The Surprise Magazine

Chapter 1: Secrets Revealed in the Living Room

The house had never been this quiet. With the family gone to my aunt's place for the weekend, every sound the living room made seemed louder, the tick of the wall clock, the hum of the refrigerator down the hall, the blue flicker of the television painting the ceiling. The popcorn bowl between us had gone stale an hour ago and still smelled like butter.

Joe sat on the couch beside mine with a blanket across his lap, and he kept glancing at me like he was sitting on a secret.

"Okay, what's the surprise?" I said. "You've been weird since you walked in."

"Patience, man." He grinned and stretched. "First things first. I wanna take a look at that Playboy you've got."

"It's not a Playboy," I said. "It's a Penthouse."

"Oh, cool. I love Penthouse. I love when they have chicks who spread their pussy lips wide open."

"You're thinking of Hustler. This is Penthouse. The one with the stories."

"I like that too." He shifted under his blanket, and I caught the movement of his hand beneath the wool, adjusting something. "Anything good?"

"Yeah, there's a hot lesbian story. Two college girls in the shower." I felt my face warm just saying it out loud. "Check it out."

I threw the magazine at him. It smacked against his chest and slid down onto the blanket, and he picked it up like it was made of glass, thumbing the cover with a care I'd never seen him use on anything.

"Two college girls in the shower," he repeated, already flipping pages. "God, I love this country."

"You're such a pig."

"Says the guy who bought it." He shot me a look over the top of the page. His eyes were brighter than usual, feverish almost, and his skin had that flushed color it got when he was onto something. "Okay. Okay, here. Your turn."

He tossed a magazine at me. I caught it against my chest, expecting weight, some glossy cover with a logo. There was nothing. Plain white cover, no title, no writing at all. Just a staple at the spine and a slight curl at the corner like it had passed through a lot of hands.

"What is this?" I asked.

"Open it."

"Where'd you even get it? It looks like somebody made it in a basement."

"My cousin. Don't worry about it. Just open it, Graham."

I turned the cover. The first page hit me like a fist. Full color, edge to edge, no words anywhere. A woman on her back, legs hooked over a man's shoulders, and he was inside her. Fully. Everything visible, everything in focus, her body spread open around him in graphic, unflinching detail. Not suggested. Not artfully shadowed like the pages I'd hidden under my mattress. Shown. The wet place where their bodies joined was right there, photographed, printed in cheap ink on soft paper.

"Holy shit," I said.

My head almost exploded. I had never seen anything this filthy in my life, and I'd spent two years building a mental library out of grocery store magazines and half-second glimpses. This was a different animal. This was the actual act, frozen, printed, passed hand to hand like contraband, which apparently it was.

My dick went instantly, aching hard. Good thing I had this blanket over me.

I turned the page with a thumb and forefinger, careful, like the paper might burn me. Another one. A different woman this time, on her knees, her back arched, a man behind her gripping her hip. Her mouth was open. The color was so saturated it looked radioactive under the TV light.

"Well?" Joe's voice came from across the gap between our couches, low and pleased with himself. "I told you it was a surprise."

"It's, Joe, this is..." I didn't have a word. Every word I knew was too small. "This is actual sex. Like, in pictures."

"That's what I said when I first saw it." He laughed quietly. His hand moved under his blanket again, and this time I pretended not to notice, and noticed anyway. "Keep going. Page six. Page six, man."

"Why do I feel like you have page six memorized?"

"Because I do. Turn to it."

I did. Page six was a close-up, a woman's face with another woman's body pressed against hers, and I stopped breathing for a second. The detail was insane. You could see the flush on her skin, the sheen of sweat, the individual hairs stuck to her temple.

"See? Told you," Joe said. He'd set my Penthouse down on the cushion beside him, forgotten already. "Grocery store stuff is like looking at food through a window. This is eating."

"That's a disgusting comparison."

"But is it wrong?"

I hated that it wasn't. The television murmured on about something, some late movie we'd both stopped watching twenty minutes ago, and the blue light kept sweeping across the room, across the open pages, making the colors shift and breathe. The house was so quiet I could hear the pages themselves, the little tack-tack sound of the paper turning.

I was aware of Joe watching me more than the magazine now. I could feel it, that sideways attention, the way you feel a stare on your profile. He was waiting for something. Me, and the blanket over my lap, and the fact that I hadn't crossed my legs in ten minutes because any movement at all was going to be a problem.

"This thing's gonna get you arrested," I said. "You know that, right? Your cousin's sitting on something people go to prison over."

"Nah. Nobody cares about two guys looking at a magazine." He shrugged, and the motion carried through his whole lanky frame, loosening something in the room. "We're eighteen. It's just paper."

Just paper. My pulse was in my throat and my lap and my ears, and it was not just paper, and we both knew it. The next page was the closest yet, and I made a sound before I could stop it, a small involuntary breath through my nose, and Joe laughed.

"Yeah," he said softly. "That one gets everybody."

The blanket shifted on his side of the room. He didn't try to hide it this time, didn't pretend to be scratching an ankle. His hand was just there, under the wool, and his eyes stayed on me, patient, like he'd decided something.

"Look at me, Graham," he said. "Be honest. Are you hard right now?"

I froze. The magazine sat open on my lap, page six gleaming under the TV light, and my mouth opened and nothing came out. My whole body went still, like if I stopped moving he couldn't see me.

Joe just watched me. Patient. The clock ticked twice somewhere behind us.

"That's what I thought," he said.

"I'm not..."

"Don't lie. Your ears are red."

