BluesDog
Sex God
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Pausing outside Della’s Café on Penobscot Street, Matt Charbonneau thumbed his phone, reviewing the list of his clients for the day, calculating how much time each would need and how much money he could collect, preferably in cash. He had been the go-to jack-of-all-trades since returning after college and a tour in the military to a Down East town not far from where he grew up, building a reputation for reliability, honesty and craftsmanship that earned an income that was tidy if not really steady. Once again, he was staring down both barrels of a truck payment that would overdraw his account at First Maine Savings, but today’s work should cover it if he could get everyone to pay.
A big ‘if’ these days when most of the town was cash-strapped.
Matt frowned as he looked at one of the entries: Kyle Williams with a question mark next to the name where the assignment should be. What had Kyle said? Something about an apple tree that needed be be cut down? Matt hoped not because Cassie Williams had loved that tree and the way that it shaded the porch on the side of her rambling Victorian house. When she retired to Florida a couple of years ago, her son moved back from Boston where he had been a cop. Only thirty-two, same age as Matt, Kyle was already retired on a disability pension after taking a bullet in the hip during what should have been a routine traffic stop. He was one mean son of a bitch now. No one in town saw much of him, and no one seemed to miss him.
But why, Matt lamented to himself, does that prickly bastard have to be so gorgeous? Anytime he saw Kyle his breath caught in his throat.
After firing off texts to everyone on the list to let them know when to expect him, Matt decided to leave Kyle for the last appointment of the day since it was almost a given that he would need a stiff drink or two after that job was over.
Toni and Marie, the two waitresses at Della’s caught each other’s eye as Matt came through the door, each sending a look that said, “This one is mine today. You owe me.” Toni won the battle and waved him to an empty place at the counter. Matt nodded at the people he knew, pretty much everyone, and grabbed the seat she indicated.
The waitress stealthily checked out her reflection in the shiny toaster to make sure that her hair wasn’t sticking out and there was no lipstick on her teeth.
Marie whispered out of the corner of her mouth, “That is one fine sexy beast.” Toni agreed. She had an on-again, off-again relationship with Charlie, who worked at the mill, but Matt Charbonneau could always turn her head. Tall, well-built, shaggy blond hair sticking out from under a knit cap, and a face that was saved from being too handsome by a nose that had been broken a couple of times in high school hockey.
And that crooked smile that hinted he knew all your secrets and didn’t give a damn!
Satisfied she looked her best, Toni strolled to the end of the counter, leaned on her elbows to show her cleavage to better advantage and cooed, “Hey, Sugar! What’ll you have?”
“Hey, Toni,” Matt smiled. “Just a black coffee today.”
“That’s all?” she pouted, “We have a special this morning. The Lumberjack Breakfast is twenty-five percent off for handsome men with pretty blue eyes. Flapjacks, eggs, ham, toast and juice.”
Matt blushed and said, “No thanks, I’ll stick with the coffee.” Any kind of compliment went against his naturally humble nature.
“Hey! What about me?” demanded Phil Burke, sitting next to Matt, “Where’s my discount meal?
As she poured the coffee, Toni stared at him coolly and responded with mock sympathy, “Oh, honey, you just missed the special for men with shit-brown eyes.” Everyone roared with laughter, and Phil flipped her both middle fingers.
Matt felt heart-sick whenever he let women like Toni flirt with him, thinking he would be interested in a relationship. He wanted to stand on the street corner bellowing that he was gay and damned happy about it, but he had seen a butt-load of small-town gossips and the vicious damage they could do. His own sister was hounded mercilessly into a cycle of drugs and alcohol, so he preferred to keep his private life to himself.
After gulping down the scalding drink, Matt slapped Phil on the shoulder and threw a fiver on the counter for Toni. He knew that she had a couple of kids and needed the money more than his bank did. He doubted that Charlie was much help to her even when he was around. As he made his way out of Della’s, Matt was the only person in the diner that was not aware of Toni’s wistful appraisal of the way his jeans clung to his ass.
Spring was taking its own sweet time coming to New England that year, and the day was blustery and damp. By the time Matt was through with most of his schedule, he was bone-chilled and ready to call it a day, but he knew better than to postpone Kyle. As he pulled into the driveway of the Williams house, he admired again the old Queen Anne with its wrap-around porches, gables, turrets and gingerbread trim. The craftsman in him demanded that his work did not reflect any decline in standards from long ago, and he always enjoyed the challenge to blend his repairs in seamlessly. He drove around the house to park between the kitchen door and the old stables that had been converted into a garage.
As Matt cut the engine, he saw that Kyle was already waiting on the back porch, slightly favoring his injured leg, the wind riffling his short, brown hair. From this distance, he looked like an older version of the handsome, athletic kid he had been before he moved to Boston: track star, captain of the baseball team, King of the Winter Carnival one year. Only as Matt crossed the yard could he see the fine lines that pain had etched in his face and the wary, hooded expression in the grey eyes. His khakis and wooly blue sweater fit well, but the body was lean and the skin taut over the muscle as though all the excess had been cauterized away.
