Hooked by the Bell Read online

  “Probably. They’re not going to get much sun, living under a fence.”

  “Well.” Harper gestured to the fact that the fence was now flat on the ground.

  “It wouldn’t have fallen over if I’d gotten more panels up.”

  “I think it would’ve.”

  Maybe. He wasn’t going to argue it. “I need a shower.” Hole digging was hard work. Who did that for a living?

  “Likewise.” Harper raised an arm and sniffed under it, but he was more dirty than smelly. Least, he smelled pretty good from where Matt was standing, like sun and man and good hard labor that ought to result in more than a fence on the ground and a string of bushes that were probably going to die.

  “Important to save water,” Matt pointed out. “Drought, I think I heard.”

  “Is there? Could be, sure. Always better to save water when you can.”

  They eyed each other, neither willing to make the first move. It’d been easier on the ground with their dicks already hard to admit what they wanted, but Matt’s dick was getting there.

  “I don’t suppose you’ve seen the bathroom remodel I did,” Harper said.

  “No, I guess I haven’t.”

  “Got a new shower put in. Big one. If… you know.”

  Matt scratched his head, which itched from sweat and grass clippings. Then he scratched his balls, which didn’t itch but which had an opinion about taking a shower with Harper.

  “Lead the way then.” He headed into enemy territory, but the enemy territory turned out to be pretty nice.

  Harper

  Harper feared he’d been hasty.

  His new shower enclosure was big, but not big enough to keep two grown men from touching each other, not that he and Matt had made much of an effort to avoid touching each other. There’d been a brief soaping, a briefer rinsing, and then a double handjob with Matt up against the wall gasping out please in rhythm with Harper’s hand. All of which had been very enjoyable.

  Where Harper had miscalculated was in getting Matt off before he got Matt’s cock in his ass. It’d been a week since his last dose, and he feared he was becoming addicted to it. It was all he jerked off to anymore—that perfectly angled cock and the toned body attached to it. His fantasies stopped before they got to the head, because the head was still Matt, who was the last guy on earth he wanted to fantasize about.

  In half an hour, Matt would probably be ready to go again. He had an admirable recovery time, Harper would give him that, but now that they were out of the shower, toweling off together, he wasn’t sure how to keep him hanging around without actually saying he wanted him to.

  “Nice remodel,” Matt said. “You done good.” He whipped the tail of his towel against Harper’s naked ass, but it landed too lightly to hurt. “You ever find that alligator we put down the drain?”

  “Must still be down there, waiting to bite your dick off the next time you take a piss.” He snapped his own towel at Matt’s ass where it raised a quick stripe of red.

  Matt rubbed at it ruefully. “You always could beat me at that game. Don’t know why I started it.” He hung his towel on the rack and reached for the pile of his clothes on the bathroom floor, but Harper stopped him.

  “You don’t want to put those sweaty things back on.”

  “Don’t have much of a choice.”

  “Come on, I’ll lend you something of mine. Not like you can’t run it back whenever.” That got Matt into his bedroom. Now he just had to get him into his bed.

  “You’re still sleeping in this room, huh?”

  “The master’s not much bigger,” Harper said as he rummaged through his drawers like he was trying to find something when really he was fine with Matt standing there naked. “And it would’ve been weird, moving into my dad’s room because he died.”

  “Yeah, I guess it was different with me. My dad’s still out there.”

  “You ever hear from him?”

  “Eh. Christmas, my birthday. We Skype.” Matt wandered over to the bed and stretched out on it, so Harper abandoned the pretense of looking for something for him to wear and stretched out next to him. Twenty minutes, he figured. Would it be too obvious if he took out the condoms and lube he’d bought just in case Matt should randomly happen to end up in his bedroom, as in fact he had?

  He opened the drawer on the bedside table, then shut it again. Definitely too obvious.

  Matt cleared his throat like something important was about to issue from it. “I’m sorry about that by the way, about your dad.”

  “Oh, well, you know. We weren’t close.”

