Here For You

by J. P. Oliver

  But today I had to leave him. Two days earlier than I’d expected. I wasn’t due back at work till Monday, but this morning my oldest sister Xiomara had called me, asking if I could come back to Denver a little early. Her husband had fallen off a ladder, trying to change a light bulb, and hurt his back—nothing too serious, but he’d be no help with my three-year-old nephew for a few days.

  La familia, right?

  So I wasn’t resentful, exactly, but I was a little grumpy as I pushed through the door of the Sit and Sip. I was just starting to notice some real positive change in mi tesoro, and starting to notice these real positive feelings in myself. This was the worst time to leave Beck, and I wasn’t going to go back to Denver without saying good-bye, and, I hoped, making plans to see him again.

  “Officer Flores?”

  The voice stopped me in my tracks and made me spin on my heels. Gavin Joy stood facing me. He smiled, as usual, but there was something a little distant in his eyes.

  “Buenos dias, Gavin. I was hoping to see Beck, just for a moment.”

  The bookseller’s eyes became just a little cooler, although I could see he still exhibited his usual loose, casual, open body language. “I’m afraid he’s not here today. It’s his day off.”

  “Oh.”

  What else can be said when you get kicked in the stomach? This wasn’t, I realized, the end of the world. Leaving from work, it would only take me an hour to drive to Harlan, and less than ninety minutes from my house. That inconvenience would be nothing with a tesoro like Beck at the end of the quest. Nevertheless, I wanted to see him now. And I surely didn’t want to leave him without a word, to disappear for three or four days with no explanation. Not when he was so vulnerable to begin with.

  And I certainly didn’t want to leave him without one last kiss.

  I’d forgotten Gavin was there until he spoke again. His eyes had softened, and his head had canted curiously to one side.

  “Is there something I can help you with, Officer Flores?”

  “I—ah.” I didn’t know Gavin. Not nearly so well as I knew Jay. And Beck—he had so many secrets, and seemed so slow to trust. Telling Gavin about my feelings for Beck, and about Beck’s beautifully maddening responses to me, it felt like a betrayal.

  “I’m leaving town early. Unexpectedly,” I finally said. “I’ve become friendly with Beck, and it felt wrong to leave him without explaining why.” Gavin’s face softened just a little more, and concern for Beck melted the ice in his eyes. I was emboldened to say more. “You know him, Gavin. He needs to be treated gently. Leaving without saying good-bye…it would feel like a betrayal, perhaps. I just wanted to see him for a few minutes and explain.”

  Gavin looked at me for what felt like several minutes, sizing me up, considering my words. Then he laughed quietly, shaking his head. “Wait here, Officer.”

  He turned and walked the few steps to the counter, sliding behind it. He picked up a phone, turned his back to me, looking out onto the street, and dialed. He spoke so quietly I couldn’t hear him, but then, after several seconds, hung up and turned to face me again. He looked as open and friendly as the day I met him.

  “You’re right, Officer Flores. Beck does need to be treated gently.” He paused thoughtfully for a moment. “Beck’s told me about you. A little. And part of me is skeptical this is a good idea. He’s…innocent, you know? But he’s also a grown man, and Jay speaks very highly of you. Just…be careful with him, you know? Treat him gently.”

  I nodded. I had to respect a man that cared for others so clearly—cared enough to protect them, and also cared enough to let them make their own decisions. Despite his slight frame and open face, I could see the same need to be a guardian in Gavin that I sensed in my friend Eli.

  “I have promised Beck I will never hurt him deliberately, and if I hurt him accidentally, I will do everything in my power to make it right. I’ve made this promise to myself as well. I’d like to say I will never hurt him, period, but an honest man can’t promise the moon. Just know, Mr. Joy, that I care for Beck deeply.”

  He smiled again. “Good.”

  I knew Gavin so slightly, but in that moment, I felt us becoming friends.

  He continued. “Because Beck is such precious cargo, I didn’t want to send you up there unannounced. But he lives above the shop, and he wants to see you, and he’s expecting you. Just go out the front door, make a right around the building, and then take the fire escape in the alley up to the second-floor balcony. When you find a green door, knock.”

