Ethan

I turn to the right as the door opens and my jaw drops. Frozen in place, I stand with a bottle of sweet vermouth in one hand, the other holding a glass where it's meant to mix up into one of the bar's signature cocktails. For what feels like an eternity, I stare at Professor Dr. William McDonough, Ph.D., who stands framed in the open bar door staring at me with a look of naked shock that equals my own.

With a start I catch myself, shake out the rest of the drink, finish mixing it, and hand it off. Distracted, I can barely think to take the cash and dole out change and put my tip in the jar. I feel like I'll trip over my own feet any second.

McDonough takes a halting step inside and lets the door close. He's still staring at me. I don't know what to do. My own confusion has chased out any other thoughts. A customer has to repeat his drink order and mutters to himself while I mix it.

Maybe I just imagined him there. If I focus on something else, and really concentrate, he'll disappear. I can just make him go away.

Nope, he's still there.

He walks through the place as if he's never seen a bar before. He's in a gay bar.

Start thinking of explanations, Ethan.

He needs directions.

He has to pee.

He doesn't know what the place is and just wanted a drink.

He heard about our fabulous jalapeño poppers.

He's sick of going to regular bars and having to beat off women hitting on him.

He thought this was a saddle and tack store. I mean, it's decorated like one.

My rationalizations become increasingly desperate, because when they crack, I will too. It's like my greatest hidden, perverse fantasy—part of it, anyway—coming true. That's what I want it to be.

Then, horror swirls through me, coalescing cold and hard in my guts. What if he ends up leaving with someone else? Am I going to have to pour him a drink, stand right here while he hits on, or is hit on by, other guys, then watch him leave?

He's here. He's right here. He puts one hand on the bar and looks at me. I feel like my clothes are being torn off by invisible fingers, and I like it. I get a lot of looks while working this job. I mean, let's face it, I'm here for the same reason that the Hardline Lounge on the other side of town has girls in tank tops tending bar. I'm used to it.

I was. Not anymore.

McDonough watches me serving other customers. He starts to tap his fingers. I can see it now: He's going to call me out for being rude and refusing to serve him. I laugh at that, the absurdity of it. He'd come in here and complain about me. That's all I need. I wonder if he treats everyone the way he treats his students, making the girl that rings him up at the grocer's tear up or the guy behind the counter at the tire store regret his life choices.

Other men give hard looks. McDonough can etch glass with his gaze.

That's not the only thing that's hard. I am becoming acutely aware, moment by moment, that my skinny jeans do not have enough carrying capacity for my fully erect penis. Besides being uncomfortable, it's getting me looks. I guess this is how the girls at Hardline feel when some drunk looks down their top.

McDonough isn't looking. At least, I didn't catch him.

I can't avoid him anymore. It's time to serve him. I cringe at the thought. I'm making silent double entendre to myself.

Still drumming his fingers, he watches me walk up to him. I throw a bar towel over my shoulder like a saloon keeper in a Clint Eastwood movie and resist the urge to spit on the floor to look tough.

“What can I getcha?”

My bravado shatters like etched glass and I shrink, wondering what the hell he's going to say. A lecture about where I choose to work? A comment about my clothes? A joke? What?

He seems to mouth something between his teeth for a moment, his hard, heavy jaw working, before he says, “Rum and Coke.”

I blink.

That's it? All that build up to the blandest drink you could order in here?

I gesture to the menu board behind me. “Could I interest you in one of our signature cocktails?”

He regards me coolly. “Is one of those a rum and coke?”

I shake my head.

“Then I won't be trying one. I want a rum and Coke.”

It's not tough to prepare. I squirt the soda into the glass, then pour a jigger of bottom shelf stuff, since he didn't specify.

“Can I interest you in our snack menu?” I ask. “We don't serve dinner until five thirty.”

He shakes his head. “How much?”

“Four fifty,” I say.

He grimaces and slaps seven dollars down on the bar.

“Keep the change.”

I take care of the business and move on to another customer.

His drink sits on the little cocktail napkin and looks lonely. Every once in a while, he flicks the glass with his finger, sending it rippling back and forth, like he's testing how hard he has to tap the glass to make it spill. He spends half an hour like that, staring at the drink as if it'll explain something to him.

Mostly. Every time he turns away he looks back at me. A creeping tension works its way up my back, tightens around my neck as my pulse throbs at my throat and in my loins. I start making small mistakes, adding change up wrong, things like that.

Finally, McDonough downs his rum and Coke and lifts two fingers.

I pour him another one. I'm the only one on bar until halfway through my shift when Teddy gets here, so it has to be me.

“Having a good time?” I ask him.

He looks at me.

“I'd say 'come here often' but you don't, and I'd know.”

“Why do you work here?” he asks very softly as he slides payment across the bar.

