Out of Position (20 page)

I know Dev’s not going to be patient much longer, but I have no idea which way he’ll swing. He lands beside me on the floor with a thump a moment later. “Are you laughing at me?”

I shake my head, but I keep laughing. He draws his paw back and cuffs my muzzle. Not hard, just enough to pause my giggling.

He’s never hit me, but then, I’ve never been this drunk and laughing. New territory for both of us, no history to fall back on. I look up at him and judge whether the hitting was something to get concerned about or not. He doesn’t look really mad, nor particularly inclined to hit me again now I’ve stopped laughing. And I do feel more sober now. “What was that for?” I ask.

“To stop you laughing,” he replies, very reasonably.

“You plan on doing that again, stud?”

I think it dawns on him then that there
is
some history there, just not ours. He shrinks back and his muzzle dips. “No.”

Silence. We both look at each other. It occurs to me that I never finished my apology from before. “I’m sorry,” I said. “For just bursting in and taking advantage of you. And for laughing, just now. It just all seemed so funny.”

“I’ve never seen you this drunk,” he says. “It’s weird.”

“And a little funny?”

His muzzle quirks. “A little.”

We lie there for a few more minutes, just looking at each other. His tail lashes back and forth. Mine stays still. “Sorry for hitting you,” he says.

I shake my head, slightly. “S’okay.” I’m trying to decide between kissing him and getting up to leave. Sleeping on my uncomfortable floor feels like the appropriate penance, but the heat between my legs is growing again with Dev’s nearness, keeping me anchored to him. So I just sigh and say, “Tell me about your weekend.”

“Let’s go up on the bed,” he says, getting partway up.

I look up at him. “I’ve slept on the floor for three nights,” I say. “Good for the back.”

I can see him trying to figure out whether I’m serious or not. Then he reaches down and lifts me as if I were a sack of clothes. Holding me over the bed, he hesitates. “You’re not gonna puke, are you?”

The ceiling and world are only moderately shaky, and definitely not spinny. “I don’t think so. Are you going to shake me?”

He grins and sets me down. “Not tonight.” Carefully, he lies next to me again. “Why were you drinking?”

“Loneliness.”

He knows me too well to fall for that one. “Uh-huh. And who was drinking with you?”

“My libido and my passion for you.” He keeps looking at me, steadily. “And Morty and Vic.”

“Full table,” he rumbles.

“We squeezed in.”

He grins. “How much can your libido drink?”

“I was trying to show you,” I say with dignity, “when those guys from Hellentown barged in.”

I get a good laugh out of him for that, and a kiss on my snout. “I could stand a beer after this weekend,” he says. “It was more exhausting than a game.”

“Think you have a shot with anyone?”

He nods. “Hellentown, maybe. Hilltown too.”

“Pity there aren’t more H-towns in the league.”

He grins back. “I’d be a shoo-in.”

“Like a tiger in a fox,” I say.

“Mmm.” He rests a huge paw on my arm, claws extended. I shiver. “I think I did okay.”

“You didn’t break any records in the 40.”

“I ran close to my best.”

“But not your best.” I’m getting hard again, just from being close to him. At least I’m sober enough to restrain myself from acting on it now. I think.

He frowns, then sighs. “No.”

“If you were worried about all those other guys, you shouldn’t be. You’re as good as any of them.”

He names the top prospect, the fox who blew everyone away. “Am I as good as Russell?”

“You could be.”

He shakes his head. “I’d need your build.”

I give him a light shove in the chest. “Success is making the best of your natural abilities, and that includes brains.”

“Russell’s pretty smart.”

I wave a paw. “So what? You’re smarter.”

“You are drunk.” He shakes his head. His claws draw lines of fire down my arm. They fade slowly. “I’m not smarter.”

“Sure you are.” I meet his look and grin. “You’re here with me, aren’t you? Q.E.D.”

He half-grins. “I dunno what that means, doc, but it ain’t football.”

“It means, shut up and kiss me already.”

He does, and the world stops, and it’s good. There’s only him and me, and a tiny bit of residual sloshing in the back of my head. When it stops, when we slide apart, I look into his eyes. “Dev?”

“Hm?”

“What happens if you do get drafted?”

