Muscle Men, page 8
They danced and drank for hours. Jericho felt an unerringly beautiful sense of connection to Josh, to the lights and the music and to the men around him. He felt the peace of decision and purpose flowing through him. This was the life he had been missing and this was the life he would claim for himself. He had tended a withering garden for far too long; it was time to relinquish his past and step into this place, this shifting world of men and rhythm and light.
The Dixie Chicks were blasting out “Sin Wagon” when Josh threw his arms around Jericho’s neck and leaned close. “Cowboy, take me away,” he shouted. Jericho grabbed Josh’s ass with both hands, wrapping Josh’s powerful legs around his waist, and lifting him up off the ground. He pulled their massive chests together and whirled them around, staggering through the crowd toward the escalator.
They made out in the elevator and stumbled down the hallway.
In the silence of the room, Jericho sobered somewhat, his cock thumping out an insistent tattoo against the inside of his jeans.
He pulled Josh’s shirt up across the damp hair of his chest. His pecs and flawlessly defined abs glistened with a sheen of sweat, the neatly trimmed hair bristling roughly against Jericho’s fingertips. Josh’s nipples, coaxed to steely attention by the cool air of Jericho’s room, stood out hard and heavy from his chest. Jericho leaned down to take the left one between his teeth, biting gently, then with increasing pressure, Josh’s gasps urging him on. He slid his face across Josh’s chest, dragging his stubble and then his tongue against the soft flesh. He pulled back and reached for the button fly of Josh’s jeans.
“Are you gonna fuck me, Jericho?” Josh’s voice was gravelly and harsh.
“I’m gonna fuck you until one of us collapses.” Jericho said, pushing Josh’s jeans down and sliding his palm across the hot erection.
They wrestled out of their clothes. Jericho flipped Josh onto his back on the bed. He stepped between his legs and pushed Josh’s feet up, pulling the backs of his thighs against Jericho’s chest. He licked his thumb and then rubbed it along the ridge between Josh’s asscheeks, toying with the soft pucker and then sliding slowly inside. Josh moved against him, his eyes becoming dark slits, his breathing becoming deeper, more ragged.
When Josh was lubed up, Jericho tore open a foil packet with his teeth and rolled a condom onto his thick cock. He pushed the head against Josh and in a moment, he was inside. The heat of this first-time fuck startled him, and he pulled back, then pushed harder, thrusting himself inside Josh until his cock was buried to the base. Josh gasped before coaxing Jericho deeper, moaning and rocking his massive body back and forth, his muscles flexing, and Jericho had to look away to keep himself from coming right then.
He pushed Josh’s legs apart, wrapping them around his waist and leaning forward to bite his right nipple. Josh jerked, his ass muscles tightening around Jericho’s cock. They both gasped.
“I like that,” Josh whispered.
“I guess I do, too,” Jericho said, sliding the stubble on his chin against the sensitive pink flesh and increasing the rhythm of his fucking.
They moved together, the power behind Jericho’s pistoning cock building slowly until neither could resist.
“I’m gonna come,” Josh gasped.
“Come on, baby.” The words had barely left his lips when Josh let loose a huge spurting explosion of come that flew past his head toward the headboard, and then rained down on his face, his chest and his stomach. Jericho pulled out, yanked off the condom, pushed Josh’s legs forward and pumped his own come onto Josh’s hairy ass, sliding the head of his cock through the rough curls and leaving a thick trail. Jericho dropped forward on the bed, bracing himself on his muscular arms, letting Josh’s legs drop down around his waist. Their hard stomachs pressed together, the come squelching between them. Jericho pushed up on his arms and then bent down, kissing Josh fiercely until his arms, becoming increasingly shaky as the orgasm sapped the strength from them, finally collapsed, dropping Jericho on top of Josh, every muscle trembling with exhaustion.
They slid onto their sides and drifted off to sleep, the come sliding down their skin, unnoticed.