I looked down at the magazine instead of at him, at the two women tangled together, sweat-shined skin printed in cheap radioactive ink. The blanket over my lap had been still for twenty minutes and now I was terrified it had a shape, a telltale tent, evidence printed in wool.

"We're both hard, man," Joe said. "Everybody gets hard. That's the whole point of the thing. If you didn't get hard, that would be weird, right?"

I swallowed. "Right."

"So relax."

"I'm relaxed."

"You're sitting like somebody stapled you to the couch." He laughed, quiet, the sound barely carrying over the TV. Then he lifted the edge of his blanket, just a little, deliberate, and I saw his hand was wrapped around himself, half out of his jeans, and I looked away so fast my neck hurt.

"What the hell, Joe."

"What? We're alone. Nobody's here for two days. Who's gonna see?"

"Me. I'm gonna see. I'm seeing it right now."

"So?" He didn't cover up. He sat there like it was nothing, like it was the magazine, like we were just two guys discussing page six. "You've been dying to look. I can feel you dying to look."

My face was burning. "That's not true."

"Graham." He said my name slow, like he was setting something down carefully. "I've known you since fourth grade. I've watched you stare at Miss Delgado's sweaters through half of eighth grade. You don't have to pretend with me. It's just us."

The refrigerator hummed down the hall. The movie murmured about something nobody cared about. My heart was going so hard I could hear it in the magazine paper, in my teeth.

"Look," he said. "Nobody here but us. House empty till Sunday. Nobody for two whole days." He paused. "You can do what you want. I can do what I want. We just pretend we don't notice, if that's easier. Deal?"

I couldn't answer. My mouth was dry and my brain was a stall of static, and the honest answer was that one part of me wanted to run to the bathroom and lock the door and another part, the part that had bought the Penthouse in the first place, the part with the two-year mental library, wanted exactly this.

"Deal?" he said again.

"Yeah," I heard myself say. "Fine. Deal."

"Cool." He turned back to his magazine, casual as anything, and I stared at the TV and tried to think about anything that wasn't the room. Baseball scores. The math test Tuesday. The lawnmower.

It didn't work. The silence had a texture to it now, and underneath it there were sounds, small ones, the rustle of wool, the creak of a couch cushion, Joe breathing a little differently than he had an hour ago. And the awful, thrilling knowledge that he could hear exactly the same things from my side of the gap.

"Page nine," Joe said, after a while. His voice had gone rougher. "Look at page nine."

I turned the page. Page nine was a man and a woman in a kitchen, and it was more graphic than everything before it, her on the counter, him standing between her knees, both of them stripped, his body pressed fully into hers, her head thrown back. You could see everything. The join of their bodies, the sheen on her inner thighs, the grip of his hands under her knees.

"Jesus," I breathed.

"Yeah." His voice was hoarse. "Look at her face. She's not even pretending for the camera. She's actually gone."

I was looking. I couldn't stop looking. The detail was pornographic in the oldest sense, literally beyond belief, flesh in focus down to pores, printed in a basement somewhere and passed through ten anonymous hands to land on my lap in a silent living room.

"Graham."

"What."

"You still hard?"

"Joe, come on."

"That's not a no."

I said nothing. The blanket over my lap said everything I couldn't, and I knew it, and he knew it, and the knowing went through me like electricity.

"Okay," he said softly. "Okay, man. New deal. Same deal."

And he went back to his magazine, hand under the blanket, and I went back to mine, hand under mine, and the two of us sat there in the blue flicker of the television, three feet apart, both of us pretending very hard not to notice the other one, and failing, and knowing we were both failing, and doing it anyway.

The house was dead silent except for the pages turning.

After a few minutes Joe said, without looking over, "Tell me about that lesbian story."

"What?"

"The shower one. In your Penthouse. You read it yet?"

"Twice."

"What happens?"

"Joe..."

"I just wanna know if it's good. I might read it next."

I cleared my throat, staring hard at the wall above the TV. "They're roommates. One of them gets out of the shower and the other one comes in to pee or something, I don't know, and they end up doing it in the shower. Like, for real, in the story. The writing's actually... it's detailed."

"Detailed how?"

"You know how."

"Say it."

My voice came out about half size. "They touch each other. One of them gets on her knees, in the shower, with the water running, and..."

"And?"

"And puts her mouth on her."

Joe made a low sound. "Man," he said. "Read it out loud."

"What? No."

"Why not? I can't read it and do this at the same time, and I'm not stopping." He finally looked at me, eyes bright, flushed to the ears now himself. "Come on. Read me the good part. It's just words."

It was not just words. Nothing tonight had been just words or just paper. But the house was empty, the pages were waiting, and my hand, treacherous, had already found the Penthouse where he'd dropped it beside me.

"You're insane," I said.

"Yeah," Joe said, settling back, closing his eyes, blanket rising and falling. "Start from the part where she walks in."

I found the story in the forum section, the letters page, third one down. My voice came out thin at first.

"She came back early from her date," I read. "The dorm room was dark and she thought her roommate was asleep, but she wasn't. She was on the bottom bunk with a magazine open on her chest, and her hand between her legs, and she didn't stop when the door opened."

Joe's breathing changed. "Keep going."

"She just stood there watching. Then she took her clothes off. She says she doesn't know which one of them started, only that she was on the bottom bunk with her roommate inside of ten minutes."

"Inside of ten minutes," Joe repeated. "God."

I kept reading. My face was on fire and my voice got steadier somehow, dirtier, the more of it I said out loud. The two girls in the story confessed everything to each other while they did it. That was the part that wrecked me, the talking. One of them admitted she'd been watching the other undress for months, every single night, pretending to study. The other one admitted she'd known, and that she'd started coming out of the shower without a towel on purpose, standing there dripping and naked with the door open, just to see if her roommate would look. Just to prove she'd look.

