Chapter 15
MONDAY NIGHT FOOTBALL. Just like always, only it wasn’t like anything ever.
Nearly a week had passed since he’d overheard Dante and his dad talking about him as if he were a leper.
Griff had buried himself in bulshit to hide, avoiding everyone. Ostrich city, baby. He had worked a crazy double at the station and then a night at the Bone that had ended with someone being thrown through a plate-glass window. Grease fires and frat boys had kept him in a rotten mood. Then, to steer clear of Dante, he’d taken two sick days. No one had said anything about the website, and there was no way to find out who had spiled the beans.
Tommy was better. His wife had thrown him out and filed for divorce even before he’d woken up. The neighborhood knew what he was and acted like he’d died. But he had healed; he could talk now and walk some. Griff went and sat there most nights. Just so he wouldn’t have to be alone. And ’cause the hospital was a safe place to hide. No one could find him there.
Dante had been out of sight himself, avoiding Griff for probably the same reason, even if he didn’t know it. He was stil on medical leave with his possible concussion. With time off and the wad of cash from that last HotHead shoot, he had been replastering the third floor of his crazy house.
Griff knew that they needed to talk, but they were both gun-shy. How do you end a friendship that had lasted your whole life? He’d broken down and started looking at apartments in Staten Island, and he’d started looking into transferring to a new firehouse. He had to be ready. Tonight with the guys would be one last taste of things back to normal.
Yeah, right.
From the minute Griff walked through Dante’s door, they were hyperaware of each other. He hadn’t known how to act or how his best friend would react.
Apparently they were going to be on pins and needles for a while, until one of them spoke up. Neither of them was rushing in where angels feared.
The house was the same: motorcycle parts in the front halway, door off the hinges of the downstairs john, the massive “SportsCenter” sectional that the guys had al been watching games on since 9/11. But Dante was completely different the second he answered Griff’s knock.
Actualy, the knock started the weirdness. Normaly, Dante’s door was open and there were a couple guys smoking on the steps and someone taking a piss in the toilet as you passed the front hal. Griff was used to hearing guys laughing and shouting at the TV, Dean Martin singing from the boom-box in the kitchen, and Dante teling a dirty joke while he poured a quart of salsa into a bowl for the crew.
Not tonight. Tonight it was like coming to a galows in the rain.
The door was closed; the house was stil; the windows were dim. For the first time ever in his life, Griff actualy knocked on the door of Dante’s rambly brownstone. The action felt alien, like his hand was made of wood. Rap-rap-rap on a brass knocker he’d never noticed because he couldn’t ever remember seeing the door shut like that on a game night. Maybe it’s not Monday? I must’ve mixed up the—
But Dante puled the door open and he was dressed like always—hockey jersey and sweats and big bare feet. That was normal. He grinned and that was normal too. “Hey.”
“Hey.” Griff held up the cases of beer he always brought, and Dante nodded, chewing a mouthful of bread before turning back into the house. So far, so good. Except tonight, he could feel the heat that poured off Dante. Even his feet were handsome, the fucker. Walking down the hal, Griff could imagine Dante’s muscles shifting under those old clothes and smel the light musk of him under the whiff of tomato sauce and flour.
“I got a baked ziti to throw in the oven. Take two secs.”
Once Griff was inside, he realized that the rest of the guys weren’t there. The fuck? The ESPN announcers yacked quietly from the flat screen in the living room—the only other voices in the enormous house.
“I was gonna cal you. Ernie is having his bachelor night and I forgot.”
Dante wiped his hands on his pants and scooped up one of the cases, turning back to the kitchen and the smel of sun-dried tomatoes.
“It’s just us.” Dante had stopped walking and looked Griff right in the eye, so suddenly that Griff stopped walking.
Griff chewed on that.
“That okay?” Dante asked him, like he thought Griff might bolt for the exit.
Griff could tel he felt nervous . Duh. Of course he did.
“Yeah, D. It’s great. Kinda nice to have a quiet night after the last couple weeks.” He’s gonna confront me. He got me alone.
Ducking into the kitchen, Dante tossed him a beer and bobbed his head in agreement, like they’d bargained over something and agreed to it.
Griff felt like they were both waiting for something to happen. “Your head’s better?”
“For sure: shit shape, shit shape. Bad as new.” Dante knocked gently on his noggin and grinned.
Griffin looked around at the cluttered counters helplessly and opened his powerful hands in front of him to take something, anything, into the other room.
“Anything I can do?”
Dante shook his head, waving him toward the living room. “Nah. Just eat what I serve you and don’t gimme any lip. Go park it. Food’s like five minutes away.”
His dark eyes crinkled up, smiling sadly again at Griff, who got the hel out of there before anything got said. He steered himself to Dante’s big old sectional, a ful 10 feet across and 4 feet deep, and hunkered down. He toed off his shoes and rubbed his hands over his face trying to gauge Dante’s plans for the night.
He wanted to cal 911, except, of course, an emergency crew was already there.
“GRIFF, you want more?” Dante was standing in the door with the half-eaten pan of ziti and a deep spoon. Griff was sprawled out on the sofa. He shook his head and patted his stomach, a hard wal of pasta and ricotta under his abs.
