Poster Boy

by Anne Tenino

  Toby laughed, which ended his attempts to kiss Jock again. “My place. I’ll drive.”

  As soon as they left the bar, Toby leading the way to his parking spot, the cold air hit them. It was mild for February in Oregon, but not so mild they weren’t shivering. He stopped and turned to Jock, glancing back at the bar. “Did you bring a jacket?”

  Jock’s hands were jammed in his jeans’ pockets, and he was hugging his bare arms close to his torso like that could hold in his body heat. “No.”

  “I’ve got an extra hoodie in the car.” He’d left stuff at too many bars over the years to bring them in anymore.

  Jock nodded his clenched jaw but didn’t make any comments about the likelihood of Toby’s clothes fitting him. Was he nervous or cold?

  Investigation was called for, so Toby pulled up a flirty grin. “I’m sure I’ve got something extra large for you.”

  A laugh burst out of Jock, complete with flashes of dimple.

  Okay, even if he was nervous, he wasn’t irredeemably so. Everything was still a go. Toby started toward his parking spot again. Everyone has a first time. But was it Jock’s first time? Toby irrefutably knew that the guy had some experience; maybe he had more than the picture and his swings between confidence and uncertainty suggested. Unless he’s really good at Photoshop.

  Forget it. A guy his age would have had to have spent all his teenage years holed up in his bedroom learning graphics programs to be that good at it. And clearly Jock had been out of his bedroom, at least to spend some serious time in the gym. Besides, why mock up a picture like that of himself?

  Maybe someone else is really good at Photoshop.

  Get a grip.

  “Um,” Jock prodded him verbally, clearing his throat. “This is yours?”

  The vehicle he was currently standing next to and staring at sightlessly? “Yeah, sorry. Thinking.”

  Jock was too big for Toby’s hoodie and Toby’s little car, which added a special air of awkwardness even before he started rapidly tapping his fingers on his knee. The five-minute drive stretched out endlessly, giving Toby even more time to think.

  Why are you so nervous? It’s not your first time.

  Because, duh, his first time had sucked. Neither one of them had known what they were doing, and it’d hurt like hell. He hadn’t bottomed again for months and months after that, convinced it sucked.

  Chill. You’ve done this lots of times. He had been with an inordinate number of innocent guys. Wasn’t that at least part of what attracted him to Jock? That and his intelligence, wit, and that air of hurt. He wanted to make sure this was good for Jock.

  If it was even Jock’s first time.

  If he even wanted to fuck. Or bottom if they did fuck. Which Toby had totally been assuming, but Jock might be thinking other things altogether, which Toby could totally provide, and even wanted to provide. Was more in the mood to provide, really.

  Jock yanked on the too-short sleeves of the sweatshirt Toby’d given him. Then he cleared his throat.

  “Are you sure about this?” Toby asked. If he didn’t start the conversation, this would get too weird to save. He knew himself too well to think he could bluff his way through, pretending it wasn’t awkward.

  Jock jerked. “Why wouldn’t I be sure?”

  Toby shrugged and concentrated on getting them the last few blocks, but after he’d parked in front of his building and shut off the car, he turned to the passenger seat instead of getting out. “Listen, um, you need to tell me . . .” He fiddled with the gearshift knob, trying to decide which way to approach this. Or waiting for Jock to pick up the thread.

  Jock shifted his legs, hitting his knee against the underside of the dashboard.

  You’re the experienced one, dude. “What do you want? I mean, I was assuming you wanted to fuck—”

  “I do.”

  Well, that was definite. “We should probably talk out a couple of things beforehand.” He took a huge breath. “Like, is this your first time? I don’t have to know—”

  “Yeah,” Jock croaked. “I’ve been with a couple of girls, but . . . I’m sure I want to be with you.”

  I want to be with you too. Toby leaned closer to him, settling his palm on the top of Jock’s thigh. “Come inside with me. We’ll work it out.”

  “Yeah.” Jock met his eyes, and something pulsed between them, lighting and clearing out the cobwebbed corners of Toby’s mind, where a few doubts about doing this were lingering. “Let’s go.”

