11 comments/  31374 views/  24 favorites

Switch Ch. 02

By: Varian P



Acknowledgements: Warm thanks to habu for giving me a firm hand and warm encouragement.



I was so stunned I don't think I said anything. Him kicking me out without even attempting to get off with me was the last thing I'd expected given how easily I'd succumbed to his seduction—if you can even call it that—and that, added to my embarrassment at coming so quickly, and my confusion over what I'd just done caused a chemical reaction that melted my brain and turned me into a zombie. I barely remember leaving the loft, except I do remember he walked with me to the door. I don't remember the drive home, either. I suppose my head was just churning with images of what we'd just done, and the downtown streets, the cruise down the 10—traffic flowing steadily at that hour—the last leg of my commute into Culver City just didn't register, as if I'd beamed home in a transporter instead of driven.

In the lingering euphoria of that unfathomable, over-the-roof intense experience, high on an adrenaline buzz of having transgressed a line I'd never dreamed of crossing, that night I felt stupidly proud of myself for being so adventurous, and was 70 percent sure that I would call Dario the next day and arrange to come back to his house to pick up where we'd left off, if nothing else, at least to see what it would be like to kiss him, who knew, maybe even to stroke each other off. But when I woke up in the morning I had the sickening feeling of having turned myself inside out, like I'd done something that had completely warped who I was, or who'd I'd thought I was, and I was actually afraid I wouldn't be able to find the courage to ever go back there, which would mean quitting the band because how could I explain to the guys that I wanted to walk away from the ideal rehearsal space (acoustically excellent and free to boot) and the only steady and lucrative weekend gig on offer? The next day after that, my view of things changed drastically about five times an hour, from feeling like I had no option but to quit the band and maybe leave the city, to being about to call Dario and ask if we could talk, not even pretending to myself that that idea wasn't really about setting up a situation where we could hook up again, to a rational but cautious decision that I would call Dario, tell him that I hoped my never-to-be-repeated impulsive behavior wouldn't hurt our friendship or working relationship, and try to carry on with the rehearsals and the gigs as if nothing had happened. 

In the end, I did nothing. Just kept vacillating back and forth between every possible course of action and every possible outcome—punctuated once or twice a day by jerking off frantically or else slowly and gently, trying to recapture the feeling of being touched by Dario—until the weekend came and it was too late to tell the guys I couldn't make it to the gig. I showed up at the last possible second, so there wasn't a minute to spare before our set and I had no time to mix and say hello to the people I knew, but just barely had time to set up my amp and tune my guitar, and our set started. Up until that night, I realize now, I'd kind of been phoning it in when we played—during rehearsals, when we had a paying audience—I'd long since written off the beautiful dream that had sustained me from age fifteen until I was twenty-six or twenty-seven, that our music, my music, was special. Extraordinary. But that night, playing, and especially singing, I fell under the spell of the music the way I had when my whole heart had been in it, when singing felt almost as good as fucking. Well, depending on the song, on the girl, maybe even better than fucking. And, at moments, worse than dying, but dying a gorgeous, soul-expanding, mind-blinding, poetic death. And now and then, or maybe the whole time, woven into that pleasure and pain the hope that he was watching and feeling the music the way I was feeling it, that my voice was moving him the way it had moved him that night when I'd sung practically a-Capella, practically a serenade. But with the lights in my eyes and the crowd filling that huge space almost wall-to-wall, I had no idea if he was there amidst that dense chaos of bodies undulating like leaves in a storm, listening and watching, or up on the roof terrace or hidden away in his sleeping loft where he sometimes escaped the throng for an hour or two. 

When we finished our set, when the music stopped pumping through me like my own blood flooded with adrenaline, the anxiety that had crashed over me a thousand times in the four days since it had happened was suddenly drowning me. I hurried to stash my gear away and get out of there as fast as possible, before I inevitably came face to face with Dario and had to figure out how to act with him, what to say, even though I hated the sickening feeling seeping into me, displacing the high of the music, that saying nothing and fleeing without even saying hi to him was a very clear message, a message which I wasn't sure at all reflected what I wanted to convey to him. 

But that's what I did.

During the brisk walk to my car—parked almost a mile away because I'd shown up so damn late and there was so little parking in that area—I felt elated, as if I'd successfully escaped from prison or eluded a school bully during recess. But the moment I was on the freeway I felt like shit. Like a coward and the most ungrateful asshole in the world, after Dario had been so great about letting us use his space, how effusive he'd been about my voice and my music, after he'd basically saved me from my own recklessness when he could have probably convinced me to go a fair bit further that night. By the time I got home I realized, well, that was it. We'd keep rehearsing and playing our gigs at the loft, and for however long all that might last, to Dario I'd always be the immature jerk who couldn't just be a man and say, "Hey, man. It was fun but I'm not queer, so let's just be friends," even though I was dead certain he would have been absolutely cool about it.

I spent the next three days pretty much hating myself. To the point where I skipped our next rehearsal, as if I was relishing being as big an asshole as possible and not only treating Dario badly, but my bandmates as well. To the point where, when later that night when the intercom buzzed, and I knew Tom was down at the entry ready to give me an earful, I almost didn't answer. The next day I'd tell him I'd been asleep, perfectly in accord with my lie about being sick, which was perfectly in accord with my lie about not feeling well which I'd used as my excuse to flee the loft the second we'd finished our set on Saturday night. But I was already getting so sick of myself and my petty betrayals that I made myself pick up the receiver. I don't know whether it was a thrill of excitement or terror that hit me when I heard Dario's voice, but whichever it was, it ripped all the air out of my lungs and I barely managed to say, "I'll buzz you in."

Waiting for him to mount the five flights of stairs (why hadn't he taken the elevator?) felt like twenty minutes, even though the beat of his footfalls were rapid and, by the tempo and the breaks I could tell he was taking the steps two at a time. And then he was standing on the landing, just outside my open front door, barely winded. Holding my guitar. 

So, this really was it. He'd forgotten the amp, but Tom would bring that to me later and either I'd be out of the band, or the band would be out of the collective and that vivid, difficult, productive, creative community I'd been taking for granted all those months wouldn't be part of my life anymore.

He peered past me into the apartment, then met my eyes, smiled (a little sadly, I thought) and said (in a strangely loud voice, I thought), "I got your text about getting your guitar. I'm on my way to meet some friends at a restaurant nearby, so I thought I'd just bring it to you since I was in the neighborhood."

It took me a minute, but I finally got it. He was saying that in case there was someone else in my apartment. Handing me a pretext so I wouldn't act weird about him dropping by. "There's no one else here," I finally said, trying to give him a friendly smile. "Want to come in?"

I was afraid he was going to more or less throw my guitar at me, tell me I'd been a dick, and leave. But he smiled his warm, confident smile, strode into my living room, carefully set the guitar by the wall, then stood there, gazing at me, looking so at ease I half wondered if all the craziness of the past week, from the handjob to my mad getaway from Saturday night's gig to skipping rehearsal that night, had been fabricated by the onset of some kind of mental problem.

"I'm guessing you're not actually sick," he said in that quiet, intimate tone he'd used with me that one night (so no, I hadn't imagined any of it).

"I'm sorry," I said. "I know I'm not handling this very well. I've been a total asshole."

"I'm the asshole." He perched on the arm of my sofa and nervously ran his fingers through his hair. It was slightly surreal seeing him so ill at ease. "I never should have pulled that with you the other night. I'd always told myself not to fuck things up with you like that, but the way things worked out that night, Tom canceling, but you showing up anyway, you playing that song just for me—I mean, not for me, but with no one else there, and then . . . well, fuck, then you reading my story—I just got caught up and I did what I did, even though I knew better." It was the strangest thing, but him saying that, the way he said it, I almost wanted to cry. And then everything crystallized into incredible clarity for the first time since the moment that night when he'd said, I want you to stay. Do you want to stay, Martin?

I said, "Please don't regret it. It was one of the nicest things that ever happened to me." A very bad job expressing what I was thinking and feeling, but even so all that rigid awkwardness so utterly alien to his character melted away before my eyes, and he looked at me with an incredibly tender, sad expression. "Just so there's no misunderstanding," I said, which was ridiculous because there'd already been a twenty-car pile-up of misunderstandings, "I've been jerking off every day, thinking about that night." He looked like he was holding himself back from laughing, and possibly from crying. "It's just that I've been confused about what that means, what I want. And I'm doing a shitty job of being normal around you and the whole loft scene while I do that."

After a while he gave me an absolutely endearing smile, stood up, and said, "Well, as aroused and just absolutely charmed as I am by the image of you getting off to pictures of the two of us in your head, I'd still take the other night back if it's going to wreck what you and the band have going at the loft. So know that you're still as welcome as ever, that I'm not going to do or say anything to embarrass you. And that I know very well that it was a one-time thing, so it's not like I'm going to be lurking in the corners waiting to pounce on you. My slightly stalkerish appearance at your door tonight notwithstanding."

"I'm a little disappointed to hear that," I said, trying to be more earnest, more like him, but I know it came out like a joke. 

That irresistible smile. "Even so." He went to the door. "You won't miss another rehearsal." It sounded like a statement of fact that I had no hope of evading, until he tacked on a, "Will you?"

"I'll be there on Tuesday."

"Good."

When he reached for the doorknob I said, "Stay for a beer?"

"I've got that thing, remember? The friends at the restaurant." He was lying.

Feeling hopeful, or maybe desperate, I said, "Dario, I want you to stay. Do you want to stay?"

He gazed at me like he was trying to decide whether he'd heard me right. Then he said, "Yes. But I'm going to go anyway. If you want to get together sometime to talk, or anything else, you have my number. I sincerely hope you'll use it. But if you don't, I sincerely hope things can go back to the way they were."

As promised, I went to rehearsal, and it was more or less like it had been before, except that for the first time around other people I felt like he and I had finally crossed that threshold of polite distance where we'd been hovering for the three years we'd known each other, and also that I couldn't stop thinking that I wished rehearsal was over so it could be just me and Dario, just so we could talk for more than five minutes without him having some far-fetched notion that he was intruding on me at my place. Except that was me lying to myself because what I really couldn't stop imagining was him finally kissing me, which it felt like I'd been waiting for for a whole week by then. And after a kiss, I wasn't sure what, but something more. Definitely something more. But after rehearsal, everyone stayed to hang out and smoke a little, and when they finally got tired and wanted to leave, it just seemed impossible to stay behind on my own.

After another night of vacillation and masturbation, the next day, I texted him. Could I come by before the other group showed up for rehearsal, just for half an hour, so we could talk? Waiting for his answer was a little slice of hell. He'd obviously decided that whatever might happen between us—even possibly just becoming better friends—wasn't worth all the labor that came with my vacillations and doubts. He probably had his eye on someone far less confused, more comfortable in his own skin (even forgetting about my inability to cope with our little erotic interlude), someone better looking, more fun, more talented, more successful. Then his text came. Absolutely. Come any time after eight. It felt like I'd been agonizing for hours, but it had been less than fifteen minutes since I'd texted him.

I was at his door at five past eight. Normally I'd hate to seem over-eager, but I wanted us to have time before the guys from Painful Friction showed up at nine for their rehearsal. He gave me a smile that felt like an embrace. "I wish we had more time to talk," I said, "but it's a little tough, between my work hours and the rehearsal schedule."

"We have all night."

"I'm not like you. I'm not good at tuning out the distractions."

"We won't have any distractions," he said. "I canceled on them for tonight. Told them I'm in bed with a migraine."

"Oh."

"All that means is that I wanted you to be able to say whatever you need to say without worrying that those guys were going to come barging in at any moment."

Suddenly I didn't know what it was I'd thought I needed to say. What I did remember was what I'd obtained, just in case it looked like we were going to do something other than talk. "I brought something." I held up the gram of weed I'd bought, knowing I'd want to calm my nerves and not wanting to taint whatever was going to happen between us by seeming like one more person who smoked all his grass and drank all his beer every time I showed up. "Want to smoke?"

"No." So definitive. So final.

"Okay."

"Whatever you want to say, I don't want to hear it through a haze."

I was still just standing by the front door, resisting my habit of crossing my arms when I'm nervous, or stuffing my hands into my pockets. Because I was so wound up, I didn't ask the real, important first question. Instead I tried to push everything onto him. "What did you mean, when you said you'd always told yourself not to screw things up with me?"

"Is that what you came here to talk about?"

"No. I guess the main thing is, I wanted to ask you if I've blown it."

"Blown it?"

"Wow. You're really making this hard for me."

"I don't mean to. Maybe I'm being a little compulsive about clarity." 

I'd composed everything in my head, but all those carefully arranged thoughts and meticulously chosen words were running and bleeding together in an incoherent mess. 

"You haven't blown anything, Martin."

"I'm not talking about the band stuff."

That soft, intimate tone. "I know."

It wasn't part of the script I'd composed in my mind, but out of nowhere I said, "Then ask me. Ask me again."

Without so much as a passing shadow of confusion or doubt, with that confidence of his that was as assuring as it was assured, holding my gaze, he asked, "Do you want to stay?"

"Yes." 

God, he looked happy. He took a step or two forward, until we were close enough to touch, but he didn't touch me. He stood still, gazing at me without a trace of embarrassment or awkwardness, but like he was waiting for something from me. "Then I'm going to kiss you." He moved, brought his body, his face closer to mine. Raised one hand, brushed it briefly against my arm, my shoulder, my jaw. His breath smelled of toothpaste, and a sudden flood of tenderness rushed over me at the image of him brushing his teeth because I was coming over. In case we might kiss. And his lips parted slightly and I tried to relax my mouth, my jaw for a kiss as tender as the caresses he'd given me that first night. "If you want me to." Not a kiss. His lips had parted for those words. "Do you want me to?"

I wanted it so badly. It was why I'd come. But it was so hard to say it. "Yes."

He leaned in a little closer, so close that I felt the heat of him up the length of my body, felt his breath warm on my lips, so close that when he shifted his weight his knee brushed against my leg, and as I felt my blood accelerate, pumping my panic from my chest into my legs and arms and hands until I was trembling, and I noticed his breathing was like mine—strange and constricted and too fast—he touched my wrist again, the way he'd touched it that first night, made me move my arm, my hand again as if it were me and not him directing that movement, and he pressed my palm over the warm, rigid bulge of his hard cock sheathed under the fabric of his jeans. "You're sure you want me to kiss you?" 

I was almost in tears because I was sure I'd already used up all the generous patience possible, but it seemed better to say it sooner than later. "I'm not sure I'm ready."

Not the look of disappointment or irritation I was expecting. Just a hint of a grin. "Not ready for what?"

"For sex."

"That isn't what I asked you. I asked if you want me to kiss you. This isn't a bait and switch."

"Yes. Yes, I want you to."

It seemed strange to me, but wonderful that he was trembling too as he slid one hand against my waist until it was curved against the small of my back, warm, almost no pressure, and he leaned in so that our chests touched lightly, and his lips brushed against mine, not even really a kiss for those first seconds, my want expanding and submerging me so that when he finally did really kiss me, soft lips pressing against mine, his tongue seeking mine, I groaned and the faint warmth of his hand on the small of my back drew me closer, pressed me more firmly to him, his other hand curving around the base of my neck, his kiss gentle but desperate, ravenous. Never in my life have I felt so possessed, so completely taken in a kiss. 

When we stopped, we were both practically panting. He moved a little away from me, to look at me—my face, the bulge sticking up under my slacks—and without realizing what I was doing I'd curved my hands behind his triceps, desperate not to let him slip away from me, not even far enough that I couldn't feel his body's heat against my belly and chest. 

"Come upstairs with me." More like a directive than an invitation. Fear but also arousal driving a violent surge of blood through my whole body with every thumping heartbeat, I followed him to the far corner of the loft and up the steep, precarious stairs that were hardly more than a ladder, a staircase usually hidden behind a teak screen he kept locked in place to bar the hordes from entering his sanctuary during the weekend events, so that I'd never seen the stairs, much less the sleeping area they led to. It was like we'd gone to a different house. As open and spare as the rest of the loft was, the upstairs area, which was suspended above maybe a quarter of the lower loft but which was probably larger than my entire apartment—was warm, cozy, intimate, mostly golds with some deep brownish reds, all the wood teak, nothing ornate, all in gentle slopes and curves, rounded corners, avoiding even a single hard angle.


Switch Ch. 02



We walked in and, I was, as usual, in awe of the place. Chameleon's was our local swingers club, fetish club, call it what you will, but it was our little secret. And a dirty one at that. We had been here several times before, but always I played the submissive, doing what I was told and being fucked hard. Tonight, however, I was in full blown switch mode. And Pete had no idea. I could feel the grin making its way across my face, and had to check myself to quell it.

We made our way to the changing rooms, and I slipped off my dress, revealing my brand new underwear. I could feel Pete's eyes burning into my skin, and he snuck up behind me, wrapping his arms around my waist.

"Ready baby?"

I nodded, "Cigarette first?"

"Come." He grabbed my hand and we made our way outside. It was pleasantly warm and for a change I didn't need one of the provided dressing gowns. The weather had given me an idea, but I stowed it for a while, wanting to see where the evening would take us. Pete pulled me outside, and I followed quietly, taking in all the sights and sounds. As usual, the club was full of characters. People fucking everywhere you turned, everywhere you looked. It was so erotic.

We sat down on one of the benches outside in the smoking area, and proceeded to smoke to our hearts content, chatting away to a few other couples there.

During a lull in the conversation, I leaned over and whispered in pete's ear.

"Your Mistress would like a drink boy." Pete's eyebrows raised infinitesimally. He turned to me slowly, a twinkle in his eyes. He knew I wanted to play.