“Took long enough,” Kyle observed tartly.
Matt swallowed the bile rising in his throat, anger crowding out lust. “I’m here now, aren’t I?”
“I made a list. Can you get this done today?”
Good afternoon to you, too, Matt thought.
Matt took the list and studied the neat block lettering. Move some cordwood to the kitchen door… prune a dead limb from the apple tree… tack up a loose shutter… replace some shingles missing from the garage roof.
“Ayuh,” as he pocketed the list. “I’ll start with the tree.”
“And the charge?”
The handyman thumbed in jaw in thought and debated adding a ten percent “Kyle-Williams-is-an-asshole” tax before quoting, “One seventy-five.”
Kyle scowled for longer than Matt thought was necessary before agreeing, “Ayuh. Let me know when you’re done.”
Matt muttered “What a prick!” under his breath as he turned away. Anyone else would have invited him into a warm kitchen and chatted over a cup of coffee, but not Kyle Williams.
By the time all of the tasks were completed except replacing the shingles, the temperature had dropped a few degrees and the wind picked up. Matt propped a ladder against the side the garage and made sure that he had the hammer and nails, the roofer’s felt and the cedar shingles before climbing up. It was only when he was at the peak of the roof that he realized he had left his gloves in the truck. He debated for a second about fetching them, but after a glance at the darkening sky, decided to tough out the cold for the few minutes that the job should take.
Prying up the old boards so he could replace the felt underneath took longer than he expected because the cedar kept threatening to split. Once a good-sized section was cleared of shingles, Matt tore out the old felt and tacked down the new. He lined up the new shingles with careful measurements and eyeballed them from several angles to make sure that they looked right, too, before nailing them down. Every hammer stroke on the last one sent a shock into his cold-numbed hands, but at last it was finished to his satisfaction. As he clambered down the ladder one hand on the ladder and the surplus materials in the other, Matt was thinking he should offer to come back tomorrow to stain the new shakes to a color closer to the rest of the roof, free of charge, since Kyle would hold him to the original quote. His inattention caused him to lose his balance when his numbed hand slipped off of a rung, and he fell backward the last six or so feet, hitting the ground on his back hard enough to knock the wind out of him.
Matt sat up and shook his head to clear the cobwebs. The shoulder he fell on hurt like hell, and there was a gash on his forearm bleeding a good bit. He felt wobbly as he stood up, but he seemed to be in good shape, considering.
Kyle came onto the porch and called, “That fall was wicked bad.”
“Ayuh. A little dizzy.”
“You’re bleeding there. Come into the kitchen and let me have a look.”
Matt took a couple of steps and judged that the dizziness was less. “Nah, I’ll be okay.”
“Won’t take but a second.” Kyle held the door open.
“I’m fine.” As much as anything, Matt was embarrassed that he had been seen tumbling ass over tea kettle and just wanted to get home.
“Why are you being such a stubborn jerk?” Kyle barked.
“Me? You’re one to talk.” Matt was angry now, his fists clinched and his jaw tight. He could see the fire flashing in Kyle’s eyes, too, even from twenty feet away.
“Is this the way you treat all your customers? Strutting around all puffed up like a banty rooster, hurling insults?”
Matt raged, “You’re the one insulting me! I just want to get paid and go home.
“So you can come back with a shyster lawyer and sue me because you are too much of a muscle-bound lunkhead to use a ladder properly? Even the monkeys at the zoo can climb a ladder without falling on their asses.”
They were breathing heavily, their faces flushed, a couple of Alpha Males squaring off for battle.
Suddenly, Matt saw the absurdity of the situation and willed himself to calm down. He relaxed and flashed his crooked smile. “What a pair of coots we are. What’ll we be like in fifty years?”
Kyle stared at him for a few seconds and shook his head, “Ayuh. State of Maine won’t be big enough for both of us. You coming in or are you going to keep bleeding on my yard?”
Matt walked to the kitchen door. “I’d be obliged.”
He paused in the mudroom to take off his boots and continued into the kitchen where he saw Kyle rummaging in the cabinets for supplies. Looking around the room he could see the range and the refrigerator were new, but the rest of the kitchen had not been changed in seventy years or more. The pine hutch packed with crockery on one wall was probably older than the house.
Kyle washed his hands with carbolic soap and waved Matt over to the sink. “Let’s see what we have here,” he said as he held Matt’s arm under the warm water flowing from the tap, gently rubbing away dirt and blood. “Doesn’t look too bad. Won’t need stitches.”
Once the wound was clean and the blood flow nearly stopped, Kyle opened a drawer to get a tea towel to dry Matt off, before pouring a healthy measure of disinfectant over it. Matt grunted at the stinging pain.
“Does that burn?” Kyle asked. “Good! Payback for calling me a prick.” A tiny smile played around Kyle’s mouth.
Matt, embarrassed, asked, “You heard that? Sorry.”
