Hearing You Read online

  What's wrong with me? This is all on me. How could I be so stupid?

  The hell? Was that my thought, or was it Steele's? There was a flavor of self-accusation that could have come from either of us.

  Don't be ridiculous, I told myself. You can't really hear other people's thoughts. It's the fucking drugs.

  My grip wasn't very strong, not yet. When I tried to squeeze his fingers, the numbness in my stung hand was broken by a sudden surge of bright electric pain. I flinched and jerked away, but he didn't let go.

  He's hurting. Oh fuck. I wanted to make him one of us, but he would be better off if he never saw us again.

  No confusion now. I couldn't believe what I was hearing. Steele had a crush on me. I looked him in the eye, and he dropped his own gaze to look at my mouth instead. It was a subtle gesture, something nobody else in the room would notice.

  Something I myself wouldn't have noticed before. I'd expected better of my gaydar, to tell you the truth.

  "We were wrong," he said. "A guy your size, you had no business taking a bite. I'm sorry."

  Hey. It isn't like I'm some twink. I'm six foot one, lots of leg. I might not be prison weight room developed, but I like to think I've got my fair share of muscle from the distance cycling. "It's OK. I was curious about what it was like when I saw Chollie's reaction."

  "No, you weren't. You don't have to be polite about it."

  "Did you see what bit me?"

  "We showed the doctor the box," Chollie said. Not really the answer to my question.

  "The one that got me came out of the ground. She wasn't one of yours." I said "she" because I remembered now that females were larger. The bug that tagged me was the length of Steele's fist.

  "I told that doctor I thought I saw something green." Steele turned my hand over again, sending another surge of self-accusing images straight to my brain. "But..."

  "I know. He already explained. No green species of scorpion. But you saw it too."

  A little silence in the room as everybody considered that.

  "There used to be a haunted house on that lot." Hasp was wearing a vintage The Rolling Stones tour T-shirt with the sleeves ripped off to show the X-rated tats on his biceps. He should have looked dangerous. But somehow he reminded me of an eight-year-old girl swapping ghost stories at a slumber party. "Before it burned down, there were all kinds of sightings."

  "Fuck that. It was a meth house," Chollie said. "That's why my dad burned it down."

  "No, dude, for real. Before all that, it was haunted. My dad said in the sixties Charlie Manson buried some of his bodies there."

  "The fuck? I never heard that." Chollie was starting to look annoyed. "You're making this shit up to fuck with me."

  "Am not," Hasp said. "It's a valid rumor."

  "I heard it too," Marco said. "I'm a little surprised you haven't."

  Steele had let go of my hand. However, he sat so close to the bed that the press of people in the small room couldn't help but push him against my arm, sending a burst of confused desire and guilt into my body every time we touched. I knew I had to be imagining this stuff, but it was so clear. I truly felt as if I was in his head.

  "It was a haunted house." Hasp can't ever stop talking." With a ghost and everything. My dad saw it himself when he was my age."

  "It was an abandoned house. Somebody spread some dumb-ass rumors so they could get away with cooking drugs there." Chollie was getting sick of the discussion.

  "So let's summarize." I took a deep breath. "I got bit by some fucking toxic meth dump scorpion."

  "Yeah, I guess that's right." Steele brushed my arm again, and I took another jolt. The image of what he wanted to do to me in the privacy of his own head was raw as fuck. "No wonder you had such a strong reaction."

  I squirmed, trying to avoid a different kind of strong reaction. I didn't need to raise a tent in front of the whole crew.

  Focus on what's important. What was really in that contaminated scorpion? LSD? DMT? No idea. I realize Brooklyn boys are supposed to know their drugs, but I kept that shit at arm's length. I had a future... or I thought I did. Before life caught up with my dad.

  "I'm trying to figure out something here. Meth isn't blue or green." I rubbed my own forehead, as if it would do any good helping me squeeze out some answers. "That's just TV."

  "I don't know." Chollie glanced around. "Our club sticks with beer."

