Taken By My Old Classmate In The French Quarter
A spooky tale about the man who got away
Sex, booze, and blood were in the air as the clock at St. Louis Cathedral tolled 11. It was Halloween, and Bourbon Street never shirked a night of the deceased. Orange and black wove through the royal blue on the street lamps, and the tourists were dressed to fuck the dead. The wet cobblestones slid under my shoes as I passed a Slut-o-ween-themed bachelorette party. The Gay Quarter was just ahead, and I had other plans.
Oz was a nonstarter when I reached St. Ann Street. The beats thudding into the street promised a night of headaches. I turned away from the river instead. I'd gawked at the rainbows overhead as a child, afraid and thrilled at what lay beyond the ancient facades. But now I was home, and home was for me, and I was for home. You can take the boy out of New Orleans, but tonight, New Orleans would be getting back inside this boy.
I slowed after a few blocks at the sight of the Silver Fox. Skeletons draped over the wet overhang, a lone thigh bone dangling next to the golden column out front. If I recall correctly, it used to be called Rawhide. From the looks of it, the rebranding came with a bit less leather. Then again, if I wanted leather and loud, Oz was waiting behind me. Gay enough with seating would do nicely.
No bachelorette parties: nice. Purple light sparkling on a disco ball: nicer. A house of harness-sporting bears and queens on the rarified and older side of gay: outstanding.
"Tonic and lime," I said with a wink when the bartender got around to me.
"And a Sazerac neat, on me," said a familiar voice right beside me. No one had been on my side of the bar when I walked up, and no one had approached. But there he was, right there in the flesh. The gorgeous, marble, gleaming flesh.
"You…" I trailed off, gazing at my new, or rather, old companion. In high school, Rick had been a year older than me, with glasses and a crease in his brow that spoke far louder than his pastel hair dye and nails. In the sinful 21st century, his bare, shimmering blue eyes left me speechless. His age was an accessory, an afterthought. Rick's smile was knowing, playful, his chiseled jaw under dark soft stubble he'd regally permitted to frost over. The thin hair I remembered was crisp, sculpted, even full. He wore white with a touch of lace under black, and the same studded leather choker I remembered adorned his elegant neck.
La plus ça change, indeed.
“You,” Rick repeated, and his voice sent an shiver down my scalp. Then his smile widened, his cool fingers brushed my hand, and I grabbed him in a fierce embrace. Dear God, he was cut like a brick wall. My hand lingered on his shoulder, thoughts already racing through my head of the muscle underneath the lace.
The arrival of our drinks saved me a few precious seconds of making a tongue-tied fool of myself. Rick’s fingers curled around his glass with the delicacy of a surgeon, the liquid eerily motionless as he raised it to me.
“Your life everlasting,” he said. I bit my lip at his tiny, regal nod. He didn’t drink; the glass was simply at his full, moist lips, and then it was less than it was.
“That used to be my drink when I came back to town,” I said. Wispy memories curled in my head, the Sazerac Hotel, the Intercontinental, the clients since elected to federal prison. I gulped down half of my tonic, suddenly parched.
“Before you tamed your thirst?” Rick asked. His question was as inscrutable as his eyes were brilliant, neither a challenge nor a welcome.
“Before I found finer tastes,” I returned. The past was over, and the present with Rick was an unfinished question. “You still in that old house on Upperline?” I added.
Rick’s silent moment lasted an eternity. His glittering eyes swept lazily over me, appraising, speculating…hungering. Our eyes locked as he raised his sazerac to his lips once again, and then the empty glass slid out of his exquisite fingers onto the bar.
“I found finer tastes,” Rick said in a low, growling heat. The golden studs on his choker rippled as he cracked his neck. He turned, and I followed. Of course I did.
We were out in the night, Rick gliding over the slick cobblestones a step ahead of me. St. Ann Street was empty. Of course it was.
St. Louis Cathedral struck midnight, and we were inside a damp, moldy foyer. The rickety half dozen locks opened silently at a bare touch from Rick’s gold-braided hand. Of course they did.
The loft across the threshold was a dark outline of ancient finery. A stately writing desk and chaise lounge right out of the Sun Court anchored the living area. Farther back was a resplendent dining table on lion’s feet, and I could just make out a four post bed in the near-total darkness.
