He got the top off the lube and managed to get some on his fingers. He circled Daniel’s entrance and didn’t even breach him before Daniel cried out and squirted streams of come over his belly. Elliot chuckled and continued his preparation.
“I hope you can get it up again. Because I’m not done yet.”
“I’m good for another round,” Daniel panted. “Give me a minute. I’ll be right back with you, old man.”
Elliot withdrew the hand he was using for stretching and slapped Daniel hard on the hip. “Who are you calling an old man?”
Daniel groaned and his spent penis twitched. Elliot laughed and smacked him once more before going back to the stretching.
Soon he had two fingers scissoring Daniel open, and Daniel started to writhe again. Elliot removed his fingers and barely had time to register Daniel’s disappointment before he rolled a condom onto himself and slid into Daniel’s body.
Daniel’s cock jerked over and over, and probably would have issued stream after stream of come if he hadn’t already ejaculated so recently. It didn’t seem to keep him from enjoying the sensation immensely, though, so Elliot continued doing what he was doing. He didn’t worry with slow and easy. He set up a punishing pace right from the beginning, and Daniel was thrashing and moaning beneath him as he finally came inside him.
He removed and tied the condom, dropped it on the floor, and then collapsed on top of Daniel, whispering in his ear, “God, Darrell. That was so good.”
He barely heard Daniel say something as he fell asleep on top of him, but he couldn’t have said what it was.
DANIEL WOKE
to an unfamiliar bed. The moonlight entering the window was at the wrong angle. In fact, the window was on the wrong side of the bed. He was not in his own house. He turned to face Elliot and couldn’t help but brush back that gorgeous lock of chestnut hair out of his eyes. As much as Daniel would have loved to merely lie there and look at the man who had brought him to orgasm more frequently and more completely than he ever remembered, he had to go to the bathroom.
It was becoming an emergency.
He smiled and pulled the covers over Elliot’s shoulders, then slipped out of bed and padded to the bathroom next door that he’d vaguely noticed on the way to the bedroom. He fumbled around for the light switch and finally found it. Lifting the toilet seat and leaning against the tiled wall, he took care of business. He was wonderfully sated and lazy and felt barely awake; he wanted nothing more than to go back into that grand old bedroom and crawl in beside that gorgeous hunk of man, who seemed to be fine with him staying the entire night.
Out of the corner of his eye, Daniel saw a bottle on the sink wiggle.
“What the hell?” he mumbled under his breath and leaned over to take a closer look.
The bottle of mouthwash jiggled again. He reached toward it, and it suddenly lurched two inches toward him.
Daniel startled and threw himself backward, away from the bottle that was coming to life just in time to get royally pissed at him and attack. He realized at the last moment that he had no idea what was actually behind him.
He found out soon enough.
Not much.
He recognized too late that his calves abruptly hit the sides of the porcelain tub. He grabbed at anything he could find to stop his descent. What he found was the shower curtain.
It declined to help him.
As Daniel fell on his ass in the tub, he could do nothing but watch the bottle of mouthwash sail through the air and land beside him on the porcelain.
“What the ever-loving shit!”
He scrambled to his feet as quickly as he could, only to find the can of shaving cream joining its fellow toiletry in flight toward the tub. It was a train wreck—Daniel couldn’t look away. The top of the toothpaste was unscrewing itself and eventually fell into the sink, as the tube itself inched forward, leaving a trail of green-and-white-striped goo in its wake.
By that point, Daniel decided he desperately needed to get out of the room before he discovered even more possessed bathroom items.
The hot water turned on—by itself—and steam covered the mirror. The screech on the glass was deafening as words appeared.
“Ou-ou-out,” Daniel stuttered. “Says ‘get out.’”
Daniel was happy to oblige whoever—or whatever—was writing the message, but he found his legs had turned into Jell-O. He could only stare wide-eyed as the comb flew toward his head, closely followed by the toothbrush and razor.
He finally found control of his recalcitrant lower limbs and scrabbled out of the bathroom as quickly as he could. Stumbling into the bedroom, he managed to get to the bed without face-planting and grab Elliot’s arm.
“Come on, man,” he gasped. “We have to get out of here.”
Elliot weakly pulled his arm away, trying to catch up with current events as Daniel grabbed his clothes. “What? What’s going on?”
