Goldilocks and His Three Bears (3 page)

“See, I knew you were smart.”

Brian shrugged. “I did meet one guy... ”
Oh. Ouch
. He'd thought maybe that ache had regressed a bit but there it was, sharp and new under the pleasantly stoned feeling.

“And?”

“He left.” Brian's voice sounded way too old and bitter for his age, he figured.

A big warm hand on his shoulder. Fingers gently digging in. Kneading a bit.

“You're gonna be okay, kid.”

“You think?”

“I know,” said Jim, all growly and sweet. “You have my personal guarantee. And I'll kick anybody's ass who says otherwise.”

Brian snorted. “Momma Bear says.”

“You got that right.” That big hand rubbed and kneaded down Brian's back. “So. You wanna fuck?”

They clambered into the back, into the familiar smell of sandalwood and Jim's earthy odor and leather. Brian hadn't noticed the ropes and things before. He handled one nervously. “Should I be worried?”

“Oh,” Jim smiled sheepishly. “No. You don't have to. I... like... ”

“Ah.” The man liked to tie them up. Well, Brian was young, but he wasn't naive. “Don't know about that, but how about... ” Brian gripped the seat back and laid the ropes over his wrists so it would look like they were tied. He heard Jim inhale.

“Okay,” said Jim, his voice a little tight.

Jim tugged at Brian's pants, and soon that thick cock was working itself slowly into his hole. A whole lotta lube and gentle care later, and the whole van was rocking on its wheels up there on the mountaintop while Brian squealed like a happy stuck pig and Jim howled.

Then Jim drove him down to Mel's and stuffed him with burgers and a milkshake and drove a fat, sated Brian back to his apartment.

“See yah,” said Jim, giving him a big sloppy kiss across the gear stick. He held Brian's face in a big paw for a second before Brian climbed out of the cab. “You're special, kid. Remember that.”

Brian gazed into those molasses-colored eyes and almost really believed him.

Brian got a little wacky about white vans for a while after that. Jim would seem to appear out of nowhere, that old van rumbling down the boulevard and that horn tootling its
Charge
tune. They'd been humping like happy bunnies in the back of the van off and on for weeks it seemed, when Jim decided to take Brian home.

Fuck if it wasn't a certain bungalow a couple blocks from Melrose.

“My roommates are out of town,” said Jim. “I rent from this great guy who sells Harleys up north. He's been gone for weeks.”

Brian had seen Jim's bedroom from the door before, but he hadn't realized that the partition in the back corner with the weirdly glowing blue light behind it was actually a small forest of marijuana. Jim tipped a long-nosed watering can over a pot plant that was almost as tall and wide as he was.

“Gets too damned quiet here, most times,” he said.

Brian was feeling a combination of guilt and sorrow. It wasn't like he and Paul were a thing or anything. And he hadn't had a phone call or a postcard or anything in the past few weeks. It was just, this was Paul's place. His roommate.

But then Jim was taking off his big beaten cowboy hat and smiling at him in that happy, gentle way of his and playing with his beard and he looked so huggable and sweet...

It wasn't like he and Paul were a
thing
or anything. Several months, he'd said. And he hadn't said much else.

Jim had a heated water bed, and he laid Brian down on it and stripped him slowly, taking the time to kiss his toes, his ankles, the insteps of his feet.

Brian giggled, then arched and hissed as Jim's mouth traveled up his calves and licked a line to his balls.

“Hey.” Jim's beard tickled Brian's face when he looked down at him. All the man's warm heat lay on top of him, the water bed giving, easy and plush and warm beneath him. Brian felt like a melted-cheese sandwich.

“Mmm,” said Brian.

“Can I ask you something?” said Jim, nuzzling at Brian's ear.

“Sure.”

“Would you let me shave you?”

And so it was that Brian sat on the toilet seat, legs spread and balls held carefully in Jim's big hands. A razor blade barely touching them.

“You sure you aren't high?”

Brian trusted Jim. He totally did. He'd never met a gentler, kinder, more trustworthy guy in his whole life. But this? Was a little scary.

“I'm sure, man. You don't want me to do this, though... I won't.” And Jim sat back, withdrawing that cold steel and rinsing the shaving gel off it in the sink.

“N-n-no. No, its okay.” Actually, it was a little hot. It was intimate, strange— and it made him feel vulnerable. “Do it.”

