by Laurie Lochs
Oh my God. His thumb in his mouth?
I stole a second glance. Sure enough, the boy was sucking his thumb. He positioned it softly in his mouth, just past his pink lips and tongue that swirled about the head. My jaw dropped. How could I have missed it? Because if the boy like sucking on thumbs, I could only imagine what else he might like sucking on… And I didn't mean my cock.
Would he like… Pacifiers? Or was it too soon? Though I’d never been involved in the scene, I’d known a few friends over the years – Bruce’s friends, not mine – who went to the club and had been involved in the scene for a long time.
Was it possible Kyle was a little?
I shook my head. Of course Kyle wasn’t a little. He’d given no other indication that he might be into little things. Baby things. Like pacifiers, diapers, and boy clothes.
Kyle shuddered and brought his thumb further into his mouth. Where there’s smoke, there’s fire.
I groaned and tried to block the beautiful sight from my mind. The truth was that Kyle was a sight for the gods. He was the spitting image of youthful Hyacinthus, Apollo’s love to whom mere mortals couldn’t compare. One glance at the boy was enough to send my heart into spasms. The boy was so innocent and soft. Regression.
Because that's what it was, wasn’t it? Regression. I’d been around enough of Bruce’s friends to know what it was about. It was what when you went back to when you were really young in your mind. Not exactly a fantasy -- it was a time machine. You could be anything you wanted, any age, any time. As long as you had a willing partner, nothing was off limits. Regression was a hiding place away from the outside world, a beautiful land that blended fantasy and reality with a touch of the forbidden. I wanted his regression in my mouth.
Slowly, and without his permission, I removed his thumb and inserted mine. Before I’d done so little as insert the tip, his little tongue darted over the coarse skin and licked it. Fire shot through my core, dousing my innermost self in liquid flame.
This was true arousal. This was the definition of turned on. My entire body was consumed by flames -- scalding, smoking, alive.
I was just about to deposit on his sleeping lips another kiss when, suddenly, the piercing cry of the new Harry Styles album suddenly burst into the room. Kyle’s eyes shot open and he glanced around frantically.
"Oh God," he gasped, peering at me.
I froze. Did the ringtone awaken him? Or had he felt my thumb in his mouth? Or did he think I’d kidnapped him? Or did his frantic eyes mean something else?
"What is it, Kyle?" I whispered, running my finger over his collarbone in an effort to calm him. But it only froze him all the more.
"How long… F-Fuck," he stammered, whipping his head back and forth. "How long have I been sleeping?"
"Erm," I said, glancing at the wall clock. It was a little past seven. Dusk was beginning to set. "A few hours."
"A few hours?" he gasped, throwing back the covers. My heart broke as his supple body slipped out of the sheets.
"Is that…" I began, unsure of how to start. "Is that too long? Or is it –”
“It’s too much," Kyle said in a tight voice, wiping his eyes as he found his khakis. He hurriedly threw them on and looked for his shirt. His arms trembled as he hoisted the shirt over his head and attempted to slide it over his chest. If I didn't know better, I'd have thought the boy was having a full on panic attack.
"What is it?"
"I can’t say," Kyle whispered, still struggling to put on the shirt. I slipped out of the bed and smoothed the back. It got caught between his arms. He would never be able to get it on from here.
"I see," I said, mulling it over. But that did little to quell the insurgency in my head. Stay, I wanted to say, kissing the back of his head. Just stay in my bed, Kyle. We'll find a way to take care of everything. I can’t stand one night without you. You need a protector, little one. I know you looked after Blakely. But here, in this moment of time, in this very bed, we've accessed a level of existence we will never return to if you leave. We're special, more special than the stars. My heart will crack into a million pieces if you go home.
