“Dick-lips,” he responded.
“Bastard,” I hissed at him, moving past the cage.
I took a deep breath once I reached the door and sent up a little prayer to God for tonight to not be the social abortion of the season. I opened the door.
God, he was so fucking handsome.
I could see the slight nervousness on his face as I opened the door, as if he was unsure who’d be on the other side and was fretting about it. But as soon as he saw it was me, that look faded and a brilliant smile bloomed on his face, dimples out in full force. He was so fucking happy to see me that it almost knocked me flat. I didn’t think I’d ever had anyone look at me like that. It was disconcerting. It was terrifying. It was fucking awesome.
“Hi,” he said, almost shyly, stepping into the door and kissing me sweetly.
“Hey,” I said roughly. “Thanks for coming over.”
He shrugged. “Your mom invited me. I couldn’t say no to that.”
And what about your mom, Vince? What’s going on with her?
“You may end up regretting that sooner than you think,” I muttered to him. Only then did I notice his arms were full. “What’s all this?”
He blushed. He fucking blushed. It was so unfair. I blushed and I looked like I had third-degree burns spreading over my body. He blushed and it made him hotter. “Just thought I should bring something for your folks and your nana.” He shuffled his feet. “Also got you a birthday present, even though your birthday has already passed. I felt bad that I missed it.”
“You… come in here all… so awesome and I can’t even… so unfair….”
He looked up and grinned. “You’re sputtering,” he murmured. “That usually means I’ve done something good. It’s nothing big. Just flowers for your mom and Nana, and some scotch for your dad because he looks like he’d like it.”
I shook my head. “You’re so fucking weird.”
“Yeah. But you think I’m awesome.”
“Did you have a good day?” I asked, trying to keep my voice level as I closed the door behind him.
I thought he stiffened slightly, but it was gone before I could be sure it was there. “It was fine,” he said.
“Oh. That’s good.” Only then did I notice slightly dark circles around his eyes. “You okay? You look tired.” I felt bad. “Look, we don’t have to do this now if you’re not feeling it. Trust me, my family can be exhausting like you wouldn’t believe. Maybe we should—”
“It’s fine, Paul,” he said with an exasperated smile. “I just haven’t been sleeping well.”
“Is it your back? Still sore?”
“Yeah. A little bit.”
“Are you sure you—”
“Paul!” Nana shouted from the living room.
I groaned. “Here we go,” I whispered. “Yeah?” I shouted back.
“Quit trying to get fresh with your young man in the hallway and bring his ass in here so I can meet him!”
“Language!” my father yelled from the kitchen. “Hi, Vince!”
“Hi, Larry!” Vince called back.
“Hi, Vince!”
“Hello, Matty!”
“Paul’s a fudge packer!”
Vince’s eyes bulged.
“Johnny Depp,” I sighed. “I told you. This is going to be bad. He hates everyone and all he does is say horrid things. I would feel bad, but you wanted to see this. I only ask that if you feel like screaming and running in the opposite direction you give me plenty of notice so that I can start looking for a new country to live in so that I may die in embarrassment around people who don’t speak the same language I do.”
“This will probably be the most magical day ever,” he assured me.
“You say that now. I’ll ask that you remember that in two hours when you’re trying to find the best way to file a restraining order against us, or if you’re looking up support groups after being verbally raped by a parrot.”
“Hi, my name is Vince,” he intoned. “Paul’s homophobic parrot touched me in my no-no place.”
“You’re a natural,” I sighed. “Let’s get this over with.”
He followed me down the hall and into the living room, where Nana was waiting expectantly in her chair. She’d put on her glasses, smoothed down her hair, and sat with her hands in her lap. If one saw her like this, they’d think her a sweet, demure little old lady. Too bad the façade was all a lie. I knew the steel-trap mind and tiger’s claws that were buried underneath. If Gigi didn’t like him, she’d tear him to shreds piece by piece. I’d seen her do it before and there was little one can do to stop it.
