Just Some Everyday Pillow Talk

412

13,560 words.

From Dandelion’s Series 1, but was never published as part of her novels. Originally appearing in the 2020 SHareCon Zine, this short story is nothing but pure, unadulterated and explicit sex stuff, so enjoy! ?

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PROLOGUE

“Hey, you want to know the real reason we joined the Academy all them years ago?” From the droll eye contact Starsky triggered, he knew his partner would simply humor him.

“Go ahead,” Hutch replied dryly. “Tell me something I don’t know.”

“Well, shit,” Starsky debated him with a snicker, “that’d take years.”

“Just get to your point, will you?”

They lay on the bed in their cabin, far from the noise of city life and its responsibilities, facing each other, and held sleepy eye contact. It was mid-morning, soft light, and the sex had been as satisfying as it had ever been. They’d dozed timelessly afterward, lowering their heart rates, breathing in wordless relaxation, and drying the sweat that had coated their perspiring skin. Only then could their brains resume tasks beyond their primal needs, while the aroma of semen, mixed with cologne, was the only reminder of their previous exertions.

Starsky was then ready for playful banter. “Well, you see, cowboy, the reason we went to the Academy to become police officers wasn’t to help people.”

“Oh, here we go,” Hutch said with a roll of his eyes. “Enlighten me.”

“We went as cover.”

“As cover?”

“To cover our asses.”

“From what?”

Starsky tugged on the handcuffs that still bound Hutch from his wrist to the center post of the headboard. “What we really wanted was to play with these things, like this,” Starsky said matter-of-factly.

Hutch leveled a firm look at his partner. “Let me get this straight: we joined the Academy fourteen years ago just so we could, years later, handcuff me to a bed?”

“It took us a while to figure it out,” Starsky explained, frustrated that Hutch didn’t understand him or appreciate his awkward attempt at rewriting their history—and seemed to mock him, too; the look in those crystal blue eyes was borderline admonishing. “I’m saying that we joined up, not realizing why,” Starsky tried again, “but it was so we would be partners and get handcuffs without ever having to tell anyone why we wanted them.”

“You’re saying we joined the Academy, graduated with honors, and became police officers—decorated detectives, mind you—because of some underlying attraction we had to each other, one that would eventually reveal itself and lead us into sex with handcuffs?”

“Well, don’t that make sense when you look at it like that?”

“Tell me this: how underlying was this attraction? I mean, it took us more than a decade to uncover it.”

“That’s not my fault.”

“It isn’t anybody’s fault,” Hutch playfully argued, “but you’re missing my point.”

“You’re missing my point. When we were at the Academy that first day and we made eye contact with each other, remember? Well, we were destined to use handcuffs the way we’re using them now.”

“I see,” Hutch said with an exhale. He’d apparently given up on the argument as if it had already been a waste of time.

“Well, don’t you think it’s interesting that we met on the same day and—”

“We met on the same day? Imagine that.”

“We met on that first day to be police officers and to use handcuffs—”

“Lay it to rest, Starsk.”

“—the way we’re using them now. Don’t you find that … incredible?”

“Yeah. I have determined that your conclusion isn’t credible.”

“You’re no fun this morning.”

“But I was earlier, right?”

Starsky laughed, abandoned his resolve to win the debate when he remembered how delicious their sex had been, and gave his partner a closer look: Hutch’s mussed blond hair, still plastered to parts of his forehead from his previous sweat, the smoothness of his nearly unblemished skin, the outline of his muscled arm, that perfect face, blue eyes, soft voice. Could Starsky have found a more attractive lover? Not in a billion lifetimes spread across a million universes. And, despite the tease, he knew Hutch understood the overall gist of his suppositions, and that Hutch appreciated them, entertained them, believed in them to some degree, and that he loved Starsky, too—with all his heart and might.

“I can’t thank you enough for letting me take you like this,” Starsky said. It wasn’t often he bound Hutch to a bed or to himself—wrists tied behind Hutch’s back, down on his knees and shoulders, or in this case, on his back with both wrists secured to the headboard; the agreement was that Starsky would ‘surprise’ Hutch now and again with his desires for that kind of play, and therefore bondage was an occasional treat. He’d since untied the rope from Hutch’s other arm that morning so Hutch could masturbate himself to orgasm—because Starsky had lost the ability to concentrate on Hutch’s ejaculation in order to deliver his own deep inside the man. “You really are a pal, Hutch.”

“Your pleasure is mine,” Hutch sincerely said, “and whatever makes you happy makes me ecstatic.” He affectionately stroked Starsky’s hair while they gazed into each other’s eyes—and he was no longer dedicated to razzing Starsky.

“But you get something out of it, too, right?”

“I get the pleasure of your pleasure out of it. You take the intensity up a notch when you have me at your whim.”

“But, I mean, you get more than that from it, don’t you? You’re not doing it just for me, are you?”

“I just explained it to you: I enjoy your enjoyment. That’s what I get out of it.”

“But that’s all?”

“Isn’t that enough?”

“Well, you could get enjoyment from my enjoyment even if you weren’t tied up or handcuffed, so why do we bother then?”

“Because it turns you on that little bit extra.”

Starsky wasn’t happy with Hutch’s answers. He understood them, but he didn’t like them. They left him feeling selfish and greedy—because there was no way Hutch’s pleasure could match Starsky’s in those experiences, despite how much Hutch reveled in Starsky’s happiness. He tried for a different answer. “Do you get anything sexual out of it? I mean, do you feel like your sex is ratcheted up, besides just because it gets me hornier?”

Hutch broke eye contact to examine the questions Starsky had posed; he seemed to understand the specifics Starsky sought and he set out to explore their answers more thoroughly. “Yeah, okay,” he finally said, looking back into Starsky’s eyes, “I get more than just your pleasure out of this kind of play.”

“Like what?” Starsky excitedly asked, if as Hutch wouldn’t tell him without his prodding.

“For one,” Hutch said, “there’s this moment, right after you’ve locked the handcuffs to the bed, where I have this thought that anything could happen. You could get struck by a bolt of lightning and I might be left pinned to a headboard with no means of escape, and quite possibly left to die—with you on the bed, dead, beside me.”

Starsky frowned. “I thought you were going to be serious.”

“I am serious.”

“How’s that a good thing from being cuffed then, hm?”

“I realize in that moment, as fleeting as it is, just how much I trust you, so much that I would let you put me in a situation in which anything could happen; okay, not a lightning bolt, but maybe a bear breaks in. I trust you that much, Starsk,” he emphasized, continuing to comb Starsky’s hair with his fingers. “I’m reminded, again, that I have someone so special in my life that I’ve consciously allowed him, stark naked, no less, to completely put me off my guard and leave me as defenseless as a newborn kitten.”

Starsky was taken aback by the answer—and it made him momentarily emotional and speechless to realize how vulnerable Hutch felt during bondage, but that he overcame his anxieties and fears of helplessness because he trusted Starsky with those personal vulnerabilities, and with his life overall. Those feelings were mutual, although Starsky couldn’t, at least not then, remember when he’d ever said as much to Hutch.

“So, trusting me is an aphrodite?” Starsky asked, returning to his original quest while he savored the feel of Hutch’s warm fingers on his scalp.

“At least an aphrodisiac,” Hutch said, and obviously trying not to laugh. He stopped his stroke and playfully tousled Starsky’s hair. “But, yeah, trusting you turns me on.”

“I guess it turns us both on. I mean, the love and trust we have for each other is what got us here in the first place.”

“True.”

“Nobody turns me on more than you do, Hutch.”

“I can say the same about myself when it comes to you.”

“But I wish you got something direct out of the handcuffs.”

“Those are direct things. You want another one? There’s this: It’s not news to you that I have a hard time taking without giving.”

“Old news, right.”

“And I think I’ve made it clear that I get my pleasure from giving you pleasure.”

“Abundantly. Abundantly clear, I mean.”

“Well, when you lock me down,” Hutch said, taking Starsky’s hand in his and holding it to the mattress, “I’m no longer able to please you—not physically, not with my hands, anyway. And, unless you pointedly put your dick in my face, I can’t—”

“My dick isn’t pointed.”

Hutch laughed, despite himself. “I’m saying, unless you make your dick available to me when I’m tied up, I can’t do anything with it.”

“That would be the point.”

“Exactly my point.”

“Okay, so whatever. Go on.”

“Except with words,” Hutch explained, “I can’t pleasure you—unless you give me the opportunity. I’m left to just … take.”

“And you don’t like taking, by itself, I mean.”

“Right. But that doesn’t stop you from giving.”

“Also the point of tying you up.”

