Cocky, Stock & Barrel

by Lina Langley

  When Max finished panting for breath, he leaned back on the wall and let out a deep sigh. “Fuck,” Max said. Ethan thought he sounded like he was far away, almost like he could hear Max’s voice through a screen. Then Max’s eyes shot open and their gazes locked. “You’re so beautiful.”

  Ethan felt a tug at the corner of his lips, but he didn’t think he could smile. He watched as Max kneeled down in front of him and their faces were level with each other. He closed his eyes when Max reached out and started to wipe his skin, tracing the outline of his cheek until his come coated finger reached Ethan’s mouth.

  Max stuck his finger in Ethan’s mouth, letting Ethan swirl his tongue around it as he licked him clean. With every lick, he could feel his cock throbbing, he could feel how close he was to the edge himself. Max kept feeding him, slowly, deliberately. Ethan thought he wanted to extend the moment as much as possible, but then Max grabbed his cheeks and squeezed him. Ethan whimpered as Max put two, three fingers into his mouth, all of which were covered in his salty come. Ethan practically gagged as Max moved his fingers around the inside of his mouth, onto the roof of his mouth and then on his tongue.

  He never stopped and Ethan maintained eye contact all the way through, despite the fact that his eyes were watering. When it seemed like Max was finally done, he let go of Ethan’s face, then kissed him softly on the mouth.

  It was a peck, a soft kiss that didn’t last more than a second or two. When he moved away from Ethan, he was holding his chin. “What do you say?”

  “Thank… fuck,” Ethan replied, his mouth dry. “Fuck. Thank you.”

  “My name,” Max said, biting his lower lip. “Say my name.”

  “Thank you, Max,” Ethan said, his voice trembling. Max smiled at him and started to get to his feet, extending his hands out so Ethan could take them. His hands were warm and soft, but they were also slightly sticky.

  “You’re welcome, darling,” Max said into his ear as Ethan wobbled. He didn’t know if it was the whisky or what Max had just done, but he didn’t feel like he could stand on both feet.

  Max grabbed him by the waist and held him close. Ethan put his head on Max’s shoulder in front of him, his forehead on the fabric of Max’s shirt. He was breathing quickly, and his breathing only got quicker as Max twisted them around so it was Ethan who was leaning on the wall. “Are you doing okay?”

  Ethan closed his eyes. “Yes,” he said. His voice sounded low and divorced from what it normally sounded like.

  “Good,” Max said. He kissed Ethan’s cheek. “Go have a shower, darling. But don’t touch yourself, okay?”

  Ethan groaned, his cock throbbing. This was torture. He didn’t know how long he was going to be able to stay like this, and he had no idea how he was going to be able to have a shower and not jack himself off thinking about what had just happened between the two of them. “How?”

  “It’ll be worth it,” Max said. “You’re just going to have to wait, okay?”

  Ethan groaned again, closing his eyes.

  “I’ll cook something for us in the meantime,” Max said. “I mean, your liquid breakfast is fine and all, but it’s time for lunch.”

  “I ate,” Ethan replied.

  “Good,” Max said, winking at him. “More for me. Now go. Shower.”

  Max patted Ethan on the ass softly and Ethan started to walk toward his bathroom, his head fuzzy and his heart in his throat.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  He thought about touching himself, but every time he wanted to reach down and start touching himself, he managed to stop. Even when wrapped his hand around his hardened cock, he couldn’t bring himself to actually start, especially when he thought about Max in his kitchen.

  He was cooking for him, as if that was something the two of them just did. He didn’t know Max. The two of them had never met, not before the night before, and already everything felt like it had changed.

  Ethan leaned back on the cool wall tile as he closed his eyes and tried to keep his breathing under control. He told himself he would get out of the shower, tell Max nothing else was going to happen, and then never see him again. There was no way he could keep this up.

  This was supposed to make him feel better, but it hadn’t. It hadn’t made him forget about Alois at all. Even though he couldn’t hear Max in the kitchen over the water hitting off the walls, he could still picture him moving around in his cupboard as he looked around for ingredients.