So imagine my surprise when she saw him for the first time and her face lit up in a wide smile. Imagine my surprise when she pushed herself up from her recliner with a very unladylike grunt and practically shoved me out of the way. It was good to know where her loyalties lay, even without having ever seen him before today.
“You must be Vince!” she beamed at him. “I’m Paul’s grandmother. You may call me Gigi or Nana, whatever you wish. It’s quite lovely to meet you.”
He smiled down at the little woman. “I got these for you,” he said, handing her a beautiful bouquet of summer flowers.
Nana giggled. She fucking giggled as she took the flowers from him. She never giggled about anything. If she found something to be funny, she had this low, raucous laugh that sounded whiskey smooth. But this? This was a high-pitched giggle of a little girl who was suddenly and without warning pleased beyond comparison. “So pretty,” she said, inhaling her flowers deeply. “And the flowers are too.” She winked at him.
Oh. Oh, so gross.
“Nana,” I groaned.
“Oh, hush, you,” she told me. “It’s not every day that I get a piece of eye candy of his caliber walking into my house. The cable repair man came the other day, but I’m pretty sure he either had gout or the plague because he was not attractive. Let an old lady enjoy the sights.”
“That’s my boyfriend you’re talking about,” I reminded her. “Not some piece of meat.”
“Paul is pretty much in love with me,” Vince told her. “He gets kind of defensive around me.”
“You must be out of your damn mind,” I growled at him, trying to keep from bursting into flames. “Because that would be the only excuse that’d make any sense for saying something like that.”
“Ignore him,” Nana said. “He thinks too much for his own good. Let me give you a tour of my house, and I will show you all the most embarrassing photographs of Paul that I have. There’s one of him dressed up as a slutty Snow White for Halloween when he was sixteen that I think you’ll just positively adore. Paul?”
“Yes, oh destroyer of any future potential relationship I may have?”
“Be a dear and take these lovely flowers Vince gave me and put them in water. It looks as if he’s gotten some for your mother as well, so take those to her. Is that scotch, dear boy? Oh, Larry will just love it. And what’s in this bag?”
“That’s for Paul,” Vince said. “I think I’ll just hold on to it while you show me Paul as a Disney princess whore. He’d probably try to open it without permission.”
“Oh, you’re absolutely right. He would always try to open the corners of his Christmas presents when he was a kid. He thought he was being all sneaky about it, but the little screams he would give when he’d see them were a dead giveaway. It was like having a tiny shrieking Christmas monkey. Speaking of Christmas, you simply must be here this year. I won’t take no for an answer.”
“Christmas is seven months away,” I reminded her, trying to keep my cool.
She glared at me. “I know what month it is, Paul. I’m not so old that I’ve slid from my mental faculties and need to wear diapers.”
“And that image will never leave my head,” I said.
She shoved the flowers and the scotch into my hands before hooking her arm through Vince’s and leading him around the living room. Their first stop was in front of Johnny Depp and I smirked, waiting
for the incarnate of evil to start spewing vitriol left and right at my grandmother’s insistence. I didn’t think she actually taught Johnny Depp to say those things, but she certainly didn’t stop him either. Gigi wasn’t homophobic in the slightest. Just her bird.
But, of course, that’s not how things went. At all. I didn’t know what the fuck Vince had done, if he was some kind of cyborg sent from the future that had the power to make everyone literally roll over and expose their bellies to him like he was the greatest thing to have ever existed. Yes, I thought he was pretty dang rad, but Jesus Christ, Johnny Depp? Johnny Depp, the most hateful bird alive?
Johnny Depp adored him.
My grandmother pulled Vince up to the cage, and I could see the parrot eyeing him. I waited for the bird to call him a turd-burglar or some such nonsense when all of a sudden, Johnny Depp whistled like he was some New York City construction worker and a hot piece of ass had just walked by. It was a low sound, a lecherous sound, and I almost walked over to choke the life out of the damn parrot for hitting on my boyfriend, because that’s exactly what he was doing.
