Best Gay Erotica of the Year, Volume 1

by Rob Rosen

  “You did a fine job,” Dublin said.

  Pride flickered. Nate resisted the urge to smile. “We’re far from being out of the woods yet, Constable.”

  “Joe,” said Dublin.

  This brought them back eye to eye as the full scope of the lawman’s handsomeness crashed over Nate. That name was suddenly the best of all, powerful in its basic letters. He wanted to repeat it, but guilt robbed him of his voice.

  “And you?” Dublin asked.

  “Nate Fremont,” he somehow managed.

  “Fremont?” A dark cloud passed over Dublin’s twin emeralds. “As in Zachary Fremont?”

  Nate nodded. “You knew him?”

  Dublin sucked in a deep, painful breath that puffed the muscles of his chest. “Of him, yes. You his kid brother or something?”

  “Something.”

  The lawman attempted to stand, only to stagger. Nate caught him on instinct and helped him to steady.

  “You shouldn’t be on your feet yet,” Nate said. And then his eyes indulged in a glance down at Dublin’s feet. So big, so attractive.

  “I can’t stay in bed while Obe Winfield is out there, free to do what he pleases. My clothes…”

  Dublin’s gaze located the sad rags in as neat a pile as Nate had been able to make of them, one boot missing, gone to the Green River’s druthers.

  He helped the lawman over to the nearest of the Hepplewhite chairs, in easy view of Zachary’s half-completed portrait.

  “You paint?” Dublin asked. Nate nodded. “You’re good. Damn good.”

  He ignored the lawman’s praise. “Wait here. I think I have a solution to your state of undress.”

  Nate wandered back beyond the velvet drapes to the room, now stinking of sweat, surgery and sex. He assembled a stack containing fresh undershorts, trousers, a button-down shirt, boot socks and boots. He carried them over to Dublin, who tracked his movements through narrowed eyes.

  “These were Zachary’s. They should fit you.”

  Dublin reached for the clothes. Nate drew back a step, placing everything out of range.

  “First, how did you know Zachary?” Nate asked.

  Dublin’s hairy throat knotted under the influence of a swallow. “His death was one of several deemed suspicious since the railroad reached this territory. President Grant’s advisors sent me undercover to investigate.”

  The lone word slipped past Nate’s lips before he could trap it. “Murdered?”

  Dublin answered with a solemn nod. “And the man who shot me, Obediah Winfield, is responsible.”

  The weight of the truth threatened to crush him if he allowed it. Behind the velvet drapes, Nate struggled to hold back the tears. He’d spent so much time returning in body and memory to that grave, and wondered if, now armed with the truth about Zachary’s death, he was doomed to take up the burial plot of hardscrabble beside him.

  Obediah Winfield had murdered Zachary in cold blood, and Nate knew why: since the man’s arrival at Yellow Rock along with the railroad, Nate had felt Obe’s unwanted attention upon him, undressing him, coveting Zachary’s rightful claim to his flesh.

  “Bastard,” Nate growled.

  Joe Dublin was still seated on the Hepplewhite, in a way completing the math problem that had so plagued Nate and the house for months. “I’m sorry.”

  Nate ignored the sentiment. “Let’s get you cleaned up and dressed. Do you want to bathe in here or out in the stream?”

  Dublin glanced through the nearest window at the new morning. “Better to be safe. Here.”

  Nate filled a bucket from the stream, retrieved towels and the bar of shaving soap that had been Zachary’s, and set to work, all while Dublin sat in the chair. He washed away the stale sweat and dried blood from the lawman’s shoulder and chest, and did his best to ignore the intense emotions unleashed by the soap’s familiar scent and the scrape of dark hair beneath his fingers as he carefully cleaned Dublin’s chest muscles, neck and throat, the lush nests of the lawman’s armpits, those magnificent legs and, finally, his feet.

  The attraction nearly overwhelmed him. Nate struggled to breathe as he washed Dublin’s back, his mind making a game of connecting the dots from the spare pattern of freckles on the constable’s shoulders. Lower he went, toward the man’s muscled buttocks barely concealed by his undershorts.

  “You…” Nate said, his mouth as dry as desert. “You can do the rest.”