“And also right. So, at first, right after I’ve been hamstrung, I feel … helpless … defenseless … not in control of anything that’s happening around or to me … and, next, I get to a place where I realize all I can do is receive.”

“And you learn to like it.”

“I do,” Hutch admitted, sounding guilty even then, “but not until I’ve worked through this mental and emotional hurdle to realizing you’ve given me permission, maybe even without knowing it, to just enjoy myself—simply because you want me to—and especially when you’re the one doing all the work.”

“It isn’t work.”

“I’m saying that I get to benefit a hundred percent from what you do. The only time I get to return any favors is when you shove your dick in my mouth.”

Starsky flashed his eyebrows. “I do like that part.”

“Yeah, me, too,” Hutch said with a warm smile.

“So, in other words, once you get past feeling like a selfish prick, you like that you get to be one.”

Hutch laughed again. “Yeah, you can describe it in those words: that I get to indulge the selfish prick in me.”

“On a scale of one to ten, how much do you like that feeling?”

“A hundred.”

Starsky pretended to calculate. “That’s a lot of liking.”

“It is.”

“Does it make the sex better at all?”

Hutch silently pondered the answer for almost a minute before he spoke. “I would say, yes, it makes the sex better, too. I have to give up every compulsion I feel to pleasure you and what I ‘should’ be giving in return, and instead surrender to the situation. There is no other way for me to go through it except to give in to it.”

“You could hate it.”

“Hate it?” Hutch asked with a light laugh. “Hate you licking my asshole and my balls? Hate you sucking my dick into a raging hard on? Hate you fucking me in the ass while telling me you’re going to fuck the cum out of me if it’s the last thing you’ll do? Hate listening to your moans of ecstasy and your dirty talk and your orgasm whimpers and giggles? And all of that without being able to do a damn thing to stop it? What’s to hate?”

“Well, when you put it like that.”

They broke up laughing at each other.

“That period of resistance I was talking about,” Hutch further explained, “doesn’t last long. Once I realize I can’t get loose, I’ve learned to get to the Promised Land sooner—especially when we use the handcuffs. I figure I might be able to outmuscle or untie a rope, but the handcuffs, that’s another thing. There’s no arguing with them. So, despite that they can sometimes hurt, they force me into accepting my fate.”

“I don’t want them to hurt you.”

“They’re made of steel, dummy,” Hutch said in a patronizing voice, “and you’re long gone into Never-Never Land yourself by the time they begin to grind me. At that point, I usually don’t care, either.”

“I don’t want to hurt you,” Starsky reiterated, not satisfied with Hutch’s answer. He would have taken the handcuffs off Hutch even then if they weren’t so relaxed and content with just lying on the bed as they were, talking about something they’d never really delved into before. Besides, Starsky liked the look of Hutch on the mattress there with him, holding hands, fully nude, and gazing into each other’s eyes, having sexually spent themselves, while Hutch was still secured to the bed post. Perhaps, if they lazed long enough, he’d get to take Hutch again under those circumstances without having to free the man first. “Maybe we can put that duct tape around your wrist like I did once to make sure you feel no pain,” Starsky suggested.

“But then I’d know what was coming,” Hutch countered him. “Getting nailed like this wouldn’t be a surprise.”

“It doesn’t always have to be a surprise, does it? Do you think you’d resist it if you knew it was coming?”

“I don’t know,” Hutch replied. “Maybe. Maybe not. We can try that sometime.”

“I like trying new things.”

“Obviously.”

“I like the old things, too, don’t get me wrong.”

“I read you right.”

“What do you think I get out of tying you up?”

“Abusing me for all the shit I give you on a daily basis.”

“Be serious.”

“Abusing me for all the times I’ve made you feel powerless in this relationship.”

“C’mon.”

“Abusing me for the shitty ways I can make you feel, especially those times you don’t deserve it.”

“I never deserve it,” Starsky said, submissively. “I mean, there’s no excuse for abuse. That rhymes,” he said on a lighter note.

“The poet in you.”

“But what I’m hearing, numb nuts, is that you think I get ‘abusing’ you out of it.”

“Oh, is that what you heard? I meant to say you get ‘deserved payback.’”

“So you think I get revenge out of it.”

Hutch obviously didn’t want to be misread on such a delicate topic, so he clarified. “I think you do get some kind of self-satisfaction for the control it gives you over me.”

“Is that a bad thing?”

“No.”

“And I get off on controlling you because…?”

“It’s a power thing.”

“I get off on the power over you.”

“Don’t you?”

Starsky had to think. Was that it? Was he power-seeking in those experiences? Granted, he did have the power in such instances; he did get to dictate what they did and how they did it; he did control the narrative and the duration and the timing of their orgasms. But was it only that? “Am I the one, then, to be the selfish prick?”

“I’m sure you know you’re pleasuring me.”

“Your hard dick says so.”

“And you get pleasure from giving pleasure.”

“Just like you.”

“So, the power isn’t despotism, but—”

“Whatever that is.”

“I”m saying that’s what it isn’t. What I am saying is that you’re controlling me to make certain that you’re giving as much pleasure as you’re gettin’.”

“I like to tie you up just so I can give you the most pleasure I can?”

“I think so, but you tell me.”

“I don’t know. That’s why I’m asking.”

“Well, how would I really know, Starsk? I’ve never been the bond-er, only the bond-ee.”

“Okay. It’s true. I like making you take it. I like thinking you’re taking nothing but pleasure from it, that you’re enjoying yourself to the max because you have to. You’re obviously not hating it or you’d go all soft on me.”

“That makes sense.”

“Perfect sense?”

“Yeah, perfect sense,” Hutch agreed.

“You think I can tie you up and fuck the cum out of you because I get off on making you feel good as much as you possibly can?”

“Isn’t that what I just agreed to?”

“And nothing more, right? You don’t think I’m doing it to get over on you.”

“No.”

“I’m not trying to get even for anything.”

“Nothing.”

“I’m not on some kind of power trip.”

“Not the bully kind, no.”

“You can see that I make myself harder by knowing you’re surrendering to nothing but the good I’m making you feel.”

“Yeah, I can. Are we beating a dead horse here?”

“I wouldn’t beat a live one.”

Hutch rolled his eyes again. “You’re a very sexual animal,” he said in afterthought, warmly squeezing Starsky’s hand. “I mean, we’re all sexual animals, but some of us are more than others, and you’re one of those. It’s one of the things I absolutely adore about you. So I think you’re capable of power-tripping in this way purely for the sexual gratification you give as much as you get. And that, my friend, in turn, makes better sex for me, too. You eat me alive, and I love the devouring.”

Starsky hadn’t meant to take them where they ended up in that conversation, but once there, he felt compelled to rest his case. “I’m not trying to talk you into anything when I tell you this, Hutch,” he carefully said, “so don’t go getting me wrong, okay? The truth is that maybe you can see now how things would be if we turned these tables.”

“If I tied you up, you mean?”

“Yeah—and not that I’m trying to talk you into anything,” Starsky quickly said, before Hutch could go off on a rant about why he’d never reciprocate the experience for them, “because, really, I’m not, Hutch. I’m just saying that you might see how you could feel if you were the bond-er—and how I’d get to feel if I was the bond-ee.”

Hutch shut his mouth, leveled eye contact, softened his grip of Starsky’s hand.

“I’m not asking you to consider it,” Starsky said decisively, sensing Hutch’s defensive withdrawal. “I know your reasons for not wanting to: I got tied up and raped—”

“Repeatedly.”

“—and you don’t ever want to put me in that memory place—”

“Not even for a second.”

“—so I get where you’re coming from, Hutch. All I’m saying today … if we ever did that, I mean … is that maybe where I’d be coming from as the bond-ee is someplace you haven’t even thought about before. I mean, maybe I’d like to know how it feels to give in completely to you giving me pleasure—and to know, while you’re doing it, that you’re getting to feel that good just from the pleasure you’re making for me.”

Hutch didn’t commit.

“You say you trust me,” Starsky reminded him, hoping for some reaction—of any kind—besides silence.

But still no words, nor any readable expression, from Hutch.

“The only thing I’m going to ask of you is that you trust what I’m telling you here today,” Starsky concluded. “That’s all.”

Hutch finally nodded, subtly.

“And maybe it’ll help you to know that my feelings about all of this means I’m not having any bad memories when you’re tied up and I’m giving it to you, either.”

“Okay,” Hutch said quietly.

“Which means you can get more immersive in—”

“Immersed.”

“—in the good you get out of it.”

“So … a hundred and one on the scale for me?”

“Yeah, like that.”

“I’ll take it,” Hutch said lightly, exhaling, as if the conversation had been more difficult for him than it appeared on the surface and he was glad to be done with it. “In the meantime, do me a favor—and then I’ll make us some breakfast.”