On the flight back to Atlanta, Jericho sank into his seat and plugged into his iPod, the thumping dance rhythms clearly audible to those around him. He slipped in and out of sleep, dreams and daydreams mixing in a surreal narrative that swirled inside his head. He was going to take the job in Chicago. Maybe things would work out with Pete or Josh or maybe something else would happen. Jericho dreamed of the future for the first time in years.
He spent the first hour of his Atlanta layover sitting in a bar, drinking Wild Turkey and answering emails.
“Hello, Jericho. Can I interest you in some hot nuts?”
Jericho looked up from the table. “Randy,” he said. “I’m gonna have to take you up on that offer—”
“I know,” Randy said, sliding his hand absently down his muscular thigh. “One of these days.”
“I was gonna say, I’m gonna have to take you up on that offer this time.”
Randy stared and then laughed and said, “Well, come on. I know a place we can be alone.”
During one of their more vicious fights, Sherie had shouted at Jericho that if he had spent half as much time tending her garden as he had spent tending the roses in the front yard, they’d still have a viable marriage. In retrospect, she was dead wrong. If he had spent more time tending his own garden they might never have married in the first place.
Before he boarded the flight from Atlanta to Gainesville, Jericho fucked Randy in a tiny storeroom, pushing into him from behind and holding their bodies together, one enormous hand resting against Randy’s rock-hard abs, the other covering his mouth to muffle the groans. They had pounded into one another until Randy bit into Jericho’s fingers and came all over a pile of cardboard boxes.
When he boarded the flight, he found a bowl of warm nuts on the tray table next to his seat. He grinned and popped his earbuds into his ears, letting the music ease him through takeoff.
“Look at your dad out there posing for Nancy.” Pete took a swig of his beer and stared out the kitchen window, grinning.
Emory wiped his forehead with the back of his wrist and glanced out the window. He laughed. “What a fuckin’ show-off.”
“Well, Nancy’s practically begging him for more.”
“She’s a flirt.”
“She’s a cougar. You better watch out.”
Emory laughed again. “Oh, come on, Pete, Mama said she was having an affair with Dr. Everett.”
“Wrong again.”
“What?”
“Sean Everett’s gay.”
“Really?” Emory said, picking up a stack of dishes and taking them over to the table.
“Really gay,” Pete said, dreamily.
“TMI, dude.”
Pete laughed and joined Emory at the table, picking up a stack of newspapers and beginning to wrap the jumble of mugs, glasses, and plates.
“I think Carlos is gonna take care of Dad’s garden while he’s gone.”
“Is that Maria’s brother?”
“Yeah, he’s got some kind of, like, agronomy degree or something and he’s doing lawns until a teaching position opens at UF. Something like that; anyway, he gave Dad a good price and I think he’ll pay anything to keep me from killing his precious plants.”
“You think he’ll be happy in Chicago?”
Emory looked up from his work. “Maybe,” he said, biting his bottom lip. His eyes were glazed, distant. They sat in silence for a long time.
Pete watched Emory’s face. He could see Jericho in the young man’s features, a handsome, rugged genetic legacy that had evolved into this delicate, doe-eyed beauty.
“I think something happened in Chi-town,” he said at last. “Something good.”
“Whadda ya mean?”
Emory dragged his eyes back to Pete. “He said he had an epiphany. I don’t know. He wouldn’t tell me the details, but…he came back changed. For the better, I think. Something besides Mom leaving. Which is good.” He nodded to himself, glancing down at his hands. “I just want him to be happy.”
Pete slid his finger around the rim of a Star Trek glass, his eyebrows knitted and pensive. “I think he’s gonna be fine up there,” he said.
Emory looked at Pete.
“You know something,” he said.
Pete tried for surprise, but blue eyes gave him away.
“What?” Emory asked.
“Nothing, I–”
“You know something, Pete. C’mon.”
The kitchen door slammed open and Jericho barged into the room grinning and beautiful beneath a layer of sweat and dust. Pete looked up, a guilty smile sliding across his lips. Emory, startled, knocked an old beer glass onto the tile floor. The glass shattered.