After a thoughtful pause, Kyle admitted, “I deserved it. I was acting like a prick. You asked for less than half of the next lowest bid.” He laid a pad of sterile gauze over the cut, instructing, “Hold this while I tape it down.” Surveying the bandage, he asked, “That’ll do. You won’t die from it at least. How do you take your whiskey?”
“If you’re offering, neat.”
“Good. That’s the only way you’ll get it here.” Kyle thumped two tumblers on the oilcloth-covered table and poured a couple of generous inches of amber liquid in them. Reaching for the glass, Matt winced as pain shot across his back and down his arm.
“Did you fall on that shoulder?” Kyle asked. “Sit down so I can see.”
Matt unbuttoned his flannel shirt and gingerly tugged it off his shoulder. Kyle peered at it and whistled, “Just a bruise, but you’ll have more colors than a desert sunset tomorrow. I have something for that, too.” He grabbed a jar from the cabinet and smeared a gob of ointment on the shoulder. Suddenly, Matt’s nose was burning, and his eyes were watering.
“Jesus, Mary and Joseph, that is nasty,” he yelped.
“Stinks worse than Satan’s ass, but the bruise will heal faster and you’ll have less pain.”
As Kyle massaged the salve in, Matt relaxed and enjoyed the gentle kneading, gradually realizing that the whiskey glow in his stomach had migrated south to his groin. He tugged his shirt down over his lap to hide the growing bulge in his jeans.
The massaging gradually slowed before stopping completely. Matt flexed and rotated his shoulder, amazed by the improvement, and turned his head to say, “It’s so much…” He broke off, startled by the suffused desire that matched his own in the other man’s grey eyes. Kyle blinked it away and limped to the sink, saying, “That should take care of the… uhh…” tailing off as he washed his hands.
Matt followed him, taking his shoulders to turn him carefully around, searching Kyle’s eyes, watching the alarm soften and turn to something without focus. He heard blood pounding as he brought his hands up to frame Kyle’s face, followed by a pause to lightly rub the stubble along the chin to see if he should continue. Matt slowly lowered his face to bring their mouths together.
The heat from his groin spiraled outward to all parts of his body until even his fingers felt like they were dipped in fire where he caressed Kyle’s jaw. Their tongues knotted together, tasting of whiskey and something minty. Matt smelled musky cologne and laundry soap overlaying a raw, purely masculine aroma.
He broke off from Kyle’s avid mouth and after a ragged breath asked, “Are you sure?”
Kyle’s eyes were flamed with yearning, “Absolutely.” He thrust his fingers into Matt’s hair to pull him in for another kiss. Both of them made low, growling moans deep in their throats, eagerly exploring each other’s mouth, reveling in the unadulterated maleness, the masculine sexiness of it all.
His pulse racing, Kyle could feel Matt’s heart pounding against his chest, and another gruff groan escaped him. He pulled back to find his feral need matched in Matt’s blue eyes and melted back into an explosive kiss in seconds.
Matt pushed his pelvis against Kyle, feeling the hard ridge of flesh rampaging into his thigh, ravished by the explosive power of his tongue. Breaking off again, he wrapped his large hands along the rib cage and lifted Kyle in a smooth motion onto the counter, then grabbed his hard-muscled ass to pull him closer. With one fist he pulled Kyle’s sweater up to expose his chest, the lean, wiry muscles like a marathoner’s, and dipped his head to take a nipple in his mouth, lightly biting it and probing it with his tongue. “You are so hot,” he whispered as he moved to the other nipple. Kyle gasped at the liquid suction, his arousal climbing.
“Matt!” growled Kyle hoarsely, “Matt! Say you want me. Say it!”
“I do. I do want you,” panted Matt. He snatched Kyle’s hand to mash it against the crotch of his jeans. He pressed his own hand against Kyle’s, feeling the thick, unyielding heat there. Rational thought ebbed away as aching pleasure shot through them both and their mouths crushed together again.
Without breaking the kiss, Matt moaned, “Bed.”
“What?” panted Kyle.
“Bed,” Matt insisted.
“Upstairs.”
Matt growled as he swept Kyle off the counter, “Upstairs.”
They slowly made their way up, Kyle learning on the bannister, but all Matt wanted to do was through Kyle over his shoulder caveman style and sprint to the bed.
In the bedroom at the top of the stairs, Kyle fell back on an immaculate white counterpane on the four-poster, leaning back on his elbows as Matt raced to pull his shirt.
“Take your time,” he ordered.
Matt grinned and let the flannel shirt slide off to the floor. He squared up facing the bed with his feet wide apart. Kyle’s breath sped at the sight of the hard muscles of Matt’s chest and arms. HIs skin looked molten in the low lamplight under its dusting of fine, dark-blond hair. One handed, he unbuckled his belt, tugging it a few inches at a time out of the loops.
“Oh, yeah,” sighed Kyle. “That’s the ticket.”