  “Gracias, Gavin. For the help, and for loving Beck like I do.”

  He laughed. “Not like you do, Flores, but maybe as much. Now. Get out of here.”

  I work out a lot, and jog most mornings. Even so, my heart thudding and my breath catching in my chest as I climbed the fire escape had nothing to do with exertion. I knocked on the green door, and the rhythm and the tightness increased as the door opened, revealing my blue-eyed angel. He wore a simple tee-shirt—no sweater—and chocolate brown corduroys. His pale feet were bare, and his hair was still shower-damp. A perfect bead of water touched his cheek. Apparently, Gavin had timed the phone call just right.

  “I was about to come see you. At the White Hill Inn.”

  I laughed from pure joy—that he’d wanted to see me, and that he’d spoken first. And then I remembered why I was here.

  “May I come in, Beck?”

  “Yes.” He smiled at me, and then stepped back.

  His room felt cramped. I shrugged instinctively to take up less space. Low ceilings, a double bed piled high with rumpled sheets and quilts. A simple wooden chair by the window with a few books stacked beside it and a battered old laptop charging on the floor. The eggshell walls had been plastered in landscapes—they looked like they’d been cut from magazines, in which snowcapped Colorado mountains jostled beside warm white beaches and dense tropical forests. From the open door in the back of the room, hazy steam from the shower rested in the air.

  I looked around, learning as much about Beck as I could from his environment. Cramped for me, perhaps, but snug and safe for him, and as bright and colorful as he could make it. I breathed and relaxed.

  “I have to leave, Beck. My family needs me. But I wanted to say good-bye before I did, and I wanted—I was hoping you’d want to see me again if I came back to Harlan to see you.”

  An enormous silence hung between us.

  “Came back when?”

  “I need a few days to take care of some things, but soon. As soon as I can. I... I don’t want to leave you.”

  He nodded, taking that in. “I don’t want you to leave either. If you come back, I’d like to see you.”

  “Not if, mi tesoro. When. Soon. Not this weekend, but maybe next? If you’d like that.”

  He smiled, just a little, the smile of a man daring himself to hope and trust. I wanted to catch him in my arms and embrace him forever.

  “Okay.” And then he fell into me, little arms surprisingly strong as they wrapped around me, his perfect face buried in my chest. “Do you have to leave right away?”

  “My drive is short. I can stay for a while.”

  And then he looked up at me, and I kissed him. Leaning down, our lips touched, and I found his already parted. I accepted the invitation and entered him gently, and began to discover his mouth. His hot breath and sweet tongue, the softness of his lips and the firmness of the roof of his mouth. I wanted to know every inch of him.

  As delightful as the kiss was, as much as it made me feel warm and tight and tingly, the difference in our heights proved troubling. When we parted, I lifted him to me. He flushed, and looked away, but the smile on his lips was unmistakable, as was the pressure of his thighs clutching my waist and his ankles crossed behind my back. The tightness made me groan with unexpected pleasure. I carried him to his unmade bed and laid him down, stretching out above him. We kissed again, and when I moved to his neck, his whimpers and writhing beneath me were unbearably good.

&nbs
p; “May I come back every night, mi tesoro? May I come to you late in the evenings, and stay with you, and leave before dawn, and come again the next night? May I steal every moment I can and give them to you?”

  “Yes.”

  The most beautiful thing he’d ever said.

  We kissed again for ages, until my clothes became uncomfortably tight on my body. I broke away from him and slipped out of my jacket, letting it fall to the floor. I kicked it into a corner unceremoniously, then began unbuttoning my shirt. Beck watched me, eyes wide and hungry, and the look on his face made me throb and leak inside of my pants. I picked up the pace, frantically tugging off my boots and throwing them aside, jerking down my jeans and dancing out of them. Even in the black briefs I wore, my cock was thick and hard and heavy, and the stain of my arousal apparent.

  And Beck, barefoot, but otherwise fully clothed, lay before me, his stomach rising and falling, his fists clutching the sheets on either side of him, his legs raised and his knees bent. He looked like he was in heat.

