eleven
David lay on his bed, looking up at Ramon.
The man was tall and muscular. Without his shirt, his shoulders and biceps seemed even broader.
Dark hair traced whorls around his pectoral muscles before descending in a tousled trail down to his belt line, covering his ripped stomach muscles in a sparse pelt.
Ramon undid the top button of his dress slacks, which, as well as dirt from a night spent in the box with Estel, were now covered in patches of damp from the bathroom.
“Take ’em off,” David whispered hoarsely, barely able to speak. “I’ll lend you some trackies.”
Ramon unzipped his fly, never taking his eyes from David, keeping him captive in that intense stare, before he pushed the slacks down his thighs.
He was wearing maroon boxer briefs that clung tightly to his thighs, offering up the thick bulge of his sex like something sculptural.
It seemed to loom even larger if possible than it had before.
He kicked off the slacks, leaving them crumpled on the floor, and stepped toward the bed.
David looked up at him, knowing that what they were about to do was the absolute worst thing he could possibly be doing, but knowing he was going to do it anyway.
Ramon raised one knee onto the bed, positioning it between David’s thighs.
He leaned forward, placing his hands to either side of David’s head and lowered his body onto David’s.
Their lips, chests and sexes made contact almost at the same time.
Ramon smelled clean, giving off the perfume of David’s shower gel, but also something else.
He emanated his own unique musk, released more fully by the warm water of the shower, a strong, slightly bitter tang of sweat.
Then Ramon’s tongue was driving insistently into David’s mouth, conquering and claiming him, his beard rough and rasping against the younger man’s smooth-shaved cheeks, his damp hair haloing his face on either side.
His full weight pressed down on David’s body, crushing the air from his chest. But it felt right.
Their hard sexes rubbed up against each other through their underwear as they bucked and rolled their bodies against each other.
David’s hands found Ramon’s shoulders and then his back, before sliding down to where they cupped his buttocks through the fabric of his briefs, pulling Ramon harder onto his body, grinding their sexes together.
His dick was hard, and he worried he might be about to cum.
He hoped not. He tried to ignore how amazing the mashing of their cocks felt together through their underwear.
He focussed on kissing Ramon back, making love to his tongue with his own.
Then Ramon pulled away from their kiss as his mouth and tongue found David’s smooth cheek, before moving down to the hollow under his jaw.
He began licking, his tongue lapping, lightly making love to David’s throat, exploring from the dip beneath his earlobe to the tip of his chin, the tip pressing into the sensitive tissue of his neck and throat, causing David to squirm, turn his head and whimper at so overwhelming a feeling.
Ramon’s tongue was merciless, driving harder against David’s flesh with the broad rasping blade, licking his Adam’s apple, as if seeking to uncover and dig out the pleasure from beneath his skin.
His tongue and lips moved down, kissing along the line of each clavicle and palpating in the shallow hollow between them.
Then Ramon’s tongue moved further south, exploring David’s right nipple, beginning to move in small, soft circles, as with his left hand he mimicked the action on David’s left.
His tongue moved to the other nipple as he supported himself on his left hand, bringing the fingers of his right hand to continue caressing David’s right breast, wet and shining from the action of his tongue moments before.
David moaned and thrust his hips up toward Ramon, who moved to grab his wrists, pinning them with one hand above his head.
But David fought free, bringing his hands down onto Ramon’s scalp, his fingers losing themselves in that thick black tousled mane, still damp from the shower.
Without quite knowing what he was about, just responding to his body’s needs, he pushed down, sending Ramon lower.
He felt the man’s breath hot on his abdomen, making those fine, almost invisible blond hairs on his stomach stand up.
And then Ramon’s nose was nuzzling into the lump of his sex, straining for release from his tight stretched briefs.
He felt Ramon’s lips and tongue tracing the shape of his cock through the fabric, his breath hot.
He couldn’t last, knew what he wanted, and he wanted it now.
Flipping his fingers under the elastic of his underwear, he pulled down, releasing his cock, which sprang up, erect before Ramon’s face.
