Head 01 Hot Head (35 page)

What are we waiting for?

“Couldn’t hear you but I figured you said yes.” Dante stepped over his extended legs and planted a bottle on the table in front of him, waiting for him to reach for it. Griff laughed and gave in, clinking the beers together. Dante stared intently at him, but not at his face; actualy he hadn’t looked at Griff’s face beyond the minimum for the past half hour.

At first, Griff had thought he was being paranoid, but Dante kept watching his hands as he popped open a beer, as he drank, as he cut bread, as he speared

pasta with a fork.

When they had eaten, he’d thought Dante was not paying attention to him, but al the attention was on his meaty paws. Dante didn’t even seem to be aware

of it, but he seemed hypnotized by Griff’s scarred hands, the wide knuckles, the faint coppery hair at the wrist.

File that away for no good reason
. Just to test, Griff reached for the remote and Dante honest-to-Christ blushed and looked somewhere else and pretended to scratch his bals.

He’s got wood in his sweats
.
From my hands?
Then Griff had to look somewhere else. He hid behind his ziti. Mrs. Anastagio had taught her middle son to cook al right.

See, as it happened, for some reason Griff’s major bone of contention tonight was Dante’s waist and lower back—not his crotch or ass, but that long line of

muscle that stretched from his ribs into his pants. He’d never noticed it particularly before, but that lean midriff kept drawing his eye. Dante would twist to reach for something behind the couch and his shirt would ride up. Dante crouched in front of the fridge digging out ziti to throw in the oven. Dante leaning forward to get his beer off the coffee table. Dante stretching before he got up to take a piss and showing that thin perfect line of crisp hair leading to….

What the hell am I doing?

Dante seemed unaware. Griff had to keep swalowing because he kept salivating at the sight of it. The thought of putting his hands on Dante’s waist, of

pushing the sweats down. Of getting on his knees between those bare feet and begging, and worse.

Al night they pretended that nothing was strange, that they hadn’t touched each other, that they were just two firefighters getting together for leftovers and pussy jokes and the game. Fat chance. Memories from that afternoon in front of the camera floated in the air between them so clearly that sometimes Griff knew exactly the memory they were trying not to share. Even in Dante’s house, the hours at HotHead.com kept surfacing around them.

Dante was rigid. Whatever Mr. Anastagio had said to him, it wasn’t going away.

Sitting on the couch to pretend to watch the game was a sharp echo of them, hairy thigh-to-thigh, polishing their boners in tandem. Or Dante joking as he

reached over to swipe the grease.
Dante turned to ask a question, and Griff saw him on his side tugging back the rosy foreskin with a wink. Maybe they were both remembering Dante sliding to his knees on the carpet, looking up at Griff like he was asking permission.
Please, sir, may I choke on your bone?
Now everything echoed between them and dragged the porn front and center.

They’d forgotten how to be normal. Every movement felt like the last time they’d be in a room together. Griff felt like jerking off and puking both.

Griff had snuck looks at Dante before tonight, but after shooting that last crazy blowjob scene, he knew exactly what he was looking at and what was hidden.

They both did. He could smel Dante’s skin. He could hear those sounds. He knew his responses in this whole other way.

For the first time in his life he understood why the Bible caled sex “knowing.” Everything was different. Now he
knew
Dante. He’d known Dante. And

wonder of wonders, Dante had known him right back. They couldn’t forget, only they didn’t know how to deal with the knowing. Yet.

Somehow it was worse sitting on
this
couch because he couldn’t begin to count the number of nights he’d crashed here or laughed here or smacked Dante’s head or confessed some embarrassing date story. It felt like getting a boner in church, definitely dirty—but horny-dirty, not shower-dirty. He shifted his rampant boner and tugged his shirt lower to cover.

At times during the game, it almost felt like Dante was flirting with him, but he seemed so panicked that Griff realized that Dante was working up to the

confrontation his dad had suggested.

By halftime, with a series of invisible, incremental shifts, they had managed to wind up pressed leg to leg on the couch facing the game. Griff wasn’t watching anyone on TV. He was nursing his beer and keeping his shit together so Dante could say whatever it was he was working up to.

Dante muted the halftime idiots. “Look. Uh. I wanna talk about something.”

Here it comes.

