Herman backed off, smiling lazily. “Questions about what? I was way across town when this fire started.”
I was all geared up to yell out some manly stuff, but Levi beat me to it. Though not in the way I’d expected.
“You’ve got a perfume factory, don’t you?”
Everyone swiveled their heads to blink at Levi.
He took a step forward. Marick and I had our weapons leveled at Herman’s head, but he could’ve run for it. Nobody was looking at him.
Levi went on. “You own Qui a Laissé les Chiens, don’t you? They make scents like Refinery29 and Nasty Woman.”
Herman looked sideways at Levi. “Yes…” he admitted slowly, unsure what Levi was getting at.
We were all unsure, too. “What you talking about?” I hissed at Levi. Waves of dry heat were reaching us now from the collapsing building, making us cringe.
Levi held out a calming hand. “This fire is proven to have been started with ethyl alcohol, right, Alex?”
“Right…” said Alex in that same dubious tone.
Levi called out triumphantly, “Ethyl alcohol is a major component in making perfume.”
Again, that weird absolutely stillness which wouldn’t have seemed too out of place were not a giant building uttering dying sounds and throwing out enormous sparks just yards from us.
Herman made a dash around the passenger side of the car, I guess planning on scooting over to the driver’s seat once he was in. But Marick, and myself by extension, hustled around to that side of the car, covering him with our pieces.
It was like a game of Keep Away, with Herman side-stepping back around the front grill and us following, hunched over in a counter-clockwise manner. Alex and Levi wisely moved back from the car, but before I could figure out what was going on, Herman had grabbed Dodge.
He had his forearm clamped tight around Dodge’s throat while Dodge clawed at him. Normally this would be no big deal. We’d just shoot Herman in the leg and be done with it. But Herman whipped a piece from his back waistband. He’d been careful to keep his back to us, so no one knew he’d stashed it there.
And he stuck the barrel in Dodge’s temple.
“You’re letting me get out of here!” shrieked Herman. “I’m getting in my car nice and easy, and you’re letting me drive away.”
“You’re the fucking mayor!” Levi yelled from the sidelines. “How are you going to disappear?”
Marick shouted, “Put the gun down, Herman. We just want to ask you some questions. No one’s saying you did anything.”
“Right!” I agreed, panic-stricken at the sight of my lover, my lover’s brain an inch from a forty-caliber bullet. “Just a couple of simple questions! Just put the gun down!”
There was a push and pull in Herman’s face. Put down the gun? Shoot Dodge? Or shoot us?
Or confess.
Owning up was clearly not in the cards as he cried, “I never got a break! I had to work twice as hard as everyone else just to get as far as they did! I had a rough childhood. Do you know what it’s like wearing the same pair of pants to school every day? Never having a lunch? Explaining away the bruises and welts? Sleeping in people’s cars until they got up to go to work in the morning?”
I have to admit, that part did punch my heart. I’d had a similar childhood. But you didn’t see me running around shooting hostages.
I had no chance to harden my heart when Herman chose a fifth option.
He shot directly at me.
I only had time to flinch. I ducked a few inches, not enough to have dodged the bullet—if it had headed for me.
Incredibly, the next thing I saw, Herman’s limp hand dropped the gun. He clutched his throat, meaning he had to let go of Dodge.
I leaped around the other side of the long sedan, like Dodge’s favorite quarterback bounding over half the car.
Kicking the writhing mayor aside, I wrapped my arms around Dodge, burying my face in his thick, silky hair.
“Holy motherfuck,” Dodge whispered.
“Holy Jesus on a stick,” I agreed.
I thought I could feel our hearts pounding together.
Dodge squeezed the breath from me with his strong arms. My eyes were pressed shut, but I could hear Marick tussling with Herman next to us.
“I didn’t do anything!” gurgled Herman. I could tell he already had a mouthful of blood. Had Marick shot him? I didn’t notice any such thing. And where had Herman’s bullet wound up? He definitely had discharged his weapon. “I’ve been good my whole life and no one ever noticed!”
“We’re not saying you’re bad,” said Marick calmly, in between grunts. “Lie still! We need to get you to the hospital.”