“What’s that?”

“Let me out of these handcuffs.”

Starsky laughed when he caught on that Hutch wouldn’t be able to do much of anything while handcuffed to the bed post. He’d secretly hoped they’d lie together long enough to refuel and go another round without having to let Hutch loose in the interim, but Starsky also felt exhausted from their most recent sex and the subsequent conversation that followed it. He reached under Hutch’s pillow, inadvertently jostling his partner’s head more than he intended, and retrieved the handcuffs key. He held it up in front of Hutch’s face to show him why he’d disturbed the man just then. “Your wish is my command,” he said.

Only at that moment did they realize the context of Starsky’s actions. Hutch had said earlier that he trusted Starsky like no other, and in all ways possible, because Hutch was helpless, exposed, and defenseless while being held captive to handcuffs locked to a wooden headboard—and not knowing that the key to his freedom had been right there under his pillow all along. No lightning bolt nor intruding bear could have hampered his escape on that particular morning.

They busted up laughing.

“You’re an idiot,” Hutch eventually said when Starsky inserted the key into the cuff.

“You’re the idiot,” Starsky retaliated, unlocking the bracelet, and subsequently allowing Hutch to harmlessly slip from it. “I mean, didn’t you see me put the key under there in the first place?”

“Apparently, I didn’t.”

“How could you not have known that?”

“I guess I’d worked past my insecurities by then and was well on my way into the Pleasure Palace to take notice. You didn’t really expect me to be paying attention to every little thing you were doing while my dick was in your hands, did you?”

* * *

THE WALL MOUNT

“What are you doin’?” Starsky wondered when he entered the master bathroom some days later and found Hutch unusually busy in it—and then asked a stupid question that had an obvious answer.

“Baking a cake,” Hutch replied without emotion. He drilled a small hole into the drywall, momentarily filled the room with the sound of a power tool before he stopped it, and shot back, “What does it look like I’m doing, dimwit?”

“It looks like you’re hanging a towel rack too high up on the wall.”

“It’s not too high up,” Hutch debated him, “and it’s not a towel rack.” He wished Starsky had complimented him on finally tackling a house chore he’d planned for months, and not razzed him about it instead. But before his partner could reply or defend his dumb comments, Hutch drilled another hole in the wall, about an inch to the left of the previous one, and drowned any opportunity to have a conversation between them for at least a quarter minute.

It hadn’t been a lazy weekend morning, despite its late start; they’d risen from bed after a long discussion—some of which was nonsensical, some of it quite profound—showered and dressed together, and then made breakfast: toast and coffee, fruit and potatoes. They followed their satiating meal for nearly an hour at the kitchen counter to drink the rest of the coffee in the pot and to discuss the details of a case to which they’d recently been assigned. But, eventually, as they did every weekend morning, they went their separate ways to respective house chores; that’s when Hutch decided, after realizing he’d long had all the parts for his specific task, to install a towel ring on the narrow wall between the sink counter and the shower stall in their shared bathroom.

“So, if it isn’t a towel rack,” Starsky asked, sitting on the closed toilet lid to either watch or spend his two cents, “what is it? A towel hook? I mean, it’s gotta be a towel something, right? or why would you be drilling ugly holes into our beautiful walls?”

“A towel ring,” Hutch corrected him while he hammered an anchor into the first hole he’d drilled.

“Ring. Rack. What’s the difference?”

“You mean, other than the obvious one?”

“Well, yeah, numb nuts. I get the difference between a hook and a rack, but—”

Hutch looked over at Starsky as if to tell him he was still being an idiot, and condescendingly said, “A ring, partner, is round and looks like that piece of hardware on the counter there—”

“I’m not the moron you think I am.”

“And yet you act like it.”

“What got under your skin since the last time I looked, hm?”

“I thought you’d be proud of me for finally hanging these rings outside our shower door. Instead, you accuse me of destroying a perfectly good wall—and not doing it efficiently.”

“Okay, Mr. Sensitive. Let me start over: so you’re hanging a towel ring, I see. What made you decide to do it that high on the wall?”

The ring would be less than a foot above Hutch’s shoulder, so he ignored Starsky’s question while he hammered the second anchor into the hole he’d previously drilled. “Do you want to be of some use?”

“Yeah, sure,” Starsky said without enthusiasm. “Keep my mouth shut?”

“Replace that plate with a new one.” Hutch pointed to the electric outlet near the door. “You’ll find a pack of plates in that first sink.”

Starsky reluctantly got to his feet and walked to the bathroom counter. When he found the bag of plates, he must have also seen the second towel ring. “Oh, I get it,” he said, when the realization finally struck him. “You’re going to hang two towel rings, one above the other—with room for a towel to hang down on each.”

“Your detective skills are as sharp as razor blades today.”

“Well, I didn’t understand, that’s all. But now I do. Cut me some slack.”

“Gotta keep you on your toes, buddy boy.”

Starsky walked to the doorway and sat on the tile floor, presumably with the new plate and the tool he needed to replace the one on the wall. “How’d this thing break anyway?”

“It was cracked when I bought the place. That’s how long it’s been in need of repair.”

“And how long neither one of us has noticed or cared.”

“Speak for yourself.”

“Okay, I will,” Starsky replied, mocking a young boy. He then sang repetitive lines of “speaking for myself, myself, myself,” as if he had a song in him, and then abandoned it for a return to the previous conversation. “How come you decided to hang rings instead of racks?”

“I couldn’t find racks narrow enough.”

“How come you didn’t just use hooks then?”

“Rings look nicer. Do me a favor?”

“Shut up?”

“Don’t distract yourself so much that you stick the screwdriver in the outlet, okay?”

Starsky chuckled, more pleased, it seemed, to have had the banter with his buddy that late morning. “Hey,” he asked, completely ignoring Hutch’s dig, “how about you and me play in the tent after this; what says you?”

Hutch stopped to watch Starsky position the new plate over the outlet and insert the small screw into its center, eventually deciding that Starsky wouldn’t hurt himself, and that he could then open the towel ring package without giving Starsky’s safety another thought. “You mean, let’s go fuck outside after we’re done here?” Hutch asked, pretending to need clarification while he was somewhat distracted by the ring’s bronze beauty shining in the bathroom light.

“Yeah,” Starsky said, taking the bait of Hutch’s echoing question, and growling in his reply to let Hutch know he was on to him. “Let’s fuck outside … in our tent.”

“So soon after this morning’s meal?” Admittedly, Starsky did look good enough to eat again, his profile on full display, and dressed as he was in washed jeans and a clean, tucked shirt, neatly groomed, though unshaven, and seemingly energized. His wasn’t a bad idea.

“That was hours ago,” Starsky pointed out. “We had sex before the sun came up, remember? and it’s almost noon now.”

“Then we have lunch and play in the tent?” Hutch teased, deciding to not let Starsky’s attractiveness derail his own plans. “Or have lunch in the tent and then play? Or—”

“No, you moron, I mean, right after this—after we finish this home improvement stuff—we go outside to the tent.”

Hutch returned to the wall once he figured out which end the towel bracket needed to face, and then power-screwed the hardware to the anchors, tightening them more than he probably needed to. He had consumed the room in a buzzing sound for that minute, so when he ended the noise, he set the tool on the counter, and faced Starsky. “You want to fuck again this morning,” he noted, playing along. “That’s what I’m hearing.”

Starsky looked up at him from where he sat on the floor, showed off an innocent grin, presented Hutch with his finished task, and whimsically said, “I lived through this, so I want to celebrate life now.”

“And you think you can get it up again so soon?”

“I want to try, anyway. Don’t you?”

“Well, I’m halfway through my chore,” Hutch explained. He turned away to slide the back of the ring onto its bracket, and then pulled down hard to permanently secure it in place. “I’m going to be another twenty minutes.”

Starsky rose from his seat, set the screwdriver on the counter, and stepped near Hutch. “Can’t you do the second ring later?”

“It took me four months to get to this first one.”

“Yeah, but if you leave the tools here, you won’t forget.”

Hutch ignored him and got a towel from the bathroom linen cabinet. He folded it in half and then draped it through the ring, making certain it met itself evenly at the bottom. He would use that visual to determine where the other ring should be bolted to the wall.

“Doesn’t talk of fucking at least get you hard enough to follow me out?” Starsky asked, a plea in his voice. “I mean, you look eatable to me right now—you with your power tools and measuring tape, you know? I’ll make the effort worth your while. I promise.”

Hutch laughed, pulled the towel off the ring, tossed it on the counter, and faced Starsky again. “You’re so easy to turn on, it should be criminal. And you meant ‘edible,’ not ‘eatable.’”

