by AJ Rose
“Maybe she’s mad because she ain’t gettin’ any.”
“Does she even want to get laid? I mean, come on, it’s not like she has a personal life,” Chris said speculatively. Donnie laughed, the motion transferring to Chris’s back. Tentatively he leaned his head against Donnie’s, his demeanor going from indignant to serious in the span of a couple pounding heartbeats. “I think I’m interested because it’s you,” he said, dropping his voice to something more intimate. “I mean, if I’m going into uncharted territory, wouldn’t it make sense I’d want to do it with my best friend?”
Donnie returned the pressure on his head, leaning farther back as well. “Not usually for something like this, Chris. Going to a gay bar, maybe. Getting your first tattoo, sure. Skydiving, hell yes. Fucking your best friend doesn’t usually hit most guys’ fantasies.”
“Did it ever hit yours? I mean before you knew I thought of you like that.” Chris couldn’t help but be curious.
“All the time,” Donnie admitted. “You’re right up my alley, you asshole.”
Chris grinned into the darkness. “Yeah? You have a type?”
“Short, runner’s build, sassy. Though I have to say, you’re more butch than my usual. Sassy sometimes means a bit of a princess.”
“I don’t know if I have a type. Not for guys,” Chris mused, thinking it over. “Apparently overbearing, bitchy women are my type of girl.”
“What would you call those same traits in a guy?” Donnie asked. “I know it’s a double standard, but whatever. It’s just us, so be honest.”
Chris shrugged, then let his head drop to Donnie’s shoulder, and with the loss of resistance, Donnie’s fell to his shoulder, so their ears touched.
“Overbearing and bitchy doesn’t change with the presence or absence of a dick.” But he knew what Donnie was asking and shrugged. “I don’t know. Self-possessed and in control, knows what he wants. Dominant.” At the idea, a shiver raced up his spine. “Not like beat-me-with-a-flogger dominant, though. I mean more commanding. Big presence.”
“Hate to break it to you, buddy, but you’re barking up the wrong tree with me. I’m not the order-giving type in bed.”
Chris’s pulse picked up. “Then how are you in bed?”
“You’ve seen me in action, dude. We’ve shared hotel rooms and brought chicks back on more than one occasion. Hell, we had that threesome that one time.”
A fact of which Chris was well aware. The memories of that night had been his go-to wank material since the idea of fucking Donnie had smashed into his conscious thoughts. With one alteration: Donnie fucked him and the girl between them disappeared.
“Yeah,” he agreed, his voice hoarse. “You’re not selfish in bed. You like making your partner happy. And you may get aggressive, but it’s always when she was begging for more.” That was it. He was hard as the rock on which they sat. Unable to help it, he turned his face toward Donnie’s, his eyelashes brushing Donnie’s stubbled cheek. He fluttered them, deliberately tickling his friend. “Your bed mates always leave with a smile. I mean, the female ones.”
“I try to make sure they all do,” Donnie said, his voice just as croaky as Chris’s.
“I’m going to sit up,” Chris said in warning. He did so, sliding off the rock to walk around and face his friend. “Scoot back.” When he did, Chris climbed onto his lap, straddling him. “I want to try it, sleeping with a guy. I don’t trust just any guy, though, and if there’s one man I know who can make our friendship survive the test, it’s you. But that’s not only why I want to have sex with you.” Donnie’s breath caught, and tentatively, he put his hands on Chris’s thighs and rubbed, possibly wiping his sweaty palms, possibly caressing, probably both. “It’s because you’re a big, tough guy, and you turn me on, make me laugh, have my trust, and are smokin’ hot.” He grinned, hoping Donnie wouldn’t dump him on his ass.
“Oh, is that all?” Donnie coughed.
When he did so, Chris felt the jump in his crotch from the involuntary muscle reaction. Donnie was hard, too, and the sensation, wholly unfamiliar to Chris, hadn’t even registered. He pressed his hips down, bringing their tumescent flesh together. Donnie groaned and wound his arms around Chris’s waist, pulling him closer. Chris looked down into that shadowed face and knew the minute he’d climbed on the rock, he was a goner. This time, when their lips met, Donnie didn’t need a second to register what was happening, and his tongue plunged into Chris’s mouth, snapping the tension that had been building between them for days.