“In handcuffs?”
“It hit his carotid artery,” came Alex’s voice. “Let me go grab some EMTs.”
“I love you,” said Dodge.
I’d never been in love. A gully-washer of emotion bubbled up inside my throat. I didn’t trust myself to speak. “I love—” And I choked. I choked on it!
Motherly love was different! This whole loving-another-man business, what was I to do with it? This man was one tall drink of sweet milk, and I couldn’t let whackjobs, his family, my family, my lousy childhood, or my own wall of bullheaded obstinacy get in my way.
When we released each other, we panted in fresh air. With hands on each other’s shoulders, we looked at each other and laughed.
They slammed the doors of the ambulance. Driving slowly away with a corpse. I had to be solemn and reflective. “Life is a great surprise, I don’t see why death shouldn’t be an even greater one.”
Dodge half-gasped, half-laughed. He squeezed the back of my neck. “Vladimir Nabokov? You are one surprising cowboy.”
But I didn’t even know who I was quoting.
“Let’s go to your place,” suggested Dodge. “I think we’ve done our job here.”
Epilogue
Dodge
“So I let them pin me up against the wall of the school, after doing some token struggling,” King said. He was telling me his teenaged story about Goodnight, Texas. Normally this would’ve been the crowning erotic apex of my entire life, hearing his naughty story.
But today was different. Today I was on top.
King was the one writhing naked on his back, handcuffed to the headboard. He could sway his hips, and he could’ve easily kicked me, but I’d flipped him halfway around and was slapping his ass with my hand. Fascinating the way each slap made his enormous cock bob. He was turned on. I tried out several techniques I’d learned from him. The hollowed-out hand that sounded impressively authoritative. Sliding my fingers across his bulging perineum to tickle his ball sac. Using the shining, crystal ball drops of precum to give his dick a few jacks. Licking the silken tuft of hair nestled in his armpit.
I was a tormentor just like him. These things gave only temporary satisfaction to him.
I required another part of the story before I’d fondle him again.
“They accused me of being a fag, even though I made sure to do all my stuff on the other side of town, the other side of the tracks.”
That was new to me. I had no idea an eighteen-year-old Kingsize Taylor had “stuff” to do.
“So if they’re such homophobics, why is one of them grabbing my cock through my jeans?”
My own cock jumped at that image.
“My older lover had taught me to be open about my love for all men, my interest in their sexual requirements. I could tell these two boys—yeah, they was football players, Dodge—was more interested in watching or touching me than in punishing me. But they couldn’t let that be known. So when he took a handful of my crotch, I wriggled my hips like this, thrusting my tool into his hand—he didn’t let go—and I said, ‘Yeah, so what if I am? Don’t tell me you wouldn’t like a little taste of my meat.’”
Wow. That earned him a few louder, harder slaps on his cutely rounded ass. I turned him completely over so he could rub his dick against the satin comforter. I moved
his meat downward so it was aimed unnaturally between his thighs, pinned to the slippery fabric.
I murmured, “Sounds like you found the men every man searches for.”
“The undeclared? Sure did. I found two God-hung bad boys, and I was eager to show them respect.”
I dry-humped the back of his thigh. As the Alpha, all I’d done was unbutton my shirt a few buttons and take my dick out. This was our way of showing who was dominant at any given time, and now I desperately wanted to feel the soft skin of his shoulder blades against my chest. I squirmed. “How’d you show them respect?” To display that I wasn’t all googly-eyed over him, I smacked his juicy ass harder than ever.
He grunted. “A demanding leader may lose his followers,” he reminded me. I’d said that many a time when he’d gone wild whipping me. He’d never crossed my hard limits, but I could see it happening. King liked to play on the edge. “Well, Sir, I’ll tell you.” He’d never called me Sir before. Normally it was the other way around. “Though they was pinning me and grabbing me between the legs, I fell to my knees. I showed how they inspired me. I eagerly undid his buckle, his fly. The other one taunted him. ‘Another guy’s about to blow you, Leon.’ ‘He is not!’ Leon shrieked in a little girl’s voice. But he didn’t pull away from me, and in a flash I had his dick down my throat.”
