Ballsy

by Mia Watts

  Mark laughed. That’s what Steven had hoped for and it made him relax in return.

  “I need to understand you,” Steven explained. Because he wasn’t going to go out on a limb, say anything sappy and wind up with Mark’s pity.

  Mark dropped his hands to his hips. “I wanted to. You were smiling. We were having a relaxed moment. I looked up, and it was just something I had to do. It’s something,” he paused, shook his head slightly and glanced away. “I’d do again if I thought you’d let me.”

  Steven’s breath caught as he processed Mark’s quiet confession. The sounds of his house adjusting, settling, the popping of the cooling oven, were the only ones that filled the space.

  Mark shifted his weight. He hung his head but looked up at Steven as though preparing for the worst. “Say something.”

  “Uh,” Steven couldn’t think.

  “Maybe something a bit more revealing,” Mark coaxed.

  “Again?” Steven’s voice cracked. He felt the burn of a blush heat his cheeks and rise to the tops of his ears. He thought it had been all talk. A way to get under his skin. From the looks of things now, it hadn’t been.

  Mark gave him a sheepish grin, a half shrug.

  “Like a friends with benefits thing?” Steven said, finally finding his voice.

  “Maybe.”

  Chapter Four

  If that’s all you want, I’ll take it. I’ll take whatever you give me. Mark bit the inside of his cheek, waiting for what felt like an eternity for Steven’s answer.

  “What do you think?” Mark pressed when he still hadn’t said anything.

  He had a fraction of a second, swimming in doubt, before Steven fisted Marks collar and dragged him forward. Mark took a step to keep his balance, but another tug had him crashing against his friend’s chest. Steven cupped the back of Mark’s head and lifted his face.

  Mark’s cock, already half-mast, thickened further with lust. He rested fully against Steven’s body, letting him feel how much the coming kiss turned him on as Steven closed the gap between their mouths.

  “Wait,” Mark whispered.

  Steven’s brow pulled into a mix of confusion and exasperation. Mark grinned slowly, reached up and slipped Steven’s glasses off his nose.

  “I don't want any distractions,” Mark explained.

  “Oh, right,” Steven rasped.

  He kept his gaze trained on Mark. The clack of black frames touching the counter top behind them stripped the last excuse keeping them apart. Once they got started, Mark didn’t want the other man to find any reason to stop.

  This time when Steven lifted his face, Mark tucked his chin to meet him halfway. He started to lead, but Steven backed off just enough to speak.

  “You're the spectator this time,” Steven said. “I lead this dance.”

  “Yes, sir,” he murmured, his voice a smooth purr.

  To Mark, there was nothing sexier than Steven acting dominant. Their lips met in a soft, gentle press. So feather-light, Mark leaned in to deepen the experience only to have Steven pull back equally.

  Delicious, yet frustrating, Mark tried to keep still, to take only what was given, but he wasn’t used to moving slowly. He was used to fucking fast and furiously with a hottie from the bar. He knew kissing Steven would be different. He’d had no idea how nerve-scrapingly tender and intimate it would feel sharing soft puffs of breath, the heat from the other man’s face touching the sensitive skin of his own. Everything centered on that one point of contact, the one brush, the one flick of Steven’s tongue along his, the one muffled sound of lip separating from lip before rejoining in smooth kiss after smooth kiss.

  Mark’s head swam. He wanted more, deeper. He wanted his cock free and their bodies bare. His mind swam with wonder that after all these years his unassuming best friend could have such command over Mark’s body and mind. He wanted Steven so badly he trembled with need.

  It was like the need had always been there, but he’d ignored it. And yet, had he? Had he really ignored the effect Steven had on him? Hadn’t that been why he never got serious with other men? Wasn’t fucking them his way of releasing the tension because going to Steven’s and not touching him had become harder and harder over the years?

  He almost laughed at the irony of it. There hadn’t been a start. There wasn’t a finish. Steven just always was the right guy. Mark had to have known it on some level, because Steven was the one he went home to. And Steven was the one guy he’d never tried to seduce.

  There’d been that time, one summer. They’d been at the lake their families always went to. He and Steven had horsed around, splashing and dunking each other, throwing mud and diving off the floating platform.

