For Love of the Dead Read online

  Six years later, Jake still spent a lot of the time in the garden, thinking of Devin and fantasizing about what his life might now be like had the driver of that fateful car swerved in time or had indulged in one less cocktail that evening. Though his libido was healthy and his looks assured he didn’t lack for bed partners, he always compared them to Devin and found they came up short. In his heart, he desperately wanted to feel love again. With each trick he could not help wondering, Is this the one? , but so many things conspired against him. Inevitably, when they found out how he was employed, or when they saw his living room, they fled. And Jake, at least so far, was left alone except for his memories of Devin and an infinite number of framed reminders of lost opportunities on his living room wall, possibilities that had been squashed by Fate before the seeds had even been planted.

  Then last night, he’d met Mario. And Mario seemed...different. Though put off at first, he’d seemed to understand Jake’s obsession with the dead, or at least he wasn’t frightened away by it.

  Mario seemed to glimpse a bit of what the dead meant to Jake, and though he did not comprehend it completely, he seemed open to further explanations. There was also the small matter of the warm comfortable feelings they’d shared, both during and after the wild sex, that caused Jake’s heart to flutter and his groin to stir anew.

  Jake tried to force his eyes to open, to concentrate on what Lucy was frantically babbling about, but his eyelids just seemed too damned heavy. His brain felt like it was encased in cotton and concentrating on her words was, for the moment, beyond him. With no conscious effort on his part, his mind drifted back to the previous evening.

  Mario was Italian, he’d thought at first. His coppery dark skin and the tight whorls of thick black hair matted in the center of his slender but hard-muscled chest thinned to feathery peach-fuzz on his upper pectorals, betraying his Mediterranean ancestry. The smell of his sweat—and Jake had sure as hell caused him to perspire last night!—was reminiscent of tapenade, the sweet, vinegary fragrance of plump ripe olives tinged with a hint of fiery spice. At one point, Jake buried his face under Mario’s arm where the wiry hair of his armpit tickled his nostrils, and his already throbbing dick pulsed even more, stimulated to new hardness just by the mere scent of his new lover.

  It wasn’t until this morning, when they were having breakfast in bed, sipping coffee and dabbing strawberry-flavored cream cheese onto each other’s faces and bodies and licking it off, that Jake realized Mario had a slight accent. Greek and Italian, it turned out, but mostly Greek, and after a few jokes about crowbars and separating the men from the boys in ancient Greece, the two of them set out to see if they could do things that would shock the sexual sensibilities of any modern-day Socrates.

  Last night, he’d been too preoccupied with other things to notice the charming way Mario spoke. That he had almost missed meeting him entirely—well, that was something Jake preferred not to think about at all.

  The dance floor at Club Fantastique had been wall to wall with gym-toned young men, many of them shirtless, gyrating wildly to the pumping beat of the latest dance mix. As always, Jake had arrived alone and within a half hour of his arrival, the heat from so many closely packed bodies gave him an excuse to strip off his shirt and wad it into the back pocket of his skintight and well-worn jeans. He ignored the appreciative stares and suggestive glances from the dancers as he pushed his way to the bar for a beer. He was in no rush. He’d never had a problem finding a bed mate and didn’t see any reason why tonight should be an exception.

  Beer in hand, Jake casually cruised the men nearby. Several looked like good prospects. The short blond man in the corner with the pumped pectorals straining at the thin cloth covering of his muscle T-shirt was hot. At least the two willowy Hispanic boys who appeared to be clinging to his every word with the same fervor they clung to his biceps seemed to think so. But when the crowd parted slightly, Jake was given a glimpse of the young man’s body below the waist. The massive chest and shoulders were incongruous atop skinny chicken legs. Jake smiled to himself; unlike many of the local show-offs, he was always very careful to devote as much time at the gym to his lower body as he did to the muscle groups above the belt line. The blond man was obviously one of those gym rats who worked out merely for show and not for health reasons or to stay in shape. Jake knew the type: arrogant, narcissistic, using physical love as an excuse for worship rather than to promote intimacy. Jake Marshall had sworn off those kinds of guys long ago.

