The Infinite Onion

by Alice Archer

  “That’s all? Really?”

  “Yeah. He was Ready Freddie, like always. Usually I was pretty into it too, but this visit was different.”

  “Why?”

  “You know why,” Oliver said. “You affected me, even without my permission. It made me hesitant about Freddie.”

  “Good.”

  “Freddie thought he was ready for more of a relationship,” Oliver mused.

  “Bullshit. Freddie wanted things to stay the same. That’s why he didn’t like me.”

  “Freddie didn’t like you because he could tell I was falling for you.”

  I puffed out my chest.

  “Asshat.” Oliver rolled toward me. I couldn’t resist petting his damp hair, smoothing it down his back to make him squirm and rub against me.

  “You painted me.” I heard the wonder in my voice.

  “I did.”

  “You made a ginormous painting of a ditch.”

  “Only because the ditch had you in it.”

  I felt my face shift and recognized my expression as the one from Oliver’s painting. He beamed at me, and I bent to touch my lips to his, to taste the red-gold beauty of him. When he opened his mouth to draw in a breath, I closed my eyes and became the man who kissed Oliver Rossi until he clutched at me and bound me tight in his limbs.

  To torture him, and to look at him some more, I pulled back. “Now that you’re free, I bet you’re going to be more social, like your dad. You’re going to be community glue.”

  “Stop talking.”

  “Not yet.”

  “I can’t believe it,” Oliver muttered. “You’re a savorer. Fuck my entire life. Why did I let Freddie get away? He understood the value of a quick fuck. You—you’re going to drag this out, aren’t you?”

  “Still waiting for you to join the conversation and tell me why you painted me.” I smiled, pushed Oliver against the back of the couch, and petted his hair until he gave in and talked.

  “Whatever wizardry you did with those kids,” he said, “you did with me too. That’s your gift. You get kids to play, but you let us bring our sorrow. You put your big hand on the tops of our heads and we know we’re okay.”

  I blinked hard. “Bastard.”

  Moonlight shone across Oliver’s grin. “Here’s what I believe. I believe you were coming to see me that day I found you in the ditch.”

  “Oh, I see you all right.” I shaped Oliver’s damp beard with my palm and fingertips. For the first time in my life, I wished I knew how to paint. “You brave and majestic Celtic king.”

  I’d never seen a brighter smile than the one my words brought to Oliver’s face. He put his warm lips to mine and kissed me slowly but more, more than I’d ever been kissed. More filthy lust. More sweet tenderness. More willingness. More strength.

  I needed to absorb him.

  I shifted Oliver to lay him flat and straddled him, felt his cock pulse hot against my balls. With my hands, I rubbed up Oliver’s sides to his armpits and over his biceps to push his hands above his head. “Your arms drove me to distraction from day one. Those overalls…”

  Oliver smirked and flexed his biceps.

  Pre-cum slid down my cock onto Oliver’s belly. Drawn by the complex scent rising from Oliver’s armpit, I buried my face there to lick at the sparse patch of hair.

  “Oh. Agh.” Oliver shot me a hateful glare.

  I chuckled and took an extra minute to enjoy the heave of his defined chest. It inspired me to pet his pecs and nipples. “I have another question.”

  Oliver trembled. Squeezed his eyes closed. Cursed and rocked his pelvis up against me. Pressed the length of his cock against the base of mine.

  “Ask your damn question,” Oliver snarled. “Then get the fucking lube and fucking fuck me.”

  Yeah. I stayed quiet, watched Oliver writhe, loved that I could so easily rile him. We were going to have so much fun in the sack. Or, well, I was. Oliver looked rather conflicted.

  “Question?” Oliver said in a peeved voice. “Lube? Fuck? Hello?”

  “Can I renew my contract?”

  He froze. “You…what? Really?”

  I nodded. “I know what I want to do for a career, but it feels too big. I want you to do what you did this summer—pressure me, annoy me, show me what I can’t see on my own.”

  Oliver’s face took on the calculating look of Professor Evil Pants. It gave me hope.

