Men in Love: M/M Romance

by Jerry L. Wheeler

  If your lover is in Baltimore, he asked, what are you doing here? I wasn’t sure if he meant here in his apartment or here in Washington. What do you mean? I asked. Why aren’t you with him, he asked, doesn’t he know how lucky he is to have you? Isn’t he afraid someone might come along and steal you away? Someone like me? He believes in me, I said, in us. And you, he said, do you believe? Yes, I said, I believe.

  As I walked around the bed to the door of the bedroom, he fell back on the bed, his head hanging over the end so he could see upside down, out the door, down the short corridor to where I stood, putting on my T-shirt. I meant what I said, he said, about your lover being lucky. I know, I said, I meant what I said, too. I put my jacket on, and he got out of bed and walked toward me with his cock still semi-erect. His cock was as beautiful as the rest of him. I wanted you to fuck me, he said, I wanted to feel you all the way inside me. He held my face in his hands and kissed me in a way that made me instantly hard again.

  We bent slightly so that I could I pick up the brown paper bag with the carton of milk in it. Let me know if it doesn’t work out, he said. You know where to find me, I said. All you have to do is whistle, I said. You know how to whistle, don’t you?

  The Missing Piece

  Colton Aalto

  Since I had an upcoming triathlon looming on the horizon and the weather offered an unusually warm spring day, I had no choice but to get in a long training run. The air was chilly when I started, but the hot sun and clear skies meant the temperature jumped quickly, and by the end of my run, I was sweating and had stripped off my shirt. I was stretching and cooling down when Professor Sanders spotted me. “Do you have a minute, Skylar?” he asked.

  A minute? Hell, I had all night for Liam Sanders. As if I would ever be so lucky! Sanders was hands-down the hottest professor on campus, the resident heartthrob for the straight coed / gay boy half of the University of Colorado student population. His classes were wildly popular, partly attributable to his being a great teacher, and partly because, as a group of drunk sorority sisters once articulated for me in vivid detail, Sanders was amazingly easy on the eyes.

  I had a crush on Sanders but no reason to be optimistic about anything happening. Sanders was married, happily from all the evidence. I met his husband a couple of times at events sponsored by the gay campus group, and the man was as hot as Sanders. Had I been in Sanders’s shoes, with a husband like that, I wouldn’t have given me a second look. So, wishing Sanders was single and interested in me was a pipe dream.

  Still, if Sanders wanted to talk, I was all over it. I could happily stare at the man for hours. “Sure,” I replied, noticing for the first time a hint of gray in Sanders’s jet black hair. To me, it made him sexier.

  I was only wearing running shorts, and I thought Sanders gazed at me a microsecond longer than normal, maybe even paying extra attention to my bare chest. It was undoubtedly my imagination, but I made a mental note to lose the shirt after my runs if even a remote chance existed that I would see Sanders.

  Normally, I would have welcomed Sanders’s attention, imaginary though it probably was, but the wild idea of Sanders cruising me created a problem. My cock stirred to life. My thin running shorts wouldn’t do much to mask an erection if I got one. I tried thinking about cold water.

  Sanders pulled me to the side of the hallway and said, “I have an opportunity I thought may interest you. Some friends of mine have a huge, state-of-the-art house in Denver that’s computerized to the hilt, but they’ve had nothing but trouble with the system. What they need is a troubleshooter. I thought of you because of your computer engineering degree and software expertise. Hours would be flexible, pay good, and I think you’d enjoy getting to know Kiel and Leland.”

  Kiel and Leland weren’t the most gender-specific names, and I pondered the odds of my future employers being men and, beyond that, possibly gay. If they were friends of Sanders and his husband, they could definitely be a gay couple. But that was irrelevant. I desperately needed the money, so even if the job was pulling apart old computers on the night shift at a recycling facility, I would have jumped on it.

  “I’m absolutely interested,” I replied. “I really appreciate you thinking of me.” The idea of Sanders thinking about me gave me a warm feeling, and my pesky cock stirred again. If thinking about cold water wouldn’t do it, perhaps thinking about snow would. But fuck, Sanders was so close I could smell his deodorant or maybe his soap, and I wanted to dive into his dark eyes. His lips beckoned.

