Curious

by Seth King

  “You’re weirdly…beautiful,” he says, as I feel myself start to melt. “That sounds so strange, but…you are. It’s almost genderless. You’re beautiful in the way girls are, but at the same time you’re totally masculine. I can’t explain it.”

  “You’re striking,” I say soon. “That’s what you are. You’re striking looking. Haven’t you ever noticed it?”

  “Noticed what?”

  “When you walk into a restaurant, forks stop in midair. People go silent. They’re struck by you.”

  “Stop. No they’re not.”

  “You’re really oblivious to it? I thought you knew, and just didn’t care. Seriously, going around with you is a spectacle.”

  “Aw, stop.”

  A large wave suddenly comes out of nowhere, and we both duck. When I come up for air, I curse – he’s gone. Fuck, where is he? Did he hit his head?

  “I’m in here,” I hear a muffled voice say. “Under the boat.”

  I dunk under the water, feel around, and then resurface when I am under the overturned hull of the kayak. The blue plastic over us is lending a beautiful blue-ish glow to his face, and instantly I feel my skin get all chilly and prickly.

  “Kiss me, Nathan,” he says, very quietly.

  “What?”

  “I’m turned on by you, and I want you to kiss me.”

  “Um. That was absolutely not discussed in the rules of our pact...that you insisted on, by the way…”

  “So what? Fuck the pact. We’re in the water now – let’s go with the flow.”

  “Okay. You make the first move, though.”

  A war wages in his eyes. Will he do it? Or will he run?

  Finally he leans in and touches his lips against mine for the very first time, but what follows is not a kiss. It is something that warms and thrills me from my toenails to my chest. It is a symphony, a song, a film from the heyday of black-and-white Hollywood…

  In short, it’s better than any kiss I’ve ever shared with any girl. Ever.

  He freezes, then pulls his head away, his eyes hooded but confused. “That was…”

  “Amazing, I know,” I say as a shiver takes flight down my back. “Yikes.”

  He bites his lip and thinks, then nods and seems to decide on something.

  “What’s wrong? You’re not hesitating again, right?”

  “Fuck no,” he smiles. “In fact, come back to the room with me.”

  “Why?”

  “Because you gave me the worst case of blue balls of my life the other night during our fight, and you owe me – big time.”

  “How big?”

  His smirk could light a fuse – it is that hot. “Well, I didn’t measure you, but I’d say about six-and-a-half inches. That big.”

  Beau Lindemann

  My whole body races as we return the kayak and Nate follows me back to the room, our little sanctuary. Once the door is locked, we breathe more easily.

  “Should I?” he asks, fingering his bathing suit. Even though we’ve done this several times, it’s still nerve-wracking every hookup – we still don’t know our ways around each other yet.

  I nod, then hold my breath…

  I watch his every movement as he pulls down his bathing suit to reveal his plump, rather large ass. Some blonde-ish hair is spread between his nipples, and those pink, supple lips – fuck.

  He slowly turns to face me as I take off my bathing suit, too. We smell like salt and sweat and human and sex, somehow. All I want is to be in bed with this dude’s skin against mine. Once he’s naked I lay down on my back, and he just lays on my chest and stares into my eyes. I push him back a little and rub my fingers down his golden chest, around his nipples, then trace the contours of his defined abdominal muscles. Some people were simply born, but Nathan – Nathan was designed. He was carved out of stone for the specific purpose of driving my senses wild, of this I am sure.

  We just lay there and stare at each other for a while, lost in wonder. I feel like there was a mountain range right outside my town that I never even noticed, never even bothered to explore. How could I have stared him in the face all these years and never noticed his muscular chest, his perfect jawline, the way his eyebrows frame his eyes like hawks?

  “One more time,” I say. “I know that going from friends to…more than friends is…murky territory.”

  “Murky?” he laughs. “Try awkward, and potentially explosive.”