Griff shrugged and kept his eyes facing forward, fake casual. “You good with bils now?”

“That’s not what I meant. I need to ask you something.” Dante scratched his head hard, and his hair stood up in a crazy wavy crest.

Griff resisted the urge to reach over and smooth it down. A month ago he would have. This sucked. “It didn’t mean anything. I’ve gotten blown before, D.

We’re fine.”

“Not the porn.” Dante was trying to drag the conversation with his father into the light.

“Dante, you’re like my brother. But that’s why we did it. Problem solved.” Griff pushed further. “Nothing’s different. I’m no different than I was.”

“I don’t know. C’mon, Griff. I got you off. I sucked your dick. That was fucking freaky. I’m a little freaked out. You’re not?”

“Stop. I don’t wanna think about it.”

“I do.” Dante picked at the label on his bottle; his face was creased like he was trying to translate something from Chinese. He tilted his head and took a sip, meeting Griff’s eyes for only a second. “Think about it. I’ve thought about it al week, I mean. You haven’t?”

“No! I mean yes, but we don’t need to think about it. I’m good.” Griffin could feel the blush heating his cheeks and ears.

“You didn’t seem to have trouble getting your nut.” Dante frowned and looked offended.

Griff turned to lean on the arm of the couch, putting space between them. “What is this?”

How did his dad find out?

“We’re best buddies. The best. You don’t hate me.” Dante’s worry was in his eyes and his hands and his clenched muscles.

“No! No. I couldn’t, D. If you’re good, I’m good. I just didn’t want you to get mixed up in… al that.” Griff tried to angle himself so he could see Dante’s

eyes. “I mean that you’re more than what you look like. A ripped body. If we gotta ditch the department, you got options. I mean, if people have found out that we

—”

“They won’t. They haven’t. Listen….”

Wait. What?

Griff felt like he’d been smacked in the head with a cartoon shovel.
Doy-yoy-yoing!
“I thought someone had seen us. Online.”

“Nah. No! That’s not what I’m saying, dumbass. Wil you look at me?”

“I heard you talking with your dad.”

Dante squenched his face and tried to recal when that could….

“When you were walpapering. You were talking about me.”

“Oh.”

“And before anything, I need to tel you….” Griff’s voice stopped in his throat and he looked down.

Dante’s swarthy hand was on his leg, squeezing him high up near his bals and the obvious bulge pushing at the seam. It felt so good that a groan slipped out

of him before he tried to take the hand away.

Griff pressed as far back into the couch as he could.

“Don’t be afraid.” In one fluid movement, Dante swung onto his knees on the couch over Griff, straddling him.

“The fuck are you doing?” The butterflies in Griff’s stomach had become pterodactyls, but he couldn’t push Dante away. He was afraid to reach up for fear

he’d pul his best friend down and taste him.

“I keep thinking about it, G. ’S’funny. I tried not to think about it while we were there. But now I sort of see you differently. Or I see you, period, like I hadn’t before. I feel you there. I’ve been having these feelings and I never thought you’d… I never did nothing like that or thought it was possible, but now I do. I am. Thinking about it al the time.” Dante picked at a scorched hole on the arm of the couch. “Not like I’m queer, but it kinda felt better than anything.”

“This is a bad idea.”

“I don’t have bad ideas.” Dante shook his head, petting Griff firmly through his shirt.

Everything’s a fucking joke.
“I want to talk to you about real stuff. Important stuff. I need to explain—”

Dante pushed his perfect hard ass right onto Griff’s heavy cannon through their sweats.

Griff gasped, pinned under his best friend’s tight body. “We’ve already done this.”

“That was bulshit for the website. This is just us. I want to know for real.” Dante’s lips were brushing against his neck, feathery soft.

Griff’s hair stood on end and he shivered. Was this a test? Some kind of weird hetero pity-fuck? Like Dante knew how his fag friend felt and he was wiling

to mess around as some kind of twisted thank you?

“Don’t do this. I heard you talking about me!”

“And you’re that fucking disgust—” Dante plucked at his nipples through his shirt. Electricity snapped between them and his cock.

“Disgusting.”

“—disgusted with me?!” Dante shook his head and glared back. “Wait, what?”

“I am disgusting.”

“You are not disgusting, Griffin. But—”

“You have no idea.”