  “You’ve never been with a man?” I knew the answer, but I wanted to draw this moment out, and promise him I’d be gentle, I’d take my time, I’d make this a day to remember.

  “I’ve never been with anyone.”

  “Do you ever…do you play with yourself, Beck? Do you know how to get yourself off?”

  He bit his lip and looked away, and somehow flushed redder.

  “Beck?”

  With a groan, he pointed to a dresser shoved against a wall.

  “The dresser?” I was confused.

  “Bottom drawer.”

  I walked to it, still straining in my briefs, and opened the drawer. A pirate’s chest of self-pleasure appeared as I slid it open. Douches and baby wipes, but also lubricant—lots of lubricant—and two of the biggest dildos I’d ever seen outside of a film. I smiled. I would never deny the innocence of mi ángel, but he was not as naïve as I thought.

  “Two, Beck?”

  He swallowed. “I suck on the white one, and with the pink one…” He couldn’t continue, my little love.

  I took the lube and closed the drawer. I wasn’t as large as the toys he’d hidden, but I could still be his first.

  “You’ve just come from the shower?”

  “I’m clean. I wanted to be clean when I got to your hotel.”

  “Gracias, mi tesoro. And I want to show you how good this can feel, even without toys, with another man concentrating on you. Will you lie there for me and let me take care of you?”

  He swallowed and nodded, and it was so beautiful I couldn’t bring myself to make him speak aloud. I could almost feel the heat washing off of his body.

  Leaning over him, I unbuttoned his pants and pulled them off his slender hips. He was as hard as I was, and had his own tell-tale dampness near the head of his cock. I sighed with pleasure, knowing I would be the first man to unleash the desire bottled up inside of him.

  I ran my thumb over his bulge, making him let out an actual yip that echoed in the tiny room. I grinned, tossed his pants into the jumble of clothing I’d left on the floor, then slowly peeled the hem of his shirt up, exposing the soft, snow-white skin of his tummy. I bathed him with kisses and licks, scraping my teeth across the skin and leaving pale pink trails. The whole time, he moaned and thrust his hips skyward. Somehow, his legs got wrapped around my shoulders, pulling my face close to him, forcing me down. This once, I was only too happy to submit.

  When I came up for air, panting and throbbing, I growled, “Sit up.”

  He disentangled his body from mine and followed the order. I peeled the tee-shirt off of him and, for the first time, really saw him exposed.

  Scrawny? I’d thought so, hidden as he always was in those sweaters that nearly hung to his thighs. But no. He was slender. Lean. His tummy had an inviting softness to it. But as slim as he was, the definition in this shoulders and upper arms surprised me. His chest was flat and hard.

  I may have growled again. I was forcing myself to be gentle, but his physical beauty and his desire were pushing the animal in me out. I took a breath, then moved in for a long, wet kiss. As our tongues tussled, I worked him out of his briefs.

  Pale golden hair, cloud-soft, crowned his groin, and beneath it, his cock, angry-red against the whiteness of his body, reared up. Longer than I’d have expected, but slender, just like him, and straight, the head shiny with precum. I wanted to take him in my mouth, but I didn’t trust him not to shoot immediately, and I wanted to make this last.

  Instead, I knelt at the foot of the bed, pulled him down toward me, and placed his legs around me, bracing his knees against my shoulders. He was clean and tight and hot, and when I touched the tip of my tongue to the pink knot of muscles, he sighed and opened up like a flower. My hands on his hips, holding him tight, I burrowed into him, exploring his hole with all the curiosity I’d explored his mouth minutes before. He flexed and clenched and relaxed around me, and the sounds he made encouraged me to push in deeper, to see how far I could stretch my tongue, to see how much of him I could take. I licked him and kissed him and ate him until my jaw hurt, and still didn’t feel satisfied I’d had enough.

  “Fuck me? Please, Jamie?”

  I ignored him for a few minutes, giving him a few more laps—less invasive now, just teasing licks to make sure he was open and relaxed and ready for me. When I pulled back to admire my work, the sight of him all spread out and wet for me almost made me come as hard as he had in the stockroom.