“They pay me money in exchange for my labor,” I say.

I stare at him hard. Harder than I ever have before. So far, I've only ever managed a fleeting look at him in the eye, and yet I pull it off now, meeting his gaze levelly as I count the money by hand.

“Are you asking if I'm gay, or if I just work here?” I blurt, shocked at how loud my voice is.

A couple of patrons look our way and McDonough pales.

I continue more softly. “Yeah. I'm gay. Is that a problem?”

“It's not a problem for you,” he says, downing his drink.

“What the hell does that mean?” I whisper.

He looks at me and points into his glass.

I frown. He took long enough with the first one. After giving him another, I hastily move away to serve other customers. I don't want to get him drunk, even if he's technically getting himself drunk. It just feels wrong.

Now he's sitting over there toying with his wedding band, watching me.

I feel like I'm a zoo creature behind class, or a specimen in a lab. McDonough looks at me with new eyes, like he's just seen me for the first time. Or maybe he was always looking at me that way and I never let myself see it.

He must be low. The divorce. Maybe he thought he'd come in here and experiment, and he's surprised to see me. Wondering if I'll out him. Asking me if I'm gay might be a way of asking if I'd say anything. Maybe he's afraid of blackmail—it's not like you can't be hetero and work in a gay bar. As long as the money's green, as my mom used to say.

He wants another one, his fourth.

Reluctantly, I pour it and take his payment.

As the place starts filling up, he gets attention but waves it off. A crowd of rowdy men mill through the place, dancing or crowding the bar, and McDonough sits there like a rock on a beach, waves crashing around him. When someone hits on him or gives him bedroom eyes, he's about as responsive as a rock. He looks miserable.

You know, after the way he's treated me, the way he runs his classes, the kind of person he seems to be…I should be thinking, good. But he keeps touching his wedding band and looking at me longingly.

When he looks this way, does he see what he wanted to be, but never could? Or…

Or is he thinking about fucking me?

Either way, compassion swells in my chest when I look at him. Oh Ethan, you are such a sub.

Finally, I have help at the bar. Before I signal that I'm about to take a break, I move over to where he sits.

“Rum and Coke,” he says hoarsely.

“Are you sure? This'll be number five,” I say.

“I'm sure,” he says, pointing at his glass.

“Do you have a ride?”

He glares at me. “What am I, twelve?”

I bite my lip.

“Give me your keys.”

“You,” he says. “My keys?”

“Give 'em or I'm cutting you off,” I say flatly.

Something, maybe remorse, clouds his eyes. I think he's embarrassed, it's just hard to tell because he's such a hardass.

To my shock, he takes them out and drops them on the bar. I pocket them before pouring him another one. I catch Teddy by the arm on my way out.

“Guy at the end, make sure he slows down,” I whisper, nodding over to McDonough.

“Roger,” Teddy says, rushing to take care of the crowd.

I step out through the back. Gravel crunches under my shoes. The place backs up to woods. Nowadays I'm sure they could relocate to the center of town and be fine, but this place used to be stealthy, just rumored, or so I'm told. I can't imagine living like that. So it's kind of out there, on the south edge of town.

I hear crunching on the gravel behind me.

It's him.

McDonough steps down from the back door and lets it close behind him. For someone who's had a lot to drink, he wears it well. He stands next to me, and I wonder if one of us should offer the other a cigarette or we should talk about fishing. He radiates manliness like heat from a furnace.

In fact, he rolls something that isn't there between his forefinger and middle, like he did smoke at one point. He's still standing there.

I look over at him.

“You alright?” I say.

“I need my keys back.”

I half-turn and look at him, hard. He's swaying. He looks disheveled. I have a bad feeling about handing those keys to him. Then again, if he goes in and complains…I'm not supposed to take customers’ keys. Can you imagine what kind of a mess that could be?

“It's time for me to go home,” he says.

I watch him for a moment longer.

“Alright, go around the front. I'll bring them out.”

He gives me a look and turns, striding around the corner of the building. I step back inside and find my boss, Big Earl.

Yeah. Big Earl.

“I have to go,” I tell him. “Little emergency came up. Can you spare me?”

He shrugs. “It's your cut of the tips. Make sure you clock out.”

I hate leaving Teddy alone. I should say something to him, but I rush out the back and around the building again, glancing at my motorcycle.

McDonough is standing by his car, contemplating it. I pull the keys from my pocket.

“There you are,” he says. “Here.”

He reaches for them, and I step back.

“Hop in the passenger's seat.”

He blinks. “What?”

“I'll drive you. You've had too much.”

“I'm not a lightweight,” he growls.

“You're not the only one on the road, either.”

He looks at the car, at me, at the car, me again.

“You'll ding it.”

