Best Gay Romance 2013 (18 page)

And then the truth would come back and I'd go down to the laundry room and put already dry clothes in the dryer. Beneath the loud
clunk-clunk
of jeans and T-shirts, I'd masturbate, hard and fast, without lube, chafing my skin into some kind of pain. Sometimes I came. Sometimes I just cried.

But after Thom died, nothing. It was like my libido got dressed up in its best clothes, and lay down to be buried somewhere between Thom and Bella. For it to come back now, suddenly and with such force that my cock tightens in my jeans—it wrecks me.

I back away from Seth, trying to shift my legs to hide everything that's happening inside me. Seth raises his eyes to the triangle of my jeans. I turn away and grab the first thing my hand finds. One of Annie's tennis balls. When I squeeze it, the air shoots out the holes into my palm. I pick up the cans of food, put them into the cupboard, so I don't have to turn around.

“Well, I guess that's settled, then,” Seth says to my back.

I'm not sure anything is settled, least of all me.

But I find myself stacking another can of food in the cupboard, saying, “I guess it is.”

Even as Seth gathers his things, I keep my back turned. It isn't until he says, “I'll see you both in a week then,” that everything subsides and I can turn and meet his dark eyes.

This, finally, is when I realize that somewhere between “I
can't,” and “You can,” I've lost the battle. Annie is staying, and this man is going to be back in my house in a week's time. And I have no idea how to feel about either.

 

For the next six days, Annie and I try to get acquainted with each other. She's learning to navigate the small house with her big body, and I'm learning to get used to the sound of movement in the rooms.

Every day, she chews her tennis ball at the back of my home office while I build websites and answer emails. Every night, I make up the bundle of blankets for her to sleep on in the living room and every night, she stands at the foot of my bed watching as I read or do crosswords or try not to think about Thom. She doesn't whine or even beg. If she did, I think I could turn her away, make it clear that the bedroom is not her space. But she just watches me, tongue hanging, until I sigh and pat the covers.

“C'mon then,” I say. And she does. Crawls on her elbows and knees across the covers like she's trying to make herself smaller. Which is nearly impossible for a dog her size. Even the bed lilts sideways at her weight. I give her one of the holey tennis balls and she chomps on it for a while and then puts her head on Thom's pillow to sleep.

So far, we haven't needed the drugs, and I think that makes us both happy. It's a slippery slope, and slipperier at the end. And although Annie's chart says five weeks, I know that could mean anything. Bella lasted longer than she was supposed to. Thom didn't.

Every morning, before our walk, I read the quality of life checkpoints off to Annie. It's a lot of
h
's and a few
m
's. Hurt, hunger, hydration, hygiene, happiness, mobility, more. It's supposed to gauge how she's doing, what her quality of life is like, if she's having more good days than bad.

I don't know if we got one of these for Bella. I'm sure we did, but I don't remember it. I wish I'd paid more attention. I wish I'd had a chart like this for Thom, although he probably would have thrown it across the room. He'd voted for calling the vet to put Bella to sleep as soon as she started showing real signs of pain, when she started having more bad days than good. But for himself, he wanted to hang in until the end, no matter the cost.

On our seventh day, the day that Seth is scheduled to come by for his check-in visit, Annie seems her usual tail-whipping self. Between breakfast and her walk, she manages to knock over the vase of yellow calla lilies that I bought…well, I won't let myself think why I bought them. The vase doesn't break, but the callas aren't salvageable.

Sometimes I swear she knocks shit over just to say that she's alive. Today, I wonder if she's not doing it to spite me for running the vacuum last night. Or maybe she's as nervous as I am about Seth coming. The way my body's jumping, if I had a tail, I'd be knocking crap off every surface, too.

I tell myself that I'm just nervous because I've gotten used to having Annie in the house, and he could decide it's not working out. But the truth is I'm excited, too.

“Okay, Missy,” I say as I give both of us a once-over in the bedroom mirror—the tip of her tail is soggy from its run-in with the vase and I've got a squeaky toy tucked in my shirt pocket, but otherwise we look pretty good. “We need to make a good impression today,” I tell Annie, who wags her tail at me.