The belt dropped to join the shirt, and Matt switched hands to tease one button open at a time on the fly of his jeans. Pivoting on one foot, he turned away Kyle and looked back over his shoulder as he used just his thumbs to twist the trousers off his hips, exposing an inch or two of white boxer briefs at a time. When the jeans were half off of his ass, he stopped to lift one leg to strip off the sock, and tossed it back over his shoulder. After the other sock was flipped over, too, Matt allowed his jeans to slip down his thick thighs and stepped out of them. The briefs were disposed of in a single fluid motion, and then he slowly turned around, first his shoulders, then his ribs, then his hips and finally his feet.
Kyle whistled his admiration. “You’re everything I imagined you would be,” he whispered.
“Now you,” requested Matt in a low, husky voice as he sat on the bed as well. Kyle pulled his roll neck sweater off to reveal a black sleeveless shirt, tugging that off as well. Before he could continue to his trousers, Matt grabbed his hand to stop him. He ran one hand through the dark hair on Kyle’s torso a couple of times, before whispering, “Continue.
Kyle slowly undid the button on his khakis and jerked the zipper down. He kicked off his shoes and pushed his slacks and boxers off together. He stood there while Matt raked his eyes over his body in admiration. He leaned forward to cup Kyle’s ass with one big hand to pull him on the bed. “You are so beautiful,” throbbing with anticipation as be bent to flick his tongue around the swollen head of the cock.
Kyle ached for Matt’s mouth, anticipating the wet heat, but he was aroused by the the darting, teasing flicker of his tongue. The underside of the shaft was licked, then each of his balls in turn before Matt wrapped a hand around him, giving a few pumps as he took him inside, swallowing him to the base. As Matt crushed him between his hot tongue and the roof of his mouth, Kyle thought he would explode. The tongue flickered again around the crest of the head and danced down the shaft, then he was once more pulled slowly inch-by-inch deeper into the mouth. Kyle caressed the mop of silky blond curls that bobbed over his cock.
The exquisite agony made him groan as sweat dripped down his back. He lifted his hips to thrust himself into the pleasure, feeling the onset of the wave of orgasm.
“I’m coming,” he moaned. Matt, beads of sweat popped on his forehead, twisted so they could lock eyes as he slid Kyle deeper into his mouth. The hot, pulsing eruption hit the back of Matt’s throat as Kyle arched his back with a hoarse cry.
“Oh, man!” panted Kyle. “Wow!”
“Wow!” agreed Matt.
The two men lay, gasping for breath for a minute before Kyle reached across to a drawer on the nightstand. He tossed Matt a condom in a foil pack and a bottle of lube.
Matt raised an eyebrow. “Yeah?” he questioned.
“I want you inside me. Now!”
Matt rolled onto one hip to show his swollen cock. “I think I can handle that!” he laughed as he tore open the packet and sheathed himself in latex. He squirted a glob of the lube onto his fingers and began stretching Kyle’s hole.
“What’s best for you?” he asked.
“On my side.” Kyle pointed. “Because of the hip.”
“Right. Side it is.”
Matt slid easily in, kissing Kyle’s neck. wrapping his arms to pull him tighter. He pumped hard and furiously as Kyle grabbed his thigh, digging his fingers into the muscle hard. Matt was driven by ravenous need, and Kyle’s ass held him fast, squeezing him with convulsive waves of sensation. He almost couldn’t breathe as sensed the first stirrings of his orgasm. Rocking harder, he crushed his mouth against Kyle’s neck, groaning louder as he splintered, lost inside the heat. With a loud shout he gave into the release and jetted his cum deep within the grasping hole.
They were trembling and gasping, locked in an embrace, sweating from the passion.
Kyle said, “That was…” as he pressed his lips lightly against Matt’s.
“Yes, it was,” whispered Matt, running his hand slowly up and down Kyle’s torso. He stroked down along the side to the hip and slowly thumbed the dark scar tissue there. “Does it still hurt?” he asked softly.
Kyle let out a slow, ragged sigh. “Not so much, you know, physical pain, I guess, but I always know it’s there.”
Matt gave a grunt of sympathy, and then they were silent for a while as they cuddled. “You know, I was thinking that I should come back tomorrow to stain those new shingles so they look a little more weathered.”
“Oh, yeah?” Kyle looked at him quizzically. “Can you keep from falling off the ladder?”
“I think so,” Matt laughed. “Still all for the one seventy-five.”
“What do you mean one seventy-five?” Kyle scowled.
Matt looked at him incredulously. “That’s what I quoted you,” he said. “For the work.”
“Aren’t you forgetting that I had to take care of your arm,” he said, tapping his finger on the bandage. “Plus you guzzled a couple of slugs of my best whiskey. That’s all deducted from what you think I owe you.”
Speechless, Matt glared at him for several seconds until Kyle burst out laughing, “Oh, fuck! You should see your face. I can’t believe you thought I was serious!”
Matt laughed, “You are such a prick.”
“And you are a muscle-bound lunkhead.”
“Old coot!”
“Curmegeon!”
