by G. B. Gordon
I lick to taste the honey, and he lets me, opens his lips, offering me more. Don’t mind if I do. It’s addictive, this kissing business. Easy to see how a man could lose his head over lips like Jack’s. I’m certainly losing time. I try to keep my teeth out of it, but it’s not easy.
His pelvis presses and moves against my dick. I’m about to warn him that if he keeps that up, I’m going to come in my pants, when I realize the shortstop is rutting against my thigh. It surprises a soft laugh out of me, and he falters. But suddenly I don’t want him to stop. I don’t care if we both come in our pants, not if I have to stop kissing him to avoid it. My brain tells me there can’t be any honey glaze left on his lips, but he still tastes so achingly sweet. It’s an ache that builds in my balls and pulls in that line from flanks to buttocks. My hands are all over his body, shooting me flashes of different materials until I’ve tugged at his shirt enough to finally find skin.
I’m holding him hard against me, as hard as I dare. My clothes feel like sandpaper, but I don’t want to miss a single heartbeat, a single twitch of his body. And I can indulge myself, because I’m free to let go the second I can’t take it anymore, because Jack is still white-knuckling the counter.
It’s that thought, that he does that for me, that pushes me over the edge, the rush intense and exquisite, and all-consuming. The echo pounds in my chest and my throat for a handful of beats before I have to let him go and step back, because my skin’s sensitivity is about to shoot off the scale. But I have time to notice that I took him with me. He’s sagged against the counter, still holding on to it, head down, tremors running through his arms and legs, his heavy breathing mirroring mine.
When he raises his head, his lips are red and swollen, and his eyes far away. “Jesus fucking Christ,” he whispers, and it’s the first time I’ve ever heard him use the f-word, other than when he was quoting me.
I lean on the sink; my legs are not as steady as I’ve known them to be.
“Are you sure,” Jack draws another breath, “that you’ve never kissed anyone before?”
“Positive.”
“Lord, love me.”
“Is that good or bad?”
“Good. Gooder than good.” He laughs a weak laugh, then repeats. “Jesus fucking Christ.”
He makes me want to hug him and hold him again, even though I can’t right now. But it’s okay; we’re good. There’ll be other times.
It wasn’t easy to walk with his eyes closed, even with Mark’s hands around his shoulders. “Can I open my eyes now?”
The hands tightened for a moment when Mark laughed. “Shush,” he said under his breath. “I’ll tell you when.”
There was a metallic click, then the whoosh of a door opening. School, he thought, before he knew why. The smell, probably, that mix of coats, lunches, and paper, with a hint of locker room thrown in.
Mark had let Margaret in on the secret of where they were going, and she’d opted to stay at home. Which meant that Jack was worrying about her being alone, even though it was a good thing that she had asked to be left by herself. A year ago she wouldn’t have dared. But he still worried. This better be good.
Along a corridor and around the corner. Wait, had that been the thrum of a guitar?
“Right,” Mark said. “Before you pitch headfirst down the stairs, you better open your eyes, but we aren’t quite there yet.”
The stairs were indeed directly in front of him. He glanced around. Yup, definitely school. And those were definitely the sounds of a piano being tested for pitch.
“Are you taking me to a school concert?”
“Nope.”
At the foot of the stairs was a short corridor that ended in a set of double doors, to which someone had taped a faded ink-jet printout that read, Absolutely no phones during band practice, underneath a flip phone icon with crossed red bars through it.
Jack turned to Mark with a raised eyebrow, but Mark laid a finger across his lips and reached over Jack’s shoulder to push the door open.
They were greeted by the ksh-dum, ksh-dum-dum of a drum set, but it stopped when they walked in on the three men, bass and lead guitar, and someone plugging mics; and one woman, the drummer.
“Jack, meet Bay Blues, Bluewater Bay’s best and only blues band.”
“Guys, this is Jack Daley.”