  “Yeah, but he was still your dad. I shouldn’t have come over here like that, gotten in your face right after the funeral like I did. That was disrespectful.”

  “Thanks.” That was an acknowledgement he hadn’t expected to ever get.

  “But how come I had to hear about the services from Wendy?”

  “I figured my dad would roll over in his grave to have a Felding at his funeral, and it wasn’t like you liked the guy.”

  “I liked you.”

  “So you thought you’d show up to one of the most stressful days of my life to harangue me about three feet of grass? Really, Matt? That’s how you decided to play it.”

  “I thought we could bury the hatchet.”

  “You thought I would concede what rightfully belonged to me to a funeral crasher? That was your idea of how we could bury the hatchet? I’ll bury it right in your fucking face.”

  “That’s Felding land, Le Croix.” Matt jumped to his feet. “Your father was a thief and a liar, and you know it. You as much as admitted it when we were kids.”

  “I never admitted any such thing. All I did was keep my mouth shut when your father started going on about it. Too bad you never learned anything about keeping your own mouth shut, like when to open it, which by the way, isn’t at a funeral dinner.”

  “Why didn’t you come back?” Matt stood there with his hands on his hips. “Winter break, spring break, summer. You never came back. Six years, Harper.”

  “I went to my mom’s. You know what my dad was like.”

  “You could’ve stayed with us.”

  “And listen to your dad go on about my dad being a liar and a thief?”

  “Well,” Matt said, softer now, “he was.”

  “You want the land? Take it. Just take it and get out. I won’t fight you on it anymore, Matt. Eighteen years, we were friends, since before we could talk, and all that mattered when we saw each other again was three feet of grass.”

  “Three feet of grass and six years of silence. Don’t worry about the clothes. I can walk my bare-ass home.”

  “Why didn’t you call him when you got back in town?” Wendy asked, puffing away on the treadmill next to his. “You called me.”

  “I didn’t know he was gay.” They’d been eighteen when they’d last seen each other, right before they’d gone off to separate colleges. Eighteen and in the closet, even to each other.

  Harper had had a rough few years hiding his growing crush on the boy next door, never realizing maybe he didn’t have to. He’d still been pretty bound up in stereotypes about what being gay meant, and his prank-pulling, risk-taking, potty-mouthed, growing-buffer-every-day neighbor didn’t fit them.

  “So you can’t talk to straight people?” Wendy said. “I’m straight.”

  Harper snorted.

  “Ish,” she qualified. “Gyms are full of eye-candy, what can I tell you.”

  She wasn’t wrong about that. Matt was over in the free weights section, grunting and heaving and generally impinging on Harper’s attempts at ignoring him. “Anyway, point is, you hurt his feelings.”

  “I was gonna call him.” Eventually. He hadn’t wanted to seem desperate, like the thing he most looked forward to about moving back to Easterly was living next to Matt Felding again. “There was a lot going on, and then he was in my face, trying to take that stupid strip of land my father spent his whole life defending while his body was p
ractically still warm.”

  “I get it.”

  “You could’ve told me he was gay.” By the time Harper had figured it out—courtesy of a Grindr ping from thirty feet away—the damage had been done. They’d gone from childhood friends to sworn enemies without a chance at what he really wanted.

  “Not my place to tell,” Wendy said. “Never told him about you either.”

  “Well, points for discretion, but I wish I’d known he was gay ten years ago.” The fun they could’ve been having in that tree fort in the Felding’s back yard, the one that’d morphed from pirate hideout to delinquent den as they’d aged. Cigarettes and beer and porn, but the porn had always been hetero and if Harper’s eyes had focused on the man in the picture, he’d never noticed whether Matt’s had too.

  Had Matt known back then? Had he thought about Harper the way Harper had thought about him?

  “You should go talk to him,” Wendy suggested.

  “Nah, I already told him he could have the fucking land. Next move is his.” He hadn’t heard from Matt since he’d stormed out of his house a week ago. Hadn’t heard from him, hadn’t been fucked by him, had barely seen him until today. He was a sight over there, his shirt off and his muscles gleaming. Did the man ever put a shirt on?

