Chapter 1: First Round

“HEY, RYAN, give me your hand.”

Ryan made sure his aching foot and calf were firmly anchored on the brake and the car was completely stopped before he looked over at his boyfriend, trying not to yawn. Five hours. They’d been trying to get up the hill to Donner Summit for five hours. God—were they the only people who could put chains on before it got critical?

The smell of exhaust was making him queasy; he’d started up and killed the engine about six times to conserve gas while they were at a standstill; and Blitzkrieg, the world’s most massive not-poodle, had needed to be walked on the side of the road three times. She’d also eaten some of Ryan’s luggage. Ryan didn’t want to look. It was a new set, and it was just too painful.

The look he shot Scotty was annoyed at the world at large.

Scott grinned back.

Scotty Davidovich had high Russian cheekbones and longish, if carefully cut, hair. (It was black and yellow this month—dyed specially, Ryan thought, to piss off Ryan’s mother at the holidays. It was a worthy endeavor. Ryan approved.) He also had blue-gray eyes with dark lashes that glinted wickedly when he looked sideways and full, smiling lips that looked like sex in a shot glass when he licked them and parted them just so. He was Ryan’s first male lover, and the love of Ryan’s life.

And right now, in the car, the look he was shooting Ryan was pure, one-hundred-percent, unadulterated, give-it-to-me-baby, fuck-me-without-mercy-in-front-of-the-dog sin.

That look was so incongruous with the little Honda stuck in traffic on the way up to visit Ryan’s parents for Christmas that Ryan had to look twice.

He put the car in park and turned off the ignition just in time for Scott to grab his hand from the keys and put it under the blanket he’d thrown on his lap the last time they’d turned the car off.

Ryan’s eyes got so big the chilled air from the windows dried them out. He blinked rapidly and squeezed, listening to Scotty’s grateful “Ah-ah-ah… ooooooohhh…” with a little bit of shock.

“Scotty, is that your…?” Stupid question. He squeezed Scotty’s cock—stiff and warm and peeking out over Scott’s underwear, yet still under the warm fuzzy blanket. Scott whined a little and bucked his hips and thrust deeper into Ryan’s hand.

Ryan’s heart started roaring in his ears, and he took a rabbity little look around their vehicular neighborhood to make sure no one was watching him give Scotty a hand job in the front of the car.

People in front of him in the big SUV? Little kids apparently enthralled by a new Dreamworks film featuring a fifty-foot woman with a nice rack. Check. Pouty teenage girl with iPod to the left of him, asleep against a pillow on the window? Check. People behind him still blocked by the luggage sharing the back seat with Blitzkrieg? Check. Rowdy frat boys on Scotty’s side surreptitiously passing a joint from person to person in the traffic? Check.

Operation Hand Job was a go!

Ryan loved the feeling of Scotty’s prick in his hand. It was hot, and the skin was soft, and the veins throbbed against Ryan’s palm. He watched Scott’s face as he stroked, loving the way Scotty threw his head against the headrest and started moaning softly in complete abandon. Traffic? Scotty didn’t see no stinking traffic; all he knew was that Ryan was jacking him off, rubbing his pre-come over his cock-head and murmuring hot things into the cold space of the car.

“You like that?”

“Mmmm…. Yeah….”

“Want it harder?”

“Ohhh… please, Ryan!”

“Harder?”

“God yes!”

Ryan let his grip slack to nothing, and Scotty’s cry of denial was almost a howl of pain.

“Ry! Please, Ry… please… lemme come… I wanna come… God… please….”

His hands were on the armrests, holding them tightly, and Ryan recognized the game; Scotty wouldn’t touch himself right now, because that was Ryan’s job.

Ryan worked hard to be good at his job. He tip-toed his fingers up Scotty’s slender length, listening to the hitch in Scott’s breath tell him that his teasing was just right. When he got to the tip, he rubbed his fingers in the pre-come that was drooling out of the slit. Scott whimpered, and Ryan used two fingers and two fingers only to slick Scotty up. He knew that the air leaking in under the blanket would serve to titillate Scott even more.