He peers at me. “Well, I’m not sure, but I think they’ll want me to put on a uniform and play football. Just a guess. I ain’t all educated like you.”

I shake my head. “I mean, about us.”

“Oh.”

“Am I going to be hiding in closets in hotels all over the country? Sneaking around hoping we don’t get found out?”

He shrugs. “First things first, I guess. If I get on a team, I’ll worry about it then.”

“Would you give me up to play football?”

“
If
I get on a team, I’ll worry about it.”

“You’ll get drafted. You’re that good. So…”

For an answer, or maybe just to shut me up, he kisses me again. I take the hint and let the question go. There’s months before that’s an issue, anyway. I move my paw down his side, to his hip, suggesting more, and he breaks the kiss to look at me. “You still drunk?”

I shake my head. The room wobbles a little bit, but returns to normal immediately. When he hesitates, I reach over with my free paw and trace a line along his hips. “I wanna show you how good you can be.”

“I’m not getting drafted for
that”
he says, but he purrs throatily at my touch.

“Nobody else here to work out for.”

He’s still hesitating. I flick my ears. “I’m really not that drunk any more. Do I smell?”

“No, I was just wondering…” I stop my wandering paw. He looks uncertain. “You think you could find out… if I moved up on any lists?”

I give him a sly grin. “Well, I don’t know about that,” I say.

He thinks he understands, moving his paw down my midriff. “Do I need to be more persuasive?”

“Maybe.” I wait until he’s found the hardness between my legs, and that makes further thought difficult. I sneak my fingers over to his, finding it just as ready as mine, so I start undoing his pants. Once I get my paw all the way inside, cupped around his nice, hot sheath, the conversation dies away. Now he kisses me, and though I’m not drunk any more (much), I am a little self-conscious about the beer taste in my mouth. Dev doesn’t seem to mind, judging by the passion with which his tongue invades it.

He shifts his weight, bearing over me and fumbling at my pants while my paw strokes him, pushing his pants down further with each stroke until his balls are hanging out over his naked thigh. I tease around them and then stroke back up that delicious length. He shoves his paw inside my loosened pants, warm pads gripping my erection so tightly that I moan against his tongue, eliciting a satisfied growl as he crushes his muzzle to mine. Letting me know how much he missed me.

I work him harder, already feeling him dripping against my fingers. I want him inside me, badly, but I don’t have any lube on me and I’m sure it’s not the sort of thing the hotel or the league provides to the kids here. I’ve used the ol’ “spit and polish” in the past, but never with Dev. He’s pretty big. But the way he’s pressing and grinding against me is lighting a fire in my cock, and the more I imagine it, the more I want him.

His breathing’s getting harsher. I pull my paw away and work it up under his shirt, enjoying the hard-packed muscles under his fur. In my mind, I can see him stretching, taut and lean on the field, muscles coiled and tensed to explode at the starter’s gun. I see them bulging and straining at the bench press. Sure, I can’t help seeing some of the other kids, but I’m not in bed with them, am I? So it’s okay. I’m sure he doesn’t just picture me when we’re in bed. Actually, I don’t know what he pictures. I’ve never asked.

He’s getting more insistent with his paw, and those thoughts aren’t able to collect and cohere, not with the attention he’s paying to my already full shaft and balls, so if I’m gonna do anything besides lay here and come, I need to decide to do it now.

Fuck it. It’s a need, not a choice. I squirm around, making him pause, and get my mouth around his cock again. The taste is much stronger than it was an hour ago, and I savor that, mostly trying to get him slick enough that this’ll work, but not neglecting his sensitive parts. The tongue’s in there, might as well be of use.

He sprawls back on the bed, all orange and white and black-striped lean beauty. I keep my eyes open just so I can admire him, and as it often does, the thought comes to mind that to have found this spirit in this talented, gorgeous body is a huge stroke of luck on my part. Most football players, by the time they get to college, are so used to being the center of attention that their ego has to get a separate dorm room. Dev spent three years being above average on a small-time program at a school where athletics was secondary to education, and despite the fact that most of the guys on the team managed to strut around like they owned the campus anyway, he never let that go to his head.

Plus he was gay and didn’t know it. That’s beyond hot.

