We listened. We could hear Rahman packing up his stuff, then his heavy impatient footsteps. Finally, the front door slammed shut.
Not two seconds later, we heard it bang open again, and more impatient stomping. Someone really ought to take a stick to Amir's handsome prick of an older brother--if only to teach him to start walking around the house like a civilized human being instead of a Saxon invader.
The door to Amir's room burst open.
"Forgot my hairbrush," Rahman said, without a trace of the sheepishness I thought was warranted.
"Um."
I actually said the word "um", just like that. My vocabulary seemed to dry up around Rahman. I was still holding Amir up against me. Hugging him, really.
That had to look weird. It couldn't look right.
Rahman took the brush from where it lay on the bed, a mere foot from the sticky puddle of Amir's release.
He went to the door, then turned around and gave the pair of us a long thorough look, up and down and all around. A look that made me feel every bit as naked as Amir. He finally settled on my eyes.
"Know what I think, 'Aaron Eisen'?"
As if I had asked.
I just stared, licked my lips.
"Know what I think, Zionist-boy?"
Cute, cute can't you do better than that?
Rahman smirked, worrying the bristles of the brush with his fingers. "I think you liked that as much as my little brother did -that's what I think."
For the first time, I looked below his waist, straining to see, through his thick loose-fitting jeans, if--
"Sick." The smirk grew wider. Did I see him wink, or was it only the play of shadow and sunlight over his dark eyes?
This time he stayed gone.
We sat for a long time, my arms tight around Amir, my damp palms caressing his torso and tensed shoulders. His smooth heaving back rested against my chest. When I let go of him, he fell onto the bed on his side, swiping at his nose and mouth with the back of his hand. The crying was winding down now to dry little hitches. I liked the way his face looked, blushing and animated with pain, the big eyes bloodshot and moist, the dark lashes matted.
I got up to shut the window-shades and lock the bedroom door. It was lucky for us and the neighbors (or maybe unlucky for them) that his window looked out on nothing but a high whitewashed fence. He watched me, the glassy shine of tears still in his eyes. There was another kind of shine there too; he was remembering how we'd comforted each other yesterday in the shower and, after that, in this room.
Such memories weren't far from my mind either. I crawled back onto the bed and took Amir in my arms again, kissing him softly on his lips and wet eyelids. The dull purple of his injured eye stood out against the flushed rosy-bronze beauty of the rest of his skin. I gave the eye extra attention, running my tongue lightly around the shape of the eyeball under the thick delicate lid. Amir moaned. I tasted the saltiness of his tears, which was as tangy, potent, and savory as his cum and his sweat. My hands slipped through his mussed black curls. He clung to me, his crying soft and erratic, his all-but-naked body pressed tight against my clothed one.
I wanted to stroke him, console him, wrap him up in my arms and keep kissing his quivering mouth and licking his tears away. But there was my urgent erection, straining against my fly. You had to hand it to the thing--it stayed up and ready in spite of sleet, snow, rain, propriety, and sympathy.
Couldn't stop it.
I guess I'm just built that way. Here I was getting off on a boy crying in my arms, crying because I'd just beaten his ass thoroughly.
And I had enjoyed it thoroughly. And I would do it again, if--no, when--I got the chance.
I gently extricated myself from his embrace and took off my shirt. If anything, I reasoned, my getting naked would make us more equal.
He kept trying to reach for me as I was stripping, pulling teasingly at my jeans and boxers and smiling his sweet smack-addled smile even as he blinked tears and saliva out of his eyes. I began to feel better. He apparently wasn't concerned about equality. And he no longer seemed to mind his beautifully raw ass. At least for now. I was certain it would catch up with him.
"Wait," I told him, pulling his hands off me and setting them on the bed between us. He smiled and watched me undress with those heart-breaking, cock-teasing, bright-wet black eyes. I saw them brighten even more as I brought my erection out and kicked off my pants. He reached to stroke my bone with those beautiful over-eager hands.