"They both admitted they could hear each other," I read. "Beating off at night when they thought the other one was asleep. They'd lie there in the dark listening through the mattress springs."

"Holy shit," Joe said. "They were faking sleep. Both of them. So the other one would keep going."

"That's what it says."

"That's the hottest thing I've ever heard in my life. Read the rest."

The rest was the act itself, slow and described in detail I'd never encountered on paper. They took their time. The story stretched it out, one girl's mouth on the other, then reversed, then the finish, which was the part Joe and I had never seen described anywhere, the two of them pressing their pussies together and grinding, legs wrapped around each other, and coming at exactly the same time, the letter said, "like one thing with four legs."

I read that line out loud and Joe made a sound low in his throat.

"God damn," he said. "My dick is so hard."

I mumbled, "Yeah, that is kind of the point."

He kept flipping through the Penthouse after that, quiet, stopping on the pictures, and I took my own magazine back and turned to the back pages just to have somewhere legal to put my eyes. The classifieds. I'd never looked at them before tonight and now I couldn't stop. Bizarre little ads, three lines each, boxed and bold. DIAL A DIVA, HOT GIRLS WAITING, CALL NOW, 1-900 numbers with per-minute charges. ESCORTS, DISCREET, OUT CALLS AVAILABLE, a phone number with an area code from a city I'd never been to. Guaranteed male enlargement, three inches in three weeks, doctors amazed. One ad was just a drawing of a pair of lips and the word SATISFACTION. Another promised photographs by mail in plain brown packaging, no questions asked.

It was like a menu to another planet. Every one of them was a dare.

"Three inches in three weeks," Joe said. He'd been reading over my shoulder, or at least reading in my direction. "Who falls for that?"

"Somebody desperate."

"Somebody's dad, you mean." He snorted. Then, "The escort one. Girls show up at your door. You just call."

"That's prostitution, Joe."

"That's delivery," he said, and laughed, and I laughed too, shakily, because laughing was easier than anything else happening in my body right then.

That was when I saw the movement.

Peripheral vision first, over by his couch, a flicker at the edge of the television's blue sweep. A slow rhythm under the wool of his blanket, steady as breathing. I turned my head a little, careful, barely a turn at all, just enough to confirm it. His arm was working, elbow moving in a lazy circle against his side, forearm flexing, and there was no doubt in the world about what his hand was doing under there. He was rubbing his cock underneath the blanket. Not fast, not furtive. Nice and slow, long strokes, the kind you settle into when you've got all the time in an empty house and you know nobody's coming home till Sunday. The blanket rose and dipped with each pass, a soft tide of wool, and his breathing had gone low and even, the way it does when somebody's concentrating on a feeling.

My heart started racing so hard the sound filled my ears, a thick thudding that climbed up into my jaw, and my mouth went dry as paper, my tongue sticking to the roof of it. Heat prickled from my collar to my hairline, sweat gathering at the back of my neck where it met the couch. The movie kept murmuring its nothing dialogue, the clock kept ticking in the hallway, and Joe just kept going, three feet away, blanket rising and dipping in that slow patient rhythm, eyes half closed like a man dozing in front of a fire, the television's blue light flickering across his flushed face.

Oh my god. Is he gonna beat off right here where I can see it? Maybe he's just getting rearranged down there, shifting his jeans, scratching some itch, anything but what it looked like. Maybe it's nothing. Maybe the deal is real and this is the deal and I agreed to it and here we are, two guys in an empty house, pretending the obvious isn't happening. My pulse hammered in my throat while I ran through the excuses, and every one of them died on arrival, because there was no mistaking the rhythm, that slow patient circle of his forearm, the blanket rising and dipping like a tide, once, twice, over and over. The refrigerator hummed down the hall and the clock ticked and the movie murmured its nothing dialogue, and under all of it, this.

He wasn't hiding it anymore. That was the thing. Earlier he'd done the fake scratch, the pretend adjustment, the casual shift of wool that a guy does when he needs some room. This was different. This was open. Deliberate. His head was tilted back against the couch, throat bare in the TV light, a faint sheen of sweat shining along the line of his jaw, eyes half closed to slits, lips parted just enough that I could hear the change in his breathing, low and even and concentrated, each exhale a little longer than the last, the sound of somebody lost in a feeling and not caring who knew it. His forearm flexed and eased, flexed and eased, and the blanket rose and fell in that slow patient rhythm, a tide of wool with his heartbeat in it, and the television flickered blue across his flushed face, catching the shine at his temple, the damp hairline, the way his jaw had gone slack. Three feet away. Three feet and a dead quiet house and two empty days ahead, and he was doing this on purpose. He wanted me to know. That was the whole point. He'd decided something tonight, back when he handed me the magazine, and this was it, this slow shameless display, a dare with no words attached. The room had shrunk down to the gap between our couches, three feet of carpet and television glare, and everything in it was heat and wool and the soft tack of turning paper, the hum of the refrigerator, the clock keeping time in the hallway like nothing in the world had changed. My mouth was dry, my pulse thick in my ears, my face burning so hot I could feel the heat coming off my own skin. Every excuse I'd built tonight was rubble now, and what was left was just the truth of it, him and me and the rhythm under the wool. I couldn't look away. I didn't.

I had the spine of the porno mag pressed on my cock under my own blanket, and every time I shifted my hips, even a little, it felt good. Dangerously good. I moved it again on purpose. Then again. The paper was warm from my lap, and the friction of it through my khakis was soft and maddening, and I discovered I could rock my hips without making the couch creak if I did it slow.