"Then I suppose we had better get my Mistress a drink hadn't we?"

I grasped his hand in mine, and all but dragged him to the bar. I gulped down my wine as fast as I could, and shocking pete slightly, I proceeded to take charge and pulled him towards one of the private rooms.

Once ensconced, I locked the door and stalked towards him.

"You've been a very, very bad boy, you know that right?"

He nodded. "Yes Miss, I am sorry Mistress. Let me make it up to you?"

"Oh you are going to more than make it up to me boy. Lie down on the bed." I ordered.

Pete did as I bid, and lay down on the large bed. I crawled slowly up his body, brushing up against him at every opportunity. He was rock hard, I think he had been from the minute I made my wishes clear. I was looking forward to fucking his brains out, but first I had to tease him, and punish him. Earlier that day he had embarrassed me terribly in front of his parents, he deserved any punishment I doled out tonight, and more.

I was lying ontop of him now, chest to chest. Without him realising I had removed my knickers. I leant down, and biting his earlobe I whispered my instructions to him.

"I want your tongue boy, I want it till I orgasm all over it and you are lapping up my cum. Understand?"

"Yes Miss."

Pete's hands went around my waist, as he tried to hoist me off him, and presumably lay me on my back so he could gain access to my clit. I wrapped my fingers around his strong hands and shook my head. Moving further up his body, I reached my goal and lowered my pussy on to his face. Pete groaned underneath me, and I knew he was enjoying it as I could feel his fingers tighten around my thighs. Reaching back I grasped at his cock, testing his hardness and heard him emit another loud moan.

Grinding my pussy against his lips I threw my head back. This was incredible! Why did we not do this before? He had always asked, I think it was the ultimate debasement me sitting on his face, but I had always refused, knowing I was too body conscious.

His tongue flicked out furiously, one minute striking against my sensitive nub, the next sucking it into his mouth. I couldn't help the cried escaping from my lips. I could feel my orgasm building and knew it was going to be a huge one. Not wanting to loose control during said orgasm, I tried to wriggle off his face. Petes fingers tightened painfully around my thighs, holding me firmly in place. I struggled half heartedly, but let him pin me to his face. I would think up some sort of punishment for him later for this misdemeanour. I ground my clit against his tongue, which was working furiously. Before I could even get used to the idea, my orgasm crashed over me. Wave after wave of bliss cocooning my body, heat bloomed across my face. As I came down I tried to pull away from him, but he still kept me pinned, lapping at the juices I had produced.

"Enough!" I cried. I had become incredibly sensitive. I pulled myself from him, and lay on the bed panting.

"Did my Mistress enjoy that?"

I nodded, then remembered myself. "You are in serious trouble now, you realise that don't you?"

He looked properly chastised. "I'm sorry Mistress, forgive me please? I will make it up to you."

"I know you will baby, I know." I got on my knees, waving my ass in the air. "Now get over here and fuck me. Hard."

"Yes Miss." Pete said, his eyes lighting up. He pulled up behind me, hands grabbing my hips, and slowly slid his considerable length inside me. I moaned in appreciation. I felt his fingers tighten almost painfully on my hips, his nails digging in to the sensitive skin. Oh so slowly, he pushed into me, until he was buried deep inside me, and then he pulled out just as slow.

I growled in frustration. "I said Fuck me for gods sake, now do it!"

I heard him moan, as he started to fuck me in earnest. What he did not know was I was not planning on letting him orgasm.

"Don't you dare cum until I say so, do you understand?"

"Yes Mistress." He said, gritting his teeth audibly. I felt him tighten his grip as he fucked me hard, deeper than he ever had before. It was oh so deliciously painful. As he hit my cervix I felt the orgasm wash over me, and everything tightened up. Pete groaned, he must have felt my pussy clench.

"Please can I cum Mistress?"

"No baby, not yet."

He moaned loud and slowed down.

"Don't slow down boy, I told you to fuck me hard didn't I?"

"Yes Miss." He groaned, frustration and tension bubbling under the surface.

"Good boy." I could feel another orgasm building, and my fingers grasped for something to hold. It was circumspect, the bed was leather. My orgasm rushed over me, heating the blood in my veins. Flushing my skin. Tightening my pussy. Pete slowed down slightly as I came back to earth. He sped up again, obviously not keen on experiencing my wrath, but I could tell he was finding it difficult not to blow his load inside me. His legs had tensed, in fact, his whole body had gone tense. He was grinding his teeth, and his breathing had become shallow and laboured. I knew he was close, actually, he was way past that point.

"Can I cum Mistress?" He ground out, still fucking me hard.

"No."

"But I don't think I can hold it."

"Yes you can baby, for me you can."

"Okay Mistress, I will try."

"Good boy. That's all I ask."

His cock pulsed inside me, ready and eager to explode. "Now fuck me harder Pete."

His movements became fast and jerky. I felt his whole body tense up behind me. Pete moaned loudly.

"Don't you dare cum boy."

"I. Can't. Help. It." I yanked away suddenly, the emptiness was terrible, but I wasn't going to let him cum inside me, not yet. He didn't deserve it. Pete cried out, loudly and I felt his seed splatter over my ass and back. I smiled to myself. Perfect, I thought. Just the excuse I needed to punish him.

"Oh god. I'm so sorry Mistress. I couldn't stop."

"Clean me up." I growled. He reached for the tissues on the side of the bed, and I let him. It was to early for me to force him to clean me up with his tongue. I wasn't feeling that sadistic. Yet.

I rolled onto my back, and grinned saucily up at him. He stood at the foot of the bed, looking properly gutted.

"Well well well." I laughed "Who's been a naughty boy then. Cumming without his mistress's permission. You know what that means don't you?"

"Yes Miss. It means you are going to punish me." He quailed slightly.

"Yes. Yes it does. But not yet baby. Come." I held out my hand to him and he took it. I led him from the room, towards the hot tub.

***
There were already about six other couples in the hot tub, but it was big enough that we could squeeze in a place to sit. Of course it didn't hurt that the only open space was next to a couple where the woman was quietly riding her husband, which didn't bother us or the other couples goofing around in the tub at all.

I made pete sit on the side of the hot tub, his rapidly growing member pointing towards the twinkling fairy lights set in the ceiling. I stayed low in the water, so I could look up at him and started gently playing with his cock. I worked my way up and down the shaft with my tongue. I looked him straight in the eye, giving a lustful look, and taking the head into my mouth, I started working up and down.

Watching all of the action around us got me so turned on and worked up, I got pete to sink back into the water, and moving over I sat directly on his lap. I straddled pete's legs and now erect cock while looking forward at the action in front of us. My tits half-floated, half-bobbed at the water line of the hot tub. A little time, grinding, and repositioning, and I had fully mounted his now freshly rock hard cock.

I wrapped my arms around his neck, and started bouncing up and down. He pulled me forwards and nipped my ear.

"Am I allowed to cum this time Zoe, or do I need your permission?"

I grinned. Switch was back. "You are in charge now Pete. So it is totally upto you."

"Good. Maybe, I've been thinking, and maybe I am not going to let you cum this time baby."

He ground into my pussy hard as he spoke, every word punctuated with a thrust. I moaned loudly, and noticed the others in the hot tub watching us. Fuck was it hot.

"You wouldn't do that to me." I searched his blue eyes. He raised an eyebrow.

"Want to bet princess?" Fuck. My eyes rolled back into my head as his continued punishment fuck went on. His fingernails digging into my waist, his tongue now on my breast. I was seriously screwed here. There was no way I could hold off an orgasm. And the bastard bloody well knew that. Especially as his fingers had made their way down to my clit and were furiously rubbing it. Fuck.

And I knew that any punishment I could dole out to him, his would be marginally better than mine. Substantially crueller and much more sadistic.



Switch Ch. 02



Raising his hands to my hair and giving me a caress that felt both tender and possessive, demanding, Dario said, "I prefer to be with you up here. Downstairs, it's for everyone. Up here, it's just for us."

He kissed me again. It was like drowning, that kiss the medium in which my body, my soul was suspended, that kiss touching every cell of my skin, every follicle of hair on my body, filling my mouth, my throat, my lungs until I couldn't breathe, until my consciousness started to dim and blur in dizzy euphoria.

Then his mouth was by my ear and in that intimate voice that made me feel like I was being touched, he said, "I want to undress you."

I wanted to. Just the words sent a thrilling surge through me. But I was afraid, too. Not afraid he'd try to make me do something if I didn't want it, but afraid that by taking my clothes off maybe I was making some implicit promise I might not be able to keep. But he knew that already, didn't he? His hands slid up under my shirt and over my belly, slowly, incredibly lightly, his hands warm, his touch amplifying my arousal more than I'd imagined could be possible given how fucking turned on I was already, even before he brushed his fingertips over my nipples. He stood still, with that complete, intense focus of his fixed on me, and then he started, the whole time mostly watching my face, but now and then looking at the skin he was exposing—my stomach, my chest—watching his fingers working the buttons of my shirt, drawing it open, then drawing it off my shoulders, down my arms. He gazed into my eyes for a moment, then his hands and eyes moved over my naked torso. He kissed me again, then, tentative, incredibly gentle at first. Then with rising hunger. Palpable want. When the kiss ended, he looked at me again, like he was trying to read my mind.

Nervous and turned on as hell, my heart hammering, I watched him sink to his knees, first gazing up at me, seeking my response, then feathering his lips over my abdomen, right along the waistline of my slacks, instantly pumping more blood and heat into my already throbbing cock. His warm, wet tongue sliding over my skin, little sucking, thrilling kisses across the tattoo that was only half visible above my belt. When he stopped, he looked at the blatant bulge of my erection jutting against my pants, then looked up at me with a rousing, eager grin, and started working my belt open, unzipping my fly. God, it was really happening. I don't think I'd ever been as nervous or as fucking turned on as I was as he slid my pants down off my hips, then knelt there caressing my hard cock through my boxer briefs with his gaze. He planted a lingering kiss just next to my cock, that gesture and his hot breath driving a fresh thrill into me. Then he slid my shorts down, just an inch or two. He looked up at me, making sure, then bared my cock. He sighed, the knelt there looking at it, his rapt gaze pumping blood straight to my erection.

When I was completely naked he stood and told me to get on the bed, and I did, heart hammering hard, erection absolutely throbbing. It embarrassed me to watch him undress, I don't know why it was much harder than letting him undress me, being naked under that intense gaze of his. But he was so, so beautiful that even though I felt embarrassed I was absolutely devouring the sight of him, his long, perfectly proportioned torso, his broad shoulders and chest the ideal I'd worked hard to approximate by going to the gym for two hours four times a week, every week since college, but which had been given to him by genetics. When he unzipped his jeans I looked up at his face because I was embarrassed to be sitting there staring, waiting to see it, and to be honest, a little scared to see it. Scared it would freak me out. Turn me off. Like he was reading my mind, Dario's aroused grin faded a little and his gaze went watchful as he slid his pants and boxer briefs down. When he stood, I couldn't help myself; like an involuntary response my eyes locked on his dick, hard, ruddy and veined and thick. I'd always been a little proud of my cock. But his was definitely bigger. Thicker. Big, flared crown. His balls. Everything groomed. Fuck. The startling shock of really seeing it went straight to my gut. 

Then to my cock. Fuck I wanted him.

When he was naked he got on the bed with me, coming close without touching, but again, so close I felt the heat of him, now and then felt a little gust of his breath as he studied my expression, as he looked over my body without a trace of shyness about submitting me, and—another lingering, greedy gaze—my cock to his scrutiny, then finally laying his hand on my waist with what I'm almost sure was restraint because I almost couldn't feel the weight of it but his hands was trembling. And then he kissed me again, a kiss that started shallow and gentle but got more and more hungry, greedy, and that lasted and lasted, as if there was nothing else for two naked people in bed together to do but kiss. 

When we finally emerged from that kiss he looked me over again, his gaze lingering now and then on some feature—my cock, the tattoo between my navel and my left hip, the scar on my shin from a cycling accident when I was in college. That caressing voice, "You're lovely, Martin. Unbearably lovely. I'm going to call you Rodin."

"Was Rodin lovely?" I teased, embarrassed.

"Not particularly. But he carved lovely figures, which is what you've done."

"Trying to look like you," I confessed.

I thought he'd laugh or come back with a clever comment, but he just gazed at me, his luminous happiness tinged with a little shadow of melancholy, I thought, then kissed me again, another kiss like a wave rising over and crashing down on me until I felt I was being swept away by the force of him, and little by little I felt that restraint he'd imposed on himself slipping away, the weight of his hand finally succumbing to gravity, then daring at last to explore, then take possession of my body inch by inch, and then he lifted himself on top of me and I thought I was going to tell him no, it's too much, but his warmth and weight on me felt so good, the scent of him filling me each time I took a breath was making me even hungrier for him, and the way he was kissing me and touching me had me gasping, moaning, straining for every caress, and I was writhing under him, the way our bodies rubbed and slid against each other driving me crazy, worse than the cruelest torment of want from adolescent days when every encounter with my girlfriends stopped short of release, leaving me in agony until I could get home and jerk off.

He ended the kiss, rose up on his knees. Towering over me, his hungry gaze framed above the sight of his hard cock drove a fresh spike of want and fear into me. He reached past me, and laid a bottle of lube on the blanket by my hip. 

Suddenly in a panic, my whole body tensed as if for battle I asked in a constricted voice that sounded almost angry, "What's that for?"

"I'm going to suck your cock until you beg me for mercy," he said, no dent in his embracing, caressing voice. "And while I suck you, I'm going to finger your ass. Has anyone done that to you before?"

"No." Two women had tried, and I'd told them both to knock it off, but I didn't say that.

"It's going to feel good." He smiled. "No, that's a lie. It's going to feel fucking amazing. But you have to give it a chance."

I didn't tell him no, even though the idea of it sounded frankly awful. Clinical, anatomical, invasive and a little sadistic. I don't know what I thought we were going to do in bed together, except maybe stroke each other off and, eventually—I'd fantasized it and was almost sure I'd eventually want to—fuck each other, but being penetrated that way hadn't occurred to me and suddenly my whole body was rigid, already trying to defend itself even before he'd moved a muscle. 

He sank down very slowly, not to go down on me, but to say softly by my ear, "Can you trust me?"

I croaked out a weak little, "Yes," as if a snake had wrapped itself around my throat and was constricting its coils, trying to choke the life from me.

"It's not a question for your brain, Martin. It's a question for your heart. You thought about it, and you said yes. But what do you feel? Can you trust me?"

I tried to make myself forget the image of a latex-gloved hand probing my anal cavity, and return to that dim, warm room, to how I'd felt with him kissing and touching and looking at me. "Yes."

"I'll always be very careful not to spoil that feeling."

"Okay," I said.

A brief brush of his soft warm lips over mine, and then he went down, looking up for a moment, noting that I was watching what he was doing, and with the same delicious, torturous patience he began to give me head. It shouldn't have surprised me, but it did: it was the best head I'd ever had. So much so, it was like a new, strange experience, as if the women I'd been with had been performing some other act when they'd bobbed up and down with my cock in their mouths. 

At first he was barely moving, and apart from seeing him slip the crown of my cock between his lips, or at other moments seeing his tongue sliding over my flesh, I couldn't even be sure exactly what he was doing. There was just the sensation of warmth, of wetness, of a muscular embrace engulfing, constricting, occasionally exerting a sucking pressure that sometimes was barely discernible, driving a fierce want into me, other times growing so intense I was almost anxious that it was about to hurt. But all through it, from the first minute, I wanted more. I wanted it so bad I was lifting my hips, seeking the depth of his mouth, raking my fingers into his hair, trying to coax him down, begging him with a gesture, a caress, a little grunt of exquisite suffering to please, please, give me just a little more of that sensation that was a new pleasure I'd never imagined. 

I was so lost in that pleasure I wasn't even aware of him doing it, reaching for the bottle, squeezing out a measure of lube, but the first touch, just a shy little feathering caress under my balls, slid warm and slippery over my skin, teasing, maybe hinting at tickling, at that tormenting thrill, then weightening into a real, coaxing caress. The taunting pleasure of his engulfing, sucking mouth, endlessly driving me to seek its own culmination, never relented, never stopped driving me to tremble, to flex and arch for his tongue, his throat even at the moment when one finger slid slowly along my cleft and began rubbing the sensitive little aperture, suddenly magnifying the pleasure of the blowjob with that new, fretful little sensation.

With a little slurping noise he released my dick from his mouth. "Baby," he said, and I felt my face burn at that little endearment, "are you always so silent? I'd love to hear you."

I realized my jaw was clenched tight, so tight that when I willed myself to relax it, it ached. I'd been holding my breath, too, taking a quick gulp of air only when I'd half suffocated myself. I made myself breathe, in and out, my lips parted, and little by little those breaths swelled up to soft moans as he started giving me head again, as he started wiggling that finger between my cheeks again, and then, as I felt his finger push past the tight little aperture and slide slowly up inside me I heard a warbly little whimper composed half of fear and half of pleasure. Then I was whining my want, my need, my bitter frustration because his mouth had all but stilled, my cock buried deep, so deep I wondered if he'd slowed because he was choking himself in an effort to impress me, and the sensation of what he was doing with that finger plunged into me to the hilt demanded all my attention as he moved it inside of me, little fluid movements, and I was grunting faintly, the sensation driving these little noises out of me without me knowing whether I'd name the feeling pleasure, but then he started working over my absolutely aching cock with his tongue and lips and driving me to the point of madness with that incredible sucking pressure while he kept fingering my ass, and suddenly I was whimpering, "Please, please," and raking my fingers into his hair, probably clawing his scalp more than once, pushing myself between his lips in a way that was way more aggressive than I'd ever let myself be with a woman giving me head, and I swear, he never resisted, never once pulled away or pushed me back, he just kept going, maybe coming up to nurse the crown when I relented, then sinking down on me again, and then the finger he had up my ass slipped from inside of me, and I thought, "Thank God," but even though he was sucking me with as much enthusiasm and skill as ever—if anything pulling me even closer to the edge but always backing off the second I teetered and almost fell—I realized I wanted it again, that penetration, that unfamiliar, fretful torment of those delicate nerves. 