Starsky gave him a smile. “Well, anyway, I’m going to set up the tent—with or without you—so when you’re done here, you know where to find me.”

As Starsky began to leave the bathroom, Hutch grabbed him by his elbow. “You’re not going anywhere, partner,” he said, turning Starsky to face him. “I’m placing you under arrest.”

“What for?”

One of the things Hutch absolutely loved about Starsky was his pure-hearted naivety and innocence. Starsky really did believe he’d been arrested, but didn’t know why.

“For soliciting a police officer,” Hutch said. He removed the pair of handcuffs from the front of his waistband and quickly slipped an open bracelet around Starsky’s wrist before his partner could realize what happened to him. The sound of the locking mechanism momentarily paused the room in otherwise silence.

“I am a police officer,” Starsky defended himself, staring at his cuffed wrist, and genuinely concerned about the situation, inevitably giving Hutch an incredulous look of confusion, and speaking just above the sound of his breath—all while under an unconscious submissiveness.

“During the commission of a crime,” Hutch explained, pulling Starsky closer to the wall he’d been working on, “you being a police officer is irrelevant.” He forced Starsky into facing the wall—without resistance—lifted his cuffed hand to the towel ring’s height, and slipped the other bracelet through the opening. “Assume the position,” he said, leaning into Starsky’s hip with his own while he raised Starsky’s other hand—and cuffed it, too.

“What’s the matter with you?” Starsky asked, but he barely got the words out when it obviously dawned on him—and probably because the inescapable fact that he’d just been handcuffed to the bathroom wall gave him his first clue. “Well, aren’t you the clever one, smart ass,” he giggled.

“Call me Sherlock, shithead.”

* * *

ALL’S FAIR IN LOVE AND BONDAGE

“You had this planned all along.”

“Nah,” Hutch said, not convincingly. “I’m a police officer. I carry handcuffs on me at all times, same as you.” Neither of them did, not all the time, but the point was playful, and Starsky didn’t argue with it.

“So, you’re going to take me right here and now, hm, buddy?”

That was Hutch’s plan. Their days-ago conversation about bondage had encouraged him to closely consider Starsky’s argument, which was that Starsky would only get pleasure out of being restrained during sex—and that Hutch would only feel good about Starsky’s enjoyment.

Once the moment was upon him, Hutch pressed his entire length to Starsky and carefully shoved him against the wall. “Yeah,” he said quietly into Starsky’s ear and to answer his man’s question, “it looks like I get to take you right here and now.” Only then did Hutch realize he was excited by the idea of owning Starsky—and it startled him enough that he instinctively knew what to do next. “But, first, I’m going to need a safe word.”

“Spaghetti,” Starsky said with a pant of excitement.

“Spaghetti it is.”

“And I want it for dinner tonight, too.”

“Idiot,” Hutch mumbled under his breath—his verbal version of rolling his eyes—as he buried his face in Starsky’s neck, deeply inhaled his scent, and belied his annoyance by asking, “Why do you smell extra good this morning?”

“Cologne?”

“Yeah, but why?”

“Because I thought I could talk you into playing with me in the tent.”

“But you figured wrong, huh?” Hutch joked. He drew attention to where they were at that moment by thrusting his hips into Starsky’s denim-clad buttocks, and causing his lover to laugh, too. “The best laid plans of mice and men…”

“What’s that about mice?”

“Focus more on the ‘laid’ part of that comment,” Hutch advised him. He nibbled Starsky’s ear, savoring the sensual aroma of Starsky’s warmth and cologne, and feeling his own arousal heat him from the inside. “I’m just sorry I had to interrupt your plans.”

“I’m not.”

“Yeah, me neither,” Hutch said, as if on second thought. He stepped back to give himself the reprieve he needed to not be in a hurry—and to examine the look of Starsky handcuffed to the wall. The first thing Hutch noticed was Starsky’s profile—and that his eyes were closed, as if Starsky was already transfixed in dreamy contentment. “You like that, do you?” Hutch softly asked. “I mean, you like being controlled this way.”

“By you. But don’t you like it when you are? Why would I be different?”

The questions by themselves answered it for Hutch. “Are you comfortable?”

Starsky appeared comfortable, Hutch thought, despite that he was cuffed to a ring slightly above his head. Starsky was able to lean into the wall, relax against it, wait for further instructions—or Hutch’s next move.

“This can only end well for me,” Starsky explained, “so how can I be uncomfortable?”

“I don’t know. A hard-on up against drywall doesn’t sound all that appetizing.”

“Who says I have a hard-on?”

“You don’t? Not even a little one?”

“I guess you’ll have to find out on your own—because I’m not going to help you.”

Never mind that he couldn’t help Hutch. But Hutch wasn’t falling for it, either; he knew when he was being baited. “So, let’s get going,” he said, as if Starsky had been the stall. “Step away from the wall and take off your shoes.”

“Funny man, you are, Officer,” Starsky replied dryly—but not until after he’d tried to get loose from the handcuffs and then obviously realized that instinctively following orders was just a prank. For payback, he did pretend to fight with the towel ring, as if miraculously pulling it out of the wall would be his key to salvation.

“Don’t scratch the hardware,” Hutch warned him. He pulled Starsky away from the wall, knelt at Starsky’s feet, and untied his shoes when Starsky surrendered, hearing him say, “Leave my socks on; the floor is going to be cold.” But Hutch ignored him and removed Starsky’s shoes and his socks.

“So that’s how it’s going to be,” Starsky said, reluctantly. “Okay. I get it.”

“Oh, you’ll get it, all right,” Hutch coyly promised him. He fetched the towel he’d left on the bathroom counter, folded it in half again, and dropped it on the floor in front of Starsky. “Stand on that.” He didn’t want Starsky to be cold, but he also needed him to be stark naked, too. Once Hutch had him where he wanted him—away from the wall, but still locked to it—he reached around Starsky to unbutton his shirt. “If this goes according to plan,” Hutch said, “I won’t be the only fly in a spider’s web from here on out.”

“Creepy crawlies and little furry rodents. You’re not going to faze me.”

“I wasn’t trying to,” Hutch said, laughing, “not that way, anyway.” He lifted Starsky’s shirt over his head, but failed to remove it when it was inevitably stopped by the handcuffs—and that’s when Hutch felt the blood drain to his feet. How could he not have seen that coming? There was no way he could get around completely stripping Starsky without uncuffing him—which would only serve to derail the experience for them. More than that, leaving Starsky’s shirt on was also hauntingly reminiscent of the gang-rape—wherein the attackers couldn’t take it off of Starsky for the same reason, so they ripped it open instead.

Hutch slumped against him with nearly his entire weight, breathing hard, feeling disappointed and angry at himself. But before he could say a word or abandon the effort, Starsky intercepted him.

“Hey, c’mon, Hutch,” he said, “don’t give up, okay? We got this.”

Hutch rested his forehead against the wall beside Starsky’s face and closed his eyes. “I’m sorry,” he whispered.

“The only reason I thought of it was because you did,” Starsky swore. “I wouldn’t have made any connections, not a single one, if you hadn’t remembered it.”

Hutch could never forget what he witnessed on that videotape.

“Look. I can use it for a cushion,” Starsky said. “See what I’m doing?”

Hutch turned his head and looked into Starsky’s blue eyes—noticing that Starsky had bunched his shirt between his cheek and the wall—and instead of joining Hutch in his dismay, Starsky also beamed a sexy smile at him. “You did my face a favor,” Starsky noted. “Next, we figure out how my hard-on can take the drywall, okay?”

Hutch didn’t know how he felt—until Starsky wiggled his butt at him. The tease didn’t titillate Hutch so much as it convinced him that Starsky was still in the game, that he was playful and willing, that he hadn’t missed a beat—except the one Hutch had caused him. So he stepped behind Starsky, pulled Starsky’s hips further away from the wall to push him into slightly bending over, and then reached around him again, that time to unbutton and unzip his fly. “Be careful what you wish for,” Hutch said, summoning a wistful voice.

“If you only knew what I wish for—”

“I’d be fucking you by now?”

Starsky laughed. “If you think you’re man enough.”

“Daring me isn’t going to get you what you want any sooner,” Hutch reminded him. He slowly lowered Starsky’s jeans to the floor, stealing a gentle love bite to Starsky’s left buttock as he leaned over and helped Starsky step out of them—and hearing Starsky’s subsequent yelp. Hutch noticed again how good Starsky smelled. He really had hoped to play with Hutch in the tent that morning, having apparently dabbed cologne in more places than just behind his ears; he exuded an enticing and fresh scent over every inch of his skin.

Hutch straightened, removed the almond oil container from his sweatpants pocket, and popped open the cap. “Look at you,” he said, turning the bottle over and squeezing it, “being so good to me and praying for a romp outside, and I’m simply going to ‘fuck the cum out of you,’ as you like to say, right here in the bathroom.”

