by John Inman
With our plates clean, Dario scooted closer to me and slid a hand around my waist. We sat like that for the longest time, staring into the fire. Dario’s injuries appeared kinder this morning. His black eye was a little more open and less swollen. The bruise had faded from black to green. Even the scab on his lip appeared less ready to tear apart at the merest threat of a smile.
“Let’s go for a walk,” he said, nestling into me, his lips on my ear. “Can we?”
I twisted my head to lay a kiss on his forehead. “We can do anything you want.”
Chapter Nine
WE DRESSED in warm clothing as there was a chill in the morning air. The sky looked like it might threaten rain later in the day. Already we could hear distant thunder stuttering across the hills to the south. Even the birds in the underbrush seemed to anticipate a round of bad weather, jittering and fluttering in the scrub and chasing each other through a stand of barrel cactus that rolled down the hill to our left. It all seemed wild and dangerous, and more than a little exciting, hidden away as we were atop my desert mountain with the sky threatening a storm above our heads and not another soul to be seen between one horizon and the other.
I had urged Dario to accept sturdier footwear, since his beat-up tennis shoes weren’t made for trekking along a rocky desert game trail. Luckily, his feet fit into a pair of hiking boots I had on hand. All he had to do was slip an extra pair of socks on to plug the gaps.
We headed off in the opposite direction from the one we had taken the day before, climbing up instead of down. The trail twisted and turned through bundles of chaparral and the occasional boulder stabbing up from the earth as if thrust there during some massive seismic event eons before, which was undoubtedly the case.
While the air was cooler than it had been the day before, it was still redolent with the scent of wildflowers and sage. More than once, Dario stopped and sucked a great mouthful of fragrant desert air into his lungs, as if he couldn’t quite get enough.
“You like it out here,” I said.
He whirled toward me, his smile plastered wide on his face.
“And you can smile again without bleeding,” I added.
He brushed the hair from his eyes and stared at me, sliding his tongue across his lip before speaking, as if testing the truth of my words. “It feels a lot better. Maybe later I can do things to you I couldn’t do last night.”
“When you’re ready,” I said as if it mattered little to me one way or the other. And in truth, I realized, it didn’t. I couldn’t imagine us improving on what we’d done the night before, no matter how many new lovemaking techniques Dario brought to my bed.
He cocked his head to the side. “So staid,” he said, a tender light burning his eyes.
I jerked in surprise. “Who? Me?” I burst out laughing. “You have no idea how wrong you are about that. I’m not staid at all. I’m still in shock, I think. Still in shock at how much I’m enjoying this weekend. Still in shock at how gorgeous and sweet you are. Hell, I’m beyond shocked that you agreed to come up here with me in the first place. No, Dario. I may be a lot of things, but staid is not one of them.”
I was leaning against a boulder at the edge of the path, my arms folded across my chest, content with staring at the young man before me. Watching me eye him, he stepped up to press his body against me and slipped his arms around my back to anchor himself. He slid his hand under the tail of my shirt and ran his fingers through the tiny patch of hair at the base of my spine, precursor to the sprinkling of fuzz that worked its way down across my ass. He slipped a fingertip into the cleft there, and I sucked in my breath as a jolt of longing shot through me like lightning. He watched my reaction to his touch, and his eyes came alive.
“I enjoyed last night too,” he said. “You make love as if….” His voice trailed away. Rather than finish his sentence, he buried his face in my shirtfront, his ears glowing red with embarrassment.
“I make love as if what?” I prodded, tucking my finger under his chin and lifting his face so he would look at me.
His molten eyes burned into mine. I could almost see him accepting his embarrassment as something he had no control over. Against his bronze skin, his cheeks were the color of nectarines. His dimples were buried deep to either side of a radiant smile, the sight of which caused a flutter to erupt inside my chest.
“As if you care, Robert. You make love as if you care.”
I leaned in and oh so carefully laid my lips over his. He did not shy away from the kiss. If it hurt him, he didn’t let on. We held the kiss for a long time as the wind whipped around us and the wildflowers all but buried us in their scent. When his tongue slipped through the kiss and begged to be let in, I accepted it eagerly. With our tongues touching, and the taste of him forging an electric path through me like a Taser, we melted into each other as we stood there beneath the glowering sky, holding on to each other for dear life.
We were hard again by the time the kiss ended, but neither of us made mention of the fact. Taking my hand, he silently led me on up the hill. He walked beneath my arm, his shoulder pressed into my rib cage. His other hand was tucked under my belt, his fingertips still nestled atop my ass. Occasionally, I dipped my head to breathe in the scent of his hair, to feel its softness flutter across my face in the wind. He never mentioned it when I leaned into him like that, and his silence seemed exactly right. It was not a time for words.
Now and then he pointed to something in the landscape that drew his attention. Still he didn’t speak until we crested a hill and found a sweeping panorama of sage and stone and great swaths of wildflowers in every color of the rainbow spread out below us all the way to the horizon.
A waist-high boulder offered a perch, and we bounced up onto it side by side. The boulder beneath us was cut inward by wind and time, and we sat there swinging our legs like a couple of kids, admiring the view and touching. Always touching.
