by Damon Suede
Ruben’s heart seized, and then he saw Andy dabbing at the semen on his inner thighs. “There’s no danger. None. I’m clean. I’d never have done anything without protection if—”
“Same. But we’re grown-ups. We both know better. You’ve fucked people. I’ve fucked people.”
“Not dudes.” The truth was, Ruben had screwed plenty of women without protection. “Some bodyguard I am.”
“Not like you can knock me up, but it definitely—” Andy reached down to his butt as if checking things out. “I dunno, you hit my buzzer pretty fucking hard with that thing.” Ruben’s dick, he meant.
“And, uh, felt pretty incredible to feel you. Y’know? Just you, without the latex.” Ruben blushed and grunted.
AIDS had always been someone else’s problem. Until it isn’t. A sizzle of dread reminded him that HIV affected guys who slept with guys. Like him, now. “I’m sorry. I didn’t think.”
“Ditto. Stupid and horny.” Andy swallowed and grinned like the devil. “But next time we’ll be smarter.”
Ruben blinked. He’d said next time, like it was gonna happen again. Just having the possibility on the table between them terrified and excited Ruben. Gift-wrapped dynamite. Part of him wanted to dismantle it, and the other part wanted to strike a big hard match.
Before his boner reacted to the thought, he rolled over onto his belly. No way Andy could see it in the dark, but his roving hands could still grab hold of incriminating evidence.
“Definitely more intense without a rubber on you. Geez.” Andy flexed his buttocks. “I feel like you pumped a pint of jizz inside me.”
A big grin. “Tell me about it.” If he was supposed to feel guilty, he was failing miserably. “How do you say jizz?”
Andy knew what he meant and what he wanted to hear. “Leche. Paja. Lefa.” He tasted the words with a sexy smile.
“Mmngh.” Ruben cupped one warm cheek. “You’re gonna teach me, pintón.”
“Gladly.” He stretched. “Jesus, Rube. So goddamned good.”
“Yeah?”
Some corner of him knew that Andy liked to imagine he was a scary thug. Like he pretended Andy was a Park Avenue prince to do with as he pleased. Brute and suit. The fantasy tripped their triggers, even if it was a lie. Sexy make-believe like dirty talk and kinky lingerie. No real harm done to anyone. They both knew better.
“I should rinse off, get rid of it, but I don’t wanna go.”
“Good.” Ruben fingered his wet crack. “It’ll give me something to dream about.” He loved feeling his seed on Andy’s smooth skin. The pearly wad glazing the fresh-baked warmth of him, marking him as Ruben’s property.
They slept.
At one point, Ruben woke up to piss, and managed to rise without disturbing Andy. He drank a glass of water staring out the terrace window. The storm had melted into a friendly summer shower.
“Hey.” Andy’s muzzy voice.
He could barely see Andy in the dark, just the silhouette against the gray-black sheen of the window. His ribcage rose and fell. Andy’s scent and the warm slide of his heavy calves. The square hands folded against his skin like sleeping birds.
“Rube?”
And then he was back in bed, whispering against the smooth skin. “I’m right here.” He pressed himself against Andy and prayed he wasn’t having another embarrassing dream.
Sometime in the late morning, Ruben woke up chilly and alone, and heard Andy on the phone in the hall or down in the office, but before he could rouse himself to investigate, Andy returned, hair damp, and crawled back under the sheets and curled against Ruben’s back, wrapping one arm across his sternum.
Ruben managed to wake up before noon, enjoying the lazy, dozy, dizzy feeling of sharing Andy’s bed and the mingling of their body heat. His eyes had adapted to the dim room, and the mattress was a jumble of bedding and downy muscle. Down at the end, one strong foot had worked its way free of the duvet. Andy’s toes twitched, which made Ruben smile for no good reason. Even kajillionaires dream.
Ruben didn’t roll over because the sweet pressure of Andy’s arm thrown over his ribcage felt too good to disturb.
About twenty minutes later, Andy’s even breathing became a low happy groan, and he woke up smiling. The first thing he did was blink at Ruben, and then his whole handsome face lit up.
And Ruben knew.
