Daddy Issues

by Seth King

  But can I really lock this down before we leave? Or will Mary Kate stand in my way? And the biggest question of all…does Mary Kate deserve to be in my way?

  Eliot Prince

  We spend the next afternoon with the rest of our party at Sandy Flats, the beach right down the lakeshore from the house. The hours are falling away, I don’t know what I’m going to do about this, and I’m getting more and more nervous. This is the craziest thing I’ve ever done, and I’m starting to feel like I’m being pulled up the initial incline of a rollercoaster, listening to the clink-clink-clink of the tracks before I hit the peak and get a glimpse of a whole new world below…

  But what does that world look like?

  Regardless, I try to enjoy myself at this “beach” that isn’t even a beach. Sure, the water is brown like tea, but the sun is strong and the drinks we bring in our coolers are, too. I avoid my mom, who seems to be going through some type of personal drama she won’t tell me about, as she rants to her sister Susan under an umbrella. My mom isn’t looking at me or Robert as she talks, though, so for once I try to relax and just have a carefree afternoon with my family.

  If we end up going down this road, Robert would already fit into my family perfectly. He’s amazing with my little cousins, and honestly it makes him that much sexier to see him acting like such a “daddy.” (Sorry for the awkward word choice, but…whatever.)

  “Hey,” Gracie says at one point, sitting next to me and motioning towards my mom. “Is it just me, or does your mom seem off lately?”

  “You might want to rephrase that.”

  “Okay, I know, she’s always a bit off. But I don’t know…this trip she definitely seems different. And where’s her husband?”

  “Rick? Apparently he’s on a work trip in China, I don’t know.”

  “Oh. Anything weird going on?”

  I shudder. Nope, I want to say. I’m just secretly dating her ex, while also getting terrifying letters from a mystery stalker. Everything’s fine.

  “Don’t know,” I say. “Again, this is my mom we’re talking about. Jesus himself doesn’t even know.”

  At one point, when my skin is starting to burn and the rays are getting long in the sky, I look at him standing in waist deep water and absolutely lose it for him. He has the perfect body – it’s not rippled and hairless like the guys in romance novels, but that’s precisely why I love it. He’s got dark hair between his nipples, and his stomach slightly protrudes a little, but in a way where you can still make out his ab muscles. He’s solid; the kind of guy who looks like he can really fuck someone’s brains out. Even if we went the slow route, and just taking his enormous dick made me come within a few minutes…

  The water sparkles like so many diamonds as I watch him stand in the six-inch waves. The way he moves, the ease with which he goes about the world, his eyes and his teeth and his heat…everything about him draws my eyes, commands my attention. I look at him with a longing in my chest I’ve never felt before.

  Be mine, a deep and desperate voice in my soul keeps begging. Regardless of it all, please just come over here and be mine. Please belong to me…

  Soon I get hungry, and Robert follows me to the snack bar in the rec center. I order a few things, and when I reach into my pocket, he sticks out his hand with his wallet in his grasp.

  “I’ve got it,” he tells the girl at the cash register, who blushes. But this annoys me a little. One thing I don’t like is how he always has to be in charge. We’re never going to outrun the “stepfather” stigma if he’s constantly doing things for me and leading me around. I think of what Oz said, about me having a “daddy kink,” and get even more uncomfortable. This isn’t like that. This is just two guys making a decision to be together…or semi-together. Or whatever we are.

  “You okay?” he asks, and I flash a fake smile.

  “Yep. Everything’s great.”

  “I know you better than that. What’s the deal?”

  “Ugh. Nothing. I’m just sunburned.” I set my jaw. “But be ready at seven. I’m driving us into town.”

  “You are?” he asks, eyes twinkling.

  “Yep. We’re going on an old-fashioned date. And I’m paying for everything.”

  I consider wearing the ripped jeans, then decide against it. I’m not quite there yet, even if I’m making progress. The main thing I want to do with him is this: have a boring night. A night that any other couple would have. Because our whole affair has been so strange and such a whirlwind, running around and hiding from everyone, I want to do something boring and old-fashioned – I want to take him to a movie.

