When I carefully walked up to the entrance of the restaurant, he was standing outside waiting for me, and I got two distinct impressions: that he was relieved I’d actually shown up, and that he had to restrain the impulse to kiss me. I knew his kisses now, at least those few we’d exchanged in the heat of the sexual battle, but not the kind someone might give on a Saturday night at a restaurant.
“Hello, Tom,” he said, with a swift smile, not even trying to hide how glad he was to see me. “Glad you could make it.”
“Glad I’m here,” I said awkwardly to cover up the jolt of attraction that streaked through me. Had he been this good-looking on that first night months ago? Kevin’s smile made him even more handsome, made me think in a flash of him looking down on me in bed. I extended my hand to slide smoothly against his and then away.
“Me too,” Kevin said.
We lingered over drinks in the bar area, but it was too crowded and noisy for us to talk much over our bourbon and waters, and Kevin kept his eyes down most of the time. The sophisticated, quiet dining room the hostess eventually took us to was different, dark red brick enlivened with candles on each white tablecloth. The room looked out over the little street that had been the restaurant’s home even back when I’d visited here with my parents. We settled on a bottle of shiraz, took our time checking out the menu, and then took our time over dinner too, all four courses we indulged in.
When Kevin told me he’d spent his teen years in Little Rock, Arkansas and shared that his mom was an art photographer living in St. Louis now, I was shamed by my instinct toward silence. After the waiter came with our turtle soup and okra gumbo, I found the words I was so accustomed to withholding. I told Kevin I was Texan to the soles of my booted feet, and that my family had deep roots here. He asked what kind of roots, and I searched for something to say that would convey how longhorns and sagebrush ran in our blood without saying too much. I settled on telling him about my brother—not me—who presided over the family-owned ranch out near Amarillo, and then ruined my reticence when I added that I went there for holiday celebrations.
Kevin listened to me talk about this—and everything else I opened my mouth about—with his head tilted a little to the side, so seriously intent. He was showing me a different part of him, not the laughing dancer and not the intent sex partner and not even the man who could coax the devil himself to sit down with the angels, because somehow he’d gotten me here, sitting across from him in the flickering light, when I never, ever did this.
That’s the thing about a really good restaurant with a discerning wait staff. If the timing is right, if the company is the best, a good restaurant can make a man feel as if he’s in a space out of time. The minutes pass differently than anywhere else, and the rest of the world recedes. That’s how I began to feel after a while as Kevin, in his charcoal gray suit and his red silk tie, took in each of my words as if it were a special gift. I wasn’t made of ice, despite how I sometimes felt. I was there, I was talking, I was being swept away by a current I’d never expected to be so strong. The wine we’d ordered might have helped too.
Besides, how could I have thought we could spend those strangely intimate hours together and not share some things I’d believed I didn’t want to say? I was letting down my guard with every minute that passed.
As we enjoyed trout amandine and shrimp Sardou, Kevin told me he’d attended the University of Arkansas in Fayetteville and that he loved the winters there and the sound of a chill wind roaring through the country hollows of the Ozarks outside of town. The way he said it made me realize he loved the land and probably was the kind of man who enjoyed hiking and camping, maybe fishing and hunting. I could see him in sturdy hiking boots, finding his way through a forest along a faint trail marked by blazes on the trees, next to impossible to follow if a man didn’t pay very close attention. I began to see the quiet, understated determination that was a part of every way he expressed himself. It seemed to me that he would never stay lost for long in a forest or anywhere else.
It wasn’t so difficult to tell him I had my teaching degree from Texas State in San Marcos and had taken half a master’s degree worth of counseling courses from Texas Tech in Lubbock, and that the long, dry, isolated drive into Big Bend National Park was my favorite stretch of road in the state.
It turned out that we shared a love of that amazing park, the least visited in the country, and we agreed that we wanted it to stay that way. He knew Big Bend well, and we spent a long time exchanging reminiscences of times we’d hiked one trail or another, how he’d come face to face with a mountain lion one early morning in a box canyon, and how I’d rafted down the Rio Grande river on a perfect spring day.