And then he gave it to me, again the pressure of his finger, a teasing rubbing at first, then that honing in, that slow push and forced dilation of that tightly closed aperture, the gradual penetration, but this time the strain was much more, as if he were putting something much larger inside of me.

"Wait," I gasped, my voice strained with panic. Immediately (though slowly and gently) he withdrew whatever he'd been trying to push up my ass, and then took his mouth from my cock. He looked up at me with a calm patience which struck me almost like mockery of my panic, but just for a second. I knew he was being kind. Sweet. "I'm sorry," I said, "whatever it is, it's too much."

"Did I hurt you?"

Honestly, it had been uncomfortable. And suddenly I'd gotten scared of what I was about to feel. "No. But it's too much."

He grinned, and lifted his hand, his index and middle finger extended. I felt my face go hot again, and had a flash of terror that his fingers would be dirty from being up there, but they were just pink and shiny with lube. "Trust me, this isn't too much." God, he sounded aroused. To prove his point, still grinning, he put those two extended fingers next to his stiff, swollen cock, which in circumference was at least twice that of the two fingers. Twice the length, too. At least. I was suddenly a hundred percent sure I would never, never let him fuck me. There was no way. No way on earth.

"I know you're nervous. I know it's new for you. But you were enjoying it, weren't you?"

"Before, with one finger, yes."

"Well, we can stick with that if you want. But if you'll try to relax, and really trust me, I promise it won't hurt. I promise," he said, "that you won't believe how hard you're going to come. There's nothing like it."

It wasn't the promise of the mega orgasm. Mostly, it was how turned on he sounded and looked as he said it, how aroused he seemed to be by the idea of doing that to me, making me come with his lips gripping my cock and his fingers up inside of me that made me willing to try again, even though I was frankly skeptical that I'd be able to handle it. But I knew he'd stop again if I told him to, so I gave him a not very eager, "Alright. I'll try."

This time he didn't suck me while he did it. He knelt there, gazing down at me, his expression all gentle empathy, his face almost beatific as he put a fat blob of lube on his fingertips, then he bent over me, kissed me deeply, slowly, but only briefly, then he lifted his head a little and watched me as he started teasing my hole again, rubbing, then just pushing one fingertip in a little way, then rubbing again until the sensation started to make me squirm with a feeling that was somewhere between a thrilling irritation and pleasure. But then the pressure intensified and I felt my hole being stretched to the limit again, and I heard myself let out a startled, frightened little cry.

"Am I hurting you?" he asked, his voice low and gentle.

"I just, I don't think I like it."

"We haven't gotten to the part that feels best. Would you try something for me? Bear down a little. So you're pushing against my fingers."

When I tried it, he smiled, and I felt his fingers sliding up inside of me. "Better, baby?" he purred.

"Maybe."

He kissed me, tasting of my cock, while he pulled out a little, then pushed his fingers deeper into me, his tongue playing with mine, his fingers slowly sliding in and out, and then he rose up again to look at me, and however I was looking at that moment made him smile. 

"That's so good," he sighed, then sank down on my cock again, sucking me to the brink of orgasm in a matter of seconds while he started doing something with those fingers up inside of me, so that when he flexed them a violent jolt of incredible pleasure hit my whole pelvis like a mallet on a timpani. 

"Jesus," I groaned. "Fuck."

I almost came, once, twice, Dario halting, withholding each time I got close, then, when I'd calmed, his mouth working my cock again with that mysterious pressure and suction and the delicious friction of his tongue teasing the most sensitive places while he probed or stroked or rubbed that magic spot with his fingertip buried deep inside me, driving these guttural grunts out of me in a way fucking and being sucked never had, but each time I started to gasp and flex and arch and tried to thrust my cock into his throat that luscious sucking pressure abated, though my cock was still jammed to the hilt in his mouth, and his fingers would slip free of the grip of my asshole, or would just recede a little, abandoning the magic pressure point that was making me thrash and making my limbs spastic and useless. He took me to the edge a third time, held me dangling there, then dragged me back.

"God, please!" I begged him. I sounded like I was about to cry, and maybe I was.

He took my cock from his mouth just long enough to say, "Like this?" Then he pushed his fingers into me to the hilt, fretting that spot inside of me with the flex and press of his fingertips while he worked over my cock until I was practically convulsing under him. And then it all stopped. "Tell me, Martin."

"Yes, please, God. Just like that."

A little groan escaped his throat as he grinned, then wrapped his lips around my cock, just under the crown, nursing and lapping as he started fingering my hole again, hitting that sensitive target at my depth one, twice, driving a long, whining moan from me as I arched up, clutching his hair and trying desperately to push myself all the way back into his throat, whimpering and murmuring a desperate prayer, "Please, yes, please, please!" and those two fingers straining my body flexed and flexed and flexed as he escalated that unbearable, perfect constricting pressure around my throbbing cock and I collapsed or seized in a brutal spasm of decimating pleasure. I don't know if I moaned or exclaimed, if I let go of his hair or forced him down on me. I just felt the pleasure grab and twist me again and again, wringing me out until I was empty. Empty and limp.

I don't remember the intervening seconds or minutes, but by the time I was halfway coherent again, we were lying next to each other and he had his arms around me. Practically cradling me, for a long time he just held me while I caught my breath and stopped trembling, his embrace close and warm and comforting. He only started kissing my hair, nuzzling into my neck, and now and then caressing my hip, tracing the tattoo there with a fingertip once I'd calmed. Every kiss, every little touch felt wonderful, made me want to be closer to him even though our bodies were all wrapped up in each other.

I said, "You're still hard."

That assured smile. An emphatic, playful, "Oh, yes."

"What should we do about that?" I was trying to be playful, too, but once again the fact that I felt nervous, that I hadn't quite made up my mind about what I was and wasn't ready to do tainted my voice.




Switch Ch. 02



"We don't need to do anything about it. It won't break. And I'm loving this, just lying here with you, kissing and touching."

I should have touched him, caressed him as I said it, but I was too shy, despite what we'd just done. "No," I tried joking again, "something's got to be done about that."

"I'll go take a shower." 

"What? A cold shower?" I was horrorstruck. He'd already written me off as useless.

"Something like that." Still smiling placidly.

"So, what? You'd rather go jerk off than fool around with me? Am I that bad?" In the face of his unflappable tranquillity I immediately felt like a total drama queen. Pardon the expression.

"That thought didn't actually cross your mind, did it? I can't tell if you're joking."

"Why would you say that, then?"

"Because I'm trying very, very hard not to push you too far too fast, and I don't want my hard-on to guilt you into doing anything. Whatever we do together, I want everything to be because you're into it. Absolutely, unbearably hard for it."

Just the way he said that had my cock perking up again. 

"Don't imagine that I don't want to reciprocate. I absolutely do. I'm just feeling . . ."

"Not ready?" he finally asked.

"Mostly I'm feeling hopelessly outmatched."

"I should hope so, since I've been assiduously mastering the art of making men come for ten-plus years." He kissed me, sweetly, almost tentatively at first, then deeply, with a swelling urgency. Then he stopped. "You talk like you're afraid you're a disappointment. So I want you to know, I haven't enjoyed being with anyone so much in years." He watched my face for a few seconds, then said, "Look at you. You don't believe me."

"First my cock. Now you're stroking my ego."

He laughed at my terrible joke. "I'm not a good liar. But I'm truly hopeless with white lies. So if your ego feels stroked, I'm telling you the truth."

"Then forget the shower, and tell me what you want. Then teach me how to do it well."

"With pleasure," he sighed, then kissed me again, this time not hiding his hunger, pulling me tight against him, licking and biting and sucking my lips in a way he hadn't done before, and I was already getting hard again and I tried to forget my haunting doubts about how I ought to be doing things and for the first time I started to really touch him, to explore that delicious body, skin as smooth and soft as any woman I'd ever touched, but the architecture of him so, so male, those long, sinewy limbs, his narrow hips, those naturally broad shoulders I was so jealous of. He kept putting his mouth to me, kissing my neck, then biting, until the skin all over my body was tingling. Had I ever made a lover feel the way he made me feel? One or two, maybe. The two I'd been so obsessed with that I almost forgot my own pleasure in my desperation to make them need me as urgently as I'd thought I needed them.

When we were both quivering and needfully flexing and rubbing against each other I broke away from his ravenous kiss and asked, "What do you want?"

"I want whatever you're ready for."

"Don't do that. Pretend for a second you're not afraid of scaring me off."

He gave me a shy, almost embarrassed smile that was utterly endearing. "You really want me to say it, whatever it is? No holding back?"

Suddenly I was terribly nervous again. But still agonizingly hard. "Yes."

"I'm dying for you to fuck me."

Honestly, I didn't believe him. That of everything, that was the one thing he wanted to do more than anything else. I was sure that the honest answer would have been that he wanted to fuck me. And that, more or less, is what I said. 

He laughed, quietly and very sweetly. "Even after what you just experienced, you can't believe I'm aching to feel you inside me?"

"It's not the same thing. Is it?"

Still smiling. God, that smile of his. "No, it's not the same thing. But bottoming is a delicious pleasure. Don't lie there imagining I'm proposing to sacrifice myself at the altar of your pleasure." A tender, lingering kiss. Then, "But I can also wait for pleasure like that. I don't want us to do it before you're ready."

I hurried to say, "I want to. God, I want to. I just . . . "

"It's okay. Say what you're thinking." Sweet little kisses along my hairline, from just by my ear, up to my temple. Then that steady gaze. "You're safe with me."

"I just wish I were more experienced. So I'd be good."

"You'll be good."

"I don't . . . I've only done anal a couple times. And the two women, neither of them liked it much."

A little grin. "I'll like it. Don't worry. Just start off slow and easy, and don't take offense that I have a habit of communicating exactly what I want."

I smiled at him through my nervous uncertainty. "Alright."

He gave me a smile. Gave me a kiss. A hungry, slow, wanting kiss that went deeper and deeper as we started touching each other. Caresses. Palms and fingertips exploring sleek planes, contours of muscle and sinew, smooth skin, tufts of hair. The way he was using his mouth on me, the way he was touching me, he had me panting, writhing, flexing into his hand each time he started to tease my cock, rock hard again, aching. I was holding out, resisting my urgent need to release the want he was provoking, half out of the desire to tease him, to make him ache the way I was aching, and half because I was afraid to start it. But then he drew back, and after gazing at me for a few moments, maybe to give me a look of reassurance, or maybe trying to read in my face if I was half as ready mentally as I was physically, he fished a condom out of the nightstand drawer, opened the wrapper, and after a provokingly mischievous little grin, put it on me. Then I watched, breathless, as he lubed up my cock, but at the same time it was taunting, thrilling, him rubbing and squeezing my desperately swollen erection.

"I'm fucking dying for it, Martin. Please don't make me wait any more," he said, his usually serene voice like the growl of some big, predatory animal. Then he was on his knees, turning away from me. I planted my knees between his, ran my hands over his ass. Fuck, his perfect, muscular ass. Holding my cock in my hand, I found his dark little pucker, and nudged the crown up against it. "Just start slow, okay, baby?"

"Yes. I'll start slow," I said, and it came out so quietly I hoped he heard me.

I was so crazy with want it was hard to go slow and gentle. As I pushed the head of my cock past his clinging clench and I felt the squeeze of his body I whimpered with the strain of holding back. 

"Okay?" I whispered.

Trembling under me he said, "Yes. Fuck, yes. Just, I'm dying for more of you. Push into me slowly, baby. But please, give me all of it." I did what he said, and slowly as I could bear, pushed the entire length of my cock into him, the little grunt he let out driving a maddening thrill through me. "Fuck," he panted. "Fuck, you feel so good. Let me feel you move." His voice trembling, like his body. "Start gently, but don't be afraid. You won't hurt me."

I stroked his hair, caressed the graceful nape of his neck, ran my fingertips lightly down his spine, then curved both hands against his hips, and still struggling to hold myself in check, pulled a little way out, panting through the intense sensation of his body's desperate grip on mine, as if it were trying to hold me still, and then I worked my cock back into him until my groin was pressed right up against his ass. Little by little, listening to his huffing breaths, his little grunts and sighs, I started to fuck him. Before long I had to stop and hold still for a minute because it was already too much and I was afraid of coming too soon. Still inside of him, I bent down to kiss his neck, running my hands over his lean abdomen, his chest, teasing his nipples for a moment, loving how that made him groan and push back like he was begging for more of my cock. 

God, I wanted to make him come. Hear him, feel his body shudder through a climax. I grabbed the lube and got a glob of it in my hand, reached under him, and wrapped my hand lightly around the base of his cock. God, what a weird, awesome feeling, the sensation of having a hard cock in my hand, but not my hard cock. 

He whimpered a warbly little, "Ah, fuck," as I took hold of him, and let out the most rousing, delicious moan as I slid my hand up the length of his hard-on and gave the crown of his cock a little squeeze just as I started fucking him again, pumping my dick into him and drawing it out with all the restraint I could muster. "You feel so fucking good, baby. You have no idea," he said, his quiet voice strained. 

I'd really thought he'd wrung me dry sucking my cock while he'd fingered my ass, but I was killing myself trying not to get carried away too soon, desperate not to come before he did, so I started jerking him in earnest. 

"Baby," he huffed, "I'm not going to last two more minutes if you keep that up."

I went still. "I just . . . I don't think I can last, no matter what," I confessed.

He made a sound, and I thought maybe he'd laughed. Turning to look back at me, I think I was right, because there was his mischievous smile. "It was just a courtesy, my little warning. Don't stop. You're perfect."

Panting and grunting, we got our rhythm back, me still pumping my hips shallow and slow, trying desperately to hold on as I stroked him, knowing as soon as he shifted a little under me and I realized that he was holding himself up on just one arm that he was close, that he was going to ejaculate in his cupped hand, the idea of it giving me such a sudden thrill I almost lost it right then, but I kept massaging his hard cock, pumping my dick into him, pausing, then going at it again, my heart pounding.

"Fuck, baby. Oh, fuck!" He let out a long, guttural groan, writhing under me, pushing back into me and saying, "Don't stop though, keep fucking me. Harder. Stop holding back," and I did what he said, all my anxiety suddenly gone, and surrendered to how fucking good it felt, fucking him, stroking him until he caught and stilled my hand, crying out, and holy fucking God I started to come, a long, excruciating spasm like all the life force was being suddenly, violently sucked out of me, crying out, fuck, almost crying.

When I'd pulled out and he'd used a couple tissues to mop up the mess in his hand he gave me a smile so happy it felt like my heart was breaking. We sprawled, panting, holding hands. When I thought about it, that felt stranger than anything had felt all during those hours of terrifying, beautiful firsts. Lying there sated and naked, holding each others' hands. Wonderful, but strange. Then he turned onto his side and lay there gazing at me, and I turned onto my side to gaze back.

"You're alright?" he asked, looking utterly tranquil as if the only possible answer was "yes."

"I feel absolutely perfect. Body and soul." Beautiful. When he smiled like that, like he was the embodiment of happiness, the only possible adjective for him was beautiful. "How are you feeling?"

"Dangerously happy," he said.

"Dangerously?"

"Being too happy is always dangerous."

For a while we lay there kissing, without that fierce hunger that had been devouring us all night, except there was that familiar, aching yearning to stay close, to try to be even closer which isn't possible without starting to fuck again. When he took a break from kissing, catching our breath, but still touching each other, always touching, I said, "Can I ask you something?"

"Of course. Ask anything."

"What did you mean, when you said you'd always told yourself not to fuck things up with me?"

"You know. I didn't want me perusing you sexually to drive you away from the loft or to ruin the chance of us being friends. And, more than anything, I never wanted to do anything that would hurt you. Screw you up emotionally."

"That's not what I meant. I meant, what did you mean by 'always.'" He grinned, but he looked utterly abashed. In other words, nothing like himself. "And why haven't we been friends? All these years knowing each other. I'm friends with most of the other guys who're always around. And you always seemed to be friends with absolutely everyone. Everyone but me."

"Because I've always wanted you."

I was stunned.

"Usually if I know someone's straight, it's no problem talking myself out of a crush. But in your case, reason was useless, I couldn't stop wanting you. With a gay guy, I'd just give it a try, and either getting shot down, or having a tryst that doesn't turn into more has had pretty much a hundred percent cure rate. But with you, there was no cure. That's why I've always been so awkward around you."

The idea of Dario pining for me for three years, that him having a thing for me had made him too shy to be friendly with me that way he was with everyone else was just too far-fetched to believe. 

"You know," he said, "Christopher and I only had two real fights. One over Jared, the man I was with before him. And one over you."

"Over me? Why?"

"Because, he could see how drawn to you I was. I guess he saw it before I did."

"Why?"

"Why? Why what?"

"Why were you drawn to me?"

He smiled the darkest, saddest smile I've ever seen. "Which answer do you want?"

"The one that's true."

