Chapter Eleven
Thanksgiving
“ARE YOU sure this is a good idea?”
“Why wouldn’t it be? It’s not like they don’t know you or something.”
Nunzio shoved his hands into the pockets of his leather jacket as we walked. The day was bitterly cold, the sky an oppressive gray, but even a promise of snow on Thanksgiving wasn’t enough to make me feel more festive. Being around Nunzio helped, but his pinched, worried face and lip-biting paranoia was catching.
“Yeah,” he agreed. “But your mom was always there in the past. You know your dad hates me. Always has.”
It was true. Something about me and Nunzio as a unit had put my father off since the very beginning. It was like he could smell our impending gayness, even though I’d never come out.
“And,” Nunzio added when I failed to respond, “your uncle vocally hates gay people. At least Joseph shuts up about it around me.”
That was also true.
“Just chill out. If anyone gets out of line, I’ll straighten them out.”
“Mikey, no. The last thing I want is for you to be fighting with your fam because of me. I should have stood my ass home.”
The wind gusted, blowing my scarf to the side. I grabbed the end before it unraveled, and swore when I lost my grip on the twelve-pack I’d just bought from the bodega.
“Just calm down. You’re acting like it’s a big deal when nothing has happened yet. I told my pops you’re coming by, and he didn’t flip out about it.”
Nunzio fixed my scarf, handsome face creased with worry. His hair was smashed down by a knit hat, and unruly strands escaped the sides.
“I just feel weird without your mom. She’s the only one who was okay with me being around so much.”
His hands fell away, and a fierce protective streak shot through me.
“It is okay. It’s my house and I invited you.”
Nunzio didn’t reply. I stalked off again, and he trudged after me. He’d been going back and forth with this ever since I’d met him at the train station a half hour ago, and hadn’t stopped even as I went from store to store looking for some aluminum pans I’d apparently neglected to get enough of, according to my aunt.
We entered the house, but Nunzio hung back and watched me wipe my boots on the mat. I rolled my eyes, and he followed my lead, removing his jacket and scarf while peering through the archway like he was expecting a guerrilla attack.
“Those are not big enough,” Aida crowed, barging into the entryway. “Carajo, Michael.”
“Look, that’s all they had. I don’t know what you want me to do. I’ll use the twelve goddamned pounds of—”
“Who do you think you’re talking to with that language?”
“Sorry.” I looked at Nunzio. He was finally smiling. “I’ll use the twelve pounds of foil that Jackie made me buy to make a pan for you, okay?”
“Smart-ass.” Aida glared at me before turning to Nunzio. He removed his hat and averted his gaze, but she bustled over with a huge grin.
“Nunzio! I haven’t seen you since you were a skinny little thing!”
“Yeah,” Nunzio’s smile returned. “Yeah, I came over for Christmas and you were here one year. You felt bad I didn’t have any presents and tried to give me money to go to Rite Aid and buy myself something.”
“Poor baby. You want something to eat?”
I could sense Nunzio was about to say no, so I gave a furtive shake of my head.
“Uh, yeah, I could eat,” he replied.
“Good, good. Jackie, Michael’s cousin, was just talking about you. Do you remember her?”
Before Nunzio could give an affirmative, Aida looped her arm through his and guided him to the kitchen. I knew she would poke at his lanky frame and dub him flaquito before giving him a predinner meal. It would inevitably lead to an interrogation about why his parents had left him alone on Thanksgiving.
Satisfied that Nunzio was being indoctrinated in a positive way, I entered the living room to deal with the inevitable shitshow of my male family members trying to coexist in the same room.
My father and his brother John had hardly tolerated each other for as long as I could remember, but after John’s wife walked out on him, they’d made an attempt to bond.
The Rodriguez family didn’t have luck when it came to significant others. Both John and my father had driven their wives away, and Aida’s husband had died of cancer only a handful of years after they’d gotten married. She’d never had any kids of her own, which was why she was so active in her brothers’ lives. More often than not, she acted in the role of peacekeeper when John and Joseph drank a little too much and shit got too real.
But they hadn’t reached that stage. Yet.