  “Hopefully you can help Kiel and Leland,” Sanders said. “They’re great guys. I’ll put you in touch with them via email.” He smiled and clasped my shoulder, causing me to freeze and melt at the same time, and then drifted down the hallway. I was left to fantasize yet again about Sanders kissing me, staring at his slender figure while waiting patiently for my cock to go down so I wouldn’t scandalize anyone on the way to the locker room.

  At least I now knew the mysterious Kiel and Leland were men, but anyone wealthy enough to own a state-of-the-art house was likely to be three times my age, maybe four. So Kiel and Leland could be in wheelchairs. Still, the job sounded interesting, and the money would be a godsend.

  Four days later, I made my way to Denver’s Lodo district to meet Kiel. Lodo, short for lower downtown, is part of the trendy area of Denver. A largely desolate stretch of old warehouses thirty years ago, it blossomed when urban sophisticates reclaimed the brick warehouses for lofts. Upscale restaurants, bars, and boutiques, along with professional baseball, followed.

  I found the address Kiel emailed me. The house was newly constructed but done tastefully, using old bricks on the façade to blend into the neighborhood. The red brick warehouses on either side had been converted into spectacular lofts. I hit the buzzer next to a massive, rusted steel door, and it swung open to reveal the most gorgeous man I had ever seen.

  Full disclosure. In college, I stumbled upon a different “most gorgeous man I had ever seen” once or twice a week. But the man smiling at me in the doorway was incredible. He was three or four inches over six feet, perhaps thirty or thirty-five, with wavy blond hair, a long, straight nose, and a matching long, straight jawline. “You must be Skylar,” he said, giving me a dazzling smile right out of a men’s modeling magazine.

  Stunned, I recovered enough to nod and mumble, “Uh, yeah.” All I could think about were the thick red lips in front of me and how I wanted the stud in the door to sweep me into his arms and kiss me.

  The Adonis introduced himself as Kiel. He shook my hand with a strong grip, and I fixated on the thick veins crisscrossing the back of his big hand. “Thanks so much for agreeing to do this,” Kiel said. “My husband Leland talked me into installing a fancy computer system when we built the house, but there’s something to be said for simplicity, reliability, and ease of operation, and this system fails on all three points.”

  I followed Kiel into the house, and he gave me a quick tour. I wasn’t sure whether I was more in awe of the house or my host. I kept scoping out Kiel whenever I thought he wouldn’t notice.

  The house was massive, half devoted to public rooms and half to Kiel and Leland’s private living quarters. The private quarters boasted a huge master suite, and I couldn’t help but think about Kiel in the big bed and naked in the massive, four-headed shower. The public rooms were made for entertaining, with a giant kitchen graced by sparkling black marble countertops, a living / reception room big enough for a hundred people, a dining room with seating for fifty, and a gallery with wall after wall of expensive-looking modern art. The flower-covered rooftop deck had stunning views of the Rocky Mountains, Denver’s recently renovated Union Station, and Coors Field, where the Colorado Rockies play baseball. The backdrop to the east was Denver’s skyline, topped, at least for the moment, by billowing white clouds as an early spring thunderstorm rolled off toward the plains.

  Kiel ushered me to the computer room, which was almost as big as the apartment I shared with three roommates, and I beg
an tackling the system. It was devilishly complicated, a mishmash of differing hardware and incompatible software. Rather than integrate the components, the installers simply added redundant items. It was no wonder the system seldom worked.

  I did what I could, solving three pressing problems, but after four hours of work, I had to tell Kiel it would take much more to get the system to run seamlessly. “Do it,” Kiel said quickly. “Take your time, work when you want. You’ve already gotten some things to function that haven’t shown life since the house was built. I’d give anything to have this system run the way it was supposed to run, even if Leland gets the last laugh.”

  It took me microseconds to agree. I loved challenges, and the computer system was more intricate than anything I had touched in college. I needed the money. And the chance to be around Kiel, even occasionally, sent a stab of desire to my cock.