"They're all true." That terrible, sad smile got a little softer. Tender. "Because your voice, the first time I heard you sing, made me ache. Because you're so fucking beautiful, and you don't see it. You don't see it at all. I understand why you'd take a corporate job. But the band. God, you're too good for those guys. Your voice, your writing. Even your playing is three tiers over what they'll ever be. But you act like they're doing you a favor, letting you into the group. The same with Avalyn. She's nowhere near in your league, and she treated you like an employee. "

They were compliments, but for some reason the things he was saying hurt my feelings. Got me defensive. To strike back, I guess, I said something about Christopher.

That sad, from-the-grave grin. "Don't be unkind to Christopher. He was always good to me, even though he knew his place in my life."

"Which was?"

"Saline."

"Saline?"

"Water to replace the blood I lost when I lost Jared."

"And why did you and Jared break up?"

He looked like I'd slapped him. Actually, no. He looked much more wounded than that. Like I'd driven the point of a knife into him. "Do you really not know?"

"No. What happened?"

"He died." He looked like it still hurt him to say it. 

"I'm sorry." Half apology. Half condolence. I didn't realize I'd withdrawn my hand, which had been feathering up and down his upper arm, gliding over the lovely hills and valley of his bicep and triceps, slightly flexed because he was propped up on that arm, until he captured my retreating hand, brought it to his lips, kissed my palm. 

"It was almost five years ago."

"How long had you been together?"

"Not so long, actually. Less than two years. Sometimes I ask myself if it could possibly have lasted, if he hadn't died. I doubt it, to be honest. But I was so, so in love. And so was he."

I'd never lost anyone close to me. Even all my grandparents were still alive. All my aunts and uncles. I didn't know what to say. I couldn't imagine living through losing someone that young, that important to me.

"Do I get to ask you a question, now?" I think Dario wanted to change the subject, which was a relief to me.

"Anything."

"Before me, you've never done anything sexual with a man?"

I felt shocked by the question, which under the circumstances was ridiculous. "No."

"But you'd thought about it, I guess."

"What do you mean?"

"I mean, you've had fantasies about men. You've had an idea that you're bi."

"Actually, no."

"You've never felt at all attracted to a guy?"

"Before you? No."

Dario laughed a little, like maybe he didn't believe me. "Alright, then. When did you first know you were attracted to me?"

"You mean sexually?"

That adorable laugh. "Yes. Sexually."

"The other night. The night."

"Mmmmm. The night," he purred, waxing nostalgic. Or the memory was arousing him. Then his voice changed, even though his wicked grin didn't fade. "You never had sexual thoughts about me before that night?"

"No. But I always . . ."

What?"

"Wanted to know you better. I always felt drawn to you." I laughed. "I always felt jealous that everyone else seemed closer to you than I was."

"Really?"

"It's a cheesy metaphor, but I've always thought of you as the sun, with all these planets orbiting around you, pulled into this solar system together by your irresistible gravity. And I was never even one of the planets. I was just one of Saturn's moons, or something."

"Look at all the trouble the sun has to go to, trying to get Saturn's loveliest moon a little closer." He tried to make it a joke, but his voice was serious. Almost melancholy. "The real reason I fill up my hours and my place with all these events, all these people I don't really know and who don't know me half as well as they think they do, is that most of the time being alone with my thoughts is excruciating."

"Why?"

"Because life is excruciating. And I haven't managed to develop the talent some people have for enjoying themselves despite that. Except by writing. That's my escape. And filling the loft, filling my time with people, it's a way of numbing myself. A white noise to drown out the thoughts."

I suddenly felt sad. Hurt. The person I'd looked up to as a model of how to be in the world, this person I was suddenly having strange, intense, tender feelings for was as wounded as any of us.

"I don't mean this. I'm not talking about you," he said, caressing my face and peering into my soul."

"I know."

"Will you stay?"

"You mean sleep here?"

"Yes. Here. In my bed. With me." God, he could be seductive.

"Do you want me to?"

"Yes. I want you to." 

I told him to turn over, and I nestled in behind him. I don't know if he thought it was because I wouldn't want him spooning me, with his cock nuzzling up against my ass, the way my cock was nuzzling up against his. All I wanted in that moment was to hold him in my arms, hold him close against me, and let him feel happy and safe. Without thinking about it much as first, I was caressing his belly a little, planting little kisses on his neck, in his hair. When I did think about it, it surprised me how tender and affectionate I was feeling for him. It was more surprising than the sexual attraction, I guess because even if the last thing I'd guessed about myself was that I'd be hot for another man, on some level sex is sex, and a healthy cock is going to rise happily to the occasion when there's stimulation and the promise of an orgasm. But this, wanting to stay close to him, to hold him, to feel his warm body go lax and hear his breathing change as he fell asleep, was more mysterious.



Switch Ch. 03



Warm thanks to habu for giving me a firm hand and plenty of encouragement.

*****

Usually, I don't sleep all that well when someone's in the bed with me, especially in the beginning. With him, I slept great. Better than I sleep alone, actually. I woke up once in the middle of the night, my arm aching from how I was lying on it, and I extracted myself from our cuddle as gently as I could, but he woke or stirred, and as if we'd planned it ahead of time we both rolled over and he molded himself against my back and draped his arm over my waist, and we were still like that when I woke up in the morning.

As usual I woke up hard. The first was waking up to the feeling of someone else's morning wood pressed against my ass, which, I noticed, did nothing to diminish my own erection. For a couple minutes I lay there, enjoying that unfamiliar feeling, enjoying the arousal it was provoking, enjoying the feeling of his warm breath breezing over the back of my neck and my cheek, the warmth of his body against mine, the weight of his arm on my side. Then I succumbed to my bladder's demand that I get up. When I stirred, though, his lax arm embraced me, pulling me tight against him.

"Morning," he said in that soft, intimate tone he'd started using with me.

I turned over to face him, and he was looking at me so bright-eyed I realized he'd been awake for some time. "Morning." I kissed him. A real, slow, deep kiss. After, he looked surprised. Almost startled. As if everything we'd done the night before had only been possible in the cloud of some magic spell that had ended with the sunrise.

"I guess you have to go to work?"

"Afraid so."

"If you have time, I'll make you breakfast."

I found my phone and checked the time. "I've got time. But don't get up yet." I went and took a leak, and came back to bed, pulling the covers up over my shoulders because I'd gotten chilled walking around naked. "If I had a choice, I'd choose a little more time here in bed with you over breakfast," I said, pressing my body against his, running my hand over the firm curve of his ass, then brushing my fingers lightly as I could up the length of his hard-on. 

He gave me a smile that made him look incredibly vulnerable. "I make excellent pancakes. But I'll do my best to make the tradeoff worthwhile."

At first we went slowly, both a little sleepy, cuddled up in that warm cocoon. Slow, shallow kisses. Tender caresses. Nuzzling into each others' necks. But then he was kissing my body, his mouth, his tongue, and now and then his teeth thrilling inch after inch of my skin, making me tingle, making me writhe. No one had ever kissed and teased my nipples the way he did that morning, as if they were the main event, as if he could make me come just licking and sucking them until I was whining and squirming under him. Then he moved and pulled me on top of him, and I did my best to return the pleasure, stroking his cock just enough to tease while his nipples hardened under my tongue. 

"Can you reach the condoms?" he panted.

I opened the drawer and reached for the box, but was distracted by the cornucopia of paraphernalia in the nightstand. Avoiding the dildo and the other things that looked kind of like dildos and which I vaguely understood to be ass toys (why were they vaguely familiar? Too much time on triple-X Internet sites?) and held up a set of pretty heavy-duty leather restraints, grinning and cocking an eyebrow. "Did someone shoot a porno here and leave their props behind?" I joked.

"That must be what happened."

Suddenly I was totally intimidated again. And just slightly freaked out. But I put the restraints back, grabbed the lube, and found a condom. Just like the night before, he took it from me and put it on me, obviously enjoying the act, the sight of sheathing and then lubing my cock as much as I was. When he shifted under me I lifted myself so he could turn onto his knees, but he stayed there on his back, and only brought his legs outside of mine. 

He asked, "Are you up for trying it like this?"

I was so dense I honestly wasn't sure what he meant until he put his hand on my waist and pulled me to him, while he guided my cock to his hole. It had never occurred to me. It was so intense, so strange and wonderful looking at him while I pushed inside him, us looking at each other, kissing, then looking again as we fucked. This time, I made it last. Maybe for the first time in my life I was really there, present as certain types of people are fond of saying, just relishing each moment, not fretting about how good a lover I was being, not working toward the goal of getting my partner and myself off. Just losing myself in each sensation, drifting away in his sighs, the rise and fall of his chest, his belly, the way he was looking at me, like his soul was swelling up with a happiness that was going to mortally wound him when it burst. When he came, his semen streaked his belly and chest, and tears streaked his temples and slipped away into his dark waves of hair.

"Is it hurting you? We can stop."

"No. You're not hurting me. Don't stop. Keep fucking me all day, if you can."

Sadly, I'm only human, and I came probably less than a minute later. When I stopped shaking and caught my breath, I asked him why he'd cried.

"Sometimes during sex, I have these . . . transcendental moments."

It seemed like one of those white lies he supposedly didn't know how to tell. "Are you afraid this was a one-time thing? I asked him.

He grinned. "That too."

"I don't want it to be a one-time thing."

He gave me a long, sweet, deep kiss. "Good."

"But . . ."

He visibly braced himself.

"I feel like a dick. A hypocrite. But I don't really want to go public with this."

Obvious relief. Even an amused little grin. "Do you think that's a surprise?"

"Just, I don't want to hurt your feelings, but around the guys tonight, during rehearsal—"

"A gentleman doesn't kiss and tell. Discretion is the heart of valor, etcetera, etcetera. The guys won't have a clue. Not from me."

"You're not mad?"

His sweet, soft laugh. "Martin, you're just starting to figure this thing out for yourself. Why would I expect you to want to bring anyone else's opinions into this?" 

In that moment, I felt really sad that we hadn't been closer friends those three years we'd known each other. But I also felt lucky that he was my friend—or whatever he was to me—now.

During the eternal commute to work, through a typically long and dull day of talking to clients on the phone and listening to the banal repetitions of complaints about the work, the customers, the lower-level employees, and the upper management from my fellow project managers, I felt happier than I think I'd felt in years. Everything seemed to be charged, humming with an elation I hadn't felt since my first two or three hard-core crushes in high school. I hadn't felt anything close with Avalyn, and flowing between the flashes of vivid imagery of my night and morning with Dario, little doubts about why I'd pursued her so intently in the first place, along with an unsettling realization that I felt like I'd just woken up from a sedated stupor that, looking back and really thinking about it, I'd been in for probably three or four years. Like I'd just kind of accepted all the safe but profoundly unsatisfying components that made up my existence. My apathetic live-in girlfriend (who I probably would have married if she hadn't left me). My tedious and frankly purposeless job. A social life based on friendships sustained by little more than common memories of high school or college, or the convenient happenstance of working together. And now, Morpheus had just shown up in my sad little office that wasn't much better than the cubicles doled out to the twelve guys and women working under me, and I'd chosen the red pill. I'd been passively, willingly yielding up my life force—all my time, my energy, my whole existence—to a soul-sucking hive organism that was draining whatever potential was inside of me, whatever years were left to me on this earth.

When had I stopped trying to thrive, rather than exist day to day in a state of deaf, dumb, blind numbness? A dozen memories, moments, choices came bobbing to the surface of that stream of doubts winding around all the belly-tickling images of those recent hours with Dario. Giving up the dream of attending a fine arts college and getting a degree in music because I'd caved in to my dad's pressure to get a BA in software development. Letting my college girlfriend talk me out of joining the Peace Corps after graduation because she was dying for us to move in together. Almost completely abandoning my efforts to write and perform the music I really cared about, in favor of joining mediocre bands because somewhere along the line I'd accepted hanging out and drinking beer as the pinnacle of social bliss.

By the time I was back on the freeway, heading toward Dario's for rehearsal, I was high on the certainty that I was awake and aware for the first time in years, and that starting that night I'd stop drifting through my own life like a leaf in a stream, passive and powerless. I didn't know what different choices I wanted to make. The important thing was that starting right then I wasn't going to let my dad's ideas about what a "real job" was, or guilt about abandoning a relationship that had already limped along months after its expiration date, or fear of being left out of a band that sounded like an inferior copy of a hundred other LA bands dictate my fate ever again.

For once, I'd rushed out of the office the minute the weekly status meeting ended, and gotten right on the freeway, hoping to get to Dario's before the other guys. But of course at that hour the freeway was a parking lot, so in the end I only got there fifteen minutes earlier than usual, and like always, I was the last to arrive. True to his word, Dario acted completely normal. As if we hadn't been upstairs touching and kissing and licking and fucking each other ten hours earlier, he gave me the old, polite smile and casual, "hello," and without getting up, told me there was beer in the fridge and to help myself. I tried to act normal, but just seeing him sitting there, taking the pipe when Steve passed it to him, I didn't dare really look at him because I was sure my expression would give everything away. Hoping to hell I didn't sound as weird and nervous as I felt, I said, "Thanks, man," or something equally bizarre, and went to grab a beer. 

I wished the other guys would get off their stoned, lazy asses so we could rehearse, because there was no way I could keep my shit together sitting around in a cozy little circle chit-chatting. Dodging danger, I went and got my guitar, and quietly practiced the new piece I'd played for Dario the week before. When the guys decided to stop getting stoned and start rehearsing, I played the piece for them. I wasn't all that surprised that they didn't have the same enthusiasm as Dario for something so far from our usual repertoire. Over in his armchair, I'd noticed Dario listening while I auditioned the song for the group, and now he was watching, listening to the guys' limp response. From all the way across the loft I couldn't tell if he was giving me a small smile of empathy, or smirking in disapproval of the group's timid attitude about stretching our range. Actually, I think his expression was completely neutral. As if our agreement about keeping the thing between us secret meant he couldn't even have an opinion about the band's cold reception of the song that he'd expressed so much admiration for.

After rehearsal, we all hung out, and when the pipe got passed my way I took a hit, and when the pipe came around again I took another. Stoned, I was calm and still and quiet. While the others talked and joked, I absorbed the sights and sounds and smells courting my senses—Dario's patient smile as Jeff and Tom endlessly debated the plausibility of a zombie finding its way into the food cart elevator of an airplane, the yeasty smell of the beer I was sipping intermittently, the fizz of it on my tongue, the zen chime of the intercom and Dario's baritone voice, sexy even when he was handling a transaction with the delivery guy, the mingled sweet and spicy aroma of the Hawaiian and the sausage and pepperoni pizza we'd ordered from the indie place down the street, the flex of Dario's angular jaw as he chewed, the motion of Steve's animated hands while he gave a long explanation too elaborate to follow of how he would escape a city overrun by zombies in which he was the lone survivor. The contours of Dario's pecs and nipples under his gray, long-sleeved T-shirt. Dario's dark eyes fixed on Tom, fixed on Steve, fixed on Jeff, and never fixed on me because he was being careful for my sake. Eventually, when the collective buzz had more or less worn off, we left, and I went to my car, and the rest went down the street and around the corner to Tom's car. I turned on my car, turned on the radio, and without releasing the parking brake I texted Dario and asked if I could come back up. He answered within a few seconds.

We smoked a little more. Fooling around and fucking stoned was incredible. Transcendental, to steal Dario's word. 

"You were staring," he said when we'd been lying there silently holding each other for a while in post-orgasmic bliss.

"Hmmm?"

"After rehearsal. You must have been pretty stoned. You were staring at me. I don't think you realized."

"Oh. Sorry."

He laughed. "I don't mind. I could feed off you gazing at me like that all night long. But it might not fit too well with your plan of silence and secrecy." His fingers combing through my hair was delightfully sedating. Did I even care if everyone figured out something was going on between us? In that blissed-out moment I couldn't imagine what the suggestion of something sexual happening between me and Dario would trigger in me. My veins flooded with endorphins and testosterone, all I cared about was the feel of his body pressed warm and close against mine, and that sensuous, tranquilizing touch of his fingertips meandering through my hair. 

And the drawer.

"Dario."

"Yes?"

"Can I ask a question?"

"Anything. Always."

"I think I know it's a dumb question. Ignorant or naïve or whatever. But I still want to ask it."

"Then ask."

"When you're with other men, are you always the one who . . ."

"Do I always bottom?"

"Yes. If that even means what I think it means." I was so fucking clueless.

He turned onto his side and looked down at me, smiling patiently. It took him a while to finally answer me, as if he were choosing his answer with a lot of thought. "Actually, until I met Jared, I was what they call a 'total top.' I never let any of my lovers penetrate me. Not even what you've let me do to you." 

"And Jared convinced you to let him—"

"Jared didn't convince me of anything, except that I was safe with him. Safe enough to be trusting and vulnerable enough to do something I'd always wanted."

"So now you . . . like it both ways."

"I don't bottom for casual fucks. But yes. When I'm with someone I feel safe with. Someone I'm really into."

I basked in the implication of that last remark for a few seconds. Then I asked him, "And can I ask you about the drawer."

"Of course."

I laughed. "So, what's with the drawer?"

And he laughed. "You might have to be more specific."

"You . . . like being restrained?"

"Sometimes. Usually, though, it's the other way around."

"Is that an important part of your sex life?" 

"Yes, in a way. I love vanilla sex. Vanilla sex can be delicious, satiating, fulfilling. But doing bondage takes me somewhere else. Somewhere I need to go sometimes. Not all the time. Not even all that often, if we're talking about need. But sometimes."

I had no idea what he was talking about. That need he said he felt. I started wondering if there was a dark side, a scary side to Dario he hadn't let me see, yet. And I was pretty sure I didn't ever want to see it. 