  Taking the hint, Hasp brought out a six-pack that looked small under his arm. Seven guys, six beers. I expected to be the one who got left out, but Steele opened his can and then passed it to me.

  "Thanks."

  I'd love to see him sip my dickhead like he's sipping that can. He really knows how to pucker his lips down small.

  As I pulled my hand away, I looked again into Steele's eyes. This dude had sex on the brain twenty-four seven. For real. He was more frustrated than I was.

  The other guys were still in the room, but they'd faded from my consciousness. All I could see was Steele. Knowing he was gay, knowing he had feelings for me... it made me look at him in ways I'd never looked at him before.

  Steele's muscular thighs could certainly fill out a pair of weathered jeans. I wondered if he had any tats down there. It seemed more than likely. If his fantasies were based on reality, it was also highly probable he had a stud in his dickhead.

  "All right, boys. Time." It was the doctor. "This man needs his rest. An alcohol-free rest." He yanked the half-finished can of beer from my hand. "You all go on home now. Damon gets out in the morning. He'll talk to you then."

  Chapter Three

  Chollie phoned around eight-thirty. Uncle Brick was out of the county jail. I decided it probably wasn't a good idea to wait around.

  "You can't just walk out of here," an old lady nurse said.

  A younger one didn't talk to me but into a phone. Fuck. She was calling security.

  "Send the bill to my uncle. Or my father. I'm gone." The elevator was a sure way to get trapped. I took the stairs. The after-effects of the venom or maybe the medicine they'd given me at the hospital meant I was still floating.

  That stuff about thinking I could hear people's sex thoughts when I touched them... fucking crazy. But I was all right now. Nobody's thoughts in my head but my own. I pushed through the emergency exit into the parking lot, ignoring the screams of the alarm going off behind me.

  Steele was just pulling up on his Harley.

  I must have imagined those sexy-time thoughts he had about me. But I felt confident enough to hop on behind him. "How fast can you go on this thing?"

  "Keep your head down, and hold on."

  I locked my arms and thighs tight around him, feeling the vibrations throb through me to my soul as he flew across the flat desert streets. I had to bury my whole head into his back to keep dirt and hair from blowing into my eyes. That warm leather aroma... oh fuck.

  Tighter. Tighter. Let me feel that throbbing dick pushing into my spine...

  OK, so I was still imagining I could hear people's sex thoughts. A lingering after-effect of the venom. It couldn't possibly last much longer.

  We blew through the last red light on the way out of town, and Steele turned in the direction of the mountains. After a few miles of climbing, he pulled over. We hadn't seen any traffic for miles, much less structures. At least we were finally getting out of the scrub and into the trees.

  "Where are we?" I asked. "Any special reason we're stopping here?"

  Steele looked at me. "You should have a helmet."

  "I can't go back to my uncle's house just yet. Chollie says he's a little worked up that I caused him a big hospital bill."

  "Yeah, I got that."

  Steele was my age. Eighteen. I don't know why I'd always thought of him as older. I mean, sure, he was older, but only by a month or six weeks. Maybe it was all the tats and the Harley that made it seem like more.

  Until now. Suddenly he seemed younger. Uncertain. In no hurry to get off the bike. "You ever think about going
back to New York?"

  "Every single day. But my dad had enemies. Now that he's in prison, he can't protect me."

  "They'd take it out on you? That your dad got caught?"

  I shrugged. "Not if I stay out of their way. Not if I don't remind them I exist. I'm nobody."

  "What happened to your mom?"

  "Nobody ever told me. She was gone before I was two, so I don't remember her."

  "Ran away and left you to be raised by a mob hitman."

  "Yeah." It sounded bad, when you put it that way. But it might have been worse for her, if she'd stolen the hitman's son. Maybe it was the only choice she had in front of her for a better life.

  I often wondered about it but I'd never know.

  He was off the bike now. For a moment, he touched my arm, just a tap. So light I almost wouldn't have noticed. Except...

  I wish I could wrap him in my arms and make it all better for him. But he'd probably kill me. New York guys. Probably has a knife in his boot.