  We see a standard thriller about a woman who gets cheated on, and then hatches a plan to ruin her husband’s life. But the energy between us is not standard. It’s phosphorescent. From the moment Robert sits in the seat next to me, I feel him, I sense him. And I know that tonight, I need him – in a way I’ve never had him before.

  I want to make him mine.

  I want to fuck him.

  I drive us home at twilight. We went to an early-ish movie, and the last traces of dusk are still glowing above the tree line across the like. Then it’s time for phase two of my evening. The dock house is the newest part of the compound, and is therefore the fanciest in decoration – the floor is a pale white hardwood, the walls are a burnished seafoam green, and huge oil paintings of Carolina mountain scenes are here and there.

  I kiss him, slowly and tenderly, in the middle of the room. Then I inhale. “Robert.”

  “Yes?”

  “You didn’t have to respond. I just like saying your name. Robert.” I glance down at his linen pants. “Woah. Is that…is that a wet spot? For me?”

  I see something I rarely see from Robert: embarrassment. He blushes and angles a little away. He looks almost boyish.

  “Ah, sorry, I didn’t even know…but sitting next to you in that theater, Jesus…”

  “Don’t apologize,” I smile. “But…I need to say something, before we move forward.”

  “Yes?”

  “I’m sick of you being in charge so much. I have…a dominant side, if you didn’t notice. It falls away with you, sure, but I still have it.”

  He frowns. “Of course I noticed. But…why do you care?”

  “Because I don’t want to be your little…you know, your bitch,” I explain. “Your trophy guy. I really like when you pay for things and open doors and stuff, don’t get me wrong, but I want to make sure I feel…balanced.”

  “Don’t ever feel like that,” he frowns again. “If I thought it was like that, I wouldn’t have pursued you. I don’t want a boy toy. I want a partner.”

  “Okay, okay, like I said, I just…want balance.”

  “…And how are you going to get that?”

  I stand taller and caress his ear. “Well, I’m going to fuck you, that’s how.”

  His body elongates, too. “You are, eh?”

  “Yes, but…”

  “What?”

  “Are you good? I don’t have a condom on me.”

  His eyes get hungrier. “Oh, wow. Yes. I’m on Truvada, and totally disease-free. And I took a shower earlier…just in case.”

  “I’m on the pill, too. Tested last month, and haven’t done much since. Get naked now.”

  And so he slinks out of his outfit. I watch, enthralled, as he shows more and more skin. Jesus, this isn’t getting old – if anything, every glimpse makes me hungrier.

  “Stand still,” I order.

  I worship his body, from his thick beard to his hairy chest to his hard, tanned nipples. Then I drop to my knees and sniff the hair dancing down his abdomen to his dick. Even his smell is sexy. I think of how the other guys (and women) look at him, and it makes me smile. I’ve never been with someone so attractive, and it makes me proud, in a way – sometimes I want to show him off and just rub it in everyone’s faces.

  Look at what I was able to land!

  His success and achievements and whatever are cool, I guess, but honestly, hi
s looks are the hottest thing about him. (Besides his soul.) So this definitely isn’t some “sugar daddy” thing. I would hate that. You can date a rich old man any day, but if you’re not happy and fulfilled, what’s the point?

  I lick him from his abdomen down to the meeting of his legs, then just dance my tongue around the tip of his dick. He’s already seeping, and it turns me on that he’s turned on by me. It’s like a chain reaction that never ends.

  “What?” he asks through baited breath as I just crouch there with his dick in my hand.

  “Nothing. I’m just a really big fan of your dick, that’s all.”

  Then I tell him I want more. He lays himself out on the daybed. Seeing him among all my grandma’s frilly white pillows is a little hilarious, and I giggle as I take him in.

  “What’s funny?”

  “Nothing, really. I just can’t wait to be inside you.”

  He laughs. “You’re funny today.”

  “And you’re sexy today.”

  Then his breath catches. “Are you sure we’re safe in here? What if…someone comes?”

