by Zach Jenkins
Harley’s arms squeezed me into a tighter hug.
“Yeah, Dad. Just be happy for me for once. When was the last time you saw me excited about anything? Icarus makes me a better person. Why can’t you see that? Why don’t you want to see that?”
His dad tapped angrily on his phone for several seconds. When he finally stood, he shoved the phone into his pocket and said, “I just told the lawyer to set up the meeting to give you access to your trust fund. He’s busy this time of year, so it’ll take at least a couple more weeks. If that’s all you needed, I think I’ll retire to my lounge for the night.”
He didn’t bother to say goodbye. His wife rose and followed him just as haughtily.
“That was amazing, baby,” Harley said, kissing my neck. “I’ve never seen him so pissed before. You did it.”
As I snuggled against his body, I admitted to myself that I had done something.
Probably something very bad.
I’d hoped my story would convince his parents that they should do whatever it took to keep Harley in their lives.
Instead, I feared that I had just isolated him as badly from his as I had been from mine.
It seemed my one true skill was in breaking up families.
Fifteen
Harley
Excitement coursed through my body like I was back in school and the bell for summer break had just rung. I needed an outlet for my energy, but we were still twenty minutes from home.
Looking over at Icarus in the passenger seat I realized we didn’t seem to be on the same page at all. He didn’t look like he shared any of my joy about how the meeting with my parents had gone.
“Are you okay?” I asked.
“I probably will be.” He nodded as if to convince himself. “I’m happy for you if you’re happy, but the whole thing brought back some old memories of my own. I’ll be fine, though. I don’t really want to talk about it, if that’s okay.”
If Icarus was suffering at all, I wanted to help. Being asked specifically not to get involved hurt my manhood.
I swallowed my pride, though. Icarus did not look like he secretly wanted me to badger him into talking.
“That’s fine with me as long as you know that I am here if you change your mind. I don’t want you to feel alone with whatever you’re going through.”
Keeping my eyes on the road as we went around the last of the switchbacks before the road straightened out, I reached over and patted Icarus on the thigh.
Both his hands immediately rested on top of mine, convincing me I’d made the right decision, and was helping him in a way that worked for him.
“So how many bedrooms does that place even have?” he asked, changing the subject. “Did we even get to all of them?”
“There are a couple that have been turned into an office and a crafting room. Counting those, and the one I framed up for myself in the basement when I still lived there, eight.”
“You made yourself a room in the McMansion? Your parents let you do that?”
I smiled at the memory of that summer before my senior year of high school. “Believe it or not, my parents and I were not always at each other’s throats like we were today. They used to have high hopes that I would turn out okay. They didn’t really approve or support the project, but they didn’t stop me, either. I think they figured I just wanted a more private place to jack off, sneak beer and maybe bang a cheerleader or two.”
“Is that what you used it for?”
“Of course. I was a rich kid in high school. That room, man, the stories it could tell. But that’s not why I did it. It was more to prove to myself that I could. Being a rich kid is definitely better than almost any alternative, but it’s not all cupcakes and unicorn farts.”
When Icarus finished laughing, I continued, “As an only child, I was set to inherit my parents’ money. Enough money that I would never need to really work for anything in my life.”
I paused and watched the road pass under the car, realizing that I still hadn’t done much to speak of with my life.
“So that room was your coming-of-age moment?” Icarus prompted gently.
I nodded.
“How’d the room turn out?”
“Horrible. I mean, I think it was safe. I followed a bunch of YouTube videos every step of the way. But I barely knew how to use any of the tools. You could see the drywall seams because I never did figure out how to tape the joints correctly. It was a mess. But it was my mess. My friends and I turned it into a metal Goth kind of room, painting the walls black and hanging band posters everywhere, including the ceiling. Why chicks agreed to come into that room, I never could understand. Money. It does strange things to people.”
“You know what, I never asked how much your parents are going to be giving you.”
The implied question snapped me out of my reverie. I replayed the statement in my head several times before I convinced myself that he hadn’t asked how much money he was going to get. Taking the time I needed to silence the alarms sounding in my head, I realized that I should have told him. We had entered into a business transaction of sorts without him even knowing the details. More importantly, he was my husband.
“Three million. There will be more someday if Dad sells off the business at a profit, but I can’t really plan on ever seeing any of that. Does that change anything?”
“I don’t think so. I mean that’s a fucking ton of money. I’m so happy for you.”
And that was it. He didn’t even seem to consider how much of it would be his.
“I don’t really want to talk about the money or my past anymore,” I said. “My present and future are so much better now that you’re around.”
I slid my hand up his leg until I felt his dick stir at my touch.
“What are you doing?” Icarus asked, but he didn’t push my hand away.
“You make me happy, which makes me want to make you happy.”
“Well, I’m glad I make you happy because this is definitely making me smile.”
