Chapter 3 – Chapter 3

I held off for two weeks. Neal wasn't persistent, but it was like he knew. He was fine with the apartment the way it was, had better ideas than I did on how to upgrade it, and he was a good carpenter. He must have really had a construction job, because he left in the morning on a regular schedule and returned in the evening at about the same time. At my insistence, he left Petey behind and I walked him regularly. The apartment had an outside entrance but it also had an internal staircase running down from the cross hall between my kitchen and dining room, with a door at the head of the stairs with a lock on my side. So, I'd just go downstairs, leash up Petey, and take him out the apartment's outside entrance. When we got back, I'd leave him downstairs, go back up the stairs, and lock the door behind me.

Petey became attached to me—and I to him. I admit I let him up into my part of the house more often than not until it was close to time for Neal to return. Neal and I were OK, too, though, with Neal calling me downstairs from time to time in the evening and on Saturdays and Sundays to check what he was doing on the construction of the apartment and to give me lists for supplies. He was good about not calling me down too late or running power tools too early on Saturday and Sunday mornings. While he dressed skimpily and gave me "those" looks while I was down there, he didn't press the issue. He did, though, say more than once, "Anytime you want it. All you have to do is signal."

And that, ultimately, is what happened. I, of course, told myself it was unintentional. But I knew it wasn't.

One evening two weeks after Neal and Petey moved in, I walked Petey late, my bringing him back coinciding with Neal coming out of the shower, where he'd immediately gone upon returning from work. He'd had a towel around his middle when he'd come out of the shower, but when he saw me come in from the street with Petey on the leash, he dropped it and didn't pick it up. He asked me if I wanted a drink. I was just wearing tight jeans myself that evening. The day had been hot. I stripped off my T and stuck it into the back waistband of the jeans before coming inside. I'm sure I knew what I was doing.

I accepted the drink, but I pretended that all I wanted to talk about was what color the walls in the bedroom there should be painted. We were in the bedroom, looking at each other across his bed. He was naked and in erection. We each had a glass of scotch in our hands. I was hard too, which I'm sure he could tell.

"Well, I think it's time I went upstairs. An early night tonight. Not going out. You?"

"No, I'm not going out either," Neal answered in measured tones.

He probably expected me to fuck him there on his bed, then. But I didn't. Saying it was good to see him—which was a little ironic as I could see all of him, and a significant piece of him was erect—I bid him goodnight.

He stood at the bottom of the stairs, watching me walk up them. He didn't hear the door at the top of the stairs close or lock—because I left it wide open.

Twenty minutes later, we were on my bed on the second floor of the townhouse, Neal under me, his legs spread and bent, my knees pushed under his buttocks, raising his pelvis to my best penetration angle. His arms were splayed out from his body, his fists gripping the fabric of the bedspread, his back arched, his head arched back too, with his eyes open wide, his mouth forming a big O, and him crying out, "God, it's huge. You're killing me! Yes, fuck me. Fuck the shit out me!"

I was thrusting hard and deep, relieving two week's worth of tension and frustration, both of us having known all along it would come to this. It may have been the grinding noise of the brass headboard against the wall or the scream of bedsprings, as, crouched over him, I held him pinned to the bed with my fists pressed into the curves where his arms attached to his torso and pounded him deep and hard, that drew Petey up to my bedroom out of curiosity. When he arrived, though, he just crouched down beside the bed, crossed his front legs, and looked up to where I was moving on his master's body. Petey gave a calm, "it's about time" expression.

I had to acknowledge that Petey was right.

Over the next month, Neal slowly worked his way up into the house and into more control of our relationship. The door to the basement remained open. Neal started showing up for dinner upstairs, so I more than doubled the portions I cooked. He roamed the upstairs at will, advising me on how the nearly untouched third floor could best be restored. He was in my bed, under me, most nights—at least for the first couple of weeks—with Petey taking up station beside the bed.

As Neal became more comfortable with our relationship, the relationship loosened up. He started to bring other men home. These were usually older men—not as old as I was, but older than Neal was. It became obvious to me that he was renting himself out to them. Some of them were there for fun, though.

Then came the evening that he brought one upstairs—a young black man. Very good looking, slightly effeminate, but very well put together.

I was already in bed, in sleeping trousers, reading a book, when they appeared at my bedroom door.

"Trax here wants to see it," Neal says. "He doesn't believe it's bigger and thicker than his." Both obviously had been drinking. Both were just in their briefs.

"Neal," I said, but he already was at the side of the bed, pulling my dick out of the fly.

"Holy, shit, that is big, man. I want a piece of that," the black guy exclaimed. He was between my legs, taking my cock in his mouth, while Neal took my head between his hands and took me into a kiss.

I wound up giving them both what they wanted. I fucked them both, first Trax and then Neal and then, embarrassingly, watched Trax, who did, indeed, have a really big one, fuck Neal on the bed beside me. I couldn't help myself, and I had one hell of a time while it was going on.

