Goldilocks: A Man, a Jersey, and a Tight End (25 page)

“It’ll ruin everything if you don’t do it, Joshua.” Brian looked at Scott and played his ace. “Don’t you think Freddie will feel left out when they all come home and Scott and I are dressed up and you aren’t?”

There was a long, long silence, and then the rattle of the door being unlocked. Brian grinned at Scott triumphantly.

Joshua came sliding out, and both Scott and Brian stepped back and looked him over appraisingly.

“You look
hot
,” said Brian finally. Scott nodded his agreement.

Joshua did. The tall, young body was lean but muscled. He had a slim gold collar around his neck and a flat stomach with a trail of hair leading to bony hips from which the waistband of the skirt hung. The short pleats (Brian had said, wide blue eyes honest with reason, that he didn’t have enough material to make the skirts longer) ended just below where the view up those muscular thighs might get interesting.

Looking
hot
seemed not to please Joshua overmuch, though, and he turned as if to go back into the bedroom. When he did, the skirt flounced, and both Scott and Brian took a quick step back.

“Freddie is going to
die
,” said Brian. “And I mean that in a good way.”

“Yes?” Joshua hesitated, obviously torn between causing a good reaction from Freddie and the possible risk of dressing like this without having checked with Freddie beforehand. His indecisive swaying was causing an indecent display to flash at the two men standing there.

“Trust me,” said Scott, holding his hand over his heart in sincerity.

Joshua seemed to think Scott’s judgment in these matters to be that of an expert. So Brian and Scott managed, like luring a rabbit from its hole, to get Joshua into the dining area where they’d set up their feast.

Phase two was next.

“Hold still,” said Brian, teeth biting his extended tongue as he squinted and attempted to draw a line of black liner under the rim of Joshua’s eyelashes.

“I’ve never worn makeup before.”

“This isn’t makeup. It’s part of the costume.” Brian stepped back and cocked his head to check the effect. Joshua blinked at him. The eyeliner wasn’t half bad, if Brian did say so himself. The mascara enhanced Joshua’s already long eyelashes, and his eyes looked enormous and waiflike.

“Hey, Goldilocks. Smile.” Brian turned, and a flash went off. When his vision had cleared, Scott was standing there waving a Polaroid in the air. “For Paul. For later,” said Scott.

Scott had emerald green eye makeup that gave him an even more evil Pan-ish look. Brian had simply painted the thick eyeliner around his own eyes, with a curled point on either side like an Egyptian hieroglyphic. It made his blue eyes look otherworldly.

Scott admired the photograph. “Got to get this one enlarged.”

“Do they do that?”

“Sure. Ready, Joshua?”

“I don’t know.”
Flash
. “Freddie might not…”
Flash
. “Scott, you shouldn’t…”
Flash.

Chuckling, Scott ran off to stash the pictures somewhere.

“When are they due back?” asked Brian when he reappeared.

“Soon,” said Scott. “Jim thinks that new mechanic is ripping him off, so he just wanted Freddie and Paul to show up and put the fear of God in him.”

“That won’t take long,” said Brian. Most people discovered a fear of God upon first meeting his boyfriend. He figured the combined vision of Paul and Freddie roaring up on Harleys in their leathers would convert the mechanic in a matter of seconds.

Joshua looked around the room. “Are they going to mind that you’ve moved the furniture?” Scott and Brian had shoved the table against the far windowed wall and laid their feast of cheese, wine, and fruit out on platters in the center of an old picnic quilt. In the manner of a Roman feast, they’d laid pillows and cushions in a square around the food in the center.

“Not once they get a look at us,” bragged Scott. In the short skirt, with his collar and the laurel leaves set jauntily above those wicked eyes, he looked more like a satyr than a slave boy, in Brian’s opinion.

“Sit over here, Joshua.” Brian directed him. “So when he comes in the door, he’ll see you. And Scott and I will sit here and here.”

They were just getting themselves posed when they heard the roar of motorcycles pulling up out front.

“Remember to keep calling him Master,” said Brian. “It’ll turn him to goo. I swear.”

Poor Joshua was looking more and more like a frightened rabbit. “Smile,” said Scott. “You look like a Roman sacrifice, not a Roman slave boy.”

Joshua tried a tremulous smile. “Like this?”

They could hear heavy boots on the stairs outside now. “Better stick with the scared look,” sighed Scott. “Freddie seems to go for it anyway.”