“I’d puke. That was great.”
“What’s the score?” Dante caled over his shoulder as he took the tray back to the kitchen.
No fucking idea, that’s what. Cock one, brain nothing. Griff squinted at the numbers until Dante’s voice echoed from the kitchen.
“You want another Guinness?”
Yes. No. Maybe.
Dante shouldn’t be drinking anyway, with his head, although part of Griff wanted to get him blasted and ravish him until he surrendered completely. Stop that. He shifted his half-erection toward his hip so it wasn’t quite as obvious.
Come to think of it, clean and sober seemed like a good idea for him as wel, with Dante’s cock swinging in those sweats, inside loose boxers.
When Dante leaned back, Griff could see his semi bulging under the cotton and his huge bals bunched against the thigh. He knew what they looked and smeled and felt like.
He felt like the worst kind of pervert, scoping his best friend, but after what they’d done it was natural that he’d… pay attention, right? He wasn’t a freak, but he kept thinking of things from that day in front of the cameras. Even knowing what Dante had said to his father. Was Dante thinking the same thing?
What are we waiting for?
“Couldn’t hear you but I figured you said yes.” Dante stepped over his extended legs and planted a bottle on the table in front of him, waiting for him to reach for it. Griff laughed and gave in, clinking the beers together. Dante stared intently at him, but not at his face; actualy he hadn’t looked at Griff’s face beyond the minimum for the past half hour.
At first, Griff had thought he was being paranoid, but Dante kept watching his hands as he popped open a beer, as he drank, as he cut bread, as he speared pasta with a fork.
When they had eaten, he’d thought Dante was not paying attention to him, but al the attention was on his meaty paws. Dante didn’t even seem to be aware of it, but he seemed hypnotized by Griff’s scarred hands, the wide knuckles, the faint coppery hair at the wrist.
File that away for no good reason. Just to test, Griff reached for the remote and Dante honest-to-Christ blushed and looked somewhere else and pretended to scratch his bals.
He’s got wood in his sweats. From my hands? Then Griff had to look somewhere else. He hid behind his ziti. Mrs. Anastagio had taught her middle son to cook al right.
See, as it happened, for some reason Griff’s major bone of contention tonight was Dante’s waist and lower back—not his crotch or ass, but that long line of muscle that stretched from his ribs into his pants. He’d never noticed it particularly before, but that lean midriff kept drawing his eye. Dante would twist to reach for something behind the couch and his shirt would ride up. Dante crouched in front of the fridge digging out ziti to throw in the oven. Dante leaning forward to get his beer off the coffee table. Dante stretching before he got up to take a piss and showing that thin perfect line of crisp hair leading to….
What the hell am I doing?
Dante seemed unaware. Griff had to keep swalowing because he kept salivating at the sight of it. The thought of putting his hands on Dante’s waist, of pushing the sweats down. Of getting on his knees between those bare feet and begging, and worse.
Al night they pretended that nothing was strange, that they hadn’t touched each other, that they were just two firefighters getting together for leftovers and pussy jokes and the game. Fat chance. Memories from that afternoon in front of the camera floated in the air between them so clearly that sometimes Griff knew exactly the memory they were trying not to share. Even in Dante’s house, the hours at HotHead.com kept surfacing around them.
Dante was rigid. Whatever Mr. Anastagio had said to him, it wasn’t going away.
Sitting on the couch to pretend to watch the game was a sharp echo of them, hairy thigh-to-thigh, polishing their boners in tandem. Or Dante joking as he reached over to swipe the grease. Dante turned to ask a question, and Griff saw him on his side tugging back the rosy foreskin with a wink. Maybe they were both remembering Dante sliding to his knees on the carpet, looking up at Griff like he was asking permission. Please, sir, may I choke on your bone? Now everything echoed between them and dragged the porn front and center.
They’d forgotten how to be normal. Every movement felt like the last time they’d be in a room together. Griff felt like jerking off and puking both.
Griff had snuck looks at Dante before tonight, but after shooting that last crazy blowjob scene, he knew exactly what he was looking at and what was hidden.
They both did. He could smel Dante’s skin. He could hear those sounds. He knew his responses in this whole other way.
For the first time in his life he understood why the Bible caled sex “knowing.” Everything was different. Now he knew Dante. He’d known Dante. And wonder of wonders, Dante had known him right back. They couldn’t forget, only they didn’t know how to deal with the knowing. Yet.
Somehow it was worse sitting on this couch because he couldn’t begin to count the number of nights he’d crashed here or laughed here or smacked Dante’s head or confessed some embarrassing date story. It felt like getting a boner in church, definitely dirty—but horny-dirty, not shower-dirty. He shifted his rampant boner and tugged his shirt lower to cover.
At times during the game, it almost felt like Dante was flirting with him, but he seemed so panicked that Griff realized that Dante was working up to the confrontation his dad had suggested.
By halftime, with a series of invisible, incremental shifts, they had managed to wind up pressed leg to leg on the couch facing the game. Griff wasn’t watching anyone on TV. He was nursing his beer and keeping his shit together so Dante could say whatever it was he was working up to.
Dante muted the halftime idiots. “Look. Uh. I wanna talk about something.”
Here it comes.
