Sunday, December 17, 2017

Topsy Turvy, Chapter Six

...in which the light of day brings new revelations.

Light woke me angling up off the night’s fast-melting snowfall and through the bedroom’s south window. I’d never gotten around to drawing the curtains. Stretching, my arm grazed Paul’s chest where his torso lay curled up and over my shoulder, his face nuzzled into my hair. My feet were untied, the rope lying near the foot of the bed. My head clearing after a minute or so, I started to grasp that what had seemed a wonderfully bright morning was in fact the light of mid-day. The clock, confirming the worst, read nearly 11.30.

Oh, hell. Paul had stirred, settled back into me, his lips languidly browsing the back of my neck, his hand grazing the left side of my chest. I broke the embrace, prodded his shoulder, heard the anxiety in my own voice as I announced we’d overslept. I leapt out of bed and into the robe draped over the armchair by the window.

“I don’t know that I can get out of your way before Jim’s back,” he said. “My morning routine’s a pretty slow deal.”

“It’s OK,” I told him. “Best thing is I let him know I slipped up, then you come down so I can introduce you. I just don’t want him to walk in on us still up here in the thick of it. Take your time getting up.” I hesitated. “Or do you need a hand?”

“I do it by myself all the time,” he said. “Just hand me the braces.”

Passing them to him from where he’d dropped them on the floor, I gave him a last kiss and tore downstairs, started the coffee, set out juice and muffins. Overhead, I heard the toilet flush, then the sound of water running in the sink. Out the kitchen windows, wet snow lay over the herb garden, the beds mounded in stippled, spiky relief against the paths’ framing grid. As the coffee-maker went into its final asthmatic spasms, I tried with a rising sense of unease to parse apart the roiling mix of what I felt: the exhilaration of meeting a sweet, hot man I wanted not just for the night we’d just passed, but again; my fantasies of how I wanted to get it on with him already outstripping the memories of what we’d done; the remorse of knowing I’d already crossed a line; the knowledge that Jim wouldn’t hold it against me; and the knot of panic in my stomach that none of the above could explain, as though the fear of being caught out had little to do with the situation, and everything to do with the anxieties escaping from my own Pandora’s Box.  With the desire to have a man in my life who took as much pleasure as I did in the sex I really longed for. With the edge of frustration I felt with Jim’s ever-uncensored demands for what I couldn’t give. With the contortions I had to go through to divert him from his own sexual agenda far enough to meet me halfway to mine on uneven common ground. With the satisfaction of his companionship from day to day, which felt as essential to me as food, clothing, and shelter.

Shaking off the flickers of irritation I didn’t want to deal with and reining in my anxiety, I imagined how Jim’s homecoming would play out.  A welcoming kiss. A first cup of coffee as we sat down at the table and he gave me his report of the night before. My explanation of the trick still upstairs amidst our Sunday ritual. By the time he walked through the kitchen door, I’d settled enough to feel confident it would all unfold benignly.

He wore an ear-to-ear grin above the heavy knitted muffler that burgeoned out of his leather jacket. His eyes dancing, he reached for my waist with both hands and pulled me into a tight hug. Underneath the smell of soap, his beard still gave off the faintest whiff of crotch.

“You had a good night,” I ventured.

“I had a fabulous night,” he said. “And now I’m home with my fabulous husband. Whose car’s in the drive?”

“Uh, yeah. Sit down and have some coffee and I’ll tell you about it.”

Annoyance flickered across his face as I waded into the explanation. His face softened again when I got to Paul’s living arrangement.

“Well, he’s still here, and no harm done,” he finally broke in as I continued tripping over myself, assuaging the guilt that kept welling up from within. “Sooner or later something like this was bound to happen.” The ice of his blue eyes warmed to summer sky, and his grin turned to a smirk. “More to the point, is he as cute as you say? Let’s not call him down for introductions. Let’s go back up so I can see for myself.”

Before I could answer, he’d risen from the table and was bounding up the stairs.

Paul was standing next to the bed in his paisley boxers, his braces at an angle against the edge of the mattress, his head through the neck of his sweatshirt, his arms tangled in the sleeves, his cheeks flushed with embarrassment. The fly of his shorts was a little tented. The dusting of black hair across his pecs, the trail of it down the cleft of his belly to his waistband stood out stark in the bright light of noon. Jim’s greeting came a little too loud, his cordiality laced with a little too much mischief, however friendly his tone. Paul lost his balance and flopped onto the mattress.

“Oh, jeez, sorry,” Jim said.

“So Paul, meet Jim,” I said.

“I guess I just did. You should know I don’t always fall for guys like this,” Paul offered.

All three of us cracked up with the tension’s release. Jim offered Paul his hand, but Paul righted himself to sit on the edge of the bed. “Let’s just compromise with gravity for the moment and leave the standing for when it’s absolutely necessary,” he said. “I gather we’re working outside the standard repertory here.” His own embarrassment showed in the slightly disjointed delivery of this last quip.

“Pretty much,” Jim offered. “So I figured I might as well come up to meet you as ask you downstairs. Can’t say I can blame Tim for bringing you home,” he smiled, turning to me with a wink that Paul could see as well. “I’d have made the same call myself, I bet.”

An awkward silence opened up, till I offered, “I’ll put the breakfast stuff on a tray and bring it up for the three of us.”

“Maybe later,” Jim said. “I was kind of hoping you guys would replay a little of last night for my bleary eyes. I’m way too fucked out, I’m happy to say, to do more than watch,” he went on, brushing a hand along the inside of Paul’s leg, the fingertips just inside the leg of his now more prominently distended shorts and laying the other over the mound at the crotch of his own jeans, “but I bet what you’ve got in there kept my Timmy happy till the wee hours, and it looks to me like you’ve maybe got a little something left to work through.”

Paul looked toward me a little confused, clearly waiting for me to call it. When I hesitated, Jim slid up to sit with his back against the headboard and started undoing the buttons of his fly. “Usually all I get is the second-hand report. I promise to keep out of the way if you can fill me in on some of the night’s high points.”

With another horny grin, Paul shucked his boxers back down below his hips, patting the mattress as his already swollen cock started to twitch across his thigh. I shrugged back out of my robe and lay down on my stomach, splayed between his legs, and began to lick him in long, slow strokes up the length of his shaft, from the loose hang of his scrotum up to his frenulum, still salty with the last of the load he’d fired all over me as I’d lain beneath him most of the way to dawn, hips pinned to the mattress by the weight of his torso as he straddled me. Suddenly aware that most of the night’s cum was still encrusted on my belly, my gaze floated to Paul’s face and then on to Jim’s, who had finished pulling himself out and stroked languidly as he watched us. “This is how I tongue another guy’s dick when you’re not around,” I slurred.

“Well, not quite the same way,” Paul chimed in. “If Jim really wants a replay, we’re going to have to tie you back up.”

Jim cocked an eyebrow at me in silent query.

“No,” I said to Paul, as a dozen stray shards of myself suddenly fell back into their rightful place. I nodded toward Jim.“We’re going to tie him up.”

“No way,” Jim said, laughing. “I’ve got nothing left.”

“We’re not asking you,” I shot back, gathering the rope up from where it lay snaked at the foot of the bed. “I’m telling you.” I pulled his jeans down his thighs and ripped the buttons off his shirt pulling it apart from the collar. “Tie his wrists,” I said to Paul. “But never mind giving him room to manoeuver. Make it nice and snug.”

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