Special Delivery: Special Delivery, Book 1 (17 page)

This was a fair point, but the price still bothered Sam. Four or five things each at this rate would be more than a semester’s worth of textbooks.
Do I really want to do this?
When Mitch had said they would play a game, he’d thought he meant sex. Why did they need props? What was wrong with cocks and mouths and hands and asses? He could do fine with nothing more than some fruit-scented lube.

Mitch stroked him a little more openly now, and that was pleasant, so Sam settled in and tried to get comfortable. He glanced around nervously at the other patrons, frankly marveling no one came over to stop them from making a public display. Almost everyone in the shop was male and with other males, and the women present were generally with other women. There were a few straight couples, but here they were a minority.

Mitch nudged him. “Choose, Sam.”

Sam wasn’t sure what he was looking at. Oh yes. Dildo City. So many different shapes to shove up one’s ass. He found he preferred the colored ones as opposed to the fleshy ones, which resembled dismembered penises too much for his taste. Beyond this, they all looked like dildos, and he pointed at a random purple one. “That.”

“Ah,” Mitch said, in a careful way that made Sam self-conscious, and he tried to withdraw. Mitch held him fast and picked up the dildo with his free hand. “Here’s an important lesson, Sam. This one’s for ladies only. You’ll notice it doesn’t have much of a base.” Sam frowned, not understanding, and Mitch mimed a few thrusts. “Gets slippery with all that lube, and it might get sucked inside.”

“Oh God.” Sam took the dildo from him and laid it hurriedly back down. “I don’t know which one. I don’t know one from another.”

“Well, then why didn’t you say? Here, let me give you a tour.”

Mitch led Sam through the whole section, explaining various dildos and vibrators and plugs, debunking the mysteries of the shapes and angles. Self-consciousness quickly gave way to simple excitement, both academic and sexual. After some consideration, he chose a medium-sized orange one that had a slight curve at the top and a nice wide base.

Mitch picked it up and led Sam to another wall. “Now for mine.”

This section was full of silicone beads strung together and rippled dildos tricked out in the same rainbow of colors and of varying sizes. Mitch’s eyes were all for the beads, though. Sam had heard of these, but he’d never used them, or really even seen them. They didn’t seem too daunting. “Okay.” He reached for a blue string of the middle size nearest to him.

“Not quite.” Mitch picked up a wicked-looking black number near the top. “This pick is mine.” But he handed the beads to Sam, letting him inspect them. “Unless you want to veto?”

Sam ran his finger over the fattest bead through the package, but he wasn’t concerned. It wasn’t as fat as the dildo he’d chosen. He shrugged. “It’s okay.”

Mitch smiled and tucked it under his arm. “Next?”

This isn’t so bad,
Sam thought, and spent the next ten minutes wandering happily through the store, occasionally asking Mitch what things were. He didn’t linger long at the riding crops, and he was quietly nervous when Mitch fingered some rope, remembering what he had confessed earlier. He scanned everything, and finally, not knowing what else to choose, decided to be a little daring and picked up a cock ring, once Mitch assured him they didn’t hurt. After asking for advice on kind and size, he selected a plain, non-vibrating silver one.

For his next selection, Mitch picked a pair of leather cuffs with a short chain between them. Sam wasn’t sure about them but didn’t voice a complaint.

He assumed they were done, but when they turned down the next aisle, Sam stopped short at the product all but leaping out at him from the top shelf.

Actually there were two of them, both the same thing except one was packaged for men and women and one was marketed at men and men. Frankly Sam thought the men were having more fun, but both couples were going at it with the submissive partner on all fours, and both fuck-ees were being held up by a sort of strap around their abdomen as their lover pounded them from behind.

“Oh,” Sam said, and he couldn’t seem to manage much else.

Mitch massaged Sam’s hip. “Looks good to me. Is that your choice?”

“I thought we were done.” Sam couldn’t stop staring at the faces of the men.

“Do you want this, Sam?” Mitch asked patiently.