  “That’s it,” I said. “Think of all the dastardly things you can require of me now that we’re…” I gave his dick a hard grind with my taint. The sharp pleasure made my eyes roll up.

  “Deal,” Oliver said. “I just now drafted a new contract in my head. It’s good—nice and nasty. Here’s how it starts: Fuck me now or no deal. Get the lube under the pillow.” He wiggled his wrists within my grip.

  I slid down to put my mouth on his, to kiss my love into him. I couldn’t kiss him enough. The love kept flowing, and I needed Oliver to know how much. I loved him with my mouth and long grinds of my cock into his pubic hair, against his slick cock, along the hard bones of his hips.

  Oliver quivered and hummed. With a gasp, he turned his face away and drew in a big breath. “Stay, Grant. Stay with me. Live here. Please don’t say no.”

  “But I want to get a degree so I can be a child therapist.”

  “You are really frustrating me right now with all the talking. Also, you do?”

  I nodded. “A child therapist who specializes in nature cures.”

  “That’s… Fuck, that’s perfect. I’ll pay for it.”

  I laughed at the absurdity. “Um. No way. It’ll take me approximately a hundred years to get that degree, but I’m sure I can figure—”

  “You’re not hearing me. Go ahead and volunteer at a park in Seattle, take classes, do overnights at Mitch’s to spend time with Kai, bring Kai here—but take the van and come back home to me. Get it, Grant? Live here. Visit Seattle. New career. No copy shops. We’ll find a university with minimal onsite requirements. I’m serious. I have a lot of money—more than you can imagine—and I’m going to spend some of it on you. There. It’s settled.”

  Oliver’s proposition caused a cranial power-wash event in my skull, a life trajectory reset. It went straight to my cock. “No more copies?”

  “That’s your takeaway?” Oliver asked.

  “I can’t—”

  “Say yes or I won’t let you fuck me.”

  I slid my hand between our bodies and gave Oliver’s dick a hard jerk to get him squirming again, then pressed my fingers between his ass cheeks, right up onto his hole.

  He tried to close his legs, to shut me out, because I hadn’t said yes to his offer, but he couldn’t manage it.

  “You shouldn’t make threats if you can’t follow through.” I pressed the tip of my finger, slick with his pre-cum, up inside him, just for a second. I found the lube under the pillow with my other hand, flipped the top, and took my finger away from Oliver long enough to slick it up. When I pushed into his ready heat again, I hooked my finger onto his prostate, making him moan and shimmy.

  “Looky here.” I teased. “Caught me a live one.”

  Oliver swallowed hard and tightened his asshole around my finger. “Tell me,” he whispered. “Say yes to my offer or I’ll… I’ll stop right now.”

  That made me smile. He’d wrapped his legs around my waist. We both knew he didn’t want to stop me. “Love this wiggle you’ve got going, Professor Squirmy Butt. Condom?”

  “Must we?”

  “Dream on. I know you haven’t been tested. Your open relationship with Freddie the globe-trotting tool means we’ll use a condom. Also, quick memo, your scowly face doesn’t work on me. Well, it does, but it only makes me really hot.”

  The ruddy flush of Oliver’s skin, the glaze in his eyes, his roving hands trying and failing to
reach my dick all did it for me. My focus narrowed. For a long while, I got off on Oliver’s pleas and small surrenders. I slowed my fingers inside him, avoided his prostate.

  “Never mind,” Oliver panted. “No deal. You’re a loser with no future. I don’t want you anywhere near—”

  “Yes, you do.”

  “Anywhere near me,” Oliver finished on a slow moan.

  “Mm-hm. Right.” I reached under the pillow and found a condom, which gave me an excuse to stop my too-slow finger-pump into Oliver’s asshole altogether. “I’d better check the expiration date. Not much light in the room. Could take a while.”

  He lunged up to grab my cock and I threw the condom into the air.

  “Give me that, you freak.” Oliver tore open the condom wrapper. In record time, my dick was covered and he’d scooted up to put his hole within range.

