To the Max

by Julie Lynn Hayes

  “What the fuck?” (Yeah, I know, very articulate on my part).

  Amy was looking between me and Richard, and it occurred to me that she had never even met him.

  “Who the fuck is this, Max, your new boyfriend?” she snarled in an uncharacteristically unpleasant manner. At least I thought it was uncharacteristic, but I turned out to be mistaken on that score.

  “No!” Richard responded before I had a chance to speak, “I’m his one and only boyfriend. Who the fuck are you, and why do you have his dick in your mouth?”

  Amy rose from her unflattering position, as if she wanted to launch herself at him, while I stared between the two of them in disbelief, not knowing whether I wanted to hit Richard, kiss Richard, hit Amy, yell at Amy, or run off and leave the two of them to deal with the situation themselves. First things first, though, and as they faced off, I quickly found my clothes and pulled them on, at least attaining a small measure of dignity for myself.

  “Oh ho,” Amy said, “so you are the bastard that left Max high and dry and wandered off to God knows where, are you? The infamous Richard Burke? Dick Burke? Your name is very fitting I see.” She moved closer and closer to him the whole time she ranted at him, while he on his part refused to back down, until they stood toe-to-toe, which was rather comical, as Richard stands some six foot plus, while Amy is about five foot nothing.

  “Don’t ever… call… me… that,” he warned her in a belligerent tone. “And you still haven’t explained your little cocksucking act or who the hell you are—”

  “I’m Max’s friend,” Amy replied, “my name is Amy Banneker, which you would know if you hadn’t taken your pathetic little show on the road and broken Max’s heart!”

  “I’m sorry, just how does that concern you?” Richard snarled at her. “And why exactly should I give a shit about what you think? And once again, just why were you sucking his cock?”

  My head was beginning to spin from all their fighting. And I hadn’t even gotten a proper kiss from Richard. Not that I should want one; I should have been angry with him. And I was definitely angry at Amy for what she had been doing. And dammit, I was sleepy and out of sorts and I didn’t particularly want to listen to this shit!

  “Can you two carry this on some other time?” I whined. “I’m tired and I want to go back to sleep!”

  Richard, my ever-solicitous lover, was instantly at my side. Which is where Amy tried to be, but he quickly elbowed her aside, hissing, “Back off, bitch!”

  “I missed you, Max,” Richard murmured as his lips brushed over mine ever-so-gently, his hands gripping mine tightly as if he intended never to let go of me again. I heard myself moan at his touch, whimpering in my neediness as my desire for sleep began to fall away. “I love you so much, Max,” he whispered against my cheek, his tongue licking at the corner of my mouth. I had damn near forgotten that anyone else was there, my eyes closing in utter bliss at Richard’s touch, his tender ministrations, until a sudden commotion caused me to open them, and I was just in time to see Richard elbow Amy as she apparently tried to draw too close to me. Just what I needed. A catfight. I groaned.

  I looked from one to the other. “Richard, Amy is a friend of Rachel’s,” I explained succinctly. “They go to the same school. Amy is studying to be an actress. Amy, Richard is my mate, my one true love. Yes, even now!” I held up one hand, cutting off what I knew was about to spill from her lips.

  Didn’t stop her. “But Max, he left you! He deserted you. What kind of love is that?” she asked, fixing me with the most soulful of looks as she tried to muscle her way to my bedside. But I knew that wasn’t going to happen, not with Richard there, guarding me like a mongrel with a bone. Not that I’m calling Richard a mongrel, mind you. Just an expression.

  I knew that I should be angry. I knew that I should be hurt, that I should be questioning him as to why, where, who, and what, how often, how much, in what positions—all the jealous questions that had been pounding in my brain ever since he left without so much as a by-your-leave. And now that he had returned in pretty much the same manner, I knew that I should turn him out of my bed, make him find someplace else to sleep until he had managed to beg my forgiveness in the most abjectly humble manner he could muster together. Make him grin and bear it. Suffer, bitch, suffer. But did I do it? Could I do it?