“You’re just a maverick,” I murmured, using King’s own word for “independent ole cuss.” Now I gathered the seeds of pre-cum from the tip of his cock in earnest. I swirled them around his asshole thoughtfully, slowly, my knees separating his, opening him up to me like a grapefruit. “You’re just born to lead.”
“Ah.” King groaned when I breached his tight ring with one knuckle, then another. I finger-fucked him for a while, knowing his cock was pumping out more precum, more lube for me. He sighed. “I want everyone to be satisfied.”
“You never satisfy me.”
“In time I do. So Leon says while I gulp his dick, ‘I’m degrading him. Look at how pathetic he is when I force him to blow me.’ ‘Oh, yeah,’ says the other football player. ‘You’re right. You’re really showing him who’s boss.’”
“But you were the boss,” I said, deftly replacing my finger with my cock. King’s asshole was tight, not stretched by thousands of cocks. I’d only been allowed to fuck him once before, on the six-month anniversary of our introduction, me peeping through King’s blinds to watch him flog another man. “The one doing the blowing is the one in control. We all know that.”
“Oh, you’d know that by how quickly he lost his load in my mouth.”
“Did you swallow every drop?”
“Every last fucking delicious drop. Then the other one wanted to be the boss. But you know what, Dodge? Ah, good. Don’t stop. Don’t stop fucking me. Those guys opened my world. They reminded me what I was made to do. They gave me peace with their fucking jizz, while I probably only gave them grief in their memories.”
Oh, holy motherfuck. Driving into King’s tight ass, cushioned by his well-formed, rounded butt cheeks, I, like Leon, was going to blow my load. I had to slow down. I rolled King on his side so I could grab his dick from the front and pull him. There. To show I was in control, I’d make him jizz all over the comforter.
“How long till he came in your mouth?”
“Oh, only another eight seconds. Boy, did I get a gullet full of seed that day. Oh, God. Oh, God.” King thrashed erotically in his chains. We liked the metallic chains that rattled, gave you more of that horror sense of power. My big power play would be making King shoot into the air before I blasted into his ass.
“Did you ever see them after?”
“Oh, yeah, all the time. I could tell they lived in mortal terror that I’d tell— Oh yeah, that’s it! You got it, baby. Oh, don’t stop. Don’t stop. Keep fucking me. Give me that long prick. Yeah, that’s it. You love fucking men, don’t you?”
“Just”—I could barely choke the words out—“you.”
Now, I’m not sure who won. Who beat who? Who showed the most control, the most power in the struggle?
I had just begun to feel the first spurts of cum bursting from King’s cock. Almost in the same instant, my mind was flooded with that fuzzy, black-and-red fireworks blankness of utter ecstasy. I strangled the very last groan from my throat as I shot into my lover’s heat, wave after wave of pure unadulterated joy. I could not have heard anything else or seen any outside motion. All was in my head, my groin. Oxytocin wiped out all else. A baby grand piano could’ve fallen from the ceiling, and I wouldn’t have noticed.
We came out of our orgasms like men at the finish line. Panting, our bodies glued with sweat, we lay sandwiched like two éclairs. My cock twitched inside King, his twitched in my hand.
Our Samoyed puppy Dolly Pop was barking in King’s living room. Dolly traveled with me, going between my house with Ryan and Georgia and our getaway, King’s house at Hardscrabble. Although Ryan said he loved King, I still couldn’t get behind feeling relaxed enough to fuck anyone one room down from my son. So we maintained separate residences—for now. We had our two lives. Our twisted, lewd bondage life at Hardscrabble, and our upstanding, family life out on Pepper Box Road. The two forks of our lives were discrete entities. They represented the two facets of us. A man could be both at once and not be living at war with himself.
“Dolly,” I whispered.
“Dolly,” King agreed.
But no one moved to see what she barked at, until I remembered and shot to a sitting position. “Levi and Doil!”
King shot up, too. “The trial!”
It was a race to get dressed first. King, as usual, felt compelled to snap on his chaps, so I won.
