Afterburner: A DADT Novella

by Lex Valentine

  “How long was he in Afghanistan?” Bas asked as he pulled up the Air Force Academy’s alumni website.

  “I don’t know for sure. My sense is that it was probably at least as long as you spent in Iraq,” Mike said dryly. “It’s all shitty anti-terrorist desert duty so what difference does it make?”

  “None, I suppose. Do you know anything personal about him?” Bas searched for his class then counted forward a few years.

  “What are you asking, Bas?” Mike’s voice went soft and cool.

  Bas began searching the faces on the site. “Don’t ask and I won’t tell, Mike,” he replied carefully.

  His friend and boss sucked in a surprised breath. “I told you he’s a smart guy. I had no idea.”

  “You still don’t,” Bas cautioned.

  “No. That’s true enough.”

  They said goodbye, hung up, and Bas scanned the faces of the classes that had been at the academy during his four years there. Sure enough, he found Ryder a couple of years behind him. The guy had been far more athletic than Bas. But then, with a brother who was a professional hockey player it didn’t surprise Bas at all that Ryder had played both soccer and hockey in college. The younger Ryder also looked vaguely familiar but Bas shrugged it off. They’d been in the same school at the same time albeit in different classes. They must have run into each other at some point, Bas just couldn’t recall where.

  He put in a call to his sister Veronica, asking to borrow her housekeeper and was told he couldn’t have her until the end of the week. Bas wasn’t disappointed when he hung up. A few days with Ryder in his bed sounded like heaven to him. He knew he was moving way too fast, but somehow he just didn’t care. He’d spent his whole life caring about whether people knew who he slept with. If Ryder wasn’t worried about his career, who was he to worry for him? Especially since they’d just met and who knew what a few weeks or months would bring? Maybe they wouldn’t last that long. Lord knew every encounter in Bas’s past hadn’t lasted.

  Shutting down his computer, Bas walked into the living room and found himself glancing out the big picture window at the driveway, waiting for the classic Mustang to reappear. A low sardonic laugh escaped him. An afternoon spent being sucked and fucked by Ryder Beckett had left him completely infatuated. How long could something that burned so hot last? He and Ryder were like a jet on full afterburner…exhilarating, adrenaline pumping speed and agility…while the fuel ran out double time. The cynical part of Bas’s heart gave them a few weeks at best while the innocent part yearned for forever.

  Chapter Two

  Ryder stood on the flight line of the Flying Marchettis airfield. Head tilted back, he watched the Slick 360 loop through the pale blue California sky. It zoomed low and darted back up. The wings waggled. The plane went into a dive and then came screaming out of it, trailing colored smoke. Ryder knew the pilot had to be pulling some serious Gs. Maybe not like in an F-16, but still. Only a pilot experienced in aerobatics could have performed the moves the Slick was being put through.

  A slightly different sound reached Ryder’s ears and he twisted, searching the sky for the little plane and found it flying inverted. He started to smile as he realized the pilot wasn’t Cristiano Marchetti. The Slick was Cris’s plane but Cris didn’t have an inversion move in his routine. Only one Marchetti flew inverted. Sebastian.

  When the acrobatic plane came in, lined up for a perfect landing, Ryder headed toward the hangar. He found Cris putting away his cell phone and cursing a blue streak.

  “What the hell is wrong with him?” Sebastian’s brother growled. “Don’t you guys let him play enough in the jets on base?”

  Ryder frowned. “What’s wrong?”

  Cris let out a frustrated sigh. “He’s not supposed to be doing that shit in my plane. I don’t have him insured for aerobatics yet. He grounded himself from doing shows this year. We didn’t ask him to stay home. He could’ve gone on the road with us. But no. He asked to stay home and then I find him doing this shit.”

  The bright red and gold plane taxied smoothly toward them and into the hangar. Ryder hung back as Cris stalked toward it. He knew why Bas had been showing off. It had been for him. Ryder was impressed with Bas’s skills, but he felt guilty even though he hadn’t asked Bas to do it. His lover had known he was watching and had decided to give a little show. Guilt or no guilt, Ryder didn’t want any part of Bas’s pissed off brother. Bas would have to deal with Cris on his own.