  “Here’s the deal, you fucker,” Oliver snarled. “You stick your cock in me within the next ten seconds, as your binding agreement that you’ll move in with me, let me pay for your degree and your food, and any other fucking thing I want to pay for, or else—”

  I didn’t let him get to past the or else. I suddenly remembered Oliver’s desperate animal sounds when I’d fucked him in the grass by the DeVille.

  “Yes.” I pinned Oliver with my eyes as I pushed my cock into him. “Yes.”

  Oliver smirked and keened and went limp, all at once.

  I took advantage, bent to kiss his desire. His mouth tasted pure and real and true, like island air spiked with seawater. Even freshly washed, Oliver’s hair smelled like the art supplies corner, as if his lifetime of creating had transformed him cell by cell into a masterpiece.

  I pushed my cock into Oliver all the way, pushed farther, until I’d pushed him half off the end of the couch. I wanted in there.

  With one of his long arms, Oliver reached between us to circle his fingers around the base of my cock, his fingers right against his own hole. The hard squeeze he gave my cock made me remember I didn’t only have to push. I could pull out too.

  Oliver’s tight grip, right there, answered all my questions. I became one of Oliver’s creations. I snapped my cock into the heat of him, pulled out when he gave me a vicious twist. I held him close in my arms, shoved my face deep into his hair, slobbered on the secret heat of his jawline as he put the finishing touches on his reconstruction of me.

  Like he’d done in the bramble boudoir, Oliver stuck his pointed tongue into my ear. I acted the part he’d written for me, came with a flourish, slid against his hot cum on my belly to flail above the surface of the sea and sparkle down at him.

  “I see you too, dickhead,” Oliver panted at me.

  Hook, line, and sinker.

  Chapter 87

  Oliver

  I woke hungry and too warm, in spite of the swirl of cool air from the open windows. At first I thought I’d been rolled up in a rug.

  Grant, it seemed, was a possessive sleeper.

  I lay on top of him, my face mashed sideways against the groove between his hairy pecs. His arms pinned my arms to my sides. He snuffled into my hair as he snored. One of his heavy legs twisted around both of mine.

  I felt safer than I’d felt in a long time.

  Safe, but also starving. I put off trying to extricate myself long enough to replay my mental movie of the night before. Tried and failed to figure out how I could have hated every one of Grant’s torturous, teasing delays, and yet loved the experience as a whole.

  My attempt to take a deeper breath woke Grant. I expected him to release me when he realized how tightly he held me, but he only gripped me tighter.

  “Can’t breathe,” I squawked.

  “Mmm. Morning, wiggly puppy,” Grant whispered. He licked my face in a big swipe, up my cheek and temple.

  “Ugh, you weirdo. Let me go.” I flapped my useless hands against his thighs.

  “Nuh-uh. Not unless you have to pee. Do you?”

  I considered lying, thought better of it, and sagged onto him.

  “Good,” he muttered. “Be still. I’m not done.”

  I decided I had nowhere better to be, and we languished until I felt Grant’s blink against my hair when he finally opened his eyes.

  “Won’t you hate living with someone else, having me here all the time?” he asked.

  I let the question settle, gave it a chance to trigger a backpedal on my offer. All I felt was a deep relief that I wouldn’t be alone. “I lived in close quarters with people for the first twenty-two years of my life. Dad and Granddad were as in-my-face and in-my-business as you are.”

  “Is that good or bad?”

  “I’ll love having you here, Grant. It feels like I’m coming home, even though I didn’t go anywhere.”

  Grant squeezed me harder.

  I kicked him on the shin.

  That brought out the devil in his eyes and led to me making an extensive mess on the comforter and Grant getting himself off in my mouth. He wiped cum from his hand onto my pubic hair.

  “Gross,” I whined. “You disgust me.”

  “You sure have a funny way of showing it.”

  I pushed him away. “I have to—oh, fuck. I left the groceries in the trunk of the DeVille.”

  Grant’s hand on my chest kept me on the couch. “Calm down. I got them when I heard Talia deliver the van and went out to say hi. After I debauched your lovely ass and you conked out.”

  “Oh. Thanks. Now get up and fix me some breakfast.”