  Of course, I was getting a crush on a yet another presumably happily married man. I needed to stop thinking about Kiel. At least frequent trips to Denver would give me a reason to scope out some different guys on Grindr.

  I worked off and on fixing Kiel and Leland’s computer system. Within a week, Kiel gave me a key to the house and told me to come and go as I pleased. “You should text me your schedule, though,” Kiel said. “Otherwise you could find we have a hundred society matrons for a charitable fundraiser, and they all think you’re a waiter.”

  Leland traveled extensively, so I didn’t meet him until I had been working for almost two weeks. I had a crush on Kiel until I met Leland, and then I couldn’t decide between the two. Leland was a few years older than Kiel. He was Kiel’s height and had the same toned, muscular build, but while Kiel was blond and smooth shaven, Leland had curly dark hair and a couple of days of scruff. Both Leland and Kiel could have walked off the pages of GQ. They could have offered workout tips and modeled designer duds on the way.

  My schedule of classes and labs during the day meant I often worked at the house in the evenings and late at night, and Kiel or Leland began offering me a glass of wine as I finished. As I got to know them better, the glass of wine turned into glasses of wine with dinner. Leland started it, telling me one night he hated dining alone when Kiel was out of town. Soon my trips to Lodo involved dinner with either Kiel or Leland, or both of them.

  And the trips became more frequent. I could work on the house’s computer system remotely, but I found myself making the trip to Denver anyway, happy to spend what time I could with my employers, whether it was a quick conversation or a lengthy dinner.

  I thoroughly enjoyed spending time with them, but the breaks meant I devoted less time to the computer system, which delayed progress. To my chagrin, the project ended up taking almost three months, consuming the spring and running past my senior year exams. Kiel and Leland weren’t bothered by the delay.

  I was one visit short of finishing the project when the three of us ate dinner one night and Leland proposed we retire to the big reception room at the front of the house. An impressive grand piano in the room caught my eye.

  “Do you play?” Leland asked with surprise after I remarked about the piano. It wasn’t every day I ran across a vintage Steinway.

  “Not as much as I’d like,” I replied. “But I did a double major in music and computer engineering.”

  “Play something for us!” Leland said. His dark eyes sparkled, and a smile lit up his face. Damn, the man was beautiful.

  I sat down at the piano, wondering what to play. Spotting a signed poster of a Broadway musical, I played three songs from the show. I was surprised I remembered the music as well as I did, but hummable Broadway tunes are easy for me to remember.

  “That was incredible!” Leland said when I finished. Sometimes the man was an open book, and I could tell he loved the music.

  “You know any jazz?” Kiel asked.

  I did. Jazz is great fun because it can be so creative and spontaneous. I played an old Frank Sinatra standard and a Cole Porter tune I had arranged myself. Kiel greeted the songs with a loud round of applause, and I couldn’t help laughing.

  “Do you hire out for events?” Leland asked. “We have a charity fundraiser this weekend, and it would be perfect to have you play for an hour or two before dinner.”

  I had never done anything like that and found the prospect daunting, but Kiel and Leland brushed away my reservations. Four days later, I found myself stuffed into a rented tux playing jazzed-up American Songbook standards. The audience of society couples, A-gays, and political types was wildly enthusiastic.

  I planned to head back to Boulder after my stint at the piano, but Kiel and Leland insisted I stay for dinner, installing me between them at the head table. They wouldn’t let me leave even when the crowd began to drift out.

  Finally only the three of us remained. Kiel broke open a bottle of ice wine, and he and Leland rehashed the night, telling me stories about some of the guests. I hadn’t realized I had entertained a U.S. Senator and a Congresswoman, along with a billionaire or two. The wine Kiel and Leland served at dinner had been wonderful, and I had guzzled far too much of it even before the three of us added two bottles of ice wine to the carnage. I was in no shape to drive and resigned myself to taking the late bus to Boulder and collecting my car tomorrow.