I guess we’re going to fuck it out, Chris thought gleefully as Donnie lay back on the flat rock, and Chris descended with him, their lips fused together. He shamelessly humped into Donnie’s dick, so beyond turned on, he wouldn’t have been surprised if he rutted to completion doing nothing more than they were now. What stopped him was not wanting to have the mess in his BDUs. Donnie’s hands on his ass squeezed, and when his cheeks parted—an entirely unfamiliar sensation since girls tended to go for his dick—need washed over him, and he gasped.
“Donnie,” he said between desperate kisses.
“Yeah?”
“Please, please do something.”
“Like what?”
“I don’t know, whatever it is that comes next.”
“There’s no script, Chris. What do you want?”
Chris knew instantly. A dick up his ass. He didn’t know how or why the act held his attention so raptly, but he needed to know, as scared as he was to let someone, even Donnie, inside him.
“Fuck… me.” He said the second word before he could chicken out.
“Do you have something?” Donnie rasped, his tongue working down Chris’s jaw and neck, sending ripples of pleasure straight down his spine.
“Shit, no,” he cursed. He hadn’t come to find his friend to do more than talk.
“I’m not spit-fucking you bare. Not for your first time.”
Chris was just afraid enough of butt sex not to argue, but apparently his disappointment was obvious enough in the dim night to embarrass him, because Donnie laughed.
Heat suffused Chris’s cheeks. “What?” he demanded, doing a push-up off the other man.
“The look on your face. You’ve only thought about that one thing the last few weeks, haven’t you?”
“Yeah,” Chris admitted. He didn’t know how to say he’d also pictured Donnie on his knees without sounding like a slutty porn star, so he stayed quiet. Maybe he wasn’t cut out for this after all. Maybe he should have just stuck to girls and left what was in his head to jerk-off fantasies. He knelt up and started to slide off the rock, willing his hard-on to subside.
Donnie grabbed his wrist, halting his retreat. “Where are you going?”
“No… stuff,” he waved his hand while trying to inconspicuously press on his erection to ease it.
“Oh my god, Chris. I fucking hate you sometimes,” Donnie growled, pulling him back down for a fierce kiss.
“Huh?” Chris asked as soon as his mauled mouth was free to speak.
“There’s so much more to sex with two guys than anal. Do you know there are some guys who never stick their dicks in people, or have one stuck in them?”
Chris gaped. “That’s a thing?”
“Yeah,” Donnie laughed. “My god, you’re cute right now with your innocence.”
“Fuck off,” Chris growled, the words losing heat when Donnie started to work on the front of his pants.
“Just… let me, okay?”
Chris nodded, lifting himself to give Donnie more room to move. When their pants were open, Donnie drew their dicks out and wrapped one mammoth hand around both lengths, jerking them together.
“Different, yeah?” he rasped, watching Chris’s face morph from curious to pleasure-ridden in seconds.
Chris nodded, his nerves singing as he humped into Donnie’s hand. He wished it wasn’t so dark. He wanted to see. But it wasn’t enough. He wanted more, wanted skin to skin, to feel the hair he knew was on Donnie’s chest against
his nipples. Lowering his face, he rubbed his smooth cheek against Donnie’s rough one, reveling in the new sensations.
“Lie on your back,” Donnie whispered, flicking his ear with his tongue.
Chris complied and the sound of Velcro being separated was loud in the lakeshore quiet. Donnie pulled apart Chris’s BDU top and hiked up the tank beneath to pec level. Chris’s brain shorted out when Donnie dropped to his knees and closed his mouth over the head of Chris’s cock, one hand wrapped around the base and the other toying with Chris’s nipples. He squirmed and moaned, lifting his head to see. The silhouette of Donnie’s head bobbing over his lap had him close to coming in seconds, and it was obvious to him Donnie was no slouch with the cocksucking.
Is he going to want a blow job? he thought, trying to focus on more than the gathering pressure in his balls. Will I suck at giving a blow job? His earlier anxiety rippled through him, and his climax receded as his brain veered off into nerve-wracking territory.
