Toy Box: Collars Page 4

  They turned in their seats and faced the rest of the club as they drank. Daddies circled, boys sneered. Jim slouched and spread his legs as one especially huge cub wandered by, nodding at Jim’s crotch but not making eye contact.

  Paulo watched him walk, his beefy ass rolling, giant arms swinging.

  “Him?” he gaped at Jim.

  Jim shrugged and ducked his head. “What can I say? I like my daddies young.”

  “Maybe he’ll come back,” Paulo soothed. “I thought Preston was more your style.”

  “Nah. I mean, I’ve worked with Preston for years, and he’s the best. I’ve even played with him since he retired, just to stay in fighting trim, you know?”

  Paulo nodded, hoping the low lighting concealed his grinding jaw. Why should Jim get to play with Preston, when it clearly was nothing but a convenience for either of them?

  “Anyway, he’s not my type, not for real, you know? And he hasn’t even wanted to play much since his book got picked up?”

  “Picked up?”

  “You and your one-track mind.” Jim passed him another beer. “Picked up by an agent, and now it’s being published, so he’s working like crazy. He even tried to get me to do some yard work for him so he could work on edits.” Jim laughed and took another pull on his beer. “Once a top, always a top.”

  Paulo shifted in his seat. He had to go see Preston. The man needed him. He just didn’t know it yet. He’d finish his beer, but leaving Jim in the lurch seemed rude and ungrateful.

  The meaty baby bear walked by again, with another predatory look at Jim. Jim gave a little shudder, but didn’t make a move.

  Obviously, Paulo would have to take matters into his own hands. “Bathroom break!” he sang as he slipped off the stool. He sailed over to the leather-clad guy, hooking him by the belt loop and towing him to the men’s room.

  The guy growled, “Kid, you’re obviously new around here so I’ll take it easy...”

  “Hush, little daddy. I don’t want you, and you can’t handle this,” Paulo camped, slapping his ass hard enough to hear over the music. “But my friend is your wet dream come true. He’s saving a seat for you.”

  They took their time walking back to the bar, giving Jim plenty of time to see them together and get all hot under the collar, so to speak.

  When they reached the bar, Paulo gestured Baby Bear to the stool next to Jim. He leaned in close to Jim and smiled sweetly. “I’ve done your hunting for you, buddy. Now, call me a cab.”

  “You’re going over to Preston’s, aren’t you?” Jim was shaking his head with disbelief, even as he flipped his phone open and gave a shy, dazzling smile to his new, furry friend.

  The ride to Master Rose’s place was longer than Paulo had anticipated, nearly out of town, where the suburbs and strip malls ended and the nurseries and horse farms began. The ride was almost long enough for Paulo to talk himself out of his plan.

  He asked the cabbie to wait and, with a witness to fortify him, made his way to Master Rose’s door.

  He fought the urge to kneel when the door swung open.

  “Paulo.”

  Paulo was struck dumb. Master Rose in his stage leathers was mouthwatering, and he’d worn that suit at the concert like nobody’s business. But this Master Rose, barefoot in blue jeans, flannel shirt open over a t-shirt worn thin enough to see the shadow of his chest hair through it, was just devastating. Could this be what Master Rose looked like when he was just... Preston?

  “Paulo!” The voice was sharp enough to jog Paulo’s tongue.

  “Um, yes. Jim said you needed yard work done and I do landscaping and carpentry and whatever else. You know, gardening. And he said you’re busy, and need help. So I came over to ask if I could be it. I mean, your help.”

  Nervousness, on top of two beers, had Paulo babbling like an idiot.

  “You came over here at 11:30 in the evening dressed as a street hustler, to ask for a job doing manual labor?” Preston crossed his arms slowly over his chest, making Paulo’s mouth go dry.

  “Y-yes. Sir. Yes, sir,” he croaked.

  Was that a tiny quirk to the man’s lip? Did it mean amusement or irritation? Why can’t I read him, Paulo railed at himself.

  “An unconventional marketing strategy,” Preston said dryly.

  Paulo hung his head and was about to babble an apology, when he saw Preston’s square, elegant hand invade his vision. He looked up into Preston’s inscrutable light eyes.

  “Come back in the morning, ready to work. We’ll discuss things then.” Paulo resisted the impulse to kiss Preston’s hand, instead shaking it as offered.

  Preston withdrew his hand far too soon, turned, and closed the door. Paulo was dismissed.

  ***

  A week into the two week trial period they’d negotiated, Preston took a break from his edits to rest his hands and watch yet another tradesman’s truck pull up outside his house. A mason, this time, evidently come to help finish the patio. The work in the yard was nearly complete, weeks earlier than Preston could have accomplished on his own. It seemed Paulo was related to every skilled tradesman in Sister City. This one, the burly mason, even got a kiss on the cheek.

  Preston turned his growl into a sigh and stepped outside.

  “Oh, sir,” Paulo called, waving him over. “Meet my uncle Ruy. He wants to hear how you want to repair the patio. I was right, it won’t cost any more to expand it than to just fix it.”