After they left, though, and I'd had time to think about it, I crept down to the kitchen. The door to the basement was open. At the bottom of the stairs, Neal was on his back on the floor. Trax was holding Neal's legs out and up with grips on his ankles, and was fucking Neal again.

I closed and locked the door to the basement when Neal and the black stud had gone downstairs. It wouldn't be open again while Neal was in the apartment. I didn't throw him out but I told him that the police would surely be calling if he kept bring men home and taking their money. After that, it was only the younger men he brought back to the apartment—presumably the ones who didn't pay.

I didn't throw him out later either. I had grown too fond of Petey. I didn't want to lose the dog. And although I told myself that I couldn't give Neal and his friends the run of the house anymore or be just another of Neal's johns, I couldn't rule that out either. I just didn't know.

* * * *

Giving up with a sigh, I surrendered to him, letting my body fall back on the bed and letting my senses concentrate on the shaft he was fully sheathing as he rode my cock in long rises and falls, his claws digging into my pecs, his breath coming in fast pants, his eyes slitted in lust.

"I have to. I must," Thomas hissed as he rode me. I couldn't think of him as Father Thomas under these circumstances, just Thomas. As his vigor lagged a bit, having ridden me for over fifteen minutes, turning to a reverse cowboy and gripping my knees for a few minutes before turning back to face me, lowering his face periodically for a kiss, I accepted responsibility. I gripped his waist and slammed him up and down on the cock, loosing seed deep inside him as he arced his own ejaculation up to my chin and neck. Lowering his chest, matted with black, curly hair, down to mine, with its salt-and-pepper mix, he licked his cum off my throat and chin and we shared it in a kiss.

I hadn't any conscious idea when I invited Father Thomas to the house for a late dinner after a Rainbow Connection board meeting that we'd wind up on my bed. But I guess I should have seen it coming. I didn't know whether to believe the taunt Neal had given months ago in that fleabag motel about Father Thomas taking cock and wanting mine, but the idea bugged me and festered inside me.

It turned out that Neal was right. I don't know which of us pushed this over the edge, but neither of us had resisted it.

"We can't come together like this again," he whispered into my chest hair.

"No, we can't," I agreed.

"This has to be the only time."

"Yes."

"But since we're here now, anyway."

"Yes," I agreed.

I was still inside him. I already was hardening again. He obviously knew that. As if by unspoken agreement, he raised his torso off of mine and arched his body back as I scooted us both down to where my butt was on the end of the bed, my spread legs reaching down to the floor, where I could leverage thrusts off the balls of my feet. Thomas' head reached the carpet below the bed. He extended his arms out from his side in a cruciform, completely open and surrender stance. His ankles went to my shoulders, and I pulled him on and off my shaft by gripping his waist until, with a sigh, we both came again.

Later we sat on stools at the kitchen island, drinking coffee and looking sheepishly at each other. We both were in terrycloth robes—and nothing else. Both robes were gaping open, revealing that we both were hirsute and muscular—Thomas dark and sultry; me more of a Scandinavian build—both with cut cocks, both of which were half hard.

"Look at us," Thomas said with a slightly nervous voice, looking straight at me over the rim of his coffee cup, his gaze quizzical. "I think we performed marvelously. I know you did. Biggest cock I've ever had."

I sat there, looking straight at him, feeling a little sad, knowing I showed that, not responding to him.

"What? What's wrong?" he asked. "You knew we were building to this. It's just biological urge. We both can intellectually get past this."

"Oh, really?" I asked. "I am sitting here wondering who I confess this to. You have been my confessor."

"I do suggest that you hold it until you take a trip out of town," Thomas said. And then, when I didn't laugh, "This has to be the only time, Wade, but this did no harm to anyone, and you need this wake-up call. You need to accept that this is what you want, what you need—being with a man. You need to accept that there's no harm done, no one to answer to if you take a man. And you need to realize that you need a man permanently in your life. Not me, unfortunately—I'd like that cock of yours inside me every day—but of course I'm not free for an open relationship. But you are. And that's the point. You're capable of an open relationship and you need one. Not with Neal, of course, you need a greater commitment than he will provide. But, dammit, Wade, find yourself a man to live with you here and share the rest of your life with—openly. I wish I had that freedom. It's a freedom you can have. You need to fully get on to a new path, one that you know you want to be on."

"Are you finished with the homily?" I asked, giving him a reassuring smile. The message had sunk in. I knew exactly what to do.

"Yes, why?"

"You said we couldn't do this again after tonight. So, I was thinking of fucking you again right here on the floor."

I lay on top of him, between his spread and bent legs, as he clutched my shoulder blades in his hands, and cried out with each hard thrust. The third time was just as sweet as the first two—and accompanied by far less guilt.