They had fallen back to cuddling in an easy peaceful silence for a few minutes when Matt could feel a hard ridge of flesh pressing against his leg.
“Already?” he asked.
Kyle grinned as he shrugged, “I’m a Yankee. Have to get my money’s worth out you. I expect some more of that Charbonneau attention to detail this time.”
A big ‘if’ these days when most of the town was cash-strapped.
Matt frowned as he looked at one of the entries: Kyle Williams with a question mark next to the name where the assignment should be. What had Kyle said? Something about an apple tree that needed be be cut down? Matt hoped not because Cassie Williams had loved that tree and the way that it shaded the porch on the side of her rambling Victorian house. When she retired to Florida a couple of years ago, her son moved back from Boston where he had been a cop. Only thirty-two, same age as Matt, Kyle was already retired on a disability pension after taking a bullet in the hip during what should have been a routine traffic stop. He was one mean son of a bitch now. No one in town saw much of him, and no one seemed to miss him.
But why, Matt lamented to himself, does that prickly bastard have to be so gorgeous? Anytime he saw Kyle his breath caught in his throat.
After firing off texts to everyone on the list to let them know when to expect him, Matt decided to leave Kyle for the last appointment of the day since it was almost a given that he would need a stiff drink or two after that job was over.
Toni and Marie, the two waitresses at Della’s caught each other’s eye as Matt came through the door, each sending a look that said, “This one is mine today. You owe me.” Toni won the battle and waved him to an empty place at the counter. Matt nodded at the people he knew, pretty much everyone, and grabbed the seat she indicated.
The waitress stealthily checked out her reflection in the shiny toaster to make sure that her hair wasn’t sticking out and there was no lipstick on her teeth.
Marie whispered out of the corner of her mouth, “That is one fine sexy beast.” Toni agreed. She had an on-again, off-again relationship with Charlie, who worked at the mill, but Matt Charbonneau could always turn her head. Tall, well-built, shaggy blond hair sticking out from under a knit cap, and a face that was saved from being too handsome by a nose that had been broken a couple of times in high school hockey.
And that crooked smile that hinted he knew all your secrets and didn’t give a damn!
Satisfied she looked her best, Toni strolled to the end of the counter, leaned on her elbows to show her cleavage to better advantage and cooed, “Hey, Sugar! What’ll you have?”
“Hey, Toni,” Matt smiled. “Just a black coffee today.”
“That’s all?” she pouted, “We have a special this morning. The Lumberjack Breakfast is twenty-five percent off for handsome men with pretty blue eyes. Flapjacks, eggs, ham, toast and juice.”
Matt blushed and said, “No thanks, I’ll stick with the coffee.” Any kind of compliment went against his naturally humble nature.
“Hey! What about me?” demanded Phil Burke, sitting next to Matt, “Where’s my discount meal?
As she poured the coffee, Toni stared at him coolly and responded with mock sympathy, “Oh, honey, you just missed the special for men with shit-brown eyes.” Everyone roared with laughter, and Phil flipped her both middle fingers.
Matt felt heart-sick whenever he let women like Toni flirt with him, thinking he would be interested in a relationship. He wanted to stand on the street corner bellowing that he was gay and damned happy about it, but he had seen a butt-load of small-town gossips and the vicious damage they could do. His own sister was hounded mercilessly into a cycle of drugs and alcohol, so he preferred to keep his private life to himself.
After gulping down the scalding drink, Matt slapped Phil on the shoulder and threw a fiver on the counter for Toni. He knew that she had a couple of kids and needed the money more than his bank did. He doubted that Charlie was much help to her even when he was around. As he made his way out of Della’s, Matt was the only person in the diner that was not aware of Toni’s wistful appraisal of the way his jeans clung to his ass.
Spring was taking its own sweet time coming to New England that year, and the day was blustery and damp. By the time Matt was through with most of his schedule, he was bone-chilled and ready to call it a day, but he knew better than to postpone Kyle. As he pulled into the driveway of the Williams house, he admired again the old Queen Anne with its wrap-around porches, gables, turrets and gingerbread trim. The craftsman in him demanded that his work did not reflect any decline in standards from long ago, and he always enjoyed the challenge to blend his repairs in seamlessly. He drove around the house to park between the kitchen door and the old stables that had been converted into a garage.
As Matt cut the engine, he saw that Kyle was already waiting on the back porch, slightly favoring his injured leg, the wind riffling his short, brown hair. From this distance, he looked like an older version of the handsome, athletic kid he had been before he moved to Boston: track star, captain of the baseball team, King of the Winter Carnival one year. Only as Matt crossed the yard could he see the fine lines that pain had etched in his face and the wary, hooded expression in the grey eyes. His khakis and wooly blue sweater fit well, but the body was lean and the skin taut over the muscle as though all the excess had been cauterized away.
“Took long enough,” Kyle observed tartly.
Matt swallowed the bile rising in his throat, anger crowding out lust. “I’m here now, aren’t I?”
“I made a list. Can you get this done today?”