For the hundredth time that weekend, I gazed over at the wounds on his face and felt an aching anger flare up inside me.
“Dario, you deserve better than your friend. Had he hit you before?”
He didn’t seem to mind my prying. “Yeah. But he’d never lit into me before like he did this time.” His eyes misted over, his lips formed an angry slash across his face. “This time he really hurt me.”
I took his hand. “I know he did. I’m sorry.”
He gazed down at his hand in mine, then back to my face. With his other hand, he backhanded a tear that was about to fall. “And he’s not my friend anymore. I told you that. Now I have a new friend.”
The implications in that statement almost knocked me off the rock.
“Dario….”
He sniffed, pulling himself together. Then he flashed me an innocent look. “What? I can’t call you a friend?”
“Of course you can call me a friend.”
“Do you like being with me?” he asked.
“You know I do.”
“And I like being with you. So that makes us friends. Right?”
“Of course, right.”
He leaned his head onto my shoulder and stared out across the desert below. “You think you’re too old for me, don’t you?”
“I am too old for you. I’m old enough to be your—”
He tilted his head up, a teasing light in his eye. There was a smile trying to grab a foothold on that beautiful mouth, but he was working hard to keep it at bay. “You’re old enough to be my what?”
“Hell, I don’t know, Dario.” I remembered having almost the same conversation with Chaz. “Your big brother, maybe? Yeah, that’s it. I’m old enough to be your big brother.”
A grin rolled across his face, lighting his eyes and once again forming those sexyass dimples. He batted innocent lashes. “Ooh. Big brother. I like that.”
I shot an elbow into his ribs, hard enough to get his attention. “No, you don’t. You like my enormous dick.”
He cast pouty eyes at me, his chin dimpling like he was a three-year-
old whose ice cream cone had landed on the sidewalk. “I hate to be the one to tell you, Robert, but it’s really not that big.”
He received another elbow in the ribs for that one. “Don’t be mean,” I said.
He dropped his head to my shoulder again and laughed. “Actually, it’s way bigger than Lee’s.”
That cheered me up. “Really?”
“Your cock is beautiful. You know that, right?”
“Really?”
Dario threw back his head and smiled so wide I was afraid he would tear his lip open again. He watched me, and as he did I saw the humor dim in his eyes while the heat in them rose. He reached up and stroked the side of my neck.
“You’re a really good lover, Robert. Has anyone ever told you that?”
“Uh, no.”
Another rush of color invaded his cheeks. “Just sitting here talking to you, my dick is dripping. What do you make of that?”
I swallowed hard. “It makes me want to make love to you again, that’s what I make of that.”
His face lit up. “That’s it! That’s why you’re such a good lover!”
“I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about, Dario.”
He eyed me, unabashed. Relentless. “I’m talking about why you’re such a good lover.”
“I hope you realize you’re embarrassing the hell out of me. But please continue. Tell me why I’m such a good lover.” I wasn’t being facetious. If he honestly believed what he was saying, then I wanted to know the reasoning behind it. Boy, did I.
He reached up and laid three fingers over my mouth, apparently to shut me up. When he did, I kissed them, and he chuckled. “You’re a good lover because that’s what you do. You make love. You don’t just have sex. You don’t hump and poke and come. You make love. I was right what I said before. You make love like you care. That’s your secret. It’s not all about you. It’s about the other person too. It’s why you brought me here to your beautiful little mountain. It’s why you worried about me being in the city alone. It’s why you made love to me so—gently. You share yourself with people. You don’t just take, you share. And when you give yourself in sex, you give it all. You hold nothing back.”
I rolled my eyes skyward as if mocking what he’d said, but I had to admit I liked hearing it. Hell, who wouldn’t? “I hate to break it to you, Dario, but I’m pretty sure everybody makes love that way.”
He gave me another sad pout. “You know that’s not true.”
“Well. Maybe,” I relented.
He let the wash of wildflowers fill the air around us for a minute; then he turned to me again. “You also make me feel important.”
All I could do was cock my head to the side and stare at him. “You are important.”
He appeared saddened by my words. “I don’t feel it.”
I ran my thumb across the back of his hand and brought his palm to my lips while I spoke. “Dario, I think some of this has to do with you losing your parents.”
For the first time, I saw a flash of true danger in his eyes. “I don’t understand.”
I tried to organize my thoughts. I had delved into crucial territory here. I didn’t want to misspeak. “Maybe the death of your parents has left you—fragile. Maybe that’s what put you in the arms of a man who, well, hurt you. I mean physically. Maybe you’re trying to fill the void your parents left behind, and maybe your judgment suffers a little from it.”
The flash of danger dissolved. As if melting back into innocence, he offered me a placid, lazy smile. “My judgment is fine now, I think. At least I can let myself feel safe with you, can’t I?”
I jumped. “God, yes! Of course! I want you to!”
While my lips were still at his hand, his thumb slid across my cheek, caressing me there. Again I felt that incomprehensible ache inside he seemed so adept at drawing from me.
“Good,” he said, dropping his head to my shoulder and breaking eye contact at last. “Then I will.”
