by Daryl Banner
“Can you drive me home, too?” blurted Duncan suddenly. “I don’t know if I wanna throw up in the back of a stranger’s car.”
James blanched. “So you’d rather throw up in mine?”
“Best friends with benefits,” sang Duncan, shoving away his phone, stumbling over to me, and slapping a hand to my shoulder. “I live close by. It’s just a ten-minute detour. James owes me.”
“Great. I miss one weekend and I owe you for life now.”
“Yep,” barked Duncan.
When I sat in the driver’s seat and turned the key in the ignition, I felt a surge of excitement at the sound. I hadn’t been behind a wheel in so damned long. My left hand hung over the top of the steering wheel while my right gripped the gear shift. A smile spread over my face as I checked my mirrors.
“Two blocks over and all the—” Duncan let out another belch. “—all the way down.”
James sat next to me, and boy, was he trying his damnedest not to look drunk as shit—which he was. He sat up straight in his seat, eyes wide open, and watched as I pulled out of the parking lot and started my way down the road.
The way to Duncan’s place was calm until he heard a song on the radio and wanted it turned up, then started singing along from the back seat. Badly. James gripped the center console and the handle to his door like armrests the whole way, unblinking and staring ahead at the road.
We came to a stop in front of Duncan’s building to drop him off. He stumbled out of the car, then came to the window and shouted, “Behave, you two!” through the glass before staggering to his doorstep and fumbling with his keys.
Minutes later, we were on the long stretch of road leading back to James’s. He seemed to relax in his seat, finally trusting my handling of his car. I didn’t speed or take turns too quickly. I was completely sober and wanted to take good care of his vehicle.
That didn’t mean I was being good in my mind.
I was full of bad, dirty thoughts.
“I think he likes you,” mumbled James.
My lips curled. “I think you like me.”
James snorted, finding that too funny. “You’re cute, Lucas.”
“You called me Lucky back at the pool hall,” I noted.
“I know. I miss calling you that.” James shifted in his seat and brought his hands to his lap. “Remember when we were just two dudes in an arcade, scared to open up too much to one another?”
“Scared?” I scoffed at him. “Speak for yourself, bitch.”
He chuckled, then peered over at me. “What are we now?”
I wasn’t sure how to answer. James still seemed to be buzzed, but he had sobered up considerably since we left. It still felt like the wrong time to discuss what the hell was going on between us.
“It’s okay,” he murmured over the soft noise of whatever song was playing on the radio. Neither of us seemed to really be paying attention, considering how low the volume was. “We don’t have to call this anything. I understand. I’m not … I’m not trying to make you say anything. I’m just curious.”
I started massaging the end of the gear shift as I chewed on my thoughts. “What do you wanna be?”
“Yours,” he answered too fast, then laughed and brought a fist to his mouth.
It gave me a boost of confidence, hearing that. I lifted my chin and smirked. “Oh, I know that much already.”
He eyed me. “So why’d you ask, then?”
“Because I want to hear it.”
“Hear what?”
“How badly you want me.”
He squirmed in his seat. “But you can understand why that’s difficult for me to answer, right?” He stuffed his hands between his legs. “I mean, I don’t want to be naïve and pretend like we can actually make something work between us.”
I wrinkled my face. “Why couldn’t we?”
“There is literally a decade of time between us, and then some. All of your twenties, for instance. It would be irresponsible of me to want to ‘claim’ you as my boyfriend or something.”
“You speak really articulate for a shitfaced guy,” I observed.
“I’m not shitfaced. I’m buzzed. Barely.” He let out a sigh. “And maybe I’m confused. Maybe I’m just horny. Well, I am just horny. Can you blame me?”
“Nope. I can’t.”
“Fuck, I am so horny.”
“I know.”
“So, so, so fucking horny.”
There were twenty minutes left on this road at the very least before we’d be turning onto James’s street. The road was narrow, and there were only fields of grass, corn, and nothing all around us for miles and miles.
The night, the hum of the engine, and the barely-there music from the radio were our only companions.
So I let out one of my bad ideas to play. “Unzip my pants.”
James turned to me. “Huh?”
“I didn’t stutter, and you’re not shitfaced, so you heard me.”
“Unzip your pants? Now?”
“Right now.”
He reached into my crotch at once and began fidgeting with my pants in pursuit of my button. I didn’t help him at all, sitting in my seat like a king and ignoring his efforts. There was something about making him work for it that gave me a private thrill.
It was addictive, the excitement of having him obey whatever I commanded him to do.
Finally, my button popped open and the fly zipped down. My bulge practically spilled out, fitted as those black jeans were. All the blood in me was already pumping its way down there in waves with eager anticipation. James’s hands expedited that process.
“How’s it look?”
“Perfect,” moaned James.
“Inviting, huh?”
“So fucking inviting.”
“Good. Now get your face in there.”
James didn’t need to be told twice. He leaned over in his seat so far in pursuit of my bulge, his seatbelt choked him at first. He undid his seatbelt, then plunged his face into my crotch. His lips opened up for my bulge, and I felt the heat of his mouth on me.
