by A. C. Katt
Milo nodded. “Upstairs. First door on the right.”
“Thank you. By the way, where are my cats, or did you deep six them, too?”
“I never took the cats! You did. How could you believe I’d do such a thing?” Milo called up the stairs.
Liam kept on walking. “Funny, I never believed you’d do what you did to me either.”
Milo didn’t try to stop him. He was literally in shock. He needed time to work through his revulsion over his own stupidity. He needed to make it right. “I know you won’t believe this, but I loved you. I always have and I always will,” Milo continued in a gentle tone.
Liam paused without turning. “I’m sorry if I’ve brought you the additional burden of knowing the kid you raised turned into your worst nightmare. However, you needed to know. None of us are who we used to be. There are no happy endings, at least not for aging rockers.”
Chapter 13
I know that it’s time for me to go home
I’ll no longer raise my hand
I don’t want to take a stand
Against my brother
I don’t care where he’s been
It will matter not to me when
I come home to his arms
Not alone again
There I’ll stay,
From my family I’ll not stray
This brother stands, no longer alone.
—Liam O’Shea, “Surrender”
* * * *
Milo climbed the stairs to his study after Liam retired. The clock struck nine, not late, and he knew he wouldn’t sleep. He rifled through the mail on his desk and noticed a padded manila envelope stamped Photographs, Do Not Bend. Curious at the lack of a return address, he grabbed the letter opener.
Carefully inserted between cardboard were a series of eight-by-ten photos of Liam, drugged, tortured, and gang raped. He went into the bathroom and threw up. He wiped his mouth and returned to the photos. Even a cursory look at photos told anyone who knew Liam that he was an unwilling participant. Yet Liam presented it to him tonight as if he sought it out.
No wonder Liam seemed fragile and defensive. I became a fucking monster about an imagined affair, what did he imagine I would do about this?
“I always played a coward when it came to Liam,” Milo admitted to himself.
He glanced again down the staircase to the landing. Liam hadn’t left. He must be still in the bedroom.
He returned to his study. For the second time in twenty-four hours, Milo went down on his knees. “Even when he followed me around as I child, I loved him more than a brother, but pretended he was a pest and hurt his feelings more than once. If a day went by and I didn’t see him, I’d miss him fiercely and worry, but I never asked where he’d gone or why he’d gone missing. I never left myself open for hurt.” Milo stood up and leaned his head against the cool adobe wall. “I hurt everyone I loved. I damaged a spirit so precious…”
He felt almost beyond the help of divine intervention. What needed to be done, he must do himself.
He still had a chance. As long as Liam remained here, Milo still had a play in the game. He rose to his feet and headed into the kitchen. Liam didn’t eat on the plane. Milo knew from the look on Liam’s face that his stomach was rocky. He went to the refrigerator and took out the sack of sandwiches and containers of salad Conchita left for them for a late night snack.
Grabbing a tray from the kitchen shelf, he arranged the food on two plates, removed two cans of Coke from the fridge, and put them on the tray with some napkins from the linen drawer. A small fridge sat in Liam’s room, and that’s where he would put everything. He knew the old Liam well enough to know that the first thing he’d do was take a shower. The man could not be so different from the boy he once adored.
Milo returned to Liam’s room from the kitchen as his mind wandered in time. Liam thought himself incapable of making love. How did his warm, generous, and inventive lover become frozen to the point where he could no longer touch? Milo catalogued his sins. He did great harm and the thought he couldn’t repair the damage overwhelmed him. He forced himself to move.
Setting down the tray of sandwiches on top of the wrought iron table next to the double chaise in Liam’s room, he then headed to his own to clean himself up and change into some gauze pants. He usually slept in the buff but he didn’t want to give even the smallest suggestion of his sexual interest in Liam. It wasn’t what Liam needed. Liam needed to know he loved him, no matter what happened in the past six years. He needed to make Liam understand that none of it was Liam’s fault.
Milo walked over to the small bar and poured himself a double shot of Remy. He took a long sip of the brandy. It burned like hell going down. He put the glass back down on the bar and headed for the shower.