The two brothers sat side by side on the sofa with identical glares fixed on a football game. Raymond was half-turned in the armchair by the window with his phone clasped in one hand.
“You’re missing the game,” John barked. He cast me a sidelong glance, disapproving even though he had no qualms about reaching for the beer I was still sheltering under my arm.
“I don’t give a flying fuck about the game.”
The degree of scorn in John’s expression heightened to blistering.
Raymond shook his head, clearly thinking I was an idiot. “Is Zio here?” he asked.
“He’s in the kitchen with Titi.”
“Ask him if he’s up for some Black Ops later. I borrowed a controller from Chris.”
He sounded exactly like one of my students, and that facet of his personality was getting more grating as time wore on.
“Yeah, I’ll get right on top of that, Ray.”
“You better. I don’t get to chill with him these days.”
Raymond sounded genuine, and I almost felt bad for being annoyed by his request. If there was any ally better than me to defend Nunzio, it would be Raymond. Even if he talked shit every once in a while, Raymond had always been keener on Nunzio than he was on me. He’d trade us if he could.
“I’ll see what he wants to do,” I said. “He just got here, and Aida has already dragged him into the kitchen to fatten him up.”
“Oh. He’ll be there for a while, then.”
The game went to commercial, and Joseph turned his glassy eyes to me. “Why don’t you bring a girlfriend home for Thanksgiving for a change?”
John snorted into his beer, still staring at the television. It was amazing how such a low, petty sound, could make my hackles rise. A witty retort waited to be unleashed from my mouth, but I settled for a wintry silence.
“Naw, he has too many different chicks to just pick one,” Raymond butted in. “If he brought one over, she’d get the wrong idea.”
The statement washed over me and left me blank, but then the meaning sank in, and my attention snapped to my brother. He was thumbing at the screen of his phone, not looking at me or our father, and appeared to have released the lie without giving it much consideration.
I didn’t know what to make of it, and judging from the cloud of confusion ghosting over Joseph’s countenance, he didn’t either. But he was already dangerously close to sliding down the slippery slope of drunk-before-dinner, and probably couldn’t make the connection between Raymond’s claim and the obvious lack of evidence, since I’d never brought a girl home for any length of time at any point in my life. It did shut my uncle up, though.
The football game resumed, and some of the tension bled out of me. Joseph and John shouted in a mixture of Spanish and English, yelling at the game and then debating with each other about every random thing that transpired. Meanwhile, I sat next to Raymond, trying to catch his eye while doing my best to pretend I gave any sort of damn about football. I largely failed.
I threw in the towel on trying to get my brother to make eye contact and went back to fantasizing about my bed and a book. The day was panning out as I had expected—uncomfortable, long, and full of awkward moments and tense exchanges that drew an iron curtain between me, John, and my father. It was only a matter of time before the side-looks and smart comments escalated into something that couldn’t be ignored, and by then we would all blow up like Hiroshima.
The best option for avoiding fireworks was to avoid alcohol, but Joseph broke the label on a bottle of Brugal, and the first stone was cast.
By the time the sun retreated from the blanket of clouds that had masked the sky all day, the volume of our voices had risen, and I had a nice buzz going. At some point Nunzio and my cousin Jackie joined us in the living room, but Raymond whisked Nunzio away to play Xbox before he got the chance to pick up on the thickening tension. I was left alone with the two elder Rodriguez men, and only John’s daughter to run interference. When my phone vibrated in my pocket, I was grateful to have a distraction.
How’s your holiday?
David.
Sucks. You?
It could be better…. I’m in CT with my parents. Is Nunzio with you?
Yes, how did you know that?
He told me.
Any number of scenarios would have led to the conversation of Thanksgiving plans coming up, but something told me Nunzio letting David in on that detail had been deliberate. I rubbed my chin and wondered, not for the first time, what Nunzio’s deal was when it came to David.
The more thought I put into it, the more it seemed like he’d been cockblocking from the start. Even the threesome had been out of character. That night in the club, Nunzio had swooped in and inserted himself as soon as David and I had started to talk.
These days he claimed to not even find David attractive, but more than that, he went out of his way to be outright hostile to the kid.