Kyle's panic attack prevented him from hearing my silent pleas. "I have to go," he stammered, staring at the floor. "I'm so sorry, Mark. I have to go. I have to –"
The boy was repeating himself like a broken record. He was in the midst of a full-scale panic attack. "It’s okay,” I began, guiding him out of the room. "I'll drive you home, Kyle. Grab the bicycle and bring it to the car. It’s still leaning against the outside of the house. I'll throw on a shirt. In two minutes, I'll meet you by the driveway and I’ll take you home."
"Thank you," Kyle muttered, shaking his head frantically. "I'm so sorry. I-I just have to—”
"I understand," I said, quickly making the bed. I didn’t understand. None of it made sense. Hadn’t we been having a beautiful time?
Kyle flew out of the room and, with his absence, shattered my heart. I didn't know if we'd ever get the moment we'd stumbled across in the bed back again. This boy was everything to me and I'd only become acquainted with him three hours ago in a pizza shop. From which he'd gotten fired. I'd fixed his bike and he, though he didn't know it, had begun the arduous task of fixing my heart. I wanted him. I needed him more than life itself. I didn't care who knew it.
Clearly, he didn’t feel the same. Conscious or not, the boy had torn himself away from me and was quickly barreling towards a life I knew nothing about. Had a lover called? How many men did he have wrapped around his little finger?
I might as well have been asking, How the hell could he extricate himself from my life so fast?
The worst part was that I could’ve sworn he was a virgin when I bred him. Untouched. I had nothing against boys who weren’t virgins or who didn’t commit to the first man who crossed their path. But he’d been so inexperienced and full of need. His body trembled like I’d fondled him for the first time.
I understood he needed to go, but more than anything I wanted him back.
Because I sure as hell wasn't going to be selfish and force him to stay, I met him by the car and foisted his bicycle into the trunk. We pulled out of the driveway and crept towards Minneapolis in the approaching night.
When we arrived at the house he was staying at, I unloaded the bicycle and debated whether to kiss him goodbye. But he grabbed the bicycle and ran up the cracked walkway before I had a chance to hold him in my arms.
I cleared my throat and watched him bring the bicycle to the back of the house. The thought darted across my mind that I could follow him and force him to give me a hug. But I wouldn’t do anything of the sort. I’d known Doms who did insane shit to their boys and I wasn’t them.
But it didn’t stop me from slipping back into my BMW and turning on the saddest classical music I could find. “He was in your arms,” I murmured as I turned onto I-35W, with Erik Satie’s Gymonpedes playing softly in the background, “he was yours and he’s gone. Perhaps forever.”
This is why you shouldn’t have done this. He ruined your life once. If you let him, he’ll ruin it again.
Maybe it was a good thing Kyle left without leaving so little as his number. I didn’t need to see him, didn’t need to know he existed or how he lived. It was for the best. I had my real estate course I’d volunteered to teach at starting next week which would allow me to forget all about little Kyle, with eyes like the Atlantic, skin like the beach. Better to forget about him before I waded in too deep.
Chapter 9
Kyle
* * *
“Ma,” I said, stirring the oatmeal. “Come to the table, please. I've got raisins, peanut butter… Everything healthy for you.”
“Oh God," Ma said, rolling her eyes. She waddled into the room and sat down at the chair closest to the stove. It was the only one that didn’t hurt her back. "You know I appreciate you cooking for me. But, my God, this -- I mean, all of this -- it really isn't necessary. I'm a grown woman! I can feed myself.”
&nbs
p; "I know, Ma," I said, sighing as I dished up the oatmeal. I helped scoop raisins into her bowl and filled it with a generous dash of peanut butter. After, I set the oatmeal back on the stove and dished up my own bowl. I poured raisins and topped it off with brown sugar. Before digging in, I opened the window to let in the sunshine and morning birds.
As much as Ma protested about my taking care of her, I needed to do it. If only because it helped me get my mind off my impromptu rendezvous with Mark last week.
The night I came in late, Ma had wasted no time in probing me for information. She’d wanted to know who I'd been with, where I'd been, and whether I'd enjoyed it. "You need to stay safe, Kyle," she said, nodding grimly. "You need to use protection. Otherwise, you know the horrible things that can happen."