The door in the living room could be heard opening, followed by Paul’s booming voice. “Hello?”

“I’m here, Master.” Brian hit his pose on the cushion. He and Scott exchanged grins. Showtime.

* * * *

While Jim had a little talk with the man working on his van, Freddie and Paul sat back, gloves and helmets cradled against their chests, and waited.

Paul gave Freddie a knowing look. “How is Joshua?”

“Better. I told him to rest for the day, and we’ll see how he is tomorrow.”

From Paul’s expression, Freddie knew that he had meant more by his question than a polite inquiry after Freddie’s health.

The problem was, Freddie didn’t know the answer.

He’d been in discipline relationships before. He’d been pretty deeply in a BDSM relationship for a year, actually. And there had been a couple of very fulfilling nonsexual Dom/sub relationships that he’d cultivated over the years. He’d always felt that those relationships had been healthy and mutually satisfying. He’d never felt like he did now.

Although Joshua readily did whatever Freddie asked, suggested, or even commanded, Freddie felt somehow that he wasn’t in control
at all
. He felt, in a metaphorical way, that he was always on his knees before the quiet young man, as if in a perpetual state of courtship.

Maybe it was the onset of middle age, he thought, some weakness taking hold of him. Maybe he needed to have his testosterone levels checked or something.

“Something bothering you?” said Paul.

Freddie sighed. If he couldn’t talk to Paul, who could he confide in? “I don’t know. I don’t know how Joshua is. Man, I don’t know how
I
am.”

“Really? What’s got you puzzled?”

Freddie shook his head, loath to admit, even to Paul, that he didn’t know what he was doing.

Paul gave him one of those piercing looks. “You know, when I first met Brian, I couldn’t believe it. I thought,
What the hell is happening to me?
”

Freddie was startled to have his inner thoughts spoken aloud. “Seriously?”

Across the way, Jim’s mechanic was shaking Jim’s hand, and their friend had a big smile on his face indicating his satisfaction with whatever agreement had just been reached. Paul flipped his helmet up to put it back on. “That young man believes you walk on water, Freddie. Just remember. Trust goes
both
ways.” And he pulled the helmet over his head.

Thoughtfully, Freddie did the same.

* * * *

“Oh, Brian.” Paul stood in the entrance to the dining room, looking down at his lover, who hung from his neck, batting his eyelashes.

Paul may have been trying to sound like an indulgent top, but his hands were reaching up under that short skirt already, and his face was going dark with blood.

“Oh, Master,” cooed Brian, rubbing and twisting into those hands. “I’ve been a naughty, naughty slave.”

Paul laughed gruffly, but when Brian wrapped both legs around Paul’s hips, hauling himself up the leather-clad body and kissing him openmouthed, Paul pushed him against the wall hard enough to make the house shake.

Jim chuckled and grinned at Freddie. “Master?” they heard Scott’s voice calling, and Jim stopped midchuckle, looking toward the room from which that cry had uttered.

Freddie followed Jim around the corner and saw Scott laid out on a cushion in the same getup as Brian’s, only less modestly so. One leg bent upward so that the skirt covered practically nothing. He held grapes just above his head, mouth opened to receive them. Jim growled, and Scott dropped the grapes.

“Oh, oh, Master. What am I going to eat now?” And Jim was on all fours, just like his namesake animal, mauling his boyfriend with a big paw.

“Say it again,” Freddie heard Jim demanding, and Scott’s half-laughing, half-serious “Master” was cut off by a kiss.

“H-hi, Freddie. I mean, um, Master.” Across the tablecloth spread in the middle of the room, Joshua knelt on a rose-colored cushion. His eyes enormous, outlined in kohl, bare-legged, bare-chested, with just a little skirt around his hips, and Freddie stopped dead.

“Joshua?”

Eyes wide, mouth opened slightly as he breathed, cheeks pink with embarrassment, Joshua stood and came slowly toward Freddie. The skirt swayed.

Freddie blinked.

“Are you hungry, Master?” Joshua shyly took Freddie’s hand. Like a fish on a hook, Freddie was led back to the waiting cushions and pulled down next to Joshua. The damned skirt kept lifting and moving, giving Freddie little peeks at what he knew was under it, but never a good look.

Joshua reached toward a dish in the center of the tableau, and the skirt slid up over that beautiful and, as yet, pristinely untouched ass.

