9781618857569GettingitAllStorm (8 page)

“She
didn’t say.”

“Don’t
worry. She will. We’ll get it all. Blow by…thanks again, sweetie.” She snapped
the phone shut.

Dorothy
leaned back against the Mercedes. Now would be the time to have a cigarette,
she thought.

If she smoked.

Which she didn’t.

At least, not yet.

* * * *

Matt stared at the ceiling over
his bed, his hand firmly locked around his hard morning bone. The last couple
of days had been perplexing, and to be honest, he didn't like being perplexed.
But look, buddy, he lectured himself severely, perplexed or not, other than
being thrown a little off kilter, he sure didn't have anything to complain
about.

Though the first go-round with
Christy had knocked both of them for a loop, the second, later in the evening,
had worked out just fine.

His dick thickened in his hand.
Ready for action.

Matt glanced down, a raised
eyebrow appraising. Woulda thought, after a couple of years of almost total
neglect, the mighty organ would have needed a bit of revving to get up to full
speed.
No
siree
,
dude.
One sniff of a proffered pussy and it was more than ready to make
up for lost time.

Even his kissing Lucy at the
scenic overlook has produced a reaction he hadn't been expecting. Not
necessarily in his dick, but surprisingly deeper inside, where it mattered.

Once he was deeper inside
Christy, that
sure had mattered too. He stroked more firmly.
Mattered more than he had expected it to.

Except he
hadn't been expecting anything.
It just—
bang!
—
had
happened.

And then again, now that he
thought back, maybe he had been ready for something.

The sexy shorts had set him up.
The massage kid, Clayton, had set him off. Hard hands on a hard body had really
worked in his case. For the first time in a long time he
felt
flesh on flesh. Really felt it.
Underneath the skin.
In the muscles.
In all the stuff underneath.
Some sleeping thing had
been stirred awake.

If the kid could advertise that,
he'd have guys lined up down the street.

Chuckling, reluctantly he let go
of his awakened giant and hopped out of bed to head for the shower. Newly
revived sex animal or not, he still had a full day's work ahead of him. The
boiling in his groin would have to wait. He could do that. He'd been doing that
for years.

He twisted on the cold water.

Saturdays were a bitch at the
shop. People trying to squeeze in appointments
who
hadn't had a chance to stop by during the week.
Families
needing their car for the weekend.
Hybrids acting
“funny.”

By late afternoon, Buddy had
pretty much everything in the bays under control and Matt had more or less
gotten the outstanding paperwork in order.

Buddy perched on his boss' desk,
sucking on a can of soda. Matt felt perplexity scratch at his groin.

“Buddy, where are those
girly magazines
you dumped on
my desk last year? Didn't you say they'd be around when I needed them?”

“Oh, man, I'm sorry. They're
gone. They were classics,
y'know
,
the
printed stuff? They don't even
put'em
out anymore.
Everything's online.” He slid off the desk and from behind Matt poked at the
office computer, glancing furtively toward the outer shop. “Don't tell the
guys. I stashed a few prime examples away on your hard drive.”

A few clicks and scanned copies
of a centerfold in all her glory appeared in more than living color before the
two men. Other gloriously unadorned young ladies flicked by.

“Whoa! You mean I've had this
right in front of me all this time and you never told me?”

“Not only that...” Buddy smugly
swirled the mouse and came up with equally naked and equally more than
protuberant young men.

“I figured if maybe you saw a
couple of hot, hung dudes who were obviously getting it, you might think about
how you weren't and get a move on.”

“Where did you get these guys?”

He shrugged and settled his large
butt on the edge of the desk as he slugged down more soda. “An old girlfriend
threw a couple of copies at me when I hit a hundred eighty and she was heading
out the door
. '
That's what we want, Buddy,' she yelled
at me. 'I don't give a damn if most of them are gay or not, that's what we want
you to look like.'” He sighed mightily. “'You are
not hot
!' were her last words to me.”

“Oh, yeah, I remember.
About the same time as the girlies.
A
year, year and a half ago?
You went on that grapefruit diet.”

“Cookies.
Cookie diet.”
He patted his belly. “I lost about twenty
pounds, but then I discovered there are some dames out there who like meat on their
man.”

“That's also when you gave up
your gym membership,” Matt chuckled, deciding it probably wasn't the best
course of action to discuss his current
perturbability
with his longtime and well-meaning but somewhat out-of-shape friend. “Did you
think I'd never find this stuff?”

Buddy quickly closed out the
pages on the computer. “Look at that computer desktop! They're right in front
of you. See those little thumbnails? I hoped you
would
find'em
. We could have got a
conversation going.”

“Okay. Okay. I get that I need to
clean off my desktop and, Buddy, we've had a conversation going.” He slapped
his young friend on his broad back. “For about two solid years now...and it
just may be beginning to pay off.
Maybe.
Think you can
handle things here the rest of the afternoon?” He shut the laptop and slid it
into the center drawer.

Buddy smirked, looking very
superior.
“Another hot date with the blonde bombshell?”

Matt stared, impressed. “How the
fuck—”

“Old man Andrews saw Christy's
four-wheel
going up your driveway.
The Neilson kid saw it coming out...several hours later. There was some
twittering about what the town sexpot and the head of the town board of
education might be discussing over such an extended period of time in the
privacy of your cozy cottage.” He backed up toward the shop door, laughing,
palms out in front to fend Matt off if he lunged.

