Wild Boys

by Richard Labonté

  Outside, the trees are bare, their twisted branches scratching at the silver sky like trees in a spooky cartoon. Our house, Mr. Lee’s house, is a six-bedroom, four-bath Carpenter’s Gothic with three working fireplaces. Mr. Lee has the master bedroom. The next room is a library, full of old first editions, a few pieces of samurai armor and a table covered with fossils and tiny meteorites on clear acrylic stands. The third room is the one Kent and I share. The fourth is the workout room, where Mr. Lee puts Kent and me through our paces. The fifth and sixth are for out-of-town guests, friends of Mr. Lee. In the winter the house smells smoky, with the muddy smell of old wood underneath. Today it’s just the three of us in the house.

  Mr. Lee kisses Kent on the lips. He runs his fingertips against the stubble of Kent’s buzz cut. He speaks to him in hushed tones, almost cooing: “Show him no mercy. None. The blond punk needs to be taught a lesson for what he just did to my Kent-boy.” Mr. Lee will not speak my name today. I have stringy white hair that touches my shoulders. When he says “the blond punk” he is talking about me. “Fuck the blond punk up. Will you do that for me, boy?”

  Kent grunts, a grin flickering at the corners of his lips.

  I sneer: “Fat chance.”

  Mr. Lee’s head swivels and his flashing eyes lock on mine: “Shut your hole, or I will shut it for you!”

  I lick my lips and poke my hand up my T-shirt to rub my smooth stomach muscles. My nut sac tightens, pushing my cock forward against my loose shorts. I tell Mr. Lee I would like to see him try. I really would.

  Mr. Lee stares at me in silence. Then he half-whispers to Kent, “Somebody needs to take this piece of shit down a peg or two.” Kent grunts. His lips widen, and his white teeth flash.

  Kent smacks his right fist into his left palm, looking straight at my eyes. My boner stirs. Mr. Lee unsnaps Kent’s shorts, and they slide down the boy’s hairy legs. He breathes through his nostrils; long, steady inhalations that whistle through his nose hair. He slowly (slooowly) tugs Kent’s boxers down the thighs, the knees, the calves. Kent’s purple cock slaps up against his appendectomy scar, and his smile widens at a slant to reveal his canines. He steps onto the pile of futons Mr. Lee has stacked on the hardwood floor. A bead of sweat untangles itself from his armpit hair and glides down his rib cage, disappearing close to the hip bone. Not once does Kent break his steely gaze.

  “Strip!” Mr. Lee commands. I make a spectacle of loosening the drawstring, inserting my thumbs in the elastic band and peeling my shorts down to my ankles and then kicking them off. I shed my purple T-shirt last. I step onto the futons and stand, legs apart, arms loose at my sides, fingers spread, a couple of feet from Kent. Mr. Lee turns his attention to me. I’m naked and he still pats me down. His hands are rough. He pokes and pinches like he’s inspecting a goat he means to buy. His thumb brushes the blunt head of my penis. I stare at the chest hair through his open shirt and the constellation of honey-colored freckles revealed by the peninsular recession of his hairline. I’m conscious of my breathing now and the steady glare of Kent’s eyes on me. His inspection complete, Mr. Lee looks into my eyes and says flatly, “Now he’s going to kill you.”

  I can’t help but smile, but the look on Mr. Lee’s face is so severe the smile dissipates in half a second. I bend my head toward him. “Kiss your pretty boy good-bye,” I tell him. “There won’t be much to look at after I’m done. I’m putting him down.”

  Mr. Lee frowns, his eyes narrow and he backs off and takes a seat in the corner. Kent licks the cut on his lip I gave him in Round One. He and I face each other; our best blank looks say we mean business, and we take each other in with our eyes until Mr. Lee commands us to start the fight.

  A fight is a fight, and there’s not much you have to say about it. Kent starts it off with a slap across my mouth. It’s a hard slap, nothing stagy or held-back about it. My cheek holds the feeling of that slap the way a cymbal holds a sound when it’s struck. It’s as if the blood in my face is swarming. The slap is meant to pull my full attention to Kent and rile me up, and it does that. I slap him back, and the cut on his lower lip burns bright red again. “More where that came from,” I tell him, clenching my fist and hurling it to his ribs. The blow shoves him back a step, but he flies right back at me, grabs my head and drags me down.