“So you
are
disgusted. You heard me teling my dad.”

Griff grabbed Dante’s hands before they did any more damage to his self-control.
Last chance
. He thrust them behind Dante’s back, holding them there in one powerful fist. His voice rumbled in his chest—bad cop barbarian. “Stop fooling around. You don’t want me.”

Dante arched his chest, wrists trapped, as though realy restrained, his round buttocks against Griff’s lap. “What do I want, huh? You tel me.”

I don’t know!
“Someone else. Something else.” Griff tried not to feel his bulge nestled in the cleft between those cheeks.

Dante’s voice was husky and his eyes shone—both barrels. “You remember the night I came to the station and kissed you? I do.”

“You hit your head and you’re not thinking straight.” Griff tried to get up, but Dante squeezed him hard with his thighs.

“I am definitely not thinking straight, man.” Dante laughed and left his hands behind him, chest out.

Blink
. Griff swalowed.

Dante leaned closer, almost whispering, as if he couldn’t confess while looking his best friend in the eye. He put the words right in Griff’s ear. “After I kissed you and you kissed me back and we had our noodle date, I went home and jerked off twice and ate it. I dreamt about it. I’ve jerked off over that fucking kiss

more times than I can count. I beat myself raw thinking about the way you tasted and felt and sounded and smeled. And—”

Griff pushed Dante off him roughly. “Stop it! Stop talking porno bulshit.”

“Christ, you’re stubborn!” Dante stumbled to his feet and stared down at Griff, hands on his lean hips. “I’ve never been with a guy. Not for real. Fuck! I

never
wanted
to be.”

“Me neither.” Griff was breathing faster than he’d realized. He had an obvious erection he did nothing to cover.

“Aren’t you even curious?” Dante used Alek’s word. Tommy’s word. A word that destroyed families and put people in the hospital pissing into a bag.

On the TV, a group of retired players in toupees and size fifty suits postured and squabbled about trivia in a newsroom. Dante stepped forward and gazed

down at Griff sprawled on the big couch, clothes puled half off, his massive boner tenting his pants.

“One night. An experiment. We’ve already done stuff. If it’s too freaky, it’s a one-off, then no harm no foul. You and me, just to see. I fucking double-dog

dare you, Griffin.”

“I know already. I don’t need to see.”

“I’m not that ugly, asshole.” Dante mock-kicked at Griff.

Griff dodged the kick, puling his legs onto the couch and sliding backward to get away. A bizarre ripple of déjà vu
stopped him cold. Website? Probie school? Firehouse breakroom? What was he remembering?

Dante ran a hand through his hair, pushing the inky waves out of the way. “Just as an experiment. You trust me. And I trust you. Then we can talk about

anything you want. But dude, I cannot talk right now.” He pressed his lips to Griff’s.

Oh!

Griff was shaking and his heart was trying to pound its way out of his ears. He nodded without breaking the kiss.

Dante did and made everything sound normal. “Don’t be scared. Rol over so I can rub your back.”

Ruh-roh.

Griff almost choked and then breathed through his mouth, trying not to hyperventilate. He could feel his IQ tumbling toward the basement. He let Dante lift his legs onto the deep cushions and shift him onto his stomach, and shuck his sweats. There were al these things he needed to say, but it al seemed pointless with Dante this close and warm and inexplicably horny.

Dante climbed back on top of him, sitting on Griff’s round butt to knead his shoulders. “I just wanna try. It’l be fine. No big deal. Maybe a massage first?

Two dudes. That’d be okay, right?”

What was he asking?

“And then, I want you”—Dante leaned forward, pressing his chest against Griff’s muscular back, lips against his ear—“to fucking turn yourself loose on me.”

IN FIFTEEN years of loving, Griff had never met this Dante: tentative and thoughtful and patient.

Where did you come from?

Dante scooted forward, so he was sitting right on the slope of Griff’s lower back. He rubbed his hands to warm them and then pressed his weight between

Griff’s shoulder blades.

Griff moaned.

“Too hard?”

“Nuh… nuh-uh.” Griff’s Cro-Magnon grunt made them both chuckle. “Uggh. Good.”

Griff pressed his blush into the sofa cushions. Why hadn’t any other massage felt like this? He hadn’t gotten a stiffie when the coaches had rubbed him down