“And it appears there were a
couple of kids at the overlook off the Taconic who saw you and Lucy making
out.”

“We did not make out!” Matt
shouted, fury fighting off hilarity. “It was a chaste kiss. Damn. Is nothing
private in this town?”

“You wanna hear the one about the
librarian and the
—
”

“I do not!”

Matt was out the door of Matt's
Motors.

And a few minutes later, into the
perky yellow massage room of Leo’s barber shop. A quick call on his cell phone
and Clay had said he'd meet Matt there. The young masseur's next and only
remaining client of the day wasn't until seven.

Leo left the customer in his
barbers' chair and accompanied Matt to the door leading to the back of the
shop. “He's waiting for you, Matt,” he said, quietly, glancing at the waiting
men customers, several chatting among themselves. “Be kind to the kid. I'm not
letting him out of our bargain. A nice young man, but he needs a lesson in hard
business sense.”

Nodding his head in agreement
with his assessment, Leo rejoined his client as Matt shielded his eyes from the
bright glare and entered the back room.

“Hi, Mr.
Bartholomew.
Thanks for coming in. You know, I can give you a break
if you buy a card of ten.”

The kid was as eager and hopeful
as ever. Matt began to undress.

“Clay, I need some advice and I
figure you're the only one in town who can give it to me. You're pretty much
the only one around who is, what I'm supposed to be on the school board.
Objective.”
He stripped down to his underwear.

“Uh, okay. Hey, I see you're
wearing your sexy Near Buffs again. Pretty sharp, Mr.
—”

“It's Matt, Clay. Matt. You rub
my butt. Anybody who I allow to rub my butt, we had better be on a first name
basis. And what the hell is
a Near
Buffs?”

“It's the brand name of your
underwear. Didn't you know?”

“No. They were a gift.
From an unknown admirer.”
He stripped the garment off.

The young man's brows went up
involuntarily. “Oh. Wow.”

“Is that a big deal?” Matt
climbed up on the massage table and lay face down.

“Well, yeah. It's just they're
pretty sexy.”

“And the unknown admirer’s
message is...?”

The masseur poured oil in his
hands and gently rubbed them together, warming the liquid. “Well, I think your
admirer admires your body.
And you.
Sexually.”
He put his cupped hands holding the warm liquid on Matt's tense buttocks and
began a deep tissue massage. He chuckled. “Want me to start with your ass, huh?
Most of the guys won't even let me touch their butts.” He sighed. “I'm afraid I
totally misjudged what I thought I had to offer the guys in this town.”

The kid's sigh bespoke of untold
numbers of young entrepreneurs now in debt up to their eyebrows.
Dreams fading quickly.
Reality bashing its
way in.

“Well, it's working for me.” Matt
was already beginning to feel his vulnerability fade, his
perturbability
...whatever.
He didn't like feeling unsettled. Clay's magic hands on his ass and up his back
seemed to calm that. “And I don't think I'm all that different from my fellow
CoveHavenites
.” Clay had worked his way up to Matt's
shoulders.
“Oh, God.
Yes. Deep, please.
Near pain.”
Clay pressed hard.
Matt
felt...good.
The tension was being pressed out.
Like
stomped grapes underfoot.
To make a good wine.
A good local northeastern vintage.

“You're different, Mr....Matt.
You want a massage. A lot of guys take a look back here, but not too many give
it a try. I thought after a hard day's work at a corporate desk or something,
most of the guys would really enjoy something that would get the tension out.
It must be tough trying to make a living in the city with all that commuting
and being away from their families. I don't know if I could handle that.”

Matt turned over on his back.

“Clay, you're gay, right?”

The young man looked at his client
carefully.
“Yeah.
Well, mostly.”

“Mostly?”
Matt
searched the wary deep blue eyes.

“I've had girlfriends.” Clay
began to stroke Matt's legs.

His
hands created pure pleasure, pure release.
Matt relaxed and poured out his
history. Alice.
Her death.
His
denial.
Buddy, his friend's attempts.
Then...

“Your massage really turned me
on,” he concluded.

“Yeah?”
Clay had
rubbed down everything except...

“It showed me I wasn't totally a
dead pile of flesh.”

“Oh?
Yeah?”
The young man was still wary.
Pleased, but not sure where the
conversation was going.
“You wanna turn over? I didn't do the back of
your legs.”

“Sure,
Clay.”
But he didn’t turn over. “I don't know if it's just the
massage.” Matt was coming down the home stretch. “Or the way
you
massage.
Or if
it was just the right time.
But you probably saved my life.
At least my sexual life.
I'm dating again.” It was a
statement of fact.
A proclamation.
A
revelation.
A salvation.

“That's...good. That's kind of
what I...wanted to...” He fell silent, his hands at Matt's pubes.

“Clay, I would love for you to
jack me off, but that's not why I'm here. I can do that really well myself. I
can't believe I'm the only guy in town who needs to have his physical life
regenerated. I think you've got something special to offer.” He sidetracked.
“But the yellow has got to go.”

“What?”

“It's a great color.
Very subtle.
Daffodil, right?
But
nobody comes to
CoveHaven
to get the same experience
they can get in midtown Manhattan. You
know,
bright,
clean spa type stuff.
At least not the guys who come here.
They want something different. They want what Leo has out front.
A history.
You know, just like you and your buddy were
impressed by the barber pole.
Times gone by.
When things were better.
Or so they'd like to believe.”