I love him.
He didn’t say it, but he knew it in his bones and balls, sure as sunrise.
Andy sounded sleepy and sweet. “S’too early.”
Ruben shook his head and smile. “Nah.”
They did make it to the tub and (eventually) the shower Sunday afternoon, where they discovered that blowjobs on tile made for easy cleanup. And that someone strong enough to give back as good as he got could fuck for hours and nap and do it again. And again, as it happened.
That was something else Ruben learned. A man did to you what he wanted done back.
If he’s a shark, at least he’s my shark.
Given free rein, Andy showed no shame about his intense appetites and no personal boundaries about sharing them.
Ruben realized that Andy really did love to make out like a horny teenager until he was dribbling cocksnot all over himself… and that fooling around didn’t have to turn into a greasy poke every time. And hour by hour, the strangeness and obsession gave way to rushing intensity, like they had to race against some cloudy clock that hung above the penthouse. Draining off a month of sexual tension left Ruben boneless and brainless.
Ruben came so many times by ten o’clock Sunday his balls felt like fried marbles, and even after an oily, languorous fuck in the hot tub, Andy could only get two squirts out of him.
“I give!” Ruben shouted, and Christ knows he had, though the mind-bending sex was only part of it.
Andy laughed and used the dollop of semen to jerk himself off again.
Ruben felt safe, and Andy slept deeply pillowed against his chest, slept for four or five hours at a time, which seemed a miracle. He tried to call Peach twice, but got no answer and left cryptic, happy messages.
For once the whole day seemed to spool out before them. Ruben needed to tell someone, but had no one to tell.
Having sated his lust on Andy’s strong, willing body, Ruben expected to calm down, but if anything the permission made it worse. He could barely stand more than a yard from Andy without biting him and marking him. Pushing fingers inside to feel the slickness and dropping to his knees to suckle at the hard flesh till he drained the pleasure out of Andy into himself.
Andy was no better. Any pretense at personal boundaries vanished. Now that they’d done the deed, often and well, Andy did as he pleased, jerking Ruben off while they watched a basketball game and then using Ruben’s fingers up his ass while he finished himself.
“Needed that.” Andy mopped up the load with Ruben’s boxers. “You have no idea how much I’ve been jerking off the past month. Actually you probably do.”
“No. No, man. I didn’t—”
“Oh.” Andy’s face fell. “I figured with the swimming and the workouts you’d been letting off steam. Well, damn.”
“I don’t jerk off.”
Andy laughed at him. Then stopped.
“Seriously. I don’t do that.” Ruben knotted his fingers. “It should mean something. Sex.”
Andy nodded silently, and swallowed. “Gotta take care of that, then.”
Maybe he shouldn’t have said that. But I did. “Doesn’t it hurt?” Ruben asked, brushing three fingers against the hot dry skin of his hole.
“Jerking off?”
Ruben chuckled. “No, idiot. Your butthole.”
“Yeah. No.” Andy slid down to the floor and put his chin on Ruben’s leg.
Ruben remembered the dizzy feeling of Andy pushing his button in the rain last night. Scary and delicious.
“Not to be gross, man, but it’s designed to, uh, open.”
Ruben realized what he meant and made a face.
; “Nature, cariño.” Andy kissed his leg. “But no. It feels good-strange. More strange at first, but it’s you inside me. Together. Like you said. All mixed up like carbonation. And boy does it make us pop.” When they fucked Andy’s loads had hit the walls.
“No joke.”
“But that’s just the sex. I mean. You’re not…. You’re the best man I’ve ever met. Person, actually.”
“Likewise, mister.” Ruben could almost imagine letting Andy be inside him like that, even if it hurt. It was his ass, after all. Hell, half the time it felt like Andy had already moved into his ribcage. Maybe nothing’s impossible. He laughed.
“What?” Andy’s blue-gray eyes shone in confusion.
“Not one thing, pintón.”
Andy crawled onto the sofa and pulled Ruben against his chest.
Strange to feel cradled. Ruben had always been so much bigger than his women.
“Hey.” Andy kissed the back of his head. “Está bien?”