He shuffled over on his bar to get as close to Vince as he could. “He’s very pretty,” Vince said, and Johnny Depp gave a little chattering sound like he was pleased with the compliment, like he understood what Vince had said. He mewled at Vince and stuck his beak through the bars, clicking his tongue. Vince reached up and stroked between his eyes and the bird fucking sighed in pleasure. “Pretty,” Johnny Depp said. “So pretty.” He clicked his tongue again.
“You’re like some weird, gay Dr. Dolittle,” I accused him.
“You just have to be nice to animals, Paul,” he said. “They know when you don’t like them.”
“Yeah, because they’re so smart like that,” I said with a sneer.
Johnny Depp reared up and looked over at me. “Paul’s a lady-boy,” he said. He turned back to Vince. “Pretty. Pretty, pretty.”
“You two should get a room,” I said snidely.
“I see what you mean about getting defensive,” Nana said. “Paul, it’s a bird. Really, you’d think you wouldn’t get jealous over a bird.”
“Paul pretty much loves me, I guess,” Vince said with a wink.
I scowled at the both of them and went to the kitchen.
And walked in on my parents making out. “Aughhhh!” I cried. “My eyes! It’s like I stared at an eclipse even though all the warnings told me not to!”
“Oh please,” my mother said. “You act like parents can’t be intimate, Paul. You weren’t immaculately conceived, you know. Your father put his pe—”
“Let’s pretend the conversation ended right there, okay?” I interrupted. “Here, Vince got you flowers and got Dad scotch, which, with how this has been going after only five minutes, I’m pretty sure we should break into now so that I am numb for when the rest happens.”
My mother gushed over the flowers and Dad grinned over his bottle. “What are you worried about, Paul?” Mom asked as she pulled a vase from underneath the sink. “Everyone will be on their best behavior. It’s not like we’re savages, you know. Believe it or not, we do know how to keep our pants on.”
“And I appreciate that more than I could ever say,” I told her. “I wouldn’t know how to explain that to him if you didn’t.”
“Sassy boy,” she said fondly.
We were interrupted by a loud shout of laughter coming from the hallway. Vince sounded like he was dying.
“Slutty Snow White?” Dad asked, opening the bottle to his scotch and sniffing.
“Slutty Snow White,” I admitted. “Remind me again why I decided to wear that?”
“Because you and Sandy wanted to see if you could find seven men to be your dwarves,” Mom said. “I reminded you that it’s never a good idea to go looking for seven different guys when I was pretty sure you couldn’t handle more than two.” She sniffed and wiped her eyes. “You grew up so fast.”
“Wow, did I have a delusional childhood.”
“No more than most kids,” she said.
“I’m pretty sure most sixteen-years-olds don’t dress in drag and look for a seven-man gang bang,” I pointed out.
“Language!” My father warned.
I heard the bedroom door open down the hall and Vince’s laugh suddenly cut off. “Oh shit,” I breathed.
“What?”
“The bike.”
Dad cocked his head. “You didn’t want him to find it?”
“I don’t know,” I muttered. “I just—”
Vince walked swiftly into the kitchen. “Matty, Larry,” he said in greeting. “Can I borrow Paul for a minute?”
My parents looked highly amused. I couldn’t look at Vince, the tightness in his voice making me think I’d done something wrong. “Go ahead,” Mom said. “We’ll be ready to eat in ten minutes or so, so take your time.”
“Thank you,” he said, grabbing my hand and jerking me out of the kitchen. They chuckled behind me as Vince dragged me down the hallway to the front door. His grip was biting into my wrist, but I didn’t dare shake him loose. He looked tense in front of me. He opened the front door, which I then snagged to close behind us after we went through.
He paused for a moment on the front stoop, snapping his head left then right. He must have decided right because he jerked me in that direction, going around the side of Nana’s little house, away from the street and anyone’s view of us. As soon as we’d cleared the corner, he roughly pushed me up against the side of the house, bringing his hands up to frame my face. He was breathing heavily when he said, “That bike in there.”