When he sat back to proffer a strawberry, Freddie’s mouth was already hanging open. Joshua popped the fruit in. Then he fed himself one. He leaned forward and gave Freddie a fruit-flavored kiss.

“Would you like me to dip it in chocolate?” asked Joshua, leaning across the cushions again.

Up went the skirt. Wiggle-twist went that pretty rump. Freddie’s hand was on one of Joshua’s thighs before he had thought. Joshua looked back at him from where he was stretched across the tablecloth, his eyes wide.

Controlling himself, which these days was feeling more and more like reining in a twelve-horse chariot, Freddie removed his hand.

“M-master?” said Joshua. Man,
that
wasn’t helping any either.

Joshua sat up and offered a strawberry now with fudge dripping from it, and Freddie eagerly sublimated by eating the tart and sweet dessert. “Thank you,” he said.

Joshua licked at the fudge on his fingers as Freddie watched. He could
feel
the blood thumping in his groin.

“Where did you get that…that…” Freddie gestured, unable to articulate exactly what he’d call the article of clothing that both covered and did not cover Joshua. Temptation of Satan maybe?

“Brian made me,” said Joshua, looking worried. “I can take it off.”

“N-no, that’s all right,” said Freddie, swallowing.

“I should have asked you first,” said Joshua.

“It’s all right, Joshua,” said Freddie urgently. Both of his hands seemed to want nothing more than to slide up under that short hemline and grope blindly. He had to clench them to control the urge.

Joshua looked at him, licking his lips nervously, and then his eyes jerked to another corner of the room.

Freddie had been so taken up with the vision of Joshua’s ass that he’d not noticed it before, but the action between Jim and Scott had heated up considerably. The laurel was now on Jim’s head, and he lay across a platter of fruit with Scott bouncing happily up and down on his cock. The skirt rucked up around his waist, and Jim moaned like a cow.

Paul and Brian were completely missing, and Freddie didn’t have to think hard to imagine what they were doing. There did seem to be a quantity of the fruit buffet missing, though.

“Freddie?”

His poor baby was nervous again. That anxiety could ratchet up to the point where he got a headache, and Freddie refused to be the cause of Joshua’s pain.

“I love the outfit,” he assured Joshua honestly. “Let’s go to our room so Scott and Jim can have some privacy.”

Scott chose that moment to howl enthusiastically, seeming to second the motion.

“Yes, Sir. I mean, Master,” said Joshua, still playacting. And he stood.

Freddie looked up to the hand being offered him; then his eyes traveled to the right and higher, and he was now looking up
under
that skirt. Stroke was imminent, he thought fatalistically as he took Joshua’s hand and stood.

He may as well die with a smile on his face.

* * * *

“I’m sorry,” said Joshua the minute he had the bedroom door closed. “They said you’d like it.”

“I did. I do,” Freddie assured him. “You look…amazing.”

Joshua came toward him slowly, that damn skirt swaying. “I don’t look shameless?”

“Well…” Freddie tipped his head and felt a loopy grin on his face. Of course Joshua stopped, suddenly indecisive.

“Come over here,” said Freddie. He didn’t mean to snap out orders, but sometimes it was just easier. And, well, he rather enjoyed how readily his orders were obeyed.

Of course Joshua went over immediately, sat on the bed.

“Do you mind me playing?”

Freddie shook his head. “Playing is part of the fun, Joshua.”

“I like calling you Master,” said Joshua.

Freddie had to take a breath. “I like it too. But, you know, I’m not your master, Joshua. I’m your lover.”

His hand was wandering on its own, down the satiny feel of that fabric, over the hip bones barely covered there, across to the lump slowly hardening.

Joshua touched Freddie’s hand where it held him. “Can I touch you too?”

Freddie was amenable to all suggestions of that nature and quickly shed all of his clothes. When Joshua acted as if he would remove the skirt, though, Freddie stopped him.

“I really do like it,” he admitted.

“You do?”

“Yes. I’d like it if you’d… Would you…” Freddie just had to see that round butt as the skirt slid up from it. “Roll over on your stomach, Joshua?”

Joshua did so, long legs spread and stretched out, back arched, looking over his shoulder at Freddie. “Like this?”

“God. I…forgive me.” Freddie allowed his hands to do what they longed to do, rubbing Joshua’s butt through the material, pushing it up and rubbing, kneading. Joshua pushed up toward him, and Freddie had to take deep breaths, his mind going white.