I moaned softly as the dark-haired man ran his tongue over my nipple and then over it again, chills running down my spine at the feel of the hard, round metal stud rubbing on my nipple. I was thinking hard, although having a hard time organizing my thoughtsâSteve was his name, I thought.
I had met up with him in the bar downstairs. I don't know what had drawn me here. I'd carried the card for the tattoo parlor with the handwritten address of the bar downstairs around with me for nearly a week before I'd come here. It was just general curiosity nagging at me. Once in the bar, when I saw him again, it was the stud in his tongue that won me overâthat had me simply getting up from the bar stool and following him up the stairs at the back of the dark, smoke- and men-filled room. This was something I'd never done before. Still curious, I also felt the danger and arousal of it.
* * * *
It had been a busy Saturday afternoon at the airport when I first saw himâbusy enough that he was mostly a blur in my memory other than that nagging curiosity he surfaced at the back of my mind. I was working security, and Fred Stringfellow, Wanda Miller, and I were on the metal-detection wands. If someone set the tunnel machine off, they were handed off to us and we'd run the wand over the passenger and make sure they weren't packing anything we didn't want on a plane.
This young, dark-complexioned guy wearing a sports jacket over a clean, white polo shirt and well-pressed khakis, his head covered with a reversed baseball cap, set the tunnel machine off like the 4th of July fireworks on the Hudson, and Fred and I took him aside.
"Sorry," I said as I waved the wand down his chest to his thighs and heard the counter go off like a swarm of angry locusts. "I'm afraid you'll have to go over to that booth over there, we'll have to check this out more closely."
"No problem," he said to me, with a big smile. "I'd be happy to go into the booth with you and show you what I got," he said.
I let that slide, although I reddened up a bit. I was sure he couldn't tell just like that that I liked menâalthough he looked like a great specimen of one. The passengers were usually too nervous to wisecrack like that. This was one cool customer.
Fred cut in at that point. I don't think he heard what the guy had saidâbut another man had set off the tunnel machine and one of us had to see to that. "I'll take this guy," Fred said. "You can get that one."
When Fred and the passenger came out of the booth, the passenger was still smiling a secret smile, but Fred looked a little flustered.
The guy went on to the bin at the end of the bag security belt, and I saw him take out his wallet and a pen and scribble something on a card. And then he was at my elbow, smiling, and he handed me the card.
"If you want to know what the other guy found out, go to this bar," he said. "I've written the address on the back of this card. I would have rather shown you than him. You're hot. I'll be back in town on Tuesday." And then he laughed and walked off.
And we were so busy afterward that I forgot to say anything to Fred about it. But the card burned a hole in my pocket for the rest of the week, and the more I felt it when I put my hand in my pocket, the more curious I became. Fred had gone off on vacation after that work shift, so I couldn't ask him. The address was in a part of town I'd never been to. And I meant to go down there one of these nights anyway. I'd heard it was a good area to cruise in, although I hadn't done a whole lot of that. And it came Friday night and I was bored and didn't have anything better to do.
* * * *
It was the first thing I noticed about him when he moved into the stool next to me at the bar. His self-assurance. He stubbed a cigarette out in an ashtray in front of me before ordering a beer over his shoulder from the barkeep and then turned sideways toward me. One hand went to the back of my barstool, the heel of his hand warm against my tailbone. The forearm of his other arm laid across the rim of the bar between me and my drink, and he was leaning in toward me.
"I see you kept the card. Haven't seen you in here before," he said to me. It was the guy from the airport who had given me the card with the address of this bar on the back. He opened his mouth in a friendly smile. It was a nice smile. He was a leather kind of guy, but he didn't look too rough. He had a full head of dark hair with a tendril of curl hanging down over what appeared, in this light, to be a violet eye. The lustrously dark hair was mostly on one side; the other side was cut short in a buzz cut and when he turned his head I could see that he had two initials, a capital B and D, shaved into the side of his head. I hadn't seen this at the airport, but he'd had it covered with a baseball cap there.
"Haven't been in here before," I said.
"Lookin' for some action?" he asked. I let my gaze float down from his well-tanned face to take in how he filled out the cut-off athletic T he was wearingâwhich was quite well. He swelled and bulged where he should if he was spending quality time working his body, and he V'd down to a trim waist with armor-plate-like abs. There was a metal ring in the navel I saw peeking out below the hem of the cut-off T.
"Yeah, maybe," I answered. "But maybe just curious. I'd wanted to check out this part of town. This looked like a good bar."
"It's a good place. A good place to get your itch scratched."
As he talked, I could see that something was going on with his mouth. A flash of a reflection off something. And then when he brought his beer around to take a swig, I saw that it was a gold bead he had pierced in his tongue. I noticed then that he had small rings pierced elsewhere on his face tooâan eyebrow ring and then two in one earlobeâin all three cases, it was on the side where he had the buzz cut. It almost seemed like he was two people. A punker on one side and the captain of the college football team on the other.
"You've got a pierced tongue," I said, almost involuntarily, an observation I half thought I'd made in silence to myself, but he laughed and followed up on that, so I must have said it out loud.
"Yep. That defines me. It's what I do. It's sexy. I believe it's what every man secretly wantsâwhat every man should have."
"I didn't notice those . . . the tongue and the ears . . . at the airport."
"Ah, so you do remember me," he said with a little laugh. His smile conveyed that he'd scored a point. It really was his invitation that had brought me here. "I take them out when I fly. Having hardware like that is a sure invitation to security scrutiny. As it was I didn't strip down enough."
I was going to say something to that, but wasn't quick enough in deciding what to say, and he went on. "Your mug is dry. Can I buy you a beer?"
"Yes, I guess so," I said.
That must have been some sort of code, some sort of signal in this bar, because he smiled, and when the barkeep delivered the beer, the guy moved his hand up under the hem of my T-shirt and palmed my lower back. His hand was warm to the touch, and I felt myself getting into the mood.
"Those must hurt, though. I can't imagine eating with a stud like that."
"What, can't imagine being eaten with a stud like that?" he asked in mock horror. And when I reddened up, he said, "That can be easily fixed. And no one has ever said it hurt. Everyone's liked it . . . a lot."
I covered the embarrassment of the moment by taking a deep drink of beer.
"My name is Steve," he said.
"Oh, I thought it was something like Billy or Butch," I said, coming up for air from my beer.
He turned the punk side of his head toward me and said, "Oh this? These ain't my initials. These define me too. Know what they stand for?"
"No," I said, with a smile. "Tell me."
"Well I'll give you a hint. The
B
is for big. I could show you what the
D