“Your damned house is haunted or something.” Daniel frantically grabbed at his clothes while periodically shooting glances toward the hallway to make sure the contents of the bathroom weren’t following him.
“What do you mean?” Elliot appeared to be struggling to wake up as he watched Daniel practically fall on his ass trying to get his pants on.
“The, the… the water… and the steam… and the words… and flying shit. Well, not actually shit, but… but flying stuff. Shaving cream, and toothpaste, and… and….”
Elliot shook his head. “Come back to bed. You’re still half-asleep.”
Daniel headed back out toward the hall carrying his shirt. “Come on. Take me home or something.” He looked back at Elliot, but Elliot had already turned over and started back to sleep.
With what appeared to be his last reserves of consciousness, Elliot mumbled, “If you want to leave now, call a cab. Otherwise, I’ll take you home in the morning. Come to bed.”
“I’m not staying here. The damned place is haunted.” Daniel looked at the bathroom door suspiciously. Were the items able to leave the bathroom and fly out into the hall? Or was the bathroom the only place that was haunted? Daniel didn’t know. He only wanted out of the house.
Elliot droned, “You’re drunk and half-asleep and imagining things.” And then he pulled the cover back over his shoulders and closed his eyes.
“I’m leaving.” Daniel turned to run toward the stairs by the time Elliot said, “Night,” and pulled the covers over his head.
THE NEXT
morning, Elliot woke to a cell phone ringing. He stuck his arm out of his blanket cocoon and smacked around blindly, trying to find the damned thing on the bedside dresser. When he finally located it, he pulled it under the covers with him.
“What, Cher?” he snarled. He hadn’t been sleeping well for several months and didn’t appreciate being awakened so early on the one morning he was actually getting some rest.
“How was twink-boy?” an overly cheerful voice said.
Elliot reluctantly peeked out around the blanket to glance at the other side of the bed. Daniel wasn’t there, and it took Elliot’s sleep-addled mind a few moments to remember why. When he finally did remember, he figured it was safe to talk about him. “He was in his twenties. Not a twink.”
“Close enough. Half your age.”
“You’re the one who was pushing him at me,” Elliot growled incredulously, trying to decide whether to get up or hide under the covers.
“Not once the whole night did I ever physically push him at you,” Sheri teased.
“You know what I mean.” Elliot flung the blankets back and sat up. Now that he was awake, his bladder was insisting he actually get up and take care of its needs.
“Details, Elliot,” she said in her stern voice as he padded toward the bathroom, phone in hand.
“It was good,” he admitted, “but he’s nuts.” In the bathroom he tried to figure out the etiquette concerning relieving oneself while talking on the phone. He decided he didn’t care after all, so he continued talking. “He left in the middle of the night because he said the house was haunted.”
“Is it?” Sheri asked in a singsong voice.
“Yes, Sheri,” Elliot snarked. “Of course it’s haunted. That’s the easiest explanation here.” His voice made clear his disgust as he pinched the phone between his ear and shoulder and turned on the water to wash his hands. “No, of course it’s not haunted. He said that everything on the sink threw itself at him. I’m at the sink right now and everything is right where I put it. Now I’m not sure about you, but if stuff started to fly through the air at me completely unbidden, I wouldn’t stop to pick the damned things up and put them back. Would you? So the fact that they weren’t moved tells me he was either seeing things or making shit up. Or maybe he really was using drugs. There was a time last night that I thought he might be high as well as drunk. I kind of decided later that he wasn’t, but… I mean, ghosts?”
“You never know, Ellie.” Sheri still had that mocking tone. “As far as all those bathroom items? Maybe the ghost put them back.”
“Right,” Elliot deadpanned, “because ghosts are noted neat freaks and wouldn’t want to leave a mess after throwing things at people to make them leave the house.” He dried his hands awkwardly, almost dropping the phone in the process, then started back toward his bedroom.
“I don’t know. Maybe your ghost is.”
“I don’t have a ghost, Cher.” Elliot rolled his eyes even though he knew she couldn’t see him. “What I had was a kid too damned young to know that he was drunk or stoned and was seeing things; someone who decided to run out in the middle of the night instead of coming to his senses enough to wait for a ride the next morning.”
