dropped his fork.
“I’m involved with someone,” Jonathan said. “His name is Mike and we’ve been
seeing each other for more than a year. He’s in England right now. He owns a public
relations firm and he’s working out of the London office for a few months.” He lifted his
hand and waved his new Movado watch in Ed’s face. “He gave me this before he left.”
He wanted Ed to get a good look.
“Is it serious?” Lisa asked. She leaned forward and rested her elbows on the table.
Evidently, Lisa loved to get all the juicy details.
Both Ed and Noah stopped eating and stared in his direction at the same time.
“He wanted me to quit my job and go to London with him,” Jonathan said. “He’s
ready to settle down. He even wants to buy a place out in the Hamptons, move there eventually, and work mostly from home.” He was looking at Lisa, but he was saying all
this for Ed’s benefit.
“My dad has a place in East Hampton,” Noah said. He jumped into the
conversation without thinking twice. He hadn’t swallowed his food yet.
“Eat your dinner,” Ed snapped, “and don’t talk with your mouth full.”
Noah swallowed hard and stared at his father.
“Well, that sounds pretty serious to me,” Lisa said. “But you don’t seem too
excited about any of this.” She also liked to analyze everything.
Jonathan shrugged his shoulders and smiled. “He’s a great guy, and he’d do
anything for me,” he said. “What more could I want?” Then he lowered his eyes to his
plate and started to eat. He certainly wasn’t going into any details about his relationship
with Mike in front of Ed. He’d already said enough. But out of the corner of his eye, he
saw Lisa give Ed a look from across the table. Her eyebrows went up and she jerked her
head in Jonathan’s direction. Ed pretended to ignore her. He lifted his hand and asked the
waiter if he could have another glass of wine.
Toward the end of their dinner, Ed took one last sip of his wine and spilled a few
drops on his white polo shirt. Noah noticed it first and told him. Ed scolded him for
pointing.
Lisa said, “You’d better ask the waiter for some club soda or you’ll never get that
out.” They were waiting for the waiter to bring back Ed’s credit card. Jonathan had
offered to pay. He could have written it off as a business dinner with clients of the show.
But Ed insisted, so he put his wallet back in his pants and shrugged. “Salt is better than club soda,” Jonathan said. “The salt will soak up most of the
wine for the time being, and when you get home you’ll have to pre-soak the stain with a
mixture of hydrogen peroxide and a good, strong laundry detergent. Then wash it on a
normal cycle and it should come out. But you have to do it right away.”
They all stared at him for a moment. He felt as if there was a piece of food on the
end of his nose. Lisa’s head was tilted sideways, and Ed’s eyebrows were up.
He shrugged. “I know how to do laundry,” he said. “I like clean clothes.”
“You’d better put salt on that right now, Ed,” Lisa said. “Jonathan, you’d better
do it for him. He’ll just let it dry and we’ll all have to look at that wine stain for the next
ten years. And I’m no good with laundry. I send everything out.” She reached for the salt
and handed it to Jonathan.
“I’m fine,” Ed said, waving his arm. “I’ll just throw it into the washer when I get
home.”
But Lisa insisted. “Stop being so stubborn and let him at least put the salt on it.”
Ed sighed and turned to face him.
Jonathan opened the salt shaker and placed it on the table. The stain was just
below Ed’s collar, on Jonathan’s left. Lisa and Noah watched while he dipped a napkin
into a glass of water and dabbed it lightly on the stain. From the way they stared, you’d
have thought he was performing major surgery. He spread salt all over the wet section of
the napkin and reached toward Ed’s shirt. He didn’t want to just dab it onto Ed’s body; it
would have fallen all over his lap. So he slipped his right hand through the opening of the
shirt at the base of his neck, rested his knuckles on Ed’s bare chest, and lifted the shirt so
the salt wouldn’t fall off. He gently rubbed the salt into the stain with his left hand, pressing against his right palm. Ed’s chest was arm and solid and his chest muscle
jumped a few times. When he inhaled, Ed’s woody aftershave had mellowed to a soft,
soothing aroma. Jonathan pinched his lips and focused hard on the stain, because when
his knuckles touched Ed’s chest something happened between his legs.
Ed sat still, staring up at the ceiling the entire time.
When Jonathan was finished, he patted it dry with another napkin and said, “Now
when you get home, pre-soak with detergent and peroxide and put it through a normal
cycle.” He placed the napkin on the table and reached to get his jacket from the back of
the chair. He had a full erection between his legs. It was a good thing he’d brought his
jacket to cover his crotch.
After that, Ed drove Noah and Lisa back to the guest house. Noah wanted to show
Jonathan his bedroom. Ed thought it was too late. He had to get up early; he wanted to
finish sanding all the hardwood on the first floor that weekend. But when Jonathan saw
Noah lower his head and pout, he said to the boy, “I’ll come in for five minutes. But we
can’t stay long, because it really is past your bedtime.”
The guest house was more like a small, one-story carriage house. When Tucker
saw Jonathan walk through the front door, he raced to him with his tail wagging, jumped
up, and licked his face.
There was a large living room/dining room section with an open concept kitchen
at the end. Beyond that, there were two large bedrooms, each with its own bathroom.
Noah’s room was stark and modern with white carpet, a wall of tacky mirrored closets
and a queen-sized bed. It was obvious this place had been pre-furnished with neutral
things and that it was only temporary. The only signs that this room belonged to a little boy were a baseball bat and glove on a chair, a collection of superheroes on a desk, and a
large poster of Barack Obama taped to the wall above the bed. When Jonathan
commented on the poster, Noah smiled and said, “He’s my ultimate hero.”
