Zach flushed and bit his lip, then nodded. David smiled and kissed him again, his tongue soothing Zach’s lip where he’d bitten it before seeking entrance again to Zach’s sweet, soft mouth. This time he slipped his hands up under Zach’s T-shirt, his fingers stroking gently over the ragged scars on his back. Zach stiffened a moment, but when David didn’t react other than to keep caressing him, he relaxed again, his own hands motionless on David’s waist.
“Take off your shirt.” David drew back to whisper against Zach’s lips. Zach hesitated, but David kissed him again. “Take off your shirt.”
Wordlessly, Zach obeyed, pulling the T-shirt over his head and dropping it on the kitchen floor. David leaned in and licked Zach’s remaining nipple, his tongue curling over it, tasting, teasing. Zach sucked in a breath in shock at the sensation; when David sucked on it gently, he moaned, his hands coming up to clench hard on David’s upper arms. David chuckled under his breath, never letting go of the stiff, sensitive tissue, but sucking harder. Zach whimpered.
“Like that?” David said, releasing him and grinning up at him.
“I never… I didn’t know….”
“Now you know why I woke up yesterday when you did that to me.” David laughed again, and kissed Zach’s chest just above the nipple before curling his hand over the rising bump in Zach’s jeans. “Turnabout’s fair play, love.” He caressed Zach as he bent to suck again, then bit him lightly.
Zach cried out wordlessly at the nip, his hips bucking and his hands tightening on David’s arms. David licked over the bite, then trailed his tongue over the nipple again, then up to Zach’s throat, his hand still stroking Zach through his jeans. “Upstairs,” he whispered against Zach’s neck. “The guest room has a full bed—mine’s too small to make love in properly—and we’re not doing this in my mother’s kitchen.” He pushed Zach gently. “Come upstairs.”
Zach pulled him close again. “Couch,” he gasped hoarsely.
“Too small. No, this time we’re doing it right.”
That stopped Zach cold. “Wait. Wait.” He released David’s arms and rubbed his neck distractedly. “We can’t. You’ve gotta be sore. I know I hurt you last night….”
“My beautiful dweeb,” David said with a gentle shove toward the stairs, “there’s more to sex than just fucking.” He weaseled past Zach. “Beat you to the top.”
“You wish,” Zach said automatically, and took off after him.
THE SPARE bedroom had been Sandy’s and was still a bit on the girly side, but the bed was a big four-poster sturdy enough for David to jump on, followed by a panting Zach. “No fair,” he wheezed, “you kiss me breathless then challenge me to a race?”
“Shut up and kiss me,” David said, shoving him onto his back and crawling on top.
Zach pushed back, rolling over and pinning him underneath. “You gotta get a king-size bed,” he said, then kept David’s mouth too busy to respond. David wrapped his legs around Zach’s hips and rocked up into him, rubbing his pelvis against Zach’s. Zach arched back, releasing David’s mouth to throw his head back, his hands splayed on the mattress on either side of David’s shoulders, his body grinding hard into David’s, his eyes squeezed shut.
“Easy, boy,” David laughed. “You in a hurry?”
He stopped and stared down at David. “What?” he asked in confusion. David lifted a hand and brushed away sweat from Zach’s forehead.
“Ease up, Zach. It’s not a race. You’re working too hard.”
“I’m hurting you,” Zach said instantly, and rolled over, sliding off the bed. “Sorry.”
David sat up and reached out a hand. “Come here.” When Zach didn’t obey, he patted the mattress. “Come on. Sit your butt down.”
Zach snorted and sat on the edge of the bed. “What?”
“You’ve never had a lover,” David said.
“Sure, I have—” Zach’s words were cut off by David’s fingers on his lips.
“You’ve had sex, but never a lover,” David explained. “I keep forgetting that. I keep forgetting that this is all new to you.”
“I’m not exactly a virgin,” Zach said dryly against David’s fingers.
“Sure you are. It’s kind of exciting.” David removed his fingers from Zach’s mouth with a gentle caress. “To know I get to be the one, your first lover, the one who teaches you how to kiss, how to make love… I should have been, you know. Should have been the one to teach you all that.”