Starsky laughed again and was apparently about to say something when he moaned instead—having felt the oil suddenly drizzle over his back, and then Hutch’s warm fingers use it to soothingly moisturize him. “That feels good, Hutch.”

It did feel good. And it looked as appealing, too. Starsky’s hairless and darker skin, sans that soft patch of black hair in the small concave above his butt, was strong and muscled, and now glistening with oil in the late morning daylight. After he closed the bottle and returned it to his pocket, Hutch coated Starsky with the lubricant, slowly and sensually, a deliberate action that evolved into an unplanned massage of Starsky’s relaxed shoulders, strong biceps, and haired forearms.

They listened to each other’s deep and hesitant breathing as time slowed and their arousals matured. Hutch was especially turned on by the overall idea that Starsky was naked—and probably erect, too—and that he himself was dressed in comfortable sweatpants and a tee-shirt while his lover was completely exposed and relatively helpless, despite that it was pretend. All Starsky could do was wait for whatever Hutch would do; those things, and the feel of Starsky’s warm and forgiving flesh at his fingers, eased Hutch’s subconscious concerns. “Yes,” Hutch agreed in a whisper, “it does feel good.” He bent over Starsky to kiss along his spine to his neck, enjoying the oral sensations of taste and touch at his lips.

“I’ll suck whatever you put in my mouth,” Starsky promised him—as if that might get him uncuffed.

Hutch leaned around Starsky to put him to the test—one he passed—when he immediately sucked Hutch’s moist lips and warm tongue. The joining moved Hutch from behind Starsky to beside him and, while they kissed, to instinctively reach for Starsky’s penis, finding and devouring it with short, gentle strokes in his oiled hand. Starsky’s erection had apparently been waiting for him; it was already firm with desire, as evidenced by the soft and lengthy moans Starsky expressed during the sexy contact.

“That feels good, too, doesn’t it?” Hutch asked when he ended the kiss—knowing the answer. He squeezed more tightly to force a breathless, “Yes,” out of Starsky, and then followed the tease with another rhetorical question: “Do you think you might want me to suck it, too?”

“Oh, yeah,” Starsky begged him. He lowered his head to watch Hutch pump his penis with a generously lubricious hand, and then lengthen the strokes. “Oh, Hutch, you make my dick feel so good.”

They did that for each other, made each other feel good like that—and with an intensity they’d never experienced with other lovers. Even then, and without direct touch, Hutch’s penis felt pulses of pleasure wash over him purely from the visual of Starsky’s helplessness in his hands, from the feel of Starsky’s hardening shaft, from the sound of his accelerated breathing, and from that just-below-the-surface pulse beat of Starsky’s pounding heart.

“I could come now if you suck me,” Starsky said, sounding matter-of-fact, despite the deeply unconvincing breaths he drew between words. “Then I’ll suck you. You like getting sucked, don’t you, Hutch? You like that more than anything.”

Hutch completely let Starsky go to kneel on the floor between him and the wall; he set his butt against the hard surface behind him for support, and spent the next couple of minutes simply inhaling the musky male scent of Starsky’s groin, his stiffened penis and his fleshy sac, that nearly black patch of kinky hair, but not touching him, not obliging—not even answering him.

“Oh, c’mon,” Starsky said, “don’t do this to me. I thought you were going to suck me.”

“Maybe,” Hutch finally said, quietly, as if to no one who cared. He stalled for time by enjoying the familiar look of Starsky’s erection, its blood-gorged veins and wider girth, visibly broader than his own, not as long, but sizable in its own right, more than enough to fill his hand and mouth at once. When Hutch focused his attention on the end of its darker pink cap, the slit pointed directly at him as if to accuse him of malfeasance.

“Just a little lick then,” Starsky pleadingly said. “Could you do that much?”

Hutch lifted his head and looked right into Starsky’s beautiful blue eyes. “Hi there,” he said, as if noticing him for the first time. “How you doing?”

“Are you listening to me at all?”

The top of Starsky’s head was against the wall, cushioned by his shirt, and he gazed down at Hutch as if he were the one in command—except the delirium in his eyes proved otherwise.

“It’s hard to think,” Hutch said, returning his attention to Starsky’s erection, fascinated again by its closeup dark and darkening skin. Even without physical contact, Starsky’s arousal for him gave Hutch such immeasurable emotional and sexual pleasure that filled him with an even deeper desire for nothing and no one else.

“I’m not asking you to think,” Starsky argued, rotating his hips to solicit tactile contact. “I’m asking you to hear me.”

“Did you say something?”

“Suck me—you know, like you do.”

Hutch got the bottle out of his pocket, squeezed a few drops of the emollient onto the tips of his fingers, closed it, pocketed it, and gently rubbed oil along his lips—and taking his time for each action.

“Yeah, that’s nice,” Starsky said, watching him, and sounding excited. “Make yourself slippery for me.”

But Hutch was nowhere near the end of his tease. He cradled Starsky’s penis at its base with one oiled hand, coated the flattened top of its crown with the other, and then gently pushed the stiffened organ to Starsky’s haired belly, moving it from left to right so the slick and pleasing sensations would only deepen Starsky’s need for that elusive orgasm.

Starsky audibly panted, a rhythmic cadence of exhales interrupted only by an occasional cuss word. He obviously wanted more—and more different. “You have … such a … mean streak,” he was able to say, pressing his hips forward to get that erotically satisfying pleasure he really sought.

“I thought the point of this,” Hutch said musingly, fondling his own emerging erection through his sweatpants and to share what little he was offering his lover in the ensuing empathy, “is that I get to play on my terms.”

Starsky’s respiration was heavy, halting, and finally exhaling with dissatisfaction. “Yeah, okay,” he reluctantly acquiesced—and only because he had to—“but … I mean…”

“That’s what I thought,” Hutch said, mocking him. He let Starsky go and sat on the floor in front of him to keep Starsky at bay for as long as he could. “You smell good, though,” Hutch added, still close enough to drink in the aroma of cologne, almond oil, and sex rolled into one titillating scent.

“C’mon,” Starsky debated him, “why are you making me wait? I mean … the point is to … take me … like I am. You can do whatever you want to do to me, so do it.”

“I am doing what I want to do.”

“But … I mean … I don’t do this kind of thing to you. I do one thing, then another. I don’t make you wait for stuff.”

“I’m not sure you’re right about that, buddy.”

Starsky inched forward and touched Hutch’s cheek with the tip of his penis, rotating his hips in a further failed effort to get Hutch to open his mouth. “It’s not going to suck itself,” Starsky said, laughing, but sadly. “And you know you love to suck my dick.”

“Okay, so you’re right about that, Starsk. It is a beautiful dick—and I do love sucking it.”

“So, then, do it, will you? And then I’ll do you.”

With just his thumb and forefinger, Hutch pushed Starsky’s penis against his belly again, gently sliding it in the oiled contact from left to right. He settled against the wall as if he planned to be there a while, giving only that, simply to taunt Starsky, and pleasuring himself to keep his own erection satisfied. But he didn’t dare reach inside his sweats; an oiled hand, even one of his doing, might push him too far too soon.

A bead of clear seminal fluid emerged from the slit in Starsky’s crown, building on itself until it threatened to spill over onto the floor—had Hutch not caught it with his thumb. He then coated that sweet spot on the underside of Starsky’s erection with the lubricant, knowing he’d raised the bar in that isolated, but highly stimulating action. “Does that feel good, too, Starsk?” Hutch asked, more firmly pressing his thumb to the hypersensitive frenulum in sensual circular caresses, and looking up at Starsky’s face as if he didn’t know the answer.

But Starsky was lost in the quicksand of his own bliss, speechless, eyes tightly closed, an expression of sweet pain outlined his face, its dark brows, thick eyelashes, thin lips—parted just enough to suck in the oxygen he needed to remain standing, lest he hang from the wall.

How could Hutch possibly keep such a needy man waiting for more ‘stuff’? He let himself go, leaned forward to kiss Starsky’s sensitive head, the swollen one at the end of that desire-aching phallus between his legs, and then closed his lips around its smooth surface of nerve-pulsing skin, continued to stimulate Starsky’s frenulum with oil and pre-cum, that time using his tongue, and heard his own deep breaths and irrepressible moans rise from the pleasure it gave them both.

Hutch couldn’t help himself, either—not in that moment, anyway. He opened his mouth and allowed Starsky to impulsively push his penis into the tight wet warmth that invited him. Starsky’s careful, gentle strokes ratcheted up both their drives. They moaned together, listened to the rhythmic sounds of sucking, enjoyed the differing sensations equally. Hutch knew Starsky watched him in those orally copulating moments, handcuffed as he was above his head, but definitely needing to see his penis disappear and reappear from Hutch’s mouth; Starsky’s hiss and his accelerating thrusting stride were the clear-cut evidence.