  Hell no.

  From that point on, I’m not sure just exactly what happened to Amy. She apparently left while I wasn’t looking, or should I say that I wasn’t looking at anything but Richard. He reached for me, his lips becoming enmeshed with mine, and I clung to him with all my passion, leeching onto him like a medieval cure for the pox looking for a home to call its own. It had been far too long, and I had missed him far too much, and this was one damn horny werewolf. The rest of it sorta fell by the wayside as I let my second brain do the talking.

  I pulled him down on top of me, never releasing his lips, my hands grabbing the back of his head tightly, my fingers winding their way into his blond tresses in the tightest of grips, and I began to rub against him needily, noting with some satisfaction that his need for me equaled mine for him.

  Later on there would be recriminations, arguments, accusations, condemnations, and questions. Maybe. Or maybe I would just roll over and play dead like I always did. But for right then there was only Richard and me, and that’s the way it was meant to be.

  Making love—to the max—together again.

  Chapter 4

  Out of the Frying Pan, Into the Fire?

  RICHARD stands by the window of our bedroom, looking out into the backyard, which also just happens to contain the Missouri River, though from this level you can’t see it. He is nude and sweaty, drops of his sweat glisten on his bare chest, darkening the blond hair there, which even close up is barely visible and from a distance is nonexistent. I often tell him he has the body of a pre-pubescent boy. He invariably smiles at that.

  As I recline on our bed, equally nude, I unabashedly stare in admiration at his profile. Middle-age—if that is what we have come to, although I am not sure, for the definition of that word seems to change with the passing years, and what at one time was perceived as old and decrepit is now merely young and lovely—middle-age agrees with him. His abs are still well-defined, his stomach flat, and his gluteus maximus is superb; I can tell you that from personal experience, believe you me. He is just as beautiful now as he was the day I met him. Even more so, actually.

  He turns to me, pensive, thoughtful as he makes his way back to me. He stretches out beside me, propping up on one elbow to face me. “It looks like you’re stuck with the bitch for now, doesn’t it?”

  “Looks that way,” I agree, sighing heavily for the thousandth time. “God!” I groan, plopping myself on top of him, draping myself over his lovely body. “Maybe we should take a trip, go somewhere, do something?”

  “Let her scare us off? I don’t think so.”

  I roll him onto his back like a human Lincoln log, laying the brunt of my upper body against his chest, which earns me an exaggerated oompf, but he makes no move to chase me off, so I know he’s just playing. “Max….” He begins in that little boy tone of voice I know so well, and I can hear it coming, the continuation of what we started before we started making love. My eyes turn inadvertently to my dresser where the culprit still lies: the note, the reading of which has so exasperated my lover. “You’re not going, are you?”

  “No, of course not,” I respond. “You know the last thing I want is to see her in any way, shape, or form. Okay?”

  “Okay.” He seems mollified as he reaches up and licks my chin. “You know she still wants you, don’t you?”

  I roll my eyes. “No, I don’t know that, and even if it’s true, that makes just one of us. You know better, don’t you? At least I should hope you do.”

  “I know that you don’t,” he admits as he rolls me back over so he can claim the upper position for himself. Always has to be the top dog, Richard does. “But her? Her I don’t trust
any more now than I did then. I just find it hard to believe she’s really changed, no matter what Rachel says.”

  “I know, I know.” I attempt to assuage his tender feelings, but I don’t know what to think myself. It would be nice if things could be the way they were before, but that entails going back to the time before Richard’s reappearance, and I don’t want that, and anything after that is just… too… tangled….

  May 8, 1977

  I WAS peacefully asleep, nay, blissfully asleep the morning after he returned, content, sated, satisfied, filled, peaceful, and utterly happy—not to mention worn out, exhausted, and done in by the night’s events—which lasted all through the night and into the wee hours of the morning, if you catch my drift, and I think you do. Therefore I did not take kindly to having my slumber interrupted by a voice in my ear, a female voice at that, urgently whispering my name. “Max. Max!”