“I wanted you to be,” Zach said. He turned and lay down across the bed, his back to David.
“I’m sorry,” David said softly. He lay down behind Zach and put his arm over his waist. They were close enough in height that his cheek rested against Zach’s cropped skull. “I wanted to be, Zach. But you scared me. I was eighteen. I’d only ever even had one relationship, and that was the one I was sneaking around on Maggie with. I’d just busted up with him when everything happened.”
“You mean when I came on to you,” Zach said.
“When I realized that you were the one I wanted. Had probably wanted even before I knew what wanting was.”
“You were just used to having me around.”
“No. No.” David came up on one elbow and looked down at him. “You know why you scared me so much? Because I was eighteen and I realized that you were the only person I wanted to be with. And I wasn’t ready to commit even though I knew that it was always going to be you. And then you went off and died on me… or so I thought.”
“Misplaced guilt,” Zach said.
“Grief. None of my relationships after that lasted. Because none of them were you.”
“Put a little pressure on a guy,” Zach muttered.
David laughed and rubbed Zach’s belly. “No pressure, really. What I feel is my business. I just wanted you to know that if you want me, I’m yours.”
Zach twisted to lie on his back, looking up at David. “I don’t know if I can do this, Taff.”
“So let’s just take one day at a time. I do have one thing I want to ask you to do for me, though.”
“What?”
David swallowed. “Please stop going to those bars: Fat Charlie’s, the Goose, any of those places. Not because I don’t want you picking up guys—though I don’t—but because it’s dangerous.” His eyes were dark and serious when they met Zach’s.
Zach said soberly, “I’m always careful, Taff.”
“I’m not talking about always wearing a condom and all that shit. Wesley’s pretty liberal, but Colorado Springs in general isn’t. There’s still a lot of anti-gay sentiment around, and there was an incident at the Goose three years ago that was pretty ugly. A couple of people got really hurt. And….” He trailed off and just shook his head instead.
“And my dad doesn’t need the bad publicity if people figured out who I was,” Zach said. “Yeah, I’ve thought about that. I just… you know.”
“I know.”
“Security’s pretty good around here and Dad’s been pretty careful about not letting people know what I look like or anything,” Zach went on. “No interviews, no photographs, nothing like that. He’s careful about my privacy, and his security team and I have protocols I’m pretty careful about. But I don’t think any of the guys I’ve been with know who I am. I mean, I never go anywhere where I see any of them outside the bars, anyway.”
“Let’s keep it that way, okay?” David kissed him gently. “I don’t want you hurt. And neither do your folks. I don’t think they give a shit about bad publicity or anything, but they do worry about you.”
“Yeah.” Zach looked up at David, and then curled his hand around the back of David’s head. “I won’t go there anymore, Taff.”
“Okay,” David said, and let Zach draw him down for another kiss. He eased onto his supporting arm and with his free hand, then trailed his fingers down Zach’s muscled belly toward the button on his jeans, sliding them under the top of the waistband. Zach made a small noise that was swallowed up in their mouths, then another when D
avid got the button open and fumbled for the zipper. Zach slid his hand down to help David unzip him, then David sat up and moved to the foot of the bed, pulling off Zach’s socks and tugging at the hem of the jeans.
Zach flung his arm over his eyes, but didn’t protest David’s pulling off the jeans, just waited for the intake of breath, the expression of disgust or shock, but there was nothing. He waited.
Then it came, unexpectedly—the soft touch of lips, like a rose petal falling on his skin, on one of the scars on his thigh. Then another, then the shift in the mattress as David crawled back up on the bed between Zach’s legs, his lips brushing each of the round scars as he crawled. It took a while. Then David laid his lips on the softer skin of Zach’s groin, where there were no scars.
Zach let out a long exhalation of the air he’d held in his lungs from the time David had pulled his jeans off. Against Zach’s hip, David whispered, “Burns?”