Griff shrugged and kept his eyes facing forward, fake casual. “You good with bils now?”
“That’s not what I meant. I need to ask you something.” Dante scratched his head hard, and his hair stood up in a crazy wavy crest.
Griff resisted the urge to reach over and smooth it down. A month ago he would have. This sucked. “It didn’t mean anything. I’ve gotten blown before, D.
We’re fine.”
“Not the porn.” Dante was trying to drag the conversation with his father into the light.
“Dante, you’re like my brother. But that’s why we did it. Problem solved.” Griff pushed further. “Nothing’s different. I’m no different than I was.”
“I don’t know. C’mon, Griff. I got you off. I sucked your dick. That was fucking freaky. I’m a little freaked out. You’re not?”
“Stop. I don’t wanna think about it.”
“I do.” Dante picked at the label on his bottle; his face was creased like he was trying to translate something from Chinese. He tilted his head and took a sip, meeting Griff’s eyes for only a second. “Think about it. I’ve thought about it al week, I mean. You haven’t?”
“No! I mean yes, but we don’t need to think about it. I’m good.” Griffin could feel the blush heating his cheeks and ears.
“You didn’t seem to have trouble getting your nut.” Dante frowned and looked offended.
Griff turned to lean on the arm of the couch, putting space between them. “What is this?” How did his dad find out?
“We’re best buddies. The best. You don’t hate me.” Dante’s worry was in his eyes and his hands and his clenched muscles.
“No! No. I couldn’t, D. If you’re good, I’m good. I just didn’t want you to get mixed up in… al that.” Griff tried to angle himself so he could see Dante’s eyes. “I mean that you’re more than what you look like. A ripped body. If we gotta ditch the department, you got options. I mean, if people have found out that we
—”
“They won’t. They haven’t. Listen….”
Wait. What?
Griff felt like he’d been smacked in the head with a cartoon shovel. Doy-yoy-yoing! “I thought someone had seen us. Online.”
“Nah. No! That’s not what I’m saying, dumbass. Wil you look at me?”
“I heard you talking with your dad.”
Dante squenched his face and tried to recal when that could….
“When you were walpapering. You were talking about me.”
“Oh.”
“And before anything, I need to tel you….” Griff’s voice stopped in his throat and he looked down.
Dante’s swarthy hand was on his leg, squeezing him high up near his bals and the obvious bulge pushing at the seam. It felt so good that a groan slipped out of him before he tried to take the hand away.
Griff pressed as far back into the couch as he could.
“Don’t be afraid.” In one fluid movement, Dante swung onto his knees on the couch over Griff, straddling him.
“The fuck are you doing?” The butterflies in Griff’s stomach had become pterodactyls, but he couldn’t push Dante away. He was afraid to reach up for fear he’d pul his best friend down and taste him.
“I keep thinking about it, G. ’S’funny. I tried not to think about it while we were there. But now I sort of see you differently. Or I see you, period, like I hadn’t before. I feel you there. I’ve been having these feelings and I never thought you’d… I never did nothing like that or thought it was possible, but now I do. I am. Thinking about it al the time.” Dante picked at a scorched hole on the arm of the couch. “Not like I’m queer, but it kinda felt better than anything.”
“This is a bad idea.”
“I don’t have bad ideas.” Dante shook his head, petting Griff firmly through his shirt.
Everything’s a fucking joke. “I want to talk to you about real stuff. Important stuff. I need to explain—” Dante pushed his perfect hard ass right onto Griff’s heavy cannon through their sweats.
Griff gasped, pinned under his best friend’s tight body. “We’ve already done this.”
“That was bulshit for the website. This is just us. I want to know for real.” Dante’s lips were brushing against his neck, feathery soft.
Griff’s hair stood on end and he shivered. Was this a test? Some kind of weird hetero pity-fuck? Like Dante knew how his fag friend felt and he was wiling to mess around as some kind of twisted thank you?
“Don’t do this. I heard you talking about me!”
“And you’re that fucking disgust—” Dante plucked at his nipples through his shirt. Electricity snapped between them and his cock.
“Disgusting.”
“—disgusted with me?!” Dante shook his head and glared back. “Wait, what?”
“I am disgusting.”
“You are not disgusting, Griffin. But—”
“You have no idea.”
“So you are disgusted. You heard me teling my dad.”
Griff grabbed Dante’s hands before they did any more damage to his self-control. Last chance. He thrust them behind Dante’s back, holding them there in one powerful fist. His voice rumbled in his chest—bad cop barbarian. “Stop fooling around. You don’t want me.” Dante arched his chest, wrists trapped, as though realy restrained, his round buttocks against Griff’s lap. “What do I want, huh? You tel me.” I don’t know! “Someone else. Something else.” Griff tried not to feel his bulge nestled in the cleft between those cheeks.
Dante’s voice was husky and his eyes shone—both barrels. “You remember the night I came to the station and kissed you? I do.”
“You hit your head and you’re not thinking straight.” Griff tried to get up, but Dante squeezed him hard with his thighs.
“I am definitely not thinking straight, man.” Dante laughed and left his hands behind him, chest out.
Blink. Griff swalowed.