  “True. Both true. But listen – I will be careful with your feelings, Nate. I promise. I will hold them like they’re daisies, if you want.”

  He just smiles, then laughs again. “Yes. I do want that. But if you hold my dick like it’s a daisy, I will be severely disappointed.”

  I laugh and get to work. “Now sit up.”

  No foreplay this time – I dive down and go straight for his balls, already my favorite part of him, even more than his dick. I just like the way they hang, I guess.

  I look up as I swallow one ball into my mouth and wait for the look of heaven I already know will come over him, and it does. Fuck, I think I love that look even more than the hookup itself, when his mouth falls open and he closes his eyes and leans back, all thanks to me, and what I am doing to him…

  Back to his balls. They are salty and a bit sweaty in a way that makes me fucking crazy. He also has this very human smell I would compare to something pheramonal – together the mix sends me over the edge. I reach up to his fat, seeping cock and start slowly pumping it as I suck his balls, licking and kissing and teasing. I feel him lean back and suddenly he’s-

  “Wait, are you already about to come?”

  “Maybe,” he moans. “It’s just too hot – every time I get more turned on by it.”

  “Well, stop. I want to do something to you.”

  “What?” he asks me, red-faced.

  “Penetration.”

  “What?”

  “I wanna finger you, Nathan.”

  “Well, then – go easy on me. I’ll try not to blow my load too quickly.”

  I keep lotion in my suitcase for jackoff emergencies in airports and such, so I reach over, hastily unzip it, and squirt some into my hand as I jack him with my other hand. Then I get him ready down there, looking into his eyes all the while.

  “You sure?” I ask after a second.

  “I’m sure,” he breathes in a moan-y way. “I wanna feel my buddy inside me.”

  Holy. Shit.

  I circle my finger around him. Take a deep breath. And go in.

  “Fuck,” he says, as my pointer finger rests about an inch inside him.

  “What does it feel like?” I ask after a moment.

  “Like…heaven?”

  “Good. Get ready for more.”

  As I pump his cock, I move my finger in a small semi-circle, making him moan louder and louder.

  “Oh, hell,” he keeps saying. “Oh, hell.”

  I speed up a little, then start fucking him with more and more of my finger. He feels…different from a vagina, but not that different. The texture is just different, that’s all. And tighter…

  “Damn,” I say. “You’re way tighter than any girl I’ve been with.”

  “And your finger…it’s…just, wow…”

  “You haven’t seen anything yet,” I laugh.

  “…But…how?”

  “Have you heard of the prostate?” I ask him. “I Googled it once. They call it the G-spot, just like women have – we have it, too. And I can apparently reach it by doing this…”

  Okay, so I’ve researched this once. I wasn’t going to tell him, but sue me. It slipped out. I’ve been curious before, but I’ve never tried it on myself. Nate will be my first exploratory mission…

  Very gently, I make a come-hither motion inside him, and his entire body clenches.

  “Fuck!” he calls. He moves his hips faster and faster, and then he leans back and cries out.

  “Stop!” he shouts. “Stop, or I’ll come already.”

  “Whoa,” I say as I r
emove my finger and he pants and tries to catch his breath, his legs clenched around me. “That was fast. But I want my dinner.”

  He stares down at me, his eyes exhausted and spent in a hooded, hungry way. “What’s that?”

  “Your come. Duh.”

  I can’t wait anymore – I want to taste his cum. I want him in my mouth. So I lean forward and take him deeper, deeper, deeper while tickling his balls at the same time, and then I insert a finger, too –

  “Ahhh,” he sighs. He squeezes me with his legs, opens his mouth, and spurts down my throat. I pump him for everything he’s got, then finally swallow it all at once, savoring his taste on the way down. As he twitches and exhales, I lean up and kiss him, carried away by something I didn’t even realize was coming.

  “I want you to taste that cum,” I say as we kiss. He’s hesitant at first, then he gives into it again and kisses me back, and together we taste what he gave us. What I made him give us.

