A Champion for Tinker Creek, page 3
I sauntered past the wide open deck bays to the north bar. The crowd was a little older here, but still no one caught my eye. I paused to say hello to Clem. Since the club was at maximum, the line of people waiting to show him their IDs had shrunk, so he had time to talk.
“Headed out early, boss?” he said.
“Yeah, can’t find much that catches my eye tonight.”
He ogled a dancer on the floor who had pulled off his shirt to reveal an accordion set of abs and whose shorts promised a tantalizing set of buns.
“Are you sure you’re just not too picky?” he asked.
I laughed. “I might be.”
“Let me have your hand,” he ordered, stamping it with a red L&F. “That will let you back in if you decide you want to,” he said.
I nodded my thanks and stepped out to find Clem’s staff had the crowd in an orderly line down the side of the building. I started to head to where I could get a rideshare when I saw a slim Latino youth, a little shorter than I, dressed sharp and looking frustrated with the line. On impulse, I stepped up to him.
“You want in?”
“Sure,” he said.
“Follow me.” I started to move back toward the entrance, then I turned to watch him use those long legs to step easily over the yellow rope and come up to the door. I flashed my hand at the entrée check and said “headed to Clem” when he shot a look at my companion.
I stepped back up to Clem and jerked my thumb over my shoulder at my friend. “Clem, he’s with me.”
He looked at me, grinned, and nodded. “Welcome back to the club, boss,” he said.
After we passed Clem’s velvet gate, I headed for the less crowded north bar, pleased that my new protégé stuck with me. We arrived in time to claim stools two young women had vacated.
“Old-fashioned straight up,” I said, “rye whiskey, lemon twist, no cherry. You?” I said.
“Cuba libre,” he said, “on a separate tab.” A moment passed before he spoke.
“I suppose I should say thank you. If it wasn’t for you, I’d still be drinkless and shut out.”
“You’re welcome,” I grunted.
“Do you do this often?”
“What?”
“Rescue random people waiting to get into the L&F.”
“You weren’t random,” I said, “and no, this was the first time.”
“Should I be flattered?”
“You could be. I don’t care.”
“Then why do it?”
“I hoped you would have a drink on the deck with me.”
“Then I am flattered. What if I said no or had been meeting someone here?”
“Your loss. And no one tries to meet up inside, but at the front. If you were going to meet someone, they would have been with you already.”
“Okay,” he said.
“Okay what?”
“Okay, I’ll have a drink with you on the deck.”
“Cool,” I said, downing the rest of the concoction and signaling the bartender. “Another round for both of us, and on my tab.”
* * *
After we picked up the drinks he’d ordered, we threaded through the crush to the deck’s far rail without speaking. The music remained audible, but the crowd sound faded, and I became more aware of his physical presence.
He smelled of metal, soap, and a little bit of sweat, and I couldn’t help but admire how well he filled out the plain white tee he wore.
“Aren’t you a little underdressed for this place?” I said, glancing around.
He grinned.
“Construction drag,” he replied, adding, “It’s like a costume.”
“The goon at the door didn’t seem to mind how you were dressed.”
He frowned. “Clem’s not a goon,” he said. “I’ve known the club owner for a while.”
We turned to look out over the water for a moment. I could feel my cock start to chub and stretched to force it back to regular size.
“I’m Manny,” I said, offering my hand and using the name my friends use.
“Lyle,” he said. His calloused palm scraped mine as we tested each other’s grip for a second before releasing.
“Pretty good handshake,” he said, though I suspected his was a lot stronger than mine.
“Likewise.” We turned to each other again.
“What brings you out tonight? I’m not a regular here, but I haven’t seen you before.”
“I’m from out of town,” I said. “I grew up here but haven’t been back in a while. I’m in the middle of transitioning back to living here.”
“Well, welcome home,” he declared, offering his glass for a light tap from mine.
“Thank you,” I said, looking directly at him. “I’m feeling more welcome all the time.” I paused to take another sip. “What about you? You said you knew the club owner, so you must have been here for a while.”
“Depends on what you mean by here.”
“Well, St. Michael’s Harbor. I grew up a little to the north of town, but we still said St. Michael’s before we would have said anywhere else, like Savannah.”
“I meant here, the neighborhood, Tinker Creek.”
“Oh, wow. Tinker Creek. You really meant like here here,” I said. “I don’t mean to offend, but when I was a little boy, Tinker Creek was someplace we were told to stay away from. I guess it’s gotten better. Or has it?”
“Oh, it has,” Lyle said. “I didn’t grow up in TC, that’s what we called it, but my dad had a business down here that I have now, and I’ve watched it grow and change. What’s brought you back to St. Michael’s?”
“Career, mostly. Family, a little bit,” I said.
We paused and turned to watch the lights again. He moved closer.
“Sorry for the twenty questions,” he said, “but you looked like you could put more than two words together, and I like that.”
I laughed. “Thank you, I guess. Or was that a polite way of telling me I look nerdy?”