He gazed off toward the horizon where storm clouds were starting to gather. “We’ll be driving back into the city before we know it. We have only one more night to be alone.”
I nodded, acting nonchalant even while the thought was a knife in my gut. “Yes. Unless it rains so hard the road washes out and we get stranded up here.”
“Think there’s any chance of that?” he asked.
“Not as much as I’d like. Know any rain dances?”
He laughed, reaching over and straightening the front of my sweater as if there was a wrinkle there that bothered him. His hand lingered on my chest. Again he seemed to find solace in touch. As I did with him.
I was hard again. So was he. I could tell by the fire in his eyes.
“Take me back to the cabin, Robert.”
I lifted his hand from my chest and kissed the tender skin on the inside of his wrist. Peering through his fingers, I studied his perfect face staring back at me.
“Yes,” I said. “God, yes.”
WE LAY naked on a blanket in front of the fireplace. We had the cabin to ourselves since Clutch was off gallivanting across the hillside again, tormenting the wildlife.
The flames were deliciously warm against my skin, but even more delicious was the feel of Dario next to me. We still lay on our sides, facing each other in the sixty-nine position we had been in when we made love, my cheek on his thigh, his cheek on mine. There was a light sheen of sweat dampening both our bodies. Dario held me close against him, as I held him. Neither of us seemed willing to tear ourselves apart. It was as if our explosive orgasms had welded us one to the other. There was still the faintest tremble in Dario’s body, an aftermath to his eruption, which I tried to soothe away with gentle petting. After a while his body relaxed beneath my touch, but he did not pull away. Instead he continued to wrap me in his arms as if afraid I’d try to leave. Fat chance.
Dario’s injured lip seemed to be healed. He had certainly managed oral sex without a glitch.
“I can still taste your come,” he said softly, pressing his face into my bare stomach as if breathing in the heat of my skin. My cock lay tucked beneath his chin, resting, replete.
His own cock lay nestled against my lips. After his climax, I had left it there so I could feel it soften against my face, which was one of the most erotic things I had ever experienced. The taste of his come still lay salty on my tongue. As we sprawled there in the heat of the fire, I scraped my fingers through the hair on his bronze legs, savoring the warmth of his skin, the muscle, the bone, the strength, the youth. The beauty. Satin beneath my touch, they were honestly the most beautiful legs I had ever seen—his calves well muscled, his acorn skin tone rich and lush, the elegant turn of his ankle a nub of stone and sinew and perfection. A tiny sprouting of dark hair rose off the arch of his foot and big toe and tickled my palm when I stroked him there.
I kissed the underside of his cock where it still rested against my mouth, breathing in his heady scent as if I could never get enough of it.
“I still taste you too,” I whispered into his skin. “You came so much. It was incredible. Thank you, baby. Thank you.” My voice was all but ruptured by passion. I could barely speak. I had to close my eyes to wrench the words from my throat, I was still so awed by what we’d done, by how it affected me. Not by the actions, for I had certainly made love like this before, but by the contentment our coupling filled me with. The pure erotic jubilation. This man, this moment, this particular slice of my life. It was as if everything had come together in just the right way to form a perfect storm of emotions. Lust, longing, need, compliance. Peace. With this boy, with this man, it was all there.
It scared the hell out of me, but somehow even the fear was one more perfect ingredient, as if anything this amazing must be paid for with some currency or other. Moments like this were too rare to be found every day of the week. They had to be appreciated. They had to be earned.
Even now, Dario’s cock leaked juices onto my lips. I licked them away, making him tremble yet again. He
ducked his head and burrowed beneath my cock to press his mouth to my balls. He stayed like that for long seconds. I thought I could feel him smile against my tender flesh, but I wasn’t sure.
“This is perfect,” he muttered, his mouth still on me there, his body offering up one last tiny shudder as if to back up his words.
Our thoughts were interrupted by a pattering at the windows. The rain was beginning. The sound was homey and calming, and I refused to worry about the lane leading back to the highway being washed out. We would manage somehow. It would take more than a simple flurry of raindrops to get this man out of my arms. Far more.
I thought of my life. I thought how lonely I had been before meeting Dario. I thought of the months I had wasted longing for Jason, when the fucker probably never cared about me at all. It was sobering to realize that however much I had pined for Jason the Asshole, it was probably child’s play compared to the way I was going to pine for Dario the Busboy once this weekend ended.
Dario’s hand slid along my back as he tugged me a wee bit closer, jarring me from my thoughts. His mouth was on my stomach again. He seemed to like it there.
“Robert?”
I snuggled closer, inhaling the scent of him for the hundredth time. Never getting enough.
“Hmm?”
“Can I see you again?”
I eased myself free and rose onto one elbow to gaze down at him lying beneath me. He peered back, his face bruised, his injured eye even now a misery to look at, and still he was the most stunning man I had ever seen.
“Do you want to?” I asked softly.
I could see his Adam’s apple move up and down as he swallowed. His injured eye was almost open now, and for the first time he was able to stare at me with both of them. It was just as I feared. Finding myself in the aim of both of Dario’s chestnut-brown eyes left me a little bit breathless.