Good afternoon to you, too, Matt thought.
Matt took the list and studied the neat block lettering. Move some cordwood to the kitchen door… prune a dead limb from the apple tree… tack up a loose shutter… replace some shingles missing from the garage roof.
“Ayuh,” as he pocketed the list. “I’ll start with the tree.”
“And the charge?”
The handyman thumbed in jaw in thought and debated adding a ten percent “Kyle-Williams-is-an-asshole” tax before quoting, “One seventy-five.”
Kyle scowled for longer than Matt thought was necessary before agreeing, “Ayuh. Let me know when you’re done.”
Matt muttered “What a prick!” under his breath as he turned away. Anyone else would have invited him into a warm kitchen and chatted over a cup of coffee, but not Kyle Williams.
By the time all of the tasks were completed except replacing the shingles, the temperature had dropped a few degrees and the wind picked up. Matt propped a ladder against the side the garage and made sure that he had the hammer and nails, the roofer’s felt and the cedar shingles before climbing up. It was only when he was at the peak of the roof that he realized he had left his gloves in the truck. He debated for a second about fetching them, but after a glance at the darkening sky, decided to tough out the cold for the few minutes that the job should take.
Prying up the old boards so he could replace the felt underneath took longer than he expected because the cedar kept threatening to split. Once a good-sized section was cleared of shingles, Matt tore out the old felt and tacked down the new. He lined up the new shingles with careful measurements and eyeballed them from several angles to make sure that they looked right, too, before nailing them down. Every hammer stroke on the last one sent a shock into his cold-numbed hands, but at last it was finished to his satisfaction. As he clambered down the ladder one hand on the ladder and the surplus materials in the other, Matt was thinking he should offer to come back tomorrow to stain the new shakes to a color closer to the rest of the roof, free of charge, since Kyle would hold him to the original quote. His inattention caused him to lose his balance when his numbed hand slipped off of a rung, and he fell backward the last six or so feet, hitting the ground on his back hard enough to knock the wind out of him.
Matt sat up and shook his head to clear the cobwebs. The shoulder he fell on hurt like hell, and there was a gash on his forearm bleeding a good bit. He felt wobbly as he stood up, but he seemed to be in good shape, considering.
Kyle came onto the porch and called, “That fall was wicked bad.”
“Ayuh. A little dizzy.”
“You’re bleeding there. Come into the kitchen and let me have a look.”
Matt took a couple of steps and judged that the dizziness was less. “Nah, I’ll be okay.”
“Won’t take but a second.” Kyle held the door open.
“I’m fine.” As much as anything, Matt was embarrassed that he had been seen tumbling ass over tea kettle and just wanted to get home.
“Why are you being such a stubborn jerk?” Kyle barked.
“Me? You’re one to talk.” Matt was angry now, his fists clinched and his jaw tight. He could see the fire flashing in Kyle’s eyes, too, even from twenty feet away.
“Is this the way you treat all your customers? Strutting around all puffed up like a banty rooster, hurling insults?”
Matt raged, “You’re the one insulting me! I just want to get paid and go home.
“So you can come back with a shyster lawyer and sue me because you are too much of a muscle-bound lunkhead to use a ladder properly? Even the monkeys at the zoo can climb a ladder without falling on their asses.”
They were breathing heavily, their faces flushed, a couple of Alpha Males squaring off for battle.
Suddenly, Matt saw the absurdity of the situation and willed himself to calm down. He relaxed and flashed his crooked smile. “What a pair of coots we are. What’ll we be like in fifty years?”
Kyle stared at him for a few seconds and shook his head, “Ayuh. State of Maine won’t be big enough for both of us. You coming in or are you going to keep bleeding on my yard?”
Matt walked to the kitchen door. “I’d be obliged.”
He paused in the mudroom to take off his boots and continued into the kitchen where he saw Kyle rummaging in the cabinets for supplies. Looking around the room he could see the range and the refrigerator were new, but the rest of the kitchen had not been changed in seventy years or more. The pine hutch packed with crockery on one wall was probably older than the house.
Kyle washed his hands with carbolic soap and waved Matt over to the sink. “Let’s see what we have here,” he said as he held Matt’s arm under the warm water flowing from the tap, gently rubbing away dirt and blood. “Doesn’t look too bad. Won’t need stitches.”
Once the wound was clean and the blood flow nearly stopped, Kyle opened a drawer to get a tea towel to dry Matt off, before pouring a healthy measure of disinfectant over it. Matt grunted at the stinging pain.
“Does that burn?” Kyle asked. “Good! Payback for calling me a prick.” A tiny smile played around Kyle’s mouth.
Matt, embarrassed, asked, “You heard that? Sorry.”
After a thoughtful pause, Kyle admitted, “I deserved it. I was acting like a prick. You asked for less than half of the next lowest bid.” He laid a pad of sterile gauze over the cut, instructing, “Hold this while I tape it down.” Surveying the bandage, he asked, “That’ll do. You won’t die from it at least. How do you take your whiskey?”
