Tag: round-robin

Different Tracks, part 22: Free round robin read

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[Part 21]

PART 22

Peter was dizzy. All the blood had left his brain for more interesting activity elsewhere in his body. And although he’d come hard enough to hear the angels sing, his blood didn’t seem eager to resume its upward flow anytime soon. Not with Xander grinding against him and thrusting into his mouth like… that. Oh God.

That was… just fine. Cognition was overrated anyway. But feeling—moist mouth, hard fingers, hard body, hard cock—was very, very nice.

Somehow Peter managed to get the front door unlocked and open. Which was a good thing, because while he didn’t have any close neighbors, getting fucked on his front porch was probably not the best idea. Although the blowjob in the truck had turned out way better than he expected.

Still locked together, Peter and Xander practically fell into the house. Xander kicked the door closed and slammed him back against the wall to attack his mouth with renewed vigor. God, Xander wasn’t a big guy but he was strong, and Peter loved the way he could take charge in a situation like this. If only Xander was as confident about the rest of life as he was about sex.

Gasping for breath, Xander pulled away slightly. “If we don’t move things along, I’m gonna come in my pants.”

Peter grinned. “That would be a real waste. C’mon. Let’s see if we can make it to the bedroom.” He took Xander’s warm, calloused hand and tugged him along.

But they were clumsy in their eagerness, and along the way Xander bumped into a small side table and knocked it over. The ceramic vase on top of it shattered loudly.

“Oh, fuck!” Xander cried, coming to a halt. Stricken, he stared down at the mess. “Man, I’m so sorry.”

“No big deal.” Really. Peter had much more important things on his mind at the moment than a stupid vase. He tried to pull Xander forward.

Xander didn’t budge. “That vase was expensive.”

“Um, not really.” That was a small lie. He’d bought it at an art show a couple years earlier and it had set him back a couple hundred bucks. But it wasn’t important. “Forget about it, Xan.”

Xander pulled his hand away from Peter’s grip and backed away slightly, shaking his head. “I… I gotta go.” He continued backing toward the door.

Peter sprinted past him, the broken ceramic crunching under his shoes, and caught Xander’s arm. “What the hell? It’s just a stupid vase. I don’t care if it’s broken.”

“If I stick around, I’ll probably break more shit.”

“Maybe. I break shit too. Last week I spilled coffee on my brand-new hundred dollar keyboard.”

“Yeah, but that’s the thing. You’re this guy who can… who can spend a lot of money on things just ’cause they look nice, and you don’t have to freak out if they get busted. But me, I’m….” He looked as if he was fighting tears.

Dammit. Peter thought they’d worked through this issue already. He didn’t release Xander’s arm. “So what if I am? That’s not who I am as a person, and it’s sure as fuck not who you are as a person. It’s not what matters.”

“It does matter.” Xander sounded more miserable than angry.

Peter had fallen from heaven to purgatory at light speed. He wanted to bash his head against a wall in frustration. But… hey. That gave him an idea. Working quickly, before Xander could put up a fight, he tightened his grip on Xander’s arm and dragged him down the hall and into the dining room.

“Stay here,” Peter said.

“But—”

“I mean it. I need to show you something. I’ll be right back. I swear, if you make a run for it I will hunt you down, Xander.”

As he’d hoped, a tiny grin tugged at the corners of Xander’s mouth. “Fine. You got five minutes.”

“Won’t take that long.”

Peter let go of him and took off at a sprint for the small room adjacent to the kitchen. That room had been put to a variety of uses over the decades, but nowadays he used it mostly to store his tools and other miscellaneous crap. He opened his tool box, yanked out his hammer, and ran back to the dining room. Where he was relieved to find Xander still waiting, arms crossed and eyebrow raised.

“Are you planning to cripple me?” Xander asked. “Are you secretly Annie Wilkes?”

“That was a sledgehammer. Except in the book it was an axe. And I am your number one fan, but the hammer’s not for you.”

“Then what’s it for?”

Peter looked around the room. It was a 1970s-era addition to the old house, and when he was a kid it was still decorated in all the green and gold horrors of that period. But he’d remodeled it a few years ago, enlarging the window, peeling off the wallpaper and painting instead, adding architectural details and light fixtures more appropriate for the house’s original age. It looked really good. He chose one wall, cocked the hammer back, and swung with all his strength—leaving a big, crumbling hole in the sheetrock.

“What the fuck?” Xander yelled.

Peter turned a little to give him a smile, then swung again. As Xander gaped, he used the claw end of the hammer to expose more of the wall studs. Satisfied, he set the hammer on the table.

Xander’s jaw still hung open. “Are you out of your ever-living mind?”

“Nope. I’m making a point. With visual aids this time. What do you see, Xan?”

“A psycho.”

Peter sighed and pointed at the hole. “What do you see?”

After a moment’s hesitation, Xander walked over. He peered into the wall, then shrugged. “I dunno. Studs. Crumbled drywall. Um, some mouse turds and a dead bug.”

“A pretty ordinary wall, right?”

“Uh, sure.”

“Right.” Peter nodded. “And you and I, we could build a wall just like this one.”

“Yeah, I guess so. I mean, we already have, plenty of times.”

Peter moved closer and settled a hand on Xander’s shoulder. He was glad when Xander didn’t flinch away. “And if we built this wall, we could repaint it with this nice cream color I have going here, or we could slap on the original wallpaper. It had daisies. Or we could get someone to put a mural here, or cover it in gilding, or… whatever we wanted. And it wouldn’t matter, ’cause underneath it’d still be the same strong wall. The one we built.”

For a  very long time, Xander stood still, staring at the hole. Peter had to force himself to breathe. He really, really had to make Xander understand. This thing between them had to work.