“Suck it,” he growled, too impatient to wait for Ramon’s torturously slow seduction. He wanted the cop’s lips on it now.
And Ramon opened his mouth, stuck out his tongue.
David felt the heat of his breath on his hard cock, on his balls, which felt full and ready to burst. He could almost feel his meat plunging into that warm wet cave of Ramon’s waiting lips.
But then, as he was about to make contact, a cacophony of horn blasts came from the yard.
“What the—?” Ramon queried, raising his head.
Pushing him aside gently, David jumped up from the bed and sprang to the window.
“Shit! Carme’s back!”
“But she wasn’t supposed to be arriving till this afternoon, was she?”
“She’s here now.”
“Damn.”
Ramon stood, joining David at the window. They watched a battered cream-colored Citroen pull into the yard. “What do we do?”
“Clothes!” David answered, looking down at his own dick, standing out hard like it still wanted to play, and at Ramon’s, still tenting his maroon boxer briefs.
“Mine are filthy. Did you say you had some trackies, and maybe a tee-shirt, you could lend me?”
“Yeah, here.” And David was over by his pack, rummaging inside.
“They might be a bit small, but they should do.” He thrust some dark gray track pants and a white tee-shirt toward Ramon.
He was already getting dressed. “Come down when you’re changed.
There’s some rubber boots in the tack room you can wear instead of those,” he said, nodding at Ramon’s dress loafers.
And David had disappeared down the hatch.
Ramon stood in the middle of the room, feeling bewildered.
Two seconds ago, he’d been about to have sex with that gorgeous guy, and now it had all turned to custard.
Slowly he got dressed in David’s clothes.
He was right: the track pants were figure hugging, emphasizing the bulge of his paquete, and a tad too short in the leg.
The tee-shirt stretched tightly over his frame as if he were some muscle queen, wearing a shirt two sizes too small, which he was.
God knows how he was going to greet Carme like this!
Maybe with his feet in the rubber boots the whole outfit wouldn’t look too ridiculous?
Yeah right. He swung down the ladder to meet his fate.
In the yard, David was standing talking to Carme and her wife, àgata, beside the car. As Ramon came up, David slunk away toward the boxes.
“Hey, Carme! Hi, àgata, good to see you! We weren’t expecting you back so soon.”
“Hi Ramon,” àgata stepped forward, kissing him on both cheeks. She was a small fit woman with short-cropped dark hair and John-Lennon-style glasses. “We had a few problems with some homophobic guests of Caroline’s,”
“Oh no, what happened?”
“Nothing too scandalous,” she replied. “But at the wedding, some of those drunk old boys felt it was their duty to try and ‘turn’ a couple of lesbians. We decided we wouldn’t stay for the after-wedding breakfast, so as not to distract from Caroline’s big day.
We left early this morning, claiming we had an emergency at the stables. ”
“Have we?” Carme asked.
“What?”
“Got an emergency at the stables?”
“Well, Estel—“
“Because I see you and David are now sharing clothes, something must have gone down.”
“Ah, no,” he laughed, but the heat in his face told him he was blushing. “I came from a party at Jaume’s yesterday in my good clothes, and ended up staying with Estel in the box. So my clothes got rather dirty. David’s lent me some of his.”
“Ah,” Carme responded, a twinkle in her eye. “Nothing to do with due diligence?”
“What—?” Ramon started.
“Psst, Carme!” àgata cut in, but Carme kept on:
“Because àgata almost crashed our car into the gatepost when we drove in. She said she saw two naked men sword-fighting in the window of David’s room. Damn, I missed it myself.”
“Very funny,” Ramon growled. “We weren’t expecting you back till this afternoon.”
“We realized that,” Carme chuckled. “I’m not questioning your Interpol techniques—I know you have to get inside him somehow, I just didn’t realize that was a police-approved method.”
“Only for the hardest cases!“ àgata giggled.
“Don’t you want to hear about my horse? Estel’s out of danger, thank you for asking.”