“If you’re offering, neat.”
“Good. That’s the only way you’ll get it here.” Kyle thumped two tumblers on the oilcloth-covered table and poured a couple of generous inches of amber liquid in them. Reaching for the glass, Matt winced as pain shot across his back and down his arm.
“Did you fall on that shoulder?” Kyle asked. “Sit down so I can see.”
Matt unbuttoned his flannel shirt and gingerly tugged it off his shoulder. Kyle peered at it and whistled, “Just a bruise, but you’ll have more colors than a desert sunset tomorrow. I have something for that, too.” He grabbed a jar from the cabinet and smeared a gob of ointment on the shoulder. Suddenly, Matt’s nose was burning, and his eyes were watering.
“Jesus, Mary and Joseph, that is nasty,” he yelped.
“Stinks worse than Satan’s ass, but the bruise will heal faster and you’ll have less pain.”
As Kyle massaged the salve in, Matt relaxed and enjoyed the gentle kneading, gradually realizing that the whiskey glow in his stomach had migrated south to his groin. He tugged his shirt down over his lap to hide the growing bulge in his jeans.
The massaging gradually slowed before stopping completely. Matt flexed and rotated his shoulder, amazed by the improvement, and turned his head to say, “It’s so much…” He broke off, startled by the suffused desire that matched his own in the other man’s grey eyes. Kyle blinked it away and limped to the sink, saying, “That should take care of the… uhh…” tailing off as he washed his hands.
Matt followed him, taking his shoulders to turn him carefully around, searching Kyle’s eyes, watching the alarm soften and turn to something without focus. He heard blood pounding as he brought his hands up to frame Kyle’s face, followed by a pause to lightly rub the stubble along the chin to see if he should continue. Matt slowly lowered his face to bring their mouths together.
The heat from his groin spiraled outward to all parts of his body until even his fingers felt like they were dipped in fire where he caressed Kyle’s jaw. Their tongues knotted together, tasting of whiskey and something minty. Matt smelled musky cologne and laundry soap overlaying a raw, purely masculine aroma.
He broke off from Kyle’s avid mouth and after a ragged breath asked, “Are you sure?”
Kyle’s eyes were flamed with yearning, “Absolutely.” He thrust his fingers into Matt’s hair to pull him in for another kiss. Both of them made low, growling moans deep in their throats, eagerly exploring each other’s mouth, reveling in the unadulterated maleness, the masculine sexiness of it all.
His pulse racing, Kyle could feel Matt’s heart pounding against his chest, and another gruff groan escaped him. He pulled back to find his feral need matched in Matt’s blue eyes and melted back into an explosive kiss in seconds.
Matt pushed his pelvis against Kyle, feeling the hard ridge of flesh rampaging into his thigh, ravished by the explosive power of his tongue. Breaking off again, he wrapped his large hands along the rib cage and lifted Kyle in a smooth motion onto the counter, then grabbed his hard-muscled ass to pull him closer. With one fist he pulled Kyle’s sweater up to expose his chest, the lean, wiry muscles like a marathoner’s, and dipped his head to take a nipple in his mouth, lightly biting it and probing it with his tongue. “You are so hot,” he whispered as he moved to the other nipple. Kyle gasped at the liquid suction, his arousal climbing.
“Matt!” growled Kyle hoarsely, “Matt! Say you want me. Say it!”
“I do. I do want you,” panted Matt. He snatched Kyle’s hand to mash it against the crotch of his jeans. He pressed his own hand against Kyle’s, feeling the thick, unyielding heat there. Rational thought ebbed away as aching pleasure shot through them both and their mouths crushed together again.
Without breaking the kiss, Matt moaned, “Bed.”
“What?” panted Kyle.
“Bed,” Matt insisted.
“Upstairs.”
Matt growled as he swept Kyle off the counter, “Upstairs.”
They slowly made their way up, Kyle learning on the bannister, but all Matt wanted to do was through Kyle over his shoulder caveman style and sprint to the bed.
In the bedroom at the top of the stairs, Kyle fell back on an immaculate white counterpane on the four-poster, leaning back on his elbows as Matt raced to pull his shirt.
“Take your time,” he ordered.
Matt grinned and let the flannel shirt slide off to the floor. He squared up facing the bed with his feet wide apart. Kyle’s breath sped at the sight of the hard muscles of Matt’s chest and arms. HIs skin looked molten in the low lamplight under its dusting of fine, dark-blond hair. One handed, he unbuckled his belt, tugging it a few inches at a time out of the loops.
“Oh, yeah,” sighed Kyle. “That’s the ticket.”
The belt dropped to join the shirt, and Matt switched hands to tease one button open at a time on the fly of his jeans. Pivoting on one foot, he turned away Kyle and looked back over his shoulder as he used just his thumbs to twist the trousers off his hips, exposing an inch or two of white boxer briefs at a time. When the jeans were half off of his ass, he stopped to lift one leg to strip off the sock, and tossed it back over his shoulder. After the other sock was flipped over, too, Matt allowed his jeans to slip down his thick thighs and stepped out of them. The briefs were disposed of in a single fluid motion, and then he slowly turned around, first his shoulders, then his ribs, then his hips and finally his feet.
