7 Days At The Roaring Bull

Day ZERO Minus 14 Days–Late Summer

“Boys! Dinner!”

Vanessa Welch shouted from the bottom of the stairs as she passed by on her way back from the laundry room to the kitchen. It was a manipulation, a futile effort to provoke two eighteen-year-old boys to venture out of their room so that she could ambush them into giving her a hand. It was a doomed attempt. Jared wasn’t yet home. The door to the master bedroom was wide open, and the shower in the master bath wasn’t running. Colby and Tyler knew that dinner wouldn’t be served until after the man of the house walked through the door and had a chance to strip down and wash up after his duty shift.

Brushing a stray lock of blonde hair behind her ear, she floated through the house with the casual determination of a mom. She fluffed and straightened throw pillows. She folded abandoned blankets and stuffed them back into the ottoman that sat against the wall, beneath a bay window that framed a view of the front yard and driveway. With a frustrated sigh, she collected the dirty dishes that lay deserted and strewn across the coffee table. Balancing four glasses stacked atop two plates and stuffed to the brim with soiled paper napkins, Vanessa retreated into the kitchen.

A wall of aromas met her as she passed through the narrow archway. Garlic and onion. Oregano and basil. The lingering scent of the meatballs she’d cooked in the oven before dropping them into the sauce that simmered on the stove. They all mingled in the air into one mouthwatering bouquet. 

After depositing the dirty dishes in the dishwasher and giving her hands a thorough cleaning, Vanessa glided over to the island where a smorgasbord of lettuce, cherry tomatoes, onions, and carrots awaited her. Vanessa was hardly a chef in any sense of the word. Neither was her mother. Nor her mother’s mother. Everything that she knew about cooking came to her through lessons from her husband, Police Officer Jared Tenney. 

The eldest of two boys, Jared’s eighteenth year ushered in more than just the right to vote. Max Tenney, his father, died six months after Jared entered legal adulthood. All wouldn’t have been so desperate had Max not sold his share in the family business to his brother and squandered it, and the family’s savings, with a gambling addiction. 

With his family shattered by grief and loss, a mother suddenly grappling with two full-time jobs as she struggled to climb out of the dire situation Max had left the family in, and a twelve-year-old younger brother who had been robbed of his father, Jared dropped out of university, abandoned his scholarship and returned home. Two years later, after striving at one low-wage job after another and with a knocked-up girlfriend and a baby of his own on the way, Jared found himself standing in the Army recruiter’s office and pledging himself to the National Guard.

The life of a “weekend warrior” propelled him back into school part-time and gave him the skills and mindset to successfully graduate from the law enforcement academy four years later. A double dose of tragedy would strike the Tenney family a mere two years later when Jared’s wife, Cassie, and his mother were both killed after their car was T-boned during a Christmas shopping trip. At twenty-six, Jared was a widower. His brother, Brock, was orphaned at twenty. And Jared’s little, six-year-old son, Tyler, was motherless.

At first, Vanessa had brushed off the attempts by her gay paramedic best friend, Kent, when he offered–repeatedly–to set her up with the walking wet dream that was Officer Jared Tenney. She rolled her eyes at descriptions of his beautiful blue eyes. She shrugged off stories about his incredible body. She scoffed at the gushing praise of his “perfect” butt. Vanessa was a divorced doctor with an unforgiving schedule and a young son to raise. She didn’t have time for dating. 

But Kent Howard was unyielding. After one failed attempt after another, Vanessa’s devious best friend put his matchmaker crown on one last time at a Memorial Day celebration in the park. 

The meddlesome bastard was right. Jared’s eyes were a beautiful shade of steel blue. His body, on full display when he stripped to the waist during a water fight, was incredible. The breadth of his pectorals, the ridges of his abdominals, the bulging power in his arms, and the carpet of dark hair that ran from the bottom of his neck and vanished beneath the elastic of his shorts made her pulse race. And, yes, his butt was perfect, as Vanessa would come to find out several official dates later. It was perfect for slapping. Perfect for pinching. Perfect for gawking at as he walked naked into the bathroom. And perfect for digging her nails into when he was on top of her. 

Two years into dating, they married, merging their two single-parent homes into one when Jared and Tyler, by then twelve, moved into the house that Vanessa shared with her son, Colby.

And then the real battles began.

“BOYS! DINNER!”

Vanessa shouted again as she ripped lettuce leaves with her fingers and dropped them into a large wooden salad bowl. 

Still, there was nothing. No answer. No sound of feet stomping down the stairs.

Grumbling at the absence of her volun-told kitchen staff, Vanessa flicked the last remnants of lettuce off her fingers and, wiping her hands on a paper towel, strode out of the kitchen like a woman off to war. She made a beeline for the foot of the stairs and scowled up at the second floor.

“Colby! Tyler!” she hollered.

No response.

“Colby!” she yelled again.

Still, no answer.

With an irritated growl, Vanessa gripped the banister tightly and started marching up the steps, her lips pursed tight into an annoyed frown. She was midway up the staircase when a loud thump thundered from the boys’ bedroom, quickly followed by a calamitous crash and a shriek of “Get off me!”

 Her face flushing red, Vanessa’s feet hit the remaining steps with rapid-fire speed as she vaulted up to the second floor and burst into Colby and Tyler’s shared bedroom. Flinging the door open with such force that the knob punched a divot into the drywall behind it, she came face-to-face with the latest battle in The Long War between her son and stepson.

 The shelves that had adorned the walls above Tyler’s bed, and where he displayed the figurines that he hand-painted for his tabletop role-play games, lay scattered across his bed and the floor. The lamp that held court on the nightstand next to Colby’s bed was toppled over. And, on the floor, Tyler lay flat on his back between the twin beds. Colby, wearing nothing but a pair of red boxers, straddled his stepbrother with his ass planted on Tyler’s chest. His arms immobilized by Colby’s knees, Tyler flung his head from side to side, his dark brown hair flopping back and forth as he struggled under his more physically powerful sibling.

“Come on, look at it! I know you want to!” Colby taunted, reaching inside the crotch of his boxer shorts, mere inches from Tyler’s beleaguered face.

“What the fuck is going on here?!? GET OFF HIM!” Vanessa shrieked. She lunged at her son and wrapped her arms around his tan, damp chest. Locking her hand around her wrist, she threw herself backward, using her weight as leverage to heave her son’s muscled jock body off the restrained Tyler.

They hit the floor with a thunk. Tyler, seizing his newfound freedom, flew at his stepbrother. Fists clenched tight, he assailed his blond foe, punching and wailing on Colby’s bare torso while Vanessa held her son’s arms tight against his body, unable to return fire, unable to do anything but laugh at Tyler’s weak attempts to hurt him.

“Hey!” Vanessa shouted again, this time at Tyler. “That’s ENOUGH!”

Tyler withdrew, strands of dark brown hair hanging over his cornflower blue eyes, which quivered with rage. He stood, glaring down at his Colby, his chest heaving and his fists still clenched, ready to resume swinging should the cease-fire be breached. 

“Tyler, go downstairs,” Vanessa ordered. “Now!” she then barked when the boy hesitated.

Tyler’s narrow chest heaved as his eyes, burning with fury, darted back and forth from Colby to Vanessa and back again. Then, finally, the boy shook his head and left, spitting out a “fuck you” at his stepbrother before disappearing into the hallway.

Vanessa waited until she heard her stepson's feet pounding down the steps before she released Colby, still laughing, and shoved him away.

“What is wrong with you?” she demanded as she climbed back to her feet. Hands on her hips, she watched unamused as her son rolled back and forth on the floor, clutching his stomach as her gaze bored into her half-naked son. “What the hell was all that about? Hey! I’m talking to you!” She gave his shin a light kick with the toe of her shoe.

“Ow! Fuck! That hurts!” Colby cried out in pain, immediately clutching his leg with both hands, protectively. “It’s nothing. He’s just being a baby.”

“Nothing?!? Colby James Welch, that wasn’t nothing!” she insisted. She glared down at him as he sprawled out on the floor. The pain of her kicks faded from his sharp, impish features and gave way to a maddeningly charming and roguish grin. It was a smirk that his father used to deploy to devastating effect. But Colby was not Bill. And Vanessa had had years to immunize herself to its potency. “What have Jared and I told you about bullying him?”

“I wasn’t bullying him, Mom. It was nothing,” Colby refuted with a dramatic roll of his eyes. The response he got in return was a stern look of resolve on his mother’s face that broadcast that the woman wasn’t buying and wasn’t going anywhere until she got some straight answers. In short, Colby was pissing her off.

“Fine!” Colby surrendered, exhaling theatrically. “He was staring at my dick when I came back from the shower.”

There was silence.

Dead silence. 

The air itself felt like it was being choked by the degree of stupidity that had just been injected into it.

“What?!?” Vanessa exclaimed in disbelief.

“I said he was–,” he began to repeat, but was swiftly cut off.

“I know what you said,” his mother snapped. “What I don’t understand is, even if he were looking at you, how the hell does that turn into this?” she said, gesturing at the wreckage of the boys’ fight. “And why, for that matter, would you think that pinning him down and shoving it in his face was okay?”

Colby shrugged as he pushed himself up until he was seated on the floor with his hands pressing into the carpet behind him, bracing himself. “I mean, if he wants a look, he might as well get a good one. Right?” he grinned.

Incredulous and disgusted, Vanessa shook her head and held her hands up in surrender. She was in no mood to argue this idiocy with a hormonal teenage boy who was still seven years away from a fully developed human brain. “Whatever,” she huffed. “We’ll talk about this later, just… put some clothes on and get this straightened up before Jared and Brock get here.”

“Wait! Brock is coming tonight?” Colby perked up.