"You've never tried it?"

I laughed. Just the image of me tying some woman to the bed (or cuffing Dario to the bed with those restraints of his!) made me feel weird. Nervous. And when the image of Dario tying me down popped into my head it was just shy of terrifying.

"Never wanted to try it? Even out of curiosity?"

"Not really." 

"Just the idea makes you uncomfortable," he said, like he was delivering a diagnosis.

"I guess . . . maybe it's different, imagining doing that with a man, with you, but the idea of fucking a woman while she's tied up, it makes me feel bad. It feels kind of like imagining beating a woman."

A sweet, patient smile. "That's why you don't tie down people who don't want it. For a little while, off and on, I was with a guy who couldn't come unless he was bound. The more restrained he felt, the less he could move, the better the sex was for him." How had Dario done so much in the same length of time I'd done so little? In a gentle, almost careful tone Dario asked, "And the idea of being tied down? How does that feel?"

"Honestly?"

"Yes, please." Smiling.

"Pretty scary."

"Bad scary? Or good scary?"

"I don't think good and scary go together, for me." I waited for the look of disappointment, but he kept it hidden. "And the other things?" I said, changing the subject almost out of fear that if I let him ponder my last answer too long, he'd realize that he was already bored with me.

"The dildo and the butt plugs?

"Yeah."

"What about them?" Grinning indulgently again.

"You use them on your . . . partner? While he's restrained?"

"Not exclusively. But yes."

"I'm sure I'm being really naïve again, but I don't see the point."

"The point?"

"Why use a molded piece of silicone or whatever, instead of your cock?"

His grin turned mischievous. "I'd be very happy to demonstrate the point, if you'd like." My face went hot and his wicked grin softened and warmed into a smile. "All good things in time. Meanwhile I'll just say that there's a pleasure—maybe more psychological than physical—going about mundane tasks with a butt plug stuffed up your ass. And it can be a decadent thrill to be down on a man's cock, your mouth stuffed full of hard dick, and get your ass fucked at the same time. Something that requires a toy, if you don't have a third party on hand."

I was blushing again like a virginal ingenue in Dangerous Liaisons, or something. "You've had threesomes?"

He laughed and sort of rolled his eyes. "I'm coming off as the fucking Marquis de Sade or something, aren't I?"

"No." A pretty limp rebuttal. "I guess I'm coming off like some kind of home-school refugee."

"Are you a home-school refugee?"

I laughed. "No. My parents aren't even religious. But I guess they weren't very open-minded, either."

"Well, my view is that you have to fight pretty hard to get past a lifetime of messages—subtle and overt—telling you it's not okay to be you, it's not okay to want what you want, to do certain things you might want to do.

"Yeah." It was like he'd been reading my mind during my drive over from the office.

"So, will you consider telling me something?"

"Yes, of course." I said it effusively, eager to reciprocate his openness.

"What's your dirtiest fantasy? Something you've never dared to do. Something you'd never even dare to ask for." I felt so put on the spot I couldn't have come up with one of my fantasies even I'd been in a confessing mood. Again, that patient smile of his that made me feel like I was getting a hug. "I just asked you to consider telling me. You don't have to say anything tonight."

"They're all obvious. Banal."

Now he looked amused. "Whose fantasies aren't?"

"They're all about women."

"I know."

"Alright. So one is . . ." Why was it so hard to say it? After all the lines I'd already crossed with him? "I'm in a room. Like a cell, really. It's pitch black. Impossible to see anything. Maybe it's dark like that all the time, or maybe just sometimes. But it's pitch black whenever someone comes in, so I never know who she is, what she looks like, how old she is. It could be the same woman every time, or it could be a different woman each time. But I can't know, because I never see her, or them, and she never talks, so I can't tell by her voice. And maybe my hands are tied—it's not really about being forced or helpless. It's just about not being able to tell who it is, or if it's just one woman or a long series of different women, so I can't touch, I can't feel her body to know if she's thin or fat, tall or short, young or old. And it's not about me wanting it or not wanting it. But it's just that I know that she—or they—she needs me. Almost like life or death. Like it's sustenance, as necessary as food. Or water. So when the door opens, and I hear her footfalls in the pitch black, I just give myself to her, like a duty."




Switch Ch. 03



Dario's hand encircling my cock. Not stroking, but just lightly embracing it in the curve of his fingers. "You fuck her."

"Kiss. Fuck. Come in her mouth. Eat her. Everything. And then she leaves, and I wait for the next one to come. Or for her to come back."

"Actually, that's not banal at all." He sounded thoughtful. "It's kind of lovely, really. But I'm a hundred percent certain it's not your dirtiest fantasy. Or you're leaving out the dirty part." He still wasn't moving his hand on my cock, which was slowly expanding in the embrace of his gentle grip. "Don't be shy. Now and then you get yourself off to something truly obscene. Confess."

The way he said it, like he was hungry for it, his voice full of want, planted a little seed of want in me that seemed to sprout and grow and flower all in the space of a few seconds, and I pushed into his hand, pleading for him to move, to stroke me.

"Be still. Confess."

My dick was rock hard in his hand, now. 

"I'm ashamed of the other one."

"Good. Now I'm really eager for it," he sighed. 

How could he have me so desperate less than an hour after we'd fucked? I could barely keep myself from pumping my hips toward his warm but cruelly static grip. "There's a woman. Very young. A servant in a mansion or maybe a castle. A cliché setup for her powerlessness, I guess. She's innocent. Not just a virgin, but, you know, she doesn't expect anything shameful to happen to her. But out of nowhere, while she's serving dinner or polishing the mahogany table, the master of the house or the lord of the castle has her bend over the table, and he watches as one of the male servants or a male visitor from a nearby property lifts the back of her dress and her slip or her petticoats, then pulls her underwear down, and fucks her. And then the master has another man fuck her the second the first one is finished. It's not like they're raping her. She's not crying, or in any pain. But she's humiliated. She feels ashamed to have her ass and her cunt bared to the master, who's just standing there being a voyeur, and more than anything she's ashamed that she's wet, that her cunt is dripping with her own fluids, and now also with the semen of the two, or three or four men the master's given her to."

I couldn't say the next part. I was sorry I'd even started, because it felt like such a pathetic cop-out to quit.

"Baby, if you don't tell me the rest," Dario growled, "and if it doesn't get dirtier than that, I'm going to keep you like this all night, without letting you come."

I wanted the reward. I was fucking dying for him to stroke me off. Or better yet, go down on me the way he had the night before. I would have done pretty much anything if he'd told me the prize would be him letting me push my aching cock into his mouth. But I couldn't get a fucking word out.

"Where are you in this scenario?" he asked, giving my cock one taunting squeeze.

"I'm a servant, too."

"Duty-bound.," he teased.

"Yes. Not a slave. Not really afraid of any particular punishment. Just, I have to do what I'm told."

"What are you told to do?"

My face burning, I told him, "The master, the one whose mansion it is, tells me to lick her clean."

He started moving his hand, just a little. "What do you do?"

My need was so intense, and his touch was so tormenting I could hardly talk. "I walk over to her, where she's bent over the table, with her skirts up, her ass and her cunt exposed, everyone looking at her. I go down on my knees behind her, so her cunt is just at the same height as my face, and I start to lick her." He was really stroking me, now. Still too slowly and gently, so I had to fight myself to resist my urge to rub my cock against his hand. "The master tells me to undo my pants, to take out my cock, which is obviously hard. He tells me to stroke it while I clean her with my mouth." 

"Do you do as he says?"

"Yes."

Dario took his hand from my cock, and I was on the brink of crying, I was so frustrated and needful, but then he grabbed the lube, and then wrapped his hand around my hard-on for real. "Then what?"

"I start with her thighs. The insides of her thighs. They're slick, sticky with her wetness and with the cum that's dripped down." Dario's hand, slippery with lube, working over my cock. "I start licking her clean, inch by inch. Her left thigh, right up to the crease of her groin. Then her right thigh."

"And you're stroking your cock while you do that?"

"Yes."

"And the master is watching you lick her while you jerk off."

"Yes."

"Are the men who fucked her still there? Watching you too?"

"Yes."

"Do you like it? Cleaning up that dirty mess with your mouth?"

"Yes."

"What next?" Stroking me in earnest, making it hard to think, hard to speak.

"I put my mouth to her cunt. She sort of whimpers, because the men all fucked her from behind, so when my tongue touches her clit, it's the first real contact she's felt there. And it's a pleasure she's never experienced before, being kissed there. I start licking, teasing her clit with my tongue sometimes, sometimes lapping up the wet mess seeping out of her, sometimes pushing my tongue as far up inside of her as it will go, my whole face pressed into her crotch."

"Is she going to come while you lick her?"

"Yes. The men tease her about liking it, and her embarrassment turns her on even more."

"Tell me how you make her come."

Dario's hand stroking me, I was so close I could hardly think, hardly speak. "She's never come before, so when it starts to happen, it startles her. When I hone in on her clit, when she feels the strange new feeling building up, she starts to squirm, trying to get away from my mouth because she's ashamed of what's happening to her. The master comes over, and just presses his hand down flat on the small of her back to hold her still, and he tells her to let me lick. He tells her that I'm going to make her come. With his hand on the small of her back like that, she can't move, and she starts to whimper as I eat her, and then I feel her cunt spasm under my mouth, and hear her crying out, quietly, like she wants to be silent but can't. I keep licking her, and she's quivering, shuddering, almost like she's seizing. Fuck, Dario, fuck," I whimpered, ejaculating as his greased-up fist slid slowly up the length of my cock, milking me for every last drop of cum. And without a word, just coaxing me gently, he pushed me down toward his belly, and wanting to, lost in the haze between the confessed fantasy and the throb of my subsiding orgasm, I licked Dario's stomach clean.

His lean belly quivered as I licked up the glistening threads and pearls of semen, the line of dark hair above his navel matting down under my tongue. On purpose, because I wanted to know how it would feel, how I would feel, I let my cheek brush against the florid, swollen crown of his stiff cock. The rosy skin of that tumescent head felt like the softest, silkiest thing that had ever touched my face. Tempted, terrified, I feathered my lips over it, just once, almost as if I'd done it by accident. Dario sighed. Groaned, actually, then touched my chin and lifted my face to meet his gaze. His sweet smile. "I wasn't asking for that, baby."

"I know."

"I mean it, I don't want you to push yourself to do anything before you really, really want to."

"I know."

I wasn't sure I wanted to really give him a blow job, but I was absolutely dying to just touch him a little with my mouth, to brush the tip of my tongue tentatively over the tip of his cock, see how it felt, see how it tasted. Maybe it wasn't fair, maybe it was expecting way too much of his already strained patience, thinking it would be okay to mouth him a little, then stop, but I told myself it would be fine. I nuzzled into his hand, then kissed his belly, then brought my mouth back to the flushed, engorged head of his cock, and brought my lips just into contact, breathing in his spicy scent, feeling that impossible softness of that delicate skin against my lips. I thought he would sigh or groan again, but he was silent. So still, it seemed like he'd stopped breathing. Then he let out a strained, desperate little gasp when I parted my lips and touched him, just for a second, just lightly with my tongue. Such a different texture, that firm, silky flesh. Nothing like eating pussy, except for that unique but related musky scent and flavor. I took the tip of him in my mouth, drinking in his fretful grunt, bewildered and thrilled by the sensation of holding that fleshy bulb on my tongue, against the roof of my mouth, then sucking on it a little as I pulled it past my lips, tasting the little pearl of clear fluid that had seeped to the tip before I'd licked and sucked it away. Still not sure I was ready to really go for it, I drew him back into my mouth, exploring the smooth firmness of the head of his cock with my lips, my tongue, then exploring the sensation of sinking down on him a little further, feeling his hard girth gradually filling my mouth until the sensation of his cock against the very back of my tongue, almost at my throat, made my stomach clench suddenly and violently and I backed off, terrified I was going to retch. 

Sorry," I mumbled, instantly knowing that was silly.

He laughed. "Fuck, don't be sorry. I'm in heaven."

"Obviously I don't know what I'm doing, so feel free to offer your sage advice."

"You don't need any advice. If you keep at it the way you're going, I'm going to come. Soon." Compliment? Warning? "Just, you don't need to deep throat me to get me off. Don't feel like you have to choke on it to be good at this."

I smiled, embarrassed. Turned on. Happy.

"I'll warn you when I'm close. Promise."

I kissed him just inside his hip bone, feeling incredibly full of tender warmth and want, then took him in my mouth again, wondering what he'd been doing when he'd sucked me off, the best head I'd ever had, playing with different ways of licking, of teasing him with my tongue while I had him deep in my mouth, playing with sucking, trying to create that strange, wonderful pressure I'd felt when he'd had my cock buried in his mouth. I thought about getting the lube and fingering his ass, but figured one thing at a time. I did fondle his balls a little, though, the way I'd tried to teach Avalyn. Dario was grunting and huffing already, and I felt like I was feeding on his whimpers and moans, on the way his belly and his thighs were quivering, as much as I was feeding on his big, tumescent cock. 

"Soon," he gasped, and I was dying to hear him, feel him succumb to me. He caught my free hand, the one not massaging his balls, and held it tight, raking his other hand into my hair, not pushing me down on him, but I felt his urgent need in the way he caught a fistful of hair in his grip, the way every now and then his hips spasmed upward, that desperate seeking, and then he said with an urgency that could have been orgasmic anguish or alarm for my sake, "I'm going to, baby," and I gave him all I had, nursing diligently at his engorged cockhead, then sinking down, sucking, rubbing at his rigid shaft with my tongue, and he huffed, "Now, now, I'm coming," and a warm gush splashed into my mouth before the words left his lips, shocking how much of it there was, and another spurt spattered against my tongue and I struggled to keep my lips sealed tight around his thick, twitching girth as he seized and shuddered under me. When he finally collapsed and went lax, I drew the thick length of him from my mouth, still sucking lightly as I finally drew the fat flushed bulb free of my lips with a little slurping sound, then struggled to swallow the huge mouthful of his cum. For a second I didn't think I'd be able to get it down, but in two swallows, I finally managed. 

"Fuck, baby. Fuck," he panted, gazing down at me, caressing my hair. "That was fucking delicious." He drew me up to him and gave me the sweetest, gentlest deep kiss imaginable. "It's sexy as fucking hell, tasting my cum on your tongue." I felt my face turn red, and he smiled. "And it's indescribably adorable how you keep blushing." Then his smile faded and he was looking at me with his earnest, searching gaze. "Are you alright?"

"I'm euphoric. My jaw aches, but I'm euphoric."

God, that smile. "I almost didn't let you."

"Afraid I felt like I had to, or something?"

"A little. Especially because of how I'd kind of shoved you down there. It wasn't for that, but I didn't want you to feel like I was asking, or hinting, even."

"I knew you weren't. I know how patient you're being."

"Not just patient. You should know that when I decided to pursue this, I was resigned that there were certain things you might never want to do."

"Like give you head?"

"Giving me head. Letting me fuck you." I was blushing. Again. And he was smiling again. 

"Yeah. I've been thinking you're likely to get pretty bored pretty quickly with me."

"I deserve credit for a little more creativity than that, if you think not being able to put my cock in your ass is going to end in boredom any time in the foreseeable future."

"It's more than that." It came out more serious, sadder than I meant it to.

"What do you mean?"

"The difference in our levels of experience. The difference in our range of . . . interests."

"You think you're boring." Another diagnosis from Dr. Dario.

"I'm realizing that I am pretty dull by comparison. Yeah."

"I know what it feels like to be intimidated by a more experienced lover. A more adventurous lover. But believe me, some of the most daring, kinky people, the polyamorous switches with a huge closet full of gear and toys are some of the dullest lovers. You've got that spark that makes every encounter exciting and arousing. Your newness to a lot of this, your shyness is actually one of the sexy things about you. Don't you get how fucking hot it is, bringing you blushing and trembling over each new threshold?"

We made out for a long time, that wonderful, languorous, sleepy, sated kind of making out, until we were too tired to go on and we curled up together and fell asleep. I woke up to him kissing my neck in the early morning light. Kissing my ear. My shoulder. We made love for an hour, and I was almost thirty minutes late for work. 

The weekend was impossible. I couldn't take it. All night long—from ten until three or four in the morning Thursday, Friday, and then Saturday, that fucking tragedy of a Saturday, pretending there was nothing between us, pretty much avoiding him because I knew if I got anywhere near Dario anyone who paid the least bit of notice would see that I could barely resist my urge to touch him, just to make contact, to close up that fake distance between us, distance that had been real for three years, distance that hurt physically now that we'd spent those three nights whispering and touching and kissing and stroking and licking and sucking and fucking each other into nirvana. Since I'd started to feel closer to him than to anyone else in my life at present. Closer, suddenly, than I'd ever felt Avalyn. 

It hurt watching him talk to person after person in that easy, intimate way he had of making anyone who came close feel like they were heard. Seen. Cared about. It hurt watching a handful of the women and—since probably a third of our crowd was queer—most of the guys flirt with him, more than a handful very obviously trying in earnest to seduce him. I wouldn't have even gone Thursday or Friday, except I had some delusional fantasy that somehow we would sneak away just the two of us, not necessarily to fuck, but to make out, to continue nourishing whatever it was between us that was so new and that felt so, so fragile. At least to me. 