  Kent flips me over his body, snags my leg in his and crawls on top of me, huffing. His hairy thigh brushes up on mine, and I feel his breath hot and wet on my cheek. I squirm, but his body bears down on me, the tight muscle restraining me, smashing me to the floor. Deep down, my lungs let loose an exasperated “Ha,” and I thrust, arching my back, raising my ass off the futon. Kent pounds me back down. His boner swipes up against mine, and my balls seize, sending a cool, rippling wave up my spine to spread like wings across my shoulders. I try to twist, but he’s got me. His teeth click against my earlobe. His cock steels up, so that it no longer feels like flesh. He grabs a fistful of platinum-blond hair and thumps the back of my head on the floor. The blunt pain blurs my vision for a second. I reach up and claw at his face, fingers snagged on a nostril and the corner of his mouth. I dig my pared-down nails into his sweaty skin. He grunts and starts hammering me with his whole body. The constant blows wear me down, and my hand falls from his face.

  “Attaboy, Kent.” I hear Mr. Lee’s strong voice behind me, over my head. “That’s how I like it. Kill the shaggy punk. Show him who’s boss.”

  Kent rolls me over on my side and starts slapping my bare ass. Hard, stinging smacks, like he means to raise welts. The guy’s a dick when he has the upper hand, but, then, who isn’t, right? Far be it from me to judge. He’s in on me tight. I feel his breaths like huffs of steam against the back of my neck, and I reach down deep to my core, trying to bring up the fight from inside myself, while keeping cool, or at least staying as composed as can be with Kent’s boner jabbing between my buttcheeks. I rear back, thrusting my elbow into his rib cage. He groans and pushes off. We roll away from each other and spring to our feet, fists cocked in front of our chests.

  I glance at Mr. Lee. He’s hard as a railroad spike. I smile to myself. He’s busy pulling his shirt off, eyes glued all the while on the shiny wet orbs of Kent’s pale ass, glutes tightening and relaxing as he dances on the balls of his feet. Mr. Lee has a good upper body for a man his age: a chest covered in ginger hair, and a respectable flat gut that bulges slightly when he inhales, showcasing a well-shaped navel, taut and round. For the first six months, he and I shared a bed. Then he set up a room for me. Then Kent moved in. Sometimes Mr. Lee videos our fights, just so we can watch them later, with an icy beer bottle in one hand and the other hand down the waistband of our shorts. He looks over at me, and our eyes meet. His flash angrily at me, and his upper lip curls. “Get him, Kent, get him,” he commands his pet. I throw a fast right that lands on Kent’s mouth. I smirk as the boy stumbles back, his shoulder blades smacking the wall. I dash in and ply his long, slender belly with punches. He takes the blows without much expression, except for the breathy grunt each time my knuckles make contact. Kent bends down, arms forward, trying to block my jabs. I grab him by the head and haul him away from the wall to the center of the makeshift mats.

  It’s not exactly what you think about Kent and me. We’re not killers or ninja assassins. We’re not fighting over Mr. Lee’s affections like a couple of bitches either. The three of us hold to each other like family—like a wolf pack, looking out for each other, playing rough to keep ourselves tough so we can protect each other and what we’ve made of ourselves here together. Kent and I fuck all the time. Sometimes Mr. Lee calls us into his room, and the three of us pile on to each other, staying warm on body heat through a bitter winter’s night. Rarely, too rarely, Mr. Lee fucks us, or lets us fuck him. He’s not so much into fucking these days, but he lets us know that he is looking out for us all the time. We play these games of anger and rage more for therapy than for any other reason. They’re like primal screams, “human spirit games,” Mr. Lee likes to say. It’s our way
of pushing past eighteen years of social conditioning to be servile, repressed and oblivious like the rest of the world, commodity fetishists every one. Sometimes I jokily call Mr. Lee “comrade” and ask him when’s the revolution starting. Sometimes I ask him if he’s practicing psychotherapy without a license. Sometimes I pretend he is holding Kent and me for ransom. He doesn’t answer remarks like these. He looks me firmly in the eyes for half a second and then looks away, way off into the distance; then sometimes he chuckles softly to himself.