Hutch only permitted Starsky a minute to enjoy himself—without ever giving him the accommodating, finishing hand. “Man, you’re damn delicious,” he said, licking his lips after he broke them apart—and panting in unison with Starsky for nearly half a minute. He then took his tee-shirt off over his head, having become aware of the sweat that seemed to have boiled up from inside him and broken out onto his skin. But before Starsky could beg for it, Hutch pushed off the wall, and fed on him again, that time stroking Starsky’s penis in a tight fist and a wet sucking mouth, both of which worked in glorious tandem—an unprecedented technique they had learned with each other and found most satisfying.

“Oh, Hutch … that’s so good … you do my dick good … if you … keep…”

Hutch knew the rest of Starsky’s sentence, despite that he didn’t hear it in words; it was the one he planned for. If he kept up the noisy, sucking, stroking of his lover’s swollen organ, Starsky was bound to ejaculate in a matter of seconds—so Hutch abruptly let him go again. He ignored the sincere cussing he heard, and pushed himself up the wall, using just his legs and his back to rise, and forcing Starsky off his head rest when he straightened, to kiss his lips and nurse his tongue instead.

Starsky may have been helpless in most respects, but he wasn’t acting alone, nor in isolation. Though he could do no more than drive or rotate his hips, he did make those efforts, pinning Hutch to the wall and riding Hutch’s erection through his sweatpants with his own.

“Whoa, there, boy,” Hutch said, pushing Starsky off him, and as if words alone would have altered Starsky’s intentions. “Let a guy get undressed first, will you?”

“You’re taking too long,” Starsky replied, accusingly. He huffed with frustration when Hutch moved out from under him and he was alone again with just a towel ring, a pair of handcuffs, and a wall. “Do you even see my dick?”

“Can’t miss it,” Hutch said, trying not to sound as amused as he felt. “I just played with it for a while—or didn’t you notice?”

“Then you know how hard it is.”

“I do.”

“So you’re just going to leave it hanging here like this?”

“I wouldn’t dream of it.”

“What next, then? Fuck me and pump me at the same time, that way you do, right?”

“There’s an idea.” But Hutch didn’t move.

“I come, you come,” Starsky explained, looking over his shoulder to make compelling eye contact with his partner. “You want that, don’t you?”

“Planning on it.”

“Well, how come you don’t want to feel good right this second?”

“I do feel good. I’m enjoying myself immensely. What’s hard to understand about that?”

“Well, can I see if it’s hard?”

Hutch loosened the drawstring on his sweatpants and then lowered them to his knees, ignoring that Starsky had misread his comment. He swung his fully erect penis in the cooling air about a foot from Starsky’s leg, as if to show it off, and laughed inwardly when he realized he mimicked Starsky’s playful behavior in times past. That boy had always been a bad influence, Hutch mused. “He’s dancing on the boulevard,” he said, referencing his engorged phallus, so swollen it had completely emerged from its foreskin without any help from either of their hands.

“Put some oil on it,” Starsky suggested. “Then fuck me, okay?”

Hutch reached into his pocket, got the bottle, and then stepped out of his sweats altogether, kicking them aside to keep from tripping on them. He poured a generous amount of oil into his palm, closed the bottle’s lid, and tossed it into the nearby sink. He then stepped behind Starsky, spread Starsky’s buttocks with one hand, and drizzled some of the lubricant into its crevice with the other, keeping most of the oil in his closed fist. “I gotta say this again, Starsk,” he said, lovingly, “you have the most beautiful ass ever made.”

Starsky had gone back to hanging his head against the wall; no doubt he was disappointed when Hutch didn’t play along exactly the way he wanted him to, but he was no less excited, and obviously quite ready to be penetrated and thrust into—an ecstasy that would end with both of their ejaculations. Or, at least, Starsky hoped as much. “I can’t wait until we come, Hutch, so hurry.”

Hutch hadn’t been facetious. “You’ve really got a gorgeous ass,” he said, admiring its muscled and fleshy appearance, its perfect curves and proportions, its warmth and its inviting sexiness, the subtle way it blended into Starsky’s back and legs. “Everything about it is … so … beautiful: the way it looks…” He bent over and kissed both cheeks, inhaling their romantic aroma of cologne and yielding skin. “…the way it smells…” He used the thumb of his closed fist and the fingers of his other hand to expose Starsky to cool air and closer examination. The view of Starsky’s darker pink entry, coupled with the hairless surface of his perineum and the reddened textured skin of his snug-to-his-legs scrotum, just about took Hutch’s breath away. And, of course, Hutch had to put his mouth—his lips and his tongue—on every part of it. “The way it tastes,” he said between licking kisses.

“You … tease … me … so … bad,” Starsky said, moaning with the aching pain and the indirect pleasures he felt at once. He rattled the handcuffs, cussed under his vacillating breath, but still couldn’t help his impulsive words. “That feels good. I love … the way … you lick me … all over … like that.”

Whatever Starsky verbally asked for, Hutch stopped giving him—just to keep Starsky in edgy anticipation. He pressed his pelvis and his erection into Starsky’s buttocks instead, and enjoyed the feel of the slippery glide against its underside as it rode between his oiled cheeks from end-to-tip.

“Go inside me,” Starsky said. “I’m relaxed for you.”

“I’ll get there,” Hutch promised. He reached around Starsky to swallow Starsky’s shaft with the oil he’d kept in his fist so they could both enjoy the sensations.

“Oh, Hutch…”

“Oh, Starsky,” Hutch said in Starsky’s ear, playfully mocking his partner’s helpless delirium, lightly laughing, and breathing heavily, as if it were Starsky who had command of him. “You make me so hard.” That part was authentic. Hutch lowered and lifted his hips to lengthen his strokes along Starsky’s backside, promising good things for his partner’s building climax, mostly to bait Starsky—but Hutch was fairly sure, as his own orgasm slowly developed, that he only succeeded in tantalizing and tormenting himself. The feel of Starsky’s hardened meat in his hand, slipping in and out of his squeezing massages, and his own shaft between the lubricated cheeks of Starsky’s buttocks, and Hutch wasn’t certain who baited who in those minutes.

He kissed Starsky’s neck, pressed his nude and perspiring body to his partner’s, the whole of his groin to Starsky’s butt, his bared chest to Starsky’s back, his slightly bent knees just inside Starsky’s supporting stance—to hold them open—and he couldn’t help but hear the pleasing whimpering of Starsky’s heavy, panting, moaning breaths, and the echoes of his own murmurs and labored gulps for air. Who was the most helpless in those rising moments of sheer ecstasy and excitement? Hutch could no longer say.

He let Starsky slip from his hand—not intentionally, not with any purpose or ill will, not even consciously; maybe the instinct to hold onto what he felt he may have been losing forced him into a different grip: his own strength to endure. He had to step forward—once, and then again—losing balance perhaps, catching what threatened to escape him: Starsky’s hips breaking away. But Hutch was clearly conscious of what he wanted; he guided his penis to its intended target and pushed forward into the warm, tight opening—except it eluded him, not by much, but by enough.

“Starsk.”

“Hutch…”

Hutch took half a step forward to close the gap he felt. “Starsky.”

“I’m gonna come, Hutch.”

Only then did Hutch realize what had been transpiring without him. “Please, don’t, Starsk,” Hutch implored him, fearing it was too late even before he said it. Starsky had been riding the closest object he could reach; he’d been enjoying that brief minute or two—when he wasn’t in Hutch’s stroking hand—to be up against the rough, but slickened surface of drywall. Hutch tugged Starsky’s hips again, more forcefully, and succeeded in abruptly breaking Starsky’s contact with the wall. “Don’t come yet,” he ordered—as if he had any power to stop an ejaculation once it began.

“Fuck,” Starsky hissed, and then angrily howled. “Dammit, Hutch. I just needed a few more seconds.”

“I need a few more minutes,” Hutch replied, holding firmly to his partner, and not allowing his pelvis anywhere near the wall. But, despite how much he loved tormenting Starsky, he also didn’t want to deprive him when he was that close to his climax; Hutch had had his teasing fun. It was time to be serious.

He found the coveted entry he sought; Starsky’s entire backside was slippery with oil, felt supplely warm, wantingly relaxed, and seemed to push Hutch toward the only tightness he could feel, that accommodating passage into his lover’s body—by an instinctively compelling invitation he couldn’t thwart or refuse. It never ceased to amaze him how comfortably he could slide into Starsky, how receptive and eager Starsky was for entry, a point proven by Starsky’s low and lengthy moan of acceptance. Hutch drove in as deeply as he could; the only thing to stop him from further penetration was the rest of his body. Only once did he have to shift his feet and further bend his knees to find the most resistance-free angle.