Carme’s face changed. “It was just a cut, wasn’t it?”
“No, it developed into cellulitus. But we caught it fast. I had Ernest come over a couple of times. The vet? We found his number in your agenda. He just left, about an hour ago, in fact.”
“Poor Estel! How is he?”
“He had quite a swollen leg for a night, couldn’t stand. But the antibiotics seem to have done their work. We’re walking him again. Two weeks, Ernest thinks, and he should be right as rain.”
“Well, come on. Let’s go and look at him.”
Where a horse’s health was in question, Carme’s whole attitude changed.
The horse was her first concern. Ramon hoped they would find David in the box with Estel, but he was nowhere to be seen.
After they had looked at Estel and reassured Carme that he was in fact on the mend, Ramon went looking for David.
But after a full search of the stables, he couldn’t find him.
He even slipped through the hole in the fence and down to the pond where they had first kissed.
But he wasn’t there either. The pond bank felt lonely on his own, without David, as if its spirit had been sucked away.
Eventually he gave up. Returning to the stables, he found Carme doing the rounds of the horses, checking each one in person, àgata in tow.
“Come on, Carme, this was supposed to be your weekend off. Go home and enjoy what’s left of it with àgata. Maria’s got it all covered.”
àgata made a face at him in thanks.
“Yes, we’re off. I just wanted to check in on all the animals. Then we’ll leave you two lovebirds to it.”
“He’s disappeared. Any idea where he might be?”
Carme shrugged. “It’s his day off. He doesn’t have to be here.”
“Yeah, mine too. I should go then. I’ll come and check on Estel tomorrow before work.”
He kissed the women goodbye and walked off.
He wished David had stuck around to talk at least. The way their lovemaking had been interrupted like that felt excruciating.
He didn’t even have a number for him and didn’t dare to ask Carme for it.
She would be scathing in her ridicule. Then there was the fact that from a legal standpoint, as David’s employer, she probably wasn’t allowed to give it out, even—or especially—to an off-duty policeman, and a horny one at that.
He decided to pick up his clothes from David’s room and leave him a note.
Up above the tack room, everything was as they’d left it.
The bed was made but rumpled from where minutes ago they’d been writhing on it.
His shoes and dress pants lay crumpled on the floor, while his shirt and socks were slung over a chair along with David’s towel.
The photo lay face down on the table beside his bed.
He looked around for paper to leave a note and, after rummaging through the contents of the desk, found a feed brochure with plenty of open space to write on—the photo of a ranch showing lots of blue sky—and a pen.
Then he was unsure what to write: a declaration of something, a light jokey message, or something in between?
In the end he just wrote “Call me. Ramon” and his private number.
He placed it on the bedside table underneath the photo, which he righted.
As an afterthought, he picked up the photo and examined it, front and back.
No details he hadn’t seen on the front jumped out.
It was a beach scene but difficult to see where.
The frame was plastic and mass-produced.
No clues there either. He popped the back off.
Written in pencil in a careful hand on the back of the photo was: “Simon, Owen & Davey, Seaton Carew, July 25th, 2013″. He snapped a photo on his phone, then removed the photo, turned it over and took a careful shot of the family group. After that, he returned the photo and put the frame back together, placing it upright on the feed brochure. Why had he done that? He didn’t know. He shouldn’t have, but it was done.
Then he put on his shoes—he’d left the boots at the bottom of the ladder—gathered up his clothes in a bundle, and left.
Sitting in his car in the yard, wearing David’s clothes, enveloped in David’s—Davey’s?
—slight musk (a hint of salt, his natural sweat, and something like grass or hay, maybe?), he didn’t want to leave.
But what to do? He couldn’t just hang around here waiting for him to come back.
Estel was fine and well looked after. The horse didn’t need him until it was time to walk him again.
And tomorrow he had to be at the station bright and early, and in uniform.
He needed to prepare for his working week.
He took a final searching look around the yard in case David should suddenly appear, then turned the key in the ignition and drove out of the yard.