After Hours Muscle in the Portland Sauna

The rain had been hammering Southeast Hawthorne since noon, and by the time I flipped the closed sign at Iron and Oak, the street was a black mirror under the sodium lights. I was thirty-four, thick through the shoulders from college wrestling and the years after spent spotting strangers under a loaded bar, and I wanted the lights off. Reed Hale was still on the flat bench in the back bay, shirtless, chalk pale on his palms. He was a carpenter, thirty-six, with a heavy chest and forearms corded from framing houses out in St. Johns. Sweat cut a dark line between his pecs and vanished into the waistband of his gray shorts.

He racked the bar and sat up, chest heaving, and looked at me like the set had only been an excuse.

- You locking up?

- Supposed to. You got somewhere to be?

- Truck's out front and the rain is mean. Sauna still hot?

- I can leave it on. Nobody else is coming back tonight.

- Then forget the spot, Cole. I've watched you for three weeks. I didn't stay for the weights.

Up close he smelled like cedar shavings and clean sweat, and the heat off his skin reached me before I could think of a reason to step back. His stomach was ridged and shining, nipples dark against the flush from the set, and the thick shape of his cock was already plain under the cotton. I walked to the front, threw the deadbolt, and killed the overheads. The gym dropped into the red glow of the exit sign. Rubber squeaked under my sneakers as I led him past the racks to the cedar box. I ladled water over the rocks. Steam climbed and bit the inside of my nose.

He hooked his thumbs in his shorts and shoved them down. Nothing underneath. His cock swung out heavy and thick, the head flushed dark and already wet at the slit, and my mouth went dry looking at it. I stripped my tank and joggers and stood in the wet heat, harder than I had been since spring, while his eyes dragged down my chest, my stomach, the curve of my cock. He stepped in and set a rough palm flat on my sternum, pushing until my shoulders met the hot cedar. The wood stung. His mouth found mine, salt and heat, tongue pushing deep, a low sound in his throat that I felt against my lips. His other hand wrapped my cock and stroked slow, thumb smearing the slick at the tip, grip tight the way a man grips when he knows exactly what he is holding.

I got my hands on him everywhere I could reach. His ass was dense muscle, flexing when I pulled him in so our cocks dragged together, hot and slick, the friction mean and perfect. I turned him and pressed his chest to the bench slat, then dropped to my knees on the damp floor. Steam made every line of him glisten. I spread him with both thumbs and put my mouth on him, licking a slow stripe over his hole, tasting salt and skin, feeling the muscle jump under my tongue. I worked him open until he was rocking back against my face, then slid a finger in beside my tongue, then two, crooking until his thighs shook and his cock dripped onto the cedar. He reached back, caught a fistful of my hair, and held me there, grinding, silent except for the rough pull of his breath.

I stood, spit-slick hand stroking my cock, and lined the head up against him. He bore down and opened, taking me in a slow tight slide that punched the air out of my chest. Heat everywhere, inside him and packed around us, sweat running off my stomach onto the small of his back. I sank to the root and stayed, feeling him clench, feeling the thick muscle of his back jump under my palms. Then I fucked him. Long strokes first, pulling almost out so I could watch my cock disappear into that gripping heat, then harder, hips snapping, the wet sound of it loud in the little box. His hands braced on the wall. Every thrust shoved a broken grunt out of him and drove me deeper. I reached under and found his cock, iron-hard and dripping, and stroked him in the same rhythm, fist tight, thumb rolling the head on every upstroke.

He came first. I felt it start in the hard rhythmic clamp of his ass around me, then his cock kicked in my fist and he spilled over my knuckles and the bench, thick pulses I milked through while I kept driving into him. The sight of it, the way he pushed back to take every inch, broke whatever I had left. I buried myself and came hard, hips jerking, flooding him in hot spurts while steam curled off our skin and the rocks hissed. My forehead dropped between his shoulder blades. His heart hammered under my mouth. I stayed inside him until the aftershocks faded and my cock softened enough to slip free, a slow wet drag that made both of us shudder.

We didn't dress. The shower beside the sauna was still warm, and I walked him under the spray with my hands on his hips. Water sheeted over the heavy planes of his chest, down the grooves of his stomach, over his spent cock. I soaped his back and his ass, gentle over the tender place I had just been, and he leaned into the tile and let me. When I turned him and kissed him under the water it was slower, mouths open, his palms sliding up my ribs. My cock stirred against his thigh. His cock thickened against mine. Rain still beat the Hawthorne pavement, the gym stayed locked, and neither of us reached for a towel.