  Toby got lucky. In spite of not checking first—which he usually did when he brought guys home—his roommate wasn’t around. Larry always tried to talk to the guys Toby was with, but the way he did it had the air of someone trying to communicate with a remote and undereducated tribe of savages, asking probing questions that he assumed they’d find inoffensive. Larry was working on his master’s in social anthropology, and Toby had begun to suspect he was writing a thesis on the mating habits of The Geighs.

  They shared an apartment in one of those old wooden rooming houses probably built by some young late-nineteenth-century widow to keep her solvent after the untimely death of her husband in a mining accident. There used to be many bedrooms and few kitchens or bathrooms, but at some later point someone had cobbled together spaces to create six apartments with bizarre layouts. The door to Toby’s opened into the kitchen.

  “Do you want something to drink?” he asked Jock, thinking of it mostly because he walked right in and immediately saw the fridge. It would help chill Jock out.

  “Um, do you have any wine?”

  “Wine? Yeah.” He just needed to find it. Most of the gentlemen he entertained in his room didn’t ask for wine. Well, Collin did sometimes, but he usually brought his own since he seemed to find what Toby had around inferior. “White or red?” Hopefully he either had some of each, or Jock would pick what he did have.

  “Whatever.”

  Unzipping his hoodie, he walked over and began the ransacking of the cupboards, trying the one over the fridge first, where the wine was most likely to be. It wasn’t that they might not have any; it was that Larry the Breeder always had some (because it made him suave, Toby supposed), but in that inconsiderate way he had he was forever storing it someplace new—almost like he was hiding it. It made it difficult for Toby to steal a glass or two on occasion.

  It was when he’d moved on to the spice cupboard (another affectation of Larry’s) that Toby realized Jock had come to stand right behind him. The subtle field his body generated interacted with Toby’s and made it hard for him to concentrate on his search. “Sorry, this could take a minute,” he murmured.

  “S’okay,” Jock said back, voice low. “We can talk about whatever else you wanted to talk about while you look.”

  “Oh.” Not how he’d imagined this conversation going. For starters, he thought he’d have to initiate it. “I just needed to know, like, what you want. Like, do you want me to fu—”

  “I want to fuck you.”

  Toby dropped the jar of oregano or weed or whatever he was holding on the counter. From behind him came the mysteriously sexy sound of unzipping. It lasted too long to be a fly, but Toby couldn’t figure it out before Jock’s hands had come around him, comically short sleeves of Toby’s hoodie riding up his arms. Then Jock’s chest pressed against his back, and Jock’s voice fell on his neck. “Would you let me do that?”

  Toby was in danger of thinking this whole thing had been a scam—Jock wasn’t some innocent, uncertain boy—but then he felt Jock’s Adam’s apple brush his ear as he swallowed, and noticed Jock’s white-knuckled fingers, gripping the counter to trap Toby’s body. “I’d let you do that,” he whispered, pushing his hips back into Jock’s as Jock pressed into him, dick making itself hard and obvious. “Do you still want wine?” he asked as he reached up behind him, searching the back of Jock’s neck for that seductive tickle of stubble on his palm. With his other hand he took off his glasses. He had a feeling they were about to get in the way.

 
Jock’s lips moved on Toby’s skin as he said, “No. I think you only have rosé anyway.”

  Opening his eyes—he’d closed them?—Toby realized the bottle was sitting right in front of him on the counter. “Looks like it, huh?”

  “Yeah.” Jock’s breath started coming shorter as he rubbed what felt like a monster dick against Toby, widening his stance or somehow making himself just short enough to grind into the top of Toby’s ass. “Where’s your room?”

  “Fuck.” Toby shoved harder against Jock’s groin. “Was your cock that big at the club?”

  “’S far as I know,” Jock said, curling one of his hands—which felt as surprisingly large as his prick did—around Toby’s hipbone, digging his fingertips into the flesh of Toby’s groin, centimeters from his dick. “Are we doing this here?”

  “No. My room. Let’s go.”

  In spite of the initiative Jock had taken in the kitchen, Toby still had some weird idea that he was conducting this excursion to the next stop on the sexploration train. But Jock took control immediately once they made it to Toby’s room, pressing him up against the still-open door and slamming it shut at the same time. Toby managed to grab a handful of shirt before Jock’s mouth was on his, forcing his lips open and thrusting inside. He had to fight to untangle his fingers from the fabric and catch up because his knuckles were pressing painfully into Jock’s breastbone. Then he fought to breathe around the force of Jock’s kiss and the way he stroked inside Toby’s mouth, nearly to his throat, too overwhelming to taste, other than a hint of the wine Jock must have had earlier.