  Hot Italian tempers flared. Arms pinwheeled and hands gestured. Both men postured like the Alphas they were. Ryder stood watching as clinically as he could, tuning out the brothers’ heated words. Cris and Bas were the same height and had the same raven dark hair and classic Roman features but that ended the resemblance. Bas had wider shoulders, leaner hips, and a more angular face with a set of delicious dimples. Cris had softer features and a barrel chest much like their father.

  Ryder decided that had he been offered a chance with Cris, he would have turned him down. Bas’s lean, muscular frame excited him as no other man ever had. Two weeks of fucking Sebastian Marchetti had Ryder in a tailspin. The first week had been spent in Bas’s house as the apartment was readied. The last week had been a little less comfortable as they went from bed to bed and even slept apart a couple of nights. Ryder hadn’t liked that. In one short week, he’d gotten use to the glide of Bas’s muscular legs against his own in the night.

  The brothers brought their argument to a close with a brief hug and slapping of backs. Apparently, all was well with the Flying Marchettis once more. Cris turned to leave, raising a hand in a wave at Ryder, who waved back. Moving toward the hangar, Ryder stood in the doorway as he had the day he’d met Bas, watching as his lover bent to tether the wheels of the acrobatic plane. Just as he had that first day, he admired the taut curve of Bas’s ass in faded jeans. The man had the most perfect ass Ryder had ever seen. He might be thirty-eight years old but he had the ass of a twenty year old. And every inch of it belonged to Ryder.

  When Bas closed and locked the hangar, Ryder reached out and got himself a palm full of the ass he’d been admiring. He cupped it, stroked it, squeezed it, and tucked his hand into a back pocket as Bas stepped closer.

  “What the hell are you doing, Ryder?” he muttered. “We’re out in the open. Anyone could drive up.”

  Ryder leaned into his lover and licked the side of his tanned throat. “We’d see them coming long before they got here,” he said softly.

  “My brother might still be here,” Bas warned.

  With a dismissive grunt, Ryder nipped at Bas’s earlobe. “Like I care if Cris knows. Besides, I thought you’d told him.”

  Bas sighed and his body melted into Ryder’s. “I did. The whole family knows. They are hell bent to protect you because they think you’re ‘it’ for me.”

  Ryder lifted his head and stared hard at Bas. “Am I?” he said softly. “Isn’t that what we think is going on here between us?”

  Biting his lip, Bas nodded slowly. “I think so, but the situation worries me and sometimes I wonder how long it will last. I already told you my afterburner analogy.”

  “Oh, no.” Ryder shook his head emphatically. “I told you it’s not true. We’re not gonna run out of fuel, Sebastian Marchetti.”

  “How can you be so sure?”

  The plaintive tone of Bas’s whisper hit Ryder like a fist. Wrapping his arms around his lover, he hugged Bas close.

  “If I tell you a secret, will you promise not to think I’m a creepy stalker?” he murmured in Bas’s ear.

  Bas smiled, his dimples showing in a way that made Ryder’s heart thud.

  “I promise. And even if you were a stalker, you’re my stalker.”

  Ryder angled his head and quickly dropped a hot, open mouthed kiss on Bas’s lips. “I had a crush on you in college,” he said.

  The dark eyes of his lover widened in shock. “You’re kidding. You didn’t even know me.”

  “I knew enough. People talked about you be
cause of your background. I had no clue you were gay. Then one Christmas break, I headed to Phoenix and in a club there…I saw you kissing a man.”

  Bas went stiff in his arms. “And you’re sure it was me.”

  The words weren’t a question, but Ryder answered as if they were. “Yes. I know what I saw and what I saw turned me on so much I’ve dreamed of it for years. I saw you completely lost in a kiss with a man and I wanted to be the man so badly, I ached.”

  For a long moment, Bas remained silent and Ryder began to worry about his confession. Perhaps he should have kept what he’d seen to himself.

  Finally, Bas said hoarsely, “If you saw me, anyone could have.”

  Cupping his lover’s face, Ryder brushed a kiss to his lips. “But no one else did. If they had, you wouldn’t have had the career you’ve had.”

  A long shaky sigh escaped Bas. “Your career could be toast if we’re exposed.”

  “That’s my problem. Not yours.”

  “You’re wrong. I care for you, Ryder. It’s my problem too.”