  "Hey." I touched him on the top of his hand. "I don't have a knife in my boot."

  His eyes got big.

  "They say she was a witch. Maybe I'm a little bit psychic. Maybe I can read your thoughts a little."

  Steele stepped away, breaking the link.

  The foothills where we'd stopped weren't high elevation, but it was much cooler than the valley. I heard water somewhere.

  "There's a waterfall," he said. "A good place for a picnic. You have breakfast at the hospital?"

  "It was shit," I said.

  "I figured." He tucked the bike out of sight of the road before leading me up a weedy deer track. His backpack was ridiculously tiny on his broad back, but it turned out to include several cans of Red Bull, a thermos of hot coffee, and an assortment of fresh doughnuts. He spread a blanket on a small bank overlooking the waterfall, and we both took off our boots and stacked them near his leathers and helmet.

  "Raspberry or chocolate filling?" he asked.

  "Chocolate filling with chocolate sprinkles."

  "I knew you'd be a chocolate guy. But I wasn't sure where you stood on the question of caffeine."

  "Coffee."

  He poured me a mug. Took a can of Red Bull for himself. It was quiet here, the only music the gossip of the birds in the trees and the white noise of falling water. The waterfall and the pool below it were larger than I thought they'd be, especially considering the creek dried up long before it reached the valley.

  "You know, your cousin doesn't really mean the things he says," Steele said.

  "About what?"

  "About, you know, gays. French bikes. Spandex biking shorts."

  "I realize he doesn't feel that strongly about it. He just says what he thinks an Arizona redneck is supposed to say."

  "Yeah. That's right."

  Steele was a little shy around me. It was a romantic scene but he didn't know where to go next. Could I trust the little voice in my head, or was I still dreaming from the after-effects of the venom?

  I put the mug down on a flat stone. Leaned into him and pressed my lips on his cheek, then slid them around to his mouth. His face was slick from the recent shave. There was a faint scent of a surprisingly expensive men's fragrance, one I never expected to smell again once I left New York. Slipping my mouth down to the dragon's head, I fluttered my tongue over his chin. Every time I touched him, I got a jolt of feeling.

  "What's that really about?" I asked. "The dragon?"

  "I don't even know," he said. "It seemed like a cool idea at the time. I was sixteen."

  "Chollie said you were protesting New York bankers."

  "It wasn't about all New Yorkers, if it was ever about any of them. Chollie says a lot of things."

  We kissed some more. It was a strange sensation, hearing/feeling his thoughts at the same time I was feeling/hearing my own. Everything was doubled back in on itself, as if I were the one kissing and the one being kissed at the same time. He liked what I was doing, but he was afraid it was some kind of trick. When I got really deep into it, I sometimes couldn't distinguish what he was feeling from what I felt myself. All I knew for sure is that we were both excited.

  I slipped a hand under his shirt down the ridges of his defined abs and into his tight jeans.

  He's just fucking with me. He doesn't mean it. If his cousin finds out, I'm out of the MC.

  "There's more to life than Furio Scorpio," I said. "More to life than Sueno Perdido Valley."

  How does he know what I'm thinking? Maybe it's true about his mother being a witch. Fuck.

  I worked his fly open, the better to have room to maneuver within his jeans. "You like me, don't you? I can tell you like me."

  A sudden rush of anger. I jerked back as if stung.

  "What is this? Just a game to you?" Steele sounded angry but not as angry as he felt.

  We were a hair's breadth away from touching again but I wasn't sure if I could take that much intensity. Rocking back on my heels, I pulled my shirt off over my head, knowing without having to hear his thoughts that he'd like watching my flat stomach and then my broad chest come into view. When he brushed his fingertips against the happy trail of dark fur leading down to my jeans, I felt another jolt of doubled desire. The anger was still there, but softer now, just part of his general confusion about what was happening.

  There was a snapshot fantasy, wordless. A body hot and sweaty, molded on top of his. It was my body. I knew it even though I felt it more than saw it. He wanted me so bad.

  Want. Need. Please.