My phone vibrated again.
Do you want to meet up tomorrow?
I stared at the words, fingers hovering over the screen, but I ultimately put my phone away without typing back. I didn’t know if he wanted to have lunch or suck my dick, and I wasn’t in the mood to come up with a response for either proposition.
“Who’s sending you messages?” Joseph jerked his chin at the phone.
“Somebody.”
“A woman?” Joseph took my lack of a response for an affirmative and went on. “I don’t understand why you spend the holidays with that maricón and not a woman.”
The casual disrespect of my father’s words boiled my blood.
“You shouldn’t say that, Tío,” Jackie scolded. “Nunzio is like family.”
“I don’t mean anything by it.” Joseph waved his hand and added a dismissive flick of his fingers, but his shoulders were stiff beneath a sweatshirt that smelled of sweat and a double dose of annoyance. Once upon a time, the sideways cut of his dark eyes and an ominous edge in his cigarette-hardened voice would have backed me into a corner until I said whatever it was he wanted me to say. But now, I matched his mean mug with one of my own. He didn’t miss the coldness in my expression.
“You always have to find a reason to be angry with me, don’t you, Michael?”
“Keep your mouth shut about Nunzio if you don’t want me to get upset. He’s more family to me than you are.”
“I bet,” John grunted.
Jackie put her hands on John’s shoulders and dug her fingers in.
“I’m going to say this once.” I stood and looked between my uncle and my father. They were five years apart but bitter and hateful in varying shades, with quicksilver tempers to match. “If you want to be in this house, you will respect my friends. Especially one that I’ve known for twenty years and has had my back every fucked-up step of the way. He was the one who helped me with funeral arrangements when you were out drunk and worrying about the will,” I spat, pointing at Joseph. “And while Raymond was too traumatized to leave his room.”
“I didn’t say anything about him. I just wonder why the hell you always have him around and not a woman.” Joseph grabbed his glass and drained it, eyes flitting to Jackie like he wanted her to get a refill but knew better than to ask. The glass dropped back to the table smeared with greasy fingerprints. “You’re telling me your mother never asked why you’re always alone?”
“Maybe she did, but she didn’t judge me for it.”
“What about you am I judging? I didn’t say anything about you or your life. I only asked a question, and you jump down my throat, rushing to defend his honor.”
“Because as far as I’m concerned you’re nobody, and I don’t owe you a fucking explanation,” I said.
A slurry of Spanish swears crept out of Joseph’s mouth. His leg hopped, fingers gripping the arm of the sofa, and he looked two seconds shy of flying into a rage. The curtain of tension was lifting, but in a way that would ensure a battle instead of an armistice.
I wanted to break it down and explain that every time he called Nunzio a faggot, every time he used words like maricón or pato, he might as well have been spitting his hate at me. The worst part was my father failed to understand that hate said in a joking tone still shriveled and hardened my heart. Even if I never told him I was gay, and even if he never directly aimed his insults at me, he would lose all respect for me if he knew. It was evident by the wary way he kept Nunzio at arm’s length and had always muttered to my mother that she should keep us apart.
My father exhaled slowly and glanced up at Jackie. She hovered behind the sofa, supremely out of place with her pink sweater, rosy cheeks, and waist-length curls—a school girl stumbling into the middle of a brewing bar fight.
“What time is dinner ready?” Joseph gritted out.
“Soon,” she replied, relief in her voice.
“Fine. I’m getting another drink.”
Joseph wobbled when he got up, teetering to the side before he regained his balance. I could tell he was upset just by looking at his profile, and the way he strode out of the room with slow deliberate steps drove the point home.
“You’re not fooling anyone, Michael,” John said once my father was out of earshot.
“Jesus, Daddy, can’t you leave him alone?” Jackie hissed. “Why did you want to come to his house if you’re going to keep bullying him the whole time?”
“Don’t worry about it, primita. It’s only bullying if I gave a fuck about what he or my father thought.”
John didn’t seem the least bit concerned about the amount of fucks I had left. He waved me out of the way of the television.
