Beneath the Stain - Part 1 (9 page)

He moved gentler then, but he needed just as badly, and for a moment they thrashed on the bed, trying to crawl inside each other’s skin.

Grant took charge, rolling over, pinning Mackey. “Calm down,” he growled. “Let me kiss you.” He moved his lips from the corner of Mackey’s mouth, down his jaw, to his neck. He didn’t suck too hard or rasp his chin over Mackey’s soft skin—every move was firm but not rough, gentle but not ticklish, and by the time he’d kissed down to Mackey’s nipples, Mackey was crazy, writhing, sobbing, because his whole body was one bright cry for release.

Grant closed his hand over his cock, and Mackey gasped, “No! Not yet!” He wanted to cry. God, this whole day and it would be over?

Grant breathed hard into the hollow of Mackey’s neck. “All night,” he managed. “It’s not even seven. We’ve got all night.”

“But what if we don’t….” Mackey’s groin was
on fire
, he needed so bad.

Grant settled him with a light touch, not teasing but not fulfilling either. “We have to,” he said, voice cracking. “I don’t want to lose my virginity with Sam. I want to lose it with you.”

And Mackey found himself comforting his lover, stroking his shoulders, whispering in his ear, because Grant was coming apart like Mackey was. They were young and in a bed and their hands rested on each other’s cocks, but the pain slowed it down, made the sex precious. When Mackey arched his back and watched in wonder as his come shot across his stomach, Grant was in his arms doing the same thing, and the wonder of it, of giving a man the same thing he was getting, that was etched in Mackey’s brain too. He’d learned two lessons about love that day, and the day wasn’t even over. It had to be a good day, didn’t it?

Didn’t it?

Their breathing slowed, and Grant made him get up so they could huddle under the covers in the unfamiliar Bay Area chill. Mackey backed up against him and accepted the kisses on his shoulders and tried not to yell at him and ruin the night.

“Why?” he asked when his body had calmed down a little. “Why do you have to sleep with her? Why can’t you just break up with her?”

Grant sighed eloquently. “She’s going to tell people I’m a fag if we don’t do it. She already threatened to tell my mom.”

Mackey closed his eyes tight. “What would your dad do?”

“He used to go to bars,” Grant said, so quiet Mackey could barely hear him. “I heard him brag to his friends about being young and going out and beating faggots up. I… I’m not like you, Mackey. You…. Music is… it’s the center of you, and it’s all okay there. I… I need my folks to love me.”

And there it was again. That cracking voice, the reminder. Grant wasn’t that much older, and Grant wasn’t that much stronger, and Mackey still loved him even though he was weak.

Mackey rolled over and kissed him, and Grant opened his mouth and took.
The rest of the night
, Grant said, and Mackey had a confusing idea that they’d fall asleep at midnight with parts of lovemaking unexplored.

The fact was that from the moment of that kiss, time stopped in the little hotel room. Every kiss was forever, every touch was a brand, an invisible tattoo, marking Mackey as property of Grant Adams until the end of time.

Somewhere in the middle of that magic bubble of timelessness, Grant put both his hands on the backs of Mackey’s thighs and shoved them up and performed gross, obscene,
amazing
acts on Mackey’s body with his tongue and mouth. Mackey was beyond protest, beyond morality. It should have been bad. It should have been nasty. But Grant’s mouth felt
awesome
, and the things he did—his mouth around Mackey’s delicate balls, his tongue down the crease of his ass, dancing in his hole—were things Grant
needed
to do to him. When Grant pulled a little plastic bottle out of his pocket and used it on Mackey’s asshole, all he could do was shudder and hiss.

“Don’t worry about rubbers,” Grant whispered, penetrating Mackey with one finger and rubbing around his rim. “I’m a virgin, you’re a virgin, we’re good.”

“Can’t get pregna—ahhhh!” Mackey’s lame joke was cut short when Grant added another finger and Mackey started shaking, terrified of the tidal surge threatening to roar through his body. “Grant!” He was afraid. This was frightening.

“Sh, Mackey, I’m coming.”

At first Mackey thought he meant climax and was almost reassured. If Grant was coming, then Grant could stop touching him, and he could stop shaking, stop needing. But he’d pulled out both his fingers and that terrifying pleasure was gone and the shaking didn’t get any better—maybe he should keep touching, and keep touching, and….