I confess that as my workday came to an end on Thursday, I was more or less convinced that three consecutive days of us not sleeping together was going to mean the end of it. But sneaking off was impossible, between his vigilance and dedication as a host, and my total incapacity to play it cool when making up lies about things like that. So I was stuck there, not talking to him (not really, since fake small talk in front of an audience doesn't count), watching Sung, the unbelievably tall, luminous, quiet emigre from Korea and sculptor of elaborate towers of dolls' heads and water pistols talk to Dario for fifty minutes straight (I timed their conversation), then watching Joe Burke from one of the bands that played that night hunt Dario before and after the set, finally very publicly and not at all discreetly putting his hand on Dario's crotch at one point, to which Dario's response seemed to me (from half way across the loft) to be an amused smile that could have meant, "You wish," or maybe "I'll text you in five with a place and time to hook up."

Each night I waited and waited, wishing the place would empty so that at the very least we could talk, just us, just for a couple minutes, or maybe even crawl into the cozy nest upstairs and curl up together, maybe not even fooling around first because we'd both drunk too much and smoked too much and talked too much to everyone but each other. But each night as it got later and later, I reluctantly gave in to the reality that there was no way to linger behind until the others had left, without drawing more suspicion than I was ready for. And each time I left I was convinced that there was no way he'd end up spending the night alone, that some other guy was lying there in that bed where he'd touched me so gently, where he'd kissed me so tenderly, where he'd gazed at me and given me that luminous smile of his, and that this other guy was gleefully doing all the things that Dario liked and that I was too scared to try. 

I didn't sleep at all Thursday night, thanks to the waking nightmare that was a ceaseless succession of images of Dario fucking Sung or Joe Burke, or maybe both of them, tying them up, fucking their asses, their mouths, sticking dildos and butt plugs up their asses, until they all collapsed in a sweaty, cum-laced heap, Dario smiling in a perfectly sated bliss I could never give him. Friday was pretty much the same, except that I was even more on edge thanks to my endless night of perpetual torment on Thursday, and sleep deprivation has always reduced me to a state vaguely resembling the emotional and mental fragility of someone going through morphine withdrawals (according to my education via Trainspotting).

Then there was Saturday.

I was more or less out of my mind. Out of my mind with insecurity. Jealousy. Sleep deprivation. Dario and I had texted a few times, but those texts felt so casual, so distant, so cold compared to the way he'd looked at me, compared to that soft, intimate voice that had told me how good he felt with me, how drawn he was to me. 

If our band wasn't playing that night, I like to believe I would have done the smart thing and stayed home. But we were playing, so I went. In the mysterious way these things happen, all the sleep deprivation, my frayed nerves, my jealousy, my certainty that the unprecedented and nascent joy I'd just started to feel with Dario had already been crushed under the untenable weight of the universe of the art collective all came together in a hideous confluence which, against all odds, made me play my best set in memory. Probably my best set ever. My voice, despite (or because of) the fact that it was a little raw from too much smoking and drinking, sounded more ethereal than ever. My guitar felt like an extension of my arm, like every note that passed through my mind was instantly born under my fingertips wailing and thriving. And I was on. Turned on to every phrase, every chord, every deep thought, every exhilarating thrill and every soul-wounded sadness of each song in the set, turned on to the mood of the crowd, turned on to the rest of the band, which maybe by coincidence, or maybe because they were feeding on my crazy energy, also played the best set we'd ever done together. By the end of our set I felt like a fucking god. A terrible, Nietzschean Übermensch. 




Switch Ch. 03



Someone—I don't even remember who—handed me a drink. Not a beer. Some kind of mixed drink. Women know better than to take open drinks from random people, but I didn't give it a second thought. And after that, I feel like the night skips ahead every fifteen or twenty minutes, like looking at photos at a party, where you can never know what brought any given person away from the keg and over to the pool, or away from the pool and over to the couch, or away from the couch and over to the dance floor. I remember Dario coming over to me and me feeling utterly elated, believing that he was going to say, fuck these people, let's kick them out and have some time to ourselves, or that he was going to say, Baby, no one will notice—lets sneak up to the rooftop even though it's a freakishly cold night. But all he did was tell me how amazing the set was, and tell me my voice sounded like Thom Yorke and Maynard James Keenan made a baby together twenty-six years earlier. Then he gave me an indecipherable smile and walked off to join a group of regulars, one of whom I know almost for sure he'd slept with a few times. 

Next, Melissa, who I'd hooked up with the first time we'd played after Avalyn left me, came over with two of her friends, and she was pretty much throwing herself at me, to the point where I felt like her friends were a little embarrassed for her. Then I was by myself, watching all those clusters of people pulsing and scuttling over the floor of the loft like a hive of insects, chattering, giggling, chortling bugs. Then Melissa was flirting with me, her friends nowhere to be seen, her mascara darkening the skin under her eyes as if she'd slept as little as me the last seventy-two hours, her upper lip dotted with beads of sweat. Then I was alone again, watching Dario and that guy I knew he'd slept with huddled together in a dark corner whispering to each other intimately, their mouths almost brushing against each others' cheeks as they murmured their private thoughts. Then Jeff and Tom and Steve were next to me, and Jeff said, "Your boyfriend isn't cheating on you, is he?"

"What?" I wanted the next words out of Jeff's mouth to change into something else. To make that first question go away.

"Don't be shy, wallflower," Tom teased. "Just serenade him a little. He's such a fan, I bet that's all it would take."

I don't know what I said. Actually, I'm pretty sure I didn't say a fucking thing. That I just stared at them until they got uncomfortable or gave up on me as hopelessly drunk or addled, and wandered off. 

Next, I was up on the roof terrace, making out with Melissa, her friends talking to some other guys. Then it was her friends talking to Steve and Jeff. I don't know where Tom had gone. Maybe home to Clara, who for once hadn't come to the loft that night. Next we were all dancing, me embarrassing myself, grinding on Melissa, putting on a moronic performance for Steve and Jeff but by then Melissa's friends and my friends were ignoring us, too wrapped up in their own efforts to hook up. Next, I had Melissa backed up against the exterior wall of the stairwell, my hand inside her dress, inside her bra, my tongue in her mouth, rubbing my limp dick against her groin through my pants and her dress. And then I don't know why—it had gotten louder or quieter, or I don't know but somehow the atmosphere changed in some unquantifiable way—I stopped making out with Melissa long enough to turn around and see what was going on, and there was a fresh cluster of people all bunched together a few feet away, murmuring quietly, maybe even philosophically in the fatigued, drunken, hungover wee hours when the sun was already getting ready to come up over the horizon, and there was Dario, staring at us the way I'd stared at Dario and that ex-lover, Dario and Sung, Dario and Joe Burke. Then Dario walked away from the group and disappeared into the stairwell.

Next I was dead sober. Or, not sober, but the night stopped skipping forward in ten-minute or half-hour increments. Time slowed down to near stillness, and I lived through every excruciating second like it was an hour in a jail cell, locked up with my doubts, my regrets, my self-loathing, my self-pity. I extracted myself from Melissa's groping hands, went to the edge of the roof, had the dark but comforting thought, not of jumping, but of maybe stumbling and falling to my death, and started throwing up. Jeff came over to check on me, and I told him I was fine, I just wanted to sit there in the fresh air a little longer. A little later Jeff came over and said they were going to leave, did I want any water? I said no, I just wanted to sit there and not move because I was afraid if I stood up I'd get sick again. He asked if I wanted a ride, or was I just going to crash there. I said I'd crash there. I didn't care what he thought that might mean, though in retrospect he obviously thought I was just going to pass out any second. Everyone else went downstairs, and I stayed on the roof. Not that much later, Dario came up with a big glass of water. 

"What did you take?"

"Nothing. I just had one drink after the set."

"What was it, a liter of absinthe?"

"I don't know. Someone gave it to me."

"Who?"

"I don't know. I don't remember."

"Can you stand up?"

"No."

"Try." He helped me to my feet, and holding my arm across my shoulders, he walked me in a loop around the roof a few times. When I told him I was feeling better we went down to the loft. Everyone else was gone. 

"Could I crash on your couch?"

"You don't want to sleep upstairs with me?"

I thought my heart would break. But I joked, "So, my diabolical plan worked after all."

"Just don't puke in my bed, Romeo."

By the time I'd washed my face and brushed my teeth and taken a leak, Dario was breathing the deep, labored respiration of drunken sleep. Too ashamed of myself after my performance and not wanting to punish his unexpected hospitality by waking him up, I stretched out at the edge of the bed rather than curling up against him and putting my arm around him. I fell asleep right away, but woke up in the middle of the night, or the middle of the morning—impossible to tell up there in the nest with the heavy double curtains closed over the big windows, and the sound of him breathing next to me, the warmth of his body radiating out to me on the other side of the bed enveloped me in a cloud of terrible sadness, and terrible need. Whatever I'd gotten in my system with that mystery drink was still churning in my blood. By the dim glow of the little nightlight I could just make out the profile of his brow, his nose, his lips, his perfect jaw, the curve of a shoulder, the dark circle of a nipple, and before my gaze had strayed down the length of his arm to his hand my cock was hard and I felt like if I didn't fuck him I'd die. Not just of physical need, which was suddenly, brutally overwhelming me, but more than anything the terror that if we didn't make love right then, that night, we'd never be together again.

In my muddled state I convinced myself that it would be almost a penance to undo the damage I'd wreaked that night by pseudo-fucking Melissa on the rooftop before Dario's eyes. An offering up of something that was really for him. Opening the nightstand drawer didn't wake him. Fishing among the dildos, condoms and butt plugs didn't wake him. Lifting the leather cuffs with their metal chains didn't wake him. Even slipping one around his wrist and fumbling in the dark with the unfamiliar prongs and buckles didn't wake him, or the sound of the steel ring clicking into place around one of the iron rods of the headboard. What woke him was me trying to extract his other wrist, which was buried under the pillow his head was nestled into. 

I don't think he knew who was there in the bed with him. He jerked his arm free of my fumbling grip and flailed around for a second, still tangled up in the stupor of sleep before he realized that his other arm was already chained to the headboard. Then he was up, sitting bolt upright, but I straddled his legs and pushed him back. He didn't say anything. He was just breathing terribly fast and hard and when I caught his free wrist in both of my hands he asked me in a terrible, terrified voice, "What are you doing?"

I'd already rehearsed it in my head ten or fifteen times, trying to remember the assertive, confident, irrefutable tone he'd used when he'd told me he was going to suck my cock and finger my ass. I said, "I'm going to tie you up. And then I'm going to fuck you until neither of us can move."

"Martin. Get the fuck off me." It was a clear, sharp order, with just a quavering hint of fear under it.

I swear to god I thought it was part of the game. The ritual. The victim pleading. Demanding. I didn't get off him. I held on to his wrist with all my strength with my right hand, and with my left I started to work the tongue of leather through the buckle. With sudden, surprising strength he jerked his arm free of my hands, swept me off of him and almost off the bed, and sat up.

"Do not fucking touch me again, Martin. If you come near me, I'm going to hit you. If you touch me, you're going to go home with something broken. Turn the fucking light on." His voice was shuddering with rage. Or fear. I went and turned on the light. He was fumbling with the restraint, trying to get his other arm free of the headboard. When he got it loose he jumped out of the bed as if it were seething with spiders, clawed at the pile of clothes on the floor and pulled on a pair of jeans.

"What the fuck, Martin?" God. He looked like he was going to cry. He looked like he was going to kill me right then, with his bare hands. "What the fuck?" he almost screamed, and it was like being in the room with someone I'd never met before. This wasn't Dario.

"I thought . . . I wanted to . . . "

"What did you want?" His words seethed out between clenched teeth. 

"It's your thing," I said, barely audibly, because even though I didn't really understand exactly how, I knew I'd fucked up. Fucked up horribly. Irrevocably.

"My thing? What? Raping people in their sleep?"

"What?" I felt tears running down my face. A flood of tears that kept coming and coming.

He turned away from me and spat out an angry, "Fuck!" Then he practically ran out of the room and down the stairs. 

I didn't know what to do, whether to leave him alone or go after him. Without making a decision either way I got dressed, because whatever was going to happen, I didn't want to be naked for it, and, more important, Dario didn't want me to be naked for it. I found my phone and my keys. That way when he told me to go, I could do what he wanted right away. Then I went downstairs.

He was sitting in the corner farthest from the stairs, all the way across the loft diagonally. Not sitting on one of the dozen sofas or chairs, but squatting down on his heels against the wall. He had to have heard me coming down the steps, but he didn't move, even to look up at me. 

"I'm sorry," I said as quietly, as gently as I could without straying very far from the staircase because I didn't want him to think I was coming at him like a raping maniac. "I don't know what was wrong with me. My thinking. It was an incredibly stupid thing to do. I fucked up. I fucked up incredibly. I know that. I just want you to know that I wasn't trying to hurt you or take advantage of you. I was just being really stupid, and trying to do something I thought you'd like. Just, please know it was bad judgment, not . . . me being violent or wanting to hurt you."

"I believe you." He hadn't looked up, and I couldn't see his face. But by his voice I could tell he was crying. "But you need to go. If you're not safe to drive, I'll call you a cab."

I'd never felt more sober in my life. "I can drive," I said. And I left.

Late that afternoon I sent Dario a text telling him again that I was sorry, and telling him that I would drop out of the band if he didn't want me around the loft. He texted me back:

"Come to rehearsal. Not ready to talk yet, though."

Rehearsal was a three-hour torture session. Dario said the usual words, the words that had embodied our vaguely awkward distance for three years, then the fake distance that concealed our secret tryst, and that now resonated with the painful truth of the chasm I'd blown open between us. But all evening he was stiff and cool, not just with me, with all of us. He didn't say anything when Jeff and Tom lit up, but he didn't smoke with them, either. Instead of working while we rehearsed, he sat in his armchair and stared into space. Tuesday, it was the same. When Steve asked what was bothering him, Dario just said with a cold, remote dignity that I realized was the dark side of his easy affability, that he had some things on his mind. By Wednesday I expected him to cancel the events that weekend, but he didn't. I showed up to play our set on Saturday night, but left right after, and avoided the loft the rest of the weekend. On Sunday morning he texted me, saying he wanted to talk. He proposed we meet me at my place after rehearsal that night. My place. So, not a reconciliation.

I felt like I was dying. I know how to accept hurt, how to survive heartbreak. But the fact that I was going to lose what we'd had, lose the chance to at least keep him in my life as a friend because I'd done such a stupid thing was unbearable. I couldn't stop going back over that night, replaying over and over the moment I'd decided the way to make up for my pathetic display with Melissa was to initiate myself into Dario's mysterious world of bondage and domination, futilely wishing I could go back like the ghost of Christmas future and whisper in my own ear what a life-wrecking stupidity my little plan was. Asking myself why I'd been so freaked out by going a couple nights without sleeping together, driving myself so crazy I didn't sleep for three nights straight, why I'd been so stupidly jealous of Dario's interactions with the other guys at the events, why I'd been so embarrassed by Jeff's joke about Dario being my boyfriend, provoking me to use Melissa as proof that I wasn't infatuated with Dario when by now I knew that the truth was that I loved him. 

When Dario buzzed my intercom that night after rehearsal, while I was waiting for him to climb the five flights of stairs, I was so on edge it felt like at the cells in my body were vibrating out of sync, like a reaction was building and building that was going to shake me to pieces at the atomic level until I disintegrated into nothing. I opened the door and made myself sit down on the couch, the least threatening way I could think of to greet him. I watched him step up onto the landing then pause for a second in the doorway, then step inside and shut the door. He came over to the couch, and for a few seconds he stood there looking down at me. Then he extended his arm. Like he wanted to shake hands or something. But when I put my hand out—not touching his but waiting for him to make the first contact—he gripped my hand and coaxed me to my feet. After a few more seconds of looking at each other, me trying not to vibrate apart into dust and him looking like he was trying not to cry, he took a step forward and hugged me. I was so stunned I think I barely even hugged him back at first. I just stood there, rigid and afraid to move the wrong way or touch him the wrong way while he went on holding me, and finally I put my arms around him and really hugged him back. It felt like the saddest good-bye of my life.

As soon as his embrace softened I let go, even though I ached to keep holding him. Even though I wanted to ask him, beg him to put his arms back around me. He sat down on the sofa, so I sat down too.

Meeting my eyes he said, "I believe you that what happened the other night was . . . an error in judgment." Suddenly I had the idea that maybe—almost certainly not, but maybe—he was going to give me another chance. That tiny bit of improbable hope changed my pained resignation into excruciating anticipation. Like I was awaiting a verdict. "And I think that unfortunately someone slipped you something without you knowing it. A couple other people have mentioned something similar happening. Including your friend Melissa. Which I acknowledge lessens your culpability for that error in judgment."

The words sounded so promising. But his tone sounded like a death sentence.

"But I'm still really freaked out. I'm not trying to punish you. But I don't feel safe with you."

God, that hurt. But I said, "I understand," because I wanted him to know I didn't blame him for whatever he was feeling.

"I'm not asking you to leave the band or find another rehearsal space. You're always welcome to come to the loft with the band, for the weekend events. But I can't see you romantically anymore. Not for a while, at least. Maybe never."

"Okay."

"Okay." 

He got up. I felt like he'd meant to say more, and changed his mind, but I let him go without saying anything.

I felt destroyed. We'd had a week-long secret affair, and the ending of it was the first time I'd ever really felt like my life was over. I forced myself to get up each morning and go to work. I started going to the gym every day instead of a few times a week, because I couldn't stand socializing and I couldn't stand being alone with my thoughts. During our rehearsals, I went through the motions. Actually, suddenly, it felt like that's all any of us were doing. No one really cared about the music, about virtuosity. Everyone seemed to be doing it just because there was nothing better to do. Maybe I wasn't genuinely suicidal, but for the first time in my life I felt like I understood why people kill themselves. 