I stepped into the past, and soft lamplight bathed the gold leaf and mahogany in the room. My lone shadow trailed along the floor, up the lavender wallpaper.
Lone?
I spun around, but Rick was still in doorway, just short of the threshold. His eyes gleamed with the lamplight; had they really been that blue in high school?
“Aren’t you going to come in?” I said, raising an eyebrow.
Rick nodded slowly, as if I had finally given the right answer after a night of Socratic frustration.
“As you wish, Kazmierz,” he said.
Rick swept into his home, and me into his arms. His kiss was a fire that raced down my back, down my limbs. Cool fingertips laced through my short hair, fluttering like a butterfly’s unseen dance. A dozen might have beens broke apart between our lips, too real to dream and too hot to be real.
I squeaked out a whimper as Rick’s off hand snaked up my back. He pressed me into his marble-hard muscles, his lips trailing luxuriously down my stubble. His cool, confident lips slowed as he reached my neck. The light kiss grew heavier, the faintest cool touch of teeth as Rick grew still.
As his lips flushed warm, hot. Searing.
As my heart beat for him.
“Rick,” I gasped. More, I wanted more, I needed it. “Please…”
A low growl boiled out of Rick’s throat as he pulled back. “Really?” he asked, his words a smoke floating in the almost nothing between us. Before I could answer he took me, moving me to his massive bed as trivially as I herded my kids to bed. I panted, short and sharp, not knowing what was next, and wanting it all.
I reached out to touch his perfect, marble face, my longer reach winning against his teasing, his withholding. His stubble underneath my fingers sent the smell of sandalwood through me all over again. Rick was a rock under me, but shifted before me, one mystery after another, the truth waiting just past my reach.
As my hand trailed onto his choker’s gold studs- gold? someone small whispered- Rick caught my hand in a granite grip. He laid me back instead, even my bum shoulder melting for his touch pressing me down into the mattress. I fumbled our clothes open as he held me fast. Rick’s kisses were slow, deep, his tongue teasing the truth of that hungry growl.
His chest hair had the same arch frost, the same power under my hands as his glittering eyes showed. I gripped him with my free hand, needing more, needing how hard he really was.
…and he caught my hand just as I got into his pants.
“Really?” Rick repeated, arching an eyebrow. He flung me down on his bed almost dismissively, then peeled off my pants, holding me down with a fiery hand over my racing heart. I was his prize, bared and enthralled and painfully hard. Hunger seethed in his eyes as they bathed me, barely restrained as I strained in his grip.
He let go of me suddenly, then I cried out as Rick trailed one long, unbroken kiss down my body. His lips fluttered warm and cool, wanting and resisting. He was a sculpted machine underneath my hands, on his own time, his own hunger.
I whimpered as Rick’s fingers wrapped coolly, precisely around my cock. His tongue was flicking, contemplative, even as I felt him tense under me with every painfully inadequate taste. I needed more, needed to give him more, give everything.
And then he took more, gliding all the way down to my base without so much as a swallow.
“Fuck!” I squeaked. I thrashed helplessly as Rick soundlessly, endlessly gargled on my shaft. Not even I was that good at deepthroating. He ground and thrust as if breathing was an occasional hobby. His tongue caressed my balls in a serpentine embrace, as if to devour me whole.
My hands shook on his perfect shoulders as Rick’s lips finally slithered slowly, impossibly slowly back up. He had me at the flick of his tongue, at the flickering heat in his lips, rising with the hunger we both felt. Each commanding, feasting stroke was slower than a frozen moment, and so fast it was a sandalwood smear. I was his prize, stretched out, begging to break, needing it, grasping without end.
I snapped inside with a roar that burned my throat. A blur of gold tore through me, seizing in my limbs, clenching in the fist of an angry god. Rick joyously swallowed my cock as I exploded, and he flushed hot with each searing thunderclap. Pride, pleasure, raw hunger rumbled out of him as he drank everything I had, everything I was.
Rick’s tongue stroked my base as my cock finally stopped shuddering. He withdrew slowly, licking every last fold clean and bare. I cried out with his lingering strokes, still rock hard, still needing more, to give more.