Dante leaned closer, almost whispering, as if he couldn’t confess while looking his best friend in the eye. He put the words right in Griff’s ear. “After I kissed you and you kissed me back and we had our noodle date, I went home and jerked off twice and ate it. I dreamt about it. I’ve jerked off over that fucking kiss more times than I can count. I beat myself raw thinking about the way you tasted and felt and sounded and smeled. And—” Griff pushed Dante off him roughly. “Stop it! Stop talking porno bulshit.”
“Christ, you’re stubborn!” Dante stumbled to his feet and stared down at Griff, hands on his lean hips. “I’ve never been with a guy. Not for real. Fuck! I never wanted to be.”
“Me neither.” Griff was breathing faster than he’d realized. He had an obvious erection he did nothing to cover.
“Aren’t you even curious?” Dante used Alek’s word. Tommy’s word. A word that destroyed families and put people in the hospital pissing into a bag.
On the TV, a group of retired players in toupees and size fifty suits postured and squabbled about trivia in a newsroom. Dante stepped forward and gazed down at Griff sprawled on the big couch, clothes puled half off, his massive boner tenting his pants.
“One night. An experiment. We’ve already done stuff. If it’s too freaky, it’s a one-off, then no harm no foul. You and me, just to see. I fucking double-dog dare you, Griffin.”
“I know already. I don’t need to see.”
“I’m not that ugly, asshole.” Dante mock-kicked at Griff.
Griff dodged the kick, puling his legs onto the couch and sliding backward to get away. A bizarre ripple of déjà vu stopped him cold. Website? Probie school? Firehouse breakroom? What was he remembering?
Dante ran a hand through his hair, pushing the inky waves out of the way. “Just as an experiment. You trust me. And I trust you. Then we can talk about anything you want. But dude, I cannot talk right now.” He pressed his lips to Griff’s.
Oh!
Griff was shaking and his heart was trying to pound its way out of his ears. He nodded without breaking the kiss.
Dante did and made everything sound normal. “Don’t be scared. Rol over so I can rub your back.” Ruh-roh.
Griff almost choked and then breathed through his mouth, trying not to hyperventilate. He could feel his IQ tumbling toward the basement. He let Dante lift his legs onto the deep cushions and shift him onto his stomach, and shuck his sweats. There were al these things he needed to say, but it al seemed pointless with Dante this close and warm and inexplicably horny.
Dante climbed back on top of him, sitting on Griff’s round butt to knead his shoulders. “I just wanna try. It’l be fine. No big deal. Maybe a massage first?
Two dudes. That’d be okay, right?”
What was he asking?
“And then, I want you”—Dante leaned forward, pressing his chest against Griff’s muscular back, lips against his ear—“to fucking turn yourself loose on me.” IN FIFTEEN years of loving, Griff had never met this Dante: tentative and thoughtful and patient.
Where did you come from?
Dante scooted forward, so he was sitting right on the slope of Griff’s lower back. He rubbed his hands to warm them and then pressed his weight between Griff’s shoulder blades.
Griff moaned.
“Too hard?”
“Nuh… nuh-uh.” Griff’s Cro-Magnon grunt made them both chuckle. “Uggh. Good.”
Griff pressed his blush into the sofa cushions. Why hadn’t any other massage felt like this? He hadn’t gotten a stiffie when the coaches had rubbed him down after practice, and back then he’d gotten wood from digging out his keys. Something about the roughness of Dante’s hands. The little, pleased non-whistle as he worked the stiffness out of Griff’s heavy shoulders.
He didn’t know this quiet, tender person at al. Maybe this was what Dante was like in the bedroom, in private. Behind closed doors, the cockiness turned
— poof—into a kind of goofy, boyish desire to please.
This is why he gets his way with everyone, even me.
Griff sighed.
Dante’s weight shifted as he leaned over the edge of the couch, rooting for something. “Got it!” Griff turned his head just in time to see him sit up with a bottle. Dante smiled shyly.
He looks… afraid?
Griff tried not to dwel on that as he heard the cap pop on the bottle, then the slither of Dante lubing his hands, and ungghh, Dante’s hands dug deep into his meaty back. Then he couldn’t form a thought at al. Dante started at the shoulders and wrung the stress out of him, al the way down to the swel of his buttocks.
Dante inched back for a better angle, using his fists to knead the pale globes.
Griff felt a drop of sweat fal from Dante onto his butt cheek, then run into his crack.
Apparently Dante had seen it, because he leaned close, his breath cooling Griff’s skin. Lower. Lower. Dante was working his way back to get his face closer and then his mouth was against Griff’s ass, sucking the drop of sweat off him and biting the muscle. Rough hands spread the cheeks. His tongue dipped between and down, spearing the tiny pink iris of muscle buried in the cleft.
A silent bark squeezed out of Griff in surprise. That’s it! That feeling again, and he wanted it.
This time Dante knew exactly what he needed too, and he didn’t let up on Griff for a second. Dante was sucking and chewing at his blushing hole, stubble grazing the skin between Griff’s glutes. Cheek to cheek to cheek to cheek. Griff chuckled and gasped as the tongue pushed al the way inside him and his little muscle closed around it.
Yes, please.