I look at the alleged vehicle with rot in the quarter panels, dings, patchy faded paint, scratched up bumpers, and a dashboard that's losing its vinyl coating. Then I look at him.

“Fuck,” he mutters.

“Just get in,” I say.

“It's a stick.”

“I can drive a manual.”

He sighs, looks at me. Looks tired. Finally, he relents and gets in.

“You're right. I shouldn't have tried to drive,” he says before slamming the door. A look of despair etches briefly on his face.

I've never seen him so…human before.

A smile curls my lips, and something at the back of my mind twitches, wondering if he intended to drive himself anywhere at all.

When I drop into his front seat, I have to hitch it up to reach the pedals and move the back up, too. He groans, as if I'd just committed some profound transgression that could never be forgiven.

The clutch is gritty and the shifter gives truth to the name “rock crusher,” but I manage. McDonough lolls beside me, blinking in the way of a drunken person who's perpetually surprised he's still awake.

“Where'd you learn to drive stick?” he said.

“My mom's old farm truck.”

He blinks.

“You grew up on a farm?”

“I grew up in a farmhouse in the middle of a subdivision that used to be a farm because my grandfather and great grandfather made poor life choices and left my mom destitute,” I say bitterly.

McDonough is silent for a moment.

“Oh,” he says. “Sorry about that.”

I glance at him as I roll up to the first stop sign.

“It would help if I knew where you live,” I point out.

McDonough jerks. “Oh, right. Near campus. Over on Maple and Jackson. The Victorian.”

“You live there?” I blurt, pitying the first undergraduate that decides to blast sex music at three in the morning with Doctor McDoom.

“I live there,” he says, looking out the window.

“You mind if I ask what you were doing at the bar?” I say.

“I'm bisexual,” he blurts, “I think. Technically?”

I swallow, hard, but somehow the question gets out of my throat anyway.

“So you…uhh…you've been with guys?”

“Married to a woman for sixteen years. Never while I was with her. Never once. I never goddamn cheated, you hear me?”

He seems shocked at his own anger.

“Before that?”

“Before that,” is all he says.

I'm quiet for a while. The rattly snarl of the Camaro's big eight cylinder fills the air, so I don't bother with the radio. I'm actually mildly terrified of finding out what this man listens to while driving.

It's either heavy classical music or AC/DC. Can't be but one or the other.

“I never pictured you as a country boy,” he says, shocking me out of my thoughts.

“I wasn't one,” I say. “I left when I could.”

Not that I had much choice, I think bitterly.

After a few beats I say, “I didn't think you'd be picturing me at all.”

He turns his head to look at me and I feel eyes spreading over every square inch of my skin. My whole being starts to throb.

I don't mean to look. It just kind of happens. He's past the point where he's going to be concerned with hiding an erection. He's not. I don't think he could.

Everybody fantasizes about their crush having a big tool, right? I know I do. It's fine when you're pretending, exploring your own desires. When I catch a glimpse of the monster outlined in his pants, I can't help but think that my eyes are bigger than my ass, to pervert a phrase.

We're here. I pull up, pull the handbrake, and leave the car in neutral.

McDonough climbs out.

“My case,” he says.

I haul the thing out of his trunk and hand it to him.

Every reason I should just turn and walk back to campus comes bubbling up at once, sliding along my resisting desire like bubbles flowing under ice.

Someone could see us, for one thing. Students live here.

I haul the case upstairs for him. He goes ahead of me and seems surprised when he still doesn't have his keys. I open the door and…

A dozen emotions twist all together, joined at once, trying to peel away from one another. I won't say he lives in squalor—the place is clean and neat. It's just empty. His only possessions seem to be packed in boxes.

I close the door quickly as his cat approaches. He scoops the animal up and showers it with a level of affection that I never imagined my nemesis-professor could provide to another living being. It's fucking adorable.

Setting the case by the door, I look around the apartment. It's a miniscule one-bedroom with plain white walls. He apparently eats his meals on a bar stool at the kitchen bar; there's no table. He has a cheap couch and a TV, also sitting on boxes. Through the bedroom door I can see unassembled flat-pack furniture in boxes or laid out on the floor like he was working on it and just got up and left. There's a mattress with sheets and a single pillow on the floor.

He sort of dumps himself on the couch and sits there, staring at his own reflection in the TV.

My heart is hammering in my chest, like it'll crack through my ribs and run off, leaving me lacking my second favorite organ.

“Would you get me something from the fridge?” he says.

I blink a few times, wondering how many lines I've crossed today, and how many I'm about to cross if I fulfill his request. I head over and pull the door open, bathing the room in light.

Professor McDonough’s fridge contains a bottle of Jack Daniels, a pack of American cheese, a wrapped up half sandwich, and a case of water bottles, still in the cardboard tray and wrapper. I grab a water and hand it to him.

He presses it to his forehead, opens it, and chugs half at once.