"I said wait." I gave him a sharp swat on his knuckles with my fingers. "Let's get that shirt off you first."
I eased the rolled-up T-shirt over his messy head; then we were both completely naked. Cupping his face in my hands, I kissed him, fervently and repeatedly. Long, wet, deep, spit-sucking kisses. His half-erection rubbed against my full one, sending a twinge of pleasure along my body. Our legs tangled; our feet brushed. I curled my toes possessively around his.
"Amir," I said, between kisses, "Now--now do you want to help me out?"
He replied with a tired but unmistakably game smile.
"Then do it." I massaged his neck and shoulders, then began to push him down. He got the idea and let me guide him so his mouth was level with my waist. He took my cock in his hand and brought it toward his open lips, but I snatched him by the wrist and unclasped his fingers from my shaft.
"No, Khalili," I said, tapping his fingers again, "I'll do it."
He looked at me uncomprehendingly for a second before I took hold of my penis and began rubbing the swollen head against his moist nose and mouth. Yeah, there was probably some snot there. But what did it matter, in the heat of the moment? Besides, this was an organ I eventually intended to stick inside his rectum--someday soon, if fate was kind. I might as well get used to having it smeared with his various fluids.
As I moved my cock-head over the lower half of his face (that dark stubble tickling it in a way that wasn't exactly pleasure and wasn't exactly pain) he tried to catch it with his pretty dark lips and tongue. I plunged my free hand into his thick hair and held firmly to try to keep him in place. He moaned again, almost begging. I traced the sharp end of his nose and the line of his thick lips with the dribbling slit so he could taste my pre-cum. His tongue darted out and I tugged admonishingly on his hair.
At last, I nudged my cock-head past his lips and let him start using that warm wet mouth. He swirled his tongue over the head the way we'd done to each other yesterday and earlier today. His mouth was a sultry well of pleasure; he was determined to suck everything out of me. Two or three times, I pulled back out- teasing him, teasing myself. I was so close. He didn't really have to work that long before I felt the final build-up.
And then I did something I probably shouldn't have done, acting blindly and thoughtlessly on an irresistible urge.
I backed all the way out of his expectant, pleading mouth which looked so lush, smeared all around with his copious spit and my clear pre-cum, almost pouty when coupled with the flash of cheated confusion in his eyes, gave my cock one, two quick jerks--
"Amir, close your eyes!"
--three, four quick light jerks and began shooting all over his face. Mostly the lips, chin, lower cheeks, but when I saw his eyes were indeed shut--almost angelically, the lashes making minuscule shadows on his smooth cheeks--and that he'd made no attempt to shy away from the streams of pearly jizz, I quickly aimed at his eyelids and forehead, even got some in his hair on the last few strong spurts. The very dregs of it ended up in my hand and on the bed. He was moaning the whole time--seemed to love it, seemed to love the humiliation, the abandon, of having me drench his beautiful face in sperm. Which was pretty fortunate for me; it had been kind of a leap of faith.
But it felt wonderful, a long hot godsend of a cum, rivaling even the one I'd had at his hands (literally) in the shower yesterday.
When it was done, I pulled on Amir's sticky hair.
"Get up here." I hooked my fingers under his wet armpits and brought him close to me. He'd opened his eyes again and was blinking cum off the lashes. He wiped some away with his fingers so he could look at me comfortably, but left the rest.