  They’d climbed onto it, stretching out in the sun and Mark had looked over at Steven as he talked about living on top of clouds and how cool it would be to look down at everyone. The two of them flying, with all the power in the world and the rest of their lives before them.

  He’d watched the animation on Steven’s face that day and something confusing happened. Mark had gotten a hard on. It had shocked him so much he’d rolled to the side and dove beneath the cold lake water.

  Looking back, it didn’t seem like nothing. Looking back, it was the first time he’d seen the other boy. At thirteen, it had been confusing. At thirty, it was a realization. He’d known Steven was for him, even then.

  He fumbled with the thought for a moment, as though that thirteen-year-old kid reached through the span of years to reveal things he’d covered up with friendship and humor and quick bar fucks, all the while seeking Steven out to fill the part of him that sex couldn’t.

  He needed Steven. He couldn’t mess this up. But the veneer Mark had spent a lifetime creating had come back to bite him in the ass. Making Steven see through it wasn’t going to be easy.

  He tried again to deepen the kiss, parting his mouth as tacit permission for Steven to take more. He shifted his hips, lining his raging clothed cock against Steven’s pelvis and rocked against the matching erection he found there.

  Suddenly Steven turned his face, dropping his hands back to the counter behind him. Mark groaned, burying his face into Steven’s neck.

  “You’re going to stop there?” Mark complained, giving a punishing nip to the flesh against his mouth.

  “You told me to show you how it’s done. I did that.” Though Steven’s stated the words matter-of-factly, his gravelly voice let Mark know his friend had been just as affected as he.

  “You’re going to leave me with blue-balls?” Mark tried to get a bead on his friend’s thoughts.

  Big brown eyes blinked back at him, nonplussed. Why hadn’t he ever noticed the tiny flecks of green and gold in Steven’s eyes? Or the way his archless brows drew out the eyeline into an exotic, half-squinted look? Or that he had a single, tiny surface mole at the corner of his left eye beneath the lash line?

  The longer Mark studied him, the more confident Steven seemed to get that he’d satisfied Mark’s line of curiosity. His smirk was fucking adorable.

  Mark threw caution to the wind, not ready to give up on the possibility they could make this work. Not willing to silence the thirteen-year-old voice telling him to try again. He tilted in, catching Steven’s lips in another kiss. This one wasn’t as gentle as Steven’s had been, or as demanding as Mark’s had been that first time. No, this one married the two into a hungry but patient claiming. This time, Mark was in control, and he took it. This time when he wanted to deepen the kiss, he didn’t silently ask, he fitted their mouths solidly together and made an entrance.

  Steven made a strangled sound, half-surprise half pleasure. Mark didn’t need any further encouragement. It was almost as though by tasting Steven he might understand the unexpected hold his friend had on him. Maybe he’d make sense of the seemingly unquenchable desire he had to wear the man…on the end of his cock.

  He stroked the side of Steven’s tongue with his own, rubbed slowly and invited him to do the same. He didn’t know what made hi
m want Steven so badly. He didn’t have an answer to that, only more lust. Mark began to wonder why he was fighting the urge to tear the man’s clothes off and fuck him until they were both replete.

  Friendship. It’s what kept him from grabbing at Steven. But when Mark’s fingers edged under Steven’s shirt at his sides, it didn’t stop the tiny thrill of victory that maybe he’d satisfy that hunger yet.

  Mark linked his thumbs in the waistband of Steven’s sweats and walked backward with him through the kitchen door. Steven hesitated, breaking the kiss.

  “What are we doing?” Steven asked, almost more to himself than Mark.

  “Making out.”

  Steven’s gaze focused on him. “Yeah. Maybe we shouldn’t.”

  “Shouldn’t question it. C’mon.” Mark urged him to the bottom of the stairs.

  “Then what?”

  “No pressure. Just fun, okay? We just keep doing more of this.”

  “Friends with benefits,” Steven said, seeming to snag on their prior discussion of where their relationship could go.

  “Don’t say, no,” Mark whispered. “I don’t know what this is, but I like it.”