Vanessa sighed. “Yes, Brock is coming for dinner.”

Despite her anger and frustration, the speed with which Colby eagerly shot up off the floor and dusted himself drew out a smile. She couldn’t help it. Despite how frustrating he could be and how furious the scene she’d walked in on made her, she couldn’t resist seeing her son’s genuine happiness and how exuberant he became when joy flowed through him.

Marrying Jared and blending their two single-parent families was always going to be a challenge. She and Jared had known that. Uprooting Tyler and moving him into a strange house where he had to share a room with another boy who, despite their similar ages, might as well have been from a completely different universe socially, was never going to be easy for anyone. Vanessa had hoped that, with time and effort, they would all get there. That was six years ago. And they still hadn’t gotten there. The fall-out of this latest battle testified to that.

Brock, however, was the silver lining.

Colby took to Jared’s little brother like a babe to the bottle. And Vanessa was grateful. She thanked the stars that her son had an adult male to look up to. Jared was there, of course. But Jared came with baggage and suspicion that Brock did not. To Colby, Jared was a man trying to replace Bill, and he bristled at all of Jared’s attempts to step-parent him. The clashes between Colby and Jared, while not as sensational as those between the boys, were still fraught.

Brock was different. From the day they met, Colby latched onto the man like a puppy to its master. Colby loved being around Brock. He idolized him. When Vanessa had to pawn babysitting duties off on her brother-in-law on the nights that she and Jared were both working, instead of being annoyed and obstinate, Colby lit up with excitement. Brock Tenney was the uncle that Colby never had, and Vanessa couldn’t help but be infected by the elation that her son felt whenever the man was around. 

“They should be here soon, and I need you and Tyler to stop fighting and help me finish dinner. But first, get dressed, straighten up this mess and get your butt downstairs, okay?” she added.

Colby nodded, his mop of golden hair bouncing. He then darted over to his dresser, wood scraping against wood as he opened the drawers and began to dig around for something to wear.

Sighing, Vanessa folded her arms across her chest. Just as she was about to leave, she stopped as if something had caught her eye for the first time. Her gaze drifted over the room the boys shared. The lamp, the shelves, and the scattered figurines were all annoying. But it was what lay beyond them that disturbed her. 

Even in the aftermath of their tussle, Tyler’s side of the room was immaculately organized. A reading lamp, eyeglass case, a comic book, and a photo of four-year-old Tyler with Jared and Cassie at Jared’s academy graduation called his nightstand home. What dirty clothes he had were stuffed into a hamper at the foot of his bed. The shelves, which were normally mounted on the walls above his bed, served as thrones for action figures and roleplay miniatures. All were organized and had their place. There was a red-haired wizard, a blonde woman with a bow and arrow, another male with pointed ears brandishing knives in his clenched fists, and an unfinished figurine of a minotaur. She always admired the detail that Tyler put into them, the detail that he put into all that he did. Everything was dusted. The floor was even flawlessly vacuumed.

The other side of the room was opposite in more ways than Vanessa could count. Where Tyler’s side was the epitome of neatness, Colby’s was an illustration of disorder. Dirty socks were shoved under the bed. A hoodie hung limply from the footpost. The bed, unmade, had untucked blankets and sheets strewn about. The mattress was half-exposed. Leaning against the headboard, his pillow lay crumpled from when he’d folded it in half while sleeping. Loose change, old receipts, and movie tickets littered his nightstand. Lint and tiny scraps of paper dotted the carpet. Band and movie posters, most of them with rips, tears, and stains, papered the walls. And a layer of dust coated every surface.

As she absorbed the state of the boys’ room, a disturbing sadness grabbed hold of Vanessa. She moved across the room and settled down onto Tyler’s bed while Colby fished around in his dresser. It wasn’t her son’s clutter that dampened her spirits. Nor was it the glaring example of chaos and order living side-by-side. No. It was that the boundary of where one began and the other ended was as clear as if it were a line on a map. 

This wasn’t a space shared by brothers. This wasn’t a space shared by roommates. This was a space that had been divided and demarcated into ‘yours’ and ‘mine.’ It was a space that had a defined border. A border that had to be respected…and defended.

Biting her cheek, Vanessa gripped the post of Tyler’s bed with one hand as she turned and watched her son rifle around in his drawer, still without a stitch more on than when he started. She swallowed the urge to scold him for mussing up what, only moments ago, were neatly folded stacks of clothes.

“Have you told him?” Vanessa asked, deadpan.

“Told who what?” Colby replied, barely listening.

She sucked in a breath and paused. Now was the time to back out, to say “Never mind” and escape downstairs to finish dinner. But that would be easy. That would be cheating. And for Vanessa to get what she wanted, she couldn’t take the easy path, and she couldn’t cheat.

“Tyler,” she replied, her voice soft and tender. “And you know what I’m talking bout. Have you told him?”

The air around them thickened and crackled as Colby’s posture and demeanor stiffened. His muscles tensed, and his head shot up, glaring at his mother through his reflection in the mirror. He turned, slowly, to face her. The radiant smile was gone. The puckish twinkle in his eyes, too, had vacated the premises. In their place was a nervous scowl.

“No.”

The word landed as heavily as Tyler’s body had hit the floor.

“Why not?” she asked, pressing further than she probably should.

Colby recoiled, the drawer screeching as he backed up into it. “Who the fuck are you to ask me that?” he snapped at her. “Because it’s none of his damn business, that’s why!”

“No, no, no, that’s not what I meant,” she said, leaping to her feet as she rushed over to her boy. Colby flinched from her when she reached out to touch his face. Settling for his biceps, she rubbed her thumbs over them, squeezing them, trying to soothe her baby boy with skin-to-skin touch. “What I mean is that it might help. It might be easier for both of you if you told him first.”

“W-why?” Colby asked, his voice cracking and eyes wide.

Sucking a breath, Vanessa shrugged and lumbered back over to Tyler’s bed, plopping down onto it, as if drawing inspiration and insight from the place where the boy slept. “I don’t know, sweetie. Tyler’s not like you…”

“Yeah, no shit.”

“What I mean is that he’s not as bold as you are. It takes a lot for him to put himself out there and take a chance. To him, you look fearless. He lost his mom. Every time Jared steps out to the front door to go to work, he worries that he won’t come back. He’s spent most of his life on the edge of being alone.

“And then he’s got this thing hanging over him. This thing that he’s afraid will drive everyone that he cares about away anyway and….”

“Don’t preach at me, Mom,” Colby jumped in, anger stitched across his brow. “You don’t know what it’s like, okay? You sit there and you think you know what he’s feeling. But you don’t! You haven’t lived it. I have. So, don’t sit there and Mom-splain being in the closet to me. Okay?”

“Alright, fine!” Vanessa stood up, surrendering again. She’d crossed a line. She’d ventured into the minefield and triggered explosions everywhere she stepped. “All I wanted to say is that it might do him a lot of good to see someone else take the risk first. Maybe he’d be more willing to open up if he knew that he wasn’t as alone as he thinks he is, okay? Or you can stick with the bullying and keep mocking him over one of the few things that you two have in common. Because that seems to be doing wonders.”

Colby held his breath as he listened to his mother, listening to her try to reason with him, to talk him into making himself vulnerable to the one person who had made it clear since the day that they met that he hated him.

The awkward silence that filled the space between mother and son lingered for what seemed like hours to Colby.

“Have you told Jared?” he asked, his voice wavering as he stepped toward his mother.

Vanessa shook her head and reached to clutch her son’s hand in hers. “No, I haven’t. That’s for you to tell him. Or for me to tell him when you say that it’s okay. That hasn’t changed,” she reassured. “Okay?”

Colby was still and silent for several moments before his olive green eyes met hers. He nodded, slowly.

“I can’t hear you,” she said, giving her son a dose of his own puckish smirk. She’d learned more than a few tricks during the years she was married to Bill Welch.

“Okay,” he finally intoned dryly, pairing it with the kind of eyeroll given by a teenager trying to escape the attentions of a mushy parent. Then, with a shrug and smile, Colby dispelled the tension, pulled his hand free from his mother’s grasp, and turned to fish out a pair of gray basketball shorts and a white t-shirt out of the drawer, then shoved it closed.

“Boys,” Vanessa muttered to herself, shaking her head as she stood up to leave. Just as she was passing through the door and into the hall, she paused and turned back to her son. “Oh, and sweetie…?”

“Yeah, what?” Colby answered as he pulled the shorts up and over his ass, letting the elastic snap against his flat, tan stomach.

“Is there really anyone alive that hasn’t seen your dick?” she quipped, then crossed her eyes and stuck out her tongue, only to be met with a t-shirt in the face.

*

“We’re home!” Officer Jared Tenney hollered into the house, a black duffle bag in hand, as he crossed the threshold and entered the foyer to the home he shared with his wife, son, and stepson. 

A black police uniform clung to his broad chest, his muscles stretching the fabric across his body like a second skin. The short sleeves were taut around his biceps, as if painted on. A tuft of wiry black hair sprouted from beneath the pristine, white t-shirt that peeked out from under his uniform collar. His aura filled the room like a man who wore intimidation as a cologne. The polished silver badge on his chest and duty belt around his waist only added potency to his already powerful presence.

Over his thirty-eight years, Jared had gone from adorable to cute. From cute to hot. From hot to ruggedly handsome. And from ruggedly handsome to ‘fuck me, daddy.’ The hints of silver in his short, dark brown hair injected an air of sophistication that only the passage of time could bestow. Meanwhile, defiant strands of hair dangled over his forehead like vestiges of an impetuous youth that refused to be brushed into conformity. 