And then Seth's knocking, calling. Annie and I nearly trip each other up trying to get to the door. Halfway across the kitchen, I calm myself and let Annie run ahead. Even so, when I swing the door open, we're both panting like fools.

Seth's standing there with a bone the size of Texas in one hand and what looks like a hand-picked bunch of black-eyed
Susans in the other. Annie looks back at me like she's smiling. I take a big gulp of air.

“Hey,” I say.

“Hi,” he says. I'm not sure if I noticed his smile last time, but I do now: straight white teeth, a full bottom lip that I want to suck.

We stand there while Annie's tail goes back and forth between the two of us. Seth holds out the bone.

“For you,” he says to me.

We both look down at the huge thing in his hand.

Seth realizes what he's done. “Oh, ah…” he says. The tips of his ears darken with color. I'm not sure I've ever seen anything so sexy. He tries to switch hands, to offer the flowers instead, but I take hold of his wrist. I don't mean to. If I'd thought first, if a vision of Thom had entered my head, I would not have done it. But my body moved first, took his wrist, and now I'm holding the hand that's holding the bone.

“Come in,” I say. His blushing, the way he fumbles through my doorway, are things Thom would never have done. I'm so grateful for the difference, for not having to compare him to Thom, that I pull him into the kitchen and press him back against the fridge. I find his mouth, that bottom lip, and I suck it into my mouth. He tastes of peppermint and basil.

Seth says something, but I can't tell what it is. It must be good, because his arms go around my back and he pulls me against him. The knotty end of the dog bone digs into my shoulder, but I don't care because our mouths are pressed together, our chests and cocks pushing into each other. He's big and the feeling of him through his jeans makes me grow large too.

I put my hands in his hair, feeling the soft black curls, the coarse gray strands. Jesus, I want to unbutton this man right here, I want to bend him over the kitchen counter and take him.
I try to tell him these things with my hips, the curve of my cock against his. He answers with his tongue, scraping the edge of my teeth, licking the inside of my cheek.

The fridge squeaks as Seth and I press into each other, harder and harder. The sound makes Annie bark, once, sharp.

All at once, we're a tangle of flowers and dog bone and tongues and panting. I step back, away from Seth's dark eyes. A flower petal brushes my ear as I break from his arms.

“I'm sorry,” I say. “I don't know…”

He smiles, and for the second time today, I am aroused by straight, white teeth. He seems to have recouped his lost confidence. His face is still flushed, but I don't think it's embarrassment this time. My own cheeks feel overly warm.

Seth goes down on his knees to give Annie the bone. She pushes the healthy side of her face against his palm before she takes it between her teeth. Still on his knees, he holds out the slightly crushed bouquet of flowers. “Would you have a vase for these?” he asks.

 

We do what's civilized. I refill the calla vase with water and try to rearrange the flowers in a way that makes them look less like they were in the middle of a lust crush. And then I offer him lunch and he accepts.

I slice up cheese and salami. Pull yesterday's tomato and mozzarella salad from the fridge. He takes the knife I offer and slices a loaf of bread at perfect diagonals.

“Beer?” I ask.

He seems relieved.

“I'd love one,” he says.

We eat while Annie gnaws her bone in the corner of the kitchen. We don't say much. It's the lunch of two men who were too nervous to eat all day. The lunch of two men who know that
dessert is going to be the best—and longest—part of the meal. I watch his hands while he dips slices of bread into olive oil. I want to suck the oil from his fingers. Better yet, suck it from his tongue. But I hold myself steady. I eat. I mention how well Annie's doing. How healthy and happy she seems.

At the end, we clear the table as though we've been doing this for years. There is no sidestepping. Seth doesn't ask where the dishes go, or how to stack things. He just does. And then there is no more to do. Annie is asleep with the bone holding her jaws apart. Her breathing is nearly silent.