“You fill me up,” Starsky said, heavy in breath. “So … big … and …” He couldn’t finish his sentence.

“Hard?” Hutch asked, as he began the pleasurable cadence of stroking penetrations. But Starsky was too far gone to answer him. It mattered not. Hutch was eventually lost in the mesmerizing feel of his slow-paced deep entries and his nearly full withdrawals. He held Starsky’s legs apart with his thighs, bent over and against him, breathed and moaned in his ear, their sweating skin pressed tightly to the other’s, their union much closer than just physical.

Hutch reached around Starsky again, took his meaty hard-on in hand, was impressed by how much fuller and more rigid he’d become, and only slightly increased the pace of his strokes, if not for Starsky’s satisfaction, at least for his own. On a manual downstroke to Starsky’s penis, Hutch delivered a deep penile penetration into his anus; on the upstroke, he nearly withdrew—creating a hypnotizing and teasing rhythm for them both.

“Oh, that’s so nice,” Starsky said after a couple of minutes of sheer bliss. “I love … oh … the way you fuck me. It’s always so … you’re just … it feels … it’s the best, Hutch.”

It didn’t matter that Starsky couldn’t assimilate his thoughts enough to verbalize them in complete sentences; they both became completely immersed in the sensations of their bodies, separately and together, until the emotional and sensual overtook their abilities to think or speak. Grunts, moans, soft laughs, communications without words, filled the tiled bathroom with a resonating sound. Skin-to-skin slaps, gentle in nature, and the occasional jangle of handcuffs against the ring hardware, added to the audible ambiance.

Hutch’s loving thrusts left him spellbound. He kissed Starsky’s ear, his cheek, the warmth of his perspiring neck, inhaled his familiar scent, his maleness and his manliness, continued to pump Starsky’s shaft with a tightening and slickened fist, and began to feel overwhelmed by the building climax within his own penis. The only sensation he missed, if he missed anything, and mostly subconsciously, was the occasional and arousing fondling Starsky would give both their sacs during intercourse, an action Starsky couldn’t make under the immediate circumstances.

“Hutch, I’m comin’…” Starsky suddenly warned him, snapping Hutch out of his trance; Starsky’s ejaculation seemed to have arrived so quickly a second time. “I’m … here I come, Hutch…” Before Hutch could even hope to change that direction, Starsky erupted in familiar wails of orgasmic bliss—and there’d be no stopping it. But Hutch wanted to at least see it, to visually feed off it, to witness what he had, at least in part, enabled, and use it to spur his own orgasm. Even that was too late; instead, he gave Starsky a lengthy, ending squeeze—holding onto Starsky’s penis while it emptied onto the floor, delivering semen as well into Hutch’s hand, perhaps onto the wall—and covered Starsky’s back with tender kisses amid several soft “I love you”s.

“Oh, man, that feels so fucking good,” Starsky said when he rolled onto the downside of his orgasm. When the ‘good’ began to fade, he laughed impulsively. “Holy shit, Hutch,” he said, but with no follow-up.

Still joined in a penetration, Hutch pushed Starsky to the wall and relaxed against him, his face to the side of Starsky’s sweat-drenched neck. Hutch closed his eyes, panted with his partner, listened to his subsiding noises—all except his heavy breathing—and felt Starsky’s pounding heart inside both their chests.

Handcuffs momentarily rattled against the towel ring.

After a minute, as they were recovering from the intensity of Starsky’s ejaculation, Starsky seemed to have found his other senses. “Did you come?” he sleepily wondered. That he asked such a question made Hutch realize his partner was still tuned into his needs—and he appreciated the thoughtfulness.

“No,” Hutch said. He hadn’t completely lost his erection, but he had purposefully abandoned his desire.

“Well, go ahead and finish,” Starsky encouraged him, laughing while he clenched his sphincter for added effect.

“I can’t,” Hutch said, despite the pleasure he’d gotten from that unexpected squeeze. Taking Starsky under those conditions—handcuffed to the wall, still wearing his shirt, and while he no longer had an erection—wasn’t something Hutch was emotionally capable of doing. Hutch knew that only then. “I’m sorry, Starsk. I just can’t.”

“Are you okay?”

“Yeah, buddy,” Hutch replied sincerely, pushing off the wall and carefully easing out of his partner. “I’m okay. Really, I am.” He did like the look of his glistening shaft as it emerged from inside Starsky, still dressed in blood-gorged veins and showing off its nearly full potential.

“Then let me out of these things,” Starsky insisted, impatiently.

Hutch picked up his sweatpants, despite how weak and out of breath he was, got the key from one of its pockets, and unlocked the handcuffs, after which Starsky pulled the cuffs free of the towel ring and locked the empty bracelet to his other wrist, so that he wore the handcuffs, much the way he often made Hutch wear them—just to know they were there.

Hutch was about to apologize again—at least to explain himself—but Starsky planted his lips on Hutch’s mouth and prevented his words. They kissed, feverishly and passionately, tongues and nibbles, reciprocating and forceful, arousing Hutch again. He felt Starsky’s hand clasp his still-rigid penis, stroke it gently and with determination, forcing it completely out of its foreskin again, and then Starsky broke away to kneel on the towel. “Don’t,” Hutch quickly said, grabbing Starsky’s chin before he could reach the floor, successfully intercepting him.

It hadn’t occurred to Hutch that their sex would end just because Starsky had enjoyed an orgasm; the giver in his man was still present. If asked in that moment what filled Hutch with an enormous gratitude, he couldn’t say—mainly because logic and words escaped him while so much blood remained in his penis. But, instinctively, it was Starsky’s impulsiveness, his generosity, his sensuality and sexuality, his adventurous sportsmanship, his need and his want and his intention-filled endeavors to push Hutch into yet undiscovered emotions and behaviors, all serving to win over Hutch’s embarrassments, and leave him with pure, unadulterated animalism. But, alas, even those were gifts Hutch couldn’t accept at that moment.

Starsky bent over to pick up the towel. His erection was obviously fading, but his skin continued to glisten, and he was still gorgeous and sexy and beautiful to behold. When he straightened, he made mesmerizing eye contact with Hutch, his blue eyes sparkling with affection and love. He appeared exhausted: mussed hair, beads of perspiration visible on his forehead, and seeming drained of energy. “That was amazing,” he said breathlessly about the sex he’d experienced. He then grabbed Hutch’s forearm and turned them toward the shower stall. “Let’s get you washed up,” he said, opening the glass door and pushing Hutch into the tiled walk-in ahead of him. “That way, you won’t have any other reasons not to have an amazing, good cum yourself.”

What turned Hutch on more than anything? Not handcuffs. Not bondage. Not even, in the broader scheme of things, sex itself. What turned him on the most was Starsky’s giving generosity, despite his already spent desire, and his unspoken understanding and appreciation for Hutch’s inhibitions, sensitivities, and needs. No man on Earth, no one anywhere, knew Ken Hutchinson to the core the way David Starsky did—and loved him because of it.

* * *

JUST SOME MORE EVERYDAY PILLOW TALK

Starsky was glad Hutch had chosen the bed to receive his reciprocated orgasm. Had Hutch chosen the chair, they wouldn’t have been given the gift of simply collapsing into each other’s arms when the sex was over; Starsky would have ended up on the carpeted floor and Hutch would have fallen asleep in a sitting position. But Hutch chose the bed.

“Here in the shower,” Starsky had asked him, “or on the bed … or?”

“The bed is good,” Hutch had replied.

“So, not the chair?” The position for fellatio had a better angle for Starsky if Hutch had chosen the chair, but he was relieved Hutch’s choice had been a mattress; he simply wanted to make certain Hutch was sure of his decision.

“The bed is fine,” Hutch reiterated.

“And do you want to sit on the bed … against the headboard, I mean? Or do you want to be on your knees?”

Hutch scratched his head. “On my knees?”

“At the edge. Down in front and hugging a pillow. I’ll do it from behind—that way, I can lick and kiss all your parts the way you did mine.” He slapped Hutch’s bared butt when the boy walked past him after choosing the kneeling position at the edge of the mattress. “Good thinking,” he told Hutch. “Last question: you want me to tease you for a while—or do you want me to just do it the way I usually do—given how long you’ve been on now—but take my time?”

“Do it your way,” Hutch had told him.

Starsky took his time.