Dante was making insane noises back there, snuffling and groaning as he tried to get his face further into the deep groove. This is what you get for doing too many squats at the firehouse.
Chuckling, Dante lifted and slid his chest along the back of Griff’s legs until he was lying ful length over him, heart beating between shoulder blades, meat wedged in the furrow of his butt. He was wearing a condom.
Where did his shorts go?
Dante had shucked his clothing—sneaky bastard.
His rampant erection slid along Griff’s backside, brushing over the tight knot hidden there. A bead of sweat dripped from his face onto Griff’s shoulder and those wine-stain lips were at Griff’s ear, making him want awful things.
“’S’good right? Your ass is so hard. Jesus, man. It feels unbelievable under me.” Again that sweet shyness saying filthy words, and Dante’s sheathed cock was insistent, brushing over his opening, occasionaly pausing to nudge right against it. Knock, knock. Back and forward and nudge, back and nudge and forward.
Griff felt their skin heat from the friction and his ass relax a little as it was rubbed-rubbed-rubbed into submission. He wasn’t afraid. This was not his idea.
Without thinking, he arched his back slightly, and on the next nudge he felt Dante’s head push inside him a little. A hiss from Dante in his ear. Griff almost blew his load right there.
“Wait.”
Dante did, his curved boner barely breaching that little ring of muscle.
Griff was paralyzed by it; he could feel the hot length of it pressed against the trench, and he could feel the strange space inside him where it needed to be.
Now.
Dante muzzled his ear, bit the lobe, licked the bite. “I’m wearing a raincoat.”
“I know… that’s not what I—” Griff couldn’t figure out how to ask for what he wanted. Everything was so quiet.
“Just us. Just now.” Dante was taking deep breaths, but Griff was holding his.
“God, I know.” For an insane moment, Griff heard a golden oldie in his head: should I stay or should I go? He could feel the slow breathing as his buddy strained to keep himself from thrusting.
Griff made the choice, because there wasn’t realy any choice for him. He arched hard and pushed back onto Dante and the head popped into him. Dante gasped with him.
Ow. Wow.
He hadn’t expected that. Griff’s shaft sweled until it hurt under him.
With infinite grinding patience, Dante driled that perfect, thick, medium-rare curve right into Griff until the pleasure made him see spots and he had to breathe through his mouth to keep from passing out. He groaned low in his bely and felt an answering rumble on his broad back.
“Oh. My. Fuck.” Dante pressed up, hands on the wide shoulders under him, pushing his lean hips deep, deep. Griff could hear him gritting his teeth, and that Italian dick burned as if it was melting him from the inside. “Griff. Your ass.”
Pumping steadily but slowly, Dante slid his hands from Griff’s shoulders along his arms until his chest was pressed tight and their fingers were interlaced, hunching into the slippery heat. “You—you—oh!”
The curve did something funny inside Griff. The head knocked against this smal hungry place that made him shake and his eyes rol back in his head.
Dante squeezed his arms hard enough to bruise and kissed his shoulder openmouthed. “Awgh! Do that again.”
“Yes, sir.” Griff chuckled over his shoulder and Dante chuckled too. It just felt so crazy and right. Griff’s eyes drifted shut as he squeezed along the length and pushed back again.
“Yeah! Yeah-yeah. Jesus…. You’re making me stupid. Aaugh. Fuck yourself on my—God!” Griff did. He couldn’t stop himself. That perfect curve pierced him to his secret core, driling into something that was pushing drool out of his dick. Each thrust forced slippery threads from Griff and nudged him toward his climax.
Too soon.
So deep his insides wouldn’t let go. Every stroke nudged that hungry spot in him, stoking a flame, pushing him toward the cliff until he was about to—
“Dante, hold on. Don’t move. Don’t move!” Griff stopped cold, trying to tense every muscle in his body to hold on. He was gonna come too soon. They’d just started, and there was just no way it would take long enough to satisfy him. On the rug below, a strip of foil-wrapped condoms gleamed like a grail.
Dante did exactly as he was told, panting and resting his forehead between Griff’s shoulder blades. His lips brushed the skin and he kissed it once. “Did I hurt you, man?”
“No, I almost—one sec….” Griff reached back and gripped Dante’s hips hard. His legs were rigid and shaking between Dante’s. His ass gripped Dante’s curved boner, holding him inside against that place. Sweat ran between them as they caught their breath, ribs rising and faling together. “I’m trying—” Then Griff felt the lightest brush: Dante’s tongue sneaking out uncontrolably to lick his spine there, a light tickle.
That did it.
Griff reared up, lifting Dante with him with a roar. Dante’s curved spike slid out of him, but before he felt the absence fuly he flipped the Italian on his back.
Startled, Dante held on part of the way then fel against the opposite armrest on his back, his glistening erection bending against the crisp line of hair that plunged from his perfect navel.
“Wait, wait for me.” Turning, Griff grabbed his legs and puled him across the couch to wrap them around his back.
Griff leaned over to kiss some part of Dante’s confused face, licked his throat, fumbling to rol a condom onto his own shaft.
Their cocks dueled for a moment as he bent down to get their faces close again, then yanked a cushion out of the way for more room. He knocked over something on the coffee table but fuck if he could be bothered to find out what.