Jack went around shaking hands and murmuring nice-to-meet-yous, as Mark rattled off individual introductions. “Tom Bowden here is the school’s music teacher, the band’s bassist, and the man they have to thank for being able to practice here. Ray Marchand, lead guitar. Bart Solomon, piano, vocals, and all-around sound tech. Bart also sings in the choir with me, which is how I got to know the band. And, best for last, Julie Cowel, drummer extraordinaire.”
They were all roughly in their forties, Julie maybe even above that with long gray hair tied back in a ponytail. Jack tried hard not to let the thrill of just being in the same room as musicians again get under his skin, but it was no use. Once they started playing, he was lost. This was his tribe, and the music they played was the blood running through his veins. And they were quite good. Not what he’d expected in a backwater school in the Northwest. Julie held the band together with a rock-solid sense of rhythm, leaving the bass free to play, underline, and accent. Jack didn’t remember Bart from the concert, but his voice had the sort of power that could fill a large room all the way to the back wall without a mic.
“You ever sing blues?” he asked Mark.
“Naw, can’t shut my classical training off. My voice really doesn’t sound right for blues. Too stylistic? I tend to think of classical music as ruled and ordered and blues as gut-felt and creative. I guess I’m a color-by-numbers kinda guy.”
“Yeah, very likely. This from the guy who told me that you simply know when you find the right fabric or style.”
“Hmm.” Mark seemed to consider that. “In any case, I prefer to listen.”
After they’d run through what Jack presumed was their warm-up set, Tom set his guitar down and disappeared for a few seconds in a back room, then came back holding two saxophones. An alto, a somewhat dinged Yamaha, and a tenor, a slightly less dinged Cannonball. “Wanna pick one?” Tom asked.
Jack swallowed hard. “I couldn’t play someone else’s sax,” he said, but his hand had already reached out to touch the Cannonball.
Tom gave it to him. “Dude, these are school instruments. If you can tease a decent note from either of them, I’m going to salute you.”
Jack slipped the strap over his head and tested the key action. Smooth enough. His throat was so tight that he was sure he wouldn’t be able to play. It had been too long: two years, four months, eighteen days to be exact. He ran the instrument through a few scales, then an improvisation, playing around with scoop and vibrato, listening to the sax’s different dynamics, slap- and half-tonguing the mouthpiece until he knew roughly what he could do with it.
It had its limits, but wasn’t a bad instrument at all. He launched into an easy rendition of “Soul Eyes,” tapping the beat with one foot, loath to stop after only a few bars, but conscious that he was intruding on the band’s practice time. He was about to break it off, when the sound of jazz brushes made him look up. Julie was nodding at him to keep going. Then Bart picked up some notes on the piano. So Jack stuck with it, and the three of them played together to the end of the piece.
Silence followed, then Tom started a slow clap that first Mark, then the others joined in for a solid round of applause. The shared joy rushed through Jack like hard liquor and broke out in a smile ready to split his cheeks. At the same time, he could barely swallow around the lump in his throat. He pinched his thigh so hard that he was going to leave a bruise, but it was all he could do to keep from flat-out bawling. Yeah, he’d missed his sax, but only now could he admit how much. How much he’d missed playing. It suddenly seemed as if he’d lived the past two and a half years with one hand tied behind his back. He ran his fingers along the bell of the Cannonball and
reluctantly held it out for Tom to take it back, but Tom shook his head.
“No way, Dude. You’ve got to play with us. Please. That was absolutely stunning. I had no idea that thing could produce sounds like that.”
He looked around at the others, and they all nodded. Julie said, “Yeah. Man. No shit. That was sick.”
They stuck to a pretty classic blues repertoire, probably to give Jack a chance to play with them. He found it hard to feel sorry, though. He was in heaven.
An hour went by in what seemed like a heartbeat. Only his lips and cheeks told him that he’d been playing that long.
When they said their good-byes, Bart shook Jack’s hand in both of his. “Jack Daley, it’s been a pleasure and an honor to meet you. I hope very much that you’ll come back to play with us some time. I’ve enjoyed the hell out of this.”
Tom told him, “Message me if you want to play. If the school’s not using the sax, you’re welcome to it any time I’m here.”