Slow, like him.

The room had a new sound now, under the TV. Two rustles of wool, slightly out of sync. His. Mine. If I could hear his, he could hear mine, and he had to be hearing it, and neither of us stopped.

"You still reading the ads?" Joe asked. His voice had gone to gravel.

"Yeah."

"Anything good?"

"This enlargement one says doctors are amazed."

"Amazed," he said, and laughed, but the laugh broke in the middle, because his hand didn't stop, and we both heard the hitch in his breath when it didn't stop. "Man, I gotta be honest with you."

"What."

"This is the best night of my entire life."

I looked at him. I let myself really look, for the first time all night without pretending I wasn't, and he let me, his eyes half open and glassy in the blue sweep of the television, his face flushed down past his collar, sweat shining at his temple. His arm kept up that slow lazy circle against his side, the blanket rising and dipping with every stroke, and my own hand kept its rhythm against myself through the wool, hips rocking in tiny careful increments, the couch springs silent if I took it slow. Neither of us said one word about what was under the blankets. Both of our hands kept moving.

"Mine too," I said, and my voice came out low and wrecked, barely more than breath.

He grinned at that, lazy and ruined, lips parted, eyes shining wet in the TV light like he was half stoned on the whole thing. Then he lifted the Penthouse again, thumbed through it until he found the page he wanted, and held it up across the gap so I could see it, the glossy page trembling a little in his grip, the colors swimming under the flicker of the screen.

"Page fourteen," he said. "Tell me you see this."

I saw it. I pressed the magazine harder against myself and rocked my hips, slow, in time with his blanket, and the clock ticked somewhere behind us in the empty house.

Joe's arm was working faster now, the lazy circle gone, replaced by short aggressive pumps that jerked the blanket with every stroke. The wool snapped and rustled, and I could see the shape of his fist under it, knuckles bunching, riding up and down on his cock in a rhythm that had nothing patient left in it. The blanket slid a couple inches down his thigh with each pump and he let it, didn't tug it back, didn't care.

Jesus Christ, I thought, my face flushing a deep red, heat crawling up the back of my neck until my collar felt tight. He is full on jerking off.

II couldn't take it anymore. My hand shook as I lifted my own blanket and shoved my underwear down past my hips, khakis and all, until the cool air hit my bare skin. Then I wrapped my fist around my dick, harder than I'd ever been, the tip already slick, and the contact made my whole body sigh. I stroked nice and slow at first, letting the head slip through my grip, a small groan escaping me that I couldn't have stopped, my hips tilting up off the cushion to meet my hand while the TV flickered blue across the wool.

He had put the magazine down on the couch cushion. I noticed that. He wasn't even looking at page nine anymore, wasn't looking at the two girls or the kitchen or anything printed anywhere. He was just stroking his dick in a dark living room with the TV muttering at nobody.

I did the same. Put the Penthouse on the armrest, forgotten, and started rubbing my dick harder, my hand finding the pace I liked, thumb dragging over the tip.

I peeked at Joe. His head was thrown back, eyes closed, throat bare and shining with sweat in the TV light. His fist was punching the top of the blanket, up and down, fast and shameless, and the fabric pulled tight across his knuckles for half a second each time he hit the head of his cock. I could hear it, the soft wet smack of skin on skin, and every stroke dragged a low grunt out of him that the movie couldn't cover. His hips lifted off the cushion to meet his own hand, and he didn't care that I could see. He wanted me to see. It was so fucking hot, his whole body flushed and working three feet away, that I couldn't tear my eyes away.

I started matching my pace with his. Up, down, up, down, at exactly the same time. The room filled with the double sound of it, two hands, two speeds, one rhythm. The clock ticked. The movie murmured. Neither of us stopped.

Joe opened his eyes and looked straight at me. Not at the TV, not at the pages. At me, at my arm, at what my hand was obviously doing under the wool. His fist never stopped moving while he stared, the blanket still rising and dipping, his face flushed so deep the blue light seemed to swim on his skin.

"Do you like what you see?" His voice came out low and rough, scraped down to gravel.

"Yeah," I said. The word fell out of me before I could catch it, wrecked, half a moan. "It is pretty hot." My hand kept its rhythm under the wool as I said it, and he saw that too.

He grinned, breathless, sweat shining on his upper lip in the television's blue flicker. "I love jerking off with other people. Their dicks getting stroked right next to you, turns me on so much." His fist never slowed under the wool, the wet smack of skin keeping time with his words.

"You've done this before?"

"Yes. And I shoot huge loads every time." He said it flat, like a fact about the weather, and his hand kept going, that slow pump of his forearm rolling the blanket up and down. No shame in it at all. He talked about coming the way other guys talked about batting averages, and his eyes stayed half open on me, glassy and satisfied, like he'd already decided how tonight ended and was just enjoying the walk there.

Something came loose in me then, some door I'd been holding shut with my shoulder all night, leaning on it through every fake scratch and careful not-look. It broke open all at once, and the words were out before I heard myself making them.

"Move your blanket so I can see you touch your dick."

What the fuck did I say? My stomach dropped like a stone. Shit. Here is where Joe laughs at me and calls me gay, here is where the whole night dies and Monday at school becomes unbearable. My face went so hot I thought the TV light would catch it, and my hand froze under my own blanket, my dick throbbing against my palm like it had a heartbeat of its own. But I couldn't help it. I couldn't take it back either. I wanted to see. I'd wanted to see since he dropped that magazine in my lap, since the first slow tide of wool rising and dipping across the gap, since the wet smack of his fist the movie couldn't cover. The wanting had been sitting in my chest all night like a coal, and it had finally burned through everything polite I had left.