“Not at all. No nerd is going to have those shoulders, legs, and ass,” he said as he ran his hand slowly up and down my butt.
“Heyyy. Did you just cop a feel of my ass?” My cock leaped again.
“Did you mind?”
I thought for a second. “Normally, yes…but right now not so much,” I said.
He took my hand and pressed it to his firm chest. “For what’s it worth, you can feel anything you want.”
My mouth went dry with desire as my cock swelled fully hard. Through the T-shirt, his chest felt warm, solid, and alive. It moved gently beneath my fingers with his every breath, and he shivered slightly as I brushed his nipple with my fingertips.
I tried to take my hand back, but Lyle held it easily, pressing it harder into his solid heat as he reached around me with the other to paw my ass, grabbing and holding it as he pulled me close.
“You never said what brought you out tonight,” he whispered in whiskey-scented breath. “Was it this?” He pulled me into him harder.
“No!” I protested. “Well…maybe.”
“Of course it was.” And suddenly his mouth was on mine, growling into me, his tongue tickling my bottom lip, demanding entrance. I was determined to deny him, to keep my lips closed—until his fingers found my nipple, teasing and pinching it to a peak.
“Do you want to get out of here,” he said low and aggressive in my ear.
“Yes.”
“Where?”
My mind flashed to my little chauffeur room in Tommy’s house with its wrought iron bed frame and skimpy mattress. “Yours.”
“Follow me.”
Trailing Lyle out the employee exit, I admired his back, legs, and ass. His shoulders were straight and strong, so the bubble on a level laid athwart them would not move and lines drawn from them to his butt would form a perfect V. We piled into the back seat of a rideshare. Lyle confirmed the destination with the driver, then scooted back.
“Come here,” he said, pulling me closer and kissing me again. He was gentler but remained insistent. He held my head as I explored his chest and back with my hands. My mind spun in a mix of confusion and delight. What am I doing? Then I realized I didn’t care. All I wanted to do was to kiss him and see him naked.
The smirking rideshare driver let us out on a commercial corner somewhere in Tinker Creek. I felt confused and a little alarmed. I thought we were going to Lyle’s place.
“Where are we?” I said, looking warily around us.
“Home sweet home,” Lyle replied, smirking. “Follow me,” he said again, passing in front of a car repair shop and then up what looked like an alley.
I hung back. “Here?”
“C’mon,” he said, jerking his arm. He was about halfway down the alley, where the streetlight didn’t reach, facing a wall. The street was quiet. I thought of Tommy’s emergency whistle in my pocket, then shrugged and joined him.
The wall he was facing was actually a metal door. He opened a little box to the right and pressed his thumb against a pad inside the box. Somewhere in the building, machinery clanked to life.
“I live upstairs,” he said as metal crashed behind the panel and it slid up to reveal an industrial elevator cab. I followed him in, and he hit the Up button. The door closed, the cab began to rise, and we were together again, standing this time, his body large and hard against mine, pushing me into the wall and gulping my kisses the way a parched man takes water.
He broke off to start snuggling my neck and unbuttoning my shirt.
“Damn, you’re so hot,” he growled. “I’m gonna fuck you so good.”
“But I don’t get…” I started to object, but his mouth was back on mine, and I vanished into the kissing storm once more. He had become a force of nature, and all I could do was hold on.
By the time the elevator door opened again, he had unbuttoned my shirt entirely and found my nipples. He had to hold me up when he tweaked them and my knees buckled. We broke apart, panting, and stepped out of the cab. I stared after he turned on the lights.
“Chez moi,” he said.
We stood at the edge of what felt like a vast space. It must have taken up the second floor of the whole shop downstairs. Large shade-covered windows along with various screens lined the walls, and pieces of modern sculpture dotted the room.
“You live here?” I said.
The smirk again. “I do. Nickel tour tomorrow, but all we need now is to the right.”
We moved in that direction, and the lights behind us shut off while spaces we were headed to lit up. I followed Lyle through a gap between two shoji screens and stepped into his bedroom. A large, wooden platform bed with headboard stood on a prominent colorful carpet. The bed would have dominated an extremely good-sized traditional room, but in this space it appeared tiny, like an atoll in a sea of polished concrete.
He took me in his arms again, bits of my now-bare chest against his tee, sliding his hands down my back to grip my ass.
He moaned low in my ear. “Hmm, how you feeling, baby boy?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “Who the fuck are you?”
He stepped away from me, looked into my eyes, and began a deep, rolling chuckle that rose from somewhere around his knees. He stripped off his shirt and dropped it behind him.
“Tonight I am the Prince of Desire,” he said. “And our first stop is a shower to wash off the smell of that funky club.”
He picked up his shirt and tossed it easily into a basket against the wall, then removed his pants and socks to the container as well, padding back to me in a pair of black boxer briefs.
“You can leave your clothes at the end of the bed,” he said.