He put fingers inside Dante’s mouth and Dante licked at them.
The pleasure clutched at Griff, held his throat until he couldn’t breathe unless their mouths were open against each other.
It was al Dante, under him, looking up at him, pushing toward him like flame. Dante was trying to lift himself on the couch, but the sweaty, lubed leather was too slippery.
Griff sucked Dante’s spit off his fingers and reached low to fumble at Dante’s tiny opening, massaging it firmly as he’d seen Dante do it a lifetime ago.
I know what you like. You taught me.
Eyes bright, Dante tipped his hips and held his knees spread, giving ful access so Griff could crawl closer and screw his wet finger, then fingers, inside. One, then two, slipping smoothly into the little opening.
The broad crown of his erection nudged Dante’s nutsack, then beneath. “Don’t fight me. It’s going in. I want it to,” Griff growled at him.
“Good.”
“I’m not going to be able to control myself.”
“Don’t.” Dante shook his head. That shyness again. “God… please don’t.”
Dante raised a hand to touch Griff’s face. Griff nodded and kissed the palm roughly.
Griff searched for the lube, but he wouldn’t look away from his man, and finaly Dante put it into his hands and popped the cap and squeezed a palmful between them, smearing his slick trench with his own fingers. Whimpering, he slid a long finger in beside Griff’s two, and together, lips brushing, eye to eye, they opened him up.
Griff couldn’t take it another second; he slid his out, and Dante’s as wel.
“Last chance.” Griff set the blunt shiny head right at Dante’s perfect, grasping entrance. Knock, knock.
Dante nodded.
Griff pushed forward a little, barely breathing, but he stopped when Dante’s eyes went wide and shocked.
“Agh! Okay… okay….” Dante nodded again. “Easy! Just go slow. Okay? Jeee-sus you’re hung, Griffin!” Griff took his time, just firmly pressing forward while Dante’s hole opened milimeter by milimeter around the fat blushing apple.
Al of a sudden the muscle relaxed and he popped inside. They both yelped. Dante panted between his teeth like he was running a marathon. He swalowed and licked his lips.
Griff froze with worry and started to withdraw.
“No. I want it. It’s so—” Dante’s eyes were wild and his voice sounded muffled. His ass flexed around the knob. His pulse jerked in his throat. “Jesus, like I didn’t know I wanted it.” He panted, and his ass slipped another inch onto Griff’s erection, squeezing it like a fist. Dante shivered.
“Ticklish?” Griff’s mouth was open on his shoulder, and he bit down on the salty muscle.
Dante shuddered and nodded and gasped. “Great—great. Ah! Mmph.” Dante was hunching his hips in little circles, trying to work Griff’s erection deeper inside him.
Griff was lightheaded; sparks flickered at the edges of his vision. “Is it too much? I can—”
“No. Get it in me.”
Suddenly Dante impaled himself on the stout invader; he just wrapped his legs around Griff’s back and forcibly puled it into him the rest of the way, shocking both of them. His dark head dropped back, stretching his strong throat, and his breath came in short huffs.
“Fuh-uhhhk.” Dante panted and licked his lips. His eyes were feverish slits. His mouth an O of surprise. “Pushed the breath out of me! You are so goddamn
—”
Griff kissed his colarbone gently, then puled out a little, so little, and nudged in again, pushing firmly until he sank inside. “There it is. Give it up. Give your ass to me.”
Dante grunted and his shaft jerked involuntarily between them. He lifted his head so they could see each other.
“Someone liked that.” Griff smiled down and smoothed wet raven curls away from the handsome face.
Dante nodded, smiling. His eyes were watering and he was fighting to breathe normaly.
Up close, an inch away, face to face, Griff realized for the first time that Dante’s eyes looked velvet black but had a slight green cast to them, like scarabs…
an emerald iridescence only visible from kissing distance.
I never knew.
Dante closed them and roled his head groggily, his lips dark red against his quicksilver smile.
Griff moved with excruciating slowness. His arms shook with the strain of holding back. “Feel that?” That’s how much I love you.
“It’s like….” Dante’s words were slurred and dreamy. “It’s like being jerked off from the inside ’cause you’re so whoa-my-God wide… wow.” Dante’s tongue snuck out to lick his swolen lips, which was too much of a temptation.
Griff folded down close to steal a kiss. He looked right into those dark scarab eyes, brushing their mouths together. Against his navel, he felt Dante’s erection leaking a continuous trickle of precum, making cobwebs between them. Cock webs. Griff smiled and Dante smiled back without knowing why.
Tell him: I love you.
Griff raised his blunt fingers to put them in Dante’s mouth, and he bit them gently, sucking them. Griff driled in at a different angle and—
Something sparkled and spattered his abdomen.
“Holy shit!” Dante’s rod was spraying the air between them suddenly with scorching wetness. “I’m not coming. That isn’t me coming. Holy Christ, don’t move.”
“What do you—?” Griff shook his head in confusion.
“I dunno. You hit something and it just… hang on. Ful! It’s stil happening. Ohmygod that’s amazing. Just go slow or you’re gonna make me do it again.” Griff laughed and flexed his boner inside his lover. “And that’s bad, why?”