"You wanna see my dick?" Joe asked. He didn't laugh. He didn't crack a joke to let the air out of the moment, and somehow that was the most shocking part of the whole night. His eyes had gone brighter, wide and wet in the television's blue sweep, fixed on me, and his fist had gone still under the blanket, waiting.

I nodded. My throat was too tight to force a word through.

"Only if you show me yours."

"Yeah," I said, barely a breath. "Okay."

We both slowly threw the blankets onto the backs of our couches. The wool slid off my lap and the cool air hit my bare thighs like cold water, raising the hair on my skin, and there I was, khakis shoved down past my hips, dick standing up hard and shameless in the TV light, and I didn't reach for the blanket. I didn't want to hide anything anymore.

"Take off your underwear," Joe commanded. His voice was low and rough, gone completely to gravel, but there was no question mark anywhere in it. "All the way off. We only have our cocks in the air with nothing on top."

I lifted my hips off the cushion, slid my undies down my legs, over my knees, past my ankles, and kicked them off my foot into the dark somewhere by the TV. They landed with a whisper of fabric I heard like a gunshot. My dick stood up straight against the faded green of my polo, flushed dark and soaking wet at the tip, a little bead of it shining in the television's flicker, and I didn't cover it. I didn't want to.

Joe stood up, slow, and pushed his underwear down over his hips, the fabric catching for a second on the head of his cock before it cleared, and then he stepped out of them one foot at a time, bare ass flashing pale in the television's blue sweep. He picked up his blanket off the couch and folded it over one arm like he was setting the rules of some new game. He was bare from the waist down in the blue light, his cock jutting hard against the navy of his t-shirt, the head dark and flushed, sticking up past the hem, and he didn't hurry, didn't make a joke, didn't look away from me once. Just crossed the three feet of floor between our couches, carpet cold under his bare feet, the clock ticking behind him the whole way.

He sat down right next to me. Not across the gap, not at the far end. Right next to me, close enough that the cushion dipped under his weight and tilted me toward him, my hip sliding on the fabric until his knee touched mine, warm skin against warm skin, and the heat of it jumped up my thigh like a current, straight through the bare skin where my underwear used to be. I could smell him now, sweat and soap and something muskier underneath it, and I could hear him breathing, low and rough, and his cock was right there, inches from my hand, twitching once in the flicker of the screen. My own dick throbbed against the green of my polo, leaking, and I didn't cover it, didn't want to.

"If we are going to watch," he said, his voice gone all the way to gravel, eyes dropping to my lap and then back up to my face, "we may as well get a good look."

I couldn't argue with that.

Joe spat into his palm and started stroking his cock right there beside me, no blanket, nothing between my eyes and it, watching me the whole time with a lazy grin on his flushed face. I spat into my own palm and did the same, hips already rolling up into my fist. His dick was a little bigger than mine, a good seven inches, thick at the base, circumcised too, the head flushed dark and shiny in the television's blue flicker. Every stroke pulled the skin tight and rolled his fist over the tip, smearing the bead of precum around the crown, and the wet smack of it filled the quiet room, mixed with his low breathing and the soft sound of my own hand working. His knee pressed warm against my bare thigh, and I couldn't stop staring.

"What do you think about when you jerk off?" he asked, his fist still rolling slow over the head of his cock, his eyes flicking from my face to my hand and back like he couldn't decide which was better to watch.

"Me, I like to imagine girls that are in classes with me," I heard myself say, my voice low and dirty and not caring anymore how it sounded. "Eating each other's pussies until they come."

"Oh yeah." The word came out of him on a moan, his hips giving a little twitch up into his grip, sweat sliding down the side of his flushed face.

"Sometimes I think about them on their knees in front of me while I blow a huge load on their faces." My hand tightened around myself, thumb dragging through the slick at my tip, my hips rocking up off the cushion. "They fucking love it. Sometimes it's two of them and they fight over my cum."

Joe groaned low in his throat at that, a rough animal sound, and his fist sped up a beat, the wet smack of his palm going faster and sloppier, precum stringing between his knuckles and the flushed head of his cock every time he rolled over it. Both of us were breathing harder now, chests heaving under our shirts in the blue flicker of the TV, the slick sounds of our hands filling the silent house.

"What do you think about?" I asked, my voice wrecked and husky.

Our breathing was getting deeper, heavier, sweat prickling at my hairline, my thighs trembling against the cushion. My hand had slowed down a little, my fist lazy around myself, dragging long and easy from base to tip, because I didn't want to end this yet.

Joe looked down at his own cock, glistening and twitching in his grip, then over at mine standing hard against the green of my polo, and his voice went low, scraped down to nothing.

"What gets me off is right here. Showing some dude my cock and watching him get so worked up he can't stand it."

I nodded and watched him stroke his dick. He held himself a little differently than I held mine, from underneath, thumb pressing the vein, and I memorized it.

"You jerk off with other guys a lot?" I managed, my fist still working slow over myself, thumb dragging slick up over the head, my voice coming out wrecked and half a whisper under the wet smack of our hands.

"Three times," he said, twisting on the couch until his knee dug into my thigh, his grin gone lazy and crooked, sweat shining on his lip.

"WIth who?", I asked

"But I've never done this."

He reached over and grabbed my cock, knocking my hand off of it like it had no right to be there. His fingers closed around my shaft, warm and dry and strong, a grip nothing like my own, and my whole body jolted at the heat of another hand on me. "Let me make you come," he said, low and rough, already starting a slow pull from base to tip that dragged a groan out of my throat before I could stop it. Then he took my hand, lifted it off the cushion, and set it on his dick, and my fingers curled around hot hard flesh that was not mine, flesh that moved when I squeezed, that pulsed against my palm with his heartbeat, the head slick and swollen under my thumb, heavier and stranger than anything I'd ever held.