“I said, we’re home!” he shouted again, scratching his neatly-trimmed beard. He plopped the duffle bag, with a worn and peeling US Army logo embazoned on the side, down onto a bench that sat next to the door. 

“In the kitchen!” Vanessa’s voice resonated in reply as Brock joined his older brother in the foyer, pulling the door closed behind him.

Jared unzipped the bag and was pulling out his soiled gym clothes when Colby came bounding down the stairs. The thunderous stomp of Colby’s feet as they slammed into each step drew an irate scowl from his stepfather.

“BROCK!” the gleeful, eighteen-year-old belted out halfway through his descent before Jared could issue a rebuke. He then leaped over the last few steps and was rushing up to Brock when Jared stepped into his line of sight, glowering at him.

“What did I say about running in the house?” the cop reprimanded.

Colby shrugged after coming to a screeching halt, his eyes gleaming with rebellion. “I dunno,” he replied, dryly.

Jared drew closer to his stepson, his formidable stance looming over the obstinate blond, his body tensing. But Colby didn’t falter. He knew this Jared. This Jared had a shitty day at work. He was stressed, he was tense, and his patience was stretched to its limit. This Jared roared when he got poked. And Colby loved to poke. He lifted his chin and met his stepfather’s stare with a tight, mischievous smirk, while Jared stood flexing his jaw. 

“No. Running. In the house. You’ve been told. And, goddammit, you’re going to start listening,” Jared growled.

Colby shrugged again, brushing his wavy blond hair off his forehead. “I tripped,” he answered, smugly.

“You think you’re pretty cute, huh?” Jared grumbled, taking another intimidating step forward. The deep baritone in his stepfather’s voice sent a gratifying shiver up Colby’s spine.

But the boy merely shrugged again. “Not particularly,” he said, puckishly dismissive. “Do you think I’m cute?” 

Just as he was taking another step forward, a clap on Jared’s shoulder halted the confrontation before it could escalate further.. “Okay, you two, get a fuckin’ room, would ya?” Brock stepped in, trying to inject some levity into the situation before they crossed a line.

As Jared withdrew into the laundry room to discard his dirty gym clothes, Brock shifted to Colby. “You ready for senior year?”

“I guess,” the kid replied with yet another shrug.

“You guess, huh?” Brock smiled, his lips curling into that easy, comfortable grin that drew people in like a siren’s call. “You going to state again this year?”

“Oh hell yeah!” Colby beamed proudly. “I’ve got a title to defend.”

To Colby, school sucked. Classes sucked. The teachers sucked. But he suffered through all of them just to wrestle. He lived for wrestling. 

The struggle and challenge of besting his opponents was intoxicating, and the thrill of victory was elating. But the real addiction, the real appeal, was the other guys. Where else could a young, athletic gay boy rub his body against another virile youth with little separating their nakedness but two thin layers of spandex? Where else could he publicly gyrate and thrust against one boy after another, and get hard doing it, and not elicit condemnation but, instead, praise?

Nowhere.

“Yeah?” Brock’s grin widened. “You been gettin’ some tips from the pro?” he asked, nodding at Jared as he reentered the foyer.

“No, he hasn’t. He doesn’t want it,” Jared interrupted. 

“O-kay,” Brock said.

“Did you clean your room like your mother asked?” the cop barked at his stepson as he retreated toward the living room.

Colby didn’t answer. Instead, he silently watched the muscles of his stepfather’s broad back and solid ass strain the fabric of his uniform as he marched into the kitchen. 

“He’s in a good mood,” Colby remarked, coolly, hooking his thumbs in the elastic of his shorts and exposing a hint of his lower abdomen in the act. 

Brock chuckled at the headstrong kid. “Why do you provoke him like that?” he asked.

The boy shrugged and stepped closer. “Because he makes it easy,” the kid replied, instinctively dragging his tongue over his dry lips as he drifted into Brock’s orbit.

Colby’s body relaxed as his gaze danced over Brock’s features. He drank in the man’s roguish baby blue eyes, his lightly tanned skin that was just beginning to bear its first creases. The rough stubble that gave his gentle face a daring edge, and the carpet of dark brown chest hair that lay exposed by the open button at the top of his work shirt. The ornate sleeve tattoos that ran up both arms. All of it called to him. All of it beckoned him. 

“Fucking brat.” The smile in Brock’s baby blues was as wide and amused as the one on his face as he shook his head in mock disbelief, stealing a glance at the bare skin just above Colby’s waistband.

“So, where’s Tami?” Colby asked, peering past Brock’s shoulder at the space behind him where his girlfriend of three years ought to be.

“Umm, she’s not coming,” he answered, “She picked up a shift at the bar. I told her I’d fill her in in the morning.”

Colby nodded, relieved. He couldn’t stand Tami. No one in the family could stand Tami. Especially Jared. But he tolerated her for Brock’s sake. As far as Jared was concerned, Tami was just one more example of his baby brother’s refusal to grow up. To Colby, she was nothing more than a groupie for Brock’s fledgling band–Playa D’s–that somehow managed to finagle a long-term pseudo-relationship out of a one-night stand. 

Brock could do better. Much better. Everyone knew it. Especially Colby.

“Fill her in on what?” the boy asked, inquisitively arching an eyebrow. 

“Patience. You’ll find out soon enough,” Brock said with an amused nod. “That’s actually why I’m here. Jared and I have something to discuss with you, Tyler, and your mom.”

“And here I thought you came here for me,” he said, overtly flirting.

“Well, I mean, ummmf….”

Before the man could finish, Colby lunged forward. He threw his arms around Brock’s neck and pulled him in until their bodies collided. Their lips crashed together as Colby’s mouth seized Brock’s in a clumsy, lustful kiss.

 Brock wrapped his arms around the boy’s body, capturing him in his tight embrace and drawing his body flush against him as he surrendered to Colby’s reckless desire. The world fell away as Brock slipped his tongue into the kid’s mouth, the minty flavor of his breath firing across the man’s taste buds. 

With one cautious step after another, Brock eased the blond youth backward until Colby’s ass collided against the bannister. There, pinned against the railing with his parents and stepbrother in the other room, the wet smack of Colby and Brock's lips echoed in the room as they devoured each other, daring someone to overhear, to catch them in this stolen moment of careless eros. 

Brock skated his hand up the kid’s back as he pressed his weight into Colby, the banister creaking behind them. The orange scent of the grease-busting mechanic’s soap that he used to wash his hands tickled Colby’s nose as Brock combed his fingers through the boy’s blond hair, then clenched them into a fist. The moments that ticked away seemed to drag on and race by all at once. Together, they lingered in their embrace, basking in the warmth of each other’s bodies, the sensation of their hearts hammering at their rib cages, the taste of the other’s breath on their tongues. 

The sudden clack of the back door opening and closing jarred Brock and Colby back to reality, driving an invisible spike between them. They shoved each other away like they’d just dodged a bolt of lightning that would have struck them down where they stood.

Colby felt his knees buckle and braced himself with the railing before they had a chance to give out and send him to the floor, while Brock doubled over as the pair fell away from each other, panting. Colby reverently traced his lips, rubbed red by Brock’s stubble, as if the memory of his mouth on Colby’s was now etched into the soft skin. A memory that seemed both distant and imminent all at once. He stared at his stepuncle with barely concealed desire, his cock throbbing behind the thin veil of his silky basketball shorts. 

He stepped forward.

“No.” Brock held up his hand, pressing his palm against the boy’s chest, halting his advance and keeping him at bay. The resolve in the man’s voice was frail, at best. “Not here,” he panted, casting a furtive glance toward the kitchen where disaster lurked just a few dozen feet away. 

Relenting, Colby pouted but stepped back. The awkward seconds before either spoke again seemed like an eternity, with both flicking their eyes to the kitchen door as if waiting for doom itself to come marching out.

“So, uh, how was the gig last week?” Colby asked as they both caught their breath and righted themselves again. 

“It was good,” Brock answered mechanically, sweeping his shoulder-length brown hair behind his ear as he shifted his weight, exposed and nervous. His weak constitution toward his desire for the young blond made resistance a Herculean task whenever Colby looked at him. “The crowd was great. Owner was a bit of a dick. But, hey, we did have this guy come up to us and ask us to cut a new demo and send it to him. He says he knows a guy who might be interested in us.”

“Wait, what?!” Colby’s eyes bugged out while his mouth hung open, then curled up into a proud, beaming smile. “You mean, like, this could be it? You might actually be getting your break?” Excitement poured from Colby like water over falls as he stared with glowing astonishment.

Brock nodded slowly, fighting back the urge to give in to Colby’s exuberance and throw his arms around the kid and kiss him again. “Yeah, this could be it, champ. This could be the break we’ve been waiting for.”

“The only break that anybody is going to be getting around here is dinner.” 

Jared’s voice sliced like a guillotine right through the passion and excitement simmering between his brother and stepson as he breezed back into the foyer, oblivious to the scene he had just missed.

“Nessa says we’ve got time to get cleaned up, and then we can eat,” Jared continued as he turned his attention to his brother. “You can shower in the boys’ bathroom. I’m sure Colb has something you can borrow to wear when you’re done.”

“Yeah! I got plenty of shit!” Colby piped in, grabbing Brock by the wrist and leading him up the stairs, skipping them two at a time as he pulled him up and away to the privacy of his bedroom.

“Language! And I said NO RUNNING!” Jared roared as he followed them up the steps on his way to the master bathroom, unbuttoning his shirt along the way.

*

Downstairs, the kitchen teemed with the mouthwatering aromas of dinner. The salad had been chopped and tossed. Meatballs bathed in the red sauce’s delicious melody of flavors. The pasta was al dente. The dining room table was set for five, with plates, tall glasses, knives, forks, spoons, and napkins arranged with Tyler’s measured precision. The Chianti was uncorked while the wine glasses chilled in the fridge. And the bread was…still cold.

