, and I liked the way I tasted on his mouth.
“Good?” he asked.
“Move, please.”
He did. I bit the side of my hand.
Chase laughed and leaned to my ear. “You need a gag.”
“Oh…fuck.” The very idea of this man tying me up made my dick jump between us.
At first he was slow, letting me stretch around him. But, it didn’t take long for me to get there, and we could both feel the moment my body agreed to this, agreed to let him shuttle his dick in and out of me.
So he did. Hard and fast, glancing off that spot inside that made me see stars every time.
I was going to pass out. I could see the flashes of light in my head, warning lights, that I was going to crash and pass out.
Wrapping his hand around me, wet with a little lube, he stroked me at the same pace his stroked in and out of my ass. His fist was tight, then loose, then tight—
“I’m coming,” I gasped as he tightened once more.
“Let me see it, baby,” he growled. “Let me see you come on your chest. Show me.”
The orgasm exploded from the tip of my cock, the tacky cum flying up onto my stomach, my chest, even my neck. The lights behind my eyes were like strobes, and my ears were ringing.
My hole clenched hard on Chase, and just as I looked up at him, he came. It was a glorious sight to see that pleasure rippling through him as he spilled his own seed in the condom. “Marcus!”
His forehead touched mine and we were panting in time with each other, letting the climax roll through me. It took a while before he opened his eyes and grinned at me.
“Holy hell,” he breathed.
“You ain’t kidding,” I answered, pulling him down onto me, ignoring the sticky mess between us.
“I like switching with you,” he murmured, licking a little of the cum from my neck.
“I could tell.”
Chuckling, he pulled himself up and slipped himself free of my body. Condom gone, lube back in the drawer, and both of us wiped clean from the climax, he crawled up next to me on the bed, and snuggled into my arms.
“Marcus?”
“Yeah, babe?”
“Can we just get tested and ditch the condoms?”
“Shit yes,” I answered.
“Good,” he mumbled, drifting off. “Love you.”
“Love you right back.”
I reached down and scratched the ankle monitor. I had to remember to use an alcohol wipe under it later. I could shower with it, but it was fastened tight.
Sorcha gave me a side long glance and sighed.
“You okay?”
“Fuck no.” The words were out before I could stop them. Letting out a blast of frustrated breath, I sank a bit in the chair. “No. I’m not okay. Please, for the love of all that’s holy and unholy in the afterlife, tell me you believe me.”
“Believe you?”
“That I didn’t rape him.”
“Oh, yeah. Of course, I believe you. You didn’t even have to ask. That guy has given me the hee-bee gee-bees since he walked into the conference room. The fact that he was always trying to get you alone was another one. Oh, also a big clue? Restraining order written into the rider on the contract.”
She slid a few of the controls around. “He’s a bully, isn’t he?”
“Bully would be kind,” I said. “He’s one of the most awful people you ever wanted to meet. He’s a good sound producer, but not great and if it wasn’t for his family, he would have been working backstage at some rinky dink community theater in Omaha.”
“And away from you and your magnificent vocals.”
I turned my head slowly and looked at her. “What?”
She glanced up at the ceiling. “What did he call it? Oh, yeah, your fuck me bedroom voice.”
My jaw dropped open. “You…talked to Chase.”
“He was here this morning to talk to all of us with those two delicious and very gay lawyers he hired for you.” She pressed a few buttons and hit a key on the computer. “They’re hot for each other.”
“Uh, Kyle and Vincent?” I asked. “No, not really. Kyle just railroads over Vin and they end up arguing. A lot. Like more than normal and—wait.” I considered what I had just said, and shook my head, then smirked. “You’re right. They are hot
for each other.”
Sorcha laughed. “I like them though. They’re good lawyers. And I suspect…” Her eyes darted to me and back. “I suspect they work like their own detective team and the two of them are going to make sure you’re not just freed, but completely cleared, and possibly turning this back on What’s His Face.”
“What’s His Face that destroyed my life.”
Sorcha put a hand on my arm. “He didn’t. You know he didn’t. He changed it. Not destroyed it. Don’t give him the mental space, that power over you. You have Chase in your life now, and all those wacky nuts he calls friends. You have a dog that loves you, and you saved kittens from a wall. I promise, you are not destroyed.”
I stared at the knobs on the board, and nodded. “I’m not destroyed. I am rebuilt. I’m reinforced.”
“Also, there are enough holes in Roberts’ story to drive an earthmover through. The ones they use in mining? With the massive wheels and you have to climb a ladder to get into? Yeah. Those.”
I cracked up laughing. “I just hope everyone can see that.”
“They will.”
The phone on the table next to her rang and she hit the speaker. “Sorcha.”
“Hey, it’s Jerry. Come up to the conference room. They want to talk about the tracks on the show.”
She shot a look at me. “Is he going to be there?”
“No,” Jerry said.
“We’ll be up in a minute,” I answered.
Sorcha disconnected and saved the work on the clip. We headed up to the conference room, where Jerry was sitting with Raph.
“Good. I have no idea why they pulled this impromptu meeting, but I’m not happy,” Jerry said. “We have a lot of work we need to get done, and this is a waste of time.”
“Totally agreed,” Sorcha said, taking the seat next to Raph.
I walked around and stood on Jerry’s other side. “Hate me?”
“Fuck you, Romano. Sit your ass down. I do not hate you. No one does. I know you rescue kittens from walls.”