To the Max

by Julie Lynn Hayes

  She looks up at me, pleading with her eyes to have me make some attempt at understanding. “Sometimes people want someone to be with, but they don’t want or need to get permanently involved.”

  “Hmmm,” I grunt noncommittally.

  “And sometimes people can’t have the ones they really want to be with….”

  “Hmmmm.”

  “Max, be fair, what would you have said if I had ever told you I wanted to make love to you?”

  “What?” The word becomes a cross between a yelp and a gulp and manages to register in the high soprano range.

  “C’mere.” She beckons me, patting her lap. I give her a look like “you gotta be kidding me,” but she tugs on my hand until I give in and sit gingerly across her legs. “Relax, you don’t weigh that much,” she reassures me, putting her arms around me and hugging me tight. This reminds me of sitting on St. Nick’s lap when I was seven, excitedly telling him about all the great things I want for Christmas, most of which I don’t even remember any more. Well, it ain’t Christmas, I ain’t a kid, and she ain’t St. Nick. Excuse my grammar.

  “Max, you know I love you,” Rachel says softly, her lips as close to my ear as she can get so that I can’t possibly miss her words.

  I nod stubbornly, not giving her the satisfaction of hearing the words returned, although she knows I do. Very much.

  “Well, Max,” she sighs, exhaling gently, “Sebastian is about as close to you as I can get.”

  If I had turned my neck any faster, I think I’d have broken it. Rachel is blushing, her eyes boring straight into mine, unflinchingly, as I stare back at her, slack-jawed. “Um… unh… ah… .”

  “She means that if she can’t get you, she’ll fuck your cousin and pretend it’s you.”

  We both jump at the voice. How can I have forgotten that Richard wasn’t far behind me? Not that I wouldn’t have told him anyway, as I tell him everything. But at the moment, for this moment, anyway, we look and/or feel like children caught doing something naughty. He, on the other hand, simply looks bemused and very worldly-wise, leaning in the door frame, holding a bag of books undoubtedly pornographic in nature, and looking incredibly hot, as usual.

  Coming into Rachel’s office, he closes the door behind him, something I apparently have neglected to do, and closes the little set of blinds on the window so no one can peek in now. Why, I don’t know. He saunters across the room toward us, and damned if he doesn’t make that simple action seem like the most sensual movement in the world. I am still sitting in Rachel’s lap, not having moved a muscle. Richard perches on the edge of the desk just beside us, regarding us both with what appears to be a great deal of tenderness. On my part, I am merely confused. I’m not even sure what Rachel is.

  “We’re all adults here,” Richard says softly. “Let’s deal with this in an adult manner, shall we?”

  “There’s nothing to deal with,” Rachel maintains.

  “What do you mean?” I ask.

  “Rachel does love you, Max, and she does want you, and I can’t blame her for that. You’re incredibly sexy, you know, not to mention you’re smart and sweet and loving and kind…” I feel my face turning ten different shades of scarlet. “…and you are the best lover in the world.” Oh my God, is Richard actually saying these things? Or have I died and gone to heaven and don’t know it?

  Rachel hasn’t denied a thing. I don’t think she can actually; her face serves to confirm Richard’s words. I feel like my brain has been turned into the little bits of cotton that they stuff inside of medicine bottles, and any coherent thoughts I might have are muffled inside.

  “But Rachel is a sensible girl, and she realizes that she can never have you, not only because you’re gay, but because you’ve chosen your mate, and you are committed to me for life. So she does the next best thing, don’t you, Rachel?”

  Rachel sighs, a plaintive little sound that goes straight to my heart. How could I not realize that she loved me like that? Is Max the word for dense in some foreign tongue? It must be, ’cause I surely am. But there’s nothing I can do about it, as Richard has just pointed out. Not only am I gay, but I am his forever, his alone. It’s what werewolves do. They mate for life. It’s unfortunate that I can’t get him to reciprocate the constancy with which I reward him. At this moment, though, I am feeling utterly perplexed, baffled, and more than a little confused. And maybe a little heartsore too.