Seth straightens a towel that's hanging on the fridge. “What now?” he asks, without looking at me.

I touch his back, at the curve-in place just above his ass.

His voice low, still looking at the towel, Seth says, “I want you to fuck me.”

It makes my cock pulse. Oh, Jesus. I bury my face in his neck. Even here, he smells of herbs.

“I want that, too,” I say against his skin. I take his hand and pull him away from the towel rack. I mean to go to the living room, something less personal, but that's where Thom is, the memories of his last months and days, and I lead Seth into the bedroom instead. I think it surprises us both, this wide, carefully made bed waiting in the middle of the room.

Seth stops in front of it. I realize that if I stop now, I'll back out. I'll send Seth on his way, and Annie and I will live out the rest of her days in the safe, lonely rooms of this house.

Instead, I push my hands against Seth's chest. Somehow, in pushing him away, I pull him closer. My fingers open the buttons one by one. I'm shaking, and I have to hold on to each button tightly. Seth kisses my neck while I work. His hands slide down the back of me, from my shoulders to my waist. I hear my belt buckle open, feel the warmth as he slides it from my jeans.

Everything's too slow for me.

“Please undress. I want to see you,” I say.

Seth lets go of my jeans. He undresses quickly, dropping his clothes in piles. His body is lean but muscled. His cock swings up, long and thin, the smooth head a beautiful pinky-purple. His body is so alive, so much muscle and blood pumping, that I'm afraid to touch him.

It doesn't matter. He comes to me, undresses me as fast as he did himself. Even so, I marvel at his hands everywhere: buttons, sleeves, sliding my underwear down my thighs so my cock springs up.

“Oh,” he says. And he never comes up from taking my underwear off. He stays on his knees, and I can see the lean muscle of his back, and just below that, the perfect curves of his ass. He licks his lips and presses them to the head of my cock.

It's been so long since I've felt anything other than my own hand that just the press of his lips there makes me want to grab the back of his head and fuck his mouth. I try to keep still. When he opens his lips, lets me slide inside him, against the press of tongue and teeth, it's almost too much. I grit my teeth to stem the rising pleasure. His tongue finds the sweet spot just beneath my head, laps at it.

“Ah, Jesus,” I say. Through my gritted teeth, it comes out as something less awed, more primal. I pull Seth up from his knees. His lips are cherry red and wet. He licks a drop of precum from his big bottom lip.

“What are you doing to me?” I ask, even as I'm laying him down on his back on the bed. He doesn't answer. He doesn't have to. The way his cock jumps as I position myself over him, the way he puts his legs up to give me access, says it all.

I lick my finger and use it to find the swirl of his asshole. I press against it, and Seth opens for me, already pushing down on my finger.

“More,” he pants. I enter with a second finger, let his body settle over it. He wraps his fingers tight around the base of his cock. The color darkens even more. My cock is jumping every time Seth's ass tightens around my fingers. It wants in. I want in.

“Seth, I want…”

“Yes,” he sighs. “Yes.”

I fumble in the nightstand drawer for lube and condoms, hoping there's something left over. Hoping I won't break down when my hand hits a cellophane wrapper.

Thankfully, Seth puts his other hand around my cock. He's wet his palm and his fingers slide over my skin, slick enough to take my mind off everything that came before this moment. I find a half-empty bottle of lube and one lonely condom in the bottom of the drawer.

Seth wraps his fingers around the base of my cock while I roll on the condom. He tightens his grip, a human cock ring that makes me pump my hips against his hand as I spread lube over the surface.

“It's cold,” I say.

Seth's already raising his hips to me, the perfect circle of his asshole waiting.

“Don't care,” he says.

I push my way inside him. Just the head at first. How much I've missed this entering is something that I feel in my whole body. This is how I try to be: Slow. Careful. But Seth is sucking me in with his low moans, with his fingers tight on my ass.

The slide inside is:
Oh, fuck
. And then I'm buried in him, his ass contracting and releasing around me. I stop.

“I don't know how long I'm going to last,” I say. “I can't promise—”