  Steven’s eyes dropped to Mark’s lips. He seemed about to say something, but nodded instead. Mark took his hand and led him upstairs.

  “Why up?” Steven asked a little nervously.

  He paused and gave him a sheepish grin. “I want to feel you against me. I can’t do that as well on a couch.”

  Mark was rewarded with a high blush on his friend’s face. They climbed the stairs. Mark tugged him over to the bed, stopping to pull his own shirt off before helping Steven with his.

  “I’ve got a bad feeling about this.”

  Mark shook his head. “Stop thinking.”

  A frown furrowed the other man’s forehead and before he could utter that thought, Mark kissed him. He pulled him down on the bed, and they fell together, rolling until Steven was under him.

  “Hell, yeah. That’s what I’m talkin’ about,” Mark murmured as he resumed where they’d left off downstairs.

  The room spun and suddenly Mark was looking up at Steven with the ceiling behind him. “I think I said this was my dance.”

  “Dude, you forfeited the reins when you ended it in the kitchen.”

  “I’m taking them back,” Steven told him. Mark started to sit up for another flip, but was shoved down at the shoulders. “Nuh uh.”

  Mark grinned. “Oh? What are you going to do to me?”

  Panic flitted across Steven’s face. Mark thought he might back down, but a smooth smile dropped into place.

  “Teach you some manners,” Steven joked.

  “Like?”

  “Don’t talk with your mouth full.” Steven kissed him, stretching out over Mark’s body.

  Mark moaned, eager to learn this lesson and more than a little pleased to be in full body contact with his best friend. Chest to chest, their breathing was a shared give and take of space, heated flesh and the ticklish crinkle of tiny hairs mashed together. Mark wrapped his arms around him, holding him tightly as he opened his legs to drop Steven’s crotch into more intimate alignment.

  Steven would have lifted his head, but Mark switched it up, planting one hand on the back of the other man’s silken hair. He had Steven where he wanted him. No way in hell was he letting him call time-out.

  Then, because Steven wasn’t moving fast enough to the end-goal, Mark flipped him again, this time pinning the other man down. He swung a hand out to the night table and awkwardly dragged open a drawer. He fished blindly for condoms but coming up dry.

  With a groan, Mark pushed up. He still pinned his friend down with his pelvis, and he twisted over the edge of the bed to find what he’d been looking for. A high gloss, bent cover calendar rested on top.

  “What’s this?” Mark asked, snatching it up.

  Steven made a grab for it. “You gave me that.”

  “Yeah, for your wall, not to be hidden in a drawer.”

  Steven pushed at him forcefully. Mark sat up, straddling the other man. He kept the calendar out of reach as he began to flip through the months. The calendar immediately opened to July with well-worn practice. Mark stared.

  “Gimme that!”

  Steven tried to backward crawl from underneath him. Too stunned to stop him, Mark let him go. Pictures of him, of them together, had been taped next to Mark’s July spread. Vaguely he was aware that Steven quit protesting.

  He glanced over. Steven sat on the other side of the bed, his back to him, feet over the side. “Get out.” Steven rasped. “Take it with you if you want, but get out.”

  Everything clicked into place as it dawned on Mark why this was in his bedside drawer. “You know,” Mark began casually. “You can have the real thing any time you want.”

  “I said get out.”

  “Is that what you want? You want me to leave? Now?” Mark challenged.

  “I said it, didn’t I?”

  Emboldened by the evidence that Steven seemed to use him as a fantasy fuck, Mark climbed off the bed. He slowly undid his pants over his bulging cock, making sure to rasp the zipper.

  “What are you doing?” Steven snapped.

  “I think I’m going to take a shower,” he mused aloud. “And if someone wanted to watch, I could pretend not to notice him getting off.”

  “Fuck you.” The words lacked venom. In fact, Steven almost sounded like he choked on the words.

  Excellent. Mark hummed quietly, kicking off his socks and unclasping his watch. He wandered into the bathroom, turned on the light and left the door open as he started the shower. He almost laughed when he heard Steven swearing in the next room.