I became hyper-aware of my breathing, my heartbeat. If I were forty-seven instead of seventeen, I might very well be ready for the cardiac ward at this moment. Did he ever look hot after that facial. He looked really--I searched for a word--really slutty. Yes, slutty. My rival, my clever, infuriating, (up til recently) demure-seeming opposite number, Amir Khalili, smiling like he'd just won the lottery (or all the year's debating prizes) with my stuff all over his face. Slutty. Incredible. If Aaron- Eisen-from-the-Future had come to me on Monday at breakfast to tell me that, come Tuesday afternoon, I'd be lying on a waterbed naked with "that fucking Arab kid", the only other serious contender for T___ High's Most Irritating Smart-Ass "Minority" Over-Achiever, with the only kid who'd ever aroused me (an apt enough way to put it) to violent anger, having just unloaded in his face, now reaching toward him so I could press his sweaty naked body to mine and kiss his briny, jizz-slimy mouth... well, I would have thought that that Aaron-Eisen-of-the-Future had probably dosed his morning coffee liberally with high-quality LSD. Or taken a few solid knocks to the head during his temporal leap.
We came apart again. Amir smiled at me with his talented honey-pot of a mouth, a lustful, lost look on his cum-stained face, and I could see his erection was full and ripe now. He was fondling it uncertainly, as if waiting for someone to tell him what to do with it.
"Jerk yourself off, Amir--I want to see--I'd do it myself " I laughed, "but I can hardly breathe."
He did it. He took some of the cum off his face and mixed it with spit and his pre-cum to use as lube. I watched him, as he thrust feverishly into his own fist. The whole time he just smiled, a wild, sweet, almost private smile, and didn't say a thing. Funny how little time it took. His load wasn't as thick as mine, since he'd just busted one while I was punishing him. (And there was a memory sure to provide months--no, years--of jerk-off material. I'd probably be in the nursing home eight decades from now wishing I could still get it up over that one... To think, I'd made this gorgeous boy cum by smacking his wriggling ass til it burned, by hurting him, humiliating him, making him sob. I remembered with a darkly pleasurable shudder his brother coming in to taunt him about his hard cock, his "sickness". I remembered the secretive smile on Rahman's face. Made me think maybe he was a little "sick" himself, that Rahman.)
"Ohh..." Amir's lips parted in a slow sultry moan as his load slicked his belly and covered his stroking hand, uttering this one semi-word (the only thing he'd said, if you could call it speaking, since begging me not to hit him with the bristles) as his eyes rolled and the lids fluttered shut. Before he could wipe it on the sheets, or do anything with it, I took his cum-coated hand and brought it up to my mouth. I tenderly and savoringly tongued the warm cum off his smooth bony knuckles, then off each elegantly tapered finger, practically fellating them while he watched the movement of my wet sucking mouth with dazed eyes.
I held his wet hand in mine across the small but infinite expanse of bed between us. I say infinite because nothing seemed close enough; I wanted to merge with him totally. I wanted our bodies to absorb one another. I wanted to know how it felt to be him and walk around all the time in his beautiful skin.
I watched our hands lying there, not his eyes. I couldn't take his eyes right now.
"I love you," I said, before reason could intervene and stop me from making an idiot of myself. It just came out, like his cum had been full of sodium-pentothal or something.
He stroked my fingers.
"Yesterday you were ready to tear me a new asshole," he said quietly.
"Well, not anymore," I snorted. "The one you've already got looks good enough."
"Okay, okay..." He tapped my hand. "Poor choice of words."
"Not as bad as mine."
"What?"
"When I said what I said. Just now."
"That you love me."
"Yes."
I don't know why I was unwilling to let my stupid slip go. I wanted some kind of acknowledgment of it, I guess, now that it was out. I wanted him to say something, even if it was "You've gotta be kidding me, you faggot Jew-boy pervert.".
I didn't think it would be.
"I didn't expect you to say that."
Quiet.
"Well..." I said after a long moment, still staring at our twined hands, "at least you're not going to hit me for it."
"Maybe 'cause I know how hard you can hit back."
I looked up at him; he was smiling, but there was a gentle seriousness in his eyes. He touched my face.
"I meant it," I said, even though I was no longer sure I had.