  “How do you taste?” I ask, and he laughs a little and pulls his eyes away.

  “Like…salt, and cooking oil. And sex, if that makes any sense.”

  “Whatever works,” I say as I pull away and collapse onto the mattress for a nap. Fuck, I am never going to be able to contain myself around him again. I know I haven’t seen many, but he’s still got the prettiest cock I’ve ever seen. I already miss it whenever I’m not able to be with it. Even soft, hangs pretty low, and it’s just wide enough to fit into my mouth (or so I guess). Perfect shape, perfect size…shit, even some glossy pre-come is dribbling out of the tip, already. Or is it post-cum?

  “Junior prom,” I let spill out of my mouth. He props himself up on an elbow and looks over at me, looking more beautiful than any dude has any right to look.

  “Junior prom? What about it?”

  “Well, once you were asking when I…if I’ve ever…if I’ve ever felt anything for a guy before. I did feel something for a guy. I felt it for you.”

  He smirks a little, but he still looks skeptical. “Explain?”

  “Um. I remember we were posing for pictures in Kelly Mallett’s backyard on the marsh, and I looked over at your hair and thought about how it was shinier than the sun, and I just…I just…”

  There is a smile in his eyes that is not showing on his lips, so pink and wet. “You just what?”

  I take a quick breath and turn away a little. “I wanted to curse your slutty little date out of jealousy, that’s what I wanted to do. Now let’s watch some TV together.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I can’t wait to wake up next to you in the morning, so I’m trying to get us to sleep early, that’s why.”

  “Okay, okay. Just let me grab my diary first…”

  what kind of love

  from the diary of Nathan Sykes

  I know I love him now.

  I love him because

  anyone would love him

  (he is that magical)

  I love him because

  he just attracts love

  like Venus

  attracts the fly –

  his laughter

  makes my soul tremor

  and his heart

  is softer

  than a baby’s rolls

  but where does that love live?

  does it live

  in the land of friendship

  of video game sessions

  and long lazy talks about sports teams

  and friendly drinks at cozy bars?

  or does it live

  in the land of wild passion

  and tender mornings

  and gods and monsters and demons and angels?

  basically,

  what I want to know

  for sure

  is this:

  how do I love

  the one

  I love?

  Nathan Sykes

  That was the day the pact started to fall apart. The no-love agreement, I mean.

  I know I said I wouldn’t get attached. Obviously. I know I said it was only about sex. But things change. They change all the time. Oceans eat away at shorelines, reshaping the look of the coast. Seasons come and go, stripping trees and then making them bloom greenly again. And friends fall for other friends, finding new contours in each other they’d never noticed before. I know it’s ludicrous of me to even be talking like this, about someone like Beau. But when I’m having the hottest hookups of my life with my best friend, it’s natural for me to start getting a little…fuzzy, right?

  Another evening passes, another series of hookups. Once he pauses the entire thing to demand that I stop touching everything else and exclusively lick his balls. At first touch he moans louder than he ever has before, and eventually he busts onto the side of my cheek. I absolutely love the feeling now – it feels so warm on me, so thick.

  “What was that?” I ask as he blushes.

  “Sorry, I…I just didn’t know I’d like it that much.”

  “Don’t worry about it,” I say as I reach for a towel. “Actually, on second thought, I’m hungry…”

  As he watches without breathing, I slide a bit of it into my mouth.

  “Um, Nate?” he asks.

  “Yeah?”

  “That was the hottest thing I’ve ever seen, and I need to look away now before I catch on fire.”