“So good. Muy, muy bien.” He turned his face to Andy’s and planted a kiss that felt exactly like an unbreakable promise.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
WHEN YOU’VE got a hammer in your hand, everything looks like a nail.
That next two weeks flew. During the days, Ruben went back to being a bodyguard, but after Hope and the rest of the employees left, they were together and the job stopped.
Getting away with something together made them both reckless. Andy stopped invading his personal space and began colonizing it. By mutual, silent agreement, they slept in the master bedroom, doing their best to peel the paint. Ruben used his own room as a staging area before the rest of the staff showed up. The actual staff, he had to remind himself. He didn’t like to think of himself as an employee, although on some literal level he still was.
When they were showering on Thursday morning, Andy paused soaping Ruben’s chest. Out of nowhere, he said, “I think you need to tell your brother.” Silence. “About… well, this.”
Ruben inhaled and exhaled carefully, unsure how to answer.
Andy leaned back against the shower’s slate wall. “Sex.”
“I haven’t told him anything about anything. Us or the other. Y’know, the business part. Your hitman deal.”
“Thank you for that, but this is different.” Andy grabbed a towel as he stepped out.
“…’cause you asked. But I should. Part of it at least, because he can help.” Ruben exhaled. “My brother is a good guy.”
“And I’m a bad guy. Problem there.”
“Hey, no. But I’m supposed to be your bodyguard.”
Andy blinked. “I feel safe. I am safe.”
Ruben killed the water and dried his hair roughly. “It’s not. I mean, none of this is safe.”
“He needs to have some kind of idea that we’re in this together. He’s your family.” Andy looked out the bathroom window and frowned, but said nothing. Whatever he was looking at wasn’t in the room with them. His family? His friends? His business?
“Bauer, will you stop being a jackass? I don’t wanna step wrong here.”
Andy bumped his leg. “You don’t have to get graphic, but I think he needs to know.”
Ruben shrugged. “I know you don’t care what your family thinks, but I do. I screw up a lot. We talk every day. He asks how I’m doing, and I feel like I’m lying to him.”
“He’s also your employer.”
Ruben nodded.
Andy frowned. “Even more reason to spill the beans, then. Conflict of interest. New intel.”
“I’m afraid to talk to him.” Ruben bunched his lips and sighed. “I’m already such a fuckup to him, but he gives a shit about me and I give a shit about you.”
“You do?” Andy met his eyes on the big vanity mirror.
“I just have to figure out a good time.” How about never? Ruben folded his arms. “Charles is less uptight than I am.”
“Thank fuck.” He shoved at Ruben’s skull playfully.
“Hey!”
Andy looked serious. “None of my business really.”
“He’s gonna freak.” Ruben picked at his pants.
Andy turned off the sink without looking up. “How much?”
“What?” Did he mean money? “I’m not blackmailing you, asshole.”
“No. I mean how can you tell him about what’s gone on? That I’m a criminal mastermind. That we’re sharing a bed. That we’re butthole buddies.”
“Not details!” A whoosh of laughter. “The truth to start. Just that I… whatever… like you, care about you.”
For the first time since they’d started talking, Andy blinked hard, turned his back to the mirror, and looked back at him, properly. “Okay.”
Ruben waited. All the feelings he’d bottled up threatened to spill out of him onto the marble separating them. His tongue moved clumsily in his mouth, too thick to speak truth. “I do, y’know.”
Andy nodded. “Me too.”
Another language I never learned to speak. Maybe Andy could teach him that one too.
Andy leaned and licked the rim of Ruben’s ear, ending the debate and rendering him incapable of speech or sense. After, they dropped the subject, but Ruben knew it was only a matter of time before he had to come clean. A complete moral inventory.
THE NEXT day he called Peach again, feeling guilty for the weeks they hadn’t spoken, but certain she’d be pleased for him. Telling his brother seemed impossible, but Peach might understand better. It rang and rang, but he refused to hang up this time. He hadn’t been to a meeting in how long?
Finally someone answered, a young woman who sounded distracted. “I’m sorry, she can’t come to the phone. Jeez.”