Icarus reclined his seat and hooked his hands behind his head. “If this is making you happy, I won’t be the one to stop you,” he said before closing his eyes.
I checked my mirrors to make sure there really was no one around for us to crash into before unbuttoning his pants and tugging at the fly until the zipper went down.
Icarus lifted his hips enough for me to slide his pants and underwear down just enough to give me access to his beautiful cock. I wrapped my hand around it to get a feel of the girth and the smoothness. I slowly stroked him until I felt a bead of cum on his slit.
He moaned and arched his back when I massaged his shaft to spread the wetness. “That’s good. Faster, though.”
Forcing most of my attention onto my driving, I upped the pace my hand and wished we were already back home in our bed. I didn’t want to miss seeing his orgasm, but I couldn’t stop now and leave him hanging.
“I wish I could suck your dick. I want to know what you taste like,” I said, my voice barely above a whisper.
Most of our sex had involved me penetrating him, or giving him a hand-job. It made me feel a little selfish, and I wanted to do something special for him.
“Do it. I won’t stop you.”
“I can’t while I’m driving. I’d end up killing us.”
“Yeah, that would be bad. But you could pull over. We’re out in the middle of nowhere. Who would ever know?”
He was right.
We still had another ten minutes until we reached civilization again.
Continuing to jack off my husband, I pulled over onto the shoulder and stopped the car. I tried to lean over to give him a blow-job but the seatbelt locked against my chest.
“Fucking thing,” I growled while I hit the button to release it.
Free at last, I dove onto his dick.
We would have many times in the future for me to take him slow and steady. I wanted to know what he tasted like and what it felt like when he came in my mouth.
> In my careless abandon, I went a little too far and felt him press against the back of my throat. It didn’t slow me down, though. I made a mental note of how far he could go and set back to work.
Everything was warmer, and slicker than I expected. I couldn’t describe the taste of his precum other than to say it tasted a little salty. And good. He tasted good.
I’d figure out the details of the taste some other day when I had more time.
I needed to make my husband happy.
I added one hand to the mix. It must have been working because Icarus pulled his hands from behind his head and placed them on the back of my head.
I let him guide my pace, but when he started bucking with his hips too, I decided to regain control. I pressed my free hand against his stomach and held him down.
He struggled against me but was no match for my extra weight and strength.
I flicked my tongue across the tip of his dick and said, “Why don’t you just sit back and have fun? Let me take charge.”
“God, it’s sexy when you talk like that.”
I waited until he put his hands back behind his head before I took him back into my mouth. My own need was off the chart, so I didn’t intend to fuck around and tease him.
Within seconds his stomach clenched against my hand and with a final grunt he exploded into my mouth. I swallowed as quickly as I could and thought everything was under control until a second wave hit the back of my throat. I closed my eyes, resolved to swallow it all, and just barely was able to get the job done.
When I finally pulled away I made sure my lips made a loud pop as I separated from his cock.
“Was I any good?” I asked with my hand still wrapped around his still-hard dick.
“You’ve been holding out on me. You’ve done this before, haven’t you?”
“I must just be a natural.”
“Want me to return the favor?”
I did, but I wanted more. “Let’s get home first. This car is too small for what I want to do to you.”
I started the car and turned on the radio. Icarus kept his seat reclined and appeared to have drifted off to sleep almost immediately.
The meeting with my parents had clearly been stressful for him. It made me feel good to make Icarus happy. Like I had done something important for once.
As I drove the rest of the way home, the bad thoughts forced their way into my head.
I kept hearing the voices of my parents telling me that Icarus only wanted me for my money and wouldn’t stay around longer than he had to.
I knew Icarus liked me.
Had he really suggested he loved me earlier?
But it was hard to shake the feeling that all this was temporary. I couldn’t even blame him. That had been the plan all along.
As each day passed, though, I wanted to change the plan. I worried that I was going to lose Icarus once my parents gave us the money. No matter what he said, the money would change him. It always changed everyone.
Hell, it changed me.
No matter how hard I screamed in my head for the voices to shut up, they continued to mock me cruelly, promising never to let me be happy for long.
Sixteen
Harley
My parents were dragging their feet with their lawyer, and it was driving me crazy.
After taking Icarus to meet with the web developer, something needed to change, and the easiest option seemed to be to get Icarus the money I’d promised and cut my losses.
The meeting had started off fine. I’d been just as excited as he’d been. The developer, someone who had built the website for my dad’s business, had gone through the screens on his PowerPoint display. Icarus had been amazed and confused by all the details. He got the most excited about some of the marketing packages that the developer promised would send tons of traffic to the website.