At the kitchen island, Vanessa stood bent over the counter with her elbow planted on the tile and her chin resting on the heel of her palm. She followed with profound interest as Tyler stood on the opposite side of the island, cutting slices into a long loaf of French bread. She studied the way he held the knife with his index finger stretched across the back of the blade. She scrutinized his manner of holding the loaf firmly but delicately with his slender fingers and his technique as he sawed the blade through the crust, using just enough pressure to pierce but not so much as to crush. 

“You’re really good at that,” she said, sounding a little more mesmerized than she had intended.

“It’s just bread,” the boy replied, shrugging one shoulder but never diverting his focus from his task.

Vanessa chortled and righted herself. Picking up the wine glass that sat to her right by the stem, she stole a sip while peering over the rim and keeping his fascinated attention firmly on her stepson’s meticulous process. Downing the last of the wine in her glass, she set it back down on the counter and navigated to the other side of the island.

“Yeah, it’s just bread,” she agreed as she moved in next to Tyler. “But it’s more than that. I mean, look at it.”

Tyler paused, his cornflower blue eyes gliding back and forth over the bread loaf, examining it for a moment before turning his head and directing his bewildered gaze at his stepmother. 

“You don’t see it, do you?” Vanessa smiled at the look of abject confusion on Tyler’s face.

“No, I don’t.”

“Okay, put the knife down and let me show you,” she said. 

Once the blade was resting flat on the cutting board and the threat of slicing open somebody’s hand was removed, Vanessa gently glided her thin fingers along the cuts.

“Look at this, Tyler. You’re cutting on a perfect forty-five-degree angle. You’ve got every slice precisely the same width. You haven’t pressed down and smashed the air out of it. Hell, you’ve sawed through the crust so precisely and deliberately that you’ve barely cracked it. It’s remarkable.”

Tyler watched intently as she spoke, following her hands as she gestured at the evidence of every point as she made it. Again, confused, he shrugged and looked at her.

“It’s just bread.”

“Exactly! It’s just bread, Tyler! It’s just bread,” she beamed at him, even as the eureka moment, the ‘ah-ha,’ flew right over his head. “It’s just bread. No one would care if you smashed it a little. No one is going to gripe if the angle is a little off and one end of a slice is thinner than the other. This is just for us. It’s just you, me, your father, Colby and Brock. Absolutely no one is going to complain about any of those things. And no one is going to praise you for it, either…because it’s just bread.”

Still confused, Tyler’s brow furrowed. “You want me to go faster?”

Vanessa shook her head vigorously. “No. No, I do not. What I want is for you to seriously consider pursuing medical school. Because–,” she gestured at the partially dissected loaf again, “--I think you’d make for an incredible surgeon. You’re precise. You’re deliberate. You make sure that every cut matters. And we need people like you in the operating room. We need people who are painstaking in their approach. 

“We need people who are going to do the job because it needs to be done, and who will do it the right way because that’s the way it has to be done. And we need people who aren’t going to be hung up on having their egos stroked for their surgical brilliance.”

She paused, shaking her head in awe…at a loaf of bread.

“I mean, you’ve cut that thing open with more care than some surgeons do their patients. If you ask me, you were born to be in the O.R,” she finished, kissing Tyler’s flustered cheek as he fidgeted next to her, his gaze locked on the half-cut bread loaf.

“It’s…just bread.”

Vanessa chuckled and patted her stepson’s cheek on the spot where she’d kissed him. “You’re right,” she nodded, “I’m just a lush who’s had too much wine. It’s just bread.”

“And just how much have you had to drink tonight, ma’am?” Jared piped up, standing in the doorway with his arms folded across his powerful chest and leaning against the frame. The white polo that he wore stretched just as taut across his torso as his uniform, and the jeans hugged him tightly, producing a pronounced bulge in his crotch.

“Oooo! Hello, officer!” Vanessa cooed as she whirled around and floated across the kitchen floor and into her husband’s waiting embrace. She positively glowed. “Are you here to arrest me?” she asked, draping her arms around Jared’s neck while he pushed off the wall and planted his hands on her hips.

“I guess that depends, ma’am, on whether you’ve been operating any heavy machinery in your condition,” Jared answered, his baritone voice laced with a ribbon of innuendo as he and Vanessa performed a pseudo-erotic roleplay in front of his son.

“Oh, no. No, no, no. I haven’t done anything like that,” she flirted, leaning in to press her lips to Jared’s. “At least, not yet. But my husband does have a lot of ‘heavy machinery’ that I need to operate regularly. You think I’m too far gone for tonight, Mr. Police Officer?”

Jared cocked a brow and stared down at her, amazed. His mouth quivered and trembled as he fought and struggled, but the smirk won out, and he broke character. “You’re ridiculous, you know that?” he chortled, giving his wife a swift swat on the butt.

“Mm-hmm. But that’s why you love me,” she answered with a wink and strolled over to a bottle of wine she’d opened while she cooked, swiping her glass as she passed the island.

From where he stood, Tyler watched the foreplay-like display between his father and stepmother. As much as he tried not to stare for too long, his attention was always drawn back to Jared as he moved, so easy in his confidence. His eyes followed his father as he sauntered over to the fridge, his admiration momentarily venturing south to the way the denim clung to Jared’s firm, round butt. Tyler licked his lips at the flexing of Jared’s muscles when he opened the refrigerator door and retrieved a beer. Everything about his father, his stance, how his shoulders always seemed to be pushed back, and his posture straight and self-assured, twisted Tyler’s stomach into knots. The sick feeling in his belly was almost as uncomfortable as the fullness that inevitably formed in the front of his pants whenever his father was in the room.

Beer in hand, Jared shoved the fridge closed and joined his son at the island, draping his arm over the boy’s shoulders in what, for Jared, was a casual and relaxed embrace. Tyler, however, stiffened. His body tensed under the heat radiating from Jared’s powerful physique. The way the man caressed Tyler’s shoulder with his thumb sent goosebumps across the boy’s skin. The sandalwood in his dad’s cologne made Tyler ache with longing.

After rifling through a drawer and producing a bottle opener, Jared popped the cap off his beer and took a protracted swig.

“Where’s Brock and Colby?” he asked his wife, who stood generously refilling her wine glass. A chill shot up Tyler’s spine as Jared began to trace his fingertips up and down his son’s bare arm. The featherlike touches sent the boy’s pulse racing. His mind broke as shallowly buried fantasies crept back to life inside his head. It was just a hug, he told himself. There was nothing in it. It was protective and affectionate. The touches were nothing. They were just reverence and love. They were innocuous acts, expressions of endearment that had become tainted in recent years. Tainted by Tyler. Tainted by his own lurid imagination.

Jared and Vanessa’s conversation faded into the background until it was little more than low, incomprehensible droning. His hands stilled, ceasing his meticulous cutting. The bread sat, forgotten.

Tyler felt his body press closer to his dad of its own accord, swept up in the gravity of Jared’s presence. The strength in his arms and firmness of his body drew Tyler in like a magnet. Even the freshness of the man’s body wash and the spicy aroma of beer on his breath conspired against Tyler. They conspired to seize him and drag him into an abyss of his own perversion.

He tipped his chin up and leaned closer, his consciousness entranced by Jared’s lips as he spoke. Those lips, surrounded by a forest of beard. Even looking at them, glistening wet with beer and saliva, Tyler could see that they were soft and firm. He knew they were. Jared had never shied away from kissing his son. On top of the head, the cheek, forehead, and on every boo-boo scrape that he’d acquired as a child, Jared had kissed. But never where Tyler wanted to be kissed. Never where he needed to be kissed. 

And he ached for those lips. He wanted to feel them. He wanted to taste them. He wanted to….

“You still with us, bud?”

Tyler jerked as Jared’s deep voice punched through the boy’s ideations. “Huh? Oh, um, yeah. Why?” he stammered, forcing himself to look away from his dad as he hurried to bury the feelings the man stirred inside him.

“I said, could you go upstairs and get Colby and your uncle? Tell them to hurry their asses up because dinner is ready and I’m fucking hungry,” Jared said, planting his palm on his son’s head and tousling his dark brown locks.

“Oh, um, yeah. Sure,” the boy replied, setting the bread knife down on the cutting board and drifting out of the room. 

Jared’s gaze burned a hole in the back of his son’s skull as he watched Tyler disappear from the kitchen, the boy’s shoulders slouched forward. When he finally returned his attention to his wife, he was met with the same concern he felt being mirrored back at him in her expression. Dropping his beer bottle down on the counter with a clink, Jared sucked in a sharp breath and shook his head as worry crept into his features and pulled at his shoulders. 

“Is he gonna be okay?” he finally asked, his steel blue eyes wet.

Setting her wine glass down, Vanessa shook her head as she sidled up next to her husband, resting her head against his shoulder while she dragged her nails reassuringly across his back. “I don’t know, baby. I hope so.”

“Fuck!” Jared barked as he slammed his fist down on the counter. “What if you’re wrong? Maybe I should just tell him. Let him know that I know and that it’s okay,” he said, as if pleading for permission.

“No!” She turned her husband to face her and cradled his cheeks in her palms, holding him, keeping his eyes fixed on hers. “It has to be his choice, Jared. He has to be the one to make that decision. I know you want him to be safe. I know you want him to be happy and to know that you love him, no matter what.” 

When Jared averted his eyes, glancing at the empty doorway his son had just passed through, Vanessa pulled him back. “But if you go storming the gates and trying to force down the walls yourself, you’re just going to terrify him. He knows that you know, baby. It’s just, as long as he doesn’t say the words, he can pretend it isn’t real. Give him time. Give him space. And just be ready to be there. He’ll open up, eventually. He’ll come to you and he’ll tell you.”