He tongued the outside of my underwear with such thirsty abandon, my balls already felt wet.
Soaked, even. Fuck, that feels so good.
“It must be heaven down there, huh?” I asked tauntingly from above, keeping my focus deliberately on the road.
His deep moan was my answer, which was both entertaining to hear as well as pleasurable to feel, his moan vibrating my dick.
I let him stay down there for a while as he bathed my whole bulge with his wet tongue. The material of my boxer briefs were so thin and hugged every curve and crevice of my crotch that I felt every single movement of his tongue and his pursed, sucking lips.
I could have closed my eyes and forgotten I was wearing the fuckers at all.
I brought my gear-shift-holding hand to the back of his head, grasped a fistful of his hair, and pulled him off my crotch.
“You ready for more?” I asked him without looking down, like he was just an object for my pleasure, a toy that wasn’t even worth looking at.
“God yes,” he groaned, his lips an inch from my bulge.
I smirked. “You sound so hot begging me for more.”
“I want more.”
“What do you want?”
“Please let me suck your dick.”
“I can’t hear you.”
“PLEASE!” I was really enjoying this. “Let me suck your dick!”
“Out here?” I asked him with mock surprise. “Out here on the road? Where all these ears of corn can see us?”
“Please. Yes. Please.”
“Great. Get my dick out then.”
I still couldn’t be bothered to even assist in making the effort any easier for him. Why exert any effort when I can make him do all the work? James loved being put to work for me.
And it showed in the way he maneuvered the waistband of my underwear down to free my dick. It took him a little rearranging, but it wasn’t long before I was freed and James parted his
lips.
“Did I give you permission yet?”
James stopped an inch away from my dick. “Please,” he finally croaked. “C-Can I suck it?”
“Maybe my dick needs some respect, first. Kiss it.”
He kissed it at once. The touch of his soft, wet lips on the tip of my dick made me melt. Fuck.
Still, despite what this was all doing to me, I maintained the authoritativeness in my voice. “Kiss it again.”
He kissed it again.
“Tell it how much you love it,” I ordered.
“I love you so much.” His voice shook with excitement. “You are the most incredible cock in the world. It would be a total honor to suck you, please, please, please.”
Under any other circumstance, I would have laughed my ass off at seeing this: an older man with his face buried in my crotch, worshipping my young cock and literally telling the thing how much he wanted to make sweet mouth-love to it.
But right then, I was too turned on to find a damned thing funny about it at all.
“How much better is it than your own dick?” I asked.
“So much better. So much bigger. So much stronger.”
“A dick as magnificent as mine gets to come whenever it wants to,” I reminded him. “A dick like mine deserves to get sucked.”
“Yes, it does.”
“You ready to show it how much you love it?”
“Please. Yes. Yes, yes, yes.”
“Get on it, then.”
James devoured my dick the next second.
I couldn’t help but part my own lips, my breath stolen as I felt his tongue bathe every inch of my throbbing dick. He went up and down its length with eagerness, swallowing my whole dick with his every plunge. Each time he came up, the cool air from the car washed over it, adding to the sensations that rippled through me.
He did not stop nor slow down. I let off the gas a little without realizing it, then corrected by pressing my foot on the pedal again. I was fighting my instinct to squirm or buck my hips beneath him. It wasn’t his speed that stole my breath. It was the passion he put into it, like he was literally in love with my cock and wanted to show it with every single twist and pull of his mouth and every drag of his slippery, warm tongue.
“Close,” I let out at once, my breath catching in my throat. “I’m close. I’m close. I’m close.”
He wouldn’t stop. He wanted it. He sucked even harder.
“James,” I warned, gripping his hair again. He wasn’t having it, refusing to stop, refusing to slow down. “Fuck. James. James. Oh, God. James.”
And then I shot.
And still, James didn’t stop.
I shot and I shot and I shot. A moan released itself from my chest as I finally bucked my hips up, plunging my dick as far into his mouth as I could, finishing my release.
James lifted off of me right then and settled back into his seat, out of breath. When I glanced over at him, he had a look on his face like he was floating at sea.
I seriously didn’t expect him to take me over the edge and then swallow. Of course I was clean and hadn’t engaged in risky sexual activity, but James didn’t know that.
I wasn’t sure whether to take it as a sign that James was totally reckless, or as a sign that he completely trusted me.
Without warning, I reached over and grabbed a handful of his crotch. James lurched forward, surprised, then peered at me with watery, hungry eyes, as if wondering what I was going to do. I only kept my eyes on the road, smirked, and squeezed my grip tighter, not letting up at all.
“You asked me earlier what I think we are now,” I murmured over the gentle hum of the car. “I’ll tell you what we are. We’re a pair of two seriously twisted-up, horny motherfuckers who can’t seem to get enough of one another.”
James whimpered as I squeezed his bulge.
His cock, hard as steel inside the confines of his pants, flexed urgently in response.
Two seriously twisted-up, horny motherfuckers doesn’t even begin to cover it.
Chapter 20
LUCKY
I should have known something was up James’s sleeve, especially when he started measuring mine.
“Why are we picking out dress clothes, exactly?” I asked.