Unlike Icarus, I did have some basic understanding of how websites, and especially web marketing, worked. While blowing off most of my classes in college, I’d taken an interest with how internet marketing worked. The promises the guy made just weren’t practical. He couldn’t satisfy my questions about how he’d verify that the traffic would be qualified leads. Getting page hits from some grandparents in Indiana who had no intention of ever visiting Colorado wouldn’t do Icarus an ounce of good.
Icarus hadn’t liked my questions. He’d eventually snapped at me, reminding me that it had been my idea to hire the guy.
Rather than pushing things, I backed down. I had promised to help, and I did have the money.
But I didn’t have to like the fact that Icarus didn’t respect my opinions on the subject, and the way he’d treated the project like something he was spending his own money on.
In the end, he’d chosen the basic package, but I hadn’t been able to shake the memories. I could feel it changing things between Icarus and me, but I couldn’t figure out how to do anything about it. The situation seemed to be entering the kind of familiar downward spiral that had ended most of my previous relationships.
We’d both stopped flirting, and barely even talked with each other. About the only time we saw each other most days was in bed, and even that was going poorly.
Since neither of us was speaking, it made it hard for either of us to make the first move, so we both just ended up falling asleep with our backs to each other.
Everyone joked about married couples not having sex, but I always thought that phase wouldn’t start until after a year or two of wild sex.
To ease my disappointment, I reminded myself daily that we were only married as a technicality in the first place. Whatever had caused us to start sleeping together must have just been a phase of its own.
My parents had been right about that. Not that I’d ever admit it to them.
I couldn’t put all the blame on Icarus, though. Over the last couple of weeks, I’d made myself scarce by spending more time with my football buddies and even going skiing by myself twice.
We couldn’t fight if we were apart. Not that we had fought yet, but it always felt like there was one building just around the corner.
I tried not to let those dark thoughts ruin my trip to the coffee shop with Icarus that morning.
He acted as if nothing was strange between us at all. He held my hand, leaned his head on my shoulder, and even kissed me several times while he worked on the crossword puzzle in the newspaper.
Shane, who had been sitting silently across the table from us, banged his fist, making my coffee splash over the rim of the mug.
“I’m so mad at him,” he said.
“Who are you talking about?” Icarus asked.
“Just some… I don’t want to talk about it, but men are idiots.” Shane said, and returned to scowling into space with his arms crossed over his chest.
With Icarus’ head resting on my shoulder, I felt him shake his head at his friend.
“Should we try to get him to talk about it?” I whispered to Icarus, and risked giving his ear a quick kiss, hoping that if we could get back to cuddling, maybe everything would get back to the way it had been.
Icarus moaned lightly and snuggled against me. “No. He won’t talk until he’s ready. It’s just who he is.”
Christian charged through the door and immediately stopped, dramatically throwing his arms wide.
Clearly, I was not any kind of expert in telling if men were straight or gay, but if Christian was straight, I’d kiss a dog’s ass.
“I’m married!” Christian screeched.
“I’m glad I didn’t say that out loud,” I mumbled to myself.
Icarus gave me a look through squinted eyes before running around the table to hug Christian. “When did it happen?”
“Last night. Megan was leaving two days ago. On the way to drop her off, I asked her to marry me and stay here instead of going to Paris. She said yes. Instead of Paris, we flew to Vegas, had a few drinks, and Megan thought it would be a hoot if we went and had Elvis marry us. So we did!” Christian’s voice ro
se higher with each word he said until he was practically in a range that only dogs would be able to hear.
Despite the hugs from his friends, none of them really seemed all that happy for Christian. If I didn’t know better, I would have thought Shane was angry, but he clearly had his own problems on his mind.
I knew they didn’t think Christian and Megan were really in love, but who were they to really judge? Did they think the same way about Icarus and me?
Watching Icarus clearly faking even a small amount of enthusiasm about Christian’s marriage reminded me that just because I had feelings for him, didn’t mean that he reciprocated them.
Words could be faked easily enough.
How many people have I dated before who told me they loved me, but didn’t mean it?
I didn’t really believe Icarus was intentionally doing anything to hurt me, but that didn’t mean it wasn’t happening on some level anyway.
And when I let myself think about it, I realized that my inability to believe his feelings toward me were authentic was exactly why I had spent so much time away from him the last couple weeks. I almost would have preferred for him to treat me just as a friend.
It would have made things simpler. It was hard to believe that the guy could really love me when he had such obvious ulterior motives for why we were together. He’d needed the money so badly when we’d met. Of course it was more important to him than I was.
I wished I had never made the stupid offer.
Things would have been so much easier if we’d met and dated like normal men.
But you would never have dated a man back then.
I quickly tired of listening to myself.
Griffin finished ringing up a customer, and came over to hug Christian. Since first meeting him, I’d learned that Griffin was about ten years older than me, and had married his husband a few years ago. I’d only met the husband once, but the guys clearly saw Griffin as a big-brother figure and tended to ask him his advice about anything and everything.