Then there was the soft scrape-scrape. It didn't even sting. Brian breathed and felt the whisper of hair falling against his skin, and then Jim was leaning over and blowing softly and Brian's toes fucking curled.

“Oh. Oh crap.”

“Feels good?” Jim's eyes twinkled up at him.

“Feels fucking amazing, man.” Brian looked down. Oh God, look at him. Getting hard now, standing up tall and proud and naked as a jaybird. His cock looked longer. Sexier. And every wisp of air was like a touch. Jim leaned over and blew a line around his cock and balls again, and Brian had to grip the toilet seat with both hands.

“Gonna fucking shoot, Momma Bear.”

“Not yet.” Jim stood, brushing pubes from his chest and legs, and held out his hand to help Brian up. “Let's go back to bed.”

Back to the warm bed, with its velvety deep brown coverlet, and Jim lit candles while Brian lay on the bed, arms in the Velcro wristbands and tied to the headboard.

He writhed, trying to find a way to rub his cock between his own legs. “I'm dyin’ here, man.”

Jim took pity on him right away and crawled back onto the bed, kissing his knees, his calves. Then something brushed Brian's balls. Something complicated and tickling, and his legs would have curled upward but Jim was holding them.

“What was that?”

“Mmm.” Jim flourished a peacock feather.

“Oh God, man. You're gonna kill me.”

But of course, Jim would never torture him long and only brushed the feather up and down Brian's oversensitized groin a couple of times before taking his cock into that hot mouth and letting saliva coat it. Jim's tongue moved around and under and over, like a fucking anaconda.

Brian started to whimper and twist against his restraints immediately. “Gonna shoot, Momma. Get a glove.”

Jim stopped. “Not yet.” Gently he pushed back Brian's legs, his own cock right there. That thick presence always stretched Brian so much, and Jim pressed in, slow and sure and didn't let up. Slick and the condom making it a little easier, but he stretched Brian so wide... so wide.

And then he stroked him with that damned feather.

“Oh! Babe!” Brian jerked, shooting across Jim's chest. His lover bowed over like he was praying, jerked a couple times, eyes closed in concentration. Then he leaned over and wrapped himself around Brian.

“That was good,” said Jim. He sounded dozy.

“Wait, man” laughed Brian. “Untie me first.”

And good thing he asked because seconds after he'd untied him, Jim was asleep on the bed. Like a fucking hibernating bear.

“More bacon?”

Brian's belly was a perfectly round bulge sticking out above his boxer briefs. He patted it. “Can't eat another bite, man.”

Jim shoveled the rest of the bacon onto his own plate, poured more maple syrup over it.

They'd had pancakes made from scratch, fresh-squeezed orange juice, scrambled eggs. Brian sighed in utter contentment and lay back in the chair, spreading his arms and legs so his body would have more room to pack all those calories somewhere.

Jim looked up from his plate. Pretty brown eyes perusing Brian's torso.

Brian relaxed and let him look. God, he felt good. Dopey, relaxed, completely safe and warm despite the fact that he was sitting practically naked in another man's kitchen. With Jim he felt at home.

Jim finished every bit of food on his plate and set down his fork. “Brian, we need to talk,” he said.

Brian stiffened so quickly he almost got a cramp. Well crap, he'd thought things were going so well...

“I have to go,” said Jim. The way he said it was like it wasn't a good thing or a bad thing. It just was. “And I wondered if... if you wouldn't mind watering my plants while I'm gone?”

He stood and went to a kitchen drawer and produced a little key on a KEEP ON TRUCKING key ring.

Jim looked shy as he pressed the key into Brian's palm. The inscribed rubber tab was soft with age, like this old hippy bear had been carrying it around with him forever. Brian felt that this simple request was somehow momentous for Jim.

“Of course,” he said. He took the keys from Jim's warm hand. “How long you gonna be gone, man?”

Jim looked up at some distant point in space. Like he saw visions or something. “I don't know,” he said vaguely.

So after a couple weeks of seeing white vans everywhere he looked, patiently watering the small forest of marijuana plants in the enormous empty house, and comparing every leather clad dude at the Faultline to his recent beaus and finding them sorely lacking, Brian was starting to feel seriously sorry for himself. You can't take a guy from mind-blowing sex almost every night to nothing, just like that, and not expect a little withdrawal.