  And that’s only one hookup. It feels like our sex has simply become an extension of the rest of our dynamic, just an especially explosive one – like when an artist finally sits down to splash all of the colors in his mind out onto a white, clean canvas. Our canvas is just our bed sheets now…

  There are other things. Once he gets a text from an old girlfriend that sends me over the edge, and I don’t know exactly why. Then he checks out a hot, older lady in the hallway, and my mood doesn’t recover for hours. This isn’t right. We are just supposed to be each other’s stand-ins for the girls who dumped us – we’re not supposed to be the actual girlfriends. I have no right to be thinking like this, and I need to stop. It’s not healthy. If I fall in love like an idiot, and we end up hating each other by the end of this trip, and I lose someone who is more of a brother to me than my own (much older) brother ever was…

  I’ll never forgive myself. I will honestly, truly never be the same person again.

  That night Beau disappears to call his aunt, and I’m still a little buzzed from our group dinner. Soon I start feeling weird and possessive and controlling. Maybe it’s the incident from earlier when his eyes trailed that lady’s ass, maybe it’s just the alcohol (which I replenish with the help of the mini bar). But my mind won’t stop running, examining this from every angle…

  I start wondering about his last girlfriend, the happy-go-lucky girl who seemed game for anything. Why did they break up? What happened? How did he fuck it up?

  I pick up my phone and stare at her number. And I can’t believe it, but soon I am calling Beau’s ex-girlfriend.

  “Hello?” Megan asks on the last ring, sounding confused but not impolite. I take a breath – I can’t believe I just called her. Then again, I can. And I’ve got to speak now.

  We were very friendly, after all, and in fact, on our group dates I’d usually chat with her more than Beau would. Ugh, just thinking about him right now sends a tingle down my leg…

  “Hey,” I finally say.

  “Are you drunk?” she asks. I don’t respond. “Seriously, what’s up? Does Beau know you’re calling?”

  “Why would he need to?”

  “Uh, I don’t know…”

  I still can’t think of how to begin. Ugh. Awkward start.

  “Anyway…yeah,” I say, flubbing my words again. “Okay. Um. I was wondering, um…you know, I always liked you. What happened?”

  “What happened? Is this Hillary Clinton?”

  “No, I mean, sorry…between you and Beau, I mean. I was just thinking about it. What went wrong?”

  “Oh. That.” She exhales. “Random that you ask, but whatever. He just kind of…pulled away, I g
uess. Or, I mean, maybe he was never here at all…”

  “In what way?”

  “Well. You know how he is. He’s a cipher. But with me, he was worse. I just felt like whoever he was, I never really knew him. I was good at faking it, but…I felt like a stranger to him. Why am I even admitting this? Ugh…”

  “What were the good things, then?”

  Her voice lifts. She gets that “aw shucks” tone to her voice that my own thoughts take on whenever I think about him. “The good things? There were a lot of them, I guess. He’s smart and he works hard. He loves animals and kids so much. And he’s hot…I was fending off bitches left and right. And he could be really good to me, really thoughtful. Actually, he was never mean at all. He was just…on vacation, in his head. But still, he could be so warm, too. Being around Beau Lindemann was like being around a bonfire. You couldn’t help but get warm.”

  “Yeah,” I say, my face burning with guilt and affection. She never un-loved him. It’s so obvious. She just got too cold every time he stepped away. “I kinda know what you mean.”

  “It’s actually funny that you’re calling,” she says soon. “It’s funny you’re asking all this. Well, not funny, I guess. I just always suspected this would happen.”

  “What?”

  “This call. This conversation. I figured you were…curious about me. You’d study me whenever we’d all hang out, actually.”

  “Study you? Curious?”

  “Yeah. You’d watch me.”

  I get a little defensive. “Why would I do that?”

  “Don’t ask me. But you two were like the same person. My friends always had this joke that I was in a three-way relationship, and I had to share Beau with you.”

  I know I should frown at this, but I smile. It melts my insides to think I had that sort of effect on him. It obviously makes me nervous, too.

  “I don’t know about that,” I answer. “I guess we are good friends.”

  “Yeah,” she laughs. “Friends. Whatever. Honestly, I thought you two always had some type of MSM thing going on.”