“Shit,” Emory said, starting to stand.
“No, I’ve got shoes on,” Jericho said, reaching for a broom. “What were you two talking about, all serious like?” he asked.
Pete watched him move back and forth, beautiful muscles flexing, hefty cock swinging low and loose inside the folds of his basketball shorts. He grinned.
“Oh, my god,” Emory said suddenly.
They both looked at him, startled.
“Are you two, um, you know, involved?” he said, a blush rising up his neck and spreading across his pale cheeks.
“What makes you think that?” Jericho asked.
He pointed at Pete. “The look on his face just now, and the way you look at each other when you think I’m not watching.”
“Emory, it’s more complicated than that.”
“No, Dad. It’s that simple. Good for you. Whatever. Be gay; be happy.”
Pete and Jericho stared at him in silence.
Emory looked up at Jericho. “Dad, all I’ve ever wanted is for you to be happy.”
Jericho stared at his son and felt himself crumble, bricks falling away from him like autumn leaves.
BRUTE
Jonathan Asche
He had a mean right hook. He sucked an even meaner cock.
I had stopped at Dot’s Café in Brute, Texas, a town so far out in the middle of nowhere that time had forgotten it. It looked like everyone else had, too. There were only two other patrons at Dot’s that afternoon. “Lucky I missed the lunch rush,” I told the waitress. She didn’t smile.
Then they walked in, three guys in blue-gray uniforms, darkened here and there with grease stains. They took the booth across from mine, nodding toward me as they sat down. Two of the guys were almost forgettable on sight, one scrawny and middle-aged, the other a doughy thirtysomething. Guy Number 3, he made an impression: a stunning muscle hunk whose brawny physique threatened to burst through his uniform shirt. It looked like his biceps already had; the sleeves were cut off just below the shoulder. Thick trapezius muscles rose out of his collar and crawled up his neck. His chest was broad; his shirt was unbuttoned just enough to give me a glimpse of golden hair, a shade darker than that curling beneath his cap, sprouting between his meaty pecs. TRAVIS was embroidered on his shirt pocket.
“Hey, pardner, how’s it goin’?” the middle-aged guy asked. His shirt pocket read DALE.
“Doing okay,” I said, turning my attention back to my Blue Plate Special.
“Where you from?”
Great, he wants to chat. I said: “Atlanta. Driving to Phoenix to visit my mother.”
“At-lan-ta,” repeated Dale, a crooked smile coming to his weathered face. “Ain’t nothin’ but coons and queers up there. Which one’re you?”
The doughy guy—I didn’t get a good look at the name on his shirt—guffawed like that was the funniest thing he’d ever heard.
I said, “Well, I’m obviously not black.”
End of conversation.
But it wasn’t the end of the talking. Dale and his tubby friend began talking loudly about what “they” ought to do “with them nasty faggots.” Travis said nothing but chuckled at their hateful jokes.
I left a ten-dollar bill for my six-dollar meal and stood up, too disgusted to eat. As I left the middle-aged fuck said in a sneering falsetto, “Toodle-oo, big boy.”
Stopping at the door I said in a soft, lisping purr: “Oh, boys.”
The men were still chuckling when they looked at me. I raised my hands, middle fingers extended. “Suck my dick!”
I was at my car when Travis, the muscle hunk, charged out of the restaurant to teach me a lesson. I should’ve known: I could’ve kicked the other two hillbillies’ asses with no problem, but Travis was in a higher weight class than me.
I wanted to be twenty miles down the highway before he swung the first punch, but he grabbed my arm before I could get behind the wheel. “Wait!”
It was his pleading tone of voice more than his grip that made me stop. When I turned to face him I was confronted by two puppy-dog eyes. He was pleading.
“That’s true?” he asked. “You are queer?”
“What’s it to you?”
“I’m… I’m a…” Travis looked over his shoulder, to make sure no one else was around. “I’m like you.”
My eyebrows shot up my forehead. “Really?”