He was moping, which was dumb. So he did some chores, went to the grocery store. And that was where it all went south. If he had to defend himself in a court of law he would have pleaded the Twinkie defense.

His sugar jones was a monkey on his back that Brian usually managed to resist. He didn't walk down the cookie aisle, and he avoided the baked goods department. But he was standing in line at the checkout, with a cart full of healthy fruits and vegetables and protein— and there, practically jumping into his cart, was a two-for-one on family packs of Twinkies.

Twinkies, man. Food of the gods.

He told himself he'd only eat one, but he knew he was lying. He finished three on the walk back to his apartment, another before he'd even put away the rest of the groceries. By the time he'd finished the twelfth Twinkie, he was bouncing off the walls, out of the apartment and up those two blocks to the empty bungalow.

Well, he'd water the plants. The whole place still smelled of Momma and bacon, and Brian bounced off walls in there for a while when he heard the roar and crank of a truck out on the quiet street and parted the kitchen curtains to see out.

There was big, shiny red and chrome rig parked in front.

At this point, Brian told himself in retrospect, He Should Have Known Better.

Your Honor, the Twinkies made me do it.

Bounce bounce bounce
. “Hi!” he said brightly to the man who came through the front door.

Wow. Only about five feet seven but built; the man was a fucking boulder standing there in front of him. Pretty, honey-colored eyes below straw-colored eyebrows. The man grinned, his tanned face full of white teeth.

“Well, hi yerself, Goldilocks. You sure don't resemble either one of my roommates.”

His voice was growly and musical, with a touch of twang. He sounded like a country song.

Brian bounced, tossing those golden locks playfully.

“I'm Brian,” he said. “I'm watering the plants.”

“Scott.” And Brian was presented a nicely shaped bronzed hand. “You a friend of Jim's then?”

Brian clasped that hand, grinning, Twinkies in his toes making him bounce and wriggle. “Yes.”
Bounce bounce
. “That your truck?”
Bounce.

Scott laughed. “That's my baby. My lover, my home, my partner in crime.” He sighed. “But it's been a long trip, and I'm happy to be back. Say, sugar, would you mind helping me bring in some gear?”

And that was how Brian ended up in the kitchen of the bungalow with the third roommate, sharing a beer.

Scott was friendly and seemed to have no personal space at all. He wrestled an empty beer bottle out of Brian's hand, getting a good pinch at Brian's butt in the process. He gave Brian another beer and caressed Brian's arm, letting his hand linger.

Brian giggled when a stubby finger found a tickly spot on his waist.

“'Jes’ tell me if I'm botherin’ you,” said Scott. Pretty honey-colored eyes blinking at him.

“N-n-no.” Brian wasn't bothered. Brian was horny and bouncy.

“Good.” Scott growled and moved right on in, grinning and crooning in that gravelly voice, his hands everywhere, squeezing and finding good places to tug. “Oooh looky,” he chortled, finding and playing boldly with Brian's cock.

Brian's brain did a swirly whirly, and his cock tried to poke a hole through his jeans.

“You've got nice hands,” he said.

Scott gave him a crinkly smile and a little pinch. “All the boys tell me so, sweetie. So. I know it's sudden, but I've been on the road for months, and I ain't had anything touch my ass but vinyl upholstery in too long. You want to take this to the bedroom?”

“Sure.”

And there they were. Scott was like a cuddly, growly pug dog in bed. Slobbering all over Brian's cock like it was candy, pushing Brian to the edge so fast that when he handed Brian a condom and rolled over, presenting that hard, perfect, round butt to him, Brian's brains about blew a gasket.

And that was the honest truth, Your Honor.

Brian wasn't sure how to handle the Scott situation. The man gave him a happy pinch on the bottom and a “thanks darlin'” and let him out the front door without a backward glance. The next day, when Brian came to water the plants, Scott was nowhere to be seen.

He was leaving, locking the front door, when he was tackled from behind.

Okay, so he'd quit those karate classes before he'd made any kind of belt of any color, but he tried to defend himself.

“Hey! Shit, sugar, that's a valuable part there!”

Oh. “I'm sorry, Scott,” said Brian from beneath the pile of man flesh. “I thought you were a masher.”

“Oh, honey, I am,” growled Scott against his ear. His fingers went to naughty places like they could see in the dark.