  A dark-haired boy with wide shoulders and an amazing bubble butt caught his attention next. He was stripped to the waist and the play of his back muscles as he gestured while talking enthusiastically to a small group of friends caused Jake’s cock to stir. He could imagine pressing himself against the boy, bearing down as his dick penetrated that luscious ass, plowing the muscled frame until the guy could do nothing but scream, “Deeper! God! Harder!” Unfortunately, the young man chose that moment to turn around. At the sight of his weak chin, the hint of softness around the petulant mouth and the glaze of drugs in the man’s eyes apparent even from several feet away, Jake frowned and cast his gaze elsewhere.

  He had little patience for nelly, self-indulgent guys and even less for drug users. The city was full of guys like this one, bitchy queens whose lives were nothing but a quest for their next trick, the next designer shirt to be worn once or twice and discarded in favor of something even more trendy, the next hit of speed or line of coke. Jake liked to think he deserved a little more in a potential partner than that.

  As he continued perusing the crowd, his hopes for the evening grew dimmer. Though a dance bar was not, as Lucy had told him often enough, the ideal place to find the kind of relationship Jake was looking for, it was familiar ground. Mildly ambitious and hard working where the rest of his life was concerned, when it came to the places he haunted in an effort to meet men, Jake was terribly lazy about branching out. The bar was comfortable territory and, he thought, surely somewhere in this huge room of succulent flesh and madly gyrating muscle, it was not too much to hope for at least one man with some substance—a man who would see beneath Jake’s handsome face and toned, beefy muscles, past what he did for a living, someone to see into his soul and to begin to love him for the person he was.

  When Jake first glimpsed Mario across the bar, he almost made the mistake of overlooking him. The young man’s body was great, slim just the way Jake liked them, but toned, his bare arms wrapped with sinewy muscle. His shirt, open to the waist, revealed a taut, hard chest and the ridges of a lean washboard, the dark skin summer-rouged with the glow of a healthy tan. But the multiple strands of gold chain around the man’s neck, resting atop the curly hair of his chest, were off-putting. The effect was a little flashy for Jake’s taste and, he thought, the antithesis of classy.

  Dismissing the young man as just another tacky queen, Jake’s eyes moved on. But something about the boy’s face drew his gaze back to linger. He wasn’t at all pretty. His nose was a bit too pug and slightly askew as if it had been broken in some childhood accident, giving him a quirky quality that Jake found ever so much more attractive than the usual cover model looks. When he caught Jake looking at him, he blinked his long lashes, smiled hesitantly, and his whole face changed, becoming something truly beautiful. Maybe it was the flash of perfectly formed white, white teeth like chalk cliffs. Maybe it was the way Mario’s fingers had nervously stroked the moisture beading on his glass when he knew he was being looked at by someone as handsome as Jake. Mario was good-looking enough not to be intimidated, yet he still seemed shy, perhaps even modest.

  Jake liked that; he liked it a lot. But what definitely caught his attention and held it was the look in Mario’s eyes, wide pupils like dark buttery fudge, glittering with the reflected flash of the strobes from the dance floor. They were hopeful without being desperate, tentative but not weak, intelligent without the arrogance of superiority, eager but not lascivious and, perhaps most importantly, they seemed kind.

&nb
sp; Jake introduced himself easily, with some casual comment about the more outrageous outfits sported by some of the dancing men, making sure Mario knew he appreciated the humor of them and being careful not to come off as critical or bitchy. The conversation was mostly bar talk: the latest movies (most of which Jake hadn’t seen), the music (some of which he recognized but couldn’t name the artists to save his life), and people they might have in common as friends or acquaintances (there were none). Though at first it seemed they shared very little, Mario’s shyness gave way to a tentative eagerness to talk, and Jake was a rapt and avid listener.

  Their hands roved about each other’s bodies, touches which seemed accidental with purposeful intent—a gently kneaded shoulder muscle, a slight squeeze of biceps, a pat on the rear. Both young men were impressed by the results of their not-so-subtle exploration. Far in advance of last call, they left. It was tacitly agreed they should go to Jake’s as Mario had stressed several times that he had a roommate.