They lay in each other’s arms afterward, sprawled across the sheeted mattress, panting heavily, laughing, naked and exhausted, on their backs staring at the ceiling, not seeing. And then they slept for an undisturbed quarter hour while Hutch held Starsky’s forearm tucked between them. Starsky was the first to rouse, as always seemed to be the case. He rolled into Hutch, wrapped Hutch’s calves under his leg, propped his temple in his palm, and poked Hutch’s belly. When that didn’t get a reaction from his partner, Starsky gently pinched one of Hutch’s nipples.

A hand immediately swatted his away. “Touch me again and I’ll punch you in the head,” was Hutch’s non-serious threat. He opened his eyes and looked at Starsky, feigning contempt. “You can never not be an asshole after sex, can ya?”

Starsky ignored the dig and smiled at him. “You tasted good, too, by the way.”

“You’ll eat anything.”

“Not anymore. Besides, I’m not the only one around here who eats cum.”

“I wasn’t judging.”

“Just stating a fact, hm?”

Hutch affectionately stroked Starsky’s hair; his expression and his voice softened. “Thank you for that amazing experience.”

“The one here on the bed? Or the one in the bathroom?”

“All of it.”

“Even what we did in the bathroom?”

“Especially.”

“Seriously?”

Hutch squinted at him. “Seriously.” He stroked Starsky’s cheek and then dropped his hand to his chest. “What impression did you get that I didn’t enjoy the bathroom experience?”

Starsky shrugged. The only impression he’d gotten was the most obvious one: that Hutch couldn’t produce his own orgasm while Starsky was bolted to the wall. Had Hutch forgotten that part? “Well, I mean—”

“You were done,” Hutch explained, having then read Starsky’s mind. “I did what I said I’d do—and I think I did it well.” He smiled as if Starsky owed him a confirmation on that claim.

“Yeah,” Starsky agreed, “you fucked the cum out of me; job well done. But, I mean, if you couldn’t come for yourself, how’d you feel about the rest of it?”

“Loved it.”

“All of it? I’m saying … did you love all of what we did, no bad feelings?”

“No bad feelings,” Hutch promised.

“So you didn’t mind that I was in bondage.”

“So long as you were still turned on, I loved that you were—because it was obvious you were getting off on it.”

“Okay, but did you get off on me being in bondage?”

“Because you did, I did.”

“You were getting off on my getting off, but not because I was tied up. Is that what you’re saying?”

Hutch paused them by looking toward the ceiling for a minute to give the question serious soul-searching. He made eye contact again. “I don’t think I can separate the two things, Starsky. If you weren’t enjoying being held like that, I couldn’t have enjoyed it, either.”

“So that’s how we’re different.”

“How do you figure?”

“Well, that first time I took you in bondage, remember? I mean, you agreed to it, but you weren’t all that thrilled about it. You did it because you knew I wanted to do it to you. It was some time before you liked it—and that was, I think, that you liked what I did to you while I had you tied up, not because you were tied up.”

“You’re saying that the act of bondage, by itself, is exciting for you.”

“If that’s okay.”

“Whatever turns you on, baby,” Hutch said with a light laugh, stroking Starsky’s hair again, and seeming to melt. “All I know is this: sex with you is the best I’ve ever had, the most rewarding, the purest and most honest, and that I don’t have to beg for it is a dream I never knew was possible. I’ve said this before and I’ll say it again: unless there’s pain involved, anything goes when it comes to you. I think we’re of the same mind on that.”

Starsky loved the feel of Hutch’s fingers in his hair, and the look of love that sparkled in Hutch’s crystal blue eyes. He felt the warmth between them, their cooling skin where it touched, but also that proverbial connection that warmed Starsky’s heart, made him feel accepted and safe, desired and equal, despite their differences, or maybe because of them. He pulled Hutch’s hand to his mouth, closed his eyes, and tenderly kissed the inside of his palm, appreciating its size and strength in his own, breathing deeply, inhaling Hutch’s familiar scent, one that belonged to him. When he opened his eyes, they shared an unspoken dialogue that expressed a rare kind of love that could not be transcribed into words.

“I’d do anything for you,” Starsky eventually said, answering what he heard in Hutch’s silence.

“Ditto.”

Starsky laughed, knowing Hutch’s one-word reply was meant to break them out of their sentimental seriousness. “Yeah, I know. I’m the one who doesn’t like mush, and here I go … getting weird on you.” He ruffled Hutch’s already mussed hair. “So you wanna do that again sometime? chain me to the wall and fuck me, I mean? Or to a bed … or to … whatever?”

“In a heartbeat.”

“Well, I got carried away because it was new, you know? Maybe next time I can last long enough so you can come first.”

“I’m game.”

“But, for the record, it’s not all my fault.”

“I wasn’t blaming you.”

“I didn’t say you were. I’m saying that coming so soon wasn’t all my … doing. You pack a powerful fuck.”

“Did I hurt you?”

“Not like that. You have this way … it’s just who you are. Maybe I’ve told you this already—”

“You probably have by now,” Hutch said with a shy smile, “but tell me again. I’m sure you’ve bruised my ego since then, so let’s hear it.”

“Well, first, you see, is the size of you. I mean, if I’m bigger than average and you’re bigger than me, we agree you’re huge.”

“So you’ve said, but do say more.”

“Not porn huge,” Starsky clarified, loving the look of mixed emotions in Hutch’s blue eyes when he wouldn’t give Hutch everything he hoped to hear, “but by everyday standards—”

“Okay. So, the size of me packs a powerful—”

“In that I feel you go in a long way—and then I feel you come out a long way. Right? That makes sense, doesn’t it? You’ve got more to go in—”

“Therefore, more to come out.”

“—so you fill me up damn good. There’s no missing that there’s a huge dick in my ass.”

“I don’t miss when there’s one in mine.”

“Well, there’d be a lot more dick in yours if it was your dick we were using.”

Hutch laughed. “Why are you bringing all of this up again? Not that I mind, mind you, but make your point.”

“That I have a different experience than you have.”

“Only slightly. Only in the difference of our sizes.”

“Here’s the part where it’s not slightly: because you got a bigger dick, you go in and come out that extra bit of difference. Can we agree on that?”

“Okay.”

“But add to that the part that’s you.”

“There’s a part of my dick that isn’t me?”

Starsky laughed. “Will you let me finish? Maybe I’ve never told you this particular thing before.”

“I’ll bet you have, but tell me again.”

“The part that’s you … the part of this comparison … is the part that can only come from you. When you fuck, you don’t just fuck.”

“So you’ve said.”

“You’re not in there to see how hard and how long and how deep you can bang me.”

“I wouldn’t enjoy it for that reason.”

“Right. The person who is you has got this slow and steady rhythm…” He stared off for a moment to reflect on Hutch’s method or his technique or just his nature, looked back at Hutch, who was being remarkably patient with Starsky’s elaborate retelling of praise he’d more than once told Hutch, and said, not ashamedly, “You make love to me—as corny as that sounds.”

Hutch smiled, warmly that time. “It’s not corny. And I do love you. You know I do.”

“Yeah. I know you do. You fuck me like you do, is what I mean.”

“I’m glad you still think so.”

“Can’t not. So get what I’m saying overall, okay? When you fuck me like that—all slow and steady and full of love for me—and you do it using that huge dick that fills me up real deep and then back again, over and over… and then add to that how you use your hand on my dick at the same time—down when you’re going in, up when you’re backing out—I mean, goddamnit, Hutch, that’s some awesome sex-making, and I just gotta tell you about it again. Do you understand?”

“I understand that you getting carried away was my fault.”

Starsky laughed, knowing he was being razzed, and pinched Hutch’s nipple more firmly than he had the first time, causing Hutch to wince and slap his hand again. “I know you’re all embarrassed,” Starsky said, appreciating Hutch’s sensitivities in that regard, “so I’ll let this go for now because I’m sure I’ll tell you about it again.”

“I’m sure I’ll love hearing about it again.”

“So, down the road, when you tie me up, I’ll try not to get ahead of myself like I did today.”

“But if you do, you won’t mind if we finish how we ended it this morning—I do love what you do to me while I’m on my knees—and no hard feelings on your part, either?”

“None.”

Hutch appeared relieved then, sleepy eyed, and content. “You’re good to me, Starsk,” he said with sincerity, combing Starsky’s hair again with his fingers. “That was some pretty hot sex I had at the edge of the bed. You take care of me in ways no one else has or could—and leave me wanting for nothing. You know how much I love you?”

“How much?” Starsky wondered, excited to hear a new measurement of Hutch’s fondness for him.

“Enough to make you spaghetti tonight.”

Starsky rolled his eyes. “I thought you were going to say something else.”

“My question was rhetorical.”

“Whatever that means.”

“That I love you more than I have the words to say.”

* * *