In his underwear, his body was more magnificent than it had been clothed. Arms with biceps the size of baseballs dropped from softball-measured shoulders down to thick wrists. Pectoral muscles stood out from his frame like plates of armored flesh, each capped with a cute quarter-sized nipple and scattered with hair. A washboard of corded strength rolled down his abdomen to his waistband along with a healthy treasure trail that disappeared under the cloth, covering a substantial bulge.
I gazed at him, both enraptured and intimidated, torn between lust for his body and shame at my own skinny frame. I stopped removing any clothes. I had never seen a man as incredibly sexy, but rather than want to dive into his bed, I longed to jump out the nearest window. What was I doing here? How could he be anything but disappointed with what I had to offer?
But he looked at me, smiled, and gently slid my pale blue shirt off, laying it softly on the bed. He opened my belt next, letting my sand-colored khakis slide down my long legs. He knelt in front of me and patiently removed my trousers, kissing his way along my torso as he took my socks and placed them all next to the shirt on the bed.
We each stood before the other wearing our underwear, my boxers barely obscuring one of the largest and hardest erections of my life, and his tight briefs losing the fight with his thick bulge.
He draped his arms over my shoulders and looked at me intensely.
“Feel better?”
I nodded.
“Ready for the next step?”
I nodded again, but then grabbed his hands.
“One question,” I said.
“Only one?”
“Why? Why me? Out of all those people waiting outside L&F, many better looking or more successful or sexier than I am, why did you focus on me?”
“Share my bed tonight,” he said. “And I hope to show you.”
Chapter Three
WTF
Manny had an early meeting this morning, so our time together ended more cursorily than I like after a successful hookup. Even so, I marveled at how much he changed from the night before. The boy who had almost jumped at every shadow when we came home and who I had to undress to overcome his embarrassment became a man who grabbed my head in the shower to pull my mouth onto his pole.
“Oh God, papi, take it. Take that cock,” he yelled as his spunk splashed across my tongue and down my throat.
Now he sat close to me on the front seat of my truck, one hand resting on my thigh and the other playing with his cell phone.
“I regret we didn’t get to share breakfast,” I said. “I feel like you haven’t been able to enjoy the full treatment.”
“You mean there was more?”
“For you, yes. I haven’t met a man as sweet, funny, or sexy in ages, and I felt you deserved a red carpet experience.”
“Oh God, papi. Don’t even front,” he said, laughing. “I don’t think I could have taken any more. I might never have left. You would have had me moving in and needed to call the sheriff to get me out.”
“Don’t call me that.”
“What, papi?”
“Yeah.”
“Why?”
“I’m not father older than you, more like older brother older.”
“Lyle, age is only a small part of it. Trust me, last night you were papi and then some.”
I surprised myself by blushing. “I might not have minded.”
“Minded what?”
“Minded if you stayed longer than a day.”
“No, you would have minded. What’s that old saying about guests and fish starting to stink after three days?”
“Ha.”
We fell silent.
“All kidding aside, I had a lot of fun, thank you,” Manny said.
“Thank you, but I couldn’t have done anything we did without you,” I said, leering at him.
He laughed. “You know, if you had asked me before last night, I would have said I didn’t bottom.”
“And yet…” I said, grinning at him.
“Definitely and yet.”
“I’m not surprised. Before last night, I would have bet I gave you your first blow job,” I said.
“Was I really that bad?”
I glanced over at him.
“Okay, I was. But you weren’t scared off. Thank you.”
“Here’s what I think. You’ve always liked guys but never felt comfortable about it. Your first blow job and full-on sex weren’t until university and were probably a mixed bag, Blow jobs had been furtive and felt dirty, and the first sex was with someone who didn’t know what he was doing, and it hurt like fuck. How am I doing?”
“Pretty close, but you left out the closeted paranoia and alcohol. The closet meant I reserved the blow jobs for glory holes in adult bookstores, and I was pretty far into the wind when my first frat boy fucked me to ‘show the faggot what’s up.’ Both experiences kept me away from any boyfriends or even much positive experience…until last night, actually.”
I turned off Breaker and soon stopped in front of the address he gave me.
“There’s a house here?”
“Behind that wall. See the gate?”
“What’s it like?”
“Old, creaky, Victorian. I sleep in the chauffeur’s old quarters on the top floor.”
“Sounds charming.”
“My best friend is the lead tenant, so that makes up for a lot.”
We fell silent again.
“So, where do we go from here?” he asked. “Or do ‘we’ go anywhere from here? I’m total crap when it comes to this part of the hookup.”
“Look, Manny, I had fun,” I said, tapping my fingers on the steering wheel. “Fuck, I had more than fun. I wish I had a whole plan for what’s next. But I can’t really promise anything based on my history. And I’m not telling you this to be an asshole but because the last thing I want is for you to leave this truck looking for something that might never happen. In my opinion, that would really be the asshole thing to do.”
He gazed at me and then shrugged. “Papi, I’m not looking for a whole plan or anything like that. I was just wondering if there was any chance I might see you again because, yeah, I will put it out there, I would like that. I would like it a lot.”