Jared’s brows pressed together as uncertainty and fear held his heart in their icy clutches. “You really think so?” he asked, almost a whimper.

Vanessa nodded, pulling her husband into her arms and rubbing his back as she held him. “Yes, I do.”

He kissed the top of her head as he pulled her tighter against him.

“I don’t give a shit that he’s gay, Ness…I just want my son back.”

*

Tyler drifted out of the kitchen in a trance. The scent of his father’s cologne still burned in his nose, making his cock throb within the tight confines of his pants. That was close. Too close, he told himself. 

He was getting reckless. He was becoming weak. He had to be stronger. He couldn’t keep letting the compulsions get the better of him. They couldn’t know, couldn’t discover it. They’d hate him, be repulsed, and loathe him. They’d ask him things that he’d asked himself. They’d want answers to questions like ‘What is wrong with you?’ Questions that he didn’t have answers for. They couldn’t know. He couldn’t let them. They’d be disgusted. They’d see him as a freak. They’d see him. 

He lumbered upstairs in a daze, taking his time with each step, drawing the quest out and giving himself ample time to calm down and for his incestuous erection to subside. 

Reaching the second floor, he shuffled down the hall and into the bedroom that he shared with Colby. The signs of their battle were gone, almost. The lamp, which had been knocked over during the tussle, was right-side up. The shelves were still off the wall but were now laid out neatly in a row on top of Tyler’s bed. The figurines, every one, were off the floor and had been set on his nightstand. 

Crossing to his bed, he picked up one of the shelves and climbed onto the mattress. It wasn’t until he went to ease it back up onto the wall that he noticed. The nails were missing. Not all of them. But enough to have prevented Colby from rehanging them and setting the room right. He turned, then, and looked over at Colby’s disheveled bed. A smile tugged at the corner of Tyler’s mouth as he set the shelf back down, jumped onto the floor, and shuffled back out into the hall.

The door to the bathroom that he and Colby shared was shut when he approached. Gripping the handle, Tyler leaned in, pressed his ear to the surface, and listened. He could hear voices on the other side. Two of them. Brock and Colby. They were low and hushed. He couldn’t discern what they were saying, but that didn’t matter. What did matter was what he didn’t hear. No running water. No echo of the shower spraying against the glass enclosure. No signs that it wasn’t safe to enter.

Clearing his throat, Tyler twisted the knob and pushed. 

As the door swung open, Tyler froze.

“Hey, bud,” Brock greeted from where he stood just outside the shower.

He was naked. Completely and utterly naked, scrubbing a towel over a dark brown mane that now, in its soaked condition, appeared pitch black. His tan flesh had a wet shine that accentuated each curve of his masculine body. The thick pelt of damp hair that covered his chest was matted to his skin. Tyler drank him in, his mouth agape, and his dick shot back to attention.

His gaze followed the carpet of hair down Brock’s chest, over his flat stomach, and south until he found himself staring at his uncle’s thick, flaccid cock nestled within a healthy bush of pubic hair. He knew Brock was beautiful. He’d known that the man had a gorgeous body. Tyler had seen him without a shirt and had admired him from a safe distance. But he’d never, ever, seen him naked. Imagined, yes. Masturbated to the fantasies of, absolutely. But never once seen.

“What’s up?” Brock asked, jarring Tyler out of his lustful fawning.

The boy blushed, flustered by how cavalier his uncle was about his own nudity. 

“Yeah, what do you want?” Colby interjected, glowering at him. Tyler hadn’t noticed him there, sitting perched on the vanity with his fingers clutching the edge and his feet tapping at the cabinet door as they swung gently back and forth. The unwelcoming look on his stepbrother’s face told him all he needed to know. He’d interrupted…something.

“Noth–,” Tyler began, clearing his throat when his voice cracked. “--nothing. Dinner’s ready and Dad’s hungry.”

“Oh, I’m sure he is,” Brock replied, his cock dancing between his hairy thighs as he stretched the towel behind him and dragged it across his back. “Tell them we’ll be right down.”

Tyler nodded, then turned to Colby. “What are you doing in here?” he asked, struggling to ignore the hypnotic swaying of Brock’s penis.

Colby just shrugged and arched his eyebrows back at him, looking at Tyler as if the answer should have been obvious. “Talking. What’s it look like?” he retorted.

“When he’s…,” Tyler began, only to be cut off.

“When he’s what? Naked?” Colby scoffed. “Who gives a shit? I see naked guys in the locker room all the time. It’s not a big deal. But, then, you wouldn’t know that, would you? ‘Cause you don’t do sports, do you?”

There was venom in the words, and Tyler felt every one of them.

“Hey! That’s enough,” Brock interrupted, throwing his damp towel at Colby’s face. 

“Fuck, man! That touched your balls!” Colby groused in disgust, tossing the damp cloth onto the floor.

Brock dismissed Colby’s whinging with a chuckle as he slipped into a pair of grey sweatpants that the blond had loaned him. “Tell ‘em we’ll be right down,” he repeated to Tyler with a wink as he tucked his ample cock down one leg.

“Yeah, okay,” Tyler murmured and stepped back out into the hallway, pulling the door closed behind him, only to feel it get slammed shut from the other side.

*

(Earlier That Day)

The dinner rush was winding down at Glen’s Diner when Brock pushed through the door. After opening fifty years ago at the south end of a series of attached storefronts built in the 1930s, Glen’s had become a neighborhood favorite in its near-century of business. Inside, the walls were dressed in silver, corrugated metal that dully reflected the sunlight as it filtered through a large storefront window with the establishment’s name emblazoned across it in peeling red paint. Planks of repurposed barn wood stretched across the floor. To the left, a long counter lined with recycled sock hop diner stools fenced off the cash register, grill, and soda and ice machines from the rest of the room. Refurbished formica tables, in various colors, were scattered around the whole dining area, three still waiting to be cleaned, while a row of booths flanked the right wall. The walls themselves were adorned with vintage advertisement placards and tools whose purpose had long been subverted by the rapid advance of technology. 

It wasn’t the classiest or most sophisticated place to meet with an attorney, but it was a measly five minutes away from B & G Auto-Body, where Brock worked. Suggesting that he and Jared sit down with Mr. Hector Del Toro, Esquire, at Glen’s meant that Brock could steal away during his lunch break. The sliced-in-house and double-fried French fries were a bonus. They were to-die-for. 

Scanning the room, a flicker of light reflecting off Jared’s badge drew Brock’s attention. Stuffing his hands in his grease-stained work pants pockets, Brock navigated through the tables to where his brother sat at a booth with a man whom he could only presume was Mr. Del Toro. 

“Here he is,” he heard Jared say as he scooted over, allowing Brock to slide into the booth beside him.

Hector Del Toro was a portly man of about sixty. His thick, white hair contrasted sharply against his bronzed skin. A set of wire-rimmed glasses sat low on his nose, and the brown, weathered suit jacket that he wore looked like it had ceased fitting properly a decade earlier and was snug across his rotund belly. 

“Ah! The younger Mr. Tenney!” the old man greeted as he offered up a hand, which Brock took in his calloused grip, and smiled. “It’s a pleasure to finally meet you.”

“Likewise, Mr. Del Toro,” Brock nodded, claiming his spot beside his brother.

“Oh, no need for formalities. Call me Hector,” he replied with a flourish.

“Right. Okay, so…Hector...what is all this about? Why did you need to meet with us?” Jared jumped in, twisting his body so his back was to the wall.

“You mind if I order before we get into all this?” Brock swiftly interjected, receiving a grateful growl from his famished belly. 

“Yeah, fine,” Jared sighed, then held up his hand and snapped his fingers twice.

Nadine, a woman in her late fifties with a jet-black dye-job, a large chest and even larger hips sidled up to the table with her eyebrow cocked and an order pad she held in her hand.

“You’re lucky you’re cute, officer, or I’d break those fingers myself,” she cautioned with a wink, retrieving the pen she had tucked behind her ear.

Jared chuckled with a flirtatious glint in his eyes. “Well, then I’d have to arrest you, ma’am. For assaulting an officer,” he answered, returning the wink.

“Sweetcheeks, I’ve got a pair of handcuffs in my nightstand. They don’t scare me. And believe me, I’ve had them slapped on these wrists by guys that weren’t half as pretty as you. You’d be fulfilling a fantasy,” Nadine shot back with a grin that choked off Jared’s retort before it could escape. “So, what’ll it be?” 

“Nothing for me,” Hector and Jared answered simultaneously.

“The usual, Nadine,” Brock said, his hands flat on the table’s surface, his fingers tapping out the bassline of ‘Under Pressure.’

“Alright, then, that’s a bacon cheeseburger with pepperjack, lettuce, tomato, pickle, no onion, extra spicy mustard, an order of fries for here and another one to go, and one beer. I’ll get that right out to ya, handsome,” she rattled off with expert precision.

Brock just nodded as Nadine made her exit, right after she stuck her hand in Jared’s face and snapped twice.

“Okay, then,” Jared chortled before shifting back into serious mode. “Is everyone ready to start now? Yes?”

They all nodded.

Hector cleared his throat as he reached into a small satchel that sat on the booth next to him and pulled out a manila folder, opened it, and spread the documents out in front of them. “Well, Jared, like I mentioned to you and Brock on the phone, I was your uncle Martin’s attorney. I know you’re aware that he passed just over a month ago….”

The brothers nodded. “Yeah, we heard, but what does that have to do with us?” Jared inquired, glancing over at Brock, both their brows furrowing.