  Damnation. I stretched out one arm and was alarmed to feel nothing beside me. Shit, don’t tell me… but upon cracking open my eyes, I saw my lover’s clothes were still on top of the dresser where he had carelessly slung them the night before, so I knew he was still there. I breathed a quick sigh of relief before addressing my immediate problem. Rachel.

  “Rachel, what the hell’s wrong?” I mumbled sleepily, pulling my sheet closer to me, just in case she decided we needed to go somewhere and tried to pull it from my still nude body.

  “Max, wake up.” She shook my shoulder in a very persistent manner.

  I looked at her grumpily between slitted lids. “This better be damn good,” I warned her.

  “Max, I’ve just left Amy at my house. She’s crying her eyes out and will barely talk to me. All she told me is that you and her were… well, you were doing something I can’t believe you were doing, when some guy barged in and threatened to hurt you both unless she left. It’s taken me all day to get that much out of her, between her sobbing and telling me she should kill herself. Are you okay? What the hell is going on? And where’s this guy?”

  She had my attention now. I sat up in the bed, trying to gather my sleepy wits about me, as well as the rumpled still-sticky sheet. “She said what?” My brain was clearly not processing information correctly. “Slow down, slow down.” I heard the sound of a toilet flushing down the hall and water running, and seconds later my wayward lover himself stood in the doorway in all his glory, eyebrows raised curiously at us, and not even embarrassed in the slightest that Rachel was getting an eyeful of a sight that should be reserved for me and me alone.

  “What’s up?” he asked, posing like some sort of damn Playgirl centerfold.

  “Get over here under this sheet,” I directed him, “and quit trying to sell your wares, you little whore.” He only laughed and did as he was told, a first for him.

  “I should have guessed,” Rachel said, beginning to smile at both of us, watching as I curled around my lover and covered us both with the sheet. “Hello, Richard.” He only grinned at her.

  “Rachel said that Amy said that you were molesting me or something.” I deliberately left out the rest of it, knowing what his reaction to that would be.

  “Well, naturally, what red-blooded male wouldn’t?” He grinned, his arms going about me protectively.

  “Not just that,” Rachel insisted on continuing, “she also said that she and Max were in the middle of a sex act? What’s up with that?”

  I blushed down to my very roots as Richard snorted indelicately. “Is that what she’s calling it? The truth of the matter is that she had his cock in her mouth and she was sucking him off when I came in!”

  “Max!” she stared at me in utter amazement.

  “No, no, no, don’t look at me like that!” I turned to Richard and punched him squarely in the shoulder. “You make it sound like it was consensual, you git; it’s not like I had any say-so in the matter, if you’ll recall.” I turned back to Rachel. “I woke up to find her… well….” I was trying to be delicate about the matter. After all, she was Rachel’s friend.

  “Are you telling me that Amy attacked you in your sleep?” she asked with a modicum of disbelief.

  “Exactly,” I responded, glad that I didn’t have to spell it out. It was embarrassing enough as it was, to be in such a compromising position, but with a girl, of all people? Sheesh!

  “Max, didn’t I tell you she’s in love with you?” she asked.

  “I know, I know,” I groaned, not wanting to hear it, but knowing it was true. And wondering just what the hell I was supposed to do about it….

  NOW here it is, more than twenty years later, and she’s back to haunt our lives. But why?

  And why did that supposedly omnipotent creator with the warped sense of humor decide that it would be amusing to have her work with me, in the one job I have managed to hold and to enjoy for any length of time, I ask you?

  I wrap my legs about Richard’s, holding him as close to me as I can manage without occupying his skin. Not because I want to make love again, at least not right away, anyway, but because I feel the need to clamp onto him so tightly that he can’t get away from me ever again. Even after twenty years, his nomadic comings and goings cut through me like a damned knife in my heart. I never know when I’ll wake up some morning to find him gone, and it still hurts.

