Tipping the Balance (37 page)

In one swift motion that belied his large size, Brad was up and over Drew, grasping his pants and underwear. “Lift up.”

In their hurry, they caught Drew’s erect penis in the folds of his underwear. “Ow! Wait!”

“Something wrong?” Brad said blandly.

“You break it, you bought it,” Drew hissed, pulling himself free before Brad yanked his clothes the rest of the way down and off.

“I’ll kiss it and make it better,” Brad said, pushing Drew back down to the bed and sitting awkwardly next to him. He lapped experimentally at the head of Drew’s penis, engorged and leaking pre-cum. Despite knowing it was coming, Drew jackknifed up off the mattress. Or maybe the anticipation stretched his nerves to the breaking point.

“Damn, Brad,” he breathed.

Wet heat closed over his cock, so different from fucking. Lighter pressure, yes, but the tongue. Brad’s tongue roved up and down his shaft, licking, tasting, playing.

Drew’s breath came in shallow gasps, and he lost himself in a sea of pleasure. Brad’s technique was far from perfect. There was too much teeth and not enough stroking, but Drew wouldn’t have traded it for the world. It was his boyfriend trying, making him feel good, and that made it the best blowjob ever.

Then Drew groaned and pulled his cock out of Brad’s mouth. “If I come, you won’t get up my ass.”

“We can’t have that, can we?” Brad breathed, kissing his way up Drew’s chest to his lips. But then he kissed his way back down. “Or maybe we can.”

“What?” Drew struggled to sit up.

“Uh-uh,” Brad said. He smiled and went back to his prize.

“Seriously,” Drew panted, “if you keep doing that, I’m going to come.”

Brad pulled off him with a wet
pop
. “Maybe that’s the plan.”

“Wait…,” Drew started, but Brad surged up and pinned him again, and didn’t that just melt his brain right down to the stem.

“You want it, and I want to give it to you,” Brad growled, fumbling with his own fly. He pulled his belt off his pants and wrapped it around Drew’s wrists, cinching it snug but not tight. Then he looped the free end around one of the slats in Drew’s headboard, tying it roughly. “Now shut it down.”

Drew groaned. He still struggled, just a little. It only made it hotter, but he knew he was done fighting. So did Brad.

Brad went back to work, but Drew knew it wouldn’t take much longer.

Drew started bucking his hips. Any moment now…. “Soon.”

Brad redoubled his efforts, humming softly to himself.

“If you don’t… mouthful… stop.” Drew looked down at Brad bent over him, head moving up and down as he sought to wring the pleasure from Drew’s body. And that was all it took. He was there, pumping into Brad’s mouth, and powerless to pull away.

And then before he knew it, before he could ask, Brad untied his hands. Drew pulled Brad up. “That was….”

Brad kissed him, and he tasted himself on Brad’s lips. “I know,” Brad said.

“But I didn’t do anything to make you feel good.” He felt a little empty, thinking he’d been alone at his climax.

“Yeah, you did,” Brad said. He kissed Drew. “That was so hot for me. Seeing you spread out and helpless like that? I could do that to you for hours. Wanna know why?”

He nodded slowly. Hearing Brad say that made him burn all over again.

“Because at the end of it, I know you’re mine, and sooner or later I’ll get to tap that fine, fine ass again.”

Drew could only nod again, blushing. He was Brad’s too. Unsure of just when it had happened, he knew in that instant that he belonged to Brad, and that was that.

It scared him a little. He’d always thought that when he gave his heart to someone, he’d be aware of it, that it would be a conscious decision, that he’d have had some control over it, but where Brad was concerned, he was learning quickly he wasn’t in the driver’s seat.

“Besides,” Brad continued, “I came right after you did.”

Drew licked his lips, wondering if Brad somehow knew exactly what he was doing or if he were rushing headlong into this too. “You’re sure taking to this like a natural.”

“Have you looked in a mirror? You would, too, if you had you teaching you,” Brad said. He leaned toward Drew. “You… I don’t know. You make me crazy, sometimes.”

But Drew did know. As passion dimmed and lust cooled, he wondered if that would be enough.

October
flew by in a blur of crumbling plaster and sawdust, there and gone as the renovation of the Bayard House kicked into high gear. Like both men knew it would, the renovation consumed their lives.

Brad’s days consisted of early mornings on the river helping Nick coach the CalPac rowers, followed by his part-time work for his father at Suburban Graveyard, and more often than not, he spent that fielding calls from his crews at the renovation, since most people who ventured out there seldom bought. Finally, he dashed to the job site, inhaling lunch as he drove and working until the crews quit for the day. Sometimes—the nights he didn’t have classes—he stayed late working by himself until the private security Drew had hired told him to go home since he was in the way.