Nadine reappeared, setting the beer in front of Brock, the glass hitting the formica table with a light clinking sound before sauntering off when the doorbell jingled, announcing the arrival of a trio of thirty-something women.

“Along with being Martin’s attorney, he also designated me the executor of his estate. It’s my responsibility to disperse his assets among his beneficiaries, of which there are only two,” Hector explained, peering over his glasses as he picked up one of the documents, stamped “Copy,” from the folder and slid it over to Jared. Then, he did the same for Brock. It was the will.

“Wait,” Brock piped in, “You mean this uncle that we’ve not heard from in, what, twenty years just died and left everything to…us?” He looked over at Jared, his eyes wide with shock and disbelief. The elder brother’s expression mirrored his. 

“Yes, for the most part,” Hector replied with a faint nod.

“What do you mean by ‘for the most part ’?” Jared asked, his eyes narrowing as suspicion and skepticism replaced shock and disbelief.

The lawyer cleared his throat as he retrieved a third copy of Martin Tenney’s will and flipped to the second page. “According to this section of your uncle’s last will, all of his assets were to go into a trust and remain there until the designated beneficiaries–that’s you two–complete the requirements for the trust to be dissolved in their favor. Should those requirements be met, the beneficiaries–again, you two–will split the assets fifty-fifty. Should you both not complete the prerequisites mandated by your uncle Martin within sixty days of being notified, the trust will be dissolved on the sixty-first day and its assets surrendered to the state.”

Brock and Jared, again, shared confused looks.

“Just how much are we talking about here?” Brock asked after drawing in a deep breath to slow his accelerating heartbeat. 

The question spurred the portly attorney to rifle through the various documents lying in front of him, finally settling on one.

“Well, once we factor in the business, all real property, checking and savings accounts, retirement accounts, and the residual of the insurance policy, the total amount comes to approximately $2.5 million…give or take,” the old man prattled off with astounding indifference.

The words detonated a bomb of emotion inside Brock. Disbelief, joy, shock, and exhilaration surged through his body. 

“HOLY SHIT! TWO POINT FIVE MILL…,” he shouted, cut off by an elbow to the ribs and a cautionary glare from Jared.

After glancing over around diner and seeing that he’d attracted the attention of at least four sets of eyes, including Nadine’s, Brock grabbed his beer and sucked down half of it. 

“...two point five million dollars?” he finished in a hoarse whisper, leaning across the table toward the portly little man who had just upended his entire life.

“Yes,” the man confirmed, matter-of-factly.

Brock pulled back, dumbstruck as he picked up the sheet of paper with the bright red “COPY” stamp on it and stared, pretending to read it. His heart hammered against his ribcage as if it were trapped in a prison and trying to get out. Jared clapped a hand on his baby brother’s shoulder, squeezing it reassuringly.

“Understand, however, that the bulk of that is tied up in the Roaring Bull. Very little of it is actually liquid at this juncture,” Hector added, his eyes flitting back and forth between the brothers.

A bewildered Brock scowled, “The Roaring Bull? What the hell is that?”

Hector opened his mouth with an explanation ready, but Jared cut him off. “It’s that resort lodge Dad used to take us to for a week every summer. Just you, me, and him.”

“Oh…,” Brock replied, only recalling the vaguest memory of those late summer trips. “Wait. Uncle Martin owned that?”

Jared exhaled a sigh, lowering his head to his hand as he pinched the bridge of his nose. “Yes, he did. He and Dad both owned it, actually. But Dad sold his share just before he died.”

“What? Why?” Brock pushed, confusion still etched across his dumbfounded face.

“Does it matter at this point?” his brother snapped, then aimed his law enforcement stare at the attorney across the table. “You said there were conditions that we had to meet before we would inherit anything. What are they?”

“Ah, yes! Those!” Hector confirmed, holding up a finger like a mad scientist in a B-movie experiencing an eureka moment. “For the trust to be dissolved in your favor, both parties–Brock and yourself–must spend no fewer than seven days and seven nights, consecutively, in the Roaring Bull Lodge. Once that stay has been completed, the trust shall be dissolved and all assets transferred to you and your brother.”

The blood drained from Jared’s face while Brock sat even more bewildered than he was before. “That’s it?” the younger Tenney asked. “That’s all we have to do? We just have to…go on vacation?”

“That is the gist of it, yes,” Hector answered with a nod.

“This is fucking insane.” Brock trembled as he held the paper in front of him, exhilaration coursing through his veins. He didn’t understand a word of the legalese. He didn’t care. He didn’t need to. That morning, he woke up wondering how he and Tami would afford to redo the roof on the house and get a new washer and dryer. Now, not even halfway through his lunch hour, he just learned he was about to become a millionaire and all his financial struggles would vanish. “And we have to do this when?”

“Within sixty days from today,” Hector replied. “My office is in Saterville, just five miles away from the lodge. If you give me a ring when you come through town, you can swing by my office for the keys.”

Brock enthusiastically bobbed his head up and down like a child being asked if he wanted ice cream. “Yeah, absolutely we can….”

“We’re going to need some time to discuss this first,” Jared interrupted, his tone sharp and final.

Hector shifted his gaze back and forth between the brothers, one eager, the other resistant. “Yes, yes, of course,” he stammered, gathering up the documents and slipping the folder back in his satchel, leaving the copies that he’d given to Brock and Jared. 

Then, clutching the satchel in his hand, he slid out of the booth and shook their hands again. “You two should talk. But remember, you only have sixty days to complete the requirements. After that, everything goes to the state, and you lose all rights to the property. I’ll leave you to discuss it, but I do very much hope that I’ll hear from you. The Roaring Bull is quite a property, and I would hate to see it turned over to a bunch of government bureaucrats.”

With that, Hector Del Toro, Esquire, dipped his head, then turned on his heel and left Brock and Jared in the diner to ruminate on their decision.

Brock watched the portly man disappear through the door, the bell ringing as he exited, before turning sharply in his seat and glowering at Jared. “‘We have to discuss this first?’” he echoed his brother’s words back at him, dismayed. “What the hell is there to discuss, Jare? Two-point-five million dollars just fell out of the sky and landed in our laps. What could we possibly have to talk about?”

“Look,” Jared replied, leveling his gaze on his brother and pointing a finger at him like he were scolding a toddler, “this doesn’t just affect you and me. I’ve got a family to think about, and Vanessa and the boys deserve to know about this before we decide anything.”

Exhaling a defeated sigh, Brock slouched back in his seat, his arms folding across his chest. “You’re right.” He hated that Jared was right. He hated it whenever Jared was right. The way the bastard lorded it over Brock every time Jared was right and Brock was wrong had become the bane of the younger’s existence. And Jared was always right.

“You can come to dinner tonight,” Jared offered, his voice conciliatory as he gave his brother’s shoulder another reassuring squeeze. “Vanessa’s making spaghetti and meatballs. I’ll text her and tell her to make extra. Besides, it’s been a couple of weeks since you’ve seen the boys.”

Brock’s face flushed at the mention of Colby and Tyler.

“Alright, fine,” he surrendered, downing what remained of his beer.

“That’s one bacon cheeseburger with pepperjack, lettuce, tomato, pickle, no onion, extra spicy mustard, and a side of fries,” Nadine announced as she appeared once again and slid Brock’s plate in front of him.

“I think he’s going to need to take that to go,” Jared said, shooting the fiery woman a devilish grin.

*

(Present Time)

“...and that’s everything,” Jared declared, leaning back in his chair and draining the last few dregs of his beer out of the bottle. His eyes flitted across the faces of his family as they sat gathered around the dinner table, the remnants of the devoured meal still scattered across its surface.

Tyler sat stiffly in his chair, his eyes circling the room and absorbing everyone else’s reactions. Next to him, Colby was slackjawed. Across from Colby, Brock slouched down in his chair with his arms folded across his chest while Vanessa remained relaxed with a glass of wine held aloft as if she were holding court as the most laid-back queen in existence, quietly observing.

“Well…?” Jared prompted.

Colby spoke first. “We’re going to be millionaires?” he muttered, then exclaimed. “We’re going to be fucking MILLIONAIRES?!?”

“Maybe,” Jared answered, the word hit the room with a thud.

“Maybe?” Brock sat up and shifted forward in his seat. Tyler eyed his uncle as he dropped his arms onto the table and twisted to face Jared. The energy in the room crackled as palpable tension flooded the air between the brothers. He glanced at Vanessa, who met his gaze with an arched eyebrow, hoping that she would speak up. He wished and willed her to intervene and calmly disarm the combatants of the impending battle before the first shots were fired. 

She didn’t.

“What the hell do you mean ‘maybe’?” Brock continued voicing his dismay. “It’s two-and-a-half million dollars split between us. What’s there to consider?”

Jared exhaled, exasperated. “Have you ever run a resort, Brock? Because I sure as hell haven’t. Neither of us knows the first thing about managing a business like that. And you’re asking me to uproot my family, disrupt our lives, and move them six hours away to oversee a business we know absolutely zilch about?”

Brock shook his head. “We don’t have to run it, you idiot. We can sell the damn thing and split the money between us. Let someone who does know what they’re doing buy it and run it themselves.”

The idea was met with a scoff from Jared. “We don’t need that kind of money.”

“Like hell we don’t need it. I need it!” Brock countered, volume increasing a tick.

“Yeah, well, you wouldn’t would you, if you hadn’t pissed away every dollar that was given to you, followed by every dollar you ever made,” Jared shot back. And it was on. Tyler’s chair scraped against the wood floor as he slid away from the table. Next to him, Colby was tense, his chest rising and falling dramatically, and his bicep flexing tightly as he gripped his fork in a fist while his eyes flicked back and forth between the brothers as the battle between them got off to a start.