  Harper pulled his own shirt off over his head, nearly tripping himself on the treadmill as he did it. He draped it over the handlebars and increased the speed until he was practically sprinting, his footsteps echoing loudly with every step.

  “Show off,” Wendy shouted.

  “Just getting a workout,” he huffed between breaths, but Matt was watching now, the barbells he’d been using to do bicep curls dangling from his hands. He started to saunter their way.

  “The gay mating call has been trumpeted,” Wendy said.

  “Told you huh just huh working out.” He couldn’t do it anymore. He stabbed wildly for the button to reduce the speed, managed to hit the one to increase it instead, and went flying off the back of the treadmill into Matt’s arms. The two of them landed on their asses as gym employees rushed over to assist.

  “I’m fine,” he said, brushing away their helping hands and getting to his feet himself. “Sorry about that.” He reached down to help Matt up. “Your ass okay?”

  “It’s your ass I’m worried about,” Matt said. “That thing’s a national treasure.”

  And there went all the gym employees. Well, Harper hadn’t wanted them hovering anyway.

  Wendy stopped her own treadmill and dismounted using gym-approved techniques. “You two,” she said.

  “Me too, what?” Matt said. “I was minding my business.”

  “Your business was over there.” Harper pointed to the free weight section.

  “But I had to come save your ass. I told you it’s a national treasure.” Matt slapped him on the body part in question and Harper hauled back to give him a well-deserved sock in the face, but Wendy grabbed his arm.

  “You two that,” she said. “I’ve had enough. Matt, apologize to Harper for crashing his father’s funeral.”

  “I already did.” Matt crossed his muscular arms over his naked chest.

  “And Harper, you apologize for ghosting Matt during college and not calling him when you moved back into town.”

  Harper wanted to say he already had, but he wasn’t sure that was true. “I didn’t realize it bothered you.”

  “That’s not an apology.” She poked him in the side.

  “Fine. I’m sorry I ghosted you.”

  “Now agree to split the land in the middle.”

  “I already gave it to him,” Harper mumbled.

  “Well, I’m not taking it.”

  “Why the fuck not?” Wendy exploded.

  “You see what I deal with?” Harper asked.

  “He can’t give it to me, because it’s not his to give,” Matt said. “He’s trying to act like he’s so adult and magnanimous, but we’ll see who the adult is. I’m giving the land to Harper.”

  “Fine,” Wendy said after a deep inhalation. “Harper, Matt is giving you the land. Will you take it?”

  “No.”

  “No,” she repeated. “No.”

  “He doesn’t get to be the adult.”

  “There are no adults. There are two very, very small children, both of whom could use a good spanking.” And with that, she took her water bottle and towel and disappeared into the women’s changing room where neither of them could get in the last word.

  “I’ll give you one if you give me one,” Matt said with a grin. He aimed his hand at Harper’s ass, but Harper danced out of the way in time. His efforts to get behind Matt were stymied by Matt’s efforts to get behind him, and they chased each other in a circle that was stopped only by a gym employee’s request to please remove themselves from the premises.

  “Ten minute drive home,” Matt observed from the sidewalk outside after their banishment. “You think we can stay hot for each other long enough to make it back?”

  “Race you,” Harper suggested.

  “Fine. But if we get in an accident, you’re the one explaining it to Wendy.”

  Luckily, they didn’t get in an accident.

  Matt

  They made it back to the street where they lived, Matt pulling into his driveway and Harper pulling into the next one over. They got out of their cars, walked towards each other, and stopped. It was that question again—whose house to fuck in—but Matt had anticipated it this time.

  “Come on.” He beckoned Harper to follow him across the lawn.

  “If this is about the fucking property, I’m out.”

  “Not the property. Our tree house.” He pointed up at the wood structure lodged into the crook of the old elm in his backyard, the one they’d spent a lot of time in as kids. “Go up.”