  A light had been left on in the front room of Jake’s cottage at the rear of the Gentle Rest grounds. A warm, cozy glow seeped from behind the drapes and bathed the porch and his favorite antique rocking chair in a wash of amber. The scent of wisteria mingled with the night-blooming jasmine clinging to the weathered wooden columns on either side of the front door, perfuming their entrance.

  Mario stood in the living room, at ease in a stranger’s house. He looked around appreciatively. The furniture was far from new, but sturdily made and well kept. The shelves on either side of the fireplace were bereft of knickknacks, holding mostly volumes of hardbound books and a few paperbacks. The decor was sparse but homey. Even the coffee table and end tables were adorned by nothing but a few lamps, an unused heavy glass ashtray, an old push-button telephone and some outdated copies of a nature magazine which Jake had kept because he liked the pictures in a couple of articles on the wildlife of New Zealand and Madagascar.

  The light was dim, fortunately, leaving the walls shadowed and providing an intimate atmosphere. The mood was undoubtedly romantic, yet masculine. Jake tossed his keys on a small table by the door and, without giving Mario time to examine the pictures on the wall behind the couch, gripped him by the shoulders and spun him around so they stood face to face.

  He paused, looking into the Greek boy’s chocolate eyes, seeing the spark of arousal fan and grow into a flame, consuming the lingering traces of Mario’s shyness. The doubts he had about himself— does this beautiful man actually like me? Or does he only want my body? Will I measure up when the time comes? Can I please him in the way he needs to be pleased? In the way I so desperately want to please him? —all vanished when Jake took him into his strong arms.

  Mario reached up to rest his hands on Jake’s shoulders and he felt his legs tremble. Without a word, Jake kissed him. It was not a hungry, desperate kiss, with tongues struggling for dominance, chest’s heaving and groping fingers. No, it was a mere brush of the lips against lips—fleeting, teasing, a gentle caress promising more to come. Their breaths mingled, a mixture of Jake’s beer and Mario’s bourbon, sweet and rich, the tang of hops complementing the oily smokiness of the whiskey. Jake ran the tip of his tongue around the outside of Mario’s lips, outlining them and savoring the taste, and he felt the last vestiges of tension in the shorter man’s body seep away.

  Mario moaned and pressed his chest, bare underneath the open shirt, harder into Jake’s, the sweat glistening on his burnished skin dampening the bleached white cotton of the beefier man’s Tshirt. His fingers left Jake’s shoulders and strolled across his back, delighting in the hard ridge of muscle that ran alongside Jake’s backbone, traveling downwards to the swell of his upper buttock, squeezing the hard muscle of his ass, tugging him closer as if somehow he could force their two bodies to melt together into one.

  Jake could feel Mario’s dick stiffen, pressed up against him as he was. He heard the gasp of heightened breath from the shorter man, and his chest expanded and released as his arousal grew.The Greek’s hands moved eagerly, exploring Jake’s body through the cotton and denim. His own dick sprang to life, thick and pulsing, straining against his zipper. He wanted to tear it from its blue jean covering, to throw Mario onto the couch and peel the trousers from his pert little ass, to thrust into him deeply, so deeply that the room would resound with his cries of pleasure as his innermost parts were probed and excited.

  But Jake refused to be rushed. Never ceasing his lapping at Mario’s mouth, never allowing more than the very tip of his tongue to push past his new lover’s parted lips, he slid his hands across the dark-skinned chest, playfully brushing the hardened knobs of nipples with his palms, smiling to himself at the sharp intake of breath when he teased the nubs of flesh. Skillfully, with a smooth continuous motion, he shifted the shirt from Mario’s shoulders, guiding it down to hang at his elbows. Impatiently, Mario tugged his arms from the sleeves, letting it dangle from where it was still tucked into the waistband of his jeans, goose pimples rising on the skin of his bare torso as the slightly cooler air of the room began to dry the sweat still remaining from the overheated bar.