Levi Steinbeck was already making one of those butt-faces with his mouth against the front window. This was a good sign that the trial had gone well. Levi had been testifying, grilled under some intense circumstances. The jury just wasn’t getting the technical side of chemistry.
Doil Payne made a similar imprint on another window. I let the men in.
“Dolly Pop, Dolly Pop,” sang Doil, seemingly impervious to the trial. He had something resembling a pudding cup in his hand. “I brought Dolly Pop an ice cream pop.” He sat on the couch and gave Dolly a puppy cup. We had adopted the three-legged dog just hours from her being put down, leg amputated after being hit by a car, and I’d given her a great prosthetic. The foot rocked like a rocking horse and she was running almost as fast as an uninjured puppy.
Levi brayed, “Assholes, jizzmongers, condom breaths, twatwaffles, every enemy I’ve made over my famous career was there. When I went onstage and released the Steinbeck power, they were in the front row waiting for me to spew.”
“An unfortunate choice of words,” I said.
“Richmond Herman’s lawyers didn’t deny the lies, the cover-up. He said it just slipped Herman’s mind that he’d ordered Doil to fumigate that day.”
Doil said, “They admitted Herman might not have cooperated well with cops.”
“Then they laughed at me!” spat Levi, pacing. “They said cyanide can’t be detected in a decaying body! The elements broke down too quickly. I riposted that it’s not as transient as that. They laughed more and said I was trying to cover my ass!”
“They did say ‘cover your ass,’” said Doil.
“They ripped my character in public, so I ripped the DA a new one!” cried Levi. “They allowed my good character to be wasted to shreds in a public forum!”
Doil said, “Herman was convicted of manslaughter of the couple for purposefully setting Osmond and me up to do his dirty work for him.”
“Did you hear that?” I said to King as he emerged from the bedroom.
“Yeah! Richmond Herman convicted?”
“Right,” said Levi. “Apparently some of my choice descriptions sunk in. And Herman’s alleged expert was debunked. Every word out of his mouth was a lie. He said he studied one of Seville’s lungs. How could he have? It was never missing from our morgue. One of these days I’d love
to see one of these so-called experts prosecuted for their lies and general diarrhea of the mouth. The DA thought I was outstanding. People just need to catch up with science.”
“Let’s go to Bottoms Up to celebrate,” suggested Doil.
Levi made a face. “Bottoms Up? That place where men strut around with their butts sticking out wearing latex lederhosen?”
“That’s the one,” I said. “I have to be up early to go to the Sacramento Zoo. I’m giving a flamingo a new leg.”
King said, “We can leave Dolly Pop at the bunkhouse with the boys. Levi, you can come. You won’t be assaulted, believe me. Straight bicurious guys go there all the time.”
“Who said I was bicurious?” ranted Levi.
I started back for the bedroom. “Thanks for reminding me, Levi. I can’t forget my thumb cuffs.”
“You got those?” asked Doil hopefully.
“Yeah,” said King, following me. “I don’t wanna forget my color-coded jockstrap.”
“Oh, God,” lamented Levi. “I think I’m going to be ill.” But he didn’t leave the house.
Actually, we were just freshening up in the bathroom. King didn’t have a color-coded jockstrap.
What had happened with Richmond Herman at the Cockroach Blockers fire was unreal. He had put such a thick bulletproofing on the windshield of his own car, his bullet—meant for King—had ricocheted and hit him in the neck. It was as simple, and as bizarre, as that. A fitting ending for an egomaniacal killer. “WHO WILL BE OUR NEXT MAYOR—CHARLES MANSON?” was a witty headline Alex Coldiron had written for the paper.
I hugged King from behind as he brushed his teeth. “I love you, man. See, we were vindicated. All that hard work wasn’t for nothing.”
King made some abominable snowman sounds with his mouth full of toothpaste.
I nuzzled my face in his neck. “Right. Now we can say we helped a murder investigation. And if that isn’t sexy, I don’t know what.”
“Mmpha coco shreena,” said King.
I bit his neck and tweaked his nipples. “I know you love me. Now let’s go strut around with our butts sticking out.”
Two Good Men [Hell's Delight: Unbridled 3] (Siren Pubishing Everlasting Classic ManLove) Page 12