  “This can’t be safe,” Harper said as he climbed the ladder. “How old is this wood?” He poked his head through the hole at the top of the ladder and stopped, stranding Matt a few feet off the ground. “You fixed it up.”

  “I love your ass in my face, but not quite like this.”

  Harper finished crawling into the space and Matt joined him. He’d spent the last week replacing rotting floorboards and cleaning cobwebs out of dusty corners.

  “I don’t remember the mattress.”

  “That’s new.” He’d hauled it up there yesterday, made it up with fresh sheets, even put a little daisy into a glass vase and set it on a crate draped with one of his grandmother’s tablecloths. Looked pretty nice, if he did say so himself. “I figured we needed neutral territory. If we’re gonna, you know.”

  “I bought condoms,” Harper said, a little shyly. “We didn’t get around to using them the other day, but just so you know. I have them. In case.”

  Matt nodded. “That’s what I was thinking too. You never know when there’ll be a protection-related emergency.” He fished around under the tablecloth and came out with the supplies he’d stocked there.

  Harper stripped off his shirt. “How do you want me?”

  “Any way I can get you.” He stepped forward to meet Harper in the small section of flooring not taken up by the bed. “Naked, for starters.” There was only a pair of athletic shorts to deal with. He shucked them over Harper’s hips, then sucked in a breath at what was beneath them. “You wore panties for me.”

  “They’re not panties,” Harper said, batting his hand away. “They’re briefs.”

  “They’re see-through.” Matt could see every inch of Harper’s hard cock and shaven balls. “And skimpy.” Harper’s thighs were beautifully bare. “And soft.” He palmed Harper’s cock through them, feeling the slinky slide of sheer fabric and the hard heat behind them. “I love them.”

  “I might’ve worn them for you,” Harper admitted.

  “You done good, honey. Let me show you how good.” He laid Harper out carefully on the mattress and traced the lines of his panties, running his fingers under the elastic of the legs, then peeling back the top just a bit so he could
get to the cock beneath them. “I’m not ever going to get tired of getting my face in here,” he warned Harper as he nuzzled between his legs, dampening the silk with his tongue.

  “I’d rather have your cock in there.”

  “All in good time. Can’t rush a good meal.” He worked Harper through the panties until they were wet from his saliva and Harper’s pre-come, then reluctantly slid them off so he could get deeper into Harper’s ass. Harper did a whole lot of squirming and moaning, none of which Matt minded at all, until he decided enough was enough and pulled Matt up by the hair at the nape of his neck and told him to fuck him already.

  It was a good thing he had the supplies ready, because neither of them had any patience left, and it didn’t take more than a minute for Matt to put his cock exactly where Harper was telling him to put it. He’d tried to take it slow last time, but Harper had made it clear that slow didn’t cut it, so he went ahead and drilled him for all he was worth, gritting his teeth to keep back the orgasm that swamped him almost immediately and angling for Harper’s sweet spot, which he knew his way to by now.

  It killed him the way Harper took him in, like he should feel privileged to serve him, like he’d better fucking measure up or he’d get pushed right back out. This was a guy who knew how to bottom. All Matt could do was hold on and drive deep and pray for the strength to get it right.

  “Oh, yeah,” Harper squealed, like a pig going to market. “Right there baby, give it to me right there.”

  Matt gave it to him right there, even as his vision started going black around the edges, Harper’s ass dragging him down into the pits of heaven.

  “I’m going to come,” Matt warned when Harper bore down on him, clenching him tight and drawing him deeper.

  “Oh, no, you’re not. You’re going to get me there. Come on, fuck me like you hate me.”

  “I do,” he said, driving harder, pulling tighter. “I’m hating you so hard right now.” His head spun, his lungs ached, his fingers cramped on Harper’s hips, his dick begged him to fucking let go, but he gave Harper everything, beyond what he knew he had in him, until Harper threw his head back with a gasp and the pretty pink column of his cock twitched with its release, jetting come over his belly and up his chest.