  “So, for just this one moment,” Richard continues—for some reason he seems to be orchestrating whatever is happening between the three of us, although I am not even sure what that is—“for this one time, and this time only, I shall allow her to have that which she cannot ever have again, but for which she so desperately yearns.”

  I think neither one of us is sure what he is saying, to be honest. Does he expect me to fuck her, just ’cause he tells me to? Just ’cause she wants it? I can’t. I mean, she’s Rachel, for Christ’s sake. She’s a girl, even worse. And she’s not Richard.

  “No, Max, not sex,” he reassures me, smiling. What, is he a mind reader now? “Just a kiss, but a good kiss, the kind that you do so well, my love. Something that she can remember for the rest of her life.” His eyes move back and forth between us, as if taking our measure, and then I am looking at Rachel, and she is looking at me, and we are looking at one another.

  I feel incredibly silly. Like a hormonal teenager who wants to get kissed and who doesn’t have a clue as to what to do. Like it’s my first time, for Christ’s sake. And I think maybe Rachel feels the same way too. But suddenly I begin to see what Richard is getting at, and I sense a certain maturity in my mate that I haven’t noticed before. Maybe he’s changing for the better? I dunno, but as I consider the possibility, I decide to do as he suggests. And I don’t think that Rachel will object; at least, I have the feeling she is amenable to the idea.

  From my perch atop her lap, I turn my head, leaning in to her. She obligingly maneuvers hers. I hope we don’t look like we are auditioning for some amateur porno. America’s Worst Porn Videos. I wonder if I’ll even remember what to do? Well, lips are lips are lips. Right?

  More or less.

  Our lips meet somewhere in the middle, I feel hers parting, mine seem to follow suit, and I just convince myself that I am kissing Richard, so it makes it more palatable as our lips meet under Richard’s watchful guidance. Our arms decide to add to the mix and just seem to wind about each other’s necks as we deepen the kiss. I even imagine that I feel the tip of her tongue exploring my lips in a tentative manner.

  And suddenly, unbidden, even as I think to myself, so this is what a woman feels like—and I have to admit that I am not singularly impressed—an image begins to flicker within my mind, a memory that stops and starts, and stops and starts again. Like a scene from a movie that has been looped and keeps playing itself out, over and over and over. I try to switch it off, but it refuses to quit running. What is it that is trying to push itself forward into my consciousness? And what in heaven’s name has triggered it?

  Damn, this is so annoying. At this rate, I’ll end up with a killer headache, I know.

  And then suddenly I remember. And oh dear God, I realize that this is not the first time that I’ve kissed a woman.

  There was one other time, a long, long time ago. Years and years and years ago.

  And God forgive me, it was Amy.

  Heading backward to the max and falling straight into the seventh level of hell.

  Chapter 9

  Into the Slipstream

  Saturday, February 5, 1977

  RICHARD left me, of all times, on the day of the night of the full moon. I wouldn’t have believed him to be capable of such a thing.

  But, apparently, he was. ’Cause he did it.

  I mean, how could he do that? How could he be so cruel? Anytime would have been bad enough, but to choose to leave on that night of all nights? The one night of the month when I am the most vulnerable, when I am so damn needy and so damn dependent on him? But he appare
ntly didn’t take any of that into consideration, or he simply didn’t care. And when you come right down to it, does it matter what the reason is? The result is the same. And the aftermath still has to be dealt with.

  The next morning I came to consciousness very slowly and very painfully. Not that I’ve never awakened to the self-inflicted bruises and bites and scratches of the wolf before, in his attempts to vent some sort of bloodlust upon the unsuspecting human world, frustrated because of his inability to reach that same human world, but this was worse, far worse. Every muscle I possessed ached, including a few I wasn’t aware that I even had. My knuckles were swollen and torn, laid open almost to the bone it felt like, and they screamed at me when I attempted to flex them in any way. My arms were simply a mass of purple/black discolorations and tooth marks between the bruises and the bites, as if the wolf had tried to gnaw its arm off in frustration. Even my feet hurt, probably from kicking at the heavy door in an attempt to escape the bomb shelter. And my head—my head was throbbing a discordant rhythm that centered behind the bridge of my nose and snaked its way through my sinus cavity to engulf my entire pate with the most excruciating torturous pain.