“Mom and I worked our asses off to save up a college fund for you. And what did you do with it? Huh? You lit it on fucking fire because you and your deadbeat friends in your deadbeat band were going to be fucking rockstars! And how’d that fucking work out?”

Tyler swallowed a lump that had formed in his throat as he, Vanessa, and Colby listened to Jared light into his younger brother, launching into a tirade that they had all heard countless times before. Tyler retreated, Colby seethed, and Vanessa observed, her eyes locked on her husband, while Jared fired off a litany of Brock’s failures, faults, and fiascos. 

“And look where it’s gotten you. Nowhere!” Jared barked.

“That’s not fair,” Brock growled back, crumpling his napkin in his fist, his baby blue eyes burning with anger as his big brother lobbed insult after insult at him.

“Bullshit it isn’t fair,” Tyler’s dad dismissed, his tenor matching Brock’s as the verbal skirmish between the two men began to break out into open warfare. “How much of your money have you blown on this childish fucking dream? How much of Mom’s money, of my money, of Vanessa’s money, did we have to blow on paying off loans that you didn’t have the money to pay back? You’re driving a goddamn company truck because yours got fucking repossessed! 

“You can’t even run your life without running it into the ground. There’s no way in hell you’re going to be able to run a business. And if we sold it, you’re just going to turn around and blow your way through a million dollars and end up right where you fucking started. But, you’re right, ‘maybe’ isn’t the answer to Colby’s question. Hell-fucking-NO, we are NOT going to be millionaires.”

Brock leapt out of his seat, sending the chair shrieking across the floor as wood dragged across wood. With his fists clenched at his sides and face burning red, Brock stormed up to Jared.

Jared shot to his feet as his baby brother advanced on him, drawing his own fists tight as he stepped forward, meeting the younger’s challenge head-on. “Think you can fucking take me, big guy?” Jared taunted while Brock’s nostrils flared. “Try it. I’ll kick your ass all the way to that deadbeat you call a girlfriend and back again. And I won’t even break a sweat doing it.”

Livid, Brock glared at his brother. Tyler, Colby, and Vanessa watched, transfixed on the disaster unfolding before their eyes. Tyler’s heart raced in his chest as a heavy, strained silence descended over the room while Jared and Brock faced off. His gaze flicked back and forth between the two men, and for a moment, he thought he saw a tear trickle down his uncle’s cheek and vanish into his beard. 

Slowly, Brock inched back. 

“Yeah, that’s what I thought,” Jared said. Tyler could taste the scorn in his father’s voice.

“Fuck you,” Brock muttered as he turned to his brother’s wife, shoving his hair behind his ear just to give his hand something to do other than clock Jared right in the jaw. “Dinner was delicious, Vanessa. Thank you, but you’ll have to excuse me….”

Vanessa, setting her now empty wine glass on the table, stood. Closing the distance between her and Brock, she wrapped her arms around her brother-in-law and hugged him. “You’re welcome…any time. I hope you know that,” she said, planting a kiss on his cheek as she pulled away.

“Yeah. Right,” Brock replied, his voice tight and dry. His eyes wet.

With one last glare at Jared, Brock Tenney rounded the table and marched out of the kitchen and out of his brother’s home.

“What the fuck was THAT?” Colby was on his feet the moment the front door closed.

Jared, easing himself back into his chair, shot a warning at his stepson. “Sit down!”

“The fuck I will!” the blond rebuffed, straightening his shoulders and puffing out his developing pectorals. 

“I said, sit down,” the menace in his father’s tone sent chills down Tyler’s spine.

“You’re a real fucking asshole, you know that?” Colby spat, knocking his chair over as he bolted out of the kitchen and out the door, right on Brock’s heels.

There was silence between the three of them, broken only when Brock’s truck peeled out of the driveway and roared down the street.

Vanessa moved with a deliberate grace as she righted her son’s chair, then began clearing the table, stacking the dirty plates one on top of the other with care. “Tyler,” she said, her voice calm and soft, reassuring. “Why don’t you go upstairs. Your father and I will clean up.”

Tyler remained planted in his seat, uncertainty carved into his face. He turned to his father. After a pause, Jared nodded. “Go ahead, we got this.”

Freedom granted, Tyler shot out of his seat and vaulted out of the kitchen, up the stairs, and away from the scene before the second battle began. A quieter battle. A subtler battle. A battle that Tyler was confident his father would lose.

Jared studied his wife as she moved around the table collecting silverware and glasses, and plates, setting them on the counter near the dishwasher before she started collecting the leftovers. He snatched a slice of bread from the basket just as she picked it up. “Okay, let’s have it.”

“Let’s have what?” Vanessa responded, her tone calm, cool, and distant. Somebody wouldn’t be getting laid tonight.

“What do you think about all of this?” Jared asked with a groan as he leaned back in his seat and folded his arms across his chest. He was in for one hell of a verbal beating. He could taste it.

Vanessa sucked in a breath and exhaled it slowly as she halted her task. Setting the bread basket back down on the table, she turned on her heel and planted a hand on her hip while she surveyed him. “Oh! Now you want to know what I think?”

“Of course, I want to know what you think,” he answered, trying to assure her.

She shook her head at him and bit down on her bottom lip, frustrated. “What was this all about, Jared? Hmm? I mean, you invite Brock here for dinner under the pretense of discussing this and getting input from your family. But where was our input when you told him ‘no?’” Vanessa took a step forward, then another, until she was standing over her husband, looking down on him with disapproval.

“I…,” he began. 

She cut him off.

“Uh-uh. You did your talking. Now it’s my turn,” she cautioned, waving a finger at her him as he sat nibbling the slice of bread. “How many times has Brock gotten himself into trouble and you’ve said to him, you’ve said to me, that you wish he’d come to you for help first?”

Jared was silent. Vanessa was certain that he’d sunk deeper into his chair.

“Huh?” she pressed like a prosecutor cross-examining a hostile witness.

“I don’t know,” Jared shrugged weakly. “A lot, I guess.”

“Yeah. A LOT, Jared,” she repeated, the tenor of her voice rising and nodding her head for dramatic effect. “And here he is, at your dinner table, invited by you, asking for your help. And what do you do? You tell him ‘no’ and then proceed to rip him to shreds in front of everyone.”

Jared sat mute under the heat of his wife’s stare, trying to dislodge a piece of pasta between his teeth with his tongue. Doing anything, everything but walking out of the room, to distract him from the awful feeling in the pit of his stomach. It failed.

Finally, he fell forward, tossing the uneaten bread onto his plate and planting his elbows on his knees. “Maybe Colby’s right. Maybe I am a real asshole.”

“Oh, there’s no ‘maybes’ there. You just did an Oscar-worthy rendition of Asshole tonight. Now get off your ass and start helping,” Vanessa scolded, snatching up the basket of bread and hauling it to the counter.

With a defeated sigh, Jared stood, gathered the remaining leftovers, and joined his wife at the counter. 

“The good thing is,” Vanessa continued, “you can still fix it.”

He scoffed. “And just how am I going to do that?”

Vanessa turned, facing her husband. Her lips were pursed tight, her shoulders back, and she met the man’s eyes. She was stern and firm. She wouldn’t back down. She wouldn’t surrender. Jared was a beast that she could and would tame.

“You’re going to start by calling your brother and apologizing for being a complete asshat,” she answered.

“‘Asshat?’ Is that verbatim?” Jared quipped with a grin. She didn’t smile. His faded. “Sorry.”

“See! It’s not that hard!” she teased, clapping him on the cheek like he was a good boy. “And once you’ve done that, you’re going to tell him that you’ve changed your mind and that the four of you are going to the lodge for a week.”

Jared’s brow furrowed, puzzled. “The four of us?”

“Yup!” she said, matter-of-factly as she pulled open the dishwasher and began to load it. “You’re taking the boys with you. You can make a ‘man’s week’ out of it.”

“You know there’s no way I can get a week off before school starts. We’d have to…,” he explained, Vanessa cutting him off right at the pass.

“...pull them out of school for a week. Correct,” she shrugged. “They’ll be fine. It’s only the beginning of the school year. They’ll have plenty of time to make it up.”

“But why?” he pressed, grabbing the glasses and finally beginning to help with the clean up without being coaxed. “Why do you want me to take the boys with?”

Abandoning the dishwasher to Jared, Vanessa strolled over to the cabinet and started pulling out storage containers for the leftovers. “Because of what happened upstairs before you got home,” she began, “And because of what just happened at my dinner table. I have been trying– We have been trying to get Colby and Tyler to see each other as brothers for six years, Jared. And we’ve gotten nowhere! They’re going to graduate after this school year, and I don’t want them to go off to college hating each other.”

Jared’s brow pressed together, still befuddled by his wife’s thought process. But he usually was. Vanessa saw things from an entirely different perspective than Jared. She saw things that he didn’t. He’d learned to trust her over the years because, as much as his ego hated it, she was usually right.

“Okay, but what does that have to do with them coming with Brock and me to the lodge? We’ve got all school year to work them through that,” he asked, moving up behind Vanessa as she dumped the remaining pasta and meatballs into a glass dish and capped it with the lid.

“It has everything to do with it. Where do you think Colby and Tyler learned to fight the way they do?” she explained, gesturing at the empty table that was, only moments ago, the site of a near-physical brawl between her husband and brother-in-law. “They’re mimicking the dynamic that they see between you and Brock. You and Brock fight. They fight. You act snotty and condescending to Brock. They act snotty and condescending to each other. You insult Brock. They insult each other. You dismiss him, look down on him, and treat him like dirt, and they do it to each other. 