  He started away, intending to give Dublin privacy. But the lawman countered with, “Wait,” in a commanding tone that made Nate freeze.

  He stood with his back to Dublin, convinced he was going to climax in his trousers, his erection so ready that the man’s voice alone threatened to tip him past the precipice. “Yes?”

  Dublin’s hand clamped hold of Nate’s closest wrist and turned him around. The seconds tolled with the weight of hours. A part of Nate’s consciousness noted that it was raining again. The air felt heavy, swollen from the approaching thunder.

  “That thing you did for me,” the lawman said. “I think…that’s what really saved me. That pulled me back from death.”

  Dublin reached up and cupped Nate’s cheek in the palm of his big hand and wordlessly drew their mouths together. Nate gasped before lips connected, and then fell drunk on the lawman’s kisses, his scent, his warmth.

  Thunder crashed over Yellow Rock. Nate’s heart throbbed between the booms. Dublin stood and backed him toward the purple velvet drapes, their dance coordinated to the scrape of bare feet across the floorboards, their hands searching all the while. In seizing hold of Nate’s ass, pushing down his trousers, and exploring his opening with a pointer finger, the lawman wasn’t alone in his claim of a return from the dead.

  Nate fell upon the bed. Dublin awkwardly fumbled off the last of Nate’s clothing and stood, his erection straining the under-shorts before they were removed, his thickness now hovering in midair.

  “So beautiful,” Dublin growled.

  He then joined Nate on the bed, kissing him, testing his hole with the tip of his cock. Nate moaned his approval as a wad of spit found the sweet spot. In a finger slid, two, all while Nate’s cock got worked. Seconds later, one firmly embedded deep, deep within the other, a warmth suddenly took hold inside of Nate’s belly, thawing the cold that had been so long rooted there. Kisses were freely given, sweat mixing with spit, their moans and groans filling the room as they happily rutted and sweated, two men together in the small, sad house surrounded by the buttes of Yellow Rock.

  * * *

  A ghost stood before Nate, dressed crisply in Zachary’s clothes. Even the dead man’s hat fit Dublin perfectly, as though made for him. The strength threatened to flee Nate’s legs, but his body steadied. He was done mourning for what had been. As for his anger and hatred for Obe Winfield, that burned hot and fresh.

  “How does it feel?” Nate asked.

  The lawman rolled his shoulder. “Hurts, but that only means I’m on the mend. You did an excellent job, Nate.”

  Gunshots were dirty things, Nate knew. But days of cleaning and changing bandages seemed to have avoided the death knell from infection. Nate extended his hand. Dublin accepted his badge and Zachary’s six-shooter.

  Dublin moved closer, stirring the tense air. Nate inhaled deeply, smelling the lawman’s masculine scent. His flesh prickled in a surge of icy-hotness.

  “Joe,” he whispered, and the word felt more than simple language, perhaps the most powerful part of a magical incantation, a spell capable of raising the dead.

  Dublin holstered the gun, reached for Nate and pulled him into a tight, protective embrace. Their eyes met. So did their lips. In that crushing kiss, the lawman tested Nate’s willingness with his tongue. Nate opened wider, granting permission. The swell of Dublin’s cock pressed against Nate’s all too briefly. The kiss ended, and Nate was left once more with the terrible certainty that Dublin would vanish, just like Zachary had.

  “Will I see you again?” Nate asked, his voice hitching with a sob.


  Dublin’s face saddened. “I don’t know. Obe Winfield’s always surrounded by his lackeys. Hard to trust even the local law. Hell, I think the sheriff’s in Winfield’s pocket and that he’s the man who betrayed me.”

  Nate started to turn, but Dublin spun him back.

  “I’m taking that bastard to justice,” the lawman said. “If I somehow make it through this alive, I’m coming back for you.”

  They kissed again, full on the lips, the connection verging on painful. Nate didn’t want the kiss to end but was the one who eventually broke it.

  “Wait,” Nate said. “There’s one time when I know Obe won’t be with his henchmen…”

  Nate approached the grave. On this visit, with the strange undercurrent in the air, like the energy that prickles over the flesh of bare arms right before a violent summer storm, the timbers that marked Zachary’s grave seemed more rigid, the dead man’s name coming clearer to his eyes.