Jackie muttered an apology to me, and I dropped a kiss on her head. She was no more responsible for her father than I was for my own.
I jogged up the staircase to seek out my wayward brother and friend. I found them in Raymond’s bedroom, sprawled on the bed and focused intently on whatever game they were playing. They were surrounded by a cloud of sickly sweet smoke and illuminated only by the glow of the television.
“Jesus, Nunzio. Really?”
“What?” The word came out in a wheeze, surrounded by billowing smoke.
I fought the urge to stand in front of the television to fuck up their game.
“You really had to smoke up with him? Now? I already got my pops talking shit to me about you being here.”
“Why?” Raymond bolted upright like my words had jammed a lightning bolt up his ass. “Zio always comes around on the holidays.”
“Yeah, when Mami was here. Now that dickhead thinks he’s king of the castle and keeps throwing underhanded comments.”
“Like what? Want me to go—”
I held up a hand to thwart my brother’s charge down the stairs. “Relax. Let Jackie and Aida tell them a thing or two. I’m tired of fighting.”
“Jackie?” Raymond considered me, his mouth pulled to the side. “What’s she going to do? She’s dumb as a box of rocks. We could straight up have a brawl, and she’d sit there like an oil painting until someone got shot.”
It was a struggle to mold my face into disapproving lines. “That’s not nice, Ray.”
“I know it’s not. That’s why I said it.”
Nunzio dug his elbow into Raymond’s side. “Hey, she’s sweet. Don’t be a jerk.”
“Whatever.” Ray passed the pipe to Nunzio. “What the hell is he busting your balls about, anyways?”
“Same old crap. Pops has forever been trying to imply that Nunzio is slowly turning me gay.”
“So just tell him you was gay even before you met Nunzio.”
Raymond said it just as Nunzio started to toke. He sucked too hard on the pipe and went spiraling into a coughing fit.
I gaped at my brother. Now it was my turn to do a rendition of an oil painting. I willed my brain to jump start, but all I managed was a vague “huh?” while Nunzio wheezed and slapped his hand against the mattress.
Raymond rolled his eyes. “You must think I’m an idiot. We used to share a fucking room. Also I used to follow you everywhere when I was a kid. You don’t think I never noticed you going up to the rooftop or behind the bathrooms at the pond?”
The bigger question was why I’d been so positive that my expeditions up to Captain Tilly Park had been so clandestine, or why I’d never considered the possibility of my bratty little brother tailing me after being brushed off one too many times.
The idea of mini-Raymond getting an eyeful of some dude balls deep in my mouth or ass was enough to make me want to fling myself off the nearest bridge.
As I worked myself up to a stroke, Nunzio was still hacking, his eyes tearing up as he doubled over and held out the pipe for Raymond. My brother took it with a self-satisfied grin. It was halfway endearing now that I knew he’d been onto my secret for years. Years.
“Why didn’t you ever say anything?” I asked, finding my voice.
“’Cause you clearly didn’t want me to know. I guess you thought I was going to call you a fag and hate your guts?”
The answer to his question was not a quick find, so I sat on the edge of the bed. With my feet planted on the floor and the weight of the mattress under me, it was easier to gather myself enough to form a coherent response.
“I wasn’t going to come out to our parents, so I decided not to tell any of you. There were times when I wondered if you were onto me, but that was when we got older.”
“Shit.” Nunzio grabbed a beer from the nightstand and gulped it down. “Jesus, Ray. That messed me up.”
“Good for you.” Raymond put his pipe in the drawer of the nightstand. “You all are some pussies, all scared of being honest and getting judged. I don’t even know why you thought I’d give a damn about you being gay when I was still cool with Zio after he dropped the homo bomb. What, you thought I’d tell Pops?”
“I don’t know what I thought, but I didn’t want you to find out.” I lay backward on the bed. “Don’t take it personally, okay? It’s no one’s business who I like to sleep with, and I didn’t want to discuss it.”
“I can relate to that,” Nunzio chimed in, voice still strained from the toke gone wrong. “I did that ceremonial rite of passage coming out to the parents bit, and it was the worst idea I ever had beyond shaving my nuts with soap and water.”