“Peach is an old friend.” Anonymity. He didn’t know what they knew about her alcoholism.
“I’m so sorry. She’s gone.” A shaky inhale.
“Can I leave a message, then? Can you make sure she gets it?”
“I’m sorry. No, sir. She’s gone. She passed away on Tuesday.”
Ice in his veins. She said more words, but Ruben didn’t hear most of them. Someone hung up.
Peach’s cancer had returned to claim her.
He sat down on the guest bed… queasy, freezing, and alone.
Peach Horowitz had been a lifeline through Ruben’s divorce, a seventy-eight-year-old Jew from New Jersey who loved showtunes and bulldogs. She had been a tough old bird, saving his life with Camels and black coffee on her deck at all hours of the night, AA slogans at the ready.
The first time he’d met her, she’d bought him a cup of coffee after a meeting and covered his fists with her arthritic hands. “Kiddo, we can’t get you into Heaven, but we can let you outta Hell.” She always and only told the truth.
Ruben felt like a heel: he hadn’t called since things had gotten crazy, telling himself he didn’t want to bug her. He’d never come clean about Andy, and now he never could. He hadn’t wanted to shock her or hurt her feelings. Just like he’d made excuses that kept him from going to meetings.
Fucking drunk, fucking idiot.
“Lighten up,” she growled in his head in a haze of smoke and bright prints. “Analysis is paralysis.”
He needed to find another sponsor in the city ASAP. Then again, maybe a sponsor didn’t matter as much after a year. He hadn’t taken a drink in so long. He wasn’t drinking, so maybe he didn’t need AA anymore, right? To be honest, he’d gotten weary of all the Higher Power business. Couldn’t he be strong?
He had his brother and this job and this man. Andy had changed so much for him. Maybe he’d kicked the alcoholism enough to leave it down in Florida. Cured. Long as he stayed on the wagon, he had nothing to worry about. Peach dying gave him a graceful exit. Bone-cold comfort.
Maybe the hitman and the drunk had both retired. Maybe the bad guy was good for him after all. Maybe Peach could be his Higher Power.
Ruben grunted in disgust. AA called that a geographic, the stupid idea that your problems were strictly regional and you could move aw
ay from them. He knew that his baggage went everywhere he did, but this time it hadn’t somehow.
For some reason, he didn’t tell Andy about her death, mainly because he felt so ashamed about avoiding her at the end. Andy seemed to sense something, but he didn’t pry.
Ruben went to no meetings, and his Fourth Step stopped dead. Moral inventory was beyond him.
Then on Wednesday, Ruben watched as Marlon Stanz, the snide pindick from the Saint A’s bash, showed for an appointment that tripped every one of his warning bells. No warning. No eye contact. Andy laughing too loud and serving up a family platter of his white-bread, minivan routine, all jaw and dimples with the eyes twinkling like coins at the bottom of a mall fountain. And then an hour behind closed doors with Ruben invited to wait outside like a Doberman on a chain.
The hell was Andy up to? But Ruben knew. Apex assassination, had to be.
He told himself he was paranoid. Peach’s passing had left him raw and irritable. He brushed it off as misplaced jealousy of their fratboy affection. He pretended the jerk might be a real friend reaching out to Andy after many years.
But he knew. And as soon as the office door opened, Ruben stood in the living room and drifted back down the hall toward their chummy voices. Still no eye contact, and Andy spoke in a low, conspiratorial voice that made the smug fucker chuckle.
Andy moved things across to the living room, then drinks on the terrace.
Guilty, grouchy, Ruben used the stairs to traverse the apartment over their heads like an angel without wings.
Ears open, he descended into the library and located it, hidden where any fool would find it.
In a locked briefcase under a stack of airplane magazines, Ruben found a week-old Apex prospectus that stank to high heaven, far as he could tell: shell companies, a run-down factory in Shenzhen, and a pair of accounts in the Grand Cayman. Marlon right there on the list of investors, and Lampton too. Without bothering to close the door, he read all eleven pages of it. “Motherfucker.”
Andy planned to keep Apex going. So much for sensible. Ruben should have known better. Andy was used to getting what he wanted and paying for triage.