  “We should be good. Aunt Susan made her famous lasagna – pans of it, actually. They’ll all be occupied for a while.”

  I crawl onto the bed and rest against him, chest to chest, placing my dick against his and then taking both of them in my hand. I feel so close to him, in many ways. My skin is against his, my hairless chest is against his furry one, my reddish hair is falling against his hair of mahogany, mixing amber and brown. I can even feel him breathing against me.

  “You know what this is called?” I ask as I rub our cocks together.

  “Um. Rubbing dicks?”

  “Nah. It’s called frotting. I just saw that in Urban Dictionary.”

  “I don’t know what any of those words mean,” he laughs, “but…great.”

  I travel down his body for a minute, then I stick my tongue in his mouth and explore him as our pre-cum mixes together. (Yes, we’re so turned on, we’re both seeping.) Taking back the power is an aphrodisiac that is even more potent than anything before.

  “Ahhh,” he moans. “Eliot.”

  “Yes?”

  He leans back. “Nobody has ever turned me on like this. Ever. Everything about you makes me crazy. How am I ever going to be okay with hooking up with anyone else after this?”

  “You don’t have to,” I say as I suddenly take my cock and press it against his hole. He groans and then stares at the ceiling.

  “Fuck,” he sighs. “I wanted this so badly, but you’re more dominant than I expected.”

  “I’m a power bottom and a power top, too. Rare breed, I guess.”

  “Please stop talking and just kiss me again.”

  We make out for a while, writhing and sighing and rolling together on the small mattress. If this is one of our last nights together, I want it to count. But at one point I glance over and read one of the needlepoint pillows: Any man can be a father, it says in a tacky cursive script. But it takes someone special to be a daddy.

  “What’s wrong?” Robert asks me. “You look horrified.”

  “Oh, nothing,” I say quickly as I turn over that buzz-kill of a pillow. “Now keep kissing me.”

  “No,” he says with hungry eyes. “Fuck me. Fuck me while you still can. While we’re still here. I need you, Eliot.”

  “Oh, baby…”

  And that does it – I can’t wait anymore. No more foreplay. I was a bit nervous up until now, but for a moment I close my eyes and tell myself to forget all the complications. I forget he was married to my mom, I forget he was once my stepfather. Right now, we are two people who desire each other. Nothing more, nothing less. And that’s the simplest thing in the world, really.

  I place myself against his hole, then push my hips forward just a bit. Oh, fuck. I don’t know what I was expecting, but he isn’t any different from a guy my age – he’s just as tight, actually.

  I rest inside him for a minute, getting used to things. Then he groans, low and deep, then does a weird movement with his torso. At the same time, his hole contracts around my cock, which is something I’ve never felt before.

  “Whoa, what was that?” I ask.

  “I just flexed my inner muscles. It’s a trick I do. I’ve always been tight, so I could never take a pounding. So I found other ways to please my guys.”

  “God, you’re so tight…do it again…”

  He squeezes again, sending me into ecstasy. It’s the tightest thing I’ve ever felt. He’s going to squeeze the come right out of me like this.

  “Fuck…keep going…”

  For ten and then fifteen minutes of ecstasy he just flexes, again and again. I’ve never felt anything like this. I don’t even have to fuck him, because he’s doing all the work himself. It feels like the vibrator did, but…backwards, if that makes sense; like someone has put a motorized sleeve around my dick. And soon it’s too much.

  I lean in and lick him from his bristly chin, up over his lips, and then up his nose to his eyebrows. He tastes like sweat and salt and sex. Then I let go of myself. I clasp both of his nipples, cry out, then thrust upward into his tight hole. He looks at the ceiling and screams, himself, and that’s when I realize – I want to come inside him. I don’t want to pull out. We’re both disease-free, and I want to make him my own in that way. I don’t know why, I just want to feel myself empty my balls into him. That would be the ultimate field-leveler, right? I’ll never feel below him again if I’ve cream-pied him.

  “Robert,” I grunt as I start thrusting harder.

  “Yes? Oh, baby, yes?”

  “I’m about to come.”