  ***

  “Shit,” Alois had said as Ethan had walked toward the kitchen, the fire alarm piercing his ears. He had flashed Ethan a big, goofy smile. “Happy birthday, babe.”

  Ethan had cocked his head, furrowed his brow and tried his best not to laugh. “What’s this supposed to be?”

  “Breakfast,” Alois said, waving the pan around the swirling smoke. “I thought I would wake you up with breakfast in bed.”

  “But you decided to go for a fire alarm instead,” Ethan said, still smiling at him. He moved forward toward the stovetop and made sure it was all shut down, that Alois had already put the pan in the sink. Did you open the windows?”

  “Yes,” Alois replied. “And I already made a reservation for us at First Time.”

  “You got a reservation for brunch there?” Ethan said, his eyes widening.

  “Yes,” Alois said. “I called in a favor.”

  Ethan shook his head. “That was unnecessary,” he said, putting his arms around Alois. He kissed him softly, completely ignoring the piercing alarm around them. “Thank you.”

  “I wish I could do more,” Alois replied. “I didn’t mean to wake you up like this.”

  Ethan laughed. “You’re here,” he said. “That’s all I care about, babe.”

  Alois kissed him on the mouth, then moved away from him. “Okay,” he said. “But can you help me figure out how to turn these alarms off?”

  ***

  Ethan felt better once he had finished having a shower. His erection had subsided, too, which he was sure was only going to make his life easier. He threw on the first pair of jeans he saw and walked out, still working to put his shirt on as he approached the kitchen. It smelled like coffee and garlic, and when he opened his eyes, Ethan was surprised to see the breakfast beautifully laid out on the breakfast counter as Max was washing the pan he had worked in.

  Max smiled at him. “That was quick,” he said. “Which is great, because you’re just on time.”

  “You did all this for me?” Ethan asked, a knot in his throat.

  “Yes,” Max said, wrinkling his nose. “Don’t ever accuse me of not being nice to you, okay?”

  Ethan blinked. He took the stool closest to him and sat down, letting the smell of food waft toward him. He felt his stomach growl and grabbed the fork Max was inching toward him.

  “Have a little bit, at least,” Max said. “It’ll help your stomach settle.”

  Ethan swallowed. “Why do you care?”

  Max cocked his head. He opened his mouth to answer, then shrugged his shoulders. “I don’t know, man. It’s your food. You can let it go to waste, if you want.”

  Ethan looked down at his food, and then slowly, very slowly, started to eat it. The first bite was something of an explosion in his mouth, the eggs perfectly salty and cheesy. Ethan closed his mouth as he continued chewing. He wasn’t really an eggs person, but he liked well-cooked food, and this fit the definition to a T. “Where did you learn to cook?”

  “Home,” Max replied. “My parents were both chefs.”

  Ethan watched him, his brow furrowed. “Seriously?”

  “Yes,” Max said, a smile playing on his lips. “Why do you find that so hard to believe?”

  Ethan sighed. “I don’t know,” he said. “I find it sort of hard to believe you come from a family of people in the service industry.”

  Max licked his lips, then laughed. “Well, that’s a way to put it,” he said. “They were both pretty successful people. They own a chain of restaurants now.”

  “Oh
?” Ethan said, taking another bite. He tried to stop himself from moaning with satisfaction as he chewed on the small bite. He swallowed. “Anywhere I would know?”

  “Maybe,” Max replied as he worked on his own breakfast. “First Time. It’s this—”

  Ethan swallowed. He tried to keep a neutral expression as he interrupted Max. “Yeah,” he said. “I go—I used to go there at all.”

  Max nodded, looking away from him. “It’s popular for couples,” he said. “They really wanted to give it a romantic atmosphere.”

  “Yeah,” Ethan said. “They… the restaurant is very good. I was just there with my sister.”

  Max cocked his head, looking him up and down. “Yet you’re still eating.”

  “I stormed out,” Ethan said, shaking his head. He was laughing a little. “We had an argument.”