"And you make me come too."

My god. Having someone else's hand on me was electric, nothing like my own grip, his fingers closing tighter at the base and dragging up slow over the head, and every stroke sent a wire of it up my stomach into my throat. My whole body shook. And feeling another hard cock in my hand was amazing, heavier and stranger than I'd imagined, pulsing against my palm with his heartbeat, the head already slick against my skin, precum smearing under my thumb every time I rolled over it. His knee pressed hard against my bare thigh, his breath coming in rough hitches beside my ear, and the wet sounds of our fists filled the room over the murmur of the TV.

It took us a minute to get the rhythm down, his wrist and mine, clumsy at first, each of us copying what the other liked, finding each other's pace. He twisted his hand a little on the upstroke and I copied it on him, and he groaned, so I did it again. But once we did, it felt incredible. My hips were lifting into his fist, rocking up off the cushion to meet every pull, sweat running down my temples, my free hand grabbing the couch cushion so hard my fingers ached, the whole room shrunk down to his hand on my cock and my hand on his, both of us breathing in the same ragged rhythm. His thumb dragged over a spot under the head that made my thighs shake, and every stroke pulled a groan out of me I stopped being embarrassed about. His cock pulsed in my fist, hotter and harder now, precum slicking my fingers.

We stroked each other and watched each other, faces open, no pretending left anywhere in the room, his blue eyes glazed and locked on mine, sweat shining on his jaw in the TV light, the wet smack of our fists filling the quiet house.

Joe started to huff, taking deep ragged breaths, his hips pushing up off the cushion.

"Oh my god, I'm coming, I'm coming, I'm commmiinnnng."

A huge load erupted from his dick, thick white ropes of it, the first one flying high enough to hit the blanket we'd tossed aside, the rest spilling over my knuckles and down his shaft onto his stomach. His back arched off the couch.

"Keep stroking, keep stroking," he gasped, and I did, milking him through it, my hand shiny with his come.

"Jesus, that's a lot of come," I said.

Joe just smiled, dazed and wrecked, chest heaving under his navy t-shirt, his come still glistening on his stomach and cooling on my knuckles. Then he reached over and grabbed my dick, his own slick still warm on his palm, and started stroking me, fast and deliberate, his grip firmer now, more sure of itself.

"Did you like making me come?" His voice was low, scraped down to gravel, his eyes locked on mine while his fist rolled over my tip, smearing my precum through his mess.

"Yes," I replied, and the word came out thick, half swallowed.

"Did you like touching my cock?"

"Yessss," I said, and my voice cracked on it, embarrassing and honest, my hips already rocking up into his hand.

"Did you like how hard you made me?" he whispered, his mouth close to my ear now, his breath hot on my skin, his hand tightening at the base and dragging up slow before snapping back to that fast deliberate pace.

"You made me so hard." My thighs trembled against the cushion, the room shrunk to his fist and the wet smack of it, his knee warm against mine, the TV flickering blue over both of us.

"Stand up," he said.

I stood up on legs that barely worked, my dick pointing straight out, dripping. Joe slid off the couch onto his knees in front of me, between my feet, and looked up at my face while his hand wrapped around me from the front. The TV light caught the come still drying on his cheek.

He stuck out his tongue and dragged it slow up the underside of my cock, then circled it around the head, lapping up the precum pooling there.

I shuddered hard, my knees nearly buckling.

Joe got bolder then, opening his jaw wide and taking the whole head of my cock into his mouth, his lips sealing tight around the shaft. He started licking and sucking me, slow and deep, his cheeks hollowing, his tongue working circles under the crown. He even took his hand and caressed my balls, rolling them gently in his warm palm, and I groaned out loud, my hips pushing forward into his face without meaning to. I had never felt anything this hot in my life.

I looked down at him kneeling between my feet, come drying on his cheek, his hungry eyes staring up at me while he worked my dick. The television painted him blue, his lips stretched shiny and wet around my shaft, his hand wrapped tight at the base, pumping in time with his mouth. Every time he sucked, my knees wobbled, the carpet cold under my bare feet, the whole empty house reduced to the wet heat of his jaw.

"My god, your cum tastes so good," Joe said in between slurps, pulling off just long enough to say it, a string of spit and precum hanging from his lower lip before he dove back down on me, hungrier than before, sucking harder, his cheeks hollowing, the sloppy wet sound of it filling the room over the murmuring TV.

His eyes looked up at me, glassy and begging, and he said, "Come for me. Come on my face. Make me your cum slut."

Those words! I didn't think I could be more turned on, but hearing Joe beg for it, kneeling there between my feet with his mouth stuffed full of my cock, his eyes wet and hungry in the television's blue flicker, sent a jolt straight through me. My cock swelled even harder in his mouth, throbbing against his tongue, drooling precum onto it, and something filthy and bold woke up in my chest, some voice I'd never heard myself use, low and dirty and dying to come out.

"You wanna be my cum slut?"

"mmmmmmmmm," Joe moaned with my dick in his mouth, the vibration humming up my shaft into my stomach, and he nodded without letting me slip out, his lips dragging up and down.

"Suck it harder, you nasty fucking cocksucker. You better suck my cock good, or I am going to tell everyne how much you love dicks"

"I'm a nasty cocksucker," he gasped, coming up for air, stroking me fast with his spit-slick fist, his face flushed deep, sweat running down his temple past the drying smear on his cheek. "Give me your fucking cum, right in my face, shoot it in my hair."