Kyle whistled his admiration. “You’re everything I imagined you would be,” he whispered.
“Now you,” requested Matt in a low, husky voice as he sat on the bed as well. Kyle pulled his roll neck sweater off to reveal a black sleeveless shirt, tugging that off as well. Before he could continue to his trousers, Matt grabbed his hand to stop him. He ran one hand through the dark hair on Kyle’s torso a couple of times, before whispering, “Continue.
Kyle slowly undid the button on his khakis and jerked the zipper down. He kicked off his shoes and pushed his slacks and boxers off together. He stood there while Matt raked his eyes over his body in admiration. He leaned forward to cup Kyle’s ass with one big hand to pull him on the bed. “You are so beautiful,” throbbing with anticipation as be bent to flick his tongue around the swollen head of the cock.
Kyle ached for Matt’s mouth, anticipating the wet heat, but he was aroused by the the darting, teasing flicker of his tongue. The underside of the shaft was licked, then each of his balls in turn before Matt wrapped a hand around him, giving a few pumps as he took him inside, swallowing him to the base. As Matt crushed him between his hot tongue and the roof of his mouth, Kyle thought he would explode. The tongue flickered again around the crest of the head and danced down the shaft, then he was once more pulled slowly inch-by-inch deeper into the mouth. Kyle caressed the mop of silky blond curls that bobbed over his cock.
The exquisite agony made him groan as sweat dripped down his back. He lifted his hips to thrust himself into the pleasure, feeling the onset of the wave of orgasm.
“I’m coming,” he moaned. Matt, beads of sweat popped on his forehead, twisted so they could lock eyes as he slid Kyle deeper into his mouth. The hot, pulsing eruption hit the back of Matt’s throat as Kyle arched his back with a hoarse cry.
“Oh, man!” panted Kyle. “Wow!”
“Wow!” agreed Matt.
The two men lay, gasping for breath for a minute before Kyle reached across to a drawer on the nightstand. He tossed Matt a condom in a foil pack and a bottle of lube.
Matt raised an eyebrow. “Yeah?” he questioned.
“I want you inside me. Now!”
Matt rolled onto one hip to show his swollen cock. “I think I can handle that!” he laughed as he tore open the packet and sheathed himself in latex. He squirted a glob of the lube onto his fingers and began stretching Kyle’s hole.
“What’s best for you?” he asked.
“On my side.” Kyle pointed. “Because of the hip.”
“Right. Side it is.”
Matt slid easily in, kissing Kyle’s neck. wrapping his arms to pull him tighter. He pumped hard and furiously as Kyle grabbed his thigh, digging his fingers into the muscle hard. Matt was driven by ravenous need, and Kyle’s ass held him fast, squeezing him with convulsive waves of sensation. He almost couldn’t breathe as sensed the first stirrings of his orgasm. Rocking harder, he crushed his mouth against Kyle’s neck, groaning louder as he splintered, lost inside the heat. With a loud shout he gave into the release and jetted his cum deep within the grasping hole.
They were trembling and gasping, locked in an embrace, sweating from the passion.
Kyle said, “That was…” as he pressed his lips lightly against Matt’s.
“Yes, it was,” whispered Matt, running his hand slowly up and down Kyle’s torso. He stroked down along the side to the hip and slowly thumbed the dark scar tissue there. “Does it still hurt?” he asked softly.
Kyle let out a slow, ragged sigh. “Not so much, you know, physical pain, I guess, but I always know it’s there.”
Matt gave a grunt of sympathy, and then they were silent for a while as they cuddled. “You know, I was thinking that I should come back tomorrow to stain those new shingles so they look a little more weathered.”
“Oh, yeah?” Kyle looked at him quizzically. “Can you keep from falling off the ladder?”
“I think so,” Matt laughed. “Still all for the one seventy-five.”
“What do you mean one seventy-five?” Kyle scowled.
Matt looked at him incredulously. “That’s what I quoted you,” he said. “For the work.”
“Aren’t you forgetting that I had to take care of your arm,” he said, tapping his finger on the bandage. “Plus you guzzled a couple of slugs of my best whiskey. That’s all deducted from what you think I owe you.”
Speechless, Matt glared at him for several seconds until Kyle burst out laughing, “Oh, fuck! You should see your face. I can’t believe you thought I was serious!”
Matt laughed, “You are such a prick.”
“And you are a muscle-bound lunkhead.”
“Old coot!”
“Curmegeon!”
They had fallen back to cuddling in an easy peaceful silence for a few minutes when Matt could feel a hard ridge of flesh pressing against his leg.
“Already?” he asked.
Kyle grinned as he shrugged, “I’m a Yankee. Have to get my money’s worth out you. I expect some more of that Charbonneau attention to detail this time.”
