EXCERPT FROM "Barefoot Storm"

“Let me be frank with you, Trent,” I say.

“Please do. I won’t accept you to speak to me in any other way.”

Our faces are only inches apart, and our heartbeats are intense with beats. I can feel his breath against my eyes. “I can’t remember the last time I had a man kiss me like that.”

“Like what?”

“Exactly what you just accomplished with my lips. Your kiss was pretty powerful.”

He jokes again, “Imagine what I do with a blowjob.”

“I can’t even think about that,” I confess, and find his ankle again with the baggie of ice.

“Your wait will be worth it.”

“Who says I’m going to wait for it?” I ask, holding the baggie of ice over his damaged ankle. “What are you going to do, fight me off?”

He bats his pretty blue eyes at me and asks, “You think I can take you?”

“I sort of like to be wrestled to the ground and taken advantage of, if you want to know the truth.”

“I wrestled in high school. That’s when I knew I was gay. Just the touch of another male jock drove me mad. It actually caused me to quit wrestling because all I wanted to do was pin my competitors to one of those gym mats and have their skin press against my skin. Boners got in the way, of course, and that was why I really had to quit.”

“I’m not very athletic,” I admit. “I’m more of an office guy and businessman, if you know what I mean. Pushing papers is my craft.”

“I would do you over a copier in a second,” he says, laugh, shocking me.

Our conversation tones down a bit once my career is mentioned. Boring details about my corporation are discussed. A whole lot of blah, blah, blah stuff. Thank God Trent brings up his photography, which saves the day from my rambling business particulars. “I started taking pictures when I was twelve. The world is sometimes more beautiful behind the lens of a camera.”

“You think?” I ask, surprised to hear this.

“I do.” He nods, confident regarding what he says. “Humans are less predictable when caught in a picture. Physical positions and appearances become frozen. A picture of time can be snapped with one mental click or snap and emotion is conceived for the viewer thereafter.”

I think about this for a second and say, “Friendship, care, sadness, tragedy, love, and lust. I’m sure you find all of these emotions in you work.”

“Lust,” he repeats, perhaps caught off guard by my response. He provides a sharp look with me that is mixed with question. “How so?”

I say rather forwardly, unable to control my behavior, perhaps excited by the young man, “The intoxicated glimmer in your eyes. My swollen dick. The way I can’t keep my eyes off of your mouth when it moves.”

“So you have lust for me?”

I nodded, confirming my intimate feelings for him. “I’d be lying if I told you no.”

“You’re naughty,” he says. “I really like naughty guys.”

“Do you like to kiss naughty guys?” I ask, seem to rush things regarding my personal time with the lifeguard. I should pace myself though, since I hardly know him, but tell myself that I want to understand him better, and maybe get him out of his clothes and in bed, or over the sofa.

“I do,” he confesses.

“Then why don’t you kiss me again?” I ask, climb over his body, careful not to touch his twisted ankle, and fall onto his lips with mine, again.