He yawned, swilling down some more energy drink. It wouldn’t help, and after five late nights in a row, first studying for exams and then taking them, on top of everything else, he was fried. Still, the mansion wouldn’t renovate itself.

Drew’d tried to tell him to take it easy, to pace himself, that they’d built plenty of time into the bid. Brad failed to understand that logic. They had both staked their futures on this high-visibility project, and Brad in particular felt like this was his make-or-break moment. He wasn’t even out of college a year and had majored in physical education. If he had it to do over….

He swore and put the energy drink down. He was too young for regrets. Wasn’t he? Maybe Drew, at twenty-nine and with a successful real estate career, could afford to go home when he was tired, but Brad knew it was slacking, not that he’d said so. He wasn’t a complete idiot. Still, Drew was stressing hard, so shouldn’t he work just as long and hard?

He rested his head on the desk they’d set up in the rented trailer inside the fence at the jobsite. Just a few minutes of rest.

Initially, he’d worried about working with Drew. They already spent many evenings together, and with Drew’s leave from selling houses… well, that promised a lot of togetherness, but the past month had flown by, the days spent in satisfying work and the nights spent making each other feel good. They usually handled their disagreements calmly, and both of them worked to keep the disagreements minor, usually a matter of what Drew envisioned clashing with the realities of engineering and a building almost as old as the state of California itself. At such times, Brad usually found himself serving as the interpreter of the structurally possible to his boyfriend.

It was weird, Brad thought. When they fucked… made love, he guessed, because it had turned into far more than getting his rocks off. Making love. He still struggled claiming the “gay” label, but he definitely had feelings for Drew far beyond what he’d felt for anyone else, and he sure as hell loved plowing him. If that wasn’t gay, he didn’t know what was. But still, the word.

He felt funny thinking that, but he also felt like they’d passed some threshold or reached some new level. Like they’d established who was boss and who liked what and that was that. Drew liked to be dominated, and Brad liked to dominate him. Drew clearly got off on submission, at least submission to Brad. But he himself just as clearly got off on that submission.

Brad hadn’t known that about himself. He wondered if Drew did. From the first time they made out, Drew had responded on a deep, instinctive level to Brad’s larger physical size and brash, even forceful personality. Brad could be tender with Drew, but they both knew what Drew liked, and as Brad was learning, his own pleasure lay in giving it to him.

In fact, that time after the football game when he’d gone down on Drew, he’d been firmly in control. He’d held the man down and given him what he craved. Brad had been the one with the dick in his mouth and the cum down his throat, but he’d definitely been on top, like he had all the other times. But that got him to thinking.

He’d always thought the one who went down was “the girl.” That was all his sexual experience had taught him, but when he thought about it, he’d eaten women out before, and he was still all man. He didn’t think Drew would’ve been so into him if he weren’t. So maybe oral was oral. Maybe sex was just sex, and what you stuck it in or who stuck what in you didn’t really matter.

But then he thought about submitting to Drew, taking Drew inside him. It wasn’t like he’d seen a lot of guys’ dicks to compare Drew to, but the thought of riding that cock kind of scared him. It meant a lot more than sex. It meant a fundamental change in who Brad thought he was, and he wasn’t ready for that.

Still, he’d never been happier, and not even running around like a crazy man between his two jobs, school, and coaching changed that. Not even the daily tedium of Suburban Graveyard brought him down, not when he had this, and not with Drew in his life. When he thought about it, he might be young and stressed about making it, but he had what he wanted—he was being taken seriously and treated with respect.

He jolted up. Damn, he was about to fall asleep. He glanced down at the blueprints and decided to get going on what he saw. The last thing he wanted was a noise complaint from the neighbors, but a reciprocating saw used deep inside the mansion should be fine. He’d cut the hole for that interior door he’d seen literally right under his nose and then call it a night before security ran him off.

It wouldn’t take long, but a few minutes saved here, a few saved there, added up fast, and time was money, right?

“
Hey
, boss, you need to see this.”

Drew looked up from the blueprints for the third-floor private residence. Now that the crews had removed those parts of the rotting floors, walls, and ceiling that posed the greatest hazard and temporarily reinforced the rest, the structural engineers were ready to begin the delicate operation of buttressing all load-bearing members, both to hold the building up and keep it standing in the event of an earthquake.

“Bring those with you,” Octavio continued.

“I’ll be right back,” Drew said to the lead engineer. “What’s going on?”

“I’m hoping you can tell me. There’s a hole for a door where there wasn’t one yesterday. Where there shouldn’t be today.”

“Where?” Drew groaned. He so didn’t need this. Too tired and busy for his usual stress releases, he could only push himself to the edge for so long before falling over it. The acid shooting into his stomach right then told him that much.

“Second-floor ballroom,” Octavio said.