His body felt over-sensitized. Liam’s mere presence in his home caused his long dormant libido to react. He hadn’t thought about making love in a long time. He did more than a few one-night stands in the last six years. One liaison lasted a month, until Milo realized what attracted him was the guy looked like his Liam, and every time he touched him he fantasized about making love to Liam’s lithe and willing body beneath him. He ended it and hadn’t taken anyone to his bed since.
Now, Liam showered a door away.
I don’t know what the hell I was thinking. I must have been crazy. Milo’s mind ran in circles. Love me, love me not. He’d raised the boy, yet refused to trust him. They held the same values. The kid adored him. They set off fireworks in bed together. Milo groaned. He couldn’t let his latent libido override his common sense.
* * * *
Liam found his beat up duffle bag in his room by the bed. His dirty clothes were missing. Liam assumed that the incomparable Conchita took them to be washed. The T-shirts he purchased at the airport, along with the sweats, sat folded neatly in a drawer. The room resembled one of his long ago fantasies. The fabrics shone in diaphanous shades of blue and green that reminded him of the colors of the ocean. On one wall stood a six-by-six-foot saltwater fish tank. The fish swam in and out of sand castles lying atop of tropical seashells. Salt water plants sat in several locations and the fish played hide and seek amid the fronds.
He examined the elaborate sound system built into the adjacent wall. A floor-to-ceiling custom cabinet held hundreds of vinyl records, CDs in jewel cases, eight-track tapes, and cassettes. He found old forty-fives and seventy-eights, the collection ranged from Benny Goodman to Tupac Shakur and the system had every component necessary to play each item on the shelves.
Liam crossed the room and picked out a vinyl copy of the band’s first hit album, named simply Shattered Glass. Liam lingered, holding the jacket to his chest as he remembered. He and Milo, more so than the others, drank, ate, and slept to the sound of this music. They sweated over every song.
Liam thought they should use all new material, but Milo insisted they include one of their signature songs, Liam’s arrangement of “Lover’s Suite.” The song brought the audience to its feet during their tour as an opening act. Liam acquiesced, and spent his seventeenth birthday in the recording studio, alone with Milo, laying tracks for the arrangement.
He needed to distract himself from this tortured reminiscence. Liam got up and tinkered with the sound system. He turned it on and adjusted the controls to mimic those in the studio where they first recorded the song. He placed the record on the turntable, taking care not to mar the surface. Then he lifted the arm, cued it to the first track, and dropped it precisely into the groove. Although he adjusted the volume to low, the room hummed with music. Liam sat in the light blue leather recliner set alongside the windows with a direct view of the mountains. Closing his eyes, he listened.
He remembered telling Milo how much he longed for his touch, What if all I ever wanted was you? The music washed over him, as did his tears. He thought the well was dry, yet seeing Milo again brought him joy, tempered by great pain, because he knew this could all have been theirs and he’d blown it.
With t
he music came the memories, whispered words of love and the electric sensuality that flowed between them, building to Milo’s possession of his body.
He undid the buttons of his jeans and took out his cock. He stroked it in time to the music, remembering Milo’s hands and mouth as they moved over his eager body. The absolute joy of those moments seemed almost worth all the pain that followed. It didn’t take long for his body to absorb the music and the knowledge that the object of all of his desire laid just a door away.
That thought made Liam cum in his own hand. He lay quietly, remembering what they had both thrown away. The feel, the touch and taste of the love he lost was always with him.
* * * *
Milo’s suite occupied the end of the wing. Decorated in browns and beiges with an occasional splash of gold and red, it possessed a southwestern style with a particular New Mexican execution. It was the polar opposite of Liam’s room, which he decorated with Liam in mind despite his attempts at self-delusion.
Milo eschewed the colors of the ocean. The ocean belonged to Liam, and that reminder brought pain. Milo claimed the mountains and high desert country. Liam was his sun. Without him, Milo’s subconscious sought him everywhere. He knew why Conchita laughed. His furniture, the door, the garden, the ocean room, all done for a man he supposedly despised. He was such a fool.