Scott wasn’t gibbering anymore. All of his concentration was on keeping his ass locked in his seat and his hands clenched on the armrests. So when he turned to Ryan with his eyes large and pupils dilated, his hips squirming and his full lips parted in mute appeal, Ryan knew he was about at the end of his rope.

“Please?” he murmured. “Please, Ry? Please finish me off?”

Ryan took one more look around and, after twisting his body in the unforgiving space of the car, dropped his head, grateful when Scotty pulled the blanket back and then covered him up with it. In the warm cocoon of come-scented dark, he fumbled for a minute, then found Scotty’s cock with his mouth and swallowed him down.

Scotty grunted, the sound reverberating against Ryan’s ear, and then Ryan grunted, because after three years together he loved this, loved taking Scotty’s cock into his mouth and sucking hard, and loved the sounds that Scotty made when clenching his hands in Ryan’s hair and bucking up, unashamed, completely lost in Ryan’s mouth on his body, in being tended to and waited on and loved.

Scotty groaned, the sound starting in his toes, vibrating in his thighs as they sat under Ryan’s cheek, and bouncing around his stomach for a while, and then Ryan was too busy swallowing, swallowing, not letting himself gag on the taste even a little, or it would make him spit up and Scotty would need to change his pants.

Scotty stopped coming, and there was quiet then under the fuzzy blanket as Scotty rubbed his hands on Ryan’s head and Ryan let Scotty’s cock fall out of his mouth and pulled back far enough to breathe.

Then Scotty’s whole body stiffened. “Oh shit, Ry! There’s a news camera three cars up. They’re interviewing people. Sit up, quick, before they spot us!”

Ryan sat up so suddenly the blanket came up, and then there was a frantic scrabble as Scotty pulled his loosest pair of jeans up and did the fly and Ryan wiped his face on the edge of the blanket while Scotty was using it to cover his crotch, just in case.

Ryan let go of the blanket, and Scotty pulled him forward for a kiss that suddenly stopped time and panic and all sorts of things, including Ryan’s heart. When Scott pulled back, his smile was gentle, even though his eyes were still dancing wickedly.

“Thanks for helping me get my perv on,” he said, that mobile mouth stretched into a smile.

“God, I love you!” Ryan blurted, because there was one person in the world who could have convinced Ryan to commit vehicular fellatio in a traffic jam.

Scott’s smile faded, and his hand came up to cup Ryan’s cheek and rub his lips with a tender thumb. “The news crew is about to knock on our window, Ry. Don’t make me get all sloppy stupid right now, ’kay?”

Ryan laughed and then almost jumped out of his jeans at the knock on the window. He clicked the keys, pressed the button, and turned around and flinched back from the blast of cold air and the fucking camera that damned near pushed its way into the car.

“Hi, I’m Suze Bachman from FOX News. So, what brings you up the hill in the middle of the crush?” Her hair was blonde and stiff under the fashionably soft red hat, her teeth were brightly veneered, and her voice was sort of scritchy-bright, and Blitzkrieg gave a muffled “ooof?” from the back seat. Ryan smiled and tried to sound like a lawyer and not a sexual deviant.

“Hi, Suze. We’re just going up to visit my parents for the holidays. I got caught up in work, and we left a little late. We were trying to beat the rush.”

“So, you and your roommate are staying in the family cabin for Christmas. That’s sweet.” She didn’t trip over “roommate,” and he didn’t see a reason to correct her—until she put her manicured hand on his shoulder through the window. He flinched back and Blitzkrieg, being the good guard dog she was, sensed the tension, skipped the “ooofing,” and let out a for-real bark.

Scott and Ryan both cringed as the entire car shook until the windows rattled. Suddenly, Blitzy wasn’t just a hidden monster in the luggage. She was a giant, black, curly head with ears long enough to fly, thrusting her narrow muzzle between the car seat and the window and biting like Suze Bachman was a new flavor of Alpo and she was gonna get her some of that.

Suze gave a little yelp and tripped backwards, and Scotty leaned over Ryan’s lap and called out, “Sorry about that. She’s jealous of strangers.” Ryan shot him a droll look that Scotty returned blandly, and then they both smiled at the camera and waved when Suze and her camera man took the “How Miserable Are These People In Traffic” show down to the next car in line.

