In Flesh and Stone Read online

  “Is that for me?” Corey feigned surprise, blinking his eyelashes in a parody of a coquette, his gazed fixed on the telltale bulge in Alex’s shorts.

  Alex was about to move forward, to doff his own shirt in a single motion to press his own chest against Corey’s naked flesh and dive right in, but at the last moment, he hesitated. Sadness washed over him.

  Instantly, Cory abandoned all salaciousness and was at his side, fingers kneading Alex’s shoulders, comforting him as the waterworks started.

  “Aw, Jesus, Alex. I’m sorry. I didn’t think.”

  “No, that’s okay.” Alex choked back the sobs and turned into Corey’s embrace, hugging him without any sensuality, just to let him know he was forgiven.

  “You know,” Corey said, stroking Alex’s honey brown hair to soothe him. “You’re gonna have needs, buddy boy. At some point, you’re gonna give in to ’em. At least with me, you don’t have all that guilt about being unfaithful. Tony wouldn’t mind.”

  “I can’t. Not just yet.”

  Corey kissed him gently on the forehead, slowly moving his mouth down across his face, licking up the remains of his tears, finally teasing at the corners of Alex’s lips with the tip of his tongue. Alex opened his mouth and, without volition, moaned and Corey was quick to take advantage of the movement, sealing Alex’s mouth with his, tongue probing until he felt his slightly shorter friend’s body shudder.

  All of Alex’s resistance fled. He sagged into Corey’s chest, breaking the kiss so his tongue was free to move about his friend’s upper body. He licked his upper chest, hungrily sucking at Corey’s large nipples, biting the tips gently as he knew Corey liked; all the while his hands roved Corey’s back, grasping and kneading at the muscles on either side of his backbone, finally coming to rest with two handfuls of taut, hard-muscled ass, squeezing and prodding the mounds.

  “You need this, baby,” Corey murmured. “You really, really do.”

  “There’s...there’s nothing…” Alex gasped, then to clarify, “No bed. No furniture.”

  Corey just smiled and, with the ease of long practice, flipped the front of Alex’s T-shirt over his head, baring his chest but leaving his arms still in the sleeves and his upper back still covered with cloth.

  “If I remember…,” Corey began playfully. He ran the backs of his hands over Alex’s naked flesh lightly, barely disturbing the fine, almost invisible hairs, circling the slabs of his chest, brushing the tips of the nipples until he elicited a moan before moving lower. Wiggling his fingers like he was mimicking a spider crawling, or playing the keys of a phantom piano, he lightly tickled Alex’s stomach and upper groin. Finally, he began playing with the sparse hair just below Alex’s navel, tugging the hairs gently one by one while his friend gasped. “…this is something you like. Or did I get it wrong?”

  “No!” Alex managed to blurt. “It’s right. Damn! It’s so right.”

  So skillfully that Alex didn’t know what had happened until the cooler air of the room caused goose bumps on his upper groin, Corey undid the button on Alex’s shorts and unzipped the fly to expose the soaked-through jock.

  “My, my! What have we here?” Corey teased.

  He gently guided Alex a few steps until his back was pressed against the wall, not bothering to remove his T-shirt completely. He knelt, rolling the cotton shorts down Alex’s legs, making sure his hands stayed in contact to tickle the hairs on the way down, until they were lying around his ankles. Then he sat back on his heels to enjoy the view.

  Alex stood leaning against the wall, shirt bunched at his shoulders, chest bared and heaving, naked down to his ankles except for the jock strap.

  “Hot!” was Corey’s only comment before he leaned forward to nuzzle at Alex’s cotton-covered dick, nipping the material and some of the flesh beneath lightly, tantalizing for a few long moments while Alex made involuntary guttural noises in the back of his throat. With his teeth, Corey latched onto the elastic band and, drawing it out an inch, allowed it to snap back and was rewarded when Alex arched forward and remained standing only because the tops of his shoulders were still against the wall. An instant later, his body slammed back against the smooth expanse of paneling and he cried out.

  “Not yet.” Corey looked up, his face split by a mischievous grin. “I’m just getting started.”