  Some people have God and religion. Kent and I have Mr. Lee and our tight three-man pack. Our master requires no worship, only strength, discipline, curiosity, reason and camaraderie. His hand on the back of the neck, or on the wrist, or on the small of the back is our smalltime version of grace. The bond among us is our refuge from a world gone blandly mad. It isn’t a religion, it isn’t a cult and it isn’t a secret conspiratorial cell. We have no cable or satellite connection to the world of homogenized fantasy and desire. We make our own movies. We play instruments, making our own music. I play the banjo. Kent plays the recorder. Mr. Lee pounds on a drum. We dance. Evenings we huddle together and read aloud to each other—Candide, Leaves of Grass, Typee, The Tale of Genji, 1001 Nights, Don Quixote and other books stacked high in the library. We eat and drink simply, at home—steak, green vegetables, bread, beer, coffee, olives and grapes, a lot of grapes. On alternate days, one of us will not speak all day, communicating only with his hands, by touch, by gaze; sometimes, it seems, by fluctuations in body heat. We entertain ourselves by fucking and fighting. Fucking and fighting bring us together at the same time as they set us apart as singular persons.

  I’m squeezing Kent’s head between my bicep and ribs. His buzz cut chafes against my skin. Pretty Kent grabs my cock and balls, and all at once I feel like I stuck a fork into a light socket. He jams his shoulder into my midsection and lifts me off my feet. I hear Mr. Lee’s hands pound the floor with enthusiasm. “You got him now, Kent-boy,” he hollers. Kent flips me over on my back. Then he falls back on me with an elbow drop. His sweaty body covers and clinches mine like an anaconda on a capybara, his hairy forearm smashing my nose and mouth as we roll three times across the futons, struggling. The hard scramble stiffens up the both of us. Kent’s on my back, his boner gliding up and down the small of my back, his right forearm mashed against my nose as he jerks my head back. I hear my heart pounding in my ears. I feel the pulse of Kent’s body up against mine. The pressure on my spine is unbearable. I scream through gritted teeth, my lips sloppy wet with spit and snot and sweat. “Now finish him,” Mr. Lee barks out. “Knock the punk out.”

  Right then I sink my teeth into Kent’s wrist and chomp down hard. Kent yelps, and his sweaty body goes suddenly cold. It tenses up and shudders, and then I flip him over, onto his back. He hits the mats with a grunt. I twist his arm up between my thighs and into my armpit. I stretch back and thrust my midsection up, amplifying the pressure on poor Kent’s shoulder. Kent thrashes for a second and then freezes up, realizing resistance only makes his situation even more painful. My eight-inch cock is like an unsheathed dagger, thumping the skin below my belly button. Kent’s cock stands tall, manically wobbling back and forth like a white flag. The mineral tang of his blood wets the tip of my tongue. Here’s the second time I’ve made him bleed today. I’ve got him wrapped up, conquered. He can’t move. His muscles go slack in my grip. His heels slide on the broadcloth fabric of the futons as his legs unbend. With his free arm, he taps my shin in submission.

  I don’t let him go. I rear back again, bending his arm backward, wanting to hear him yelp one more time. Kent knows what I’m after, and he struggles to deny me that base satisfaction. I respect that. But I want to feel him go all tense and limp again against my body, to feel the surge of raw power, like a runner’s high, but, oh, much more ecstatic! His lips purse and clamp tight over his clenched teeth. The veins of his neck stand out. His skin blushes deep red from his forehead to his sternum. I raise my leg and bring it down on his chest. A shudder passes through him, and he gasps, a high-pitched squawk, eyes brimming with tears. Without releasing the hold, I turn my head toward Mr. Lee. The expression on my face is cocky and wicked. His pale-blue eyes relay an amalgam of contradictory messages that are nonetheless crystal clear. First, there are pity and horror. The boy is, after all, his pet, and though my surfer-boy looks exude sex appeal—long blond hair, honey tan and smooth muscle—I know Kent’s uncomplicated beauty surpasses mine. Next, his eyes express his shock and rage that I, someone he cares for, would so willfully extemporize on his script and push the limits of the game, twice in a row now, to hurt, really hurt, an opponent I love as much as he does. But behind those emotions lurks something else—fascination—a terrifying nexus between him and me—a guilty recognition of the erotics of pain, control and humiliation—morally suspect, without a doubt, but genuine, raw, the uncouth bedrock of our being. It’s his tongue darting out to lick the outline of his lower lip that gives it away, our collusion at this moment, though strictly on an emotional level, and our secret, lurid, but no less tantalizing appetite.