Ryan rolled up the window, and he and Scott looked at each other and giggled like the stoned frat boys in the next car. (And why weren’t they getting interviewed for the six o’clock news, that’s what Ryan wanted to know!) Blitzkrieg whined, and Scotty pulled her forward, rubbing those fantastically silky ears and crooning, “Good dog! Who’s the bestest good girl in the world, oh yes! Driving off that nasty, mean reporter who wanted your other daddy’s body! Good girl!”

Ryan rolled his eyes. “She was just being annoyingly friendly—no lust needed.” But he joined Scott and petted the dog, because she was warm and she liked to lick their faces, and because she was their baby and had been since Scott had brought her home from the grocery store six months earlier and said, “Isn’t she a sweetheart? She’s supposed to be a toy poodle, and she was free!”

They’d learned a couple of things since that day in the summer. Thing the first: the dog wasn’t a toy poodle. She was maybe a cross between a giant poodle and a Clydesdale horse. Thing the second: They both loved the rapidly growing kibble disposal unit with an almost frightening intensity. Thing the third: There was no such thing as a free dog.

It was a thing Ryan had known when he put her in the backseat with the new luggage and the reason he could forgive her for slobbering all over his best suit right after he’d had it cleaned. It was the reason he’d risked his credit for a little house in the suburbs and the reason for the exclusive “Yes, I make house calls because your idiot canine ate garbage with a chaser of shoes” veterinarian, and generally one of life’s big lessons that didn’t hurt at all when Blitzy was licking your face after a shit day at work.

And now, as Ryan’s hands tangled with Scott’s in the curly tornado of Blitzkrieg’s fur, he realized that the dog might not be free, but that didn’t mean she didn’t pay you back.

“Yes,” Ryan said softly, squeezing Scott’s hand. “The dog saved me from the predatory heterosexual female who was horning in on your turf. Are you going to give her a treat now?”

Scotty flushed. “Sorry, Ry. It’s not the female that got me, really. You know that, right?”

Ryan knew. Scott usually wasn’t jealous at all—mostly because he kept saying that Ryan was the most trustworthy man he’d ever met. But usually they weren’t going to meet Ryan’s family.

“Look,” Ryan said reluctantly. “If you really don’t want to go, we can always take the next overpass and turn around.”

Scott rolled his pretty gray eyes. “For another five hours of traffic? No. We have to visit with them eventually. I mean, they do love you.”

And it was true. They did love Ryan. It was Scott they weren’t so crazy about, and not because he was the reason their son came out of the closet, either.

Ryan sighed, and then flashed a grin at Scott. “Just shows they’re biased—doesn’t mean they’re smart.”

“Yeah? How smart are they going to have to be to figure out that we were fooling around right before that news camera showed up?”

Ryan shrugged. “It wasn’t like it was written on our faces. Besides, that Suze person didn’t even see it, and she had to have read the vanity plates.” SCTSBOI was what the plate actually said. “Scotty’s Boi-Toi” was what the plate frame around the plate said. Scott had bought them for Ryan’s Christmas present the year before, and Ryan loved them.

Scott gave Ryan a purely male shove on the arm. “For all she knew, you were Scott, and the plates were about the car! And as for written on our faces….” Scott finished the sentence by pulling his hand up to Ryan’s lips and rubbing his thumb across the bottom.

Ryan looked in the rearview mirror and groaned. He’d wiped off his mouth, but his lips were both swollen and red. He’d been doing something with his mouth, that was for sure.

“Oh shit,” he mumbled. “God. I do. I look like I’ve been blowing someone with a cock the size of the Chrysler building.”

Scott smirked. “Well, I don’t like to brag….”

Ryan was aware that the cars around them were starting up in preparation to move, and he did the same. But no one was moving quite yet, so he turned around and smiled gently at the man he was pretty sure he couldn’t live without. “It’s not bragging, sweetheart, it’s the truth. Besides, what are the odds that’ll actually show up on the news and my folks will see it? Best way to kill time in traffic ever.”

Scott’s smirk softened, became the rather vulnerable smile that Scott saved for Ryan and Ryan only, and then the car in front of them moved and it was time to move on.