A perfect spring day. Or evening. I remembered a few, but it had been a long time since I’d added one to the list. Kevin picked up his wine glass and held it for a moment in front of him, a small toast. I did the same, and we both drank.
It was a good dinner.
The night had taken firm hold of the city when we finally left Brennan’s close to ten o’clock. A breeze had come up that whipped our pants against our legs. We’d each parked our cars in the small lot with a crumbling concrete surface at the end of the block, so we walked down there together, where our cars were side by side, though facing opposite ways. We each pulled out our keys and clicked the driver’s doors open, the clicks sounding one after the other.
I turned around to face him, not sure what I wanted. I was a little drunk and a lot confused. I wasn’t even supposed to be here, and none of this should be happening: not the night out or the good company, not the smiles that had been sent across the table or the warm feeling he’d created in my belly, not this had-to-have that sprang up in me as I watched him watching me.
I wanted to kiss Kevin, the way he hadn’t kissed me when we’d met for the evening, and he’d so stripped me of myself that I actually stepped up to him and did it. He kissed me back, his breath catching audibly, and I discovered how his lips moved when we weren’t having sex and how dessert tasted in his mouth. It was damn good. And dangerous.
I pulled away, already asking myself why I’d done that, especially out in the open where anyone could have seen us. Shit! I didn’t want to get involved, never would let that happen, and now that we were out of the clutches of the restaurant, I should have known better. “Good night,” I said roughly, and I jerked the car door open and climbed inside.
But Kevin wouldn’t let me escape; he held the door open and leaned in to where I was stubbornly staring out the windshield.
“Where are you going?” he asked.
“Good Times,” I said. “A few laughs, a few beers, dance a little, find somebody who—”
“You never laugh, Tom,” Kevin said. “I don’t think you’ll do it there.”
“Yeah, well, you never know.” I fiddled with my key without putting it in the ignition.
“If you go, then I’ll go.”
“You don’t have to.”
“Sure I do. I want to get laid tonight too. I’ll play the game just like you will.”
“Fine.”
“But we don’t have to.”
Of course we didn’t. The man I wanted to have sex with was right there talking to me. Was I out of my mind to be thinking of driving away from him? I thought maybe I was.
Kevin came even closer. “Come back to my room with me,” he said quietly. “Spend the night with me. Please.”
I turned to look up at him. “I don’t… I don’t do guys over again.”
“Sure you do,” he whispered.
I had, hadn’t I?
Kevin kissed me then, his lips warm and lush against mine, and I didn’t stop him. I took what he gave me, and it seemed that the kiss, this connection between us, lasted for a very long time. Lasted through my hand coming up to rest on his shoulder and his palm coming down to cup my cheek, and lasted through the time he drew back to say Follow me, and lasted through the Miata starting and finding its way along the streets of Houston al
l the way back to that Marriott Courtyard, and lasted through the two of us silently walking through the lobby up to his room.
The door closed behind us and we were kissing again, or still kissing, and Kevin breathed against my lips, “Do you do it? Do you? I want to fuck you so bad. I’ve got stuff for it. Will you let me do you?”
I almost lost it right there; my knees gave way for an instant and I sagged against the entranceway wall. It’d been years, but that didn’t mean I didn’t want to be fucked, that I didn’t fantasize about it and sometimes even dream about it, waking up convinced I was spurting with my legs over a man’s shoulders, his cock commanding me. I was used to denying myself the things I wanted, but here he was in the flesh, tempting me. I shouldn’t, I shouldn’t.
God help me, I was going to let him fuck me.
I launched myself at him and pushed him against the full-length mirror, where we heaved against each other as if we wanted to exchange skins right through our clothes. Then I grabbed his shoulders, spun him around, and propelled him across the room to the bed, where he fell backward, startled and laughing. He wasn’t down long but bounced back up to me. I swayed when he hit against me but caught him. My hands went up to his necktie. “Get this damn thing off,” I growled, and I started to yank the silk from its knot.
