by John Inman
Their mouths found each other in a kiss, and as Dilly was losing himself inside it, Boz pulled back and stared down into Dilly’s eyes. Then it was Boz’s turn to burrow his hand between them and circle Dilly’s dick in his warm, pliant fingers. It felt so good that Dilly shuddered deliciously, arching his back against the touch.
Watching him, Boz smiled. “I wasn’t kidding, Dilly. I think we should start seeing each other.”
Dilly was taken by surprise by the sudden hammering of his pulse inside his head. He didn’t think it was entirely because Boz was playing with his dick. There had to be more to it than that.
“If that’s what you want,” he heard himself say. Then he clamped his mouth shut, afraid he would say too much.
Boz frowned and laid a fingertip over Dilly’s mouth. “No,” he said. “If it’s what you want. That’s what counts.”
Dilly was suddenly aware that true morning light had begun to creep into Boz’s bedroom while he wasn’t looking. The silver sheen of a rainy dawn had dissipated. It was the morning sun now, cloud-shrouded and golden, that was eating away at the shadows. He stared into Boz’s blue eyes—the blue was noticeable now in the wakening light—and realized there was no humor to be seen in their depths at all. Boz was staring back, as serious as a heart attack. Waiting for an answer. Waiting to hear what Dilly would say.
But then, it seemed, Boz could wait no longer. He burrowed closer, resting his chin on Dilly’s chest, his eyes never once leaving Dilly’s face. “Please,” he said. “Tell me you want to see me again.”
Dilly’s vision suddenly blurred, and a mist fell over his eyes. At first he thought it was simply the dim light of a rainy dawn playing tricks with his vision. Then he felt the burning at the back of his eyes. It had been a while since he took a breath, so he gave a tiny shudder and filled his empty lungs with the damp morning air.
“I do,” Dilly murmured, fighting back against the rising heat behind his eyes, determined not to let Boz know how close he was to tears. He cleared his throat and said the words again, just to make sure they were heard. “I do. It’s what I want more than anything.”
Boz dropped his face to Dilly’s chest and pressed a kiss there. In the middle of the kiss, Dilly felt a smile crawl across his skin. The gentle swipe of a tongue on a nipple. A heartbeat later Boz was slithering down in the bed, dragging kisses as he went.
When Boz’s mouth brushed Dilly’s erection, and his kisses skidded upward along the shaft of flesh, heading home, Boz whispered into the rising heat of their two bodies. “Show me, Dilly. Show me it’s what you really want.”
So Dilly did.
Chapter Seventeen
PUFFER KNEW something was up the minute Dilly walked through the shop door. Puffer was at the sink in the back, washing Cheetos dust from his fingers. He had just eaten breakfast. If one really wanted to call it that.
“You’re two minutes late,” Puffer barked with a wicked snort. “I may have to dock your wages.”
“Blow me, boss,” Dilly answered with a smile equally wicked.
Puffer gawked for a minute like he couldn’t believe what he’d heard. He hastily wiped his wet hands on his shirtfront, dug a fingertip in his ear as if fishing for a pound of ear wax, then stormed across the shop on his stork-like legs to thrust his long, pointy nose in Dilly’s face. “What did you say, boy? What did you say to the man who signs your paychecks? The man you look up to as mentor and all-around hero?”
Dilly smiled benignly and leaned against the racks, calmly folding his arms across his chest. He was chewing a huge wad of bubble gum, and while he stood there, he inflated a bubble the size of a baseball, then sucked it back into extinction before answering.
“Sorry, mentor and all-around hero, but you pay me cash, so there aren’t any paychecks. And since I’m always early, I think you can afford to grant me two minutes grace for once in your miserable life.”
Puffer stabbed his bony fists into his hips while his lips twitched as he tried not to grin. “So that’s what you think, is it?”
“Yep,” Dilly said, and blew another bubble. This one was even bigger than the one before.
Puffer calmly reached out and poked a finger in it, causing the bubble to explode across Dilly’s nose and chin and halfway up to his hairline. Puffer howled with delight.