  I keep my eyes on Mr. Lee’s as I loosen my hold on Kent. Kent and I are sweat-soaked, and as soon as the exertion stops, as soon as we stop straining against one another, we feel the wintry chill in the air. I roll over on Kent. He lies on his back, shoulders scrunched against a futon, elbows pinching his ribs, hands open and outstretched melodramatically, like a transverberated saint. His bent knees bow apart, and his cock protrudes shiny and reddish blue, a lush, alien quartz. I crawl on top of him. His averted face looks softened by the fight. I kiss the corner of his mouth. I lick his sweat. I press my dully throbbing cock on his. I bend his slender penis up against his hairy tummy. I mimic the rhythm of his breathing so that our bodies synchronize—one vigorous heartbeat in two persons. I press my hips onto his. He turns his face to mine and nibbles the tip of my earlobe. He raises a hand to run his fingers through my hair. I push, deliberately slow, unnaturally slow at first, gradually building momentum. He moans. Out the corner of my eyes I detect motion, as Mr. Lee stretches back against the wall, kneading his swollen crotch. A sudden red blindness forces me to sink into myself, my mind submerged in dark, ropy viscera—I am all touch and motion—slick, groping, exposed and vulnerable as a beating heart in a surgeon’s hands.

  Kent shoots first. His cum paints a warm slash across our stomachs. Immediately, there’s the sensation that he’s falling away from me, and I clutch him mechanically, still thrusting, now more feverishly than before. Then the crescendo release. My body shivers. The pressure behind my eyes subsides, and I blink like a moviegoer facing the sun after a long matinee. Things stay unfocused for many seconds, as I rise and fall gently to Kent’s respiration. Then I feel the palm of Mr. Lee’s hand on the small of my back.

  ABOUT THE AUTHORS

  JONATHAN ASCHE’s work has appeared in numerous anthologies, including Afternoon Pleasures, Brief Encounters and Erotica Exotica. He is also the author of the erotic novels Mindjacker and Moneyshots, and the short story collection Kept Men. He lives in Atlanta with his husband, Tomé.

  MICHAEL BRACKEN’s short fiction has been published in Best Gay Romance 2010, Beautiful Boys, Black Fire, Boy Fun, Boys Getting Ahead, Country Boys, Freshmen, The Handsome Prince, Homo Thugs, Hot Blood: Strange Bedfellows, The Mammoth Book of Best New Erotica 4, Muscle Men, Teammates and many other anthologies and periodicals.

  DALE CHASE (dalechasestrokes.com) has been writing male erotica for more than a decade with numerous stories in magazines and anthologies. She has two story collections in print: If The Spirit Moves You: Ghostly Gay Erotica, from Lethe Press, and The Company He Keeps: Victorian Gentlemen’s Erotica, from Bold Strokes Books.

  MARTIN DELACROIX (martindelacroix.wordpress.com) has had stories in more than twenty anthologies and has published four novels—Adrian’s Scar, Maui, Love Quest and De Narvaez—and three single-author anthologies—Boys Who Love Men, Flawed Boys and Becoming Men. He lives w
ith his partner, Greg, on Florida’s Gulf Coast.

  LANDON DIXON’s writing credits include Options, Beau, In Touch/Indulge, Three Pillows, Men, Freshmen, [2], Mandate, Torso, Honcho, and stories in the anthologies Straight? Volume 2, Friction 7, Working Stiff, Sex by the Book and Ultimate Gay Erotica 2005, 2007 and 2008.

  HANK EDWARDS (hankedwardsbooks.com) is the author of the Charlie Heggensford series: Fluffers, Inc., A Carnal Cruise, and Lambda Award Finalist Vancouver Nights, as well as the novels Holed Up, Destiny’s Bastard and Plus Ones. Bounty, a paranormal romance, and story collection A Very Dirty Dozen, are available at Amazon.

  ROSCOE HUDSON is a creative writer and academic whose work appears in Best Gay Erotica 2012. He lives in Chicago.

  DANIEL W. KELLY (danielwkelly.com) is the author of the erotic horror collections Closet Monsters and Horny Devils. His short stories have appeared in the anthologies Manhandled, Dorm Porn, Just the Sex, Bears and Best Gay Erotica 2009. He also writes excessively about horror, movies and pop music.