In between bobbing up and down and watching him twitch and purr-growl, I spit on my paw and work that under my tail, until it’s nice and slick and Dev is squirming so much that I know my mouth’ll be full of tiger musk in another minute. I don’t think he’s noticed what else I was doing, so it’s a bit of a surprise when I slide off his muzzle, work a leg out of my pants, and straddle him. Golden eyes fly open, stare up at me.

“Lee?” I smirk and nod, settling him against my tailhole. It takes a lot of restraint for me not to just plunge down on him. “We don’t have any…”

“S’okay,” I tell him, and push down to make my point. His eyes roll back and he doesn’t argue, unless a choking moan and strong paws clutching my hips are an argument. It’s rougher than it usually is with the lube, but it feels good. I let him hold my hips, because that feels good too, pushing up against his strength and then letting him shove me back down. I take care of my own shaft, which is rock hard, shaking off any effects of alcohol nicely (though I’ve never been one of those guys who can’t perform while drunk).

I know sex isn’t the same as love, but it really helps us express love. My stupid actions earlier in the evening fall away, and I writhe with my tiger, both of us feeling the same sensations and sharing the experience with each other. He bucks up into me, driving so deeply I feel him all through my body, clenching my jaw, bristling out my fur, arching my tail and curling my toes. My paw clenches around myself, I pant as I watch the contortions on his face and feel him pulling me towards him, and I match my growls to his, pushing his shirt up further with my other paw so I can see his chest heave. I press my weight down against him to feel his power as he presses back, and to get closer to him as we surge toward release together.

It’s hot and powerful, his claws digging into my thighs as his neck muscles strain. His sharp, deep thrusts burying his length in me are all it takes to send me over the edge too. Barking throatily, I empty myself onto his chest, muscles tight, paw working myself to get every last drop out. I shudder and reach back so I can feel the tightness of his balls, the stretching where he’s entering me, and the hardness at the base of his shaft. I rub there as we both slowly relax, panting, and look into each other’s eyes.

Now I feel the warmth, and with it a wave of sleepiness. I lean on his chest with both paws, lower myself to kiss him on the muzzle, and he slides his paws up my sides as he kisses me back. “Nothing like you,” he rasps.

“You either,” I say.

I let him pull out of me, with more relief than usual. My body drifts down to his side, I yawn hugely, and snuggle against him. He purrs and pulls an arm around me. “So,” he says, “now do you think you can find out where I stand?”

“Mm.” I rub my nose into his short fur, inhaling. “I don’t know.”

“How much more persuasive,” he trails claws through my thigh fur, making me squirm, “do I need to be?”

“S’not that,” I mumble. “I mean the Dragons offered me a job so I dunno if I’m allowed to tell.”

He’s quiet for a minute, his claws going still. “They what?”

“Not definite,” I say, eyes still closed. “Morty says he liked what I did, he’s gonna recommend they give me a trial run for a few months. Up to the draft.”

I feel the prickling of his claws, but he doesn’t say anything, still. I crack one eye open. He’s staring at me. “You were going to tell me this when?”

I grin. “After.”

“It’s after now.”

“And I’m telling you.”

He pulls me tighter. “That’s great! It’s like you got drafted, kinda.”

“Kinda.” I’m too sleepy to argue semantics.

“Are you excited?”

“Not any more.” I feign sudden realization. “Oh, about the job. I guess, yeah.”

“What are you going to do about school?”

I shake my head. “Didn’t really think about it.”

“What about your parents?”

What does it pay? “
Don’t kill my buzz.”

He’s quiet for a little longer, stroking my fur, and then he says, “I’m gonna shower. Be right back.”

“Mm,” I say as he slips away from me, and that’s just about the last thing I remember until the sun stabs me in the face the next morning.

The bed still smells like tiger, though it’s hard for me to focus on that over the searing pain behind my eyeballs, throbbing in my head. It’s not the worst hangover I’ve had, but it’s bad enough, and to compound it, I’m now feeling the effects of having a tiger in me without completely adequate lubrication. Somewhere over the night I shed my pants completely, but I still have a shirt on, which smells like beer. Or maybe that’s me. I pull the sheets over my head and try to go back to sleep.

Some minutes, or hours, later, I vaguely think I hear someone knocking. “Go ’way,” I mumble into the pillow, folding my ears down and shoving them under the soft foam. I assume, in my hung over haze, that that’ll be the end of it.