Raymond shook his head. “No one needed to know that shit, man.”
“Look, I’m just saying, it don’t always go right.” Nunzio put a hand on my forehead for no reason that I could discern besides wanting to touch me. His fingers slid into my hair and scratched along my scalp. “He didn’t even tell me for a while, and I’m his best friend, and he already knew I was pretty fruity based solely on my appreciation for Nick Carter.”
“You even had those fucking trading cards,” I said, smiling at the memory. “You were a lame kid.”
“Shut the hell up.” Nunzio gave my hair a tug. “Anyway, don’t get mad, Ray. He’s just a secretive asshole. Like how he’s always trying to front and act like he’s not trying to get with this guy we work with.”
I shoved his hand away. “Okay, time to change the subject.”
“What dude?” Raymond asked, looking between us with obvious curiosity. “Yo, I always wondered—do you take it up the ass?”
“Wow.”
Nunzio cracked up. His shoulders shook with the force of his laughter.
“This conversation is officially over,” I said, pushing myself up. “I don’t even want to know why the hell you’re wondering about what happens to my ass.”
“It’s a normal thing to wonder,” Raymond said defensively. “Like, how do you even fuck? I mean I know how you do it—it’s my lucky day whenever a girl wants to do anal, but—”
I interrupted him with a loud groan and hunched forward, covering my face with my hands. “Can you just go check and see if dinner is almost ready?”
“You really ain’t appreciating my effort to be supportive.”
“And you fail to understand that your effort to be supportive is disturbing.” I shoved him off the edge of the bed. “Vete. She’s been roasting that fucking pernil for, like, twenty hours, and the turkey is done.”
Raymond managed to look indignant while red-eyed and squinting after marinating himself in THC. “You better keep your hands off my weed if you’re sending me off to fetch dinner like a bitch.”
“Why does everything have to be like a bitch? You sound like my students.”
“Just don’t be smoking my shit.”
I refused to look at him and didn’t drop my hands until I heard his footsteps tromping downstairs. He was so damn loud that I heard him halt in the archway to the living room and inquire about the game instead of going to the kitchen. He needed some Adderall like my uncle needed the stick removed from his ass.
I groaned again and looked at Nunzio. “Let’s pretend we’re twelve and go hide in my room. I need to recover from that plot twist.”
“Fine by me.”
We took the narrow staircase to the attic. Compared to Raymond’s cluttered, narrow room, it was a studio apartment.
Nunzio stepped inside, and I flipped the deadbolt on the door.
“Damn, I haven’t been up here for a long-ass time.”
“You haven’t visited the house in general since I moved back.”
“Because you always come running to me.”
Nunzio stood by one of the circular windows and peered out at the large snowflakes that had begun to drift around in the wind. A tiny smile appeared on his face, and I had to force myself to look away when the fondness in my chest swelled to a suspicious portion.
“Want a drink?”
“Definitely. Having your aunt and cousin grill me about my love life for two hours was pretty stressful.”
Nunzio turned away from the window and plopped down on the bed. He reached over to my nightstand and poked at a messy stack of books that I’d discarded there months ago. There had been a time when I’d refused to unpack fully while I fibbed to myself about only returning to the house for a month or two to make sure everything was in order. But a month or two had turned into a year, so it was time for me to just rearrange my bookcase and quit living in a fantasy world.
“It seems like everyone in my family is obsessed with your love life.” I grabbed a sleeve of plastic cups from the top of my dresser, a half-full bottle of rum, and joined Nunzio on the bed. “I had my dad and uncle practically accusing me of fucking you.”
“They’re pretty perceptive about gay sex for some drunk old guys. They never showed this much interest in your love life before.”
“Yeah, well,” I said, measuring out the amber liquid like it was life blood. “Just because Raymond is cool with it doesn’t mean they will be, and I’m not planning to have the conversation tonight.”
I handed Nunzio one of the cups. We toasted, and I muttered a salud. I’d intended to nurse it, but a baby sip turned into a continuous swallow. Nunzio kept his head tilted back, ever competitive, but failed out before me and set his cup to the side.