And then Grant was there, his cock pushing against Mackey’s butthole. Mackey closed his eyes and cried out. “Grant!”

“Sh, Mackey, relax,” Grant crooned. “It’ll feel good. You’ll stretch. Just push against me and you’ll… ah!”

Mackey still hurt, but Grant was right, the pushing helped. Grant kept thrusting inside and Mackey opened, slowly, painfully—so painfully he was sweating, tears slipping through the corners of his eyes. Grant kissed them, kissed him, and Mackey kept crying.

Grant pushed himself up and wiped a palm down Mackey’s temple. “You okay?” he asked, his voice tortured. “Mackey, you okay? Do I need to stop?”

“Keep going,” Mackey grunted, even though it didn’t feel good. Grant wanted it. Mackey would give him anything he wanted.

Grant kept moving then, slowly, making low groans of pleasure, and his noises made Mackey happy. Grant felt good. Mackey was doing it right.

The ache and burn in his ass began to feel better, to work inside him, and Mackey reached down to his semihard cock and started stroking. Oh… oh yes.

That pressure/pleasure surged back. Mackey was even more scared of it now. He fought against it even as Grant groaned and sped up. Oh God, it hurt, but it didn’t, and Mackey was afraid, but it felt good, so good, ouch, but good, it hurt,
so good—

“
Grant!
”

He screamed it, and Grant’s voice caught on his next moan, and his hips shifted. That tidal wave crashed down on Mackey, and he knew what climax felt like, but nothing this big. He screamed again, wordless and afraid. Grant devoured him, mouth hot on his, rabbiting his hips back and forth and—

Both of them groaned, and Grant spasmed.

Mackey felt it: hot come, jerking into his body, slick and invasive. That thought sent him smashing into orgasm, screaming into Grant’s mouth until his throat was raw.

They calmed down. Grant got up, leaving Mackey cold and sprawled on the bed with his legs spread, but when Grant came back, he had a warm washcloth that he used to clean Mackey up with, and then himself. He got back into bed and touched Mackey’s chest, kissed his shoulder, until Mackey turned toward him and started kissing back.

“You okay?” Grant asked, his voice shaky.

“Yeah.”

“Are
we
okay?”

“Yeah.” They had to be, right? If they weren’t okay, then what? No more moments? No more of Grant’s touches? No more of them together?

Unbearable.

“We’re great,” Mackey said, and he made himself believe it. Self-delusion is easy at fifteen.

It would be easy at sixteen and seventeen and eighteen and nineteen too.

But Mackey wasn’t thinking about nineteen that night. All he let himself think about was Grant’s body, and pleasing it. By the time they left the hotel room late the next morning, he and Grant had done everything they could think of. He’d held Grant’s thighs up and done filthy, obscene things with his tongue—and loved them. Loved the taste of Grant’s sweat and come and the feel of his skin. Loved the sounds he brought about, loved every act they performed.

He tried to top and was not wonderful at it. He was so greedy, so trembly, Grant had needed to take over, to direct him, to take his own pleasure from Mackey when Mackey couldn’t give him what he needed.

Afterward, though, he let Mackey clean him up, wash them both, and they curled up naked under the covers. Grant turned off the light and they were alone in the dark of the hotel room, counting each other’s breaths in the sudden silence.

“I wish this was us all the time,” Mackey confessed, knowing it was stupid. Even if he was a girl, girls didn’t get married at fifteen.

“Me too,” Grant whispered back. “We’ll just have to… have to take what we can, right? Be ready, all the time, to do this.”

Mackey closed his eyes and breathed their sex and their body heat inside. “This is what they mean,” he realized. “When they say stolen kisses.”

They fell asleep in the middle of a stolen kiss.

T
HEY
WOKE
up late, with barely enough time to shower before they had to be on the road. Grant drove as fast as he could without attracting attention so he could make up time, and they ate breakfast and lunch practically on the run.

They talked during the trip home like they hadn’t stolen that night together, like Mackey was Kell’s little brother and Grant was Kell’s best friend. But right before they hit their county, Grant pulled into a rest stop, saying he had to take a leak, and Mackey followed him, thinking he’d do the same.