  “Come, then. Come, yes, come inside me…”

  I pound deep and hard one last time, and then my body is going numb and I am being taken away to somewhere only the angels know…

  My body contracts as I start to spurt into Robert Glazer. And then something brushes against the door, and I bolt upright at once.

  Robert Glazer

  When we both hear the sound, he’s already coming inside me. He sits up, but it doesn’t stop. His body shakes and twitches and trembles as his cock pumps his semen into me, and the sensation makes me come, too, in some kind of chain reaction. I know this is so dangerous, but I can’t stop. I feel my hole contract around him as I moan and sigh, then squirt all over my own abdomen. He freezes against my shoulder.

  “Fuck,” he says. “What’s that?”

  “I don’t know, I don’t know…”

  We both wait, both of our hearts thundering. And there it was again – the sound. Someone is trying to get into the dock house. And his penis is still inside me.

  I’m just considering jumping up and making a run for it when a small form jumps up on the table outside, in front of the window. It’s Sara’s old cat, Gayle King, named after a host of her favorite morning talk show. The gardener kept her, and now she spends her days wandering around Woodhouse Lawn.

  I feel his dick go slack inside me. We thought someone had found us. And it was just a stupid cat.

  “God, it’s just Gayle,” he sighs as he pulls out of me. I wince, then laugh.

  “We’ve become pretty paranoid, haven’t we? Jeez.”

  “Well it’s not like we don’t have reasons to be…”

  He pulls out of me, and I listen to him breathe. I smile at his big shoulders, his glossy hair, his deep-set eyes. He is so beautiful here in this moonlight. I reach over and rest a hand on his bicep.

  “Tomorrow night’s all mine, okay?” I ask him. “Let me plan everything.”

  “You got it.”

  I just keep observing him, soaking in his beauty. The thing with the cat really got my emotions going, and now I can’t stop the Emotion Train. A tear comes to my eye. My whole life, the world told me the only thing that awaited me was sadness and despair. Gays didn’t get happy endings. Every gay movie ended in tears. Every gay book ended in a funeral.

  But Eliot is making me think, for the first time, that my story can be w
ritten in sunlight. I know we haven’t known each other for long. But he is slowly introducing me to a happiness I’ve never known, a goose bump joy that raises my hairs and makes me want to reach for stars I’ve never even noticed in the sky before. I was so busy focusing on the doom and gloom the world told me I deserved, I couldn’t really see those stars.

  But no more. Regardless of who he is, regardless of what our relationship would do to the rest of my life – I think I want to be with him. For real. For good. No more sad stories. He is my HEA, IRL.

  “Eliot,” I finally breathe. “I have to say something.”

  “Yes?”

  “I know we have our issues, but…”

  “…Yeah?”

  “Okay. Well…stepparent, stepson, family member, non-family member, whatever…I’m just really glad I met you. I’m glad you came into my story.”

  He kisses my sweaty forehead. “And I’m glad, too. And Robert?”

  “Yes?”

  He looks down. Then his face breaks, and he lets out a breathy giggle. “I think my come is seeping out of you.”

  ~

  Eliot heads to the downstairs shower, in the gym complex, so we don’t have to walk through the house together. At this time of night, that would be a hard one to explain.

  I stop in his room on the way to mine, since I left my favorite shirt in there the other night. It’s empty, but I know he wouldn’t mind. I find the shirt tossed behind the far side of the bed, next to the spare dresser. I stop for a moment and smile when I breathe in his scent. His clothes are strewn everywhere; his suitcase is tipped over. He’s a mess and I love it. I love everything about him, actually.

  I’m turning to leave when something on the dresser catches my eye – it’s a little sticky note.

  At first I don’t think much of it. Then I start to wonder. What would this be? Is it a note from one housekeeper to another? When in the world could that have been left there? Honestly, it could’ve been there from day one – I don’t pay attention to little things like that, and Eliot wouldn’t have seen it, either. Neither of us have had a reason to come back to this corner of the room. Something tells me to investigate, and so I walk over and peel it off and then feel my stomach drop out: