Best Gay Romance 2008, page 9
Dear You,
I didn’t sleep at all last night. Oddly, though, I’m not the least bit tired. Now dawn has come, as perfect as dawns get. I’m looking out the kitchen window, out at your favorite view.
The sky is a softening pink, the birds, twittering like crazy, can be heard through the half-open window, there’s a delicate but definite promise in the air. Whether that promise will be fulfilled, or will be broken, as so many promises are, is still up for grabs. And—not to sound maudlin, which you hate, or at least say you do—for each and every one of us, every dawn can be the last. And yes, I wish you were here beside me. I do, I wish that most of all.
But no, I’m not the least bit sleepy. Still, maybe I’ll go lie down. I have those pills.
No, don’t worry, sweetie. I won’t hurt myself. I know you always worry about that. But there was just that one time.
It’s a beautiful day. A beautiful fucking day.
Love,
Me
Dear You,
Okay, maybe David Mamet was right, and yet—
THE BIKE PATH
T. Hitman
Do you want to go for a bike ride, down the path?”
He is standing with his spine pressed against the big wooden post at the center of our antique house, no shirt on, when he asks this. He moves his naked back up and down on the rough burl, scratching it the way bears do in the wild, against tree trunks. The image charms me. It also excites me.
I’d rather take a walk, I think. But I answer, “Sure.”
Bradley-Stephen smiles. He hasn’t shaved on his day off work and the prickle of his cheeks and neck lends his usually trim goatee and mustache, silvering around his mouth, a wild, intensely sexy look. Butterflies take flight in my stomach, scattered by lust. It’s almost a decade since I first felt this way for him, but he still has the power to freeze me with a stare, melt my insides with his smile.
Yes, I’d prefer a slow, effortless walk on this sunny, lazy late summer afternoon. But I give in to Bradley-Stephen’s suggestion, because that’s the key to a successful relationship, which ours is by every indication. A little compromise goes a long way. Nearly ten years, so far. And if we keep feeling the way we do about each other, there will be ten more, and ten after that.
As I’ve since learned, it doesn’t hurt to have at least a few common interests with your partner when you enter into a monogamous relationship. I can recite, chapter and verse, the minutia from even the most obscure of films. Bradley-Stephen knows TV. He’s football, a game that’s all brute strength and force. Me, I’m summer baseball, lazy and precise. Bradley-Stephen likes to knock back a cold beer with dinner a few times a week, but I haven’t touched a drop of alcohol since yarking my guts out twelve years ago at a freshmen college booze-fest. Bradley-Stephen spends his days swinging a hammer and slapping paint onto walls with a brush. Me, I sit my ass in an office chair and stroke keys for a paycheck. He’s naturally athletic, whereas if I don’t make the effort, the pounds creep up on me and get comfortable hibernating around my midsection.
We’re not one of those cookie-cutter gay couples who exchange clothes and hook up to double the size of their wardrobe. We don’t share a lot of the same passions. But we do enjoy wandering the paths that cut through the conservation woods behind the house we bought a few years ago, and from the moment we met, we haven’t been able to keep our hands off of one another.
I love Bradley-Stephen, and he loves me. Great sex…yes, we do share that common interest.
Deering, the small, rural town where Bradley-Stephen painstakingly restored our formerly falling-down antique cottage on three pine-studded acres, boasts a great bike path. It winds through the downtown, cuts through the woods, and continues through a vast farmer’s meadow, where its course gets mowed by herds of rare heritage goats and dairy cows. Couples need to do fun things together other than sex, and that bike path has provided plenty of opportunities for us to bond. And more than once, we’ve had sex there, too.
We bike away from the house, down Blueberry Hill Road to Bayberry, where the signs point us toward the woods. If we were walking like I’d wanted, we could have held hands, crossed through the brambles, and intersected the path from directly behind our property. This route, however, is bumpier, faster, and requires more effort. Bradley-Stephen shifts gears and glides onto the dirt trail. I feel like I’m pedaling flat, square wheels while trying to keep up with him. My balls ache as the treads pass from smooth, paved sidewalk to uneven dirt. Sweat drips down my forehead, then pours, stinging at my eyes, soaking my pits and crotch. Like all couples, Bradley-Stephen and I argue. Usually, it’s over stupid little things, like when he leaves the toilet seat up or forgets to cap the toothpaste. Or when he takes me for a bike ride and taunts me from twenty feet ahead.
“How’s the weather back there?”
I sense we’re about to have one of those stupid arguments. I’m ready to shout at him to slow the fuck down, to let me catch up…it’s not a race. But then, as if reading my thoughts, Bradley-Stephen slows his pedaling. He tips his head in my direction and shoots me a devilish smile. Whatever anger I briefly felt evaporates. There’s mischief in that smile; he’s so damn cute, I wonder how I ever could have lost my cool over something so ridiculous. Cute, and so fuckin’ sexy, the desire for him that I experienced back at the house reignites. In between navigating the way ahead, I study his magnificent body. The way his bare legs shimmer in the light, the sun embossing his naked skin, a bead of sweat catching in the hair along one calf…heavenly distraction.
I can’t see Bradley-Stephen’s warm brown eyes through his sunglasses, but I feel them wandering over my body. There’s a good chance they’re mentally undressing me; that goofy, lust-filled smile on his handsome face betrays what he’s thinking. Bradley-Stephen is about to turn thirty-five, but often, like most guys, he still acts like a kid.
I smile back at the sight of him, perched atop his ten-speed, tall and lean, wearing his baseball cap and his shades, his khaki cutoff shorts and the ratty T-shirt bearing the name of some town in New Jersey he hasn’t been back to in years, the tops of his bright white socks sticking above his paint-splattered sneakers. He takes my breath away.
The cathedral of pines thins, then opens on the long stretches of meadow. The air is bewitchingly sweet with the perfume of mowed hay and late summer wildflowers. There’s even a trace of Bradley-Stephen’s scent to be detected, sweeping up to embrace me on the breeze. The bike path continues on for another half mile through the field. More trees loom on the horizon. From there, the trail swings back into a neighborhood on the north side of Deering.
Bradley-Stephen, glistening with sweat, pumps the brakes. His bike slows, drops back until we are even, and suddenly that mischievous grin is neck-and-neck with me.
“Hey,” he growls, all cocky.
I suppress a smile. “Hey, yourself.”
“Come here often?”
“Only when my husband drags me out here against my will,” I fire back, not missing a beat.
“He must be a smart guy if he’s marked a piece of ass as hot as you as his own personal property.”
I sigh out a laugh at his statement, but my insides catch fire as I realize I’m pushing an erection against my bike’s seat. I
understand Bradley-Stephen well enough to finish his sentences, to anticipate his moves, his needs, so I know when he’s horny and wants to fuck. Finally. My lust for him is about to be satisfied.
Bradley-Stephen comes to a complete stop. I hit the brakes, coast to a halt several yards ahead of him, and turn back to see that grin, those hidden eyes, that mouth. The strength departs my aching legs.
“What?” I ask, unable to adequately catch my breath. I already know what.
“Come here,” he growls, kicking his leg over his ten-speed’s ball-buster bar. He tips his chin toward a patch of tall grass behind us.
“Here? Now?”
“Oh, yeah…”
Bradley-Stephen leads the way, walking his bike through the timothy grass, wild buttercups, and the lazy black-eyed Susan flowers. His steps kick up that fragrant country-summer smell. Suddenly, my insides feel twenty years younger, imprisoned in the shell of a thirty-year-old man. Bradley-Stephen dumps his bike onto its side. I pursue and let mine fall, too. Then we join the bikes on the ground, creating a private, secret crop circle, safe from prying eyes.
Bradley-Stephen pulls me into a tight, sweaty embrace. The full press of his lips crushing over mine removes any doubt as to where this is leading. I’m so ready to go there with him, I no longer worry about garter snakes slithering through the grass, or that hikers are going to hear our grunts and groans and discover two men fucking just off the bike path. There is only the taste of his mouth, that clean trace of mint from toothpaste, the salt of his sweat, and the rough scrape of his goatee as his lips consume mine.
The scent of Bradley-Stephen’s sweat fills my desperate breaths. I place a hand against his chest and trace the contour of familiar territory through the damp, worn cotton of his T-shirt. From there, my fingers walk lower. The fur-lined tautness of his abdomen scrapes beneath my fingertips as they travel down the region of exposed flesh between the bottom of his shirt and the top of his shorts. I feel the button and the metal teeth of the zipper that separate me from his cock. I cup his thickness. Bradley-Stephen humps my fingers. From the corner of my eye, I steal a glance and see that he is already leaking pre-come. A circle of wetness stains his tented crotch.
An appeased growl sounds from deep in Bradley-Stephen’s chest. His kisses shorten into gentle bites. It’s my cue to move lower. Shifting position inside the little crop circle we have flattened into the meadow, I place my chin on the exposed patch of muscle just above Bradley-Stephen’s groin. He reclines, stretching out with his arms crossed behind his head. It’s the same position he and I have stared up at the stars from, back at our little homestead. I glance up to see he has popped a blade of timothy grass into his mouth and, while working to free his thickness, snort out a laugh.
“What’s so funny?” he grumbles, that cocky grin still planted on his mouth.
“You. You’re such a guy,” I answer.
“Shut up and suck my dick, bitch,” he says straight-faced, holding back the laughter. If we were home in bed, he’d probably have a beer in one hand and the remote in the other.
“I love you, you bonehead,” I snicker, undoing his shorts.
“I love you, too, babe….”
I open his shorts. Bradley-Stephen is wearing gray boxer-briefs beneath, and they’re musty with his sweat. I ease everything down to his knees. His cock is toughened to such stiffness that it snaps out and strikes his stomach with an audible pop. His balls glisten in the late afternoon sunlight. Bradley-Stephen’s raw, primal scent possesses me.
I toy with his balls, tugging on their loose sac. Bradley-Stephen moans his approval—as I know so well, he loves when I give attention to that part of his physique. The meadow sings with a counterpoint of chirring crickets. Somewhere in the distant trees, a mourning dove sings its familiar elegy. I lean down and brush my tongue along his length, tasting salt, sweat, and pre-come. Bradley-Stephen unknots his fingers. One hand lovingly cups the back of my skull, urging me to continue with gentle pressure. I take the straining helmet of his cock’s head between my lips and slowly nurse down his first few inches. From there, I suck my way steadily deeper, stopping only when the coarse thatch of his pubic hair tickles my nose.
After so long together, owing to countless occasions in bed, I’ve learned how to adequately handle my husband’s thickness. I rarely gag on his dick anymore, unless it’s intentional, which I sometimes do because it excites him. Over the years, I’ve also learned that it’s good to mix things up a bit to keep the sex fresh; with only the sun sinking toward the horizon to mark the passing of time, I alternate between teasing licks and hard sucks, and whenever Bradley-Stephen edges toward climax, I release him completely and only service his balls to prolong his pleasure.
At one point, I worry that his grunts will give us away. But there are no other visitors on the bike path today. It’s just us, the crickets, the birds, and heritage breed dairy cows grazing somewhere far away.
I’m drunk on his taste, high on his scent. My cock, burning in my shorts, begs for release. Bradley-Stephen senses this, in that way couples who share a great connection are able to. Without asking, he begins to massage my ass through my shorts. The gentle ever-widening concentric circles intensify. Eventually, he tugs me toward him, away from his balls. Seconds later, I am on my back and Bradley-Stephen is pulling off my clothes.
Warm summer air gusts over me, followed by wet kisses that move steadily lower. A breath teases the sensitive flesh of my most private place. A feral grunt and a lick invade my asshole. Fighting the urge to shudder, I grab my legs behind my knees and pull them up, allowing him easier access to the prize he seeks. My husband has always been an ass man; by the time he stops licking me out, the sun has fallen noticeably lower, bathing the meadow in the last of its light, and my fuck-hole drips with his spit.
“Yes,” I beg, after he briefly breaks our connection.
Bradley-Stephen moves into position on top of me. He lowers, again crushing our mouths together. I taste myself on his lips just as the pressure of his cock’s head presses against the opening to my core. I seize in place beneath him when a jolt of icy-hotness tickles my insides. The mild pain at being invaded by my husband’s length passes, turning to pleasure. We are linked now. Yin and yang. His hardness fitting perfectly into my softness. I encircle Bradley-Stephen’s shoulders and hold on to him, pulling him even closer. The sun’s waning light casts an aura around his face. The image of his magnificence overwhelms me.
“Fuck me,” I moan.