Sam considered lying, and at first he tried to talk himself out of it. Shame rose up and choked him out of nowhere.
What am I doing here buying sex toys? What am I thinking, wanting a strap for Mitch to hold me up with so he can fuck me deeper?
Except he really, really wanted that strap. He couldn’t speak, and so he nodded, his face as red as the anal plug on the shelf below.

Mitch picked the strap up wordlessly and reached for a package beside it which read,
vibrating thong
.

Sam laughed. “Seriously?” But Mitch only waggled his eyebrows, and after determining Sam didn’t object, added it to his pile.

Mitch steered them toward the movies, and here Sam felt a little more comfortable. He decided this was actually a pretty smart way to explore sexual ground without anyone feeling awkward. He twitched at a title mentioning a golden shower and was relieved to find Mitch didn’t seem interested, either. He saw one of the college-boy videos Mitch had in Old Blue, and Sam took a moment to inspect it more closely. It did look pretty good, he decided, except all the sleek young men were apparently having sex with one another, which was less exciting than he’d thought. But when he saw one called
Hot Truckers 2
, he waved it at Mitch.

“Interested in replacing me already, huh?” Mitch teased, but he put it in his pile. When Sam protested he didn’t have to get it, Mitch held up a hand. “No, see, now I get to pick one.”

Sam went quiet, waiting to see what Mitch would choose.

He took his time, inspecting everything, but in the end he went back to where the college-boy videos were and picked up one called
Twink Kink
.

Sam took it from him, inspected it and glanced at Mitch. “You like them, don’t you? Twinks.”

Mitch watched Sam carefully. “You don’t look pleased.”

“Well, I guess
I’m
one. But I always wonder if I’m being made fun of when someone calls me that. Like I’m vapid.”

“I’d ask if you want me to put it back, but there’s not much to be done about the others you already saw.”

“I guess that’s it. Because if there’s all this wall of stuff, and
this
is what you pick over and over again, and if this is what I am…well, now I feel kind of hot.”

“That you are.” Mitch indicated the video. “Well?”

Sam shrugged. “Sure.”

They browsed a little longer, laughing at some of the titles, getting aroused at some of the suggestive poses on the covers. Then Sam went around the corner.

He’d found the BDSM section.

The straight porn was mixed in with this, which he certainly didn’t need to see, but there was also a small gay section, and in a way, these videos were scarier than the heterosexual versions. Men and women were bent over, spread open and tied up in the pictures on the covers.

Was this what Mitch was into?

Some catalogs sat stacked under a sign reading SPECIAL ORDER ONLY. Sam picked one up, opened to a random page and gasped.

“Walk before you run, Sam.” Mitch tried to take the catalog from him, but Sam turned away, so scared he was cold but also unable to stop staring.

Spreaders, they said. He didn’t understand them exactly, but what he saw was a woman bent over, her ass exposed and her legs wide apart, held there by an iron bar, her hands cuffed and attached to the same. He saw another woman with a bizarre smile upon her face as she lay on a bed, spread-eagled. Then he saw the man.

The man had no visible face because the picture showed only his upturned ass and gaping, shaved hole. His ankles were spread over a foot apart, his hands clamped to the same bar as his legs. There was a lock at the end of the bar. The man knelt, completely shaved, his pale balls hanging down as he waited, one assumed, to be fucked.

Sam made a strangled sound and gripped the sides of the catalog.

Mitch tore it out of his hands, almost literally. “Don’t scare yourself.”

Sam could still see it, the image burned forever on his brain. “Have you done that?”

“What—used spreaders, or BDSM in general?” Mitch put the catalog back, but he fussed with it after, and Sam knew Mitch was avoiding his gaze.

“Both.” Sam watched Mitch’s hand tighten on the shelving, and he had his answer. He felt queasy. “You—you’re
into
that?”

“No. Whatever’s going on in your head—fuck no, I’m not into that.” Mitch ran agitated fingers through his hair and groped for the packet of cigarettes in his shirt pocket, but he put his hand down, acknowledging in frustration he couldn’t smoke here. “Look, Sam. This isn’t what I need to do to get off.”