“What about it?” I panted, squirming in his grip. I was harder than I’d ever been in my entire fucking life. I was also a little bit worried, given the way he was looking at me, his eyes narrowed but alight with something I hadn’t yet seen in him. It was like fire. It was like he was burning up from the inside and it was all for me.
“Is it for me?” He brushed his fingers through my hair, digging into my scalp.
“Yeah. You needed a new one, ’cause I broke your other one, and Jenny at the bike store said that it was the one you—”
He cut me off in a very effective way. As soon as the last word came out, he bent in and kissed me deeply, pressing me up against the side of the house with his body, his fingers curling in around me. There was no shyness here, no gentle insistence, no sweet hesitation. The moment his mouth was on mine, he pushed his tongue through my lips, clashing our teeth together. The groan I gave came from nowhere, and he bit my bottom lip, pulling it between his teeth as he ground against me. Our groins rubbed together, and I could feel how hard his cock was, pressed up against mine. He gasped at the touch but pressed harder, the heady sensation almost too much for the both of us to handle. I had a very dim sense that I was being rutted against on the side of my nana’s house with her and my parents only feet away, but it didn’t seem important to me in the slightest.
What was important was how he moved his lips from mine to trail along my jaw. His thumbs went to my chin and lifted my head until he nuzzled into my neck, his tongue trailing along my skin, his teeth scraping hotly, his breath moist against me. “All this,” I groaned, “because of a fucking bike?”
He growled against me. “No one’s ever done something like that for me before,” he said, sounding snappish. He used his foot to kick apart my legs, then pressed his knee up against my crotch. My dick thought this a fine idea as I ground against him. Beyond fine. Amazing, even.
“I’ll keep that in mind for the future,” I said as he found my ear with his mouth. It was about that time I realized all I wanted to do was take this man home, throw him on my bed, and ride him until I exploded. These were not normal Paul thoughts. This was not normal Paul. Normal Paul had fled. This was horny, slutty Paul who wanted to fuck and fuck some more. My hands scrabbled for his jeans as he sucked on my ear lobe. I gripped his dick through his pants and marveled at the fact that even if it was horny, slutty Paul doing this, it was stil
l me.
“I’m going to do so many, many things to you tonight,” he whispered harshly in my ear. “You’re not going to be able to walk right for a fucking week, you get me? You don’t get to say no. Not now. Not ever again.”
“Jesus Christ,” I muttered as I realized I was all but humping his leg like a dog in heat. “We gotta stop. We gotta—Oh balls,” I said as I found that ass, that perfectly perfect glorious ass. I grabbed as much of it as I could. His breath was getting more ragged in my ear, a little whine escaping from his throat as he continued assaulting my neck. “Vince. Vince! We gotta stop.” I squeezed once more before dropping my hands.
“Why?” he moaned, causing me to very seriously consider coming right then and there.
“Because we still have to have dinner with my fucking parents. I don’t want to do that sitting in my own spunk. And besides, having sex at my grandma’s house is not one of the things I wanted to do before I die.”
He pressed his knee to my dick again, that cruel, vicious bastard. “Not even if it’s with me?” he whispered, causing goose bumps to break out on my neck.
“Not even,” I managed to say, even if it was a total and complete fucking lie. I gathered up all my resolve and pushed him off, leaning against the wall to catch my breath. He eyed me like I was some kind of prey as he wiped the back of his hand over his mouth. I tried to keep my eyes at an appropriate level, but I figured since I was pretty much damned already, it couldn’t hurt, so I glanced down at his dick and saw the very clear outline through his pants. I swallowed thickly, trying to keep from looking like I was drooling.
“You keep looking at me like that,” he said hoarsely, “and I’m not going to give a fuck where we’re at. I’ll do you right here.”
I couldn’t help it. I grinned at him. “That doesn’t sound like much of a threat.”
His eyes searched mine. “You didn’t have to do that, Paul,” he said finally. His voice was soft. “It means so much to me, and thank you, but you didn’t have to do it.”
I knew he was talking about the bike. I shrugged. “Even if I didn’t have to, I wanted to. Okay? You’re… you….” I shook my head and looked down at my feet.