Booze helped me have sex the way I had to have it, and it was part of my ritual at the club: get hammered and get lucky. But I hadn’t gone to the club. I’d shared a few drinks and two bottles of red wine with this man who’d wanted to spend the day with me. I’d denied him then, but now he wanted what I’d always wanted and hardly ever trusted anyone to give me.
His hands were on my belt. “Let’s get naked,” he muttered, his hoarse voice sending shivers through me. “Show me your cock, come on. Show me everything.”
We wrestled each other out of our clothes, our fingers everywhere, and a few seconds later, we were naked on the bed. I sucked his tongue like I wasn’t going to let it go, making hungry sounds that a faraway part of me was embarrassed by, was alarmed at, but I didn’t pay attention. I so wanted Kevin to lay me.
I wrapped my fingers around his cock. It was thick but not too thick, what I’d seen and felt and tasted before. Now, with new purpose, his cock was different, better. He was gripping my waist hard as we kissed, and he gasped as I milked him. One second we were on our sides, and the next he flipped me over onto my belly and then pulled me up onto my hands and knees.
Now was the time I should have protested, should have said that I didn’t do this. But the carefully constructed person who lived in west Texas and was 2007 Teacher of the Year had been set aside somehow. I hadn’t done it; Kevin had. Besides, he was distracting me with wet kisses on the small of my back, staying there and breathing against my skin, making me tingle and shake and driving a line of sensation from his lips to my cock, lifting it. It jerked and stretched and throbbed, and when I swiped at it—only once, I couldn’t stand more than that or I’d come too soon, way too soon—my palm came away sticky wet with my weeping.
It’d been so long. How had I let it go so long between fuckings? It was as if the lid I kept so tightly capped on my desires had been blown off by some dark-haired guy talking football in the candlelight. Kevin wanting me and me wanting him back.
Nothing better than his hands all over my ass, rubbing, scratching, taking the shape of me. He reached between my legs and pushed, trying to spread me more, and I shifted on the bed, aiming to rest most of my weight on my right hand and knee, but I did it, gave him what he wanted. Up against my balls he went, not gently but so right. I hissed when he palmed me from behind.
He rubbed the side of his face against my back as he hefted my balls, and I would have screamed at him to move up to my cock and touch me!, except all I could do was heave in air, not talk.
“Okay?” he whispered, and he kissed my back again, both his hands moving to lightly rest on my hips. I froze, feeling as if they were holding me in place, and I did not want to move.
“Okay,” I breathed.
I ached, deep down inside where nobody had ever touched me. God, did I ache.
I held my head low as he reached toward his kit on the nightstand. The sound of a rubber being opened and rolled over his erection made me tremble, and then the wet daub of the lube rubbed around my hole made me moan.
I knew what was to come next, and sucked in breath and held it. Taking in a cock was never easy for me. It was the universe thumbing its nose at me, a dramatic irony that it hurt way more than I knew it should have. Kevin put his cock right there and held it just outside, where I could feel its lubricated mass threatening. He shifted, seeking the right angle, and then he shoved inside.
His cock pushed all the air out of my lungs, almost like cause and effect: there was too much of me to admit him and so I had to let something go. I stretched my spine to try to escape the immediate cramping, even though I knew I couldn’t, and I dug my fingers into the mattress, forcing myself to wait, wait, wait…. If I waited long enough, it would get better….
Behind me, Kevin muttered, “Damn,” and then held still, not moving when I knew he must have wanted to. He might have speared me without any thought, could have started fucking right away instead of letting me adjust. One hand went up to my shoulder, and I felt his fingers spread and contract, spread and contract, attempting to ease my discomfort.
Sweat prickled my forehead, and I panted like a woman in labor. Then, finally, the pain began to fade.