Then Xander’s eyes widened. Very slowly, he turned his head to face Peter. And a wide and beautiful smile bloomed. “I get it,” Xander said.

***

Read the full story on these blogs, starting with Sophie Bonaste’s:

Sophie Bonaste – http://sophiebonaste.blogspot.com

Charlie Cochet- http://charliecochet.com/blog

Grace Duncan –  http://www.grace-duncan.com/graces-blog

Kim Fielding – http://kfieldingwrites.com

Suki Fleet- http://sukifleet.wordpress.com/

Lane Hayes-  http://lanehayes.wordpress.com

Elizabeth Noble –  http://www.elizabeth-noble.com/

Brynn Stein –https://brynnstein2.wordpress.com

 

 

 

 

Different Tracks: Part 6

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I’ve joined a great group of authors to write a round-robin story called Different Tracks. We’re posting installments every Monday and Thursday and today is my turn! The other authors are Sophie Bonaste, Brynn Stein, Grace Duncan, Suki Fleet, Elizabeth Noble, Lane Hayes and Charlie Cochet.

Here are links to the first five parts:

Different Tracks — Part 6

 

The interior of Xander’s Civic was much too small. Xander smelled good—soap, sweat, and sawdust—and the designs on his forearm shifted as he turned the steering wheel. He was skinny—wiry, maybe—but his arms were well-muscled. Droplets of water fell from his hair, dampening his collar. Peter imagined those droplets gliding slowly over bare skin, over the half-finished samurai tattoo, and he imagined licking them away. He shivered violently, then smiled a little when Xander reached over to turn up the heat.

Damn! Xander was so close to him!

Peter glanced at Xander, who was frowning and had caught his lower lip in his teeth. Peter tried hard to find something to say that wasn’t a double-entendre about eating meat. “You don’t—” he began.

Xander startled as if someone had shocked him. “What?” he asked, his voice unexpectedly raspy. He looked briefly at Peter, then back at the windshield, where the frantic swish-thump of the wipers did little to clear the sheeting rain.

Peter cleared his throat. “You don’t have to go to the diner if you don’t want to. I mean, it’s not mandatory or anything.”

“It kinda is.” Xander sighed. “Court order.”

“Ah.” Peter had been wondering about that. Xander worked as hard as any of the volunteers, but carpentry was clearly not his thing. “What did you do?”

“Chopped people up to make my prize-winning sausages,” Xander replied. When Peter snorted an inelegant laugh, Xander chuckled. “Got caught speeding.”

“You must’ve been driving pretty fast,” said Peter. Xander wasn’t driving fast now. In fact, he was crawling along as he dealt with poor visibility and slippery streets.

“I, uh, kinda got caught speeding four times.”

Jesus. He was gorgeous with that sheepish grin. “Well,” Peter said, “I don’t think they’ll give you the death penalty if you decide to skip the diner. I can call Mr. J and tell him you’re bowing out on account of crappy weather.”

Xander rolled to a stop at a light that was barely visible through the downpour. “How come you’re there every Saturday? Do you have a lead foot too?”

Peter did tend to drive pretty fast, but he’d been lucky enough to not get caught. “I’m just a volunteer,” he said. “It used to be something I did with my dad, and when he died, I guess I didn’t have the heart to give it up.”

“Sorry,” Xander murmured.

“Oh, it was a couple years ago. But thanks.”

“You guys must’ve been close.” Xander sounded a little wistful, Peter thought.

“We were when I was a kid. Then….” Peter hesitated a moment. Fuck it, he thought. Hiding the truth never works out well. “Then when I was sixteen I told him I’m gay.” He held his breath as he waited for a response.

Xander didn’t have a homophobic freakout and boot him out of the car. Instead, he turned to look at Peter, his brown eyes wide. “Yeah?”

It took Peter a moment to remember what he’d been talking about, and then he had to clear his throat again. “He, uh, didn’t take it well. We basically didn’t talk for months. But he got over it eventually. Then I guess he decided we needed more bonding time or something. He started joining me on Saturdays when I volunteered for Habitat. We always did a lot of construction chores on the farm anyway, so I guess it came naturally to him. Uh, the light’s green.”

Xander blinked before gently pressing on the gas. “Farm,” he said quietly. That was clearly more of a shock to him than Peter’s sexual orientation. He didn’t say anything right away. They came to another red light, and after he stopped, he rubbed the back of his neck with one hand. “Are you still a farmer now?” he finally asked.

“No. I still own the place—it’s been in the family for generations—and I live in the house where I grew up. But I lease out the land.”

“What do you do for a living?”

Peter looked at the dashboard of Xander’s fifteen-year-old car and then at the sexy tats on his sexy corded forearms. He winced as he admitted, “Software developer.”

“Seriously?” Xander’s eyebrows lifted. “You don’t look anywhere near geeky enough for that.”

“Um, thanks. I guess.”

“I can picture you better riding a tractor instead of a laptop. You’re… strong.”

Shit.

And then because Xander was so goddamn near, and because Peter could hear him breathing even over the pounding of the rain and the roar of the car’s fan, Peter reached over and used one finger to trace the stubble along Xander’s jawline.

When Xander answered with a shudder and a low moan, Peter’s jeans became much, much too tight. “We don’t have to go to the diner,” he reminded Xander, hearing the catch in his own voice.

Xander’s eyes were very dark, as if the pupils had almost completely overwhelmed the irises. “Yeah?” he responded in a near-growl. “Where would we go instead?”

Peter smiled at him. “We could go to my place.”

___

Check in with Sophie Bonaste on Monday for Part 7!