I stand close to him. Too close. I can feel his presence. More importantly I can't take my eyes off his powerful arms, sculpted body, thick chest, and that monster throbbing between his legs.

He's looking at me, too. Raking me with his eyes, absorbing every detail he can, especially the growing throbbing in my crotch.

Absently, without thinking, I touch his left sleeve and push it up, baring his bicep. There's a military unit insignia tattooed there, and more—something on his shoulder, still covered by his shirt.

“That's not the worst one,” he says.

He pulls up his shirt and I gasp. Yes, he's cut, and he's beefy as hell, but I knew that. He has a coiled Japanese dragon tattooed on his stomach. In fact, he's damn near covered in tats.

I run my fingers over his skin, almost like trying to feel the creature's scales. It's a profoundly well done tattoo, perfect really. I sit beside him and feel a little drunk myself despite not even tasting a drop. My head is certainly swimmy and swaying.

Professor McDonough runs his hand down my back. I arch and go rigid—in both ways—and his weight and movement pull me closer. I'm pressed into his side now, feeling the heat of him through the thin cotton of my dollar store shirt.

I should go. Now. He's going to be pissed when he thinks this through. Hell, he'll probably think I'm trying to sleep my way to better grades, and if he doesn't, someone else will. This could be bad for both of us. I really, really need to leave, and not swing my leg over his hip and sit in his lap, grinding my ass against his cock.

Yeah, I don't leave. I do the other one.

“Professor—” I start.

“Call me William,” he says.

“William,” I murmur.

Suddenly, his big, powerful hand is gripping the back of my neck. He controls me completely and easily, pulling me down to invade my mouth with his tongue. An electric shudder of arousal passes through me and I shove my hands up under his shirt, digging my fingertips into his chest. I roll my hips and grind my cock against his through our pants.

His hand slides under me, cups me, lifting me up a bit. He's harsh, demanding. He keeps me pinned so he can devour me with kisses while his hand explores. My legs, my ass. He squeezes and prods and caresses, pulls my shirt up and runs his palm up my back, pulsing harder under me.

My own hands…

I undo his belt. I pull him out. He's a solid two-hander. I can't look down, his tongue is invading my mouth, our lips locked.

He yanks my jeans open. I think I lost the button. My cock flops free and I move my body and hips in a full motion, sliding against his stomach as he slides against mine. The heat of them between us like a furnace.

I push harder, molding against his body, belly to belly, chest to chest. He pulls me up a little and I grip his sides with my legs. If I didn't have pants on still, I wouldn't even think twice: I'd rear up and sit and take that monster in my ass. I know I need lube, not to mention a condom, but the urge is too strong.

He's stroking my cock now. He pulls me up, nuzzling and kissing and biting my throat. Sometimes his body jerks an involuntary thrust and I can feel his power, the force ready to be unleashed into me in a sudden snap of muscle.

My whole mind uncoils. I'm filled with an instinctive need to pleasure him, but then he's pushing me up and his mouth is on my nipple. A hint of teeth that makes me cry out.

Then I'm on my back and he's yanking my jeans off. I wriggle and kick my way out of them and my shoes, and end up with one sock, bare-assed on his couch.

He strokes his own dick and I can't stop staring at it, until I feel his breath on my shaft and he sucks me. Hard. So hard it hurts, and I groan, pushing on his shoulder until he eases up. What he lacks in experience he makes up for with desire.

I melt, losing control as he plays my body like an instrument. There's nothing in the world like a top who knows how to take control with an act that others consider submissive, like a blowjob. I've never felt that as a topping act, something aggressive. I'm not thrusting, I'm being taken.

“Ung,” I grunt.

He sucks my balls, taking them in his mouth as he strokes my cock. He wets his finger with spit and slides right up my willing ass.

His hands. His mouth. They're everywhere.

I can't help it. This is like a dream, and as in a dream, I'm not really in control. I'm carried along on the current.

I come and William takes it all, almost wringing it out of me until I collapse, sweaty and exhausted by his attentions.

Then he stands, his big member swaying as he sheds his clothes. I stare for a moment, savoring his body with my eyes, and then I fall, naturally, into a subservient, kneeling position, my hands on my thighs, my head tipped just slightly back, my mouth open.

He almost looks like he doesn't know what to do, at odds with the command he showed moments earlier. It's like it's settling in and becoming real, too.

I even stick my tongue out. Do it, damn it.

He looks down at me and runs his fingers through my hair.

Closing my mouth, I swallow once and say,

“Fuck my face. Please. Sir.”

His grip tightens. He holds my head in one hand and his cock in the other, bringing them together. The head glides over my tongue and he moans loudly, then even louder as I close my lips around his shaft.

I only have to dive forward once before he gets the picture, before he understands that I want to be used.