“You haven’t been answering your cell phone,” Topher persists.
“I lost it,” Richard grunts. He wonders what gave him away, what telltale sign Topher read in his game that told him Richard wasn’t spouting homophobic nonsense? There can only be one reason Topher is here, looking for him.
They look at each other for an immeasurable time. Topher seems to be waiting for something. Richard stares into inscrutable eyes and surrenders to the inevitable move: “Do you need a ride somewhere? Would you like to get something to eat?”
Topher merely nods, and his silence is unnerving.
Richard drives them to a restaurant he knows on the West Side—well, to an underground garage nearby, anyway, as one must put the car somewhere. He finds himself not at all surprised that Topher seems in no rush to open the door.
Topher’s hand is on his sleeve, in fact. “I don’t want to presume, but I have a request.”
“But you presume anyway,” Richard says, voice low and tired, betraying not a hint of the painful excitement squeezing his heart. It’s rather like the heat of a title match, the oppressively charged atmosphere around the black-and-white board, so small and yet with all attention focused upon it. He looks sidelong at Topher. Topher is the one who opened this gambit; it is his move. Richard waits.
“I am sure you will tell me no if I am wrong and you don’t want to,” Topher says, manners impeccable as always.
Richard huffs. “What’s the request?”
“Kiss me,” Topher says, and Richard is not prepared for how those two words knock gravity askew. He is spinning in free fall, vertigo threatening to make up into down and east into west.
Best to just do as he asks, then, and Richard anchors himself by pulling Topher to him roughly, his hands yanking the collar of his shirt and nearly cutting his own lip on Topher’s teeth. The kiss is pure pleasure, though, the taste of Topher eerily familiar, as if this has happened before, even though it hasn’t.
Perhaps Richard has imagined this moment more times than he would ever admit.
When he releases Topher, the poor boy’s lower lip is bruised, his pants are visibly too tight, and he has a glazed look in his eye that says he’s forgotten entirely where he is.
But not who he’s with. “Richard…”
If they are going to play this game, Richard needs to establish his dominance, display his experience, emphasize the gulf between them. At least, that is what he tells himself. Otherwise, he’ll never gain any advantage. “Kiss me in return,” he demands.
Topher nods, then shifts in the bucket seat until his knees are folded under him and his hands are cradling Richard’s face. His ever-serious young eyes lock on to Richard’s for a long moment before they close, as he brushes his mouth across the older man’s expectant lips.
Richard thinks his head might explode. Topher brushes past again, then presses more firmly, the tip of his tongue darting into Richard’s mouth. Topher is all tightly trammeled desire, as intoxicating and potent as gin and vermouth.
“You’re trying so hard to get it right,” Richard chides.
Topher jerks back, stung. “You didn’t like it?”
“Are you going to be like this the whole time? If I let you get in bed with me, will it be like this?”
“Like what?”
“Like you’re ballroom dancing and trying not to make a misstep. If I want that, I can pay for it.”
Topher’s confidence falters. “But… I mean…” Then he gathers himself to make a countermove. “Well, maybe you should make love to me, then. And show me how it’s done.”
Richard seizes him by the back of the collar, pulling him close again into another crushing, bruising kiss. “I will shatter you like a window in a hurricane if you’re too stiff, you know,” he says, and feels Topher stiffen even more at the comment. Richard knows it’s cruel to wind him up, but he’s unable to help himself.
Topher nods, then squeaks, “Here?”
Richard looks around the inside of the car as if seriously considering it. Then he unlocks the doors. “Hmm, no. Come on.”
Topher trails slightly behind his…what. Rival? Intended partner? He doesn’t have a word for what Richard is right now. Richard is the former student of Topher’s father, and two months ago if you’d asked Topher what his plan was concerning losing his virginity, Richard wouldn’t have even come up. But one takes what opportunities the game presents. Richard is perfect and he doesn’t even know how perfect.
Topher’s confidence wavers some as they walk, though. Are they actually going somewhere to eat first? Was that only a pretense?
Then he sees a sign in a window that makes him think there’s a chess club in the building ahead, but no, they couldn’t possibly be going to…? No. They walk right past, into the lobby of a somewhat rundown building. Paying for the parking?
But Topher is wrong again. It’s a hotel. Richard hands his credit card to the receptionist, who doesn’t even take her eyes off the small TV on her desk as she hands it back with a key card.
They ride a noisy elevator up to the fifth floor. Richard leads the way to a room where everything is beige and peach, even the artwork bolted to the wall over the bed.
At least everything looks clean,
Topher thinks. Richard sheds his jacket, draping it on the dresser and then stands, legs slightly spread, by the large bed. He unbuttons his shirt, and is taking off his watch when Topher realizes he’s just been staring, watching Richard undress and not doing anything himself.
“I, um…”
“This was your idea, Topher,” Richard points out. “Wasn’t it?”
“Well, yes,” Topher agrees. “I’m just…not sure what to do from this point forward.”
Richard sets his watch aside. “Come undress me, then.”
Topher takes a breath, correctly divining that this is a test of some kind. Testing his resolve, perhaps. That’s what he thinks when he has finished pulling Richard’s undershirt over his head and is undoing his belt and unzipping his fly. The
thing
he feels, then sees, so long and hard it has pushed up through the waistband of Richard’s underwear, makes him swallow and quaver.