  “Okay,” Grant said. “In a minute.” He stroked my chest with one hand, traced the edges of my pecs, swiped a nipple, caressed my hair and beard.

  I tried to bat his hands away. “You’re drugging me again.”

  “My coppery sex flame.”

  “Agh. Stop. I had a thought a minute ago I wanted to share,” I said. “Before you—”

  “It’ll keep.”

  “No. I remember now—we should have a party.”

  “We just did. Pretty noisy one too. I almost called the cops to come over and shut you up.”

  I ignored Grant’s attempt to wind me up. “A party to celebrate you finding a home and me leaving home.”

  “Yeah.” Grant’s hand settled on my sternum. “A party with a gallery showing.”

  “What you did on the treehouse wall should be in a gallery,” I said.

  “Your painting should be in a museum. Except I never want to not be able to see it.”

  “It’s not even finished.” My stomach growled so loudly Grant released me.

  “I’d better feed the beast,” he said.

  As we ate, I told Grant about the archive room, and about Pascal, the Tacoma auto mechanic I’d sworn to secrecy.

  “Doesn’t a Cadillac as old as the DeVille run on leaded gas?” Grant asked.

  “Pascal changed out the valve seats to run on unleaded.”

  “He made a house call? That seems—”

  “No. Well, yes. Twice a year he comes to Vashon at night, stows his car in my garage, and takes the DeVille to Tacoma on the last ferry of the night.”

  “Sneaky.”

  “She gets a thorough checkup and detailing the next day, and the next night he brings her back, along with a resupply of full gas cans for the van.”

  “Brought her back,” Grant said. “You don’t need that arrangement anymore.”

  My breath stopped. I stared at Grant and felt my eyes go wide, so wide it felt like my eyebrows slid off the top of my head.

  I forgot I could leave.

  “Well, you don’t,” Grant said. “You should call and invite Pascal to our party.”

  I stood so fast my chair clattered against the stove. “Let’s go invite Pascal in person.”

  Grant’s surprised laughter made him look like a child. A child who got to ride in a big Cadillac and da
ydream about the fun things he’d do when he grew up. A happy child who lived in a pretty house in the middle of a big forest and got to play under the trees with his friends.

  Chapter 88

  Grant

  A month or so later, on a warm Saturday in September, the day of our party found me perched atop the fridge.

  From across the great room, Oliver directed the placement of his painting-in-progress. He’d stopped working on it for a week to let it dry enough to temporarily relocate it for the party. “Lift the left corner of the right panel a touch higher.”

  “Screw that,” I snapped. “I’m looking at the bubble in the level. It’s dead even.”

  Oliver smiled his smile that meant he’d wound me up on purpose.

  He’d pay for it later.

  “Nervous about your first art show?” Oliver pinched my big toe and grabbed the grocery list on his way past the fridge.

  I peeked across the room at my treehouse collage, which Oliver had installed with great accuracy on the wall by the stage. “A little.” It was going to be strange to share that private stuff with our friends.

  “Good,” Oliver said.

  “Hey, Penelope took a break from play practice. She wants to go with you.” Our party didn’t start until dinnertime, but we’d invited a few people over early to help out, including the kids, who’d taken over the stage. “She’s already in the van.”

  “Of course she is.”

  Oliver and I had reinstated the Saturday Tour DeVille, with a route change to honor the day Oliver unraveled me as he looped around the island, and so we could pick up and drop off kids and parents along the way. After the first Tour, over lunch with the kids, Mitch, and Jill’s dad, and with the aid of a map unrolled on the dining table, Oliver had confessed. “Basically,” he’d said. “I hadn’t left my property since before any of you kids were born.”

  Penelope had taken it the hardest, the shock evident on her face. She’d peppered Oliver with questions and appointed herself Oliver’s guide to the world “out there,” as she called it.

  I slid off the fridge with a thump and headed for the French doors. “Big night tonight, kids.” Jill, Clover, Kai, and Abelino didn’t acknowledge me, too intent on final preparations for opening night of their play about a boy who came out in a bramble patch.