Kevin didn’t have to ask if it was time to move. I swayed with relief and demanded, “Go, go!” and he did. With my eyes closed and all my attention focused on my ass, I felt that first thrust of his completely, the controlled, smooth pull-back, and then the abrupt, ravenous shove of his braced legs as he drove inside me.
I sucked in air through my teeth and hissed “yesssss” down to the sheet, half out of my mind with the first thrust. I jerked back, desperate to meet the second one.
“Yes!” Kevin exulted. “God, you’re tight. So good.”
Oh, Christ. It felt so good, after so many times imagining it, to finally have this again. I loved getting fucked, loved cock up my ass. Anything else I could do as a gay man didn’t come close to what I got from that strong warmth joined with me, the movement and the sounds of two bodies pistoning together, the slickness and the slapping, the press and the pull, the weight behind me and the hands on me. I gave myself up to the incredible feeling of being ridden, of being filled.
“Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah.” Kevin chanted with every thrust in, and I matched myself to his rhythm. It was easy to do, automatic, because we were after the same thing. Me and this chance-met man from the bar. Kevin, who was real, who tasted like a man, and who was now proving he moved like a man with the sharp snap of his hips that sent my left hand blindly seeking my own cock.
One pull in time with Kevin’s entering, two when he dragged out, and already it was starting, my balls so tight they’d practically disappeared when I ran the tips of my fingers over them. Not long, I wasn’t going to last long, three more maybe. One and my mouth opened suddenly. Two and my lips pulled back. I let go of my cock but I was too far gone. Three and I shook all over, gushing regret that it was over so soon, that I hadn’t even tried to make it last, and that I couldn’t have this all the time.
To have this all the time. The sex, the man, the conversation, the life.
My head spinning from the force of my coming, I pressed my forehead down to the pillow and offered up my ass for however long it would take Kevin to finish, but he wasn’t far behind me. One long groan and then that hitch that I expected now, and I could feel him shuddering as he shot his wad into the condom.
I collapsed straight down onto the small lake of my spunk, and he came right with me, keeping us together. The wet spot soaked into the sheet as he pressed me into it, and it coated my belly and then spread up higher. I tried to live intensely in the moment, him in me, his cock in me—fuel for my fantasies, the midnight hour of my wants�
��but it only took a few seconds and he was gone.
The sounds of him tying off the rubber came to me. Then he was snugged tight against my back again, pulling us both over to lay on our right sides. I let myself be moved as if I had no will of my own, as if I’d passed it all over to him just because I’d let him do me. Where was the fortitude that Kevin seemed to have forced out of me, the resolve that had shaped my years?
There were his lips, brushing against the curve of my shoulder. “Thanks,” he said, and his arm slipped around my waist as if we were dancing again. The familiarity of his action shocked me out of my lethargy, and I blinked.
I knew Kevin. Almost by accident and surely against my will, but I knew him: his athletic walk, the way he savored wine, his informed enthusiasm about the outdoors, the betraying clench of his fingers when he asked for something he knew he wasn’t likely to get. His innate kindness.
He wasn’t a casual fuck. And what I’d allowed myself—this night—had now come to an end.
Unaccountably, sadness swamped me. I touched his fingers, closed my eyes, and abandoned myself to dreams.
I came back to myself slowly, still curled on my side and under the sheet, feeling lighter somehow despite the ache in my ass. I remembered where I was and what we’d done as if I hadn’t slept at all, as if there’d been no time at all from Kevin breathing in my ear and this moment where I could see sunlight through my eyelids.
This was how it used to be when I’d been with Sean, when I’d slept over at his dorm and we’d fooled around, two not-quite-men with nothing to lose. In that last semester before we graduated, we’d decided we wanted to, yeah, see what fucking was all about, and not only cocksucking. I’d wake up wedged between him, snoring, and the wall, with the smell of old pizza and dirty clothes thrown all over the room. I’d breathe in the rank smell of our coming together, and there hadn’t been anything that made me happier.
Dreamspinner Press Year Three Greatest Hits Page 76