“What did Clive think about you being in the closet with your folks?”
The empty cup crinkled in my hand when I started to refill it. “He thought I was a coward and a big baby, and made sure to tell me in detail about his own dramatic coming-out adventure and the harrowing tale of striving for acceptance.”
“How did you deal with that guy for two years? He talked so much bullshit I was tempted to wipe his mouth anytime I was forced to be around him.”
I turned sideways, not hiding my wry smile. “He thought the same thing about you.”
“Me?” Nunzio stared at me, disbelieving. “That guy was saying shit about me and you never told me nothing?”
“Yeah, because you would have started something.”
“Oh, because I’m that immature?”
“Yup.” This time, I nursed the drink. “He thought you were this loud, ghetto guido, and tried too hard to prove yourself.”
“What the fuck is that supposed to mean?”
“Clive just liked to make a lot of assumptions because he was insecure. I told him you came from the same neighborhood as me, and you didn’t have to prove anything to anybody. After that, he quit criticizing you in my presence, but I’m pretty sure he just found it annoying that you knew my whole family when he never got to meet anyone.” I tipped my head back, regarding him. “He also claimed you would brag about it to him every chance you got.”
There was not even the thinnest veneer of shame when Nunzio replied. “Yeah, just like he made sure to brag about how hard he tapped your ass every chance he got.”
“What the hell? Did you two sit around trying to one-up each other about me?”
“Pretty much.”
I hadn’t spared Clive a thought in the past several months. A relationship that had once seemed so steadfast and imperative had ended with an unchecked breakup that I hadn’t even mourned. A lot had happened since then, but maybe that was just an excuse and I was as capricious with my lovers as I always accused Nunzio of being with his.
Nunzio drained his cup, and I took another chaste sip from my own. The addition of more rum to my bloodstream was starting to make me woozy.
“What was the point of you trying to make Clive jealous?”
“Why the hell was he trying to get me jealous?”
I licked the traces of rum from my mouth. “Because he was intimidated by you.”
Nunzio brightened. “Yeah?”
“Yes. He swore you wanted to fuck me, and that’s why you convinced me to go out and drink with you so much. But I don’t think any normal person would be cool with the number of times we got wasted and passed out in your apartment. What isn’t normal is the two of you sitting around bullshitting each other like immature-ass kids.”
“Hey, he started it. Always telling me how hard he made you come, and wondering why you never gave me the time of day. He loved flaunting that he had you and I would never get you.”
There was no use in feeling mortified about something that had happened months ago, but it still hit me like a truck.
“Come again?”
“Oh, forget it. It don’t matter.”
“Uh-huh.”
I wasn’t sold on the idea of it not mattering, but I let the conversation come to a full stop and drained my second cup.
I scooted back to lean against the wall but followed my body’s command and lay down instead. I looked out the window, tracing the swirls of snowflakes and wondered whether it would stick. The little kid in me wanted to see snow on the ground, but the adult who trudged from Queens to Brooklyn every morning wasn’t thrilled about an added complication to that commute.
With my nerves pacified by over-the-liquor-counter sedatives, the combination of snow, the smell of Thanksgiving dinner, and the muffled cacophony of salsa, football, and loud voices, I found a grain of comfort and eased into the lull.
I was vaguely aware of Nunzio rummaging around beside the bed, and was only a little caught off guard when he exclaimed, “Holy shit, you have an arsenal of sex toys in here.”
My head lolled to the side. Nunzio was pawing through my nightstand. He looked half-scandalized, half-intrigued, and I didn’t even have to ask what he was seeing. The drawer was filled with enough condoms, lube, and sex toys to keep the entire staff of the Moonlite Bunny Ranch entertained. A couple of vibrators, cock rings, three different Fleshlights….
Nunzio lifted a curved, black prostate massager. “You use all of this stuff on yourself?”
“Yeah, why the hell else would I have it?”
“Obviously but—shit man, I never knew your alone time was this exciting. I just get busy with some lotion and a tight grip.”