  Preston shook the man’s thick-fingered hand and turned to Paulo. “Why don’t you get us something cold to drink? There’s iced tea in the fridge.”

  Paulo beamed up at him and trotted through the back door. If his plan all those nights ago had been to make himself indispensable to his new boss, managing tasks Preston had neither time nor talent for, he was doing an admirable job. He watched Paulo return, trying to ignore the way the sun had pinkened the boy’s shoulders and multiplied the freckles on his light brown skin.

  “That’s my sister’s youngest you’re looking at with eagle eyes,” Ruy rumbled, snapping his attention back to the matter at hand. “He gave up his job to come work for you. You treat him right, now. You’re all he talks about lately.”

  Preston fiercely dampened his curiosity -- what could Paulo possibly be telling his family? What job had he quit? He wouldn’t have expected a traditional Portuguese -- Cape Verdean, whatever -- family to be so blithe in their acceptance of a gay scion. Maybe they weren’t so traditional after all. Preston realized he didn’t know much about his new... handyman (not sub, he reminded himself sternly).

  All afternoon as Ruy’s wet saw shrieked through the paving stones, Preston watched Paulo through the kitchen window. His smudged carpenter’s jeans hung low on his hips, revealing the sweet swell of his ass and, Preston decided after due consideration, no underwear. The muscles of his back and arms bunched as he pushed a stone past the spinning saw blade or carried a fresh stack to the patio. Ruy’s part of the job was done by mid-afternoon, and the guy took off with a final kiss for his nephew.

  Paulo was already back to work, kneeling on the new patio stones, by the time Preston walked through the house to grab them each another drink.

  “Not that I don’t appreciate the sight of you on your knees, but what are you doing?”

  Paulo smiled up, accepting the glass of tea. “Mmm, sweet. Thanks, sir.” He held up a whisk broom. “I’m brushing jointing sand between the stones, to set them. There’s a little concrete in it, so it won’t wash away like regular sand.”

  Impressed, Preston sat in one of the old teak chairs Paulo had moved off to the side of the work area. “Why didn’t your uncle leave a bill? The landscapers didn’t, either, and neither did the guys who cleaned the gutters and patched the roof. I know you bought the materials with the money I gave you, but there’s been no labor cost except what I pay you. What gives, Paulo?”

  Paulo took a long drink of tea. “Just calling in favors, sir. I don’t have a place of my own, so I never call on anyone to even up.�
��

  “Even up?”

  “Every truck you’ve seen? Every machine on those trucks? I keep them working. Every good boy needs a skill, and that’s mine. I must have saved my family thousands over the years.”

  “You’re a mechanic? That’s the job you gave up to work for me?” Despite all the hard work Paulo had done during the past week, Preston still thought of him as the flighty, singing naïf from the Gay Men’s Chorus.

  “More of a freelancing thing at the moment, so no worries.” Paulo shrugged. “Getting a trade certificate was my dad’s condition for sending me to college instead of trade school.”

  “You wanted to study music,” Preston guessed.

  Paulo nodded, moving to a new section of patio, dragging his bag of sand and glass of tea with him.

  “We really should talk about the windows, sir. I think that was the last big job you wanted me for.”

  Preston blinked a little at the reminder that Paulo wasn’t there to stay.

  “Come find me when you’re done here, and we can figure out what it’ll take to get all the storm windows ready for winter.”

  If Preston spent far too much of his editing time that afternoon thinking of new tasks no one but Paulo could do, who was the wiser?

  ***

  Paulo waved as his cousins from the salvage yard backed out of Preston’s driveway, leaving him with a load of storm windows in need of painting. He loaded them onto his big push cart and wheeled them over to the sawhorses he’d set up on the shady side of the shed, then went round to the side yard to do battle with weeds before the sun got too high.

  As he dug dandelions out by their stubborn roots he broke off a few and twisted them into a chain, fashioning a collar. So what? Preston had hired him on indefinitely after some discussion the day before, he was here every day, and every day presented new opportunities to learn about the man and his needs. He might not deserve a real collar yet, but this would do for now.

  Happy on his knees in the sunshine, he sang, “A kiss on the hand may be quite continental, but dandelions are a boy’s best friend.”

  He heard footsteps approach from the rear of the house, but stayed on his knees and kept singing. “I've heard of affairs that are strictly platonic, but dandelions are a boy’s best friend. And I think affairs that you must keep liaisonic are better bets...”

  “Having a Jule Styne moment, boy?” Preston blocked the sun, causing Paulo to squint.

  “If I say yes, will this little pet get big baguette?” he asked, finishing the line he’d been singing.

  Preston chuckled, low and warm, and Paulo felt his face heat with pleasure. “No baguettes, boy, just a sandwich and tea, if you’re at a stopping point.” He headed back the way he’d come, saying something that sounded like, “Not all gentlemen prefer blonds, boy.”

  Paulo grinned and hurried to follow.

  Having lunch together had become a habit in the last few days, delighting and discomfiting Paulo in equal measure. He tried not to babble too much, or ask nosy questions, but it was hard. He washed his hands and face at the spigot by the shed and met Preston at the newly-refinished teak table and chairs on the patio.