  He buries his head in the hollow at the base of my neck, his tongue laving the area almost roughly, his beautiful blond hair, still a rich lemon shade and still flowing down to his shoulders, falls about his face, and I run my fingers through the hirsute veil it presents. Why do I love him so fucking much when I can’t even count on him to be here for me, when I know for a fact that when he’s gone he’s fucking other guys? The fact that he doesn’t love them, he loves me, is totally immaterial when I’m lying alone in our bed, crying for him, my heart attempting to self-destruct to escape the complete and utter pain he brings upon it. Much less during the night of the full moon, although to give the devil his due, he does make more of an effort to be with me at those times, for the wolf without his mate is not a pleasant sight, let me tell you.

  And yet, even after all these years, I love Richard with a love which if anything has simply grown stronger. I know I’ll never give him up. Why kid myself? He knows it too; that’s why he feels free to play his stupid little games, for whatever reason, because he knows I’ll always take him back. Okay kids, how do we spell stupid? M-A-X! Let’s say it all together now!

  “Richard,” I begin, but just then the phone rings, breaking into my thoughts. He reaches for the cordless on the bedside table, looks at the caller ID and hands it to me without answering it, returning to his former position licking at my skin.

  I glance at the ID and press PHONE. “Hello, Rachel.”

  “Max, are you going to lunch with her?” That girl just does not beat around the bush.

  “No, I don’t think so,” I reply, looking at Richard as I do so, trying to keep my tone casual.

  “Max, she just wants to be friends. She isn’t still carrying the torch for you.” I can hear it in her voice. It is that persuasive, sensible Rachel, the one who knows more about the real world than simple little gay werewolf Max and he should listen to her advice.

  “Uh huh,” I respond noncommittally. “I just don’t see that as an option.”

  “’Cause of Richard?” she asks knowingly.

  “Yes, that is correct.”

  “Bring him with you. In fact, I’ll come too. We’ll make it a foursome.”

  “My, doesn’t that sound lovely,” I respond in a toneless voice, as if I were some sort of human Dalek.

  Richard looks at me, gives me his I-know-what-you’re-up-to look. “She wants you to meet with the bitch, doesn’t she?”

  Thinking quickly, I open and close my mouth a few times, which only makes me look stupid and doesn’t fool Richard one bit. So finally I nod my head like a good boy. “You too,” I mouth, “and her too.”

  “Oh boy, sounds like fun,” he says sarcastically. All of a sudden, I feel him nipping at my
skin, damn near biting me.

  “Hey!” I yelp in surprise. He only looks at me and grins. “Okay, tell Rachel we’ll come,” he announces, apparently spur of the moment.

  “What the fuck?” I ask him. “Why?”

  I can hear Rachel’s happy voice on the other end of the line: “Tell Richard thanks.”

  “Well, darling, I decided that if you’re going to have to see her at some point anyway, I’d rather have it happen while I’m around to make sure her lips don’t end up wrapped around your pretty little cock again,” he says with a smirk.

  “Very funny!” I make a small moue at him, which he quickly licks, and all my resolve begins to crumble under his wet assault. “Damn you, Richard,” I moan into his touch as he begins to kiss me in greater earnest. I forget everything but him as I fall under his magic spell once more. Do I never learn? Apparently not.

  “Who do you love?” he whispers to me, his lips warm upon mine, his hands running lightly up and down my spine and creating the most delicious electric sensations that course through me. “Tell me who you love.”

  “Richard,” I respond without hesitation, feeling the above-mentioned prick beginning to rise to the occasion once again. “God, you drive me crazy.”

  “Short trip,” he automatically replies. I think this is where he takes the phone from my unresisting hand, whispers, “Bye, Rachel,” and clicks if off, tossing it carelessly onto the table once more.

  “Hey!” I protest. “That isn’t good for it.” But his lips still my words, and he makes me forget what I was going to say or what I might have been thinking, and it isn’t long before the old familiar tunnel vision is back, and all I see hear or feel is Richard Burke. I’m drowning in my desire for him, going down for the third time without even putting up a fight.

  Once more into the breach, my friends—to the max—and loving every minute of it.