  He attacked the bulge in Alex’s jockstrap anew, using teeth and lips and tongue with consummate skill honed by years of doing the exact same thing to the endless progression of models, wannabe actors and personal trainers who made up his usual sex partners. He could taste Alex’s sweat from his earlier jog in the cloth, salty and sharp, musky and warm. Had his mouth not been occupied, he would have smiled as the other flavor he knew so well, the vaguely woodsy, almost mushroom taste of pre-cum. Alex’s ability to shoot prodigious loads after hours of leaking was one of Corey’s most cherished rewards for teasing him for as long as he possibly could.

  Corey regretted this was not one of those times. Though he would have loved the chance to stretch this out for the rest of the day, Alex was in no condition to withstand that kind of treatment. Besides, they had to finish moving him into the new apartment. Nevertheless, there was no point in moving things to the finish too quickly. Corey would take his time and enjoy himself.

  In very short order, the jockstrap was dripping wet with a combination of Corey’s saliva and the forerunners of Alex’s sperm. When he judged the time was right, he used his teeth to grasp the jock and free the blond’s throbbing penis to leap and bob, seeking any friction that would allow release. At the same time, he reached into his own waistband and skillfully rolled down his shorts – unlike Alex, he never wore anything underneath – to reveal his own pulsing erection.

  With one hand, he grasped his cock, stroking it with increasing speed; the other snaked around to Alex’s rear, toying with the hairs on his friend’s ass, lubricating his fingers with Alex’s sweat. Slowly, he teased the indentation of Alex’s hole, circling the opening, feeling the blood pulsing in the tender tissue, his nails scratching lightly at the sensitive skin. It wasn’t long before Corey felt what he’d been waiting for, the slight spasmodic pucker and widening of Alex’s hole.

  Corey smiled, and attacked. He thrust two fingers into Alex’s gaping hole. At the same instant, he opened his mouth wide and, in a second, he had wrapped his mouth around Alex’s pulsing cock, swallowing the full length of it, feeling the warm throb at the back of his throat. Alex cried out, an inarticulate primal sound, and clenched his fingers in Corey’s hair. Thrusting helplessly, he toppled forward, bearing Corey to the marble floor, pumping and moaning while Corey’s talented fingers probed even more deeply into his asshole, fucking his face with movements like a lascivious rodeo star trying to stay astride a bucking bull.

  Corey loved the taste and feel of Alex’s cock in his mouth; he always found it strangely comforting, a familiar emotional sensation from his carefree past. He guessed the warm inner glow he felt was akin to what some people experienced when they smelled fresh baked brownies which took them back to their childhood. In Corey’s case, the salty hot maleness transported him back to college when he didn’t need to concern himself with mundane trivialities like making a living. No, it was a happier time, when his only concerns were how quickly he could manage to screw the quarterback or the majority of the boys’ swim team.

  He felt the pulse of Alex’s cock – which had always been prone to a peculiar throb just before it actually shot – and knew Alex was about to climax. Eagerly, he increased the pace on his own cock and was rewarded. Gasping, thrashing and heaving, their climaxes were virtually simultaneous. A thick ribbon of milky white sperm shot from Corey’s dick in a long stream, splattering onto the floor between Alex’s feet. Corey’s jaws and neck ached from the effort of trying to still move his mouth up and down the shaft at the same time he was swallowing. Closing his throat to prolong things and squeeze the last few spasmed drops from Alex’s still-hard dick, Corey regretted only that the moment
of climax was too quickly passed. He longed to extend it, in delicious stasis, for ever and ever.

  Though he had been with more beautiful men in his time, and though he knew he and Alex would never be more than good friends with benefits, having sex with Alex was the only time he felt truly safe. Physically, in spite of the emotional incompatibility they’d experienced as bona fide lovers, they had always somehow...fit.

  Collapsed in the contented afterglow, the two lay intertwined, each lost in his own thoughts. For Corey, his mind toyed with the fantasy that he and Alex would spend the rest of their lives together, living as partners, sharing their physical delights with each of them pushing the erotic buttons of the other, buttons they both knew all too well. Finally, he disentangled his limbs, rolled over onto his stomach and came back to reality.