  Gives great body check. Check.

  He should have expected this kind of aggression, but he was unprepared for Jock’s strength. Yeah, the guy was uncertain sometimes, but as soon as he got over it he took charge. Filled up all the space in Toby’s head and senses, grinding his hard-on into Toby’s stomach as he fought to get the hoodie off, then pulling Toby against him with an arm around his waist, fingers splayed wide on Toby’s back, kissing him even harder. Could lips bruise? Doesn’t matter. Worth it.

  And the boy could really kiss, with those wet-dreamsicle lips wrapping Toby’s and a tongue that might just rival his dick for girth. He was huge everywhere. Not just the size of his body and the physical intensity of him, but the way the lust flowed out of him, wrapping around them both. Jock manhandled him like he’d never experienced before.

  So Toby let go of his expectations of the uncertain virgin, and took advantage of said virgin’s size. He wrapped his arms around Jock’s shoulders, and thighs around Jock’s hips, climbing him, trying to break the kiss long enough to tell him bed. Jock gripped Toby’s skull, not letting go of his mouth, shifting to palm his ass. Maybe to hold him up, but the way Jock’s pinky curled around and pressed into the hard seam of Toby’s jeans had him moaning. He could feel the echo in Jock’s throat.

  And then, thank God, Jock lurched, moving toward the bed, his hard cock bumping and sliding along Toby’s while he stumbled across the room. Toby fisted Jock’s hair, wrenching his head to a new angle to go deeper into his mouth, knocking them off course, but it was necessary to express how fucking transcendent it felt to touch like this. How much he’d been looking forward to it. Dying for it. And he had, hadn’t he?

  They definitely had more than lust to explore together, because in his experience, simple lust was never this satisfying.

  Jock dropped him—or threw him—onto the mattress. Toby landed on his back, legs dangling off, arms wide, staring up at Jock, who stood at the foot of the bed staring at Toby dazedly, lips huge and wet and red. He’d look so much better—hotter—naked. Sitting up, Toby reached for Jock’s fly, the small noise Jock made when Toby touched him sending more prickles across his skin.

  Toby took his time, unsnapping and unzipping, watching the way Jock’s abdomen jumped under his touch and listening to his ragged, stuttered breathing. When he left Jock’s fly hanging open to reach under the hem of his shirt, a soft, disappointed “uh” escaped. But it was quickly superseded by hitching lungs when Toby trailed his fingers up Jock’s stomach, tracing the grooves and hard angles, working up to the beautiful pectoral mounds. To trace the bottom curves of them, then palm the muscles, thumbs teasing Jock’s nipples. He was rewarded with a groan.

  Toby stood, forcing Jock back a step, fingers digging in so he wouldn’t go too far. While Jock tried to help, Toby worked the T-shirt over his head. Then he bent forward to lick into the notch at the base of Jock’s throat.

  “Oh fuck,” Jock murmured, twisting. At first Toby thought he was trying to step away, so he bit lightly in warning. He wasn’t stopping now. Jock hissed and froze, then squirmed more. Trying to get the shirt Toby’d abandoned behind his neck down his arms. Nibbling his way down Jock’s chest, he reached behind Jock and yanked it off, freeing Jock’s hands just in time for him to grab Toby’s head as Toby licked across his nipple. “Oh shit, that feels . . .”

  “Good?” he asked, talking with his mouth full. It could be excused under the circumstances.

  Jock grunted, hips jerking forward when Toby used his teeth.

  Definitely more exciting than Toby’s own first time with a guy. Jock’s reactions amazed him. Made him feel like it was his first time, too. Whenever he introduced Jock to some new sensation, he could feel it flooding his own nerves, and his body’s reactions mirrored Jock’s. When he shoved his hand down Jock’s jeans and into his briefs to knead his ass muscles, they both pushed forward, grinding into each other. When Toby wiggled his fingers between their bodies and traced the shape of Jock’s dick the first time, Jock’s groan shuddered in his own lungs. They both worked Jock’s pants over his hips, Toby dropping onto the edge of the bed and Jock still standing, swaying in front of him, hopping on one leg and then the other, until he was almost naked.