  The glint in those dark eyes turned Ryder inside out. “I care for you too.” He slipped his hand back into the back pocket of Bas’s jeans and squeezed one tight buttock. “I need you now.”

  They started walking toward Ryder’s apartment.

  “Why the hell do we always walk here?” Bas complained breathlessly. “It’s too far. I need to start driving here.”

  Ryder chuckled and rubbed his palm against the flex of his lover’s ass as they walked. “Anticipation is half the fun.”

  “Half the foreplay is more like it.” Bas’s grumbled words accompanied a fierce frown.

  “Look at it this way, if half the foreplay is done by the time we get there, we’ll get to fucking in a lot shorter time,” Ryder murmured with a grin.

  They rushed up the stairs to Ryder’s apartment two steps at a time. In a flurry of flying clothes, they tumbled to his bed and rubbed against each other’s naked body. Bas moaned as Ryder palmed their two cocks together in his hand. The cocks slid against each other as he stroked them. Lust surged through his body as it always did when his cock touched Bas’s.

  Grinding against each other, mouths hot and wet, bodies needy, erections already leaking copious pre-cum, their foreplay had an urgent air to it. Ryder knew what he wanted. Something Bas didn’t give him nearly enough. He reached out and his fingers snagged the tube of lube on the bedside table.

  “Fuck me, Bas. I need your cock inside me,” he murmured.

  The dark eyes above him glittered with heat. With rough hands, Bas flipped him over onto his belly then grabbed his hips, pulling him onto his knees. Ryder’s breath caught in his throat as Bas caressed his buttocks.

  “Time for you to fly inverted, Flip,” Bas murmured, referring to Ryder’s call sign of Flip because he’d been so eager to learn the maneuver in acrobatic school.

  With rough fingers, Bas prepared him. Lube dripped down the crack of his ass and he shuddered. Then Bas’s long fingers pressed into him, the burn sending his heartbeat into the cardiac arrest zone. Ryder loved it when Bas was rough with him. Loved to have Bas fuck him as opposed to make love to him. He liked both, but they each had their place too. Today wasn’t about love. It was about lust. The fire that burned deep in his gut every time he saw Bas needed containment today and the only way to do that would be if Bas fucked him hard.

  The quick finger fuck made Ryder’s balls ache. He spread his thighs, moving his knees shoulder width apart as Bas’s fingers left his ass. He heard the tear of a condom wrapper and then a hard hand clamped down on the back of his neck as Bas’s cock shoved its way inside his ass.

  Ryder gasped loudly, his body rigid with pain and pleasure. God, he loved it when Bas treated him like this! At first, Bas wouldn’t, but Ryder had shown his lover just what he wanted from him. Soon enough, Bas took him with a masculine aggression that turned Ryder into a limp mass of satisfied flesh. Getting Bas to fuck him sometimes took some conniving though because the other man seemed to relish being fucked more than fucking.

  Ass burning, Ryder thrust backward into Bas’s hard strokes. When his lover’s hand slipped down his belly to roughly pull on the rigid cock that swung between his legs, Ryder gasped again. A long moan escaped him. Bas tugged hard on Ryder’s tight balls then began to jack his cock in a forceful manner.

  Every thrust had a coarseness to it that Ryder loved. Their fucking felt primal, elemental. Already Ryder could feel his orgasm nearing. Bas fucked his ass hard, his cock pushing into Ryder with such force that his body rocked. His lover’s hands caressed him from balls to cock to nipples with rough, unapologetic masculine touches. Nothing about their sex spoke of softness. It was a raw meeting of male bodies, meant to showcase their evolutionary roots of conquering and dominating.

  Bas tilted Ryder’s hips up a little, shoving his head down. The rigid length of Bas’s thick cock slammed into Ryder and pleasure exploded within him as his prostate received a hard caress from the downstroke. A series of furious strokes pounded Ryder’s prostate, forcing him into a world of insane pleasure pain where nothing existed except him and Bas. He found himself moaning Bas’s name over and over to match each thrust. When Bas twisted his balls and caressed his aching cock with a firm grip, Ryder finally lost it.