  It would never work. He and Alex knew each other too well, better perhaps than two people should. No matter how much they both might wish a relationship with each other, they had already tried it and it hadn’t worked. They loved each other deeply, and they certainly stoked the passion in each other’s bodies. But it was not a romantic love and the passion was of the moment, a flame too hot to be indefinitely extended.

  As for what Alex was thinking, Corey would have been a little shocked that maybe he didn’t know his best friend quite as well as he’d assumed.

  Spent from the physical sensations, Alex looked up, allowing his mind to wander. But the scope of his thoughts stayed within a narrow range. It could even be numbered and the number was thirteen.

  His eyes roved over the smooth marble of the statues, taking in the strange characteristics of each. The large round testicles and bulging penis balanced on Libra’s scales, the horns on the head of hairy-bodied Taurus and the just-this-shy-of-overly-muscled Aries, the sleek equine flanks of Capricorn and Sagittarius, and the sly knowing smiles of the Gemini, whose free hands, from this angle, cupped each other’s genitals.

  Alex drank in each detail, marveling at the not-so-subtle eroticism the sculptor had evoked from each figure. He wondered how the statues had been allowed to stand in public view back in the days before the old library had been closed down, partitioned up and converted into condo lofts. He longed for the talent to sculpt such heavenly beings and, though his own artistic ability with brushes and oils was not insubstantial, he regretted never having been inspired to such creative heights with hammer and chisel.

  He looked at the zodiac gods of male perfection with awe, as if witnessing an unearthly, unholy beauty. He was so transfixed by what he saw, he barely noticed what was happening to his own body. Though Alex had never been one for marathon sessions, only able to cum once before he lost the urge, his penis seemed to have a mind of its own.

  It was odd, this unaccustomed feeling – troubling. Unconsciously, his hand moved down to caress his dick slightly. It throbbed anew. Alex experienced a flash of sadness and regret. In the back of his mind, he knew the reason: not one of the thirteen exquisite dicks pointing down at him was stirring at all.

  CHAPTER 2

  “Corey and I finally finished moving me into the condo. It wasn’t as rough a job as I thought it was going to be. Thank God for that interior decorator – the one that gave Corey the truck. If we’d had to rent one...”

  Alex knew he was talking to himself. The words poured out of him as he described his activities of the past few days much as he and Tony used to share the details of their daily lives each evening over dinner. He knew Tony couldn’t hear him – his voice echoed from the muted mint green walls of the room, a color intended to relax and soothe, he’d been told. As silly as it might have seemed to speak to someone who was not truly present, Alex felt no embarrassment. He couldn’t remain silent, or simply sit wrapped in grief, and couldn’t speak the words he really wanted to say – the words of his heart, the phrases of his loss.

  “I told you I rented out the townhouse, right?” He tried to inject as much positive cheerfulness as he could. “I knew you wouldn’t agree to it but, honey, it’s way too big for one person. I kept wandering around from room to room, hoping you’d be in one, and feeling lost. Besides, Roberto’s moving back to Haiti or the Dominican Republic or wherever he’s from and you know how tough it is to hire a responsible maid nowadays. It’s only for six months so, if things change...with you, I mean...”

  He reached out one hand, wanting to stroke Tony’s bare upper arm, not knowing whether he intended to comfort his lover – who couldn’t feel anything anyway – or himself, but he stopped short, wanting to make contact but unable to force his fingers the final fraction of an inch.

  “I wish you could see the place. You know it used to be a library, right? It’s got stone floors – real marble – and this amazing paneling going halfway up the walls like that room we both liked when we took that tour of Versailles. The upper part is all wallpaper and Corey thinks it should come out. It’s not in too terrible condition but it’s got this ghastly pattern of vines and leaves – very distracting when I’m trying to work. And the background color? Red with gold flocking, can you believe it? There are these huge windows, six or maybe eight feet. The light keeps coming through and reflecting off that god-awful wallpaper and screwing up my sense of color when I’m trying to paint.”

  He paused, knowing he was rambling and then, continued in a softer voice.