“How did he get home?” Sheri finally sounded concerned.
“Cab, I guess. I don’t know. I went back to sleep.” Elliot looked around for his clothes, debating whether he wanted to stay up or go back to bed.
Sheri was indignant. “You didn’t make sure he got home okay? Make him call you or something?”
“God, Sheri. It’s not like I’m dating him or something. He was a one-night stand who invited himself home, then got freaked out and wanted to leave. Not my responsibility.” Elliot decided it was just too much trouble to pick out clothes for the day, let alone pick up the ones from yesterday strewn all over his hardwood floor, and crawled back onto the bed instead, barely listening as Sheri said, “You can be an ass at times, Ellie.”
“Why? Because I wanted to get some sleep instead of catering to the kid’s hallucinations?” Elliot slipped back under the smooth sheets and pulled the blanket up to his shoulders.
“I can’t reason with you when you’re like this.”
Elliot sighed as he snuggled his head into the pillow. “You called me, remember? Not the other way around. And too damned early on the morning after, if you ask me. So, if you got all the details you wanted, I’m going back to sleep now.”
“I didn’t get all the details I wanted, but good enough for now, I guess.” Her voice turned brighter. “Meet me for lunch? I don’t have any catering events today, or even tomorrow that I would have to start cooking for. So I’m yours all day, if you want.”
Elliot shook his head on the pillow. “Got to check in with the office later, then go to a couple of contractors and start getting bids.” He heard a disappointed sigh. “Dinner, maybe?”
Sheri’s voice brightened again. “That sounds great. I’ll cook. Oh, and maybe I’ll see if Malcolm can come over here and you can meet him. You have some stuff in common with him actually. You two should get along well.”
Elliot smiled sleepily. “What? We’re both suave, debonair, sophisticated?”
“No, you both have gigantic sticks up your a—”
“Good-bye, Cher.”
She laughed. “See you at seven.”
ELLIOT ARRIVED
at Sheri’s at exactly seven o’clock. He walked up the stone-encrusted path to the front door of a normal-looking 1950s-style cottage home. How someone like Sheri could live in an ordinary house, Elliot never could understand.
He had no idea what they were going to have for dinner, but knowing Sheri, it would either be raw or some hitherto inedible part of some weird animal. One time she threatened to serve him monkey brains. Thank God he’d talked her out of that one. Whatever they were having tonight would have to go well with red wine, because that was what Elliot had brought.
Elliot knew the door was unlocked, so he walked in, through the living room, and into the kitchen. Sheri surprised him. They were having normal steak. At least, he thought it was normal steak. She was putting the plates on the table as Elliot crossed the kitchen and kissed her cheek.
“This
is
beef?” Elliot asked as he sat beside Sheri and across the table from an older African-American man with a neatly groomed goatee, whom he assumed to be Malcolm. “Right?”
Sheri gave him a sly smile. “Maybe.”
Malcolm grinned and offered Elliot his hand. “I’m Malcolm, and I brought the meat to be grilled. It’s beef.”
Elliot smiled, nodded to Malcolm, and addressed Sheri. “I like this guy already.”
Sheri smacked Elliot. “Ah, shut up.” Then she giggled.
Elliot dug into his now-confirmed beef steak. “So, Malcolm, what do you do for a living?” He knew Sheri was going to give him hell for his
tone
later, but come on, really. Who names their kid Malcolm? And the guy was wearing a suit and tie. To dinner. At his girlfriend’s house. Even if he liked the guy for insisting on beef for dinner, Elliot had to give him fits for as much as possible. It was his duty as Sheri’s friend.
Malcolm answered the question, completely unaware of Elliot’s inner musings. “Much the same as you, it sounds like,” he answered. “I own my own perfume business. Started with a little lab and a couple of partners, and now I have several branches. I have a CEO for the tedious stuff, and I oversee what I want to oversee. I tend to stay in the R & D department more than anything. I enjoy research. Of any kind, really. Scientific. Historical. For fun.” Malcolm piled salad on his plate and passed the bowl to Elliot.
“I’m not sure I’d call research of any kind fun,” Elliot answered, eyeing the bowl of greens as if it was as inedible as those long-ago-threatened monkey brains. “I’m more a work-with-my-hands kind of guy.”