Honeytrap

by Aster Glenn Gray

  Daniel looked up at him over his reading glasses. “Gennady?”

  “I thought,” Gennady started, and then stopped, and then started again. “Since this is the last night…”

  “Is there some American experience you’ve managed to miss out on all these months?” Daniel asked amiably. “Baseball? Monopoly? Hula hooping? I draw the line at Monopoly, but I bet we could pick up hula hoops somewhere around here.”

  Gennady shook his head. He couldn’t catch his breath. “I wondered,” he said, and drew in his breath, and for a moment thought he would not be able to finish the sentence. “Do you still want to kiss me?”

  Daniel stared at him. He set his book aside. “Have you decided that you’ve got to work the honeytrap, after all?”

  Chapter 24

  Gennady jerked backwards, eyes wide and mouth open with the kind of genuine surprise that was almost impossible to fake, and instantly Daniel was sorry he had said it. He had probably ruined their last evening together – perhaps cast a shadow over the memory of their whole partnership, just by bringing it up.

  “I’m sorry,” Daniel said. “I just – I had to ask, you know?”

  “No, of course,” Gennady said. The first flush had faded from his face, leaving his cheeks a dull mortified red. “I should not have brought it up. I thought – ” He lifted his hands, as if to signify the uselessness of further words, and took a step back. “Perhaps I should go.”

  “No!”

  The word exploded out of Daniel. Gennady stopped.

  “I mean,” Daniel said. He flushed too, and he wasn’t sure if it was nerves or arousal singing in his blood. “You’ve already got more than enough material to blackmail me with, anyway.”

  Gennady’s brow smoothed. He leaned against Daniel’s chair again, and said, “I’m not going to blackmail you.”

  “No. Of course not,” Daniel said, and hesitated, uncertain. “I just… I’m not sure why you asked if I wanted to kiss you.”

  He thought maybe he knew, actually. But he had thought Gennady wanted to kiss him before, at the roadside, and he did not want to be wrong again.

  Gennady sighed. “How can I answer this? Why does anyone want to kiss anyone, Daniel?”

  Daniel’s heart beat so hard he felt light-headed. “Do you want to kiss me? Is that why you asked?”

  Gennady hesitated. His tongue flickered over his lips, thoughtful rather than seductive. “I think so,” Gennady said, and oddly Daniel found that more reassuring than an easy yes. “It was nice when you kissed me that night…”

  So Gennady had responded to that kiss. Daniel hadn’t been imagining things.

  “But I’ve never kissed a man before – not sober.” Gennady scuffed his foot. “I want to try it.”

  Daniel cracked a grin. “I’m a perfection salad?” he said.

  Gennady’s face was serious. “I hope perhaps better than perfection salad.”

  “One more American experience to try before you fly back to Moscow,” Daniel said, still smiling, although the words hit him like a punch. Gennady was leaving. They wouldn’t even be able to keep in touch.

  He found himself studying Gennady’s round face: high cheekbones, gray eyes under straight thoughtful brows. Gennady met Daniel’s gaze, a faint flush rising in his cheeks under Daniel’s scrutiny, till at last Gennady averted his eyes and bit his lip. “Go on,” Gennady said.

  Daniel stood up and cupped Gennady’s face in both hands and kissed him.

  It was not a long kiss; just long enough to ascertain that Gennady was not going to pull away. Then Daniel broke the kiss himself, and Gennady drew in a slow shaky breath and put a hand to his mouth.

  “How was that?” Daniel asked.

  Gennady’s eyes brightened with mischief. He looked up at Daniel, his mouth half-obscured by his hand. “I don’t know. Try it again.”

  Daniel took a step forward, then paused. “Maybe I ought to check you for hidden cameras.”

  It was mostly a joke, and Gennady kept smiling. But his voice was serious when he said, “Yes, do.”

  “Well, sit down,” said Daniel. He pushed Gennady lightly to sit on the foot of the bed, and went down on one knee beside him. He cupped Gennady’s left foot in both hands, and slid one hand up under his trousers to the inside of his knee. He kept his eyes on Gennady’s lower leg, as if he really were looking for cameras, but mostly to give Gennady some time to adjust to being touched.

  He squeezed Gennady’s calf just below the knee. Gennady drew in his breath, and Daniel still didn’t let himself look up, but hooked his fingers over the top of Gennady’s sock. He slipped the sock off and set it aside, and squeezed the ball of Gennady’s foot.

  “Are you going to take all my clothes off?” Gennady’s voice was unsteady.

  “No,” Daniel said. He kissed the inside of Gennady’s knee through his pants, and Gennady’s leg gave a little kick. “Just the ones that are a pain to get off later. Your socks…” Daniel drew off the second sock. Then he put his hands on Gennady’s knees, over his pants, and ran them right up his thighs. “And your belt,” he said, suiting actions to words.

  As he tossed the belt aside, he looked up at Gennady. He found Gennady wide-eyed, his shoulders tense, his fingers clenched on the bedspread, and Daniel was mortified. “Christ! All you said was kiss. And here I am ripping your clothes off…”

  Gennady laughed. His fingers relaxed on the bedspread. “No, no, nothing is ripped. It’s okay.”

  “Well, at least I’d better kiss you before we go any further. All right?”

  “Yes, okay.”

  Daniel rose high on his knees to kiss him. First a small peck, almost to give Gennady a last chance to back out; and then, when Gennady did not pull away, a more lingering kiss, very gentle.

  Daniel expected hesitancy. He had been very hesitant himself the first time Paul kissed him properly; had panicked and run out of the room halfway through.

  But Gennady’s hesitation lasted only a breath, and then Gennady was kissing him back, soft and questioning, perhaps a little shy. One hand brushed Daniel’s cheek, moved away, then moved in again to cup Daniel’s face. Gennady laughed just a little.

  His mouth opened as he laughed, and Daniel touched Gennady’s parted lips with his tongue. Gennady gasped, very softly, and he did draw back, but only an inch or two, still so close that Daniel could feel Gennady’s breath on his face.

  “All right?” Daniel asked.

  “Yes, okay,” Gennady said. His lips and cheeks were flushed, and his eyes were bright. He leaned in to kiss Daniel again.

  This time, it was Gennady who touched his tongue to Daniel’s lips. Daniel let Gennady kiss him, gentle, tentative, and then growing bolder, more demanding, a little frustrated noise in his throat, and only then did Daniel open his mouth and kiss him back.

  Gennady’s hands were in Daniel’s hair now, kneading the back of Daniel’s neck. Daniel cupped Gennady’s hips, and when he drew back to catch his breath, he found that he had pulled Gennady to the very edge of the bed. He tugged on Gennady, an invitation, and Gennady slid obligingly off the bed, so he was straddling Daniel’s lap; and quite suddenly Daniel could feel just how hard Gennady was, and knew that Gennady could feel the same for him.

  Gennady’s cheeks flushed. He pushed himself off Daniel’s lap, and drew his legs to his chest, and hid his reddened mouth against his knee. Then he began to laugh, and Daniel laughed too, giddy with delight, and wrapped a hand around Gennady’s calf.

  “All right?” Daniel asked, rubbing his hand up and down Gennady’s leg.

  “Yes, yes! It was just so sudden,” Gennady said. His gaze flickered toward Daniel’s groin, and then he hid his face behind his hands, although Daniel had already drawn up his legs to hide that telltale bulge. Gennady looked at Daniel through his splayed fingers, and Daniel laughed and kissed the back of Gennady’s hand.

  “If we had more time…” Daniel began.

  “But we don’t,” interrupted Gennady. He lowered his ha
nds. “We have only tonight. And I want to do everything.”

  “God, I love you,” Daniel said, because it was just such a characteristic thing for him to say, so Gennady – and he kissed Gennady again, and although he had meant to say some other things, for a while he forgot it all entirely in the pleasure of Gennady’s lips, and his tongue, and his hands on Daniel’s face and neck, and the way that he shivered when Daniel kissed the place where his jaw met his ear.

  “Is it all right if I take off my shirt?” Daniel asked.

  “Yes, okay.” Gennady was breathing hard. “Do you always ask so many times?”

  Daniel fumbled a button. “I don’t know.” Did he? It was hard to remember now. “I just want to make sure you’re comfortable.”

  “Yes, well, so,” Gennady said. “I’ll tell you if I’m not.” His forehead furrowed. “Will it hurt?”

  The matter-of-factness of the question gave Daniel a strange pain. “No, we won’t do anything that would hurt,” he said. “If…” we had more time, he almost said again.

  But they didn’t, and he didn’t want to spoil their one and only night together by attempting something he didn’t really know how to do: Paul had never let him top. (“The older partner tops,” Paul had said. Those ancient Greeks again.) And there were plenty of things they could do that had no chance of hurting at all.

  Daniel slipped his shirt off his shoulders and then stripped off his undershirt, slow, hollowing out his stomach as he pulled it over his head. Putting on a show.

  All for nothing, it turned out. Gennady had politely averted his eyes, as if they were in a locker room. Daniel poked Gennady’s stomach. “You can look, you know.”

  Gennady gave him a quick shy glance, and then a longer look; and then, third time’s the charm, he looked Daniel over, starting at Daniel’s waist and raking slowly up his chest, so that Daniel was blushing by the time Gennady met his eyes.

  There was a tenderness in Gennady’s eyes that startled Daniel, and Daniel kissed him again without thinking. Gennady kissed back, his mouth open and eager, his palms pressed firmly against the flat hard carpet. Daniel drew back, laughing a little, and told him, “You can touch me if you want.”

  He expected the same process as with the gaze: the quick light touch, then longer, more lingering. But Gennady launched himself forward, knocking Daniel flat on his back, and Daniel’s legs curled around Gennady’s waist as Gennady pressed against Daniel’s chest, palms on his shoulders, kissing Daniel again.

  Even with the layer of Gennady’s clothes between them, it was burning hot. Daniel wanted more, skin on skin, he wanted Gennady inside him, fuck the ancient Greeks anyway. Or maybe not, Gennady had probably never done it before and it was hard to get right, Paul had taken a few tries to master it, it was just – Christ, Daniel wanted more.

  Daniel tugged Gennady’s shirt out of his waistband, Christ he had such a little waist, those blocky Soviet suits hid it. The shirt came free, Daniel’s hand grazed bare skin on Gennady’s back, and Gennady hissed and bit him – “You don’t like that?”

  “Idiot! I do!”

  Daniel pressed his hand against the small of Gennady’s back, and Gennady gasped and bucked against him. “You like that?” Daniel teased, and pressed his hand against the same spot, rubbing, loving the way that it made Gennady wriggle against him, the way Gennady’s mouth fell open, his lips wet against Daniel’s neck.

  “Yes, yes.” The words came out as a gasp.

  Daniel rolled them over, so now Gennady was lying on his back. He paused afterward, just in case Gennady didn’t like that, but Gennady just looked up at him, so trusting, his chest rising and falling as he panted, a quarter inch of pale skin showing at his stomach where his shirt had been pushed up. His parted lips curved upward in a smile as Daniel stroked a knuckle along his cheek.

  “Yes, yes, okay,” Gennady prompted, and darted a kiss on Daniel’s finger, and Daniel laughed and kissed him again.

  He wanted to take off all Gennady’s clothes and kiss him all over, kiss right down Gennady’s chest and take his cock in his mouth and suck it till Gennady came; or to hook Gennady’s legs over his shoulders and push into him, feel Gennady all tight and hot around him, his heels digging into Daniel’s back, toes curling, his mouth gaping open with pleasure.

  But he had said they wouldn’t do anything that might hurt. So Daniel put that second thought aside, and pushed Gennady’s shirt up another couple of inches, and kissed the soft vulnerable skin of his stomach.

  Gennady’s hands tangled in Daniel’s hair. This position put Daniel close enough to feel the little tremors under his skin, to smell his arousal. He breathed it in, and popped the button on Gennady’s fly, and worked his pants down (thank God he’d dealt with the belt earlier) just enough to expose his navel. Daniel sank his teeth in very gently, and Gennady’s hands tightened on Daniel’s hair. “Not so hard!” Daniel gasped, and Gennady let go, and Daniel sat up and ran a hand over his smarting scalp.

  But he was glad that Gennady had yanked, because drawing back gave Daniel a good look at him, and God was it spectacular. Stomach hollowing, lips flushed and parted, a sweet little line between his eyes, so close. He’d come in a minute if Daniel let him.

  Daniel rested a hand on Gennady’s exposed stomach, hooking his thumb in his navel, and Gennady twisted his head and made the most wonderful wretched tiny noise. Daniel kissed the inside of his knee. “I want to suck you off,” Daniel said, and Gennady blinked up at him, those big gray eyes, God.

  “Okay, okay,” Gennady said, and then: “What does that mean?”