Regally, Dilly peeled the pink bubble gum off his face and poked it back in his mouth. He frowned when Puffer leaned in close and pulled Dilly’s collar aside.
“What’s that?” Puffer asked.
Dilly touched the side of his neck but didn’t feel anything. “What’s what?”
Puffer poked him just below his left ear. “Right there! It’s a hickey. That’s what it is. You’ve got a hickey on your neck. A big one.”
Dilly quickly flipped his collar up and tried to ignore the burning in his cheeks. “You’re crazy. Now let me get to work.”
But Puffer wasn’t having it. His beaklike nose stabbed ever closer as he scanned Dilly’s face. “Your lips are chapped and your chin is red from dragging it through somebody’s five o’clock shadow. I know beard burn when I see it. God knows I’ve suffered from it myself now and then.” When he saw Dilly’s eyebrows pop up, he quickly explained, “A couple of my older lady friends have a thicker beard than I do, God bless ’em. When you’re old, that’s the way it is. Sex in the upper seventies might be just as much fun, son, but don’t ever think it’s pretty. Or without risk.”
Dilly made a face like he was about to barf. “I’ll be thinking about that all day. Please don’t tell me anything else about your sex life ever, ever again.”
Puffer merely snickered. He hooked a long arm around Dilly’s neck, squeezed enough to get a grip, then prison-walked him to the back of the shop where the coffee pot stood spewing noxious fumes. “Fine, then,” he said, “let’s share a cup of joe while we talk about your sex life. You got lucky last night, didn’t you?”
Dilly tried to wiggle free, but Puffer wasn’t having it. He clamped on tighter with one hand while with his other hand, he poured two cups of coffee, as thick and black as Everglades mud. The Mr. Coffee machine he poured it from looked like it hadn’t been cleaned since sometime before Desert Storm. Puffer thrust the coffee into Dilly’s hands, then stepped back to sip his own.
“Details,” he said, his eyes big and round and hovering over his steaming cup. “I want fucking details.” Then with a grin, he added, “Literally.”
Dilly sipped his coffee, then grimaced, set the cup aside, and cleaned the steam from his glasses with the tail of his shirt. He frowned and muttered stoically, “There’s nothing to tell.”
Puffer looked dubious.
“I think there’s plenty to tell. It was that cutie, wasn’t it? The one who came in and bought Lesley Gore’s Boys, Boys, Boys album.” He leaned in and took a closer gander at Dilly’s neck. “Damn! The lad’s got a mouth on him, don’t he? Excellent suction. Just look at the size of that hickey!” Dilly slapped a hand over the side of his neck, and at the same time his eyes got all dreamy as if thinking back to the night behind him.
“Details!” Puffer barked again.
Dilly shook himself out of whatever daydream he had been lost in and refocused on Puffer’s weaselly face.
“No,” he said. “Not talking.”
Puffer frowned. “Spill the beans, dammit! I brought you two together. The least you can do is give me a basic rundown of what you did last night, leading up to and including the moment you got that hickey!”
Dilly checked his fingernails, gnawed off a hangnail, and spat it out. A sneaky smile touched his lips. “Nope.”
Puffer’s eyes squinted into two seamy slits. “So did your cat get a present last night too?”
Dilly looked properly surprised. “How did you know that?”
Puffer pounded himself on the chest so hard he slopped the coffee out of his cup and almost fell over backward. “Because it was my idea, you nincompoop! I’m the one who told the boy that giving your cat a gift
would be the quickest way to worm his way into your heart.”
Dilly blinked. “My heart….”
“Yes!”
Suddenly Dilly didn’t seem to be having quite as much fun. “So when I get my heart broken, it’ll be thanks to you. Is that what you’re saying?”
Puffer opened his mouth, closed it, opened it one more time, then finally stood there speechless, staring at Dilly’s sweet, innocent face in front of him.
“What makes you think you’re going to get a broken heart?” he asked, trying to resurrect a grin.
And in the same barely audible whisper, Dilly quietly answered, “Because I always do. Only this time it’s going to hurt way more than usual. So thanks for that.”