  Everything I was, every single part of me screamed in agony. But the part that screamed the loudest was my heart.

  Do you want to know what the absolute worst thing of all was? What made me wince every time I thought about it, what caused me to try to tear my heart from my breast, as if to offer it up in some sort of Aztecan sacrifice, anything to stop this exquisite pain that threatened to engulf me in its maw?

  It was this:

  Friday morning, I was sleeping in, conserving my energy for the coming night. The better rested I am, the better chance I have at maintaining some level of control over my other self. Richard had gotten up early for a change, having had to do an early morning shoot. He was just getting started with his photography then and had to take any job he could, otherwise he’d never have arisen at such a beastly time. I’d offered to go with him, but he insisted that I rest, that he’d be back before I was up, and I took advantage of his thoughtfulness to do just that, confident in his ability to handle the Monte without me. I’m not even sure at what unholy hour he arose, but I knew he had to be somewhere at dawn, so it must have been damn early. And it was still dark when he returned.

  Which return I became aware of when I felt a wet tongue sliding into my ear and a warm hand embracing my sleeping cock. “Richard?” I murmured sleepily.

  “Who else, love?” he whispered warmly in my ear, taking my earlobe into his mouth, sucking on it, his hand wrapping about my growing erection, as I thought to myself what a very nice way this was to be awakened. “Mmmm,” I responded, moving my dick into his palm more, loving the way his hand felt, thinking that when I woke up a little more, I would grab me a piece of his own very lovely meat.

  The next moment I found myself bereft of all my sheets and blankets, unceremoniously stripped from my naked form, leaving me shivering in my birthday suit. Helluva way to wake up. But before I could complain about being cold, the linens were replaced with a soft warm body as my lover straddled my torso, dry-humping my stomach with his stiff prick as he moved up my body, past my chest and neck, his balls slapping softly against my chin as he rubbed his leaking hardness across my lips, asking for admission, which of course was granted. I opened my lips, taking that beautiful cock into my mouth eagerly, sucking at that delicious flesh, the taste of which was so familiar to me, swallowing the pre-cum that leaked from it. My Richard is very well hung, more so than I am, and his dick is quite beautiful to behold, as well as to consume. When he is turgid, the veins swell along the underside like blue ropes, while his balls are two tasty little sacs of creamy flesh, lightly haired, just right for cradling in one’s mouth.

  Greedily I slurped at my breakfast treat, fully awake now, making whimpering noises around his cock that only served as a mini-echo chamber, enhancing the vibrations. I knew what Richard liked; we’d been together nearly a year by then and had had lots of time to explore one another most thoroughly: likes, dislikes, favorite positions, favorite rituals, etc. So when he unexpectedly removed himself from my mouth, I started to whine like a spoiled puppy.

  He shushed me. “Move down will you, dear, and hand me up one of the pillows?”

  I grumpily did as he requested, sliding my body down a little bit, handing him the pillow, which he proceeded to slide beneath my hips before changing his position about so that not only was his cock back within reach of my eager mouth, but his own mouth was directly above mine. I quit complaining as I began to see what he had in mind, and in my eagerness to accommodate him, accidentally kicked the small beaded lamp that sat on my bedside table, sending it crashing to the floor.

  Richard shushed me again. “You’ll have your whole family in here, and this is not a sight I wish to share with them.”

  Chastened, I attempted to calm down, busying myself with that pretty pink object dangling just above me. I took him back into my mouth, gripping his ass with my fingers, stroking his perineum gently as I attempted to suck him to orgasm. He, on the other hand, after first running his tongue over my pucker, stuck a couple of his fingers in his mouth, and once they were sufficiently moistened, proceeded to insert them, one by one, into my anal orifice, sending the most wonderful sensations rocketing through my body. I shuddered at his touch, moaned happily around his cock, while wishing for the umpteenth time that we had a place of our own where we would be free from the fear of familial intrusion. That dream, alas, was still a few years away.