  I raised myself up on my elbow and locked eyes with him. The torture of unfulfilled needs and raw lust sat in the tightness of his jaw, his dilated pupils, the rosy glow of his cheeks and brow.

  “Not today, mi ángel, mi tesoro.”

  He whimpered again.

  “I want to, and I have no doubt you could handle me.” I nodded to the drawer where I’d found the hidden stash of toys, unable to keep a wicked smirk off of my face. “But I have to leave you tonight. I want you so badly, hermoso, but I want to sleep beside you after our first time.” I’d smeared a little lube on my fingers while I spoke, and started working them inside Beck while I continued. “I want to take care of you, Beck. I’m going to make you come harder than you ever had, but we’ll save our fucking for next weekend, when I can hold you close, and fall asleep with the smell of you in my nose.” I was in him good now, two fingers, up to the second knuckle, stroking him from the inside. His feet were planted on the mattress, knees bent, ass raised off the bed, pushing against me with the same fervor I was pressing into him.

  “Can you do that, Beck? Can you wait one little week for me?”

  “Yes.”

  “And when I see you again, will you give yourself to me? Completely?”

  “Yes.”

  “And while you wait for me, when you play with yourself, when you fuck yourself, will you think of me as you slide that big rubber cock inside you?”

  “Nnngh.”

  Poor guy. He was doing his best to speak while furiously fucking my fingers. I opened my mouth and swallowed him, hoping to put an end to his misery. I took him all, till I felt my throat fighting against his length. Never one to give up in the face of difficulty, I pushed my face against his body and swallowed.

  That was all it took, primed as he was. His hands cupped the back of my head and pushed me even harder against him as he let out the most beautiful moan I’d ever heard. My angel sang to me as he shot down my throat.

  When he started to go soft inside me, I pulled off of him. His chest rose and fell heavily, and he smiled at me under half-lidded eyes.

  “Kiss me,” he whispered.

  “Si, mi tesoro,” I said, pleased he felt comfortable telling me what he needed. He kissed me greedily, sucking himself off of my tongue. When we broke apart, I collapsed beside him, then hoisted my own ass off the bed and slid my briefs down.

  “May I take care of myself before I leave you?” I was already stroking myself lazily.

  “Come on me.”

  “Yo
u sure?”

  “I…I want to feel you.”

  “Claro que si.”

  I kicked my briefs off, then straddled him. His sky blue eyes traveled back and forth from my cock to my face as I played with myself slowly, teasing him with my desire. He bit down on his lip until the pink faded to white. When I couldn’t hold my own need back, I closed my eyes, threw my head up to the ceiling, and jerked off hard, letting out a few primal grunts of my own. I came loudly, and Beck’s moans, deliciously lower than his whimpers, joined mine in harmony.

  When I looked down, his fingers were trailing through the mess I’d left on his stomach, and he looked at me with a heat and happiness that made my heart swell.

  Then he lifted his fingers to his lips and parted them.

  I don’t know how he managed to look innocent while sucking my semen off his fingers, but he did.

  11

  Beck

  The sun was still shining when Jamie left my room, the faint golden glow of the afternoon sun on a day that couldn’t decide if it wanted to be late winter or early spring.

  I watched him get dressed in silence, but I was too lazy to move. He told me to stay there. He told me he liked looking at me. It made me want to hide under the blankets, but it also made me happy. I let him look at me.

  We kissed again when he was dressed. I told him I’d miss him.

  “Una semana, mi tesoro. One week.”

  I hadn’t cried when the door closed behind him, but I had felt empty. A little lonely.

  But I was also running a little hot. I’d taken out my toys before bed, and, as promised, thought of Jamie while I used them.

  I’d fallen asleep with my come, mingled with his, on my skin.

  I took a long time in the shower the next morning, letting the water run so hot it reddened my skin. When I soaped myself up, I imagined his hands.

  I took so long getting ready that I was nearly late for work. Nearly. I let myself in through the stockroom door, locked it behind me, then trotted up to the front to find Gavin and check in for the day. He stood as usual behind the front register, counting the drawers.