When he stood up straight, Rick was a silver rock in front of me, bare but for his choker. I gaped at his indomitable beauty, at his ass I could finally grip in my own two hands. His cock was enormous and gorgeously uncut, his rich thick head straining out of his foreskin. I needed it so bad.
Rick’s growl was more hunger than control as I ran my fingers through his balls. His blue eyes locked on mine as I kissed, flicked closer. It took all I had to stop at just tasting that swollen, gorgeous head. Just kissing.
His fingers were warm as they slid through my hair.
Just tasting.
I held his blue eyes, savoring each tremor at my attention. His jaw tensed as I teased his foreskin, traced his head with my tongue. His fingers tightened.
He growled.
I pulled back, and cracked my neck slowly. Then I looked him in his hungry, angry, flashing eyes.
“Really?” I said, and rolled mine.
Rick’s hungry snarl took my breath away. He seized me with a deep, commanding kiss, finally claiming me for what he desired. I moaned as he turned me, pushed me into the bed with one sweeping motion.
The tear of a condom wrapper sent a shiver of anticipation through me. I spread my legs eagerly, the ancient damp of the Quarter in the air. His lubed finger was a cool command, tracing his design on me before entering, slow, purposeful.
But Rick’s other hand traced something else.
His cool fingertip rewrote the word I’d etched on my back. I stilled as his palm rested, pressed down on the message I’d left for myself. His hold was solid, neither reassuring nor restraining.
Rick’s hard, rich head pressed into my asshole.
“Nvmqvam,” he murmured.
I pushed back onto him in reply, his grunt melting into my moan. God, he was big, and he was perfect with it too, taking me slowly but relentlessly. His shaft was a rock pushing me apart, taking me, remaking me. He kept thrusting when buried, crushing me into him, claiming me.
A tremble in Rick’s grunt sent a hot shudder of satisfaction through me. His hand blazed like a furnace as he held me down. His thrusts were power coming apart, his desire cracking his visage of marble control.
I cried out as he drove me into the bed, crushing me flat and filling me to bursting. His fingers dug into my back, his nails just beneath my tattoo.
“Nvmqvam ante?” he grunted at my ear.
I clenched the gold threaded bedding in my hands. “Nvmqvam iterum,” I growled back.
His nails raked across my back in a blazing streak of pain. I cried out as Rick took hold of my hips, as he thrust powerfully enough to split me in half.
As his lips blazed at my blood weeping out.
He thrust. He drank. He took. His cock pumped in, my heart beat out. A growl past hunger and human boiled out of the marble god at my pack. He moved with abandon, his power ramming past both of us, through me, on me, all over me.
Until he could take no more.
An airless shriek split my ears as Rick smashed into me like a hurricane. His cock seized within me, each spasm battering me like he was fucking me deeper still. He heaved into me, with me, both of us lost to the drumbeat of his unhinged, inhuman pleasure. His choker studs dug into me, as his grip turned helpless, trembling.
As his lips reached my neck-
“It's four,” someone said in the darkness. “Time to go.”
I sat up. The Silver Fox was empty, and half closed. Its barstools were up on tables, and acrid cleaner cut through my nose. The cute bear who had been behind bar when I walked in rolled his eyes as I looked around.
“I'm…here?” I said, feeling stupid. I…me…had fallen asleep…in a bar?
“Yeah, those tonics and lime will get you every time,” he said with a sigh. “Go on, then. You don't have to go home-”
“But I can't stay here,” I finished for him. He dismissed me with another eye roll and got back to mopping.
The dawn was still a vague glimmer in the after smells of Halloween on St. Ann. I stretched my back with a groan. Nice one, Kaz: a decade of sobriety just to pass out in the French Quarter, just like in high school. Hell of a dream, though. Served me right for changing meds while traveling.
…but my back didn't hurt like I passed out on a bar.
I flexed my shoulders. It wasn't just my back, either. I slid a hand down the back of my shirt…and froze as I felt a scratch just beneath my left shoulder blade. Several of them, big ones.
All of them short of the tattoo.
“Nvmqvam,” I murmured. The unlit, overcast sky had no answer.
Never again, indeed.