  Chapter Five

  Steven tried really hard not to listen. He tried, but every nerve honed in on each tiny sound Mark made. He imagined the pants falling to the ground, his friend’s naked strut and flexing ass into the bathroom. He even imagined—he was certain, with accuracy—the smirk gracing Mark’s lips. It was that one-upmanship grin. The grin that said, “I know you’re going to fail and I’m going to win.”

  Steven cradled his head as though he could squeeze the images from his mind. Instead, he vividly imagined the calendar picture, water splashing over his friend’s chest. Only this time, there wasn’t a shadowy opening on his turnout. Nope. This time, if Steven went in there, he’d see it all. Something he had studiously avoided since his crush had gone full-blown Monty for Mark.

  He didn’t remember making the conscious decision to stand up. He didn’t remember choosing to walk to the bathroom. Yet there he was, leaning in the doorframe, staring at his best friend’s tight, wet ass. An embarrassingly loud groan wrenched from him.

  Mark turned his head to the side listening, then resumed humming with gusto. He snagged the shampoo and lathered up. He faced Steven with his eyes closed, as though he was alone in the bathroom, oblivious to a voyeur.

  “Dear God,” Steven muttered, eyes riveted to hard cock glistening with shower water.

  Mark made a show of taking his lathered hand and washing his balls, his shaft with deliberate lifts and strokes. Steven’s dick throbbed like it expected the same treatment. His mouth went dry. His gaze slid over the trickles spilling over his friend’s perfect body.

  With a trembling hand—praying with what portion of his brain still functioned that Mark had meant his promise—Steven pushed his sweats down. He wrapped his hand around his own cock, mimicking Steven’s slow, thorough cleaning.

  Mark raised his face to the showerhead. Bubbles dashed over his shoulders, chest and thighs. Steven pinched his own nipple with a free hand, twisting it as he began to glide along his palm with the help of pre-cum.

  He slitted his eyes, sinking into the sensation as he watched Mark. The glass shower door opened and Mark walked to him, heedless of the water puddling on the floor beneath his feet. Steven grabbed his sweats to tug them up, but in one swift move, Mark dropped to his knees. He grabbed Steven’s hips shoving them hard against the wall.<
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  All Steven could do in the milliseconds between jacking himself off and seeing Mark on his knees was utter a small grunt of surprise, before Mark’s mouth opened. He took Steven in, drawing him deep and holding on when Steven tried to push him off in a panic.

  Steven fisted his fingers in Mark’s hair, thinking he’d yank him away, but the man’s mouth on his flesh short-circuited his brain. Steven’s resolve to stop him waned. Mark buried his nose in Steven’s pubic hairs. His hot mouth held all of him and his throat swallowed around the tip.

  Steven shook. His balls drew tight, and he knew it was already too late. Cum streaked up his cock with a speed that would make a pubescent boy chagrined. He jerked into Mark’s mouth unable to stop the spill as orgasm singed his nerves.

  Mark licked him off and stood. “This isn’t over,” he told Steven darkly.

  Mark hooked Steven’s arm. He knocked him back onto the bed, and using their discarded shirts, made fast work of tying first one hand, then the other to the headboard. Steven jerked, still slightly dazed, only to find himself trapped.

  Mark grinned down at him.

  “You said you would pretend not to notice,” Steven accused.

  “That was before I opened my eyes and saw you abusing that beautiful penis.”

  Steven colored a deep red, pressing his lips together mutinously. “Untie me.”

  “Nope. You’re full of demands tonight, but I have this theory that all your piss and vinegar needs to be worked out. Guess who’s going to work it out of you?” Mark teased wiggling his eyebrows. “Pardon me, while I turn off the water and grab a towel, won’t you?”

  As though he could stop him. He slanted his eyes toward the tall, blond Adonis. The water shut off. The light went out. He came back and hummed happily over to the closet, where he found belts. Then he went to the dresser and unrolled two pair of socks. Finally, he located the condoms he’d been looking for earlier. Not in the bedside table, but in the medicine cabinet where they’d been, unopened.

  Mark dropped them next to Steven’s hip. Methodically, he switched out the shirts for sock-padded belts, without actually giving Steven a moment of freedom. With a deft yank, dropped Steven’s pants the rest of the way and bound up his ankles, this time with a little more difficulty because of all of Steven’s squirming.