Donnie pushing his trousers down to the tops of his thighs got his attention, and when his fingers pushed into Chris’s mouth, he instinctively sucked them, running his tongue between them and making Donnie moan around his dick. The vibration jolted Chris’s pleasure up a few notches. He licked and kissed Donnie’s fingers, pretending it was Donnie’s dick and taking it for practice if he was going to reciprocate.
He wasn’t prepared for Donnie to take his hand away, part his cheeks, and ease one of his spit-slicked fingers into Chris’s asshole. Nearly jumping off the rock, Chris hollered at the intrusion, which was awkward and a little painful, but then Donnie lit him up from inside at the same time he took his cock all the way down. The feel of his nose against Chris’s pubic bone overwhelmed him with sensation very quickly, and he huffed a breath and could only watch, his knees falling as far apart as possible in his restrictive trousers.
The finger in his ass monopolized his focus, and he found himself squirming to hump it and fuck into Donnie’s mouth. As soon as he realized what he was doing, he ground his hips to a halt, but Donnie shook his head and pulled off his dick with a pop.
“You can fuck my mouth.” And he dived back down, unaware of what his words did to Chris. He withdrew his finger, and Chris whined a negative, but the stretch of two fingers had him throwing his head back and staring at the stars above him while stars inside him exploded. Instinct took over and he fucked himself into wet heat and onto the penetrating fingers, his world reduced to what was happening to his ass and cock and the man doing it to him.
He was so far gone, he couldn’t even warn against what was coming, and when Donnie moved the hand on his cock down to his balls and tugged on them, that was it. The grip was intense, but so was every sensation in his entire pelvic region. He came, and he came hard, with a shout that echoed in the lake basin and bounced to the peaks of the mountains. His hearing reduced to a whine as his blood rushed everywhere, and his muscles spasmed and released rhythmically, like a whole body orgasm.
As awareness returned, the sound of a hand on flesh reached him, and he saw Donnie over him, straddling his legs and beating off above his softening dick, making noises like he was close.
“Come on,” he urged. “Splatter me with it.”
“Hnnngh,” Donnie groaned and the warm spurts hit Chris’s skin and snagged in what little pubic hair he grew and along his limp dick. He reached down to smear it on himself, giving his oversensitive shaft an experimental tug. Another pulse hit the back of his wrist, and he suddenly had to taste it. Panting, Donnie watched him lift his hand to his mouth and lick, and the salty tang burst across his tongue. Donnie fell to his knees again and licked his own spunk from Chris.
“Oh my god,” he said incredulously, his prick giving an almighty twitch despite being thoroughly exhausted. “That’s so hot.”
“Yeah, you are,” Donnie agreed, breathing heavily.
They stared at each other for a long minute, and the shame Chris had expected to accompany his first experience with a guy never came. There was no regret, just an incredible surge of affection for the man in front of him. He sat up, feeling the chilly air for the first time since they’d sat on the rock, and pulled down his undershirt. Then he clenched his fist around the Velcro band on Donnie’s BDU top and yanked him forward.
“Is that how it is every time?” he asked, brushing his lips against Donnie’s.
“No,” Donnie answered, breathing hard into Chris’s mouth.
Chris’s asshole twitched with the ghost impressions Donnie’s fingers had left behind. He kissed Donnie hard, faint traces of come reaching his taste buds and nose, tanging the air between them. He wanted to find out what was different about this time, but he was afraid Donnie would say it wasn’t as good as it had been for Chris.
With that thought, his insecurity surged, and he slowed the kiss to a stop. No one had played his body like Donnie just had. No one had taken him from zero to holy-fucking-shit at such a breakneck speed. But he’d just lain there, let Donnie do all the work, and hadn’t given the man any reason to want a repeat.
Hell, if Chris were Donnie, he wouldn’t want a repeat either. No one wanted to fuck a limp noodle.
“We good now?” Donnie asked, searching Chris’s face.
There was the shame.
He only did that to shut me up, so we’d get it out of our systems and go back to the way things should be.