They exchanged numbers, and he and Mark got invited to the band’s next gig at a bar in Sequim.
As they were walking across the parking lot, he could still feel every single note running through him, lifting him up and making his skin tingle.
With a whoop, he turned to Mark and only stopped himself from hugging him at the last second. “Thank you. You have no idea what that meant to me.”
Mark touched his cheekbones, and let Jack lean into the touch. “I might have an inkling,” he said.
Jack wondered what he was seeing in his face.
He hoped Margaret had enjoyed her evening half as much, and was conscious that he hadn’t thought of her for over an hour. He checked his watch. She’d be in bed before they got home.
Mark seemed to read his thoughts. “My place? So we don’t wake up your sister?”
Jack hesitated. When they’d been on the road, she’d dealt with being alone at night when he was out playing gigs, but she’d hated it. On the other hand, she’d practically shoved him out the door this time. She had both his and Mark’s phone numbers for emergencies, and she was using her tablet more often these days too. She’d be fine. He sent her a quick message, then nodded at Mark. “Your place it is.”
For a few minutes they walked in silence through the slowly quieting streets. It wasn’t ten yet, but traffic had died down when the stores closed, and the place didn’t sport a ton of nightlife.
“Where did you learn to play like that? That was amazing.”
Again Jack hesitated, and Mark added, “If that’s part of what I shouldn’t be asking about, forget it. I apologize.”
Jack shook his head. He could tell a bit without mentioning names or places. He wanted to tell Mark as much as he could, and he wanted to talk about his music. “I started in school, in a band room much like that.” He hooked his thumb over his shoulder in the direction they’d come from. “I loved it, maybe not from day one, but pretty close. Got a sweet, sweet Keilwerth Vintage for Christmas. The joy of playing that . . .” He trailed off, couldn’t come up with an adequate description. “It made me want to become a musician.”
Charles had had kittens about that decision, but there’d been nothing he could do. As long as Mawmaw had been alive, Jack’s allowance had kept him afloat. It hadn’t been quite enough to keep him enrolled, but it had helped a lot. “I worked in a grocery store during the day and played the bars at night. With a bit of family money, it was enough to pay for college.”
“Do you think they still have it?”
“Huh?” He’d been lost in the past and had no clue what Mark was talking about.
“Your saxophone? At the pawnshop, I mean.”
Jack stopped dead. “Margaret tell you that?”
“Yeah.”
Mark had walked on, and Jack hurried to catch up with his longer legs. “Maybe. Not very likely, though. I didn’t pawn it. I needed more than a short-term loan at the time, so I sold it.” He’d made a little money on the road, playing gigs, but they’d tended to be few and far between, and he’d hated leaving Margaret alone in a motel room at night. And ultimately he hadn’t been able to rationalize hanging on to a valuable instrument when they didn’t have enough money in their pockets to pay for food and keep a roof over their heads. He’d gotten a fraction of what it was worth at the pawnshop, of course, but it had kept them going for a while, without having to touch the money Mawmaw had given them to settle down somewhere else, the money that had ended up as a down payment for the mortgage on the store.
“You should check it out,” Mark said.
“Maybe.” Most likely he’d get his hopes up for nothing. The sax would be long gone by now. And if the guy had found out how much it was worth, Jack wouldn’t have the money to buy it back, anyway. Not yet, an irrepressible voice inside said. Business had been picking up quite a bit recently. If it continued like that . . . No, the sax would be gone. “Maybe,” he said again.
“How much would you need to buy it back?” Mark asked, obviously following his train of thought.
“Likely more than I have.”
They walked in silence for a while until Mark stopped in front of a three-story building. “This is it.”
“I can’t believe I’ve never been to your place.”
“Better get your cute ass up the stairs, then.”