He didn't answer. Instead, he leaned over and engulfed my lips with his, suckling on the old tenderness from where he'd hit me yesterday. I'd almost forgotten about it. Even while licking at the purple skin of his eyelid, I had not consciously thought of how it had gotten that way, though I must have remembered, on some level--and that was why it was so charged for me, almost erotically charged--but on the surface, I'd seen it only as a thing of discordant beauty. I found the thickened, sensitive part of his lush lower lip, probed it with my tongue, nibbled it. We moved closer together, ending up in a kind of full-body embrace: legs scissored together; arms locked around each other; our drained cocks unable to help responding, however sluggishly, each to the proximity of the other. The temperature in the room seemed to have dropped. Maybe it was all the sweat starting to cool on our bodies. We both felt it. He pulled his tangled red comforter from the foot of the bed, and we burrowed together under the warm layer. He turned the wet pillow over so we could lay on it. The clock read 2:12.
"How long do you have the house to yourself?"
"Today's Salim's late day. He has math turtoring from four to six, and he usually goes to McDonald's or someplace for dinner, so we won't be seeing him. Qasim will probably go with them. He'll go to Joe Lemmons's house after that. They have a project due for bio. And Rahman will probably collapse in some friend's room on campus."
I hoped the friend would turn out to be a depraved sexual sadist nursing a hard-on for nicely- proportioned Arab boys with shit attitudes.
Amir and I moved into that all-over embrace again. It was hard to think vengeful thoughts about Rahman with his lips grazing my neck, ready to nip and suck. It was hard even to think of my stupid slip of a moment ago. Just more blurted silliness.
Oh, I was going to be a gibbering wreck next Wednesday at debate practice. No question. My head felt like exploding just thinking about it. Being in the same room with him and having to keep our clothes on would be a trial in and of itself.
"I really hurt you, didn't I?" I slipped my hand down his back and rubbed his butt gingerly. I felt him wince under my hand. The sensation of those round sleek ass-muscles was glorious.
"Yeah, you did. But I wasn't exactly gentle with you either."
He stroked my butt as well, reawakening some of the heat and pain. I squirmed my tender behind into his hand.
"You weren't. Not at all."
We massaged the sore, beaten flesh--fascinated by what we'd done to each other.
"I made you cry," I said, unable to conceal my cruel pleasure in the so-recent memory.
Amir gave a delighted shiver. "Don't worry about that. Rahman's right." He grinned. "I'm a sick boy."
"If you're sick, I'm sick. I was hard the whole time. The whole time, mind you. Your turn and mine. But you know that."
"Yeah. I felt it under my ass when he made you pull me up." Amir removed my glasses in a graceful, gentle movement, and placed them on the headboard shelf (if I ever wanted to tie him up, we'd have to do it in my room, where there are bedposts). "Your jeans chafe, by the way. And you were like a fucking rock down there the whole time I was smacking you." He kissed my cheek. "I knew you were hard smacking me too. I could sense it."
"See, now," I smiled. "That makes me doubly sick."
"If you're doubly sick, I'm doubly sick too."
"Sick and dirty," I chuckled. "Doubly dirty."
"Oh, yes." He rolled his eyes and showed his pretty white teeth. Any further away, his face would've gone smudgy, like a clumsy watercolor. "Dirty boys. Inarguably dirty boys."
I traced his ass-crack with my finger. This time he didn't seem to mind, and I didn't try to go any further.
"Yes, unquestionably," I agreed.
"Unadulteratedly," he persisted.
"Incontrovertibly."
"Conclusively."
"Categorically."
We were laughing now.
"Hands down."
"Balls-to-the-wall."
"Q.E.D."
"Yeah.." I squeezed him hard and gave him an affectionate kiss on the neck. "It's settled."