James was too busy thumbing through suit jackets on the rack. “You’re going to look so fucking good,” he promised me, his eyes alight and a smile pasted over his face. “Like a king. Did you look at the bowties? What colors spoke to you?”
I stared at him hard. “I ain’t a bowtie kind of guy.”
“You’re going to look hot in a bowtie. Maybe a red one. Or white. Oh, here we go!” He pulled a jacket off the rack. “Hey, what was your shoulder size again? Never mind, I wrote it down.”
It was impossible to get through to James when his mind was set on something. And it was definitely set on something that day. I just didn’t know what it was quite yet.
Then, hours later when we were back at the house and my whole snazzy outfit was bought and paid for, he whipped tickets out of his pocket and fanned the pair of them in front of my face.
I took one and read it. “Concert tickets?”
“Yes. A night of piano classics, including the indomitable music of Chopin.” He grinned. “You, Lucas, are about to get totally schooled in the most beautiful music you’ve ever heard, as performed by one of the greatest pianists in the world. She’s coming to the concert hall at the local college. I scored us tickets.”
I didn’t know what to say. After staring at the tickets in a total stupor, I finally lifted my eyes to him. “Thank you, James.”
“Just wait until you hear that first piano stroke,” he said. “You will realize in that moment, you’ve never heard music before.”
He was right.
It was Thursday night when I found myself in the back of a balcony box. I felt like a million bucks, and James was so damned sharp and good-looking, I could have tackled him right in that balcony box if we weren’t surrounded by men and women twice my age who were all decked out in tuxes, glittering gowns, velvety dresses, and two tons of jewelry.
And when I heard that first stroke of the piano, I was hooked, my eyes glued to the pianist as her fingers danced.
James pressed against my side, shoulder to shoulder, as the piano music swelled around us. It was overwhelming at times, how powerfully the music affected me. I knew I would enjoy attending one of these concerts, at least on some level.
I never anticipated responding to the music at all levels.
Between two of the songs when the audience responded with polite applause (which surprised me, since my instinct was to roar and shout with my enthusiastic clapping), James leaned into me and asked if I was enjoying myself.
To that, I faced him and answered with a kiss. It was a kiss that seemed small at first, but then grew as we both sank into it, our lips locking tightly and throwing away the key.
He wasn’t expecting that. Neither was I.
One of the final songs near the end of the concert, I actually recognized: Chopin. As recognition dawned in me, I felt James’s eyes on the side of my face, which pulled my attention to him. He smiled at me with the tiniest twinkle of nervousness in his eyes. I wondered what he was thinking right then.
Maybe he wanted to say something to me, but felt it was way too soon to even think such a thing.
Maybe I was thinking something similarly, staring at his eyes with the rippling notes and unexpected chords of Frédéric Chopin storming all around us.
Maybe we were just sitting there staring into each other’s eyes wondering what the other one was thinking—an endless loop of wonder and curiosity.
When the final piece concluded and the pianist rose from the bench to take her bow, I was first on my feet, applauding. I could not stop myself from exploding with my appreciation for her hard work. Maybe a part of me was just proud as fuck to be among that audience to experience the life-changing music that night.
Maybe I was just proud to be
at James’s side.
When we crossed the lobby on our way out, I shook my head. “Duncan actually fell asleep through a concert like that? Shit. He doesn’t know what the fuck he’s missing out on.” I caught a scandalized glance from an old couple near me, then leaned into James to add, “I should probably watch my language here.”
“Been telling you that since day one,” James teased back.
I forgot for a moment that we were at a college campus, taking note of the much younger (and less dressed-up) crowd who occupied the seats on the ground level of the auditorium. Many of them were leaving, strolling into the night to return to their dorms or head for the parking lot.
That was what gave me the idea. “You want to walk around the campus a bit before we head back?” I asked James. “I know it’s a work night for you, but—”
“Hell yeah,” James exclaimed. “Let’s do it.”
It was a good thing we did. The campus was actually very well lit, and there were many people around on a random Thursday night, sitting in lit areas with their computers out typing away or just walking about. I imagined them working on term papers that were due tomorrow or typing out essays for their professors on important scientific findings. It filled me with excitement, being on that campus and feeling like a part of the community without having a damned thing to do with it.
I guess you could say I was riding a high the concert gave me.
Nothing could pull me down.
“You ever think about college?” asked James as we passed by a building lined with tall trees, a woman leaning outside its doors smoking a cigarette and staring off into the night.
It was days ago at Ringers that Duncan asked me that same question, albeit in a less kind tone. “Sure, yeah, I do.”
“Before you left home, did you have a plan set in mind?”
That was his more polite way to say “before you ran away”. I always respected James’s sensitivity toward my circumstances. For some reason, on that particular night, I appreciated it more than I ever had before.
“Y’know, if I did have a plan,” I replied, “I’m sure it would’ve involved graduating high school first.”
He nodded. “You know, I could probably talk with Duncan and figure out what’s involved in getting your GED. I mean, assuming you’re sticking around here. I’m just …” He let out a short, nervous laugh. “I guess I’m just looking into the future.”