The one and only good thing during those weeks was that it was incredibly fruitful for my songwriting. I wrote every night, from the minute I got home from rehearsal or the gym, until I couldn't stay awake anymore. Half the time I woke up in the middle of the night and, tortured by my miserable thoughts I couldn't fall back asleep, so I wrote. I wasn't just prolific. The music I wrote during that period was the best I'd ever produced. The compositions, and the lyrics.

Three weeks and five days after Dario had broken things off, he texted me saying he had a professional proposal to discuss, did I want to come by after work? The other band wouldn't be rehearsing there that night. For the first time in a month life didn't feel pointless, like a burden I was dragging around against my will. Feeling that much better and knowing it rode on one innocuous text from Dario scared the hell out of me.

Of course I went. He was nervous, but warmer than he'd been since we'd said good-bye at my apartment. I turned down the offer of a beer, so we both had water. 

"How are you doing?" he asked.

"I'm alright," I lied, and I could see in his face that he knew it was a lie. "How are you doing?"

"About as good as you, I suppose." He gave me a sad smile, and in that moment I recalled the dozens of melancholy smiles he'd given me during our brief interlude, and had the uncanny feeling that he'd known from the start that we were both going to end up terribly hurt. "I have something I want you to consider," he said. "Do a solo show."

"What? A whole set, just me?"

His indulgent grin. Such a poignant, bittersweet thing to see. "Yes, that's what solo means. Or, if it sounds like too much work to get ready for just one show, we could plan on two or three. One night over however many consecutive weekends."

"I'm not ready for anything like that."

"You mean you don't have enough material?"

Only then did I get how serendipitous his offer was. "No. I mean, actually, yes. I have enough material. I have enough material for a ten-hour rock opera if you want to convert the loft into a mass torture chamber. Heartache is a phenomenal catalyst for creative output." I regretted it the moment I'd said it, but he gave me one of his deep, earnest looks and an empathetic smile. So I wouldn't throw my arms around him and tell him again how sorry I was, I said, "I mean I'm not ready as a performer. I'd feel too . . . vulnerable or something, up there by myself."




Switch Ch. 03



"Even if you had time to rehearse?"

"Rehearse?"

"Painful Friction are breaking up. You know, Kevin's partner just had a baby, so he can't be gone three nights a week playing rockstar. The guys from Zip Code and Absinthe Make the Heart Grow Fonder have been telling me for months that they'd kill for a slot here, but they're nowhere near as good as you are. None of the groups I could get in here are as good as you are."

"You're really serious?"

"Of course. Or we wouldn't be having this conversation. And you could have Friction's rehearsal slot, too."

My heart was beating faster, faster with every passing second. "Here?"

"Mondays and Wednesdays. As many hours as you wanted."

I couldn't believe what he was saying. "That wouldn't be . . . weird for you?"

"No. Would it be weird for you?"

"I don't know."

He caught me and held me still in an earnest, vulnerable gaze. "I've missed you, Martin."

My chest ached. I didn't know if my heart was healing, or breaking again. "I've missed you, too."

"I came up with the idea because of your music. But I confess that I like the idea of getting to see you sometimes without the other guys." Then he added, "But I also don't want you to get the wrong idea."

"No," I said, trying to hide my hurt and disappointment, "I won't get the wrong idea."

"Will you think about it?"

"No. I don't need to think about it. Before . . . things went wrong between us, I promised myself I was going to start putting my time into things that really matter to me. I can't imagine a better opportunity to keep that promise."

That night, instead of writing, I spent a couple hours going through the binder of stuff I'd written over the last few weeks, and chose the ones I wanted to start rehearsing with. Then I got my acoustic guitar and practiced each one a couple times. Rehearsing for the rehearsal. I was too nervous, too excited, in a way almost too happy to sleep much that night.

When I got to the loft the next day, Dario had already told the guys about his offer to me and they called me Gwen for the rest of the night to punish me for embarking on my solo venture (which is maybe a much nicer thing to be called than whatever the No Doubt guys probably said about Stefani when she abandoned them to obscurity in her rise to global stardom). For the first time in weeks I stuck around after rehearsal and we all got stoned. It was a good night. For whatever reason, for the first time in a long time it felt like we were all genuinely close. Even Dario seemed happy. When I got home, I practiced my new material for an hour or so and then slept like a baby.

When I started rehearsing, suddenly the music didn't seem nearly as complex, innovative, transporting as it had sounded in my mind, as it had sounded in those hushed acoustic prerehearsals in my apartment. When Dario set his computer aside and swiveled his armchair to face the stage, then sat there perfectly still, staring at me as I struggled to drag my voice over the hurdle of my mounting doubts, the worst part was knowing how disappointed he must have been. How let down he must have felt. After he'd been impossibly generous, giving me a chance like that after how I'd already hurt him. After I'd gotten through the fourth song, he stood up and came over. I set my guitar aside and braced myself. He patted the edge of the stage, and I sat down, my shins dangling over the edge so he could deliver the news face-to-face.

Dario put his hands on my thighs. The memory of that first time he'd touched me, when he'd laid one hand on my thigh, midway between my knee and my hard cock filled me with melancholy. "You beautiful fucking genius," he said, like he was whispering a prayer. "I don't even want to let the hordes in to profane this with their collective din." He must have seen in my face how relieved, how surprised I was, because then he said, "What did you think I came over to say?"

"I was afraid it wasn't . . . what you expected."

"It's not. I thought you'd come with ten variations on that piece you played me that first night. And I would have been thrilled. But this is on another plane of existence. Where the fuck did this come from?"

I didn't say, my pain.

"Did you really write all of this just these last few weeks?" he asked, somberly, sadly, as if I had said out loud. His hands still on my thighs.

"Yes."

"Martin. You need to get a manager. You need to get time in a recording studio. I'm not fucking around."

"You're biased."

"You suck at taking a compliment. A heartfelt, true compliment from the man who sucks at telling white lies."

That night I left after three hours of rehearsing without a break, and on Saturday I played the set with the band, but didn't hang around after, or come for the other shows. I agreed to play the solo set the following weekend, telling myself it didn't matter that I hadn't perfected my repertoire, since basically I'd be playing for the crowd that was already loyal to Babel, so they'd be a sympathetic audience. Low pressure. After my next solo rehearsal Dario and I smoked and hung out for a couple hours, talking more seriously and more playfully than we ever did when the rest of Babel was around, and I felt a deep, melancholy contentment that even if I'd ruined what we'd had before, it looked like we were going to be real friends. The next time I was there on my own, after I'd rehearsed we spent another few hours talking even though we didn't smoke.

On Friday night I played with Babel, and on Saturday night I did my first solo set. Predictably, all my sang froid about performing for the usual suspects went out the window as the day approached, but I got through it, and I was thrilled that only half the crowd seemed dismayed to get stuck with such an intimate, moody performance so unlike the pounding, driving onslaught they were used to getting from Babel and Painful Friction, while the other half seemed genuinely into it. Enraptured, actually. I couldn't believe how still the room got, how quiet, a few people even shushing people who were talking quietly in the back. After, there was a long procession of people coming up to hug me, congratulate me, flirt with me. I adamantly refused all proffered drinks, though. Every time I saw him, Dario was beaming like a proud new father getting ready to hand out cigars. That night I lingered to bask in the glow, but left while there were still a dozen people or so, so Dario wouldn't wonder if I was planning on trying to overstay my welcome. 

Monday, an hour into my rehearsal, Dario got up from the armchair where—his new habit—he'd been listening, watching instead of working, and came over. When he patted the edge of the stage, I set my guitar aside and sat down. As soon as I met his gaze my belly went taut and my heart started thumping hard. Watching me closely, he laid his hands on my thighs again, moved forward until his hips were between my knees, and came closer, closer, until I felt his breath on my lips. And kissed. My chest aching because too much happiness had swelled up too quickly, I fought my unbearable urge to pull him against me, to delve deep into that kiss. I made myself wait for him.

He was patient. Cruelly patient. Slow. Gentle. The first long, delicious, excruciating moments he only brushed his lips lightly against mine. Then he drew back, just a millimeter or two, just enough so that our lips were no longer touching, lightly as two feathers, and waited. Was he testing me? To see if I'd retreat? To see if I'd impatiently push things too quickly? Panic-stricken, I stayed absolutely still, knowing I was trembling, almost sure he must be able to feel it. Then he kissed again, now a slow, deep, tender kiss that made me feel like I was heating and melting from the inside out. 

He asked, "Do you want to go upstairs?"

I was almost too stunned to speak. "Are you sure?"

It was so joyfully familiar, so him, so us, the way he grinned and said, "I weren't sure, I wouldn't have asked."

We went up to the warm nest where I'd been so shy and scared and happy, took off our clothes, and got in bed. I couldn't believe he was kissing me, touching me, mouthing my ear, biting my neck with an eagerness that was an exquisite blend of tenderness and hunger, teasing my nipples with his fingers, with his tongue and teeth, mouthing my cock, denying me even a moment of real satisfying pleasure, teasing me, torturing me, until I was whimpering with every breath, writhing with every touch of his hands, every taunting touch of his mouth. Then he stilled.

"Baby? Aren't you going to touch me?"

I blushed. He smiled. "I guess I'm axious. I don't want to do anything to . . . make you nervous."

"Do I seem nervous?"

"No."

"I needed time. You gave it to me. I'm in bed with you because I want you to touch me. I want you to kiss me. I want you to fuck me. Just stay away from the restraints. At least until I've given you a proper tutorial."

We fucked like crazy all night. To this day, I think it was the happiest night of my life.

At work the next day, I was back to questioning what I was doing with my life, which for the first time in weeks felt like it was worth living, and more to the point, worth living as well as the need to pay my rent and grocery bill and health insurance would allow. Now that the time I was spending playing my music and making love to Dario felt so intense, so lovely, I resented the hell of out the hours at a job that kept me from those pleasures and that meant nothing to me but a paycheck. But then again, maybe that was the price that had to be paid. Life couldn't be all fucking and writing and playing and kissing. Nobody's that lucky.

The next time we were alone—another game of feigned departures and coordinated text messages after the Babel rehearsal—he kissed me deeply. Smiling, looking me over like a cake he was about to take a slice of, he said, "I love how you're always warm and dewy after you play. You smell so good. Taste so good." Then added, "I'm aching to take you to bed. But then we'll fuck until we pass out, and in the morning you'll have to race off to work. And we should really talk."

I did not like the sound of that. I hated the sound of that. But I was trying hard not to fly off the handle over nothing now that I was on my second chance, so I tried to hide my anxiety and disappointment and said, "Alright, let's talk."

Dario wasn't usually much of a drinker, but he grabbed two glasses and extracted a bottle of whiskey hidden in a high cupboard behind stacks of paper cups that came out on show nights. Then we curled up on one of the couches. We both took a drink, then he kissed me, a deep, whiskey-flavored kiss that lasted longer than I expected it to. He caressed my cheek, smiled.

"Don't look so nervous. I just thought we should check in with each other about a couple of things."

"Alright." The pit of my gut still felt like a heavy, sharp-edged stone.

"I want to talk about the night you got dosed. Not about what happened upstairs. About earlier," he said, his serene gaze and voice doing very little to calm the anxiety the topic provoked in me. "I know that whatever got slipped into your drink played a big part in things that night. But I also know you were . . . pretty on edge all weekend. So I'm pretty sure there were other things going on that channeled your high in the direction it went that night. Do you agree?"

My throat felt tight, like it didn't want to let any air out, but I forced out a limp little, "Yes."

"Baby," he said in his most intimate, embracing voice, "this isn't about me scolding you. I just want us to have an honest conversation about our expectations, so we can enjoy this weird world we seem to living in together twenty-four/seven. Doesn't that make sense to you?"

I made myself take a deep breath. "Yeah. You're right." Then I took a big drink of whiskey.

"Do you want to share anything with me? Or should I start playing twenty questions?"

I was so embarrassed by all my headcase bullshit for that weekend, I didn't know how to begin to tell him what had made me act like such a dick that night.

He laughed. "Alright. First question. You wanted to keep the thing between us a secret, like we discussed—am I right?" 

"Yes."

"That weekend, I was trying to act more or less the way I used to act around you. That was me trying to honor our agreement. But I've wondered since then if I did anything to hurt your feelings. Something that started upsetting you on Thursday night?"

"I got jealous," I confessed, kind of hating myself.

He laughed again. "Yes, that was obvious enough. I wasn't going to use up one of my twenty questions on that." He gave me a kiss on the cheek to take the sting out of his taunt. "We'll address the jealousy issue in a minute. I mean, should I have spent more time with you? Should I be more attentive? Because you have to know that when I'm far away, when I'm indifferent in my tone, that's me working incredibly hard not to put my arms around you and whisper naughty things in your ear."

"I know. I mean, I guess I knew it that weekend, in my brain. But emotionally, it felt bad anyway."

"Yeah. I hate it, too. But I think it's up to you to decide if you want to risk a step onto the slippery slope of being closer when we're around other people. But meanwhile, your brain needs to convince your heart that there's no one at these parties that I would rather talk to, that I'd rather watch blush, that I'd rather take to bed than you." He leaned in and gave me a slow, deep kiss that lasted and lasted, and I hoped the talk was over. But no. "Now. The jealousy thing."

"Uh huh."

"I'm going to ask you a couple blunt questions, okay?"

"Okay."

"I'll start with the obvious, already demonstrated, just to get you warmed up. Since I saw you trying to kill Joe Burke with your stare of hatred, I'll use him as an example. If I had kissed Joe in front of you that night—a romantic, maybe we're going to fuck later kiss—would that have upset you?"

No filter. I just said "Yes," and let all the hurt and revulsion of that image fill my voice.

He smiled. "I'm liking the honesty. And, just for the record, I'd rather stick a needle in my eye than let Joe Burke put his tongue in my mouth." I laughed. It was the saddest feeling laugh of my life. "My next question's going to be a little rougher on you, but I really hope you'll tell me the truth."

"I will."

"Did you kiss Melissa on the roof to hurt my feelings? To make me jealous?"

"I don't think so. I think I did it to make myself feel less bad, because it seemed like half the guys in the loft were trying to get in your pants. But I really don't think I was trying to punish you or hurt you." Then I asked the painful question. "Did it hurt your feelings?"

"A little, but not because I was jealous. It only hurt, because I thought maybe you wanted to hurt me, if that makes sense."

"But you weren't jealous?"

"I don't really get jealous. Which bothers some people. Does it bother you?"

"No. Except that it makes things kind of uneven."

"Yes. It does."

"I want to confess something. Another reason I did that with Melissa."

"Alright."

"The last thing I remember before that, was me watching you with Alex. Then Tom and Jeff noticed me watching you. They said something about my boyfriend cheating on me."

"Oh."

I couldn't read what the feeling was behind that quiet, even little syllable. "I'm not proud of it. I know I need to figure it out. And I'm sure whatever that cocktail was I got served didn't help. But I felt—"

"Outed."

I think I must have blushed when he said that. Even sitting there, desperately hoping that this conversation was going to end with Dario fucking me, and not dumping me, the implication that I was gay felt like an attack. But he was right. "Yeah. My cowardice must be getting pretty old."

He laughed. "Right. Because most people come out a couple weeks after they realize they might be into people of the same sex." Then his smile faded and he sighed. "Know when I knew? Not like you, one aberrant attraction to one person. I mean, can you guess when I knew that I would never want to be with a girl, and that I couldn't wait to kiss and get off with a guy?"

"Sixteen?"

"Eleven." A wistful smile. Like he was remembering one particular bittersweet crush. The first one. "Know when I came out?"

"When?"

"Seven years later. All those years while other kids my age were playing spin the bottle and seven minutes in heaven in the dark walk-in closets, bragging about getting to first base, second base, bragging or lying about losing their virginity, I made up pretend crushes on girls, sometimes causing tragedies of Shakespearean proportions until I learned to invent crushes on imaginary girls I'd met at a summer camp no one else had gone to, other schools."

"Yeah. But I'm not eleven years old."

"I'm not convinced it's any easier at twenty-six. Sure, it's a little easier now because there's a huge community of queer people. But I know how hard it is to face the idea of telling your friends, your parents, all the people who have an image of you as a straight guy who's probably going to put a ring on some girl's finger someday and make a couple babies, that maybe instead you're going to live with or marry a guy." For once, he blushed. "Or even just fuck one now and then. So, yeah, of course I wish we lived in a world where no one would feel embarrassed for being gay or bi or queer in whatever way, or even having people think it regardless of whether it's true. But that's not the world we're in. So I get it."

"Getting it's one thing. Putting up with it on the daily with the guy—a guy—you're sleeping with is something else."

"You're right. And I can already sense that the longer this thing between us lasts and the closer we get, the harder keeping it a secret it will be, emotionally, psychologically. But we're brand new. And unless you know something I don't, we haven't even figured out what this is, exactly. Which is fine. Unless it isn't."

I laughed. "You lost me."

"I don't need to know exactly what this is, unless you do. It's another question that cropped up at the party that night. Or maybe it's an extension of the jealousy question."

"Are you asking me if this is going somewhere?" I said in a voice that was more playful than I felt.

"I think it'll go where it's going, regardless of what we think or tell each other right now. What I guess I'd like to know is whether you have an expectation or desire for monogamy."

"Oh." Even in my own mind I'd dodged this question a hundred times since the first time I'd spent the night with him. "I don't know. Do you?"

"Well, like I said, this goes back to the jealousy issue. I like what you and I have. I'd be sad to lose it. But short of you deciding you didn't want to be with me anymore, you wanting to fuck someone else wouldn't hurt me. But I get the feeling you don't feel the same way."