“From Esteban’s cigar,” Zach said in the same low tones, as if he might be overheard. He felt David’s swallow, but then the soft mouth was moving again, exploring the hollow of his pelvis, then down to nuzzle his testicles. He sucked in a breath as David tasted him, tugging on the loose skin with gentle lips, then moved to lick the underside of his rapidly rising cock. Oh, God, he thought, David’s mouth was on him, David’s tongue on him, David was going… oh, God…. “Condom,” he gasped in protest, reaching down to cover himself just as David’s mouth had moved to lick the rim of his glans. “Condom….”
David stopped and raised his head. Zach uncovered his eyes to look back at him miserably. “You test positive?” David asked gently.
“No, my last test was clean, but….”
“Have you ever barebacked?”
“No, never, not since Venezuela, I’m not stupid.”
“Ever even gotten blown without a rubber?”
“No….”
“I’ll take my chances,” David said, and closed his mouth over the head of Zach’s cock, his tongue stroking, lips tightening.
Zach almost shot off the mattress. The feeling was incredible, amazing, hot and wet and intense. His hands fisted in the coverlet as David took him deeper; then David swallowed and Zach felt the tightness of David’s throat against him and he cried out wordlessly, his hips bucking as he fucked David’s mouth and fist. The fingers of David’s free hand dug into the taut flesh of Zach’s ass, holding on.
David pulled away just as Zach started to come, cupping his hand over Zach’s cock so that his come flooded over David’s fingers. Then he moved up over Zach, dipping his head to kiss him. Zach tasted himself on David’s tongue, then jerked in surprise as David slicked Zach’s come on his own cock, then rocked forward, his cock sliding between Zach’s thighs to rub against the sensitive skin behind his balls. Zach moaned, rousing again, or still, as David’s hands and tongue and cock teased and soothed and tormented and pleased, until he was crazy with the sensation, wild with need and lust and love and hunger, so that when David’s fingers found their way inside him and stroked gently, he barely even recognized the sensation, only the brush of beautiful pressure on that needy place, and he came again, burying his hands in David’s hair and kissing him frantically as he cried his release into David’s mouth.
And then he jerked back as he realized that David’s fingers were deep in his ass, where he’d sworn no one else would ever go, and he stared in disbelief at his lover. “What the fuck?” he gasped.
The pleasure on David’s face faded. “What?”
“Get your fucking fingers out of me. Now,” Zach growled. David obeyed and Zach tried not to jerk away, not to overreact. It was okay. It was okay, he told himself fiercely. It was David, for God’s sake…. He forced a smile and said, “Sorry. Reaction,” and reached up to kiss David again, but David resisted, frowning.
“Are you okay?” he asked, pulling back against Zach’s hand on his neck.
“Yeah. Sorry. I didn’t mean to snarl at you. It was okay. It was good.” Zach’s mouth twisted. “Oh, God, tell me I haven’t fucked up again.”
“No,” David said slowly. “No, I’m just… oh, shit. I’m sorry, Zach. I didn’t think….”
The smile came a little easier now, still difficult, but more honest. “I hope you weren’t thinking,” he said, “cuz God knows I wasn’t. It’s okay. I’m sorry I overreacted. It’s okay. It’s okay.” He kissed David again, this time desperately, wanting it to be the way it was, wanting to take away the tension that tautened David’s body.
The tension eased and David moved to lie beside him, his waist in the curve of Zach’s arm. He rested his chin on Zach’s chest and said soberly, “You’re okay, then?”
“Better than okay,” Zach said. “Much better.” He reached up his free hand and stroked David’s hair gently. “That was awesome, Taff. I never realized you could do anything like that and have it be half as good as…. Well, you know.”
“You’re such a dweeb,” David said, laughing. “It’s called anal sex. And yeah, it’s nice. It can be fantastic. But it’s not the only thing you can do together, you know. Sex isn’t just about fucking. And love isn’t just about sex.” He bent his head and kissed Zach’s shoulder. “Though sex is a pretty good part of it. Can I ask a question?”
Zach blinked. “Sure.”
“Why did you buzz your hair? Is it just part of the whole biker thing, or the whole Army thing?”
“Shit, Taff, that has to be the weirdest after-sex question I ever heard.”
“So?”