He sat holding the brandy glass in his chair, his erection straining against the soft cloth of the light drawstring pants. Liam had never lied to him, never cheated. Everyone’s pain—Liam’s, Sam’s, and Rick’s, as well as his own—lay wholly on his head. He now solely owned the title of the asshole who’d torn his own beating heart out of his chest because he possessed too much pride to listen and too little self-respect to believe.
Milo’s soul needed music. He flipped the switch that turned on the CD player. It started to play the song he’d listened to throughout last night. Liam’s clear tenor came in right after his. “Turn around…” The song that was Liam’s first gift, followed by the greater gift of his virginity. Even on that night, Milo couldn’t form the words I love you.
Milo heard a noise, a thud from Liam’s suite. It shook him from his reverie. The song played in an endless loop. He felt as if Liam called his name. The door connecting the suites drew him. Liam stood somewhere on the other side, physically accessible for the first time in over six years. He held the key in his hand. His baby sat somewhere on the other side of the door.
Milo couldn’t think anymore, his body filled with emotions he didn’t want to feel. Oh Lord, I know I promised, but how can I let him go? How will he ever know how much I love him, if I don’t tell him? Even if he walks, now, tonight, at least for once in my goddamned life, I will have stopped hiding who and what I am and what I really feel. I’ve got to tell him now, while I have the courage.
His body pressed against the door as his own memories of kisses both sweet and hot, made his cock leak. He grabbed it and pulled, imagining the touch of Liam’s hand rather than his own.
* * * *
The turntable stopped, the music ceased, yet it still played in Liam’s head. Every note, every chord he wrote, his first real musical effort was made for his love, his Milo. He’d poured everything he hoped to be into the arrangement and gave it to him. Liam hadn’t meant to horn in on the band, he’d just wanted to give Milo a part of himself Milo would remember when he and Shattered Glass became rock stars.
Liam knew, even back then, they would become famous. As a musician himself, he saw the extent of Milo’s talent. With Sam’s management skills and Rick and Mike’s loyalty, he’d believed they would go far beyond Hazlet, New Jersey.
He didn’t know Mike would walk. Liam offered to fill in spontaneously and unthinking.
He couldn’t tell right from wrong anymore. Could of, should of, would of didn’t give him the comfort of Milo’s arms at night. Please, he begged the capricious fates, one more time. He slammed his fist on the table top of the wrought iron table beside the recliner and sent the lamp to the floor with a thud. He was lucky the glass was too thick to shatter.
Chapter 14
I need you so
I’ll love you forever
Give me your hand
I’ll never let go
—Milo Stamis, Words Without Music
* * * *
Milo’s entire body flattened against the connecting door between the two suites. He got as close as he could allow himself. Liam needed time to adjust, and Milo couldn’t force the issue again. Hadn’t he learned his lesson? He never gave Liam the time he needed to grow and learn.
I grabbed, I always grabbed. I took him too soon. I should have let him have boyfriends, dates. I was selfish.
Milo lost himself in memories of other times they’d made love. How he’d needed to worship his baby’s body with his hands and tongue, but Liam got there first, making him shake and shudder, his mouth everywhere. Liam’s tongue traced the rim of his navel and the trail of hair which crossed his hard stomach to the juncture of his thighs where his cock stood straight up, leaking.
Liam called it a happy trail. It made Milo laugh, until Liam licked around his groin and somehow maneuvered his head to a place beneath his balls, where he accessed the sensitive underside of his cock, and the pendulous set of balls in danger of tightening up to shoot their wad too soon. Liam kissed and bit the skin beneath his cock and caressed his balls. He took each of them in his mouth and rolled them with his tongue.
Liam worked his mouth around to Milo’s ass. Liam swiped the crack with his tongue in an intense, rhythmic motion, until Milo’s clenched cheeks relaxed and flowered for Liam. Liam’s tongue moved between his cheeks to the tiny puckered rosette waiting for him. Liam dove in, circling the outside of the small pink center with a sweeping motion, then Liam plunged his tongue within.