  Max didn’t say anything. He took a sip of his coffee. Ethan looked at his fingers. They were long, like a pianist’s, and it looked to Ethan liked they wrapped all the way around the black mug.

  “It was about you,” Ethan continued, quite aware that Max hadn’t asked him anything. “I didn’t appreciate being brought into the fold without being told everything.”

  “If you had been told everything, would you have agreed?”

  Ethan laughed dryly. “No,” he said. “Of course not.”

  “Well, then,” Max said. He bit into the slice of buttered toast. “I can’t help but feel a little glad they weren’t totally honest with you.”

  Ethan nodded, looking him up and down. Then he bit his lower lip. “Yeah,” he said. “Because you got to come on my face.”

  Max took a second to react, his eyes widening, then he laughed, throwing his head back. “I mean, yes,” he said, once he had finished composing himself again. “Sure. That’s part of it.”

  “Part of it,” Ethan echoed.

  Max laughed again, this time more quietly. “Well, I like you, also,” he said. “I mean, you don’t make it easy. But there’s something about you.”

  “Should I be offended?”

  “I’m sure you’re going to find a way,” Max replied, a smirk on his face. “You always seem to find a way.”

  Ethan stared at him. He was about to bite back with a sarcastic remark, but that would only have proven the self-satisfied bastard right. “I like you too,” Ethan heard himself say. “God knows why.”

  “See?” Max replied. “We have something in common, after all.”

  Ethan nodded. “And you can cook,” he said as he finished the last of his food. “This was amazing.”

  “You’re welcome,” Max said. “If you want, I can keep coming back. Cooking for you.”

  Ethan opened his mouth to tell him that he shouldn’t do that, that he didn’t want to see Max again. That it was a one-time thing. It hadn’t worked. He was still thinking about Alois after all, if anything, more than he had before he had met Max.

  Alois had always been part of his life, but his presence had waned sometimes, and Ethan had even felt happy a few times. Not truly happy—but at least the wave of sadness seemed to subside for a bit and he felt like smiling for an hour a day, slowly getting to the realization that things would never be okay but they could be better than they were before. That maybe he would be fine, even if fine meant alone for the rest of his life. Then Max had waltzed into his life as if he owned him and Ethan had run with it. But now…

  Max was staring at him, clearly waiting for an answer.

  “I don’t know,” Ethan said. “I don’t know if this is helping.”

  “Helping with what?” Max asked.

  Ethan licked his lips. He didn’t want to make Max feel used, but he had been the one who had been complaining about games all along. He supposed that the least he could do was tell Ethan the truth. “You’re… you look just like my fiancé.”

  “Yeah,” Max said somberly. “I noticed that too.”

  Ethan shook his head, putting his fork and knife down noisily. “I thought if we had sex, I could finally start to move on,” he said. “I haven’t… that was the first time.”

  “Since he died?” Max asked. To Ethan’s surprise, he sounded more curious than angry, but there was a hint of compassion in his voice that Ethan didn’t think he had ever heard before.

  “Yeah,” he said. “It’s been… I’ve tried. I just haven’t been able to find anyone, I always chickened out at the last minute. You look so much like him, I don’t know, I guess I thought I could picture him or something. Which is actually really cruel, now that I say it out loud.”

  “It’s okay,” Max said, shrugging his shoulders. “I figured it was something like that.”

  Ethan looked at him for a few long seconds. There was something unsettling about that answer, but he couldn’t quite figure out what it was. “And you were okay with that?”

  “Sure. I mean, I used to be,” Max replied.

  “You’re not anymore.”

  “I’m less okay with it than I used to be,” Max said quietly. “But, to be fair, when I was okay with that, I didn’t realize just how much I would want you.”

  “I don’t understand,” Ethan said, shaking his head.

  Max smiled at him. “That’s okay,” he said. “You’ll understand soon enough.”

  He got off the stool and approached Ethan, putting a curled finger under his chin so he could tilt his face up. “What are you doing?”

  Max leaned forward to kiss him on the mouth. The kiss was sweet, soft, brief. By the time Max had moved his face away, Ethan hadn’t managed to process what had happened.