"You've been thinking about my cum, haven't you?" I said, my voice low and ragged, my hips pushing forward into his grip.

"mmmmmmm," he moaned, leaning in to drag his tongue up the underside of my cock, slow and deliberate, tasting every inch.

"Every night when you jerk off, you think about sucking my cock, don't you?"

"Yes. Yes. Every night. I've dreamed of this." His voice was wrecked, hoarse, his fist never stopping, precum and spit stringing between his knuckles and my tip. "Give me your cum, I want to taste it. I want it all over me."

"You are such a bad boy, thinking about cocks and how they taste and feel," I said, and my hand found the back of his head, my fingers sinking into his choppy light brown hair, not pushing, just resting there, and he shuddered at the weight of it.

"You should punish me for it," Joe said, looking up at me with those wet blue eyes, his mouth hanging open an inch from my dripping head. "You should spank my ass for being a naughty boy." He turned a little on his knees, offering himself, his bare pale ass flashing in the TV light, and he licked the head of my cock once more, moaning, waiting for it.

I erupted. Shot my load across his face, a thick rope across his cheek and nose, another into his hair, more down his chin, all over the place, spattering his forehead and his neck while he knelt there with his mouth open and his eyes locked on mine, jerking me through every last spasm like he was trying to empty me completely.

I sagged back against the couch, dick still twitching, my come cooling on Joe's face. He knelt there a second longer, then wiped his cheek with his thumb and licked it, grinning up at me like he'd won something.

"You come a lot," he said.

"You asked for it."

"I did." He hauled himself up onto the couch beside me, naked from the waist down, his softening cock lying against his thigh, slick with his own load and mine. He didn't clean up. He just sat there, flushed and dazed, sweat shining on his throat.

"So," I said, my voice still wrecked. "Those three times. With who?"

Joe looked at the TV for a while. The movie had gone to a commercial, some ad for carpet, of all things, blue light sweeping over the two of us sitting there with our pants around our ankles.

"Mike Ferretti," he said.

"Mike Ferretti? From the baseball team?"

"Two summers ago. He had this basement, his folks were gone a lot, and he'd gotten his hands on a stack of these same kind of mags. Worse than this one, actually. No cover at all, just pages in a manila envelope." He picked at a dried spot of come on his stomach. "We're sitting on his couch, exactly like this, flipping through them. And after a while I notice he's got a blanket over his lap."

I knew where this was going. My stomach tightened anyway.

"And the blanket starts moving," Joe said. "Slow. I pretended I didn't see it. I mean, what do you do? Hey Mike, nice rhythm? We were watching some dumb movie with the sound up too loud. I stared at the screen so hard I could've burned a hole in it."

"What did you do?"

"Nothing. That was the problem. He got more obvious." Joe's hand drifted down to his own thigh, idle, his fingers tracing through the dried mess there without seeming to notice he was doing it. "He stopped even pretending to watch the movie. He was staring at me, man. Full on, mouth open, while he worked his cock under that blanket. I could feel him looking at my face, my neck, anywhere but the screen. And I'm sitting there hard as a rock myself, terrified to move, because if I move he'll know, and if he knows, then what."

"And then?"

"Then he quit messing around." Joe laughed, low. "He just pulled the blanket off. Threw it aside. There it was, his dick in his fist, soaking wet at the tip, and he looked right at me and kept going. Didn't say a word. Not one word. Just showed me. Like, here. Look what we're doing."

"Jesus."

"I didn't know it was possible to be that hard. It hurt. It was beating like a second heart." He shifted beside me, his knee pressing against mine again, and his voice dropped. "So I pulled mine out. Just did it. And we sat there on his busted couch and beat off together, both of us watching each other's hands the whole time. Nobody said anything. Not before, not during. Not even after."

"You came?"

"Both of us. He went first, all over his own shirt, and watching that pushed me right over. I shot harder than I ever had in my life. Then we pulled our pants up and finished the movie and he took me home." Joe shrugged. "Never talked about it. Not once. Not the next day, not at practice, not ever. He moved that next spring and I never saw him again."

"Never talked about it at all? You hung out all summer."

"All the time. Slept over at his place like five more times. You know what we did those nights?" He turned and looked at me, his blue eyes bright in the TV flicker. "Watched regular movies. Played cards. Nothing. Like it never happened. And every time I lay there in his guest room I'd think about his fist on his cock and I'd beat off into a sock at two in the morning."

"Why are you telling me this now?"

"Because you just came on my face, Graham." He grinned. "I think the secret's out."

I laughed, shaky, and he laughed too, and then we were both just sitting there, dicks out, the commercial droning. His thigh was warm against mine.

"Did it happen again? With him?"

"Never. I wanted it to. I'd lie there hoping. But he never pulled that blanket again and neither did I, and I was too chicken to be the first one." His hand found his cock again, not stroking, just holding it, waking it back up. "That's why tonight almost didn't happen either. I kept thinking, don't push it, don't be weird. Then you asked to see my dick and I nearly came on the spot."

"You were obvious all night," I said. "That blanket was moving for an hour."

"I know. I was doing it on purpose. Same as Mike did." He tightened his grip, a slow drag up the shaft, and his cock was filling again, thickening in his own hand. "Worked on you, didn't it?"

"It worked on me."

"So here's the part I never got to do with Mike." He turned his body toward me, knee digging into my thigh, his dick standing back up, half hard and shiny in the TV light. "Mike and me, we watched each other and never said a word, and then we never talked, and then he was gone. I've thought about that night a thousand times. What I'd do different." His free hand landed on my knee, warm and heavy. "What would you have said to him? If you'd been me?"