"I know, Ma," I’d whispered, mirroring her by nodding. I wanted to thank her for looking out for me but at the same time wanted to say that this was my life and that I could make my own decisions. If I was mature enough to get into crazy situations I was mature enough to find my way out. Never mind that, every “situation” I'd been in thus far, I'd had to be rescued. Ma rescued me when my woodland adventure with Blakely and Trevor didn’t work out. And Safe Boys helped me when I’d fucked it up with Mark the first time.
Goddamnit, Kyle. Enough about Mark already.
I didn’t exactly have a choice. For the entire previous week, I tried to scrub him from my mind, but he always found his way back, like a bird coming home to roost. Whether he knew it or not, he'd made an indelible impression on me.
Because, well… He’d been my first. The first one to enter my hole. The first to touch me.
Yet I still couldn’t believe I’d been so fucking ballsy. Untouched or not, what kind of nineteen-year-old boy threw himself at the man who used to foster him? I was a worse placement than Blakely. After the Godins kicked me out and I changed my ways, I spent the rest of my years at Safe Boys priding myself on my spiritual transformation. I was no longer the impulsive, needy, hyper-sexual fourteen-year-old I was when I'd try to seduce Mr. Godin the first time. I'd grown, or so I told Miss Molly, who might have seen right through me but didn't want to say anything for fear of spoiling my progress. In my mind, I've matured past the point of wanting to seduce much of anyone -- and that included Mark. I was content to serve as an example, a beacon of light in the dark foster care world to guide the younger boys and help them make the best decisions for their futures.
You know, like the ones that didn’t involve coming onto their foster parents.
But last night had shattered any lingering illusion of my moral superiority. In place of virtue, a festering desire had taken root. My heart was a vineyard freshly plagued by weeds and thorns.
Because Mark made me feel safe, hadn’t he? In his arms, I was free. In his marital bed, I was reborn.
The only person that could have gotten me to leave was, well… Ma.
When she’d called, it’d been a punch in the gut. The call was a literal wake-up call that told me, Don’t do this. It was the worst thing I could do, touch this man whose life I’d ruined, this man who had awakened in me the original desire to submit. I was acting on urges I’d harbored since I’d been fourteen years old.
At least he hadn’t seen me sucking my thumb like a little baby.
Thank God for Ma’s call. Better to forget it ever happened.
"Thank you, Kyle," Ma said, snapping me back to the present with the sweetest smile in the world. Her crystal eyes glistened in the light of the day.
"Sure thing.” My voice was a whisper, which only conveyed how distracted I was.
I helped Ma take a bite of her oatmeal and glanced at the wall clock behind her. 7:30 AM. I had to leave for my real estate course right away… Couldn’t be late for my new life.
After clearing the dishes, I grabbed the bagged lunch Ma had packed me and hauled the bicycle to the front lawn. I hopped on it and raced through everything I knew about the real estate course I’d be attending, which would “prepare me to be a top-selling agent in the Twin Cities metro area.” It was held at the Minneapolis Community and Technical College, a local community college I’d sometimes seen advertised on TV but which I’d never bothered to look up because I didn’t plan on going to school. But in a way, this was sort of like going to school… I was going to class, wasn’t I? Sure, the instructor would be teaching me about different property values and types of homes, but I was still learning something. I might never be a lawyer but a real estate agent was still a valuable career. They performed real functions in society. And it had nothing to do with the fact that Mark was one of the top in the city or the fact that I’d seen his commercials on TV a million times before ever stepping into his home for the first time. Truth be told, it’d been like I’d met a celebrity, albeit a local one who didn’t quite have the command of Leonardo DiCaprio… But I didn’t mind. If anything, seeing him in person had been even more alluring; it was like I had a direct line to a God.