  “We’re going to have sex,” Max said into Ethan’s ear. “But before we do, you’re going to beg me. And you’re not going to be thinking of anything else, Ethan. I can promise you that.”

  With that, he turned around and walked away.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Ethan didn’t touch himself. He wanted to, when he was on the sofa half-watching a nature documentary, when he finally went to bed. He wanted to when he woke up in the morning. But it felt wrong, because Max hadn’t said he could do it.

  He hadn’t said he couldn’t do it, either, and it was driving Ethan up the wall. He wanted to crawl out of his skin. He thought about calling Max and asking him if he could touch himself, but the very idea of that seemed absolutely preposterous. He was a fully-grown man. If he wanted to touch himself, he could damn well do it.

  Except he couldn’t. He couldn’t, and by the time the next day had rolled around, he didn’t know what he was supposed to do. He went to the gym to try and burn as much energy as he could, got home and sat down on the sofa in front of the television. He was about to go in the shower when his phone rang.

  He couldn’t help but smile when he saw that it was Max calling. “Hello?”

  “Hey, Ethan,” Max said. “Are you busy?”

  Ethan cocked his head. There was something in Max’s voice, but he couldn’t quite put his finger on it. “Rarely,” he replied. “Are you coming over?”

  Max laughed, but there was no humor in his voice. “No,” he said. “I just need to talk to you for five minutes.”

  “Okay…”

  “Listen,” Max said. “I just had a call from the governor’s office.”

  Ethan furrowed his brow. Whatever this was, he was sure it couldn’t be good. “Right.”

  “He wants to withdraw his endorsement,” Max said. “There are other, stronger candidates. He feels they would have a better chance at winning than me.”

  “That’s… he told you this?”

  “No,” Max said with a chuckle. “Not at all. The governor doesn’t talk to me. It was Claudio and he seemed pissed.”

  “Why?”

  Max sighed. “I don’t know,” he said. “He’s been pushing for me to be state’s attorney for a long time now. I think he thought I would be good.”

  Ethan waited. He didn’t know what to say.

  “But there’s this other person, and apparently, the governor prefers her over me,” Max
continued. “She has been a… long-term contributor.”

  Ethan shook his head. “That’s so shit, Max,” he said. “I’m sorry.”

  “It’s fine,” Max replied. “Well, it’s not, it means I can’t win. There’s no way I can get around this, you know? Without the governor’s support, I’m just an unknown lawyer.”

  Ethan nodded. He closed his eyes. “Can I ask you something?”

  “Sure,” Max said.

  “Why do you even care?” Ethan asked. “I mean, you’re successful, you’re rich… why would you want be state’s attorney? Is it just a step toward public office?”

  “No,” Max replied. “I mean, yes, I do want to be a politician, but mostly because I think I could actually help people. Our state’s attorney is egregiously bad, with a host of diversity problems. I’m not saying I can solve everything, but I really do want to try and make a difference.”

  Ethan sighed. He hadn’t expected an answer like that from Max. He wasn’t sure what to expect from Max at all, but it was become more and more clear that he needed to get rid of all the assumptions he’d made about Max in the first place.

  The guy might have been an arrogant fuckwad, but Ethan, despite himself, couldn’t help but like him. “Shit, man,” he finally replied. “I’m sorry about that. Is there anything I can do?”

  “No!” Max exclaimed, then cleared his throat. “Sorry, no. There isn’t anything you can do. You really don’t have to get involved.”

  “Are you sure?” Ethan said, straightening up.

  “Yes,” Max replied. “That’s not why I called.”

  Ethan closed his eyes. He suddenly had a headache. For some reason, his head was throbbing. He didn’t want to ask Max why he had called, he suspected that he already knew the reason. “Oh?”

  “Ethan,” Max said.

  Ethan opened his eyes. It was the first time Max had said his name, ever, maybe, and Ethan could feel a shiver of electricity going down his spine. It was just his name, but it felt like a kiss, like a current of electricity had washed over his body, from his head to the tips of his fingers. “What?”