“And when exactly would that come up in conversation?” I asked, grinning at Nunzio’s shocked expression. With his tan gone and his complexion back to its typical sandy hue, the rosy flush stealing over Nunzio’s skin was easy to notice. He wet his lips and tore his gaze away from the device to look up at me.
“You don’t want to know what I’m imagining right now.”
“Try me.”
Nunzio rose from his kneeling position and reached down to adjust the crotch of his pants. I knew he was hard. He threw off pheromones like a beast. His lust was so intense I could practically smell it, and my own dick stiffened in response.
“I want to watch.”
I slid down on the mattress until my hips and the small of my back were mostly flat against it. Nunzio’s gaze darted down to my stomach when my shirt skewed up, and then slid down to my dick.
“What do you want to watch?”
“I wanna watch you fuck yourself.” Nunzio held up the prostate massager, rapt expression tipping toward the kind of filthy leer that made me pant. “And then I want to see you fuck one of those Fleshlights.”
“Now? Here?”
“Where and when else?”
I swallowed. “You have to be insane. My whole family is downstairs.”
“You have a dead bolt on your door.”
“Oh, that’s not suspicious at all.”
The mattress sank beneath Nunzio’s weight when he knelt at the edge of it. “Don’t hold out on me, Mikey. I need to see.”
“Need?” The question came out breathless when Nunzio slid the rounded tip of the massager along my erection. The pressure wasn’t enough, but I still canted my hips up with a hint of desperation. “You don’t need it.”
“I do. For when I’m having my own alone time.” Nunzio dragged the massager up, digging into my torso and then the hollow of my throat. “Come on. I bet you put on a show for Clive.”
“Nope.”
He inched the toy up to my chin, but I turned my head before he could touch it to my mouth.
“Good old Clive didn’t want to watch his baby,” Nunzio drawled, always having hated when Clive called me that, “fuck himself like a slut?”
“He wondered why I needed all of that.” I was overly conscious of how fast I was breathing and how difficult it was to keep my hand away from my crotch. “He was insecure.”
“I’m not.” Nunzio dragged my lower lip down with the tip of the vibrator. “Suck it.”
“No.”
“Please.” His voice was velvet and sex, somehow commanding and pleading at once. “I love to watch those lips work a dick.”
I groaned and reached down to grab myself through my jeans, losing all self-control and opening my mouth so he could plunder it with the vibrator. I didn’t know what he got out of it, how he could possibly be so turned on by watching me blow the curved silicone until it became slick with my saliva, but Nunzio’s eyes were glued to the spectacle and dilated until the blue was just a thin ring around his pupil.
“Yeah,” he whispered, fucking my mouth with it faster. “You love sucking dick, don’t you?”
My answer came in the form of a sloppy humming sound. I could do nothing else as I undid my belt one-handed and stared at him from beneath my lashes. When he dragged the vibrator from between my lips and slid his own tongue along the length of it, molten lava filled my belly and tightened my nuts.
“Now get your clothes off and put it in your ass.”
You would have thought it would take more convincing, given the possible outcomes. A couple of months ago, the most physical we’d gotten was lying next to each other during a Breaking Bad marathon and eating off the same plate, but it took roughly ninety seconds for Nunzio to convince me to strip, lie on my back with my thighs spread wide, and screw myself while he watched. A few minutes later, he had taken over and was stabbing my prostate with the device set to full blast as I pumped my dick with the Fleshlight.
Covered in sweat and a boneless sack of trembling limbs, I surrendered to the violent urge lancing through me. I had to bite the knuckles on my free hand to keep quiet.
Nunzio hunched over me, fully clothed and panting. “Fuck it faster.”
I obeyed, sliding the lube-filled device over my cock, and bit my fist harder to muffle the groan that followed.
“Let me fucking hear you.”
I shook my head, nearly delirious from the constant buzz against my sweet spot, but did nothing to evade when he knocked my fist away from my mouth. The sounds I made could only be described as desperate, and far too loud considering the number of people downstairs, but I was far beyond caring.
Welling pressure and tingling in my balls struck me so suddenly that I yanked the Fleshlight off my dick with a wet sucking sound, and clamped my fist around the base of my shaft. “Wait. Fuck, fuck—wait.”