  Pouncing on his food with what he hoped wasn’t unseemly relish, Paulo watched Preston eat in neat, precise bites. The ramshackle house and shambolic garden seemed so out of step with his personality, Paulo couldn’t help but ask how he’d ended up there.

  “This place reminded me of where I grew up. I’ve had it for years, but only moved out here when I retired.”

  Well, that raised more questions than it answered. Paulo ate in silence for another minute, then asked, “So, how are your edits going?”

  Preston sighed, brushed a few sandwich crumbs from his long fingers, and sat back in his chair. The sun hit him full on, the red and silver lights in his dark hair and the blue of his eyes easily the most perfect combination Paulo had ever seen. “They’re slow going. My editor knows her job, but she’s... untutored in the subject matter.”

  “Well, she would be, wouldn’t she, if it’s about your life?” Paulo ventured.

  “I meant, untutored in the lifestyle.” Preston looked down at his hands, spreading the fingers and rubbing, a habitual gesture that brought a flood of affection to Paulo’s chest.

  “And your hands bother you,” he stated simply, belying the nerve it took to bring up something so personal.

  Preston’s eyes narrowed a little, and Paulo had to concentrate to maintain eye contact. “Arthritis. I’m not used to typing eight or ten hours in a day, and it’s flared up. Getting old, I guess.”

  Paulo thought Preston was just right, age-wise, but instead of saying so decided to take the chance he’d been seeking for over a week. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a little glass jar with a handwritten label. “My grandmother makes this. For her joint pain. Works on muscle aches, too.” He slid the jar across the table.

  Preston looked at it, turned it around in his hand. Then he slid it back towards Paulo. “Thank you, boy.” His expression was, as usual, inscrutable.

  In for a dime, in for a dollar, Paulo thought. “You… that is, sir, would you let me massage your hands?”

  Preston leaned back in his chair and rested his right hand on its polished arm, and Paulo had his answer. With what he knew -- and didn’t care -- was unseemly haste, he scrambled out of his seat and around the table, unscrewing the lid of the jar as he knelt at Preston’s side. He scooped out a bit of the spicy-smelling liniment and began to spread it gently over the slightly swollen knuckles. He used his thumbs to rub between the bones on the back of Preston’s hand, over and over. He pressed into the meaty part of the palm between thumb and wrist, lost himself in rolling fingertips between the pads of his fingers. The smell of the cayenne and olive oil in the salve tickled his nose and soon he was breathing deeply, humming a fado his grandmother sang when she missed his grandfather. He didn’t know how much time had passed by the time he moved to switch hands, but it must have been a while as his feet tingled from sitting on them.

  He shuffled over awkwardly, distantly surprised that his prick was tingling right along with his feet. When had the erection started? It wasn’t the sort of thing he failed to notice in the normal course of events.

  “That’s lovely, boy,” Preston said as Paulo started on the left hand. Paulo didn’t say anything, didn’t ask if Preston meant the massage or the song, while his erection flexed and the tingly feeling spread through his balls to his ass and pelvis. He rocked his hips a little, cradling the feeling, and let himself sink back into his trance state.

  He kept up with both the fado and the rubbing until the prickles in his feet turned painful.

  “You’ll burn if you stay out here much longer, sir,” he said quietly.

  “Right, boy,” Preston said as he reached to clear the table.

  “Let me, sir,” Paulo said, rising to stand on numb feet.

  Preston looked at him and smiled, brushed the back of one oiled hand across the insistent bulge in Paulo’s jeans, and walked slowly back inside.

  Paulo took a minute to calm down. Their scene at Tasim’s club had been intense and heavy, and had dominated his thoughts and fantasies for months afterwards.

  So why was a simple hand massage so much more intoxicating?

  ***

  Paulo was driving Preston crazy. It was a humid, overcast day, threatening rain, and the boy was rushing to get all the storm windows up before the weather broke.

  Up and down the ladder he clambered, with an uncanny sense of which room Preston occupied at any moment. Shirtless, wearing a sinfully tiny pair of cutoffs that showed a filigree of tight black curls every time he stretched up to screw a frame into place, his stomach muscles flexing with each movement, Paulo was driving him slowly out of his mind.

  He’d known, since their scene at Tasim’s club, when he’d astonished himself by losing control and fucking the boy right on stage, that there was a connection between them, one he might very well be helpless
against. Now, having Paulo there every day, he was coming to rely on the boy for all of the things he’d dreamed of relying on a sub for. It said a lot for Paulo’s sincerity that he didn’t ask for sex or scenes, just offered service and companionship, giving things that were only his to give, like the favors owed him by his cousins and uncles, or the blissfully luxurious hand massages.

  It had been weeks, and Preston was beginning to admit that the boy was becoming his boy. Today, inconveniently, his mind and body simmered with wanting his boy.

  He tried to focus on the latest batch of queries from his editor, but the unrelenting pain in his hands distracted him. Maybe Paulo was right, that the low barometric pressure made the arthritis worse. They’d discussed it over breakfast. A breakfast Paulo arrived early to make before setting to work. After the first two such days, Preston had stopped protesting and started giving orders.