  “Yeah. You’ll be happy to know I’m finally painting again.” He smiled wryly, as if at a private joke. “Gotta pay the bills, right?”

  It had been a long-standing joke between them, how Alex worked constantly but only had to make two or three sales a year to surpass Tony’s more regular income at the travel agency. Tony had been – was – a vice president. Though his job responsibilities had more to do with promoting the company to the gay markets, and little to do with selling packaged tours and the like, he and Alex had gotten their fair share of luxury vacations and ocean cruises at dirt-cheap prices.

  Alex remembered the last one, scarcely six months ago and still crystal clear in his mind, to a half-dozen tiny ports in the Mediterranean, some of which Alex had never heard of. The two of them had spent long, lazy days lying out on deck chairs with the sun sparkling off the deep blue water, covered in coconut scented oil and slowly roasting until their skins practically glowed. Tony’s naturally dark skin, indicative of his Southern Italian ancestors, drank in the sunlight and browned deep chestnut with only the lightest of sun screens. Alex, being fairer, always resented having to use a higher SPF and to lie out longer in order to achieve a matching result. It was worth it to see the heads of the other passengers turn whenever they came into the dining room, linked arm in arm, one dark and one light. The picture they presented in their tailored tuxedos during the cruise’s Formal Night was nothing less than breathtaking. Proud of his handsome partner, Alex had lapped up the attention like he was starving for it. It was so much more rewarding than the endless fawning that pseudo-knowledgeable collectors lavished on him whenever he reluctantly agreed to put together a full exhibit for Nadine’s gallery.

  Sycophancy irritated him, both as an artist and as a person. Far too few self-proclaimed experts could see the beauty of what Alex hoped he had created with his oils and brushes. Even fewer had the perspicacity to really look at the paintings or to divine the purpose behind them. Alex had never painted just to smear oil upon canvass; he sought to instill each work with meaning, to make a point which could be communicated even more effectively via the beauty of his work.

  Theories, of course, abounded – almost every visitor to Nadine’s had one. Alex had learned quite early in his career to mask his impatience with their inane speculations in favor of simply nodding, smiling pleasantly and agreeing with the ridiculous theories. In situations where the person complimenting his work – or criticizing it, for that matter – propounded something so ridiculous that it could have only been put forward by someone who had spent his adult life living on an alien planet, Alex simply effected mild surprise and responded, “You know, I never thou
ght of that. Perhaps you’re right.” Then he would turn up the wattage on his smile and comment, “I guess sometimes even the artist isn’t fully aware of what he’s doing. Thank you so much for pointing that out to me.”

  Certainly, Nadine was mollified by his more mature approach. In the early years of his success, when he would rant and rave, and had no bones about calling the more inane collectors idiots to their faces, she had often had to step in to save the sale, using the excuse of “artistic temperament” as justification for Alex’s boorish behavior. Since then, life had intervened and taken the edge off. He supposed he’d become complacent and, as a result, more tolerant. How not? He had a career beyond his wildest expectations, more money flowing in than he knew what to do with, a circle of good acquaintances to spend time with, an amazingly devoted friend in Corey and, of course, Tony.

  Alex didn’t care what the doctors said. As far as he was concerned, Tony was still the most beautiful man he’d ever known. Even though his chest and arms were beginning to lose their definition and atrophy, in his mind’s eye Alex could still see the remnants of the stunning physique that had recently spotted him for bench presses in the gym or filled out a suit with admirable sensuality or, even better, sprawled next to him nude on their king-sized bed. With his eyes narrowed, Alex thought he might even be able to ascertain the last vestiges of the magnificent tan from their cruise peeping through the pallor. But upon reflection, he had to admit to himself it was just an errant beam of light bouncing off the scarlet roses he’d placed on the bedside table when he’d arrived today. Wishful thinking, no matter how fervent, was still as tenuous a thing as was hope.

  “Well, honey,” he whispered. “At least you don’t need to stress any more about that extra eight pounds you put on from all that rich food on the cruise.” But the morbid humor fell flat and, looking at his lover’s sunken cheeks behind the respirator, he felt the sting of hot, salty water trickling down his own.