Brick by Brick

by Maryn Blackburn

  That couldn’t lead to anything but trouble. Should I speak up if I was sure James was hurting Gage?

  I’d cross that bridge when I came to it. “Listen, Gage, I don’t mean to be rude, but James is running late, obviously, and we still need to eat, once he gets cleaned up.”

  “I know. Go shower, James. I’ll help Natalie.”

  “Take your time,” I told my husband. “If you want to soak until you cool off, this will wait.”

  James returned, damp-combed and sweet-smelling, to another place. Gage had not only set a nice table for two, but also closed the blinds, lit candles, and poured three glasses of wine.

  “Is there a dress code? I can change.”

  Only a teenager would think he was cool to let that much of his underwear show through the splits in yet another pair of ancient Levis.

  “You look good to me,” Gage said, setting his wine on the kitchen counter. He came to the table and pulled back a chair. “Madame?”

  I sat and let him push me in. James seated himself and reached for the bread sticks before his napkin.

  “Good evening,” Gage said. “My name is Gage, and I’ll be your server. I took the liberty of pouring you this evening’s featured wine, a modest fume blanc with citrus and flint undertones.”

  We tasted. “Very nice,” I said.

  Gage presented the spinach salad with raspberry vinaigrette. “Enjoy,” he said and retreated to the kitchen.

  “He’s our waiter?” James asked, his voice low, hiding his amusement.

  “I think he’s just goofing around, keeping himself busy. What else is he supposed to do, since he’s already eaten?”

  “It’s weird, being waited on at home.”

  “Get used to it,” Gage called. “Pretend I’m not here.”

  “Right,” James said. “So, how was your day?”

  “Pretty busy. We have a new bed, and new sheets, which I washed. Oh, and I saw Cynthia at the drugstore. Your sunscreen is in the kitchen.”

  “Good, don’t let me forget it in the morning. How’s Cynthia?”

  “Fine. She was buying travel sizes. Doug’s going to Houston.” I paused, remembering her basket. “He uses hair spray, did you know?”

  “I knew he used something. I don’t know what I’ll do when I start to lose my hair.”

  “If. I hope.”

  “What, you won’t like me bald?”

  To my surprise, we forgot about Gage and just talked, like any night.

  Gage exchanged our empty salad dishes for our plates. “How was the salad?”

  “Very nice,” James said, just as if Gage were really our waiter.

  “I’ll pass your compliments to the chef.” He disappeared, and we started talking again, this time about his employee Danny. Sure he was a good worker, and fast, but James couldn’t count on him to stay out of jail. He suspected Danny’d come to work high a few times too. “He’s a liability. He could get hurt or hurt somebody else. I’m letting him go.”

  Gage cleared our plates and poured a little more wine. “Living room?” he suggested.

  With James looking over his shoulder, our guest scanned our eclectic CD collection, his expression flitting from admiration to disgust to puzzlement before he chose my favorite New Age-jazz hybrid, great as background music but better for careful listening. How did he guess? He frowned at the CD player but figured it out quickly enough.

  “Okay? Now what?” Gage said, quickly adding, “Not that there has to be any ‘what.’ I’m fine with just hanging out. James is probably tired.”

  “Maybe he’d like to fool around but take it easy,” I suggested, sinking to my knees.

  James turned, centering his pelvis in front of my face. “I told you she was the smart one.”

  Gage stepped close, then back. “This part’s always so awkward, and with three it’s just that much worse.”

  “Stand right next to me,” James urged him, “so you can see everything.”

  I set my hand on the fly of my husband’s ancient jeans, soft as deerskin, savoring the contours of James’s fledgling erection. I massaged it, looking up for his reaction while he grew to full size beneath my hand. His cue was clear, a head gesture toward Gage: him too.

  Gage’s jeans were thicker, but he was already fully hard within them. I pressed my tongue to the cloth. He closed his eyes and breathed in deeply.

  “Show me you want more,” I said. “Both of you.”

  Chapter Eighteen

  Almost in unison, the men unzipped and slid their Levi’s onto their legs. Freed, their erections bobbed before my face. Jamie’s, long and delicately pale pink, the glans one shade deeper, rose from burnished gold curls, the penis of a gentleman-aristocrat, the sort whose portraits hung in gilded frames. Yet he laid brick.