The kid began to shake, and Milo worried he didn’t like what he did. But Milo didn’t have time to explain Liam got an A+ in lovemaking. He was so hard, so emotionally high thinking about how he would nail his Liam, he hadn’t given a thought to telling his baby how good he made him feel. He frantically grabbed at Liam’s torso and brought him up to the top of the bed.
Reaching over to the nightstand, he opened the drawer for a bottle of lube. “Baby, I’m going to fuck you. But we need to lubricate your ass. I don’t want to be responsible for hurting you and clouding your first experience with any lingering pain. Lay on your side.”
“I can take you. I know I can,” whimpered Liam in a frenzy of need.
Milo didn’t listen. He took the lube and slathered his fingers. Reaching down to Liam’s ass, Milo began to massage his cheeks. As he caressed the high hard muscle, he reveled in the satin texture of Liam’s pale skin, which made such a startling contrast to the long, thick, straight ebony hair touching his shoulders and back. Milo sunk his face into Liam’s curtain of hair as he spread Liam’s cheeks. Taking his two largest fingers, he circled Liam’s hole, stretching his anal passage. He worked him for ten minutes until Liam’s desperate moans reminded Milo that Liam needed this connection as much as he did.
He rolled Liam over so they were face to face, pushing Liam’s knees to tuck up under his chin. He forced a pillow underneath his baby’s lower back. This allowed Milo full access to Liam’s mouth, cock, and hole. His fingers probed Liam’s passage, searching for the elusive sweet spot.
He knew he found it when Liam cried his name followed by, “Please, Milo, please, take me. I’m forever yours. Come inside me. I want you inside me!”
Milo looked down and lost himself in Liam’s violet eyes. Yes, his baby wanted him. Milo’s eyes blazed in passion. He pulled on Liam’s leg, bringing him up and closer. Liam took his own arms and placed them so they helped to angle his hole for a direct hit by Milo’s ready cock. Milo could wait no longer. He took his cock and shoved it toward Liam’s bright pink hole. Nothing held him back from claiming what he’d always thought of as his. He pushed. Liam bore down, and Milo moved past the sphincter muscle into his tight, ho
t passage.
Liam moved his muscles, clenching and relaxing, massaging Milo’s cock. Milo couldn’t wait for Liam to adjust. Liam salved his conscience by yelling, “Move, Milo. I need you hard and quick, now!”
Milo began to pound into Liam. Soon his body and his brain coalesced, and all that was left was the feeling produced by his dick in Liam’s hole. Over and over and over, he rammed into Liam’s ass, his balls slapping his baby’s cheeks. Milo needed more. His mouth moved over Liam’s skin. His hand stroked his baby’s long slender cock as it twitched between them. Liam’s shout showed a complete loss of control.
“Good, Milo, so fucking good. God, I love you…deeper, harder. Please don’t stop. Love me, please, love me. I need you to love me so much.”
Milo felt the beginnings of his orgasm at the base of his spine. It traveled from his brain, along his spinal cord, through his balls and sent electrical shocks to his cock. He began to cum. He felt like he shot an endless flood of cum into his baby’s ass. He imagined the passage painted in his seed, coated with his scent, marking his lover as his and his alone. He felt Liam’s dick explode in his hand, the jism shooting up and over Milo’s chest and under his chin. Milo lay on top of Liam and smeared the cum on his chest, over Liam’s body, spreading Liam’s seed between them. They lay silent, staring at each other in wonder. How did this happen?
Milo kissed Liam on the forehead, and when Liam tried to speak, Milo put his finger to Liam’s lips. “I’ll be right back, baby.”
He went into the bath and ran warm water. He dumped the ice from the bucket and filled it. He soaped up a wash cloth and brought both the bucket and cloth back to bed. Milo went to Liam and washed him with great tenderness, kissing and loving each area he cleaned. He rinsed the cloth in the water and wiped down his own chest. He left the bucket and cloth on the nightstand, slipped under the covers, and pulled Liam in close. Liam pinned him to the mattress with his leg bent up over Milo’s stomach and his nose somewhere near his nipple. Milo sighed. It would take some time to get used to sleeping on his back, but he wanted Liam this close, so he only had to reach out and know he lay there beside him…