He pulls Richard’s pants down anyway, folds them with a neat crease over the jacket, and then looks at the man in front of him. His cock is a proud, red, artful curve away from his body. Topher pets his balls the way one would an imposing dog.
“You have a very determined look in your eye,” Richard says. He climbs onto the bed, leaving Topher standing. He props himself up on pillows, one hand idly moving his foreskin up and down his shaft. “Your turn to undress. Go on.”
Topher is mindful of the ballroom dance comment, but he can’t just toss his clothes aside and leap onto the bed like a twink from the one porn video he’s seen. He takes off his clothes methodically, folds each piece and makes a neat stack on the seat of the desk chair. That’s who he is, and this tryst isn’t going to change that.
When he looks up at Richard, it’s clear that he has found this performance every bit as arousing as some fake slutty striptease—maybe more. Topher climbs onto the bed, then sits back on his heels, his own prick bobbing in his lap. “I want this to go well,” he says. “As I said before, I think maybe you should lead the dance.”
Richard Partridge is entranced by the beauty of the young man climbing onto the bed. Maybe Topher growing up wasn’t so bad after all. And surely this can’t be Topher’s first time? First time with someone older and more experienced, probably.
Richard lingers over the sight of Topher naked, far more entrancing than he had imagined. Not that he had spent much time imagining such a thing. Of course not. Richard resolves that whether this goes well or badly, he will take Topher shopping to replace the too-small suit and whatever else his mother has sent him off to college with that needs replacing.
Yes, he is thinking ahead, but that is the way Richard nearly always thinks. And he knows Topher does, too. That is what chess players do. They learn the rules, then immediately predict what the rules will allow them to do.
He decides to frame everything for Topher in terms he’ll understand.
“The winning state here, if we may be claiming there is a single winning state to be defined,” Richard says quietly, “is to get my cock into you, for you to come while it’s there, and for me to come shortly after that, if not at the same time, which might happen but is hardly necessary. There’s no loser in this game, unless you don’t enjoy yourself.”
Topher nods, as if Richard has just analyzed the checkmate in a junior match.
“You could try kissing me again,” Richard suggests. “You might be less stiff now that we’re out of the car.”
“All right.”
Topher crawls over him, lying atop the length of him as he brings their mouths together. His cock nestles into the curve of Richard’s hip, and Richard’s cock presses against his belly. This kiss ends up necessarily more sloppy as Richard’s hands clamp on to Topher’s backside, pulling him against him, knocking their noses together. For all the neat words he’s used to describe what they’re about to do, what he hasn’t told Topher is just how much he fucking
needs
him now, and maybe there are no words to describe this need, and the only way to tell it is to just pull at him like he wants to merge their skins together.
Topher loses himself in the kissing and rutting for a while, in the incredible sensation of Richard’s skin against his, then suddenly finds himself struggling to get away, to stop the inevitable flood of come from his prick, squirting hot and sudden between their bellies as he cries out, distressed, even as Richard holds him even tighter against him.
“It’s all right,” Richard croons. “You can come. You’ll be ready again in no time, I’m sure.” Now that he thinks about it, Richard’s been saying that for a few minutes, but words had ceased reaching Topher.
“But now we’re all…” Topher’s blush is so deep it makes his face even redder than Richard’s cock.
“Get a towel from the bathroom and clean us up.”
Topher does as suggested, still breathless from the orgasm and the kissing, retrieving a small towel and wiping himself with it. When he returns to the bed, Richard has brought brightly colored packets of condoms and two small tubes of lubricant into the bed. Topher’s throat goes dry with anticipation.
He’s really going to do this. Finally do this.
He uses the towel to wipe off the semen smeared on Richard’s skin, and then follows Richard’s gestures to lie on his back.
“For someone who’s just come, you’re rather tense,” Richard says, as he tears the tip off one of the tubes of lube and slicks his fingers with it. “This is supposed to be fun, remember?”
“I’m sorry,” Topher says. “I’m just nervous.”
Richard revises his estimate of Topher’s experience level downward again.
He’s embarrassed by smeared come?
He rubs a warm hand over Topher’s now clean belly. Topher’s eyes mist over as Richard’s fingertips just barely brush the boy’s soft shaft, which is already hardening again. “You may feel we are playing a game, but there is no winner or loser here,” he says, voice low. “There is also no getting it right or getting it wrong, unless one of us isn’t enjoying ourselves.”
“I’m sor—”
“No apologizing! If you’re not enjoying yourself, I need to work a little harder.” He rubs his slick fingers between Topher’s asscheeks, making no attempt to penetrate, purely teasing. He is gratified to feel Topher’s hips rock toward the touch rather than away from it. He teases one small nipple between his lips and enjoys the sigh that elicits.
“How did you know I would like that?” Topher asks breathlessly, when Richard has relinquished his hold on the nub and is now just running a finger over it lightly.
“A good guess,” Richard says. “I like it, so I thought maybe you would, too.”
“Oh.” Richard watches Topher’s eyes light up, as if he can see the wheels of logic turning in his head. Yes, logic can be applied to sex, if not quite so rigidly as it is applied to chess. “And do you like…” The pause is just long enough for Topher’s cheeks to flush again. “Being penetrated?”