  Rising from dense blue-black tangles, the penis of the artiste was a workingman’s, brawny and textured with veins. The moist tip of its decidedly rosy head peeked from the uncircumcised sheath the color of chocolate milk. I could not resist giving a chaste, closed-mouth kiss to the reddish glans the moment I saw it.

  I pulled James closer, so he and Gage stood touching from rib to bare hip, the heads of their penises bouncing only inches apart. Gage circled James’s ribs with an arm. Seconds later, James put his arm around Gage’s.

  They watched me take James in my mouth. I swirled my tongue on him as he entered, sucked slightly when he left, lavished him with my mouth and my love. I truly relished the smoothly rich taste of the man, very like the fresh lobster we’d enjoyed so much at Cape Cod.

  I turned to Gage, who pushed back his own foreskin. “Watch your teeth,” he said.

  “What’s this?” Stupid, since it was so obvious. Two pairs of quarter-inch silver balls adorned the head of his penis, one above the other.

  “It’s called an ampallang. Well, a double ampallang.”

  “Holy shit.” James leaned over, examining the tiny silver barbell rods which passed sideways through the meaty part of the glans, presumably just missing Gage’s urethra, and the round studs on both ends. “Why on earth would you poke holes in your cock?” He stood up again, his hand on his own erection. It had wilted a little.

  “I got it done after I had to fly back to LA. One piercing for each of you. I knew they’d heal slow and I couldn’t have sex until they did, but once I realized I wouldn’t see you before I had to go on location, decision made.”

  “Can you take them out?” James cupped his own glans with a protective hand.

  “Yeah, but I probably couldn’t put it back in. If you don’t like it, I could take it out and let it close up.”

  “Don’t,” I said. “I thought I’d just forgotten how thick you are, but I must have been feeling this. I liked it.”

  Gage grinned. “That’s the idea. It’s for the ladies, or in this case the lady. Like a tongue piercing is for the guy?”

  “I don’t see any tongue piercing,” James said.

  “I’d never get another speaking role if I pierced my tongue.”

  “I didn’t mean I thought you should get one,” James said. “I can’t believe you got this. It’s weird.”

  “Maybe weird for Tucson. Not so weird for California.”

  James cocked an eyebrow. “The question is, how does it taste?”

  Different, I decided as I took him into my mouth, careful not to hit the studs with my teeth. Did I imagine a metallic edge to Gage’s basic brininess? I’d tasted him before without thinking of canned shrimp.

  I slathered his penis with small kisses, somewhat reluctant to use my tongue, but they used their hands to urge me forward until I held lots of Gage’s penis in my mouth. His foreskin slipped back over the studs, dulling them to intriguing hard spots.

  When I sent my tongue in a brief spiral deep into the secret place beneath his foreskin, tasting the metal on purpose, both my lovers moaned. I repeated the motion and looked up at Gage’s small sound of pleasure.

  “He likes that,” James said. “Do it again, nice and
slow. Yeah, that looks so hot. Know what else is hot? Seeing his fat brown cock in your pretty mouth like before, all of it. As much as you can.”

  Gage moaned, low. “God, Natalie, yeah, that’s so good. I love that you’re watching.” His tone speaking to James was conversational.

  I pumped, my mouth a slow piston. Gage flexed his pelvis, pushing himself into me. Naturally, he went too deeply and I coughed.

  “Hold still.” James set the flat of his hand on Gage’s belly, just above his thatch, the tips of his fingers on the scar. “Let her move and control the depth. Nat, work him with your hand while you suck just the head, then more and more.”

  If I hadn’t been aroused, I might have resented the instructions. It wasn’t as if this were entirely new to me.

  I didn’t particularly enjoy giving oral sex, but the man’s reaction did something to me, made me feel both powerful and wanton. I had complete control. Gage’s little pleasure sounds were as pretty as music.

  “Wait, I’m getting too close.”