“But you
do
get off on it. You have, in the past.”

Mitch grimaced. “Sometimes.”

Sam turned to the toys—clips and gags and cuffs and weird things that screwed in. “I don’t get it. Why would you want to
hurt
?”
Why would you want to hurt me?

Mitch held up a hand. “I’m not a sadist. But I know people who are, and I know plenty of masochists too. It probably sounds strange to someone not in the Scene, but it works for them. Everybody’s into something different. Everybody has different limits. And that’s okay.”

Sam could appreciate this in an academic way, but he felt frustrated because Mitch wasn’t addressing his own interest in the subject. Sam took the catalog from him, holding the image of the bound man in front of Mitch’s face. “Would you want to do that to me?”

Mitch quickly shifted his eyes to the ceiling, looking as if he wanted to push up one of the tiles and climb into the ductwork.

That’s a yes.
Sam tried not to be disappointed. “But
why
? I don’t
get
it—what about it is hot? Please, Mitch—tell me, so I can understand.”

Mitch kept his eyes averted, but Sam could see him sifting carefully through possible explanations. “It isn’t
necessary
. It isn’t something I
need
in you, or in anybody. But if you let me strap you down and make you so helpless, if you found helplessness fun and if you trusted me
that much
—” He shut his eyes briefly, and Sam thought he saw Mitch suppress a shudder. “That would be hot.”

Sam turned the magazine around and tried to view the photo with new eyes. He was surprised to find that, if he worked at it, he could change his point of view. This image, a pale, faceless man held down on a white background as if any monster could come by and fuck him at a whim, was scary as fuck. But when he imagined this with Mitch, in a close, cozy room, maybe with a fireplace, with
his
body strapped inside, his eyes shut as Mitch touched his skin—well, that was different. If it was Mitch gripping his hips and probing at his back door, preparing him, getting ready to fuck him as Sam lay there, bound and bent over, unable to stop him, capable of neither encouraging or resisting, as submissive as he could possibly be—

“Oh.” Sam swayed a little, bowled over by the image, and his hands trembled.
Oh.

Mitch took the catalog away. He looked gruff and highly nervous. “I don’t
need
that, Sunshine. There are a lot of ways to show me you trust me. There are a lot of things I find hot. I love spicy food, but I wouldn’t want to eat it for dinner with you if you didn’t like it too.”

Yes, but would you go and eat it with someone else?
How the hell that could matter when Sam offered himself up as a plaything for strangers as Mitch watched, Sam couldn’t explain. But then he remembered the other man, the one Mitch had traveled with: the ghost between them. Had Mitch done these things with him? Was that what had gone wrong? Or was playing like this what had hooked him so badly that even when Mitch was with Sam, he couldn’t seem to forget this other guy?

Mitch took his hand and leaned forward to brush a kiss against Sam’s hair. “Let’s go back to the bar.”

Sam stopped brooding and looked up sharply. “Not to Old Blue?”

“Not yet.” Mitch winked at him. “I have a plan.”

They headed to the register, and on the way they passed the rope display which had unnerved Sam earlier. He thought of the spreaders, of the other man who had used them with Mitch.

Sam took a deep breath, and then he picked up a package of purple nylon cord.

Mitch saw this and raised an eyebrow.

Sam did his best to play it cool. “I decided you wouldn’t hurt me, so there was no reason to be worried.”

Mitch touched Sam’s cheek then picked up a package of nylon ankle cuffs. “So I
don’t
hurt you.”

The bill would have paid for one of Sam’s classes.

“Don’t worry about it.” Mitch hauled them both down the street toward the bar. Once in the parking lot, however, he hustled Sam into the truck instead. As soon as the door closed, he said, “Take off your underwear.”

Sam felt a little self-conscious but also very horny, so he did as he was told. He worried other people would see as he knelt on the seat, but then Mitch’s lips landed on his butt, and he forgot there was a world beyond the truck. Once Mitch had him gasping, cold lube made him jerk as Mitch’s finger entered him.