“I don’t—I couldn’t control—” Dante turned his head to the side and threw an arm over his face. “So fucking lame. Goddamn teenager. Jeez. I can’t believe I lost it—sorry.”
“Hey. Hey! Don’t hide from me.” Griff puled the arm away and smoothed sweaty hair out of his face, leaning down for a kiss, growling, “I’m not fucking done with you.”
Dante groaned and puled Griff’s hips closer with his legs until that battering ram was buried inside him, stretching him impossibly. “There’s so much of you, man. I’m trying to get a handle.”
Golden hands slipped over Griff’s wet skin, looking for purchase. They were too slick. Dante finaly slid his arms around Griff’s ribs and squeezed him in a kind of humping bear hug. Between his cheeks, the tight knot of muscle milked the ful fat length of Griff’s erection; Dante’s whole body squeezed around it.
Dante’s black-green eyes found his. “Good?”
“Ungh. Uh-yeah. That. How are…?” Griff groaned and gasped his approval. “Keep doing—keep that.” Dante’s tan legs squeezed around his back, the soft, sooty hairs plastered with their mixed sweat and sliding over his high flexing haunches. The circle of Dante’s sinewy arms squeezing their chests together and Griff licking his throat again and again.
Dante’s dick was trapped in the cage they made, slipping between their abdomens and leaking honey. Dante’s mouth against his babbled nonsense in Italian.
Every slam of Griff’s hips forced the air out of him, and he was pushing his hips up to meet the thrusts.
“Hard… harder.” Dante’s voice was hoarse and frantic. He was straining like he was climbing a sheer rock face, puling himself up toward something impossible. Like he was trying to get away, but he wanted to take Griff with him wherever he was going.
“Do you feel that? Do you feel where I am? I’m fucking you, Dante.”
Dante grunted every time he touched bottom, air whooshing out of him, his ass straining to accept the girth, his eyes watering with the strain. So stretched.
For the first time in his life, Griff was proud of his thick pole instead of worried. His flesh was doing something irrevocable to Dante.
With one hand, Griff reached down where they were joined, and ran a finger around that perfect stretched hole, tracing the exact ridge where his dick was wedged inside, stretching Dante so completely.
God, don’t let me hurt him more than he needs me to.
Dante’s ass was clamped so firmly on Griff that the skin of his dick couldn’t move against the condom; his blunt erection slid inside the foreskin and kept the friction from rubbing the tender opening raw. They were fused so tightly that he could barely tel where he stopped and Dante began. One beast.
Griff groaned and covered Dante’s loose mouth with his own, driving his tongue in to steal the stars from his eyes, the fire from his mind.
“Dante, open your eyes. I’m right here. Look.”
Dante grunted, squirming closer.
Griff lifted an inch and spoke right into his mouth. “We should never be farther apart than this.” Dante panted and nodded. His eyes were wet, watching Griff’s, and a tear leaked out the corner of one into the sweat on the beautiful Roman face. Dante’s hot ass, kneading and milking harsh pleasure out of him.
Their hips thudding together, Griff yelped at the heat. He felt like his skin had shrunk and his spirit was about to pop free. Griff licked the salty trail away and kissed both eyes, black lashes against his lips.
Tell him: I love you.
His fingers roamed over Dante, marking his skin with handprints, memorizing it. “This belongs to me. Only me. No one else can have it. Not even you. It’s mine. You’re mine.”
Dante whimpered and nodded, pleading.
“Your spit is mine. Your skin. The way you smel.” Griffin kept fucking Dante like a brute, pounding him with savage punctuation. He could feel Dante’s nipples rubbed raw against his wet, furry chest.
This is what I need. This is who I am.
Dante reached up, pushing his hands into Griffin’s thick red hair, his long body shaking and grunting with the impacts. Dante was crying and kissing him so hard that one of their lips was bleeding, the coppery taste in both their mouths.
Griff rubbed his stubbled face against Dante’s shadowed jaw, sucking and biting it like a tiger. “Those sounds are mine. Your cum. You can’t give it to anyone else.”
“Please, Griffin. Please!” Dante’s eyes were scorched, the pupils dilated with need; his mouth was loose as he begged with his whole body.
“Say it. Look in my eyes and tel me. Whose is it? Never again, Dante. You hear? Listen to me.” Griff could feel a spark in his lower back as his ass hammered at Dante.
Griff arched back, bracing one beefy palm in the center of Dante’s chest over his thundering heart so he could see everything while he was feeling it, memorizing the way Dante’s muscles shook with the thrusts and his midnight hair twisted in the cushions, the whole footbal couch creaking as he tried to make them into one thing, one thing, one thing….
What if it’s only this once?
“Something is happening. I can’t stop—” Dante widened his eyes and spread his arms like he’d been thrown out of a plane, like the ground was rushing to meet him. He didn’t touch his hardness. “Agh! What are you doing to me? The fuck are you doing to me?!” I’m loving you. Tell him.
Griff felt his bals drawing up, a hard knot at the base of his dick, readying the load he needed to put inside Dante. “I’m not gonna let you hurt yourself anymore. I’m not gonna let you be lonely or hurt or afraid. Ungh. Mmmph. Every part of you is mine, D. Beautiful and ugly.” They slid and slapped against each other. The couch was soaked with sweat. Griff braced one leg for purchase so he could push a little closer, get a little deeper. Dante’s vein-strapped erection jerked untouched between them, dark with urgency.