Bradley-Stephen rocks forward, burying his cock deeper. The world temporarily shifts out of focus as a wave of pins and needles wracks me from ears to toes. He pulls partway out, then shoves in again, settling into his rhythm. My legs join my arms, wrapping themselves around him. I barely remember coming, just that at some untimed point in our lovemaking, Bradley-Stephen rubs that internal trigger spot beyond my ability to hold back another second. In doing so, I tease him into climaxing, too.
He collapses on top of me, and as has always been the case since the first time we made love untold thousands of fucks behind us, he lowers back down between my legs and savors his own taste.
I keep thinking, as the swirl of his tongue cyclones around my asshole, making me levitate above the ground, how every time we make love is like the first. After ten years of this, you’d expect some of the fire to go out. It’s only natural, because that’s what happens with couples over time. But it hasn’t for us, not yet. When Bradley-Stephen crawls back up, putting us face-to-face on a carpet of flattened meadow, I cup his cheek. My expression, reflecting in his sunglasses, speaks volumes.
“You’re the best,” I whisper.
“No, you are.”
“I wouldn’t trade this for anything.”
“You’d better not.”
He fidgets back into his pants.
“It’s getting late. Think you’ve got enough energy to make it home?”
“I hope so,” I grunt, pulling on my shorts. A stray blade of timothy grass teases one of my buttcheeks.
“We don’t have to ride the bikes,” he says, standing and extending his hand. I take it, and Bradley-Stephen pulls me back to my feet. “We can walk them back.”
Give and take. Him and me.
“I’d like that,” I say. And with twilight approaching, we start down the bike path, headed for home.
THE COUNTRY HOUSE
Jameson Currier
Arnie always graciously warned his guests about what to expect at the country house: slamming doors, crashing plates, flickering lamps, the dogs out of control, even a spike in their own temperaments. “Mitch and I have been fighting more and more since we bought this house,” he would add after he had extended an invitation to his friends to spend a weekend with them in their haunted country house. “I think our ghosts get a kick out of seeing us irritated with each other.”
After five blissful years of living together in a tiny cramped studio in Greenwich Village, Arnie and Mitch found the large, rustic rooms of their weekend retreat both liberating and aggravating. Arnie, who fell in love immediately with the giant kitchen and new appliances, wanted to cheaply furnish the other rooms, but Mitch was headstrong about scouring the local flea markets and estate auctions for deals and had soon developed a taste for overpriced broken furniture.
“The drawers won’t open,” Arnie complained about an oak hutch Mitch had found at a garage sale and brought back to the country house. “And the legs wobble.”
“It’s art deco,” Mitch pointed out. “Look at the carving on it.”
“And the shelves are missing. You got pinched on this one.”
“I can get someone to fix the leg and put in a new shelf.”
“And it’ll end up costing more than it’s worth. We should’ve bought something new.”
“You can’t buy a new antique.”
“If it was new, you could have gotten a discount,” Arnie complained, “not a four-hundred percent markup. What a waste of money, if you ask me.”
“No one’s asking you,” Mitch answered. “Which is why I bought it.”
Mitch and Arnie’s country house is a ninety-minute drive from Manhattan, not far from the Delaware River and the canal and the quaint village shops of New Hope and Lambertville. Originally a small two-room stone cottage built in 1823, it was expanded in 1871 with a second floor and renovated and enlarged with a new wing a century later in 1983 by a well-known interior designer and his significant other. The property is outlined by the low-rise stone walls made from clearing the land for crops, and branches of the gnarly-trunked oak and maple trees shade the house in the summer and blacken in the winter months. A stone path, blistered by roots, leads from the road right up to the kitchen door. Inside, in the kitchen, is an enormous working hearth where the meals were cooked in the original house, along with the modern-day upgrades of a double-door Sub-Zero refrigerator, granite countertops, two ovens, and a six-burner grill. Upstairs, the master bedroom has a cathedral ceiling and a hot tub in the bathroom. Neither Arnie nor Mitch were any good at husbandry—carpentry, gardening, plumbing—and luckily all that was necessary before they moved in was to have the rooms painted and central air-conditioning installed, a process Arnie was insistent on and that meant sawing through the old floorboards and plastered ceilings of the house to install the vents, which had probably dislodged and disturbed the already restless resident spirits.
