Storm-Locked with the Stone Mason

The ridge above Asheville had been spoiling for a fight all week, and Thursday evening it got one. I was thirty-six, a framing carpenter named Darren Holt, and I had spent three days setting headers in a glass-and-cedar house that hung over the Blue Ridge. My shoulders were thick and sore. Sawdust clung in the hair on my chest where I had cut the sleeves off my shirt at noon, and my jeans were stiff with sweat. The sky went the color of a bruise. Rain hit the roof sheathing hard enough to sting.

Evan Brooks came up the switchback from the lower terrace with his shirt already gone and a mason's apron riding low on his hips. He was thirty-one, wide through the chest, arms corded from the wall he had been laying, a dark line of hair running down a stomach that still showed the work. Rain beaded on his shoulders. He ducked under the open bay and shook his head, water flying. Wind shoved the plastic sheeting, and the skeleton of the house groaned around us, open to the valley on one side.

- Road's going to be a creek in twenty minutes.
- Then we don't take it.
- You want to sit in a skeleton all night?
- Trailer's got a bunk, a camp stove, and a lock that works. I've slept worse for less reason. He looked at me longer than the weather required. His eyes were wet slate. That look landed low in my gut, the same place it had been landing since Monday, when he stripped to a tank top and I forgot what a stud was for.

We killed the saws and dragged the tools under plastic. Rain blew sideways and cooled the sweat on my ribs. Evan wiped his hands on his thighs, and the muscle jumped under his palm. I watched. He caught me and did not look away.
- You've been staring since the footing inspection.
- You've been earning it.
- That a complaint?
- That's me saying the storm already made the excuse. If you want this, I'm not walking that road tonight for any other reason.

He crossed the plywood in three steps. Up close he smelled like wet stone, rain, and a long day in the sun. His hand closed on the back of my neck, rough and sure, and he held with his mouth an inch from mine until I closed it. The kiss was not careful. His stubble scraped. His tongue pushed in hot, and he walked me back until my shoulders hit a stud. His apron buckle dug into my hip. I got both hands on his waist and felt how solid he was, heat pouring off him, his cock already thick and trapped against the fly of his work pants.

I dropped to my knees on the cold plywood before either of us could think better of it. I opened his pants and shoved them down his thighs, and his cock came out heavy and flushed, a thick curve that filled my hand and then my mouth. He tasted like clean sweat. I took him slow, learning the weight on my tongue, the way the head flared and leaked when I pressed it to the roof of my mouth. His fingers tightened in my hair. I worked him deeper, spit slicking my chin, one hand braced on the hard muscle of his thigh, the other rolling his balls while I swallowed around him. He rocked in short thrusts, fucking my mouth without forcing it, the head bumping my throat until my eyes watered and I wanted more of exactly that. I pulled off to breathe, stroked him wet and shining, and went down again until my nose pressed into the dark hair at his base and he shuddered all the way up his stomach.

He hauled me up by the belt and kissed the taste of himself off my mouth, then steered me through the framed doorway and down the slick boards to the job trailer. Inside it was dim and close, coffee and wet wool and the tick of rain on the metal roof. He locked the door. We got the rest of our clothes off in a scramble of boots and damp denim, and he put me on the narrow bunk and went to his knees between mine. His mouth on my cock was hot and greedy. He took me deep, one big hand pinning my hip, the other sliding back until a spit-slick finger pressed at my hole and pushed in. I groaned at the ceiling. He opened me with two fingers, then three, slow and thick, curling until my thighs shook and my cock jumped against his tongue. Lightning flashed through the small window and lit his shoulders, broad and wet, the muscle shifting as he worked me open like he meant to use every inch of it.

He slicked himself from the bottle in his bag and pressed the head of his cock against me, waiting until I bore down and took him. The stretch burned and then gave, a thick, steady push that filled me until his hips met my ass and I could not get a full breath. He held there, buried, one hand spread on my chest, thumb dragging over a nipple, the other gripping my thigh and folding me open. Then he started to move. Long strokes at first, pulling almost out and driving back in, the bunk creaking, rain hammering the roof in time with him. Each thrust knocked a sound out of me. He found the angle that lit me up and stayed on it, harder, the slap of his hips loud in the small trailer, his cock dragging over that spot until my vision went white at the edges. I got a hand on myself and stroked in the same rhythm. Sweat ran down his chest and dripped onto my stomach. He fucked me through it, deep and relentless, until I came hard across my own fist and my hole clenched around him. That pulled him over. He drove in and stayed, pulsing, heat spilling inside me while he shook and ground against me like he could get deeper still.

We stayed locked together while the thunder moved off the ridge. His weight was solid on me, breath hot on my neck, his cock softening inside me. When he eased out I swore under my breath. He kissed my shoulder and pulled the wool blanket over us. Rain softened on the roof. The ridge could wait until morning.