Cedar Dock Heat After Dark

The lake held the heat the way a closed room does. Torch Lake in late August, copper light on flat water, cicadas already loud in the cedars. Craig had left me the house for three nights while he closed a deal in Chicago, and I had driven up from Grand Rapids with a cooler and no plans. I was thirty-one, thick through the shoulders from years of setting stone, and the afternoon's job still lived in my back. I stood on the dock in swim trunks, chest hair damp, a beer sweating in my hand, and listened to a truck door slam up by the gravel.

Boots came down the path, heavy and sure. The man who stepped onto the cedar was bigger than the evening had room for. Derek Hale, the text had said. He ran a gym out of Traverse City, a former Marine, and he was there to look at the bilge pump. He was thirty-four, sunburned across the nose, hair cut short and going silver at the temples. A gray T-shirt fought his chest and his arms. Veins stood on his forearms. He stopped a yard from me and let his eyes travel, slow and unashamed.

- You Evan?
- That's me. Craig said the pump was fussy.
- Pump can wait till morning. You been in the water?
- Not yet. Too busy staring at it.
- Then stare at me a minute. I drove an hour and I want to know if this is mutual.
- It's mutual. Has been since you cleared the trees.
- Good. I don't do coy.

I felt the answer low in my gut before I gave it. The dock smelled like hot cedar and lake weed. A fish jumped past the swim raft. I set the beer on a piling. He watched my hand, then my mouth, and something in his jaw went tight like he had been holding himself on the drive up.

He closed the last of the distance. His hand found the back of my neck, callused and sure, and his mouth hit mine hard enough to taste the day on both of us. Salt, beer, the clean bite of his soap. I got a fist in his shirt and hauled him in until our chests met, muscle on muscle, his heartbeat thick against my sternum. He made a low sound and walked me backward toward the boathouse without breaking the kiss. The door stuck, then gave. Inside it was dim and warm, the air full of rope, gasoline, and old wood. A workbench ran along one wall.

He peeled his shirt off and dropped it on a coil of line. I did the same. In the half-light his body was all work, thick pecs, a trail of hair down a hard stomach, a pale scar along one rib. He shivered once, then crowded me against the bench, mouth on my throat, teeth careful, tongue not. My hands learned his back, the wide slope of it, the way the muscle jumped when I dug in. He shoved my trunks down. I kicked them off. His shorts followed, belt buckle clinking on the planks. We were both hard and heavy, pressed together from mouth to thigh, and the shock of bare skin pulled a rough breath out of me.

He turned me and bent me over the worn bench, then kissed down my spine until his mouth was low and filthy and sure. His tongue worked me open with a patience that did not match the strength in his hands spreading me. I gripped the wood and pushed back into every wet stroke, feeling the scratch of his stubble and the heat of his breath against me. He spat, slicked me with two thick fingers, and worked them in slow, curling, until my knees went loose and I was grinding on his hand like the lake outside had stopped existing. He added a third when I bore down and stroked my cock in the same rhythm, thumb slick at the head.

He stood behind me. I heard the tear of a wrapper from his wallet, the small sound of latex rolled on, then the blunt press of him at my hole. He waited, one broad hand spread on my lower back, until I pushed back to take him. He sank in thick and steady, an inch at a time, filling me until the burn flared and settled into a deep full ache that whitened the edges of my sight. He bottomed out and held there, chest sealed to my back, breathing hard through his nose against my neck. When he started to move it was long strokes, hips rolling, the bench creaking under our weight. Each thrust knocked a sound out of me I did not try to hold. Sweat dripped from his chest onto my shoulder blades. His hand found my cock again and worked it in time, rough palm, perfect pressure.

I reached back, caught his hip, and hauled him harder. He took it. The pace broke open, deep and relentless, his balls meeting me, the slap of skin loud in the small room. I felt him everywhere, the stretch, the drag, the hot weight of his body covering mine, the smell of our sweat cut with cedar and gasoline. My thighs shook. He hauled me upright against his chest without slipping free, one arm barred across my pecs, the other still stroking, and fucked up into me while I braced on the bench. That angle hit something bright and mean behind my cock. I came with a choked grunt, spilling over his fist and the wood, clenching around him so hard his whole body locked. He drove in twice more and stayed buried, pulsing, a shudder running through the muscle under my hands.

He eased out, dealt with the condom, and turned me for a slower kiss. Outside, the copper light had gone blue. His hand stayed on my waist. I was not done with the night, and neither was he.