  “Don’t wait.” James moved his hand from Gage’s stomach to his shoulder. “Do the foreskin thing some more. Make him come. I’ve never seen his face.”

  Even from my low angle, I identified Gage’s going-to-come moment. His eyebrows rose as he gasped, and he looked down at me with unabashed arousal before turning to my husband. His expression twisted from angelic to I-hit-my-thumb-with-a-hammer as his semen spurted against my soft palate. Gage’s orgasmic mew was guttural, almost pained; then his face softened to the point of boyishness.

  “Oh, nice, very nice. Beautiful. Was that good?’

  “God, yes. Thank you, Natalie.” He nodded toward James, telling me to give my husband more.

  Gladly. In no time I had quite a bit of him in my mouth, enough that I could smell the faint soap scent from his pubic hair.

  At first I thought Gage had turned so his thigh pressed my upper arm. Then I realized he and I knelt, shoulder to shoulder, before James.

  “Oh, yeah.” James beamed down at us.

  I pulled my mouth off to check on Gage, whose apprehension showed.

  “I want you to,” James said, “so much.”

  Gage raised his face to James. “I want to, because you want me to, but I still don’t think I can.”

  “I need it. Right now. Really need it.”

  When Gage did not move, I provided what he needed and left my husband wetly rigid before Gage’s rounded eyes.

  “Please, Gage, do it. Do what Natalie did.”

  In a whisper Gage said, “I can’t.”

  Moving my lips soundlessly, I told him, You can. He shook his head no.

  I licked the taste of ocean from James, circling my tongue extravagantly, licking my lips afterward for Gage, miming that it tasted good.

  “Oh.” James breathed fast. “Gage, you do it. Please?”

  Gage leaned nearer, looking at James’s long pink penis as if it might lash out suddenly.

  “Come on, Gage, take it in your mouth. Suck it.”

  He shook his head rapidly.

  I wrapped my tongue around the mushroom head, savoring the drop of salty egg white at the end.

  “Lick it, then, come on, please, a little lick?”

  Gage averted his eyes and shook his head again.

  “A kiss then, just a kiss. Your lips on me. Please, Gage. Please?”

  With fresh blushes, Gage leaned close, hesitated a long moment, then gave the shaft a kiss as short as those James gives my friends’ cheeks.

  My husband’s penis jerked upward. He mussed Gage’s hair with battered hands, the warmth of his affection pouring on us both.

  “Excuse me a minute,” Gage said and got up awkwardly. “Bad timing, but I really need to pee.”

  “I’ll keep James warmed up until you come back.” I took him in my mouth, dimly aware of the sounds of the bathroom door, Gage peeing, water running.

  Gage returned with his clothes in his arms. He dropped them on the sofa and knelt immediately. “Where was I?” He gave James a little grin and kissed the shaft with closed lips, this time without hesitation.

  “Oh, yeah.”

  “Yeah.” He kissed again.

  “Can I help?” I said. I didn’t wait for an answer but took just the glans in my mouth, leaving room for Gage’s little kisses up and down the shaft while I worked the head with my tongue.

  High above us, James said, “This is the best dream I’ve had in ages.”

  That seemed to spur Gage on. He opened his lips a little, and the kisses he deposited became wetter until he tapped me on one shoulder, gesturing that he wanted to take that part of Jamie that I held.

  I let him. He paused.

  “Only if you want to,” James said.

  Gage tilted his face toward James as if my husband were the sun, Gage a flower not yet in bloom. He let the tip of his tongue lick the head cautiously before retreating.

  “Good. I hope to God you want to.”

  At that point Gage opened his wet lips wider and took James into the rounded O of his mouth, sucking the plummy head with a soft, wet sound.

  James wove his fingers through Gage’s disheveled hair, urging him forward but not forcing. Gage changed his angle, bobbing down to accept some of the shaft too. He smiled around James’s penis, clearly pleased with himself. He had maybe three inches of Jamie’s considerable length actually past his lips, wrapping much of the rest, which shone pink and wet from the tongue bath, with his fingers.

  They were lost in it, ignoring me. Only fair; usually I had two orgasms for their singles. While I watched the men give and receive, thinking how beautiful they both were, James made a little grunting sound.