“Do you have to leave today?”
That made me laugh. “I want to leave right now.”
“There’s a motel up the road, the Maverick Inn, ’bout ten miles outside Brute. I can meet you there tonight.”
I didn’t answer right away. My eyes dropped down for another quick scan of his magnificent body: the flat stomach, the narrow waist, the meaty biceps, that provocative bulge at the front of his blue-gray chinos.
“How will you know what room?” I asked.
“Don’t worry, I’ll find you.” Then: “I’m gonna have to hit you now.”
“What?”
“They’re watchin’. I gotta do somethin’.”
“You could just go back inside.”
“Don’t worry,” Travis said. “I won’t hit you hard.”
I was doubled over gasping for breath before I could protest further. Bullshit, you won’t hit me hard. When I was able to stand upright I didn’t have to look at the café’s front window to see Dale and his doughy buddy laughing at me; I could hear them through the glass.
It was after ten at night when Travis knocked on my door at the Maverick. He didn’t have to look too hard to find me: there were only two cars in the parking lot when I checked in, and one of them belonged to the old lady at the front desk.
Travis greeted me with a sheepish grin. I should’ve greeted him with a fist to the face, just like I should’ve kept driving when I got to the Maverick Inn. But then I’d think of Travis’s buff bod and all the fun I could have with it, and before I knew it I was paying forty dollars to stay in a room that belonged in a Hitchcock movie. My cock didn’t hold a grudge.
He stepped inside, his he-man body seeming so much larger in the small room. He wore a black-and-white tank and a pair of blue jeans that advertised his crotch and ass like a neon sign. My crotch was doing some advertising, too, the way my cock poked at the front of my red gym shorts.
I hooked two fingers in the waist of Travis’s jeans and pulled him closer. “You’re overdressed,” I said.
Before I could start pulling his clothes off Travis wrapped me in his thick arms and kissed me. I tasted mint as his tongue slid into my mouth. His hands glided down my bare back, burrowing beneath the waistband of my shorts and gripping my ass.
My lips were almost sore when our mouths parted. I felt dazed, perhaps because all the blood in my body had rushed to my aching cock. Travis’s eyes glimmered with excitement.
I said, “I’m Heath, by the way.”
He chuckled. “I’m—”
“Travis,” I interrupted. “I saw your name tag earlier. Now get out of those clothes.”
The tank came off first. In one swift move Travis unveiled a flawless torso, girded with voluptuous muscles. The golden hair accentuating the cleft of his beefy pecs disappeared beneath his sternum, reappearing below his belly button and marching downward between abs you could sharpen knives on until it disappeared beneath his jeans. My eyes followed that furry trail all the way.
“Very nice,” I whispered. My hard-on seconded that opinion with an impatient push against my shorts.
Travis unhooked the top button of his jeans. “Wait,” I said. “Turn around. Show me that ass.”
The sheepish smile returned to Travis’s face as he did as he was told. With his back to me he unzipped his fly and was about to step out of his pants when I stopped him. “Take them off slow, like a stripper,” I commanded. “Just the jeans, not the underwear.”
I could tell he felt silly, but he obeyed, revealing his perfect bubble butt a few agonizing inches at a time. By the time his jeans slid past the lower third of his cheeks I had decided that my face was going to spend a good part of the night buried between those plush, round globes. I kneaded my cock through my gym shorts, eager to get started.
“Now take off the underwear.”
He hooked his thumbs in the elastic waist of his simple white briefs and started to pull them down in the same teasingly slow fashion he’d removed his jeans. I waited, determined to pounce the moment his ass was bare. Travis revealed a few inches of asscrack and then…
Travis turned to face me, grinning proudly at his sudden improvisation. I immediately put my plans for Travis’s ass on hold. He not only had a flawless ass, he was hung, too. His cock was barely contained in his briefs, the thick shaft curving over his right leg, the cockhead peeking over the waistband. Now all I could think about was sucking that huge tool until sunrise.