Mark led the way in and up the stairs, then let Jack go ahead into his apartment as he switched on the lights, illuminating a small tiled area at the entrance that led straight into the main room. Mark showed him what he called the hall closet on the right and the bathroom on the left. On the other side of the main room, which held a couch, table, desk/bookshelf combo and TV, was a separate mini-kitchen with a small dining table and two chairs, but no stove. The place wasn’t quite Spartan, but spare and clean, except for a jumble of boxes, which had probably come from the latest yard sale.
“Neat. This doubles as your bedroom?”
Instead of answering, Mark pulled the couch apart to reveal a fully made-up bed, pillow and comforter strapped in place. He undid the straps and folded the corner of the comforter down, and just like that Jack’s heartbeat sped up.
“What do you want?” Mark asked.
Huh? “What do I want?”
“Yeah.”
It wasn’t that he didn’t know what he wanted, but wasn’t this about what Mark wanted? Or rather where his limits lay? On the other hand, those limits had been rather well laid out between them, so . . . “I want to see you.”
Mark tilted his head, a puzzled frown between his brows.
“Naked.” Jack tried to swallow the anticipation that was making his throat tight.
Without a word, Mark bent to take his shoes and socks off, then he unbuttoned his pants and pulled down the zipper.
No amount of swallowing was going to clear his throat now.
Mark stripped his pants off and stepped out of them, then picked them up to fold them over the back of the desk chair. He wasn’t making a production of stripping, but he wasn’t hurrying either. He probably took his clothes off like that every night. Holy hell.
The T-shirt was next, then the briefs. Once naked, Mark stretched his arms out and turned full circle, letting Jack look his fill of that lean runner’s body, and not hiding his rising interest in the proceedings.
“Your turn.”
Jack followed suit, except, standing on the other side of the couch-bed, he dropped his clothes where he stood. He too did a full circle, because Mark had done it, but he was a tad embarrassed.
“You are so gorgeous.” Mark closed the distance between them and took Jack’s hands. “And such talented fingers.” He cocked his head at Jack. “Will you play for me again?”
“Yes.” No contest. He wanted to play badly enough as it was. And for Mark? Anytime.
“I’d like to kiss you.”
Jack tried to say please, but no sound made it through his throat, so he simply nodded.
Mark ran his hands down Jack’s chest, up his arms and neck, into hi
s hair. Light, unhurried movements that had Jack covered in delicious goose bumps from hairline to toes in seconds. Then their lips met, and Jack closed his eyes. He hadn’t known people could kiss like that. One read of kisses that made the knees weak, but this was ridiculous.
Mark took his time, licking, tasting, nipping, like he had that first time. And like it had then, the kiss started a slow tingle in every single one of Jack’s nerve endings. He didn’t have anything to hold on to, so to avoid touching Mark, he curled his hands into fists and held them out to the side. Mark huffed a laugh, then without breaking the kiss, caught his fists and held them to the small of Jack’s back, pressing their bodies together.
“Much better naked,” he murmured against Jack’s mouth.
Jack wanted to agree, but he’d forgotten how to speak. The only language he had left was his movements, attuned to Mark’s, his answering kiss, and maybe that moan, deep in his chest. And, yeah, that next one might have been his, too. The tingling intensified, then ignited a spark. Liquid fire raced through his veins, building into a need that threatened to consume his determination not to touch Mark back. It sent him reeling. Or maybe that had been Mark pushing him onto the bed.
“This time you don’t get me off like that,” Mark said. “I didn’t buy these for nothing.” He took a paper bag from the desk and shook a condom pack and small bottle of lube into his hand. “I want to—”
“Yes! Oh God. Yes, please. Now.”
Mark pulled him to his feet. “Stand on the bed.” It was barely higher than a mattress on the floor, not even half a step up. “Brace yourself against the backrest and spread your legs.” If Jack had thought his cock couldn’t get any harder, he’d been wrong. His head swam, and lowering it between his arms was a relief.
When Mark ran his hand up the inside of Jack’s legs and cupped his balls, he hissed at the surprise touch and the pleasure that was so close to agony. It was all he could do to suppress a scream. Ramp the sensations up a notch and it would be unbearable. Oh yeah, he definitely understood where Mark was coming from.
