The Dryad’s Trap Hudson #2
The second one had been David. David was the one I didn’t think about.
We’d lasted almost four years. We had a place together for a while.
We’d planned a future the way that people plan things when they think they have all the time in the world.
And then David had gotten an offer for a job in Phoenix that he’d taken without telling me.
And, over the course of three weeks, I had moved from we should talk about this to I’m taking the job whether you like it or not.
And I had stood in our kitchen on a Sunday morning while he ate cereal and explained to me, calmly, that he had been falling out of love with me for about a year and had needed a reason to go.
The job was the reason. I was the thing he was leaving.
I’d been so prepared to fight for it. For us. But he never even gave me the chance. He’d already decided.
The third one had been Mason. Mason was the worst, even though on the outside he looked like the easiest. Mason was beautiful and broke and twenty-eight to my thirty and had moved into my apartment after we’d been seeing each other for six weeks.
Then, over the course of eighteen months, had cost me about nine thousand dollars I’d never see again, two friendships I’d had since high school because he hadn’t liked them, and a small but meaningful portion of my self-respect.
Then, one day, I came home from a job in Cincinnati and found the apartment empty and a Post-it note on the fridge that said sorry babe, take care.
I’d stood there reading the Post-it for what must have been ten minutes.
Then I’d taken it down, folded it in half, lit it on fire with my cheap white lighter, and called a locksmith.
That had been almost three years ago.
I hadn’t dated since.
I still didn’t pity myself. I remember those hurts only because they are facts.
The held no more space in my heart than the fact that I was thirty-three, that I welded for a living, or that I drove a rusty pickup from 2011.
I had, three separate times, opened my chest up and let someone walk in and put their hands on the soft tender thing inside it.
And three separate times the person I let in had done damage I didn’t think they were capable of.
Somewhere after the third one a quiet, sober voice in the back of my head had said one simple thing.
Hudson. Buddy. We’re done with that.
And I listened. I trusted that voice more than I trusted most things.
I wasn’t lonely though. That was the part people didn’t get when they tried to set me up or invite me to Friday beers or ask, in that tilted-head way, but don’t you want somebody?
I had a job I was good at. I had a body that worked.
I had eight blocks of walking distance to a decent diner and a record store on the corner.
I had two old friends I called on birthdays and one cousin I texted on holidays.
I had my uncle’s armchair and thirty books I’d read and a king bed I didn’t have to share.
And I had, most importantly, the bathhouse.
Every weekend. Every single weekend, for the last four years. Because even a lone wolf needs to get fucked.
The bathhouse sat in the warehouse district, between factories that had no idea of the wonderland lying between them.
From the outside it was nothing. A flat corrugated metal face, a windowless metal door, and a bare bulb burning above the lintel even in daylight.
And hanging beside the door was a single red neon sign that said OPEN.
I parked in my usual spot around the side, where the streetlight didn’t quite reach and where nobody who didn’t already know the lot would ever bother to pull in.
I killed the engine and sat there for a second with my hands on the wheel, looking at the side of the building in the failing October light.
And, just like every Friday, I felt like I was finally someplace I belonged.
The bathhouse wasn’t home. My apartment was home. But the bathhouse was the place where the other part of me, the part the apartment couldn’t satiate, got to exist for forty-eight hours a week. And that was its own kind of homecoming.
I left my duffel in the car. I’d unpack that later at the motel around. I always stayed at one on the weekends because the bathouse was nearly an hour drive from my apartment and I didn’t want to waste a single moment traveling.
The lobby was plain and quiet. There were simple waiting room chairs against one wall next to a snake plant that had been there longer than I’d been a member.
A row of fluorescents in the ceiling buzzed faintly, welcoming me in.
And behind the counter, the same silver-haired man who’d been behind the counter every Friday I’d ever walked in, his nose in a paperback with the spine cracked back almost in half.
I’d been trying to figure out his name for four years. He’d never offered it. I’d never asked.
“Hudson,” he said, without looking up.
“Evening.”
He held out a hand. I dropped my card into it. He ran it under the scanner, slid it back, and reached under the counter for a wristband and a folded towel without breaking eye contact with his book. The whole thing took maybe five seconds. After four years of Fridays, we had it down.
“Busy?” I asked, because asking was part of the ritual.
“Average for a Friday.”
“Anything I should know about?”
He turned a page. “Steam’s running a little hot in the east room. Maintenance is on it. Probably be fixed by tomorrow.”
“Thanks.”
He grunted and went back to his book.
I walked through the inner door into the locker room the way I’d walked through it two hundred and eight times before.
I’d done the math once. I’d been a little startled by the number.
The walls were that same dim warm color, the floor tiles the same dim warm white, and the air smelled of clean water and men.
Oh, that was the other thing I loved about the bathhouse. It wasn’t just human men there. It was everyone. Werewolves, satyrs, vampires, mermen, werebears, and a whole bunch of other hot creatures that I could never get enough of.
I considered it a successful weekend if I got fucked by at least three types of dicks I’d never seen before.
I stripped down and stowed my clothes in a locker, wrapped the towel around my waist, and fastened the wristband. The plastic was cool against my skin. It had my locker number on it and nothing else. That was the beauty of the place. You came in as a body. Nothing else mattered.
And I always liked to start my weekend in the open plan showers.
Sure enough, the moment I stepped around the corner and saw the showers, there were already several men there. Some were showering, a courtesy before and after using the bathhhouse. But some, the ones I was staring at, were on their knees sucking a fat werewolf cock.
The werewolf’s head was thrown back, his chest heaving.
The guy on his knees had his hands braced on the werewolf’s thighs, working with a rhythm that looked like he’d gotten a lot of practice.
I watched for a moment, feeling the familiar pull of heat starting low in my gut.
The steam from the shower heads curled around them, carrying the scent of pheromones and lust.
I stepped into the shower area and let the steam wrap around me.
The guy on his knees didn’t look up, too focused on his work.
The werewolf’s eyes opened though, scanning the room with that predatory awareness they all seemed to have.
And when he caught sight of me, something flickered across his face.
Interest, maybe. Or just acknowledgement that there was fresh meat in the room.
I moved to one of the open shower heads and turned the water on, letting it cascade over me.
The heat was good, loosening the last of the tension that the week had wound into my shoulders.
I could feel their eyes on me now. The werewolf’s for sure, and maybe the guy too, though he was still committed to the task at hand.
I took my time rinsing off, not performing exactly, but not hiding my hardening cock either.
When I was clean I turned off the water and stood for a moment under the steam, letting it rise off my skin.
The werewolf was close to finishing now, his breathing getting ragged.
The guy on his knees was making small sounds in his throat that echoed off the tile.
I watched the werewolf’s muscles tense, watched him grab the back of the guy’s head and forced his cock further into his mouth.
His balls pulsed as he let out a low growl.
And then it was over. The guy swallowed and pulled back, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand, and he looked up at me with this satisfied smile.
“There’s more where that came from,” the werewolf said, his voice gravelly and low. His gaze was locked on me now, all the way.
I could have gone over there. Could have dropped to my knees and joined them right there in the open showers where anyone walking by could stop and watch. That was the kind of thing I did here. That was the whole point.
But something in me hesitated. Not from shyness. Not from shame. Just from the simple fact that I wanted to feel what else the night had to offer first.
“Later,” I nodded, and I meant it.
The werewolf grinned like he knew I would be back. He was probably right.