An hour and a half later, we heard the slow patter of rain. We were still on our sides; cooled sweat seemed to have welded our limbs together. Amir's face was nestled into my neck. I almost had a mouthful of his sweat-fragrant hair. He was awake too, his eyes were open, but neither of us said anything. I played with his hair; he squirmed closer to me, we listened to each other breathe. We lay there under the warmth of the blanket, pressed together in the rain-rhythmic quiet. Finally, thirst got us both moving again. We put on our pants with care and went to the kitchen, where we had some water and heated up some of those frozen pocket sandwich things, which I didn't think I'd be able to eat (my stomach was doing Olympic-caliber gymnastics) until I bit into it. Then I realized I was ravenous and wound up having two, standing over the counter next to Amir.
I watched him eat, watched his soft little tongue lick dripping cheese off his fine lips. I watched his satisfied pleasure at the taste. I watched the smooth skin of his neck as he swallowed. Licking sandwich-pocket residue from my fingers, I stepped behind him and began to caress his back, then-- very gingerly--his jeans-covered buttocks. I knew exactly what I wanted for dessert.
We went back into Amir's room after finishing our snack. I pulled him back down on the bed without a word, got rid of his jeans, flipped him over, and took my tongue to his ass. It wasn't like yesterday; he was so sore I didn't even bother trying to part his red cheeks to reach his hole. Instead I concentrated on the elysian mounds themselves, which were beginning to show painful purple bruises. I massaged his smooth tender skin with my lips and tongue, stroking the backs of his thighs to feel the sleek lean muscle. His skin tasted so good after all the sweat and pheromones of the day. I was hard again, but not urgently so, not the way I'd been with his nude shaking body locked in my arms under Rahman's penetrating gaze.
When his ass was spit-coated to my satisfaction and he was purring contentedly, I moved slowly up his body, caressing the strong curve of his back with my tongue and hands, then turned his face and kissed his mouth.
"Can I do yours now?" He stroked his hand from my neck to my lower back, licking his lips in anticipation.
"Do you need to ask?"
That evening, after looking over the handouts several of my teachers had so considerately e-mailed to me for perusal during my uunexpected hiatus, I went out for a long drive to do some thinking. Though it was not exactly bliss sitting on my sore ass, I needed to be alone. And driving always calmed me better than anything when I was scared or indecisive.
On the way back home, I stopped by an all-night pharmacy.
I had two more days. I figured if I wasn't able to convince Amir tomorrow, perhaps he'd prove better-disposed the next day. A slow and gentle introduction to the idea would be best; I might not even bring it up til the last day of suspension, reserving tomorrow for more subtle hints, extensive oral coaxing, perhaps, finally, a little "digital" progress.
I fretted over how big a box to get. Buying condoms at all probably wasn't strictly necessary. I knew I was clean, and when I'd quizzed Amir about prior relations with girls, he'd reported a similarly arid past. And I was the only boy he'd ever even kissed (other than maybe Qasim, during a hot night of giddy adolescent experimentation?). But I thought somehow that if I offered them he might be less wary about the whole thing. As if it would make the eventual, physical act any less uncomfortable for him.
Besides, in spite of my earlier blitheness about the idea, having his fluid--those fluids--on my cock made me nervous in some undefinable way having nothing to do with fear of disease. Maybe it was too intimate. I didn't know him very well yet--as anything more than an enemy.
As an afterthought, I added a box of "self-warming personal lubricant", in case all the saliva and gentle attention I planned to lavish on his little bud should prove insufficient. The manager, a geeky-cute blond college boy, was the only one in the store save for the nondescript middle-aged pharmacist at the back counter.
"You realize that's not the spermicide kind," he told me, tapping the box of lube.
"Huh?"
"It's best to get the spermicide lube. This isn't it." He tapped the lube again, picked up the box of condoms. "Certain condoms come with it too, but these ones you've got don't."
I stared sat him blankly.
"Just some friendly advice."
"Um, she's on the pill," I bit my inner cheek to keep from laughing. Amir was certainly no "she".
"Smart of her."
He rang me up. I got out.
A light melancholy drizzle had begun. I felt very tired and very happy. I drove home, stashed away my purchases, and turned in.