“So,” she turned and placed her hands flat on Jared’s chest and looked up into his steel blue eyes, “you and Brock are going to the lodge, as brothers, and you’re going to take Tyler and Colby with you, as brothers. And, together, you and Brock are going to do what a good father and uncle should do and set an example for them for how brothers should really treat each other. Capiche?” 

*

(Thirty Minutes Later)

Across town, a battered, white Ford truck with a cap over the bed and ‘B & G Auto-Body’ decals emblazoned on the sides sat shrouded in shadow on the north side of an empty parking lot behind a strip mall. All the businesses–a tax office, a Korean grocery store, three restaurants, a pet supply store, and a liquor store–were closed. All were closed save for the laundromat that occupied the southernmost storefront. None of its three patrons, up to their ears in their weekly laundry, would venture out back. Neither would the clerk, who was too busy scrolling through her phone to muster a greeting when the rare pathetic soul, with nothing better to do on a Friday night than their laundry, strolled in.

No one would stray into the rear parking lot. They wouldn’t venture to the north end. Nobody would spot the truck with the ‘B & G Auto-Body’ decals. Neither would they wonder why it was parked behind a strip mall instead of across the street where the B & G Auto-Body shop was. And no one would see that white Ford truck rocking back and forth. 

Beads of dew streaked down the fogged-over windows of the cap. Inside the truck bed, the atmosphere was thick and suffocating, stark in its contrast to the briskness of the air outside. On a thin mattress inside the bed of that dingy vehicle, shielded from view by the canopy that sat upon it, Colby Welch lay flat on his back, panting…and moaning. His legs were splayed open, held apart at the back of the knees by the arms of the man on top of him. 

By the tattooed arms of the man fucking him.

“Oh, fuuuuck!” he whined pitifully as Brock slammed his hips forward, driving his thick, eight-inch dick into Colby’s willing ass. Brock’s knees dug into the small single-sized mattress as he shoved himself inside the boy. He’d started throwing the thin cushion into the truck two months ago. Its only function was the one it currently served, and it wasn’t comfort. It was a barrier between their bodies and the hard, rough surfaces of the truck. It kept Colby’s back and ass from getting shredded by the abrasive, non-slip strips that stretched along the length of the truck bed. It prevented Brock’s knees from bruising or scratching from tiny pebbles littering its surface. It reduced risk. It aborted physical evidence before it could form.

No marks would blot Colby’s smooth, tanned body. No hickeys, no scrapes, no blemishes, and no scratches would mar the blond boy’s soft skin. When they were done, just like every other time they were done, Brock would drop Colby back home and no one–no one–would ever know that he’d been fucked blind by his stepfather’s brother. It would remain their secret, as it had for the last three months.

“Oh, fuck…Brock! Fuck me!” Colby whimpered. He stared up at his idol, the man he worshiped, as he hovered over him, his iron-hard prick slicing through Colby’s gape like a blade through soft tissue. The boy sucked in and swallowed Brock’s warm breath each time he panted and huffed on top of him, tasting the residue of the beer he’d had with dinner.

“Fuck me.”

As he dicked his young lover, a lust-filled inferno raged behind Brock’s baby blues. The intensity of his gaze felt like it was searing away Colby’s facades, layer by layer, exposing the primal and wanton needs of his very soul. Stripping away all pretense and leaving nothing behind but a need as naked as the boy himself.

One hand clasped the back of Brock’s neck, the other skated down his shoulder, across his bare back and clutched his hairy, thrusting ass. Colby’s fingertips brushed the waistband of the sweatpants he’d loaned him earlier in the night, pushed down just far enough to make fucking possible. 

“Fuck me.”

The heat that radiated from Brock blanketed Colby’s nude physique, swaddling it and shielding it from the chill air outside their debauched mobile nest. His long hair, damp with sweat and swaying with each thrust, tickled the boy’s cheeks as it blocked out the world around them like a curtain, leaving them alone, together, with their shared bestial compulsion. 

“Brock,” Colby muttered through gasping breaths, his eyes full of longing, “I…I love you!” 

The whispered declaration halted Brock in mid-thrust. He froze, his cock pulsing within the tight confines of the boy’s pussy. Precum oozed out of the tip into the furnace-like cavity of Colby’s insides. Stilled by the confession, Brock hovered over him, breathless. His hairy chest heaved with labored inhalations as he stared down into Colby’s youthful face below. 

The animalistic urges that burned in Brock’s eyes abated and dimmed as he studied the prone, vulnerable boy in his arms. His elbows bent, lowering his body as he settled his weight onto Colby. Chest to chest, the kid could feel his lover’s heart race as it thumped against his ribcage like a drum. The intensity in Brock’s expression faltered and softened as he drew his face so close to the eighteen-year-old’s that their noses brushed. 

“What?” Brock croaked.

Colby’s Adam’s apple visibly shifted as he swallowed, his gaze locked on Brock’s intense baby blue stare. The pulsing of the man’s dick, embedded inside his chute, marked time as moments of silence ticked away. The Playa D’s frontman’s gaze swept across Colby’s features. The vulnerability etched into the boy’s face was a stake piercing Brock’s chest. 

“I said…I love you. I’m in love with you,” the boy repeated. A tear spilled from the corner of his olive green eyes and raced down his sharp cheekbone to be soaked up by the mattress that cradled him, joining all the other bodily fluids they’d exchanged over the last several weeks.

In that moment, everything shifted. 

The stillness and silence lingered.

And lingered.

And lingered.

Goose pimples formed on Colby’s trembling flesh as the fear of impending rejection sent a cold chill through his body. “Brock…I…,” his voice cracked as he prepared to take it all back.

“Shhh,” the man hushed, soothing. Releasing his hold on the boy’s left leg, he pressed his index finger to Colby’s lips, then traced them with the tip. Meanwhile, within the exquisite heat of Colby’s body, the girth of Brock’s swollen cock expanded further.

His mouth found Colby’s. A spark jolted through them as the soft skin of their lips met in a tender, amorous kiss.

As he slipped his tongue into Colby’s mouth, Brock rolled his hips, grinding and churning his prick in the boy’s silky insides. They moaned, together, as Brock continued to fill the blond athlete’s lily white ass. The soft walls of the boy’s insides convulsed around the gentle invasion. Brock stirred his cock inside of him, each motion methodical and deliberate, while they passionately drank down each other’s desperate breaths. 

He had fucked Colby before. He’d screwed him. He had even drunkenly and clumsily taken the boy’s cherry on Colby’s eighteenth birthday. But tonight, within their private universe, Brock made love to his brother’s stepson.

Gradually, but steadily, the grinding motion of Brock’s hips blended into shallow, staccato thrusts. Colby whimpered into the kiss as he felt the pace increase, ratcheting up slowly, cranking up one gear at a time, until Brock was pistoning his dick into him all over again. Colby’s back arched, like a steel rod had been jammed up his spine, when Brock reared back, pulling his eight-inch prick almost clear of his lover’s ass, and punched back in. 

“OH, GOD!” Colby crowed, the force of the impact driving their lips apart. “Don’t stop!”

The kid clawed at Brock’s back, carving welts into his flesh as the force and tempo of his fucking intensified rapidly, making the boy’s hole squelch as it got defiled by his demanding prick. Colby threw his head back, his damp blond hair casting beads of sweat all over their metallic cocoon as his body was wracked by the ecstasy of the man rutting inside of him.

Brock huffed and grunted into the kid’s ear as he fucked harder. Fucked faster. The friction of his dark, sweat-saturated chest hair bristled against the boy’s nipples, turning the delicate, pink nubs into glass-cutting rocks. His flat, hairy belly pressed against Colby’s aching dick, rubbing and stroking it with each desperate lunge forward. 

“You’re mine!” Brock growled.

Faster and faster, the truck rocked in that empty parking lot, the squeaking of the shocks penetrating the stillness outside with the same rhythm that Brock penetrated the boy within. Brock’s hairy ass flexed violently as he pummeled his dick into Colby’s queefing cunt. The slurping of his hole around Brock’s exacting cock mingled with the loud clapping of the man’s hips against Colby’s cheeks each time their bodies collided. A lewd call and response melody. 

This wasn’t sex anymore. This wasn’t venting out rage. This wasn’t blowing off steam. This wasn’t merely the allure of forbidden fruit. With every plunge, Brock claimed his brother’s stepson. He took him. Seized him. Stole him. He made Colby his. This time, mattress or no mattress, Colby’s body would bear the marks of what they did.

Just a foot away from where Brock kept his euphoric blond lover pinned while he pounded into the boy’s warm cunt, Brock’s phone lit up on the wheelwell where it lay. An incoming call. Jared’s name on the caller ID. 

He paused his flag-planting thrusts long enough to snatch his phone, send his brother to voicemail, and toss the irritating device aside with a clatter. 

Then, after wrapping Colby’s legs around his waist, ankles hooking together just above his hair-dusted butt, Brock hammered him into that fucking mattress. He sodomized him over and over and over again. He drilled so deep and so hard into Colby’s cunt that it felt like his cock was going to plow its way right to the kid’s soul and pierce his very essence.

Inside the bed of a truck, on a soiled mattress, in a dark corner of an empty parking lot, Colby wailed and shrieked as the man that owned his heart savagely and passionately fucked him. His cries reverberated inside the shelter of their metallic nest, resounding beyond the safety of those walls and splitting the near quiet of the otherwise tranquil parking lot around them.

For over thirty minutes, Colby keened into Brock’s ear as the man plundered his hole, making his young body quake and tremble every time his older lover’s bloated cockhead speared into his prostate. Each primal thrust drew out a wail from the boy’s lungs.

The harder Brock fucked, the louder Colby screamed.

And the louder Colby screamed, the harder Brock fucked.

(To Be Continued)