  Toby halted when confronted with plain white briefs bulging out at him, a wet spot spreading across it. He’d thought they were way past the point of no return, but this was somehow it all over again. He looked up, waiting for some kind of okay.

  Jock stared down at him, mouth hanging slack, sucking in air, sweat beading on his forehead. “Yeah,” he rasped.

  So Toby dug his fingertips into the waistband and pulled Jock’s briefs down in one vigorous yank. Hard, hot dick slapped him in the cheek, which some guys might have seen as a reprimand, but Toby saw as an incentive. He grabbed it, fisting Jock’s shaft—as big around as he’d hoped—holding it so the dark pink head looked straight at him, pre-cum oozing out the end. Then he stuck out his tongue and licked it off.

  Jock’s knees buckled in Toby’s peripheral vision and he pitched forward onto the bed, half-crushing him. Toby never let go, though.

  Jock shoved up on his elbow, gripping Toby’s jaw and holding him still for a kiss while working his dick through Toby’s fingers and against his thigh. Then he pulled away. “You get naked.”

  “Make me,” Toby said, smiling. Taunting.

  Grinning, Jock let go of Toby’s jaw to pull up his shirt. He didn’t take his time undressing Toby, and Toby didn’t encourage him to. He wanted his clothes off as much as Jock did. No more foreplay; they needed to get to the fucking.

  In seconds he was naked too, pulling Jock over him. But Jock resisted, sitting back on his heels. He looked over at the nightstand, swallowed, turned back to Toby, then the nightstand again.

  Okay, yeah, maybe Jock was a tiny bit of a nervous virgin. It wasn’t as if Toby would forget protection. He reached over, feeling with his fingers for a condom while watching Jock’s inexperience almost get the better of him. His brows lowered, and his lips dipped into a slightly angry pout.

  “Hey,” Toby said softly. He didn’t let the smile he felt at the freaking endearingness of Jock’s uncertainty show as he sat up, holding the condom between them. Not giving Jock’s anxiety any more time to work up, he ripped the package open, grasping Jock’s dick with one hand and rolling the condom down with the fingers of the other. Stroking a couple extra times. “To make sure
it fits.” He could finally grin when Jock’s hips lifted up toward his hand.

  Toby didn’t waste any time after that. He grabbed the lube and lay back down, squirting some out and reaching under himself, sliding a slick finger into his ass.

  “Aren’t I supposed to . . .” Jock trailed off, staring down at what Toby was doing. Then he clamped a hand on Toby’s knee, shoving his leg wider, licking his lips, dick thrusting up. An unconscious, primitive reaction, Toby’d bet. Possessive. Jock watching him made the somewhat clinical task of stretching himself sexy as hell. As if his fingers were Jock’s, sliding inside him, twisting around.

  Enough of that. He stopped. “C’mere.” Gripping Jock’s biceps, he guided him forward until Jock was hovering over him, kneeling between Toby’s legs, propped up on his arms, fists on the bed bracketing Toby’s ribs. Frozen other than his gasping breaths. His muscles trembled under Toby’s hands, maybe with the strain of holding himself up like that, but Toby thought it was because of what they were about to do.

  “Ready?” he whispered.

  Jock gulped, then nodded. But he didn’t move, except for his eyes, pupils huge and glassy, gaze drifting down Toby’s body. Toby took the opportunity to admire the guy who was about to fuck him. Give thanks to the sex gods for this perfect specimen of masculinity. Broad shoulders slicked with sweat, beautiful, sculpted chest narrowing down into slim hips, and every muscle ever invented lovingly wrapped in smooth skin.

  So fucking perfect. And I’m his first. How did he get so lucky? He swallowed the lump growing in his throat—the enormity of everything it meant to let Jock inside him. Overwhelmed with an unfamiliar sense of gratitude and possibility. Definitely more than just sex.

  Jock’s eyes tracked every move as Toby lifted his legs, gripping the backs of his knees and spreading himself open for him. He huffed heavily a couple times, grabbing his dick at the base, finally tearing his gaze away from Toby’s offered ass to meet his eyes a split second before looking back down. “Now?”