Dilly shot Puffer a final resigned glance and walked away to start his day. Puffer stood uncertainly, slurping at his coffee. Finally he bellowed at Dilly’s back.
“At least you got laid! How about thanking me for that?”
Chapter Eighteen
THE FIGHT escalated quicker than Angel ever imagined it could. One minute Bobby Mayfield was at his door, demanding to be let in. The next minute Juan Pelo, one of Angel’s roommates, slammed the door in Mayfield’s face.
And that’s when the shit really hit the fan.
Only minutes before, Juan and the other roomies had staged an intervention on Angel’s behalf. The four boys, all Angel’s age, had been walking on eggshells for months, praying they wouldn’t be deported back to the poverty and the drug-addled violence of their homeland. But it was another kind of violence they worried about with Angel. For he was their friend, their compa, and they tried to look out for him.
Like always when they were alone among themselves, the boys spoke in the Guatemalan derivative of Spanish they had used since birth. Born and raised in the slums of Guatemala City, the boys were spared trying to communicate among themselves in any of the twenty-one variations of Mayan that the country folk spoke. Even among immigrants, there is a hierarchy in place. The boys who lived in the big house with Angel Ruiz in this new land of freedom called California considered themselves on the more sophisticated end of the immigration spectrum.
Since they were friends, they agreed to accept Angel’s homosexuality. That did not mean they accepted the man Angel had chosen to love.
“Your boyfriend will kill you one day,” Juan told Angel, who sat sullenly at the kitchen table, the rest of his roommates gathered around him. “And he’ll probably take one or two of us with you when he does. You have to stop seeing him.”
Angel straightened his shoulders and glared at each of the boys in turn. “You have no right to ask this of me.”
“And you have no right to endanger this household,” Eduardo, said, leaning forward, elbows on the table, piercing Angel with two laser-like chocolate-brown eyes. “We’re illegals. Don’t you understand that? If the police are called here, we’ll all be hauled off by ICE and that will be the end of it. We’ll be back in Guate before the week is out. Is that what you want?”
The other boys nodded in agreement, and Angel felt tears begin to rise.
“I love him,” he said softly.
As soon as the words were spoken, Juan brought his fist down on the tabletop, rattling the salt and pepper shakers and making everybody jump.
“He’s a culero! Why would you love somebody who treats you like filth? He comes here, he fucks you, he bangs you up the side of the head a couple of times, and then he leaves. How can you see love in that, Angel? How can you let yourself be used like this?”
Angel dropped his head and a tear spilled into his lap.
“Do you want me to leave?”
It was Ramon who answered. He was still in his boxer shorts because he worked nights at a 7-Eleven, and had just crawled out of bed for the conclave. “We don’t want you to leave us, stupid. We want you to leave him.”
Juan reached across the table and laid his hand on Angel’s arm. “If you’re afraid to do it, we’ll do it for you.”
Angel shook his head. “He won’t let me go.”
Juan laughed at that. “We think he will.”
It was then that a knock came at the door. Everyone at the table glanced at the clock over the stove. It was almost ten. The only one who would be pounding on their door at this time of night was the man they were talking about.
Still, no one moved to answer the knock. They watched Angel instead. His tears were falling freely now, and he was ashamed for his friends to see them. Still, he ached to run into the arms of the man standing at the front door. No matter what his friends thought.
“I’ll speak to him,” he said quietly, wiping the tears from his face.
“No,” Juan said. “I’ll speak to him. All of you stay here.”
Angel began to rise, but Eduardo pushed him back into his chair. His two other friends cast uneasy looks in his direction. One shook his head as if totally disgusted. When Angel saw that, his tears fell faster.
In the other room, they heard Juan speaking through the closed door.
“Your boyfriend isn’t here,” he called out. “He started working nights. He said to tell you he can’t see you anymore. Please go away!”
Angel and everyone else at the table heard the chuckle that came from the front porch. The next minute a crash made everybody leap to their feet. Chairs overturned. The unmistakable sound of a fist striking flesh could be heard in the other room. Two seconds later Bobby Mayfield hurled himself through the kitchen door.