  Daniel blushed so hard that he couldn’t speak. He lifted Gennady’s hand and slid two fingers into his mouth, and sucked so hard that his cheeks hollowed.

  This Gennady understood. His hips bucked; he blurted something in Russian, certainly not a word Daniel had learned from the Polyakovs. “Are you sure?” Gennady gasped. “Will it hurt you?”

  “No,” said Daniel, with a robust confidence borne mostly of desire. He’d never actually done this before. And, well, he figured Gennady wouldn’t last thirty seconds once Daniel got his mouth on him, even though Daniel had no technique to speak of.

  Gennady fumbled at his own zipper. He undid it on the second try, and pulled his pants down just far enough to expose his cock, and Daniel’s mouth went dry. From this angle, so close up, Gennady’s cock looked far too big to fit in Daniel’s mouth, and briefly Daniel quailed.

  But he rallied, and kissed him right at the tip, and then licked him all along his length. The line was back between Gennady’s eyes, his stomach hollowing again, and Daniel put his hand around Gennady’s cock and took just the head in his mouth, and he had only just begun to suck when Gennady came.

  That left Daniel with a mouthful of stuff, and he felt a moment’s confusion as to what precisely he ought to do with it. But Gennady was already pulling him back up, and Daniel swallowed almost automatically, and then Gennady was kissing him, his hands on Daniel’s cheeks, murmuring, “Thank you, thank you.”

  Daniel nuzzled into Gennady’s neck, and Gennady sighed, and relaxed, and to Daniel’s secret vexation tucked his cock back into his pants. At least he did not pull his pants all the way back up: his navel remained exposed, and a sliver of pale stomach.

  Once his breathing had softened again, Daniel ran his fingers over that soft exposed skin. Gennady’s eyes opened, and then he smiled at Daniel, and rolled on his side, propping himself up on an elbow. “Your turn?” he said, and poked Daniel lightly in the stomach. “What would you like?”

  “Well…” Daniel was not quite sure. It had startled him when Gennady came in his mouth. Not that it was bad, exactly, just not quite what he had expected, and some of the urgency had gone out of his arousal.

  He slid his hand up under Gennady’s shirt, feeling the ribs in his side, the muscles in his back. Gennady giggled when Daniel got high up on his side, near his armpit.

  “Are you ticklish?” Daniel teased.

  “Are you?”
Gennady threatened.

  Daniel took evasive action and pushed Gennady onto his back again. He looked gloriously disheveled, his hair kicked up in little devil horns, his shirt crumpled and twisted, his pants just low enough to show a smattering of pubic hair. Daniel kissed him there, and his navel, and his stomach again, and Gennady caught Daniel’s face in his hands and lifted it so that Daniel looked up at him.

  “But seriously,” Gennady said. “Don’t you want anything?”

  “This is what I want.” Daniel slid up along Gennady’s body to kiss his mouth again, grinding his hips against Gennady’s so Gennady could feel his arousal, and Gennady’s cheeks turned pink and he laughed and put his hands lightly on Daniel’s sides. “The small of my back,” Daniel told him, “like I did for you,” and Gennady dug the heel of one hand in just where Daniel said, and Daniel shuddered as pleasure flashed like lightning along his spine, up to his neck, down into his ass.

  God. Maybe he did want Gennady to fuck him, after all. That’d take some working up to, though, he’d have to get Gennady hard again…

  Which probably wouldn’t be that difficult.

  Gennady ran his hands up Daniel’s back, pressing hard, the way Daniel liked it, and then he rolled them both over so he was straddling Daniel’s hips. Daniel had to push him off. If Gennady stayed pressed against Daniel like that, Daniel was going to come in his pants.

  Gennady let himself be pushed. He sprawled, lying on his side like a Roman senator at a banquet. His shirt had fallen back into place, covering his stomach, and Daniel looked at that and groaned and said, “Let’s get your shirt off.”

  “What?” Gennady’s eyes widened. Then he darted in to kiss Daniel again, and said, “Yes, okay…”

  Daniel started at the top button. Gennady drew back slightly as Daniel’s hands brushed his chin – gosh, he really must be ticklish – then went very still, except for the rise and fall of his chest, rapid enough that Daniel could feel it under his hands. His breath sounded harsh in the quiet room.

  Daniel was on the third button when he looked up at Gennady, and found him biting his lip, his face averted and pale. A sense of unease settled on Daniel. “Everything okay?”