  “I’m sorry, Zachary,” Nate said, holding his hat over his heart. “You deserved so much better.”

  Fear slithered over his skin. The wait wasn’t long.

  “You should have come to me on your own, boy,” said a deep man’s voice from behind Nate’s back. It was Obe Winfield’s.

  Nate spun around. He started toward the Sharpe, which he’d left resting beside the outcrop of yellow rock as always, but Obe was upon him before he could retrieve the rifle. The tall man surged up behind him like a living shadow and wrestled Nate to the ground, onto his stomach, leaving him fighting to no avail against the monster’s unwanted touch.

  “I can give you everything you desire,” Obe huffed at his ear, his warm breath stinking of whiskey.

  “No,” Nate yelped.

  He managed to turn over, just as Obe worked open his own trousers. There, of all places, the murderous bastard planned to take him right on top of his victim’s grave! Nate gazed up at the lusty smirk on Obe’s face, a look devoid of any compassion, and knew he was staring right at the devil himself.

  “You killed him,” Nate spat. “You murdered Zachary!”

  Obe delivered the back of his hand with enough force that Nate almost blacked out.

  “Shut your filthy hole, boy,” the devil snarled. “You’re mine now, and don’t you forget it!”

  But as the devil was occupied undoing his belt, an angel appeared unnoticed behind him. Nate smiled at the vision.

  Dublin cocked the trigger of Zachary Fremont’s six-shooter. “Obe Winfield,” the angel said, “under the authority of the president of the United States, you’re under arrest.”

  THE MAGAZINE

  Jonathan Asche

  They were almost done with dinner when Logan, the hired hand, came in from working in the yard. He stripped off his sweat-soaked T-shirt and bitched about how they didn’t wait for him before eating dinner. Then he scared the shit out of Josh with, “Hope you don’t mind, but I didn’t have any clean socks this mornin’ so I borrowed a pair of yours.”

  He said it matter-of-factly while reaching across the kitchen table to grab a biscuit. Josh nodded, trying to act like his stomach hadn’t just jumped off a cliff, but his hands shook so badly that he dropped his fork to the floor.

  “Gonna go upstairs and take a shower,” Logan said, with a mouthful of biscuit. He winked at Josh when he said it, but Josh barely noticed.

  Linda—she refused to let Josh call her Grandma, especially since Josh’s mother was dead and couldn’t insist otherwise—told Josh to get himself a clean fork, but Josh said he was done eating.

  “That case, you can help me clean up,” Linda said, lighting a cigarette while her eyes followed Logan out of the room, glaring for reasons that had little to do with his getting biscuit crumbs on the floor.

  It was thirty long minutes before Josh was done helping his grandmother and could then go upstairs to his room. He went straight for his dresser. He had his hands on the handles to his sock drawer when his bedroom door opened.

  “Lookin’ for this?”

  Logan shut the door behind him. Josh thought he heard the soft click of the lock. The hired hand was over forty, and while time hadn’t left Logan unscathed—less hair on his head, a few more lines on his face—it had been kind. In fact, he was something to see as he did his slow strut toward the younger man, his skin, damp and tinted pink from a hot shower, glistening under the room’s light, his muscles thick and still firm, his biceps decorated with tattoos. The head of a snake tattoo that coiled around his left thigh peeked up above the pale green towel riding low on his waist. At the front of the towel was a noticeable bulge of another snake, which pushed against the cloth. But all Josh could see was what Logan held in his hand: the magazine.

  “For someone startin’ college in the fall, I expected you to think of a better place to hide your porn than your sock drawer,” Logan said, now just a couple feet from Josh, a big wolfish grin gleaming through his beard.

  Josh managed to stammer that he only put the magazine there temporarily. He’d been running late for work and didn’t have time to stash it in its usual hiding place. Not knowing what else to say, he said, “I’m sorry.”

  “For what? Lookin’ at it or stealin’ it?”

  “I…I was gonna return it,” Josh whined, looking away.

  “I bet you were.” Logan chuckled. “Kinda’ surprised, though. This is old school. But I guess you found somethin’ in here you like, somethin’ you won’t see on the Internet.”