Zach regarded him with solemn eyes. “Actually, I didn’t cut it. About two months after I got back from Venezuela, it all fell out. The doctors said it was a weird after-effect of vitamin deficiency. I only ate crap for five years, but then when I got home and started eating real food again, my hair fell out.”
“Weird,” David agreed.
“It just started growing back in about six months ago, and it was really patchy at first, so I kept it more or less shaved until it started coming back in normal again. It’s growing slow. I’m wondering if it’ll be curly again; one of the doctors said that it might come back completely different from what it was. Though it looks like it’ll still be black, anyway.” He looked away and went on. “I didn’t really mind not having any hair for a while, you know. Esteban used to drag me around by it, and pet it, and crap like that. So it’s kind of nice not having it as a reminder. I’m thinking maybe I’ll let it grow out again in a year or so, see what happens with it.” He snorted. “Assuming it does.”
“Shame if it doesn’t,” David said. “I like long hair on a guy.”
Zach flashed him a quick smile, then turned his head away again. Yeah, he thought, thinking of the sketchbook upstairs. The pictures of Jerry showed he had a headful of curls, just like he himself had once had. “Okay,” he said. “My turn for weird questions.”
“Okay,” David said.
“You said there’s more to sex than just fucking, right? So how many guys have you actually fucked?”
David laughed. “Jeez. Three. Chris, Steve, and Jerry. The only serious relationships I’ve had, as in live-in relationships. I’ve had other relationships, but those three are the only serious ones.”
“Who was the first?”
“Chris. My roommate in college.”
“Were you scared?”
David came up on his elbow and looked down at Zach, who was watching him with solemn eyes and teeth worrying his lower lip. He looked so much like the child Zach that David had to chuckle. “Scared spitless,” he admitted. “But Chris wanted it, so….” He shrugged. “I was fine with the other stuff, the frottage, the blow jobs, but….”
“The what? Frot… what?”
“Frottage.” David grinned. “What we just did. What we did in the shower. Rubbing off on each other.”
“It has a fucking name?”
The grin became a laugh. “Jesus, Zach, everything has a name.”
“Not this,” Zach said, pointing to the groove above his uppe
r lip. “Try and find a name for that.”
“Spaz. Dweeb. Microcephalic moron.” David kissed him. “You are so mental.”
“So this Chris guy wanted you to fuck him?”
“Yeah. He asked me to. I wasn’t sure. I mean, shit, yeah, I wanted to, but all I could think was that it must hurt like a bitch, but Chris said not. He said it might hurt a little to start, but if I was careful, it wouldn’t hurt. It would feel good.” He shrugged. “I have to say it felt good from my perspective.”
“Yeah,” Zach said. “I can’t imagine it feeling good from his perspective, but I’ve been with enough guys to know that there are some that really get off on it.” He looked away, then asked shyly, “I’m sorry about last night. I just….” he trailed off.
“You just wanted sex and I was available,” David said.
“No. No. I just,” Zach swallowed, “I just wanted sex with you and that was the only kind I knew. I never knew about this other stuff. I mean, yeah, blowjobs. But I gave you one of those.” He glanced back at David, ducking his head so he was looking up at him through his lashes. “Was it okay? I don’t have a lot of experience with that.”
“Good thing,” David said, “because if you were more experienced with that you would have killed me.”
“Did I hurt you last night?”
David knew he wasn’t talking about the blowjob. “It hurt to start with, yeah. But by the time you were done, it felt good. I never thought I’d say it, but I wouldn’t mind doing it again, if that’s what you wanted.”
“I can’t give you what you want,” Zach said. “I can’t let you….”
“Did I ask?” David cut him off. He eased off the bed and pulled at the spread. “Get up a minute, will you?”
Zach obeyed and David pulled the spread off the bed and rolled it up. “That’s two bedspreads I have to wash today,” he complained, but folded down the top sheet and gestured for Zach to crawl under. “Later.” He followed Zach into the bed, and put his arm around Zach’s neck, shifting on the pillows until Zach’s head was on his shoulder. “There. That’s good. You comfortable?”
Dreamspinner Press Year Four Greatest Hits Page 17