  Jake took full advantage of having the slender and toned naked torso before him. He abandoned Mario’s mouth and slowly, ever so slowly, ran his tongue along the sides of the other man’s jaw and across his throat, lapping at the hollow just at the top of his chest and licking along his collar bone. Mario’s head arched back with another gasp. He fumbled at Jake’s T-shirt, his scrabbling not indicating whether he was trying to pull it from Jake’s pants and over his head, or whether he merely wanted to rip it off in order to get at the broad chest and flat stomach underneath.

  Jake refused to allow it, running his fingers across Mario’s bare ribs, tickling him slightly, then grabbing his hands to secure firmly at his sides. When he was sure Mario knew he was not to move, not yet, he continued his journey across his body. He stooped slightly and pressed the side of his face into the hair of his chest. He was pleasantly surprised. At the bar, he’d expected the wiry-looking hair to be rough and coarse, but against the tender skin of his cheek, it was soft and velvety, like the worn velour of the chairs in Gentle Rest’s offices where the families made arrangements. It was familiar in that, and comforting.

  Jake turned his head, burying his nose in the dampness of Mario’s chest hair, inhaling the spicy, exotic scent of his sweat for the first time, an arousing blend of savory sun-ripened fruit and chili pepper. He could not help but lick and, as the taste of Mario exploded on his palate, his tongue went to work with vigor. Lapping and sucking, his saliva wetted the hair even more until it clung to Mario’s tanned skin. Jake ringed each nipple with his mouth, sucking at the whole and then licking the hardened capers of the tips with quick darts of his tongue until the Greek boy’s chest rose and fell with gasps of delight. Mario’s arms shifted, and Jake did not bother to replace them at his sides, his hands gripping Jake’s shoulders to keep himself from toppling to the floor with the sensations coursing through him.

  Inspired by his new lover’s reaction, Jake sucked Mario’s right nipple into his mouth and, positioning his teeth, bore down gently on the succulent tip. He was rewarded with a high-pitched mewl of ecstasy and felt fingers dig painfully into his shoulders. He bit harder, a warning, or perhaps just an experiment to see what Mario liked, and the grip slackened, so Jake eased off, apologizing with a few final soft kisses to each nipple.

  His mouth moved on, down to the armor of Mario’s stomach, framing each plate of muscle with his mouth’s juices until the front of Mario’s body from lower chest to groin was glistening in the dim glow from the lamp. He seized the waistband of his jeans in his teeth, tossing his head playfully and worrying at the heavy cloth like a puppy with a bone. The youth’s hips pumped forward, his dick clearly outlined, so aroused that a blotch of pre-come seeped through the denim and darkened it.

  Now, eager to taste Mario in truth, to see if his juices matched the exotic spiciness of his sweat, Jake stood and swept him up, supporting him wi
th one arm under his shoulders and the other behind his knees. The Greek youth might have been shorter and slim, but his body was sheathed in muscle and he was heavier than he’d first appeared. Jake tried not to grunt with effort when he carried him into the bedroom like a bride across the threshold, masking his difficulty by plastering his lips to Mario’s and finally allowing his tongue to probe deeper.

  The sensation was electric. He stood by the bed, lover in his arms, completely forgetting how heavy he was, while their mouths sucked greedily at each other’s. Mario’s tongue, like the rest of him, was slim and agile, slipping between Jake’s teeth and his lips, teasing his gums and probing the inside of his cheek. Jake’s thicker tongue chased it clumsily until they finally met and danced together in a pas de deux, tasting each other and savoring the flavor.

  While they kissed, Jake struggled to kick of his shoes but, with Mario still in his arms, he lost his balance and tumbled forward, losing his lip lock and spilling the bare-chested young man onto the mattress. Mario landed unhurt and laughed aloud when Jake had to brace himself on the bed to keep from falling on top. Grinning through his blush of embarrassment, Jake removed his shoes and socks and swiftly yanked his T-shirt over his head and tossed it aside.

  Mario’s look of appreciative wonder at Jake’s muscled physique more than made up for the foolishness the mortuary assistant had felt when he’d stumbled. He took in Jake’s thickly-corded shoulders, wide barrel chest, the covering of silky jet black hair against the lightly tanned skin, the thick plump nipples, the flat stomach, and the wings of Jake’s lats tapering down to his waist, astonishingly slim for a man with such broad shoulders.