Perhaps living with Mark even briefly had awakened the desire to be a real estate agent in me when I was a boy. Maybe we’d even talked about real estate when I lived there, but I didn’t remember. All I knew was that it was one of the most practical career choices for a boy who didn’t want to go to school. But if Mark had played any role in that, well… I’d just have to thank him in my dreams. Because I definitely wasn’t going to talk to his ever again. It was completely out of the question. I had no desire or way to ever see or speak to him again.
I stopped at a red light near Lyndale Avenue. As the light turned, it suddenly hit me that I’d forgotten the brown-bag lunch Ma packed me. “Oh, shit,” I whispered, running my hands across the handlebars that Mark had been gracious enough to patch. How the hell could I have forgotten the turkey sandwich on French bread and carrot sticks with ranch? I had no money to buy lunch, either.
But it’d be okay. Because it had to be okay. I’d just have to get through it. It wouldn’t be the first time I’d gone without food. Hell, in the woods with Blakely and Trevor, we ran out of food for three days before Trevor and I reached the small pond from which we drawn a few fish as we were on the brink of starvation. And before that, it wasn’t like Safe Boys fed us on a regular schedule. They tried the best they could but at the end of the day the meal hall was dependent on donations. That wasn’t something we could control. Our stomachs are grown resilient because of it. I would go without lunch.
At last, the light turned green. Ten minutes later, I locked the bicycle up outside the main building and entered MCTC and made it to the classroom.
I took a deep breath and entered the classroom. It was enormous and there were tons of students. Brushing past the first row, I found a seat and made a space for myself in the second row. I was far too scared to talk to anyone else in the class but I spotted a few kids who looked nice enough. I made a mental note to talk to them so that I wouldn’t be totally alone, stranded at my desk with no one to think of but Mark, whose firm arms hadn’t stopped gripping my waist in my mind since last week.
In an effort to get my mind of my Daddy-who-wasn’t-my-Daddy, I forced myself to think of Nino and what he was doing in the restaurant. How was he coping with the news that he was going bankrupt? Though my number one priority was Ma, if I could, I wanted to help Nino and save the pizzeria — but I already knew this would be too much to think about, at least right now when I was barely making it on my own. Maybe when I became one of the top real estate agents like Mark before I ruined his life I could go back to Nino’s and help.
Best to focus on school and how to better my own situation before I tried to help anyone else like I always did. I’d helped enough as it was, with Blakely and Safe Boys. It was time to forget about the world and focus on my future and my career.
I cracked open the textbook Ma had bought for me with the change she’d been saving for a rainy day or medication. It was the last gift she’d been able to get me and I promised to repay her when my career took off. At last, instructor opened his
mouth to speak and introduce himself to the class.
Except he didn’t get a single word out. Because when he opened his mouth, a very familiar well-built man burst through the door and changed my life forever.
Chapter 10
Mark
* * *
When I woke this morning, the birds were chirping and the sun was shining in the sky. But this wasn’t enough to reduce the effects of the shadow that this fucking real estate course I’d agreed to help out with was casting over my entire life. All I wanted to do was return home and bury myself in my pillow, the same pillow where Kyle had slept and where we’d made love. Who knew the class would be so much stress?
To say I was terrified was an understatement. I’d spent the entire weekend preparing but I was worried I’d forgotten the fundamentals of my profession. My business had tanked so much the last three years. Was I even qualified to teach a class anymore?
I took a deep breath and prepared to enter. I couldn’t believe I was going to be teaching a class in the same conference room where I’d gotten my real estate license back in the day before they built the addition that housed the current students. It was like my career was coming full circle at the worst possible time.
If only this could have happened before the breakup.
I forced these thoughts from my mind and stepped into the room, setting my briefcase on a chair by the front podium. The instructor, whose name was Peter, beamed and clapped me on the back. “Welcome, Mark. We’re happy to have you.”
”Thank you.” I turned to Peter and shook his hand. I knew him from the industry and had seen him on more than one occasion at the closing table. When he'd asked if I could help out I’d been eager to accept. Now I was regretting everything.
Especially when I saw that the boy sitting limply in the second row was him.
Oh my God. What the hell was he doing here?