  I rolled out of reach. A tease, but not a cruel one. I needed to catch my breath.

  Also, I needed to peel out of my jeans.

  Steele pushed himself onto his knees and stared up at me with open longing on his face. "You can't ever tell."

  "I won't tell. But people might figure it out. Half the town thinks I'm gay already. No big deal for me, since I'm just counting down the days until college."

  Steele was the one at risk, and we both knew it. It's not like anybody would bash a man his size. But they wouldn't go out of their way to make life easy for a gay man either. They'd be too afraid of getting called gay themselves. Trouble is, he was in a line of work where he needed friends to keep from getting busted.

  The motorcycle club had to get their money somewhere. Harleys and leather jackets and bail-outs after bar fights don't come cheap. I figured it out almost from the first day I realized the entire back end of the house was more or less a private zoo. Uncle Brick considered himself a conservative, and he was strongly anti-drug. But if you're an entrepreneur who refuses to work in rural Arizona's biggest employer of high school drop-outs, you don't leave yourself a lot of choices. The exhibit hall in back held an ever-changing inventory of annoyed scorpions, pink and yellow beaded lizards, and up to seventeen species of rattlesnakes.

  Think about that. Who in New York even knew there could be seventeen species of rattlesnakes?

  The MC jumped mining claims too. An entire wall was a glass-fronted cabinet displaying a large assortment of mineral specimens, many of them quartz threaded in gold. I sneaked in a few times to study the labels, but the location data seemed to be written in code.

  If even one animal, vegetable, or mineral specimen in that house had been legally collected under permit from the Bureau of Land Management, I'd eat Steele's motorcycle helmet with a butter knife and a salad fork.

  Great town they had here, a place where gay was bad and stealing from public lands was just your duty as a righteous red-blooded libertarian. And they laugh at people from Brooklyn for eating ten-dollar hipster artisanal chocolate bars.

  "I have to live in that town," Steele was saying. "There's no place else for me."

  "I know. I really won't tell, you know. For real. You can trust me. I'm just saying that people aren't stupid. We would have to keep our distance, or they'll figure it out."

  "I don't know what to do." Or what to say either, from the sound of it.

  His uncertainty made me bold.
I had to be bold, didn't I? Otherwise, nothing would ever happen. Who knew how long Steele had held those secret feelings in his heart for me and never said a word?

  If not for the scorpion's sting, I still wouldn't know.

  I undid my fly, slid my thumb into my jeans, yanked them down in one smooth motion that trapped my briefs along with them. Did Steele know that his hazel eyes went dark with desire? I joggled my package, letting him feast his gaze on the bobble of my large balls and the thick, veiny length of my erect shaft. A thick gob of salty pre-cum was already oozing from the slit.

  He leaned forward, hands grabbing for my bare hips. I stepped back quickly, again just out of reach, wondering if I could handle the doubled intensity of... this. I no longer kidded myself that I was imagining things. It was real. When we touched, I could hear/feel Steele's sex thoughts/experiences as intensely as my own. It was like being one man with two bodies.

  The anger flared again in his eyes. "So you're just fucking with me?"

  "No, I want it too," I said. "I was just... I just needed to catch my breath."

  He sat back on his heels. "You come to me then. If you're for real."

  I stepped forward, leading with my cock. His mouth was hot and open. He'd done this before. I could tell from the agility of his lips and the easy way he gulped me deep inside. Also, I could tell from the flash of past memories, a blur of an encounter in a park near Scottsdale. Older guys, looking for a quickie from a young biker.

  Nothing real back there. Nothing like this. So real.

  He liked the taste of me, and he knew how to work his tongue so he could get the saltiness of my skin over the maximum length of taste buds.

  So fresh. So...

  His throat opened. I gushed. I couldn't help myself. It was too fast but it had been too long. There was nobody for me in this town, and I hadn't known about the park or had a way to get all the way out there if I had. Besides, if I'm honest, I'm not really interested in quickies with older guys. I liked guys my own age. Guys I could talk to. I'd figured there wouldn't be anybody like that for me again until I went back east to college.