Nobody was there, but Grant pulled him into a stall anyway, talking softly after the door closed. “I meant what we did last night,” he said, looking into Mackey’s eyes. “However this ends, whatever lies we have to tell, you just gotta know that, okay?”

“Okay,” Mackey said, helpless. “I know. I know.”

Grant kissed him hard and fast, and when Mackey would have gotten lost in it, Grant opened the door behind him and shoved him out.

Well, yeah.

Both of them really did have to take a leak, didn’t they?

And that was how they did it. For five years, that was how they did it. Grant slept with Samantha at the end of August. A week later he showed up at the school, snuck Mackey out, and took him in the backseat, parked behind a tree by the river. Mackey went back to school reeking of come and hardly able to walk, and nobody said a damned thing.

Grant bought a van for the band’s equipment, what Jeff called a serial-killer van, with no windows. Stevie hired Tony to stencil the band’s logo on the side, and it looked really official, but the best part? Grant kept a stack of blankets in the back, thick ones meant to cushion the equipment so it didn’t get damaged when they drove around to gigs. Mackey didn’t drive, and Kell owned the other car, so it just made sense for Mackey and Grant to take the van when they went out of town. “Help move shit” became a euphemism for Mackey getting laid. The van ran like a dream, but Grant told everyone it overheated if it went too fast. Mackey got more action in the back of that van than porn stars got on set. And Mackey was greedier for it too. They had no time for shyness, for courting. The minute they had time to themselves, they were slutty, rapacious cocksucking fuckers, and both of them got pro quality at the two-minute blowjob.

It wouldn’t occur to Mackey until later that speed was not necessarily what you wanted from a lover. It didn’t even rank in the top three.

Outbreak Monkey continued to grow. Grant used his dad’s business contacts and they played three or four places regularly, earning a steady enough paycheck for Mackey to not have to work anywhere else but the music store. Kell and Jeff moved into the apartment next to their mother’s with Stevie, but Mackey could make up the difference for their mom, so it was okay that they moved out. (Mackey didn’t want to tell anyone, but he liked the bunk bed anyway. If he wasn’t going to sleep with Grant, the little cove kept him safe.)

Mackey made it through high school in a wobbly sort of way. His math and science scores were mostly luck, but his English and history grades were outstanding. As one teacher said, anything he could make into a song had his complete attention. For the most part, Mackey used the popularity the band gave him to stay above it all. The band played school functions and rich kids’ birthdays, and the kids who wanted to hang all over him helped with the equipment.

Tony was one of those.

He wasn’t annoying, though—was just, like he’d told Mackey before, entranced by the music. He never tried anything, didn’t even flirt, and Mackey treated him like a friend. It was good to have friends. He played in the band with his brothers and his lover—talking to Tony about the Features or Cage the Elephant was like breathing sweet air.

Playing on the stage next to Grant with come still running down his asscrack was like breathing pot smoke until his feet didn’t even touch the stage. The smell of Grant’s skin got him buzzed, and the smell of his come or the musk under his balls got him high as a kite.

It gave him courage to have that stamp on his skin.

He learned to flirt outrageously with the crowd when he was still in high school. To smile that fuck-off-and-love-me smile until they screamed his name. He learned how to look right over their heads and lick his lips like he’d go down on every guy and girl in the place. When he was on stage and his heart was playing notes instead of blood, he felt like he
could
go down on everyone in the place, like he wanted to taste them all and hear them scream and feel the clench of their fingers in his hair.

He yearned day and night to song-fuck the crowd one more time.

It was so much easier than living in his own skin when he saw Grant and Samantha walking down the street in the sunlight like they had every right in the world.

Living poor gives you a really short view of the world. You live to your next meal, your next paycheck, your next birthday, your next high. Mackey was no different. He lived for his next moment with Grant, and he didn’t see the time swimming under his feet like fish under a river of ice. He didn’t wake up one day and think,
Hey, I’m nineteen, and I’ve spent a quarter of my life loving someone I can’t kiss in public!
but one day it happened, whether he noticed or not. He probably could have lived his
whole
life that way, starving at the banquet, but the river under his feet changed in ways he did not see.

For the first couple of years, they played the Nugget one town over from Tyson, in Hepzibah, four times a month. Then one night, right before Mackey’s graduation, someone in the audience, at the first table, said something about Stevie’s dad being a pervert.