"I'm starting to feel like the greedy boy who wants to keep his cake and eat it too."

"Because you want more freedom for yourself than you'd like me to have?"

"No—ha, well, maybe—but no, not really. I mean because I feel so possessive when I won't even be open about what's going on between us."

"We can put that whole thing aside. Really. I don't need to parade around holding hands. I'm a pretty private person. Or, as one or two people have put it, I'm rather guarded. Things that are precious to me, I tend to keep to myself. I guess that ties in to why I like being physical with you upstairs more than down here, where anyone and everyone roams around three nights a week."

"As long as me being 'closeted' (I couldn't keep the implied quotes out of my voice) isn't hurting your feelings. Or making you feel like I'm, I don't know, less into you than I am."




Switch Ch. 03



"You're not hurting my feelings. And I promise you I'm not gauging how important I am to you by how we are when there are a hundred other people around. Or even just the rest of your band." We nuzzled, kissed, nuzzled a little longer. "But you do still have to answer my million-dollar question about your feelings about monogamy. Like I said, I'm not jealous. And given that you might not feel like you're getting all your needs met just by me, maybe we should keep it open. So you can be with women," he added in an adorably sheepish way that was totally incongruous with his manner throughout the rest of our talk. "On the other hand, being a promiscuous slut is pretty played out for me, so—especially in the short term while we're figuring our relationship out—I won't feel deprived if I'm not sleeping around. I just need to know what you want so I don't do anything that would hurt you. Or hurt us."

"I guess . . ." I don't know why it seemed impossible to say it. 

Dario leaned in, planted a few soft kisses along my temple. Gave me a sweet smile. "You guess what, baby?"

I cleared my throat. "I guess . . . this thing with you is new and intense. And as my freakout at the party clearly demonstrated, I don't quite have a handle on my feelings. For me, I guess, fooling around with anyone else would just confuse me even more."

"So, no kissing Joe Burke or Melissa, for either of us?"

I laughed. "Deal."

"Deal. Which means this weekend, you can feel safe and know that if you see me talking to Alex or Burke, you don't have to worry about finding me in a dark corner or upstairs doing anything more than smoking a bowl or droning on endlessly. And if you change your mind, just come and talk to me about it."

"Okay."

"Anything else you think we should talk about?" I must have grimaced or something at the idea of any more discussion because Dario laughed and said, "Then for fuck's sake, can we please go upstairs and screw until we pass out?"

"God. Yes."

Dario leaned in and whispered in a throaty voice that went straight to my cock, "But tomorrow night, we're going to have a talk about bondage."

On the bed. Naked. Kissing. Up on our knees, chest-to-chest, belly to belly. Dario drawing back. Smiling.

I told him, "You look like you're gloating over a secret."

He laughed. "You're too good at reading me."

"But I can't read what the secret is."

"Good. Life's dull without surprises. What's your favorite color?"

I laughed. "Red." 

Then he pushed me down on the mattress and straddled me, pinning my wrists over my head. The kiss he gave me then drove a surge of blood to my cock, and soon he had me writhing under him. I wanted to pull him closer against me, I wanted to grab his ass, I wanted to slide my hand between us and stroke him, but he didn't let go of my wrists when I tried to move. Instead, his grip tightened and he extended his arms, stretched his torso, until my arms were pulled taut over my head, almost to the point of discomfort.

He put his mouth close to my ear and purred, "I changed my mind."

"About what?" I tried to sound playful, though I was suddenly feeling thrown off and nervous.

"About waiting until tomorrow night to talk about bondage. Also, I changed my mind about talking about it."

I laughed. "Dario, I'm not sure . . ."

"Not sure? About what?"

"Not sure I'm ready. Not sure I want to do that."

"What's your favorite color?"

"What? I already told you," I said, my voice high and tight and weird. I tried again to pull my wrists out of his grip, but he held tight.

"Tell me again."

"Red." I huffed, adrenaline making me shake, making my heart race.

I flexed against his grip, half testing his strength, half testing my fear. He didn't let go. He kissed me, very softly. Then looked at me with that gaze that made me feel like our souls were touching. Then kissed me again, softly, and when I gave in to his gentle warmth and kissed him back, he came at me more hungrily, a deep, possessive kiss, and something about being pinned like that, my torso stretching, straining, made the sensation of his body sliding against mine feel absolutely exquisite, and the want flooding my body pushed away that anxious uncertainty his grip had provoked.

But then he started flexing and shifting and using his legs he pushed mine apart, got his hips between my thighs. I felt his hard cock against my belly, brushing against my dick as he writhed over me, kissing me deeply, but slowly. Then he drew back and gazed down at me. Reading me. When he reached for the drawer, when he grabbed the bottle of lube I tried to pull my wrists free of his one hand, but somehow I hadn't noticed he'd done something with the sheet, twisted it around my wrists and hands. He'd done it so quickly and furtively I figured it would be easy to twist and flex my arms and hands a little and get myself free, but no.

"Dario. I really can't move."

He grinned. "I know." He said it as if I'd told him that dogs can't fly. "What's your favorite color?"

"Dario . . ."

Soft kiss. "Be a good boy, and tell me one last time."

"Red." 

I felt weirdly vulnerable. Something beyond the physical restraint of not being able to move my arms. Like something was happening that I couldn't control, not with my body, not with words. Like things were simply happening to me regardless of anything I might think or feel, and Dario lubed up his swollen cock, taking his time about it, enjoying stroking himself with one hand while he held me down with the other, enjoying watching me watch his hand slide over the glistening length of his shaft, the gleaming, rosy crown of his cock. Then he got more lube and slipped his fingers between my ass cheeks.

My voice cranked up with panic now I pleaded, "Dario, not like this."

Another bemused grin. "There's one word you can say to make me let go of your wrists. One word, if you want me to stop anything I'm doing. But only that one word. So, you can tell me no, you can tell me you're scared, tell me it's too much, too hard. You can even cry, and I'll keep going. But if you say the one word, I'll stop that second."

"What word?" I asked, starting to really freak out.

"What do you think?"

In my panic it took me a couple moments for my mind to calm enough to come up with the obvious. "Red?"

"Yes. You won't forget it, will you?"

"No."

"Good. But only use it if you really want to stop things."

Then he shifted and flexed and slid his greased-up cock between my ass cheeks.

"Dario," I practically yelped.

"I didn't put on a condom. Do you think I'm going to fuck you bareback?"

"No."

Holding me down, holding my gaze, Dario started writhing over me, and his cock slid back into the cleft of my ass, then forward, nudging against my balls before it slid back again, Dario sighing, groaning as he used his legs to force me to splay open even wider. Nervous as I was, I was rock hard. Aching. But he didn't touch my cock. For once, he seemed totally focused on his own pleasure, the slippery sliding and chafing of his cock nestled into that narrow crevice, him hovering over me, pumping his hips as if he were fucking me. Then he stopped, and settled the weight of his body down on top of me to keep me pinned while he reached overhead and—I realized after a moment—fasten the sheet binding my wrists to the headboard. Then he reached back into the drawer, fished around for a few seconds, my mind riffling through remembered or invented images of toy after phallic toy, all of them thicker and longer than the two fingers he'd put up my ass on a few occasions, a couple of them larger than any cock I'd ever seen, terrifying proportions of length and girth. The one he seized and held up for my appraisal while his gaze locked on my expression was somewhere in the mid-range. Smaller than Dario's cock, but definitely bigger than those two fingers I'd let him fuck me with. 

Dario got a glob of lube in his hand, then watching me watch, greased up the dildo. Lying there, holding that little three-letter word ready on my tongue, I watch him set the dildo on the nightstand, then flash an aroused grin before he took hold of my hips and with no apparent effort, lifted me and put me on my belly. I don't know why, but that drove my panic through the ceiling. Being face-down, not able to easily see what he was doing, not being able to read my safety in his gaze, all of a sudden I felt abandoned, helpless. Honestly, terrified. Then he was hoisting my hips up and wedging a pillow, two pillows under me, in a low, aroused growl by my ear, said, "Be a good boy and present for me." Then one hand on the small of my back, gently but irrefutably pressing down, and one hand—I can't describe how possessive this felt—cupped my balls and part of my cock, and lifted, making me raise my ass up in the air. "Yes. Fuck. Just that that," he purred, sounding like his arousal was escalating with my embarrassment and fear. "Don't hide in the pillow like that, baby. Turn your face to the side. Good. Now I can watch you, see what you're feeling while I fuck you."

My heart was hammering so hard I could barely breathe.

"With your ass up in the air like that, you look like you're absolutely begging for it." His hands on my cheeks, spreading me. My face burning hot. "Fuck, I love how you blush for me, baby." That he said softly, that note of tenderness he used with me in our most intimate, connected moments, and some of my terror drained away. Then I felt him shift against me, and then the cool, moist touch of something against my hole. "I'm going to push it in. Just a little," he said. First, there was just more pressure there. Then an insistent sort of nudging. But then that slick blunt thing was pushing more and more urgently, and I felt my body yield and dilate for it. Be good, baby. Bear down a little like I taught you." I did as he'd told me, and little by little I felt the phallus prying me open and burrowing into me. 

"How does that feel, baby?"

Unfiltered honesty. "It feels big," a said, my words tinged by a note of alarm.

"Mmmm." He sounded so fucking aroused. "I thought you deserved better than two paltry fingers," and he slid it deeper into me, making me whimper in revived panic, and the weird, alarming feeling of being stretched so tight and filled up so full. 

"No more, no more," I pleaded. 

"But baby, that's less than half." That couldn't possibly be true. Or I was deformed in some way, if other people's assholes could swallow twice what he'd pushed up inside of me so far. "I'm going to push it in another inch."

"No, don't."

"You can tell me if it hurts, but it's not going to," he said in his caressing voice, and in the middle of my whimpering little protest I felt that incredible, strange fullness extending up inside of me as he pushed the cock in his hand further up my ass. "See," he said, "that didn't hurt. Did it?"

I was trying to breathe.

"Tell me, baby."

"No."

"I think you can take the rest. Don't fight it, hmmm? Relax, and bear down a little again for me."

"Wait, wait, wait," I pleaded, my voice escalating with my panic, but that cock was driving into me, dilating my asshole, stretching me, filling me as I panted and clawed at the sheet with my toes. 

He sighed. "Fuck, baby. Fuck, you can't imagine what you do to me, blushing and writhing like that while you take it." He bent over me, combed his fingers through the hair above my ear. Kissed my temple, my cheek, the corner of my mouth. "Let's see how you like being fucked. Just a little, just gently to start."

Not waiting for an answer, he moved the phallus buried in my ass, drawing it slowly out against the clinging grasp of my body, and a euphoric relief poured through me, but before I'd even caught my breath Dario was driving it back up inside me, slowly, but unhaltingly, inch after inch until I felt his hand brush up against my balls. Two more slow, deep strokes, and little by little the fear that I was going to tear, that the hard thing tunneling into me was going to hurt me, subsided. "That's right," he purred. "I knew you could take it all." His warm hand caressing my ass. "Now, you're going to have to help me, because with the dildo in your ass instead of my fingers, I can't feel your anatomy the same way. You you have to tell me when you feel that pressure on your prostate. Can you do that for me?"

When I didn't answer, he asked me again and I nodded my head, and then he started moving that man-made cock gently and slowly in and out, changing the angle slightly every few strokes until I let out a startled grunt.

"Did I get the spot?"

"Yeah. I think."

He nudged the tip of the dildo upward a couple more times, knocking a couple guttural groans out of me. "Mmmm. There it is, hmmm?" Then he said, "You haven't forgotten your favorite color, have you?"

A strained, embarrassed little, "No."

"Good. Then you want me to keep fucking you." All earnest arousal. His hot hand still planted firmly on my ass, he got to fucking me for real, not long hard strokes, but little pulsing thrusts that bumped up against that knot of nerves inside of me each time, and in no time I was trembling, toes clawing and burrowing out of maddening, needful, but overwhelming, uncomfortable pleasure now, instead of fear. I was waiting, praying, writhing for that hand on my ass to slip around and take hold of my cock, and when I saw Dario grab the bottle of lube I was sure he'd barely have the chance to stroke me for a minute or two before I'd come (unless he decided to torment me, dragging it out, making me beg). But his hand didn't wrap around my cock. His hand didn't land on my ass again. But I felt him moving. I heard the rhythmic, sticky chafing sound of him jerking off. 

"I imagine how hard and ruddy that beautiful cock of yours must be," he growled. "Does it ache?"

"Yes. Fuck," I groaned, hoping he'd take pity on me.

"And is this still the place? Hmmm?" He drove the dildo into my asshole. A sudden, brutal jolt of pleasure knocked a quivering whimper from the bottom of my lungs. "There, baby? There?" He pumped my ass full again, again, and I writhed and strained against the twisted rope of sheet holding me fast, pulling me taut while that wet smacking sound of Dario stroking his cock tormented me with need, with envy. The longer he kept at me with the dildo, the more intense and strange that cruel pleasure felt, until I was trying to wiggle away from it because it felt like I was going to lose control of my body in some way, I didn't know how, but it worried me, it embarrassed me, it scared me. 

"Wait. Wait!"

Dario slowed that pulsing penetration, but didn't pause even for a second.

"What is it, baby?"

"It feels strange. Maybe I don't like it."

Soft laughter. "Maybe? Don't be shy. Give in for me."

If anything, he started fucking me harder, and with every deep thrust of the cock he was driving into my ass, I was crying out, now. Defenseless cries of submission to whatever was happening to me.

"Fuck, yes," his groan mingled with the sticky sound of his fist riding up and down his cock. "I love hearing you, baby," his voice had changed, tight with strain, "the way you cry out for it." Then the cock buried in my ass stilled, and Dario let out a desperate wail of pleasure, of release, and I felt a warm wet splatter on my ass as he ejaculated, the warm creeping tickle of his spunk slinking down my thigh. "Oh, fuck," he groaned. Panting. "Fuck." Then his hand was back on my ass, caressing, and the dildo slid into me, slow, deep, nudged at that magic spot, insistently, until I grunted and shuddered.

"Baby, I wish you could see yourself, ass in the air, my come running down your thigh, you panting and grunting and writhing while I ream your hole."

"Please," I almost sobbed. "Please, I need to come."

"Do you, baby?" He pulsed up against that spot again, again, and I whimpered, dying to feel his fingers wrap around my excruciatingly hard cock and jerk me off. Instead of grabbing my cock, his hand slid up my back to the nape of my neck and pressed down, just hard enough that I suddenly felt utterly immobilized, unable to shift my shoulders or move my head, and just then he started fucking my ass hard, fast, ramming against that spot over and over again, and my shuddering body suddenly spasmed violently, and I was coming hard. Like no orgasm I'd ever had, not even with Dario's fingers up my ass, and I was gasping, wailing, collapsing on the bed as I lost all strength in my legs, all control over my body.

Lying there trembling, my heart hammering, I felt Dario gently slide the dildo out of my ass, then was vaguely aware of him touching my hands. He'd untied me, because then he was pulling me into his arms, cradling me against his chest. Stroking and kissing my hair. Trailing his fingertips lightly up and down the length of my back. For a long time he was quiet while he held me. Finally he asked, his voice quiet, warm, "You're alright?"

I think I laughed. But weakly because I still felt limp. Drained. "I'm alright. Exhausted. Perplexed, but fine." Then I revised. "Wonderful. I think I feel wonderful."

He sighed contentedly, or it was a sigh of relief, and hugged me tighter and kissed my forehead.

"I didn't know that was possible."

"Hmmm?" He sounded sleepy.

"I came."

"That was the idea."

"But you didn't touch my cock."

A drowsy little laugh. "It's a different feeling, isn't it?"

"Understatement of the day."

He stirred, kissed my cheek. "Before we drift off." He hopped out of bed and I heard the water come on in the bathroom. He came back with a wet washcloth that was warm on my skin, and I realized he was washing his cum off the back of my thigh and my ass.

"You dirty boy," I teased him when he got back in bed.

"Me? You're the one who planted that idea in my head."

"When?"

"Your fantasy about the girl you lick clean."

"The washcloth is cheating, don't you think?"

"Touché. To be fair, I was busy giving you a life-force draining orgasm. Next time, I promise to come all over your cock and balls and to slowly, meticulously lick and suck you clean." If I'd been any less exhausted, that image and the way Dario said it would have gotten me hard again.

"So, was that my bondage tutorial?" I asked.

"The first of many, I hope."

"Dario? Can I ask you something?"

"Always. Anything." Our ritual.

The night I tried to tie you to the headboard . . ."

"Yes?" He sounded strange. Guarded.

"I'm not saying I don't understand why you were upset. But, was there something else going on with you that night? You just seemed so scared. Maybe more scared than I'd expect, in retrospect, since the cuffs are yours and you have experience with that kind of thing, and I don't think you've ever had reason to feel afraid of me before?"

He was silent for a long time, so long that I got more and more nervous about what he was about to tell me. Finally he said, "I don't know. It was a weird night. I was asleep, confused. I guess everything just came together in a bad way for me at that moment." 

I don't know why, but I didn't believe him.

The next time we were in bed together, I asked him to teach me how to hit the magic spot while I was fucking him. It turned into a deliciously long tutorial, starting with putting my fingers up his ass, him talking me through everything with endearing patience and, eventually, a huge boner and a lot of delicious sighs, and finally a marathon fucking session, with partial success as far as the G-spot goal. A strong first effort, he promised with smiles and kisses after I'd finally taken pity on him and stroked him to climax while I fucked him.