“Inside of me. Something….” Dante gasped appreciatively, his mouth an O of surprise and his eyes blind. “Oh my God, Griffin! Inside. I can’t stop—oh Jesus Christ! I’m not even touching—it feels…. I’m not—”
Griff drove himself into the flexing satin heat and stayed planted, so deep he was sure his hardness was nudging Dante’s heart. He felt the slick muscle clamp along his length, milking him and puling him that tiny bit closer. His arms buckled, and he let his ful weight drive him ful-length into Dante.
With that, Dante roared—threw his head back, greedy and groaning and begging as hot spirals of cum splatted between them up to his mouth. His hands dug into Griff’s flexed back. The smel was everywhere: salt, musk, and the funk of his semen. Al Dante. The walnut tang of it filed their mouths so that they could taste it in each other’s kiss. Their torsos slid in it, smearing hot together as Dante gulped air and rode the feeling as far as he could, and it was starry heaven.
Griff fought his orgasm with everything he had. Stil pushed deep and unmoving, he stayed rigid, trying to stop the inevitable, impossible pleasure as Dante’s body spasmed around him, but he knew: he was going to come. Even if he didn’t thrust, he was going to come in Dante’s flexing ass. Jesus-Mary-and-Joseph, he was breeding his best friend and he had asked for it and they were both stone sober and wide awake. He could feel that bal of lightning at the base of his spine and his hips hunched uncontrolably closer, a half-inch deeper.
At that, Dante’s scarab eyes— dark glass-green and I never knew— opened to look right into his gray, into him, and that was it.
Griff puled back his ful length once and drove his club of a cock one last time into that tight, sweet ring, roaring and nailing Dante to the sofa and turning himself inside out as he tried to get deep enough—just emptying-emptying-emptying everything he had inside Dante where it belonged. Somewhere far away, it felt like Dante was coming again, filed with him.
The room was suddenly quiet. Dante panted and whimpered, not looking at him, hiding his eyes. Sweat and semen slid hot between them.
Griff felt the room fade back into view around them as his focus on Dante softened; the whole world suddenly phosphoresced. No way was sex ever like this. This felt too good to be normal. How am I gonna be normal with him? His own breath coming in huge gulps as he tried to slow the heart hammering behind his ribs.
So much for experimenting. So much for curious.
A dog barked down in the street.
Griff shivered and realized he had fucked up worse than either of them could have imagined. Nothing would undo what had happened. Nothing they could say would erase this. Nothing in his life would ever make him happy but this, and Dante was trying not to meet his eyes. Oh shit. Why won’t he look up? His skin chiled; his stomach knotted. And Dante wasn’t looking at him, was actualy trying to avoid looking at him.
Dante’s face was crushed into the sweaty sofa pilows, his hair knotted and his eyes barely open.
I hurt him.
Griff could feel the panic building. Had he forced him? Had a joke just gotten out of hand?
I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry, D.
Griffin felt his erection soften and slip free, the condom ful. He held it awkwardly.
Dante winced, curling his legs up so he was on his side, and Griff’s heart turned into a sack of ice in his chest.
Griff crouched over the space where Dante had lain, memorizing them together. He couldn’t think, didn’t know where to be on the couch. Should he go?
Should he apologize? Idiot. How could he have screwed up so completely?
He wasn’t expecting the whisper when it came.
Dante didn’t even rol over to ask. “You mad at me?”
Griff didn’t know what to say, half-witted with panic.
I’m mad at you? Why am I mad at you?
He couldn’t connect the words to anything he felt. He didn’t know what to say, so he stayed cautious as a cat on a rope. He licked his dry lips with a dry tongue and spoke gravel.
“I’m so sorry, Dante.”
Dante’s back stiffened; his breath stopped. He stil would not turn over. “Oh.”
A crack split the block of ice inside Griff’s chest, and hope drained out of him.
Griff didn’t know where to look, but he knew he needed to put some safe space between them. He didn’t want to make it worse. He shifted and leaned back, puling his knees up, his bals pooling on the damp upholstery. “I just wanted you so much and I felt al this crazy shit for you and I didn’t mean to make you do anything you didn’t… I’m sorrier than anything, D. I’d die first. I’d never hurt you. I’d kil anyone who hurt you. With these hands. You know that. Please look at me.”
Dante roled over on his back, his face stil searching for something on the ceiling.
I didn’t mean it. Please. Please don’t say whatever it is.
Griff held his breath, waiting for it, knowing the axe would fal and he’d start dying as soon as he walked out the fucking door, and Dante would just grin and joke and try to forget what they had done together in this room.
Then Dante’s glinting scarab eyes slid to his.
The tiniest movement under those raven-black lashes and the corner of that medium-rare mouth hooked into a wicked grin and caught Griff’s big dumb open heart and reeled it wriggling from his chest into the gleaming air, and then Griff wasn’t sorry, not sorry at al, as he laid himself ful length over the man he loved and stroked him and thanked him and made promises he knew he would keep.