  A hoarse cry broke from him as Bas’s body covered him, shoving him down on the bed as he came inside Ryder’s ass. Ryder’s cock sprayed the sheets with hot jets of cum. He shuddered, his ass convulsively clutching at Bas’s invading cock. Shaking with reaction, they collapsed on the mattress, drenched in sweat, the scent of sex filling the room.

  Bas finally pulled his softened penis from Ryder and stood up to get rid of the used condom. Ryder rolled to his side to watch his lover. Bas walked on obviously shaky legs to the bathroom. When he returned he sat beside Ryder and bent to kiss him.

  “Was I too rough?” he asked, his dark eyes worried.

  “Fuck no,” Ryder groaned. “I loved every second of it. You don’t fuck me enough, Bas. I want to feel your cock in my ass every day.”

  Bas chuckled. “Taking turns has its limitations I suppose.”

  Ryder sighed in satisfaction as Bas caressed him, sweeping his palms over Ryder’s chest. He reached up and ran his hands up the hard length of Bas’s arms. Their gazes met. An idea that had been percolating in Ryder’s head for the past few days rose as he stared at his lover and he decided it wouldn’t hurt to pose the question.

  “Bas, could we get tested? Maybe get rid of the condoms?” he asked carefully, watching his lover for his reaction. “I don’t want to be with anyone else. I just want you.”

  Dark eyes gazed at him with a serious expression as one black brow rose. “Monogamy? Commitment?”

  “Yes.” Ryder’s reply came out in an emphatic tone.

  The expression on Bas’s face told Ryder that his lover was giving the idea some serious thought.

  “I don’t see why not,” he finally said.

  Joy streaked though Ryder. He wanted to leap from the bed and cheer. Getting this much of a commitment out of Bas after such a short time meant that the man felt the same way about him that Ryder felt about Bas.

  He sat up and wrapped his arms around Bas. “You know, Babe Marchetti, I could get used to loving you.”

  Bas laughed at Ryder’s use of his call sign. “I know what you mean, Flip.” He leaned closer and kissed Ryder. “I really do. What’s growing between us…well, it feels special. For the first time in my life, I want to know what it feels like to build something with someone. With you. Just you.”

  Ryder caressed the muscles of Bas’s back. “I feel the same. So testing this week and next week…bareback.” He wiggled his brows suggestively. “I can’t wait to feel your cum in my ass.”

  Dark brows rose as Bas gave him an arch look. “It will be a new experience for both of us.”

  “And that’s just the way it should be. You and me, doing this, experiencing it together.”

  Ryder kis
sed his lover and felt the instant response of Bas’s body beneath his hands. And in that moment he knew there would never be another man for him.

  Chapter Three

  The small community of Forza, California had been founded by Marciano Marchetti and his three brothers when they were all young men in their early twenties. They each bought a significant piece of desert property near Edwards AFB and Marciano had built hangars and a runway. His brothers had become land developers. Eventually, with their nurturing, a little town sprang up and other people came to live in the area. Bas’s Uncle Antonio had been the first mayor of Forza. Not that it was really big enough to warrant having a mayor even after fifty years.

  Over the years, Forza had grown. It now boasted a half dozen dusty streets, a big chain grocery store, a mini-mart, two gas stations, Todd Construction run by Bas’s brothers-in-law, a post office, Tony’s Bar & Grill owned by Bas’s cousin Antonio Jr, and a couple dozen other businesses from an attorney and CPA to a tattoo parlor. Bas looked at it as a town that pretty much had everything, if you weren’t picky. He also looked at it as a place where he was safe. He could be himself there since half the residents either were related to him or worked for a relative.

  Not many days past his one month anniversary with Ryder, Bas found himself standing in the bar side of Tony’s Bar & Grill, pool cue in hand, watching his lover slaughter his cousin. Oddly, Tony seemed to be enjoying the bloodbath.

  “Bas, you bastard. You’ve been hiding this boy’s light under a bushel,” Tony said, rubbing his hands together with unholy glee.

  “He’s been burying his light in my bushel,” Bas paraphrased sardonically.

  Ryder choked out a laugh, but took his shot anyway and sank the seven ball in the corner pocket.

  “Oh, stop with your gay references.” Tony made a face. “I’m an enlightened man. You gays do not intimidate me with fears of turning me to the dark side. I don’t believe in the ‘gay menace’ unless we’re talking about this boy and his way with a cue stick.”