  I knew what it meant. Did Gage? Jamie’s closed eyelids trembled, seizure-like. Within the next few seconds he would come.

  When it happened, Gage opened his eyes wide and jerked away so quickly James’s throbbing organ left his lips with a pop.

  The first viscous spatter struck Gage’s neck, the others his chest and upper belly. A pearl of it ran down the scar. Gage looked at it with wonder, as if he’d never seen such a thing. His lower lip shone.

  My husband dropped to his knees, dabbing the semen from Gage’s body with his hands. “I’m thrilled to be your first,” he said. “I really am.”

  “Thanks for being so patient with me. I hope it was worth the wait.”

  “It was. What’s that on your nose?”

  Gage touched his nostril. Something white showed clearly, just a trace. It was powdery, definitely not cum or mucus. “Nothing.”

  Chapter Nineteen

  The angry lightning bolt between James’s eyebrows returned. “Coke or crystal?”

  “Don’t worry about it,” Gage said. He got up and sifted through the rumpled clothes he’d tossed on the sofa.

  “In my house, either one could get you an ass whuppin’,” James said. “Just ask my brother David.”

  “Yeah, right,” Gage said, pulling on his jeans. “Hey, Nat, did you hear? James is going to spank me.”

  “My parents’ house,” James corrected.

  “I didn’t think you’d beat my ass,” Gage said.

  “I didn’t think you’d need to drug yourself to give me head. Am I that unappealing?”

  “No, no, it’s me. You know that.”

  “You can’t be doing coke or whatever it is and helping Rowan,” I said.

  “Or yourself. We’re going to your hotel, right now, to get rid of the rest,” James said. “I don’t care if it’s the only way you can make yourself do me.”

  “Come on, it’s not you. It’s me.”

  “I don’t care if it’s the fucking pope. Find your shoes.”

  “Fine.” Gage crammed his bare feet into his shoes and fished in his pocket for his keys as we all went out the front door.

  “Don’t be stupid,” James said, neatly lifting the keys from Gage’s unsuspecting hand. “You think I’d let you drive?” He cuffed Gage’s head just the way I’d seen his father cuf
f David’s, sending Gage stumbling toward the truck. “Get in. You too, Natalie. Somebody’s got to ride herd on my temper.”

  Gage shot me a questioning look. I nodded, small: I’ll protect you. If I can.

  “Shit, I almost forgot. Wait a second.” James trotted back inside.

  “Is he as mad as I think?” Gage asked.

  “Probably. He worries himself sick over David throwing his life down the toilet because of drugs, and I’m sure he’s hurt that you needed—what was it, cocaine?”

  Gage nodded.

  “Needed cocaine before you’d touch your mouth to him.”

  “I didn’t mean it like that. I just wanted to give him what he wanted. Is that so awful?”

  “What does that say about the way you feel about him, that you have to anesthetize yourself first?”

  Gage knotted his narrow lower jaw and glared at the windshield, not even looking in James’s direction when he returned to toss a paper grocery bag, its top edge rolled over several times, behind the seat.

  The truck didn’t want to start. “Come on, you bitch-whore,” James muttered, and it caught. Nobody said another word until we reached the hotel. “Where should I park?” James asked.

  Gage just pointed. We trailed him to his room. It was nothing special, just a basic hotel room with two double beds.

  James set out the DO NOT DISTURB sign, then closed the door softly and swung the bolt home. “Where do you keep it?”

  “Suitcase.” Gage gestured toward the open area with a rod and hangers, a black suitcase and several pairs of shoes on the floor below. James set the empty suitcase on the luggage rack and threw it open, reaching inside the pockets and compartments until he found a plastic bag filled with other tiny plastic bags of white powder. “How much is this worth?”

  “Couple thousand.”

  “Natalie, would you take Gage’s investment in his future and flush it?”

  “Sure.” I wished there was a store where we could get him a refund.

  “Thank you. Gage and I need to have a talk.”

  The little packets seemed densely compact, but most floated and didn’t take well to flushing. It took several minutes of continuous flushes before they’d all gone. I was glad it wasn’t my plumbing and water bill.