He grabbed Angel’s arm and yanked him out of his chair. A wicked grin turned his handsome face into a cruel mask as he leered at the others standing about the room, clearly scared to death.
“Where’s Juan?” Eduardo demanded.
Mayfield laughed, clearly relishing the fact that he towered over everyone in the room. “Is that his name? He’s by the front door with a busted lip.” His eyes turned mean. “Don’t any of you ever stand in my way again.” He dug his fingers in Angel’s arm and gave him a shake. “Tell them I can see you any time I want. Tell them.”
Angel couldn’t speak. The pain in his arm and the shame he felt being manhandled like this in front of his friends had rendered him mute. He could only nod his head, which unleashed another cascade of tears.
Dragging Angel along in his wake, Mayfield stepped closer to the three boys and waved a finger in each of their faces in turn. “I come here to see Angel whenever I want. You understand? You jackasses stay out of my way when I do. Don’t think I don’t know what you’re worried about. Deportation, right? Well, trust me, you fuck with me, and that’s what you’ll get.” He gave Angel another shake. “And that includes your little come dumpster here. You’ll all be on the bus back to Guatemala before the tortillas get stale in the fridge. Got it?”
No one spoke, but they did look up when Juan stepped into the room. He was holding a bloody wad of tissues to his busted lip. When Mayfield turned, Juan backed away, making Mayfield give a mocking laugh.
Angel gasped when Mayfield dug a hand down the back of his pants and wormed a fingertip into his ass. In front of everyone in the room.
“No,” he pleaded. “Don’t.”
But Mayfield only laughed. “That’s the first time you ever said that.”
And before anyone could make a move, he dragged Angel through the door and down the hall. At Angel’s bedroom door, Mayfield planted a foot in the small of his back, and propelled him into the room. Angel landed on his hands and knees, wincing from the pain.
“Strip!” Mayfield commanded, slamming the door behind him. “You have to pay for what you just did.”
Mayfield pulled his shirt over his head and threw it across the room. He kicked off his boots and peeled down his jeans, his massive cock already stiff, bobbing at attention.
“Don’t worry,” he said, his anger ebbing. Humor once again twisted his face. “Let’s get those clothes off, Angel. By the time I finish, you’ll be begging for more like you always do. And keep right on blubbering if you want. Your shame turns
me on.”
Sobbing, Angel began removing his clothes with shaking hands. When he was down to his socks, Mayfield lifted him from the floor and threw him on the bed. Of his own free will, even as his tears continued to fall, Angel spread his legs and reached to pull Bobby down on top of him. He could smell the liquor on Bobby’s breath and the sour stench of sweat. Somehow none of it mattered. All that mattered was that Bobby was here. And that Bobby wanted him.
“That’s my boy,” Mayfield cooed, his finger driving home once again. Spreading Angel wider, making way for what was soon to come.
Angel cried out, lost somewhere between the pain and the bliss and the humiliation.
In a dark recess of his mind, back where fear still lived and where common sense prevailed, Angel knew his friends were right. This man would kill him one day. But right now, at this very moment, Angel didn’t care.
When Bobby’s long cock tore into him, Angel lost himself in the delicious pain. Squeezing his eyes shut, he forced his body to relax, to open up, to give him over completely.
Soon the agony, and everything else, was forgotten. Nothing mattered but the man rutting through him.
The man he loved.
Chapter Nineteen
“SHE REALLY does like it.” Boz laughed, watching Grace manhandle the old used teddy bear as she struggled across the floor, dragging it clumsily between her legs.
He was standing in Dilly’s living room. It was two days after they spent the night together. Since he had not heard from Dilly since, Boz took the bull by the horns and made the first—well, he supposed that now it was the second—move.
He turned his gaze to Dilly. “I wanted to see you. I hope you don’t mind.”
Dilly shook his head. There was a reticence about the way he acted that bothered Boz. He looked almost ashamed to be seeing Boz again. And Boz didn’t like that at all.