  Oh dear God, what was he doing? Using his fingers to stretch my opening, he added his tongue to the mix, thrusting it inside of me like a mini-prick, and I couldn’t help but arch my back, it felt so damn good. This was something new, and my first reaction was an enthusiastic yes! I almost bit into his cock in my eagerness but managed to merely graze it with my teeth.

  “Like that, do we?” he purred, burying his nose in the crease of my thigh, his fingers corkscrewing my asshole most pleasurably, while I, concentrating on sucking him off, mumbled my response into his cock. I’m afraid there were no actual words, just animal sounds.

  He ran his tongue up along my sensitive skin, before moving back to my anus, blowing across it gently, cooly. I realized that he had recently eaten something pepperminty; its tingliness only served to drive me crazier. It was becoming harder to concentrate on what I was doing, and I did want to do justice to my craft.

  “Maxie, Maxie, Maxie,” he murmured into my orifice, before plunging his tongue in once again, and God, how I moaned, like an animal in fucking heat, pushing against his face urgently, desperately almost. His free hand snaked up to my erection, and he began to stroke it, setting a rhythm that matched that of his tongue. Damn, my concentration had definitely been broken, and his poor neglected cock lay inside my mouth, unattended.

  This was too good, too good, too good…. I gave myself over to the sheer pleasure of his tongue fucking my ass and his hand pumping my erection, bombarded with sensations right and left and every which way. I felt my balls grow tight, impatient to release their load, and although I wanted this to last forever, I knew it couldn’t possibly, but still…. Was there anything in the world at that moment but me and Richard and this incredible feeling between us? I didn’t think so.

  About then it was that I reached the edge of the precipice, stood there for a moment and then jumped off, plunging straight into my orgasm, shooting my load all over his hand as I felt his tongue hit my sweet spot, and only his hard-on in my mouth kept me from screaming his name loud enough to bring the whole household down around us. Instead the vibrations were constrained by his willing flesh. Which I remembered was being sadly neglected as I resumed my ministrations, feeling his cock touch the back of my throat, proud of my ability to deep-throat my lovely one. Suck harder, harder, I urged myself, so very anxious to please.

  I was still coming down from my high when I felt him go, filling my mouth with his fluid, bucking up in
to my mouth as he spasmed, fiercely shaking with the force of his orgasm. I suckled at him greedily, drinking every last drop that issued from his pulsing prick. Mine, all mine.

  Until at last we both lay there, gulping air as if it were in danger of being rationed, quite sated and very content.

  Richard moved first, reversing his position and crawling up beside me, claiming my lips and kissing me as if he were imprinting me, as if pressing his own personal signature on me so that everyone could see that I belonged to him and him alone. If I had only known….

  “Love you, Max,” he whispered heatedly into my mouth. My very own Benedict Arnold. With his very own lying lips. He must have known, even then. He had to. And still, he spoke those words. “Max, I love you so much.”

  I told him how much I loved him; I cooed all over him, groveled for him, abased myself in every conceivable way with my protestations of my undying devotion and affection… well, you get the idea.

  About that time, my sister knocked at my door to tell me that Rachel was on the phone. I guess the timing could have been worse. Reluctantly, I threw on a pair of pants, kissed Richard sweetly, and left to see what she wanted, returning within a few minutes. “Rach is having car problems; want to go get her with me?”

  He looked as if he might, as if he were actually considering the question, but then he shook his head. “No, you go ahead,” he said. “You don’t need me for that.”

  I demurred, protesting that I needed him for everything, but finally I decided that I was wasting more time arguing the point. “I won’t be long,” I promised, leaning over him, requesting a kiss, which he freely gave.

  Again his lips tightly pressed against mine, so hard he took my breath away. Damn, I was obtuse. “Love you, Max,” he repeated as I threw on shoes and a shirt. I stood in the doorway for a last lingering look, blew him a kiss, and then I was gone.

  And by the time I returned, a mere forty-five minutes later, he was gone.