  Leland asked if I knew Chess, a 1980s musical with a so-so plot and great music written by the two B’s from the pop group ABBA. I played a couple of songs from the show, finishing with “I Know Him So Well,” a duet sung by the two female leads. Leland knew the lyrics and sang it to Kiel as they slow danced. It was touching and romantic, and for the umpteenth time I wished I had a relationship like theirs. I added an extra-jazzy flourish to the end of the song, and when I finished, I remarked on how much Kiel and Leland had in common.

  “Not as much as you might think,” Kiel said, untying his bow tie and flopping down on a couch. He unbuttoned the top couple of buttons of his shirt, giving me my best view yet of his bare chest. Damn, the man looked hot in his tux with the tie dangling from his neck and his smooth chest exposed. My cock stirred. In the back of my mind, a voice said, he’s married, you idiot! And his husband is right next to him!

  “He drags me to Broadway musicals,” Kiel continued, “but I’d rather read a book. In turn, I have to beg him for months to get him into a jazz club for an hour.” Jazz or Broadway, I was good with either. Most of the piano music I knew fell into one camp or the other, and I would happily do both a Broadway show and a jazz club, even the same night.

  “He’d rather work out in the gym than cycle outside,” Leland added, “and I hate stationary bikes and would give anything to do long bike rides together when we’re in town.” The idea of seeing Leland pedaling in a spandex biking outfit sent chills down my spine and made my cock tingle. A second image popped into my mind: me spotting Kiel on a bench press, a sheen of sweat covering his muscles as he strained to lift the bar. Between the two images, I suddenly had weeks of jack-off material.

  “The biggest problem is we’re both tops,” Kiel said, smiling at Leland and ruffling his curly dark hair. “An inconvenient fact meaning our sex life is confined to oral sex and mutual masturbation. Try as we might, neither one of us can handle a cock in the ass.”

  “Your fucking cock is too big,” Leland replied, giving Kiel a sly look.

  “Me? What about your fat beer can?” Kiel protested indignantly. The conversation was doing absolutely nothing to keep my dick under control. My image of Leland in a spandex bike outfit and Kiel in gym gear devolved into a vision of two big, stiff cocks, one pressing against bike shorts and the other tenting in gym shorts.

  “Yeah, what we really need is a hunky little college bottom.” Leland chuckled. “Even better if he would take both of us at the same time.” Kiel opened his eyes and mouth wide, and he gave Leland a sharp frown. Leland took a moment to realize what he had said, and his face went white as his smile was replaced by a grimace.

  Leland broke the silence, rushing to apologize. “I’m sorry,
Skylar, when I said college boy, uh, college bottom, I, uh, pulled that out of the air. I wasn’t being suggestive. Please don’t take my comment wrong.”

  I had fantasized more than once—okay, constantly—about sex with Kiel or Leland. The thought of being in bed with both of them at the same time came like a blinding revelation. Too bad I didn’t bottom.

  It wasn’t like I had never taken it up the butt, but my bottoming experiences hadn’t been that great. I lost my virginity to a friend in high school who talked me into flip-flopping. He was older and I let him go first, but when it was my turn, he whined about it hurting before I was all the way in, and begged me to take it out. I didn’t get to fuck and was suspicious because his cock was bigger, and I had taken it with no trouble.

  Indeed, I had no trouble taking even an enormous cock up the ass. The dude with that monster between his legs was an older triathlon guy. My predilection for older men made me an easy target, and once the dude discovered I could take his dong, it rapidly became clear I was nothing more to him than a lubed hole. I didn’t seem destined to enjoy bottoming, so I had avoided it during college.

  But if bottoming meant I could sleep with the two gorgeous men staring at me…Who was I kidding? You bet I could bottom! I was less sure about getting double fucked, but if that was what it took, I was signing up. No time like the present to learn a new trick.

  I broke the silence by mumbling, “Um…can I apply for the job?”

  I thought it sounded lame. Kiel and Leland exchanged the briefest of smiles, and Kiel said, “Come here.” In a fog, I sleepwalked from the piano bench to the couch Kiel and Leland occupied. Kiel pulled my head down and pressed his red lips against my mouth. I had fantasized about that moment since I first met him.