“Yeah, we’re good,” he whispered, not trusting his voice to remain steady and keep from betraying his thoughts.
Well, if he thinks once is enough, he’s out of his fucking mind. Next time, I’ll fuck him so stupid his only option is to want more. Like I do now.
Because the one thing Chris hated was being told he couldn’t have something.
22
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Day 45
Bamforth National Wildlife Refuge northwest of Laramie, Wyoming
* * *
Civilization is like a thin layer of ice upon a deep ocean of chaos and darkness.
—Werner Herzog
* * *
THE DEEP NIGHT HELD THE chirp of crickets, the chittering scurry of furry creatures, and the occasional hoot of an owl in search of dinner. Mist shrouded their footsteps where the cool ground battled the warm air. Elliot felt like he should be wearing a hooded cloak and carrying a scythe instead of a newly laden backpack and Ghost’s leash, attached to a new harness. Ghost looked ethereal in the moonlight.
He’d protested shackling the dog, but Ash suggested if the dog’s footing slipped in the mountains, an anchor of sorts wouldn’t be a bad idea. After all, they’d gotten climbing equipment for themselves. It only made sense. Elliot had joked that maybe he’d get a harness to carry Ghost on his chest like he would a baby.
Ash scared him by giving it serious thought.
Three human figures and one canine split the mist into swirls and eddies in their wake. Elliot, Ash, and Brian neared their campsite in Bamforth National Wildlife Refuge by the vague light of the Cheshire Cat-smile moon.
“I’m starving,” Charlotte said as they approached the small fire she and the others sat around. “What’d you get?” Alongside the coals rested two pots of water, ready to be boiled.
“Beef stew, spaghetti, Jamaican BBQ chicken, chili mac,” Brian sing-songed as he tossed a pouch to each person. “Teriyaki chicken and rice, shepherd’s pie, chicken and mashed potatoes, and for me, lasagna with meat sauce. Feel free to barter, trade, beg, plead, steal to your heart’s content.” He sat in front of the fire and hefted one of the pots to put it on the grate directly over the flames.
“Does this spaghetti have meatballs?” Riley asked skeptically. “They didn’t have any Spaghetti-Os?”
Elliot winked at him, taking up the other pot to help boil the water. “Don’t worry, kid. After this, we’ll do dessert.”
Riley immediately perked up. “Dessert?”
“Yep, freeze-dried apple cobbler and freeze-dried ice cream,” Ash said as if it were the most abhorr
ent thing he’d ever heard of.
Elliot, however, knew differently. Ash had taken way more time than normal to pick out things in forgotten storeroom of the camping store that had long ago been raided. They’d lucked out immensely in the quantity of food they’d been able to acquire from a box someone had clearly missed, and Ash had said over and over he wanted to take as much as possible in case they had unexpected trouble in the mountains. “We’re not going to be the next Donner Party,” he’d grumbled.
Elliot had to ask Brian what he’d meant by that, having never heard of the Donner Party. Brian had smiled but only just. “Group of pioneers going west got stuck for the winter in the mountains in Utah, I think it was. They had to eat each other to survive.”
Elliot was horror-stricken.
“Mom, I’m never complaining about your cooking again,” Riley said, sticking his tongue out to convey his disgust.
“I’m never eating fish again,” Elliot agreed.
They were all tired and hungry. The last few days had seen little in the way of game to trap, and they’d been down to sharing food pouches to the point where it was worrisome they’d run out.
When they’d crossed into Wyoming, Elliot had almost cried. He’d only known because Ash had shown him the border between states on the GPS screen as they’d crossed it. Elliot had whooped and kissed Ash for all he was worth. Luckily, Ash had come up laughing, the others joining in. All except Tim, who’d stared back the way they’d come.
Shortly after that, Elliot had had an absence seizure.
No one seemed to notice, and he didn’t call attention to it because they would only worry and try to move faster. He’d breathed deeply, concentrated on putting one foot in front of the other, and kept himself away from Tim. Ghost had licked his hand, and he’d patted the dog’s head in reassurance. He was fine. They were so close now, a few days more and he’d be in proximity to a hospital. He could return to almost-business-as-usual.