Nunzio’s hand stilled. He switched the device off and pulled it out, slow and gentle.
“Shit.” I bit my lip and shut my eyes. I didn’t want to come yet, but I was sure I’d bust as soon as I removed my fingers. After a long moment of guttered breathing, the oncoming orgasm receded.
I wrenched my eyes open and found Nunzio naked and clutching the thick column of his cock. It took only my heavy-lidded stare and a tiny smirk for him to get the message and shove his dick home.
No care was given to the sound of skin slapping skin, and with a buffer of two floors, music, and football, I decided it was acceptable to not even attempt muffling my hoarse groans. I couldn’t contain it and didn’t want to—if Nunzio wanted to watch and hear me be a slut, I’d give him enough material to jerk off to for the next six months.
And there was no denying that I wanted it. That I needed it. The feel of his sweat-slick body sliding against mine, and him stretching me open with an agonizing burn, triggered the part of me that wanted to be fucked until I couldn’t take it anymore.
I thought he would give it to me that way; pound me hard and fast until he filled me up with hot spurts of come that I craved with every nasty fiber of my being, but Nunzio slowed his movements when things got too frantic.
He dropped messy kisses on my stubble-covered cheek. “Shh,” he murmured. “Slow the hell down.”
I started to bare my teeth at him, but he grabbed a fistful of my hair and drew my mouth up to meet his. Nunzio said my name when he kissed me, a faint hint of syllables as I swallowed each of his breaths. It was too sweet, too gentle, and my heart stuttered in response.
I reached around to palm one of his asscheeks, urging him on, wanting the hard usage he’d given me moments ago, not the delicate brush of his lips.
“Nunzio, come on.”
“I wanna make it last,” he said.
He slid a hand between us to squeeze my sac, and laughed quietly against my sweaty face. Everything Nunzio did was so smooth, so deliberate and practiced, that I felt shameless and out of control in comparison. He could draw this out all night, and all I wanted was to be screwed until I was sobbing into the mattress and aching from the violation.
“Just come in me,” I said in a voice that Clive had never gotten to hear. “And then fuck me again later.”
Nunzio laughed again, his voice thick and low. “I love that you want my dick this bad.”
“Do it.” I clenched up around his cock, working it until his laughter was replaced by labored breathing.
“Shit,” Nunzio said and grabbed my throat with one hand while shoving my knee sideways with the other. He fucked me so hard I just clung to him and enjoyed the ride. When he came, it was abrupt and explosive, and the raw cry that tore out of his mouth was so loud that he had to press his face into my sweaty neck. But he kept pumping his hips and sliding his still-swollen dick in and out of me with decreasing speed.
“Jesus,” I whispered. “I want to come.”
Other words tried to formulate in my brain, but none had the chance before Nunzio pulled out and flipped me over. My ass was in the air, and the smooth, cool length of the massager was reinserted into my hole.
“Oh fuck, yes.”
I rode back on it like I’d been waiting for another dick all along. He jammed it into me hard, and by the time he activated the highest power, I was shaking. My mouth dropped open, but no sound came out. Between the repeated strokes of the vibrator against my prostate, and Nunzio reaching around to pump my straining cock, I blew my load with a blinding intensity that drained my balls of every drop of semen.
I collapsed. My lungs burned from the lack of oxygen.
Nunzio said something to me but it was an incomprehensible whisper. I was only aware of him stretching out beside me and pulling me close. He kissed the side of my neck, then my cheek, but my daze prevented me from reciprocating.
I was too destroyed to attempt to be anything other than dick addled in front my family, but even with that in mind, I made no effort to crawl out of the bed, or to ignore the ache in my abs and the throb of my abused ass.
If anyone walked in now, it would be a wrap. The room stank of sex, we were both naked and drenched in sweat, and parts of my body were reddened from Nunzio’s gripping hands. But I stayed wrapped up in his muscular arms because I didn’t care about family or holidays or anyone’s opinion anymore. I only cared about the warm contentment pooling inside me as Nunzio stroked my back.
“Spend the rest of the weekend with me,” he murmured.
There was no hesitation before I nodded.