  He was real close now, so close Josh was sure Logan could hear his heart hammering inside his chest.

  “You know, I was plannin’ on going out, it being Friday night and all, but maybe I don’t have to do that.” Logan’s voice was low, rumbling like a distant thunder. “Maybe what I’d be going out for is right here.”

  He put two fingers under Josh’s chin and raised his head so their eyes met—his a steel gray and mischievous, Josh’s a deep brown and frightened. Josh worked at Patterson’s Grocery, where the aisles were equally as full of gossip as two-for-one specials. What he heard about Logan made him curious and wary. Some accused him of burning down Nate Durkee’s barn when he was in high school more than twenty years ago. Others said Logan was responsible for Nate’s son “gettin’ messed up on drugs.” But the story that really interested Josh came from Wilma Narles, who knew “for a fact” that Logan had been arrested last year in Houston, nabbed in a raid on, of all things, a gay sex club! Josh knew another secret for a fact from Logan’s past, but unlike Wilma Narles he wanted to keep it to himself. Even the fact that Logan now knew that Josh knew seemed a betrayal.

  Logan said, “Maybe we could snuggle up in bed and you can show me what you like about this rag.”

  He moved over to the bed. Josh snuck a look at Logan’s ass—high and firm and very fine—then dropped his gaze to the floor. He’d been stealing glances at Logan ever since that day he showed up at the house asking Linda for a job. She explained that things weren’t like they were when he was a boy, when his father worked for them. “All we have now is the few piddly acres this house sits on. Don’t even have that little house your family lived in,” she said, wistfully. Then she smiled and added, “I’m sure we could find a way for you to earn your keep.”

  “So, you gonna stand there starin’ at the floor all night or are you gonna get out of those clothes?” Logan asked. He was on the bed now, lying back against the pillows, one leg up so the towel parted, revealing a hairy, muscular thigh and a glimpse of the tip of his cock resting on the pillow of his heavy balls.

  Josh undressed slowly, looking apologetic as he exposed more of his body. A few weeks earlier, Logan told Josh he looked like an actor. “You know that show, the one with the two brothers fightin’ demons and shit? You kinda look like the tall one.” But the prospect of getting naked in front of Logan made him feel more like a scarecrow than a cute actor.

  Once stripped to his skivvies, Josh cautiously approached. Logan parted his thighs and pulled Josh onto the bed to sit in the open sp
ot between. Josh leaned back against Logan’s furry chest like he was an easy chair of muscle. The older man’s arms circled around him, holding the magazine in front, so that they both could see it, like a father reading a bedtime story to his son.

  When the handyman spoke, Josh could feel his voice vibrating against his back. “What d’ya think of the guy on the cover?”

  The magazine was called Release, “An All-Male Fantasy Magazine,” published in 1996—a year after Josh was born—and featuring on the cover a porn star popular at the time. The only opinion Josh could admit aloud was he thought the guy’s ears were too big.

  “Shee-it, boy, that just gives you somethin’ to hold on to while he’s suckin’ your dick,” Logan cackled. He brought a hand up and swiped Josh’s hair behind his ear. “Just like he’d hold on to this nice hair of yours if you was suckin’ his.”

  Logan’s words were like a slap and a caress delivered simultaneously, acknowledging a secret Josh wasn’t ready to share, yet desperately wanted to.

  The pages turned quickly, Logan occasionally stopping at the pictorials to offer his opinion—or ask Josh’s—of the models. Josh had little to say, but Logan had plenty: Ryan (pages eight to thirteen) had a cute little ass, but not much of a face; Victor (pages twenty to twenty-five) wasn’t bad, even if his Hitler mustache pubes looked ridiculous, especially at the base of such a big cock; and he didn’t care what Josh said about his ears, he thought the cover model, Cliff, was hotter than hell.

  The images barely registered in Josh’s eyes. He was too distracted by the damp warmth generated between his and Logan’s bodies, by how one of the older man’s fingers would sometimes touch down on his chest and casually circle one of his pinkish-tan nipples, lingering at the stiff peak before retreating, leaving a tingling sensation in its wake.

  The pages kept turning until they reached page forty-six. “We-el, who do we have here?” Logan singsonged.