But they didn’t stay long. Ed stood near the door the entire time they were there,
hands in his pockets, rocking on the balls of his feet. When Lisa offered to make coffee,
Ed said he was tired and that Jonathan could come back another time. Lisa gave him a
look, then asked Jonathan for his cell phone number. “I’m taking Noah shopping for new
shoes tomorrow,” she said, “I’m probably going shoe shopping myself afterwards.
You’re welcome to join us if you like, Jonathan.”
Jonathan smiled. “I’d like that. I don’t know anyone out here. Call me in the
morning. I’ll drive.”
When Jonathan and Ed were back in the car, the ten-minute ride back to Ed’s
house was quiet. Jonathan mentioned how much he liked Lisa, and Ed smiled and nodded.
Ed thanked him for putting salt on the wine stain, and he smiled and nodded. The click of
the turn signal magnified. It felt as if they were driving cross country instead of a few
miles. When they reached the driveway and Ed pulled up to the garage and switched off
the headlights, the entire world seemed to go dark.
They sat there in silence for a moment, then Jonathan said, “Don’t forget:
hydrogen peroxide and detergent when you get into the house.”
“Got it,” Ed said.
“Then I guess I’ll see you on Monday morning,” Jonathan said. “Thanks for
dinner tonight. It was fun.” But when he reached for the door handle, Ed grabbed his arm and pulled it back.
Then he leaned over the center console and kissed him on the mouth. It wasn’t a soft kiss
either. He pressed his lips against Jonathan’s, shoved his tongue inside his mouth, and
tipped his head sideways. Jonathan grabbed the back of Ed’s head with one hand and held
his bicep with the other. The muscle bulged in his palm. His tongue was thick and warm;
he smelled so damn good. And he tasted even better.
Jonathan wanted this man to control him. He wanted this hot hunk of sexy male
flesh to pull him by the back of the head and throw him down again.
Ed stopped kissing for a moment and asked, “Should I stop? I will if you want
me to.” Then he ran his large hand up Jonathan’s shirt and squeezed his right nipple. “I
don’t want to be presumptuous here.”
Jonathan licked his ear and said, “Yes. We have to stop. We can’t keep doing
this.” He knew it was wrong, and he’d already promised himself that he wasn’t going to
do it anymore.
Then Ed squeezed his nipple harder and kissed him again. “I really want to stop,”
Ed whispered into his ear, “but you look so good tonight. When you cleaned that wine
stain on my shirt in the restaurant, my dick was ready to jump out of my pants. I never
thought cleaning a wine stain could be sexy, but there you were.”
Jonathan was surprised to hear that Ed had been just as turned on in the restaurant
as he’d been. He’d seemed so stoic and reserved and unimpressed. He certainly knew
how to hide his real feelings in public. “We should stop and I should go back to the
hotel,” Jonathan said. But when Ed ran his strong hand down his stomach, he whispered, “You’re so
beautiful. I can’t believe you’d even want to be with someone like me.”
“I like you,” Jonathan said, shrugging his shoulders. There were a few rough
calluses now on Ed’s palm from sanding the floors. He wanted to know what it was like
to feel those calluses on his naked ass. So he unbuttoned his jeans, pulled down his zipper,
and kicked off his shoes. His pants, his shirt, and his socks came off fast. When he was
completely naked and ready to submit to all of Ed’s needs, he wrapped his arms around
Ed’s wide shoulders and said, “Let’s go in the back seat.” Then he pulled a condom out
of his jacket pocket and crawled to the back.
Ed followed him. His eyes were wide and his breathing was heavy. He sat down
in the middle of the back seat, stretched his legs out, and pulled down his zipper. When
his erection was sticking out of his pants, he covered it with the condom and held the
base in his hand. Jonathan lifted his right leg over Ed’s lap, faced the front of the car, and
lowered his ass to the tip of Ed’s dick. He spread his legs as wide as they would go and
held the front seats for support. Ed inserted the tip into his tight hole. Jonathan closed his
eyes and lowered his body. When Ed was all the way inside and he was sitting on Ed’s
lap rocking his hips in circles, he threw his head back, leaned into Ed’s chest, and
moaned.
Then Jonathan pressed the tips of his toes to the carpet and rode him this way for
a few minutes. But it didn’t take long for Ed to turn him all the way around so he was
kneeling on the back seat and facing the rear of the car. Ed assumed total control and his
penis never slipped out once. Jonathan spread his legs wide and Ed’s hips began to buck.
His dick went in and out fast. The car rocked and Jonathan’s head went up and down. Each time Ed slammed his ass and went deep, Jonathan tightened his ass muscles and
clamped down on Ed’s penis.
It was desperate and rushed, just as it had always been with them. The windows
fogged and the slaps against Jonathan’s ass grew closer together. It was as if Ed couldn’t
get deep enough into his body. He held Jonathan’s hips with such force and pressed so
hard, he touched spots Jonathan didn’t even know existed. They were sensitive,
erogenous places that made his nipples hard. He hadn’t been fucked in the back seat of a
car since he was in college, and never with a man who made him feel as sexy as Ed did.
A few minutes later, Jonathan grabbed his dick and said, “I’m close. I’m really
close.”
Ed was fucking hard by then. He squeezed the sides of his ass and said, “Come
for me. Jerk your dick for me.”
Minutes later, while Ed hammered so hard his eyes rolled, he exploded all over
the back of the seat. His prostate jumped and his toes curled. It was one of those rare,
extended climaxes that left his balls tender with orgasmic sensations. A second after that,
Ed grunted a couple of times and filled the condom. He bucked and pushed deep while
his callused palms rubbed Jonathan’s ass.
When it was over, he pulled his penis out of Jonathan’s body and said, “Thank
you for that.”
Jonathan raised his eyebrows and pressed his lips together. Of all things, he
hadn’t expected a thank you from Ed. So he pulled him down to the seat and sat on his