I thought about it. My face was still hot, my come still drying on his skin, and the honest answer sat right there in my lap.

"I'd have said something," I said. "I'd have said, do it again."

"Yeah." His breath came out rough. "That's what I'd have said too."

"Good thing we're not them, then."

"Why's that?"

"Because you're not moving away in the spring, and I'm not pretending tomorrow." I reached over and wrapped my hand back around him, felt him harden fully against my palm, already slick again at the tip. "We're talking about it."

"Filthy talk counts as talking," he managed, and pushed his hips up into my fist. "So does this. Squeeze it harder, yeah, like that."

"You gonna come for me again, or do you need a magazine?"

"I need you to keep doing exactly that while I tell you every dirty thing I ever thought about in Mike's basement." His mouth found my ear, his voice all gravel and heat. "Starting with the part where I wished it was his hand on me instead of mine. Same wish, different night. Your hand feels so much better than mine ever did."

My fist tightened around his cock and his whole body shuddered against my shoulder, and the clock ticked on in the empty house, and neither one of us was pretending about anything anymore.

Joe twisted his hips into my fist, his cock swelling hard again in my grip, precum welling up under my thumb.

"Your turn," he said. "Mike's basement rule is over. I told you my whole thing. Now you tell me yours."

I kept stroking him, slow, buying time with the motion. My face was hot for a different reason now.

"Come on," he said. "You came on my face. There's nothing left to be scared of."

"You'll laugh."

"Graham. Look at my face right now." He turned, his knee digging into my thigh, come dried on his cheek and in his hair. "Do I look like a guy who's about to laugh?"

I took a breath and it shook going in.

"Since last summer," I said. "Since the pool party at your place. You came out of the water and your shirt was sticking to you and I couldn't stop staring at your stomach." My fist kept moving on his cock the whole time I said it, like the motion carried the words. "I've watched you ever since."

"Watched me how?"

"In class. At practice. When you stretch before gym, I have a whole routine for where I look so it doesn't look like looking." I laughed, wrecked. "It doesn't work. I think about you every night. Every single time I jerk off, Joe. It's not girls from class. It's you."

His breath caught. His hand found my wrist but didn't pull it away, just rested there, feeling the motion of my fist on him.

"What do you think about?" His voice had gone to nothing.

"Sucking your cock." I said it out loud for the first time in my life and my whole body shuddered. "Since the pool party. I'd lie in bed and imagine getting you alone in your room and getting on my knees and putting your dick in my mouth until you came down my throat. I imagined your cum in my mouth so many times I think I know what it tastes like."

"Jesus Christ." His hips pushed up hard into my fist. "Keep going."

"I used to look at your hands and imagine them on me. On my dick. On my ass. I'd watch you scratch the back of your neck and get so hard I had to sit down." My own cock was aching again, dripping onto my khakis, and I didn't care. "And tonight, when you dropped that magazine in my lap, I thought, he knows. He has to know. And I hoped."

"You hoped."

"I hoped so bad it scared me."

Joe grabbed my face with his free hand, turned me toward him, and kissed me. Open mouthed, sloppy, his tongue pushing past my lips, tasting like both of us, and I moaned into it and kept stroking him through the whole thing. It lasted a long time. His hand slid into my messy hair and held on.

"I had no idea," he said against my mouth. "A whole year. You sat next to me every day and you wanted my dick in your mouth and you never said anything."

"I was terrified."

"Of me?"

"Of what it meant."

"And now?"

I looked down at my fist wrapped around his cock, his precum stringing over my knuckles, and back up at his face, flushed and wet-eyed in the TV light.

"Now I want to know what it tastes like. For real. I want to suck your cock, Joe. I've wanted it for a year and I don't want to imagine it anymore."

"Then get on your knees."

I let go of him and slid off the couch, the carpet cold under my knees, his thighs right in front of me, his cock standing up thick and hard against his stomach, shiny with my spit of a few minutes ago and his own mess. He spread his legs wider to make room for me and leaned back against the couch, watching me with those half-lidded blue eyes.

"Take your time," he said. "You've been waiting a year. Enjoy it."

I wrapped my hand around the base and just looked at it first, close up, bigger than I'd ever let myself imagine, the head flushed dark and slick, the vein running up the underside thick as my finger. Then I stuck out my tongue and licked him from the bottom of the shaft all the way up, slow, feeling every ridge of him against my tongue, and the taste hit me, salt and skin and a bitter slick bead at the tip, and it was better than a year of imagining.

"Oh, fuck," Joe breathed. His hand came down into my hair. "You really have been waiting."

I opened my mouth and took him in. The head slid over my tongue and I sealed my lips around the shaft and sucked, and he groaned so loud it bounced off the walls of the empty house. I bobbed down, taking more, feeling him push against the back of my throat, and I relaxed and kept going until my nose was almost in the navy cotton of his shirt.

"Graham. Graham, holy shit, you're taking all of it."

I pulled up slow, dragging my lips along the whole length of him, then went back down, finding the rhythm, my hand working the base in time with my mouth. He tasted like sweat and cock and the faint salt of his earlier load, and I moaned around him because I couldn't help it, and the vibration made him buck his hips up into my face.

"That's it, that's it, suck my dick. You've thought about this for a year, so make it count." His fingers tightened in my hair, not forcing, just holding. "Look up at me while you do it. I want to see your face."

I looked up. His head was thrown back, jaw slack, sweat shining down his throat, and when my eyes met his he made a sound like he'd been punched.

"You look so fucking good with my cock in your mouth. Unbelievable. Knew it would be like this, some part of me knew."

Chapter excerpt truncated at the edge.