Scott Sherman - First You Fall

But not for long.

I looked up from his boots.

“You’re so big, Sir. So strong.”

I met his eyes and saw his naked lust.

“Thank you Sir,” I said, remembering that time at the gym when Randy Bostinick straddled me on the bench and I accidental y sat up too fast. The force of that blow almost neutered him.

That’s the bitch about history. It tends to repeat itself.

I pushed up off my hands with al my might, bringing the ful weight of my head right up to where it would do Michael the least good. The impact sent his bal s up somewhere into the vicinity of his lower colon.

“Fuck!” Michael cried, doubling over.

“You fucker!” I screamed, bringing my knee into his crotch. This time, his hands blocked some of the blow, but he stil staggered backwards.

Bent over, his head was just about level with my arm. I pivoted back onto my left foot and brought my fist back for a right hook. The trick to a hook is not to hit with your hand, but to put your whole body into it. I twisted my hip and extended my arm.

“Ai-yee!” I cried.

This time, Michael was ready for me. As much pain as he was in, he managed to catch my arm in his left fist. Fol owing through, he brought his right fist around and caught me on the chin.

Even though he was off balance, Michael’s tremendous strength was enough to knock me to the floor.

In a flash, he was on top of me, sitting on my crotch. We were both panting with exertion.

“You real y hurt me, boy,” he snarled. “But you know what? I kind of like being hurt.” He leaned over and licked my face, humping his stil — exposed genitals over my stomach. He got hard again.

What had he said? Every top wants to be a bottom?

“Good,” I said, “then you’l like it when I fuck your brains out.”

Michael laughed; a deep throaty rumbled that scared me more than anything else yet.

“Oh, I don’t like to be hurt by little boys like you, whore,” he snarled. “No, I have something else in mind for you.”

He brought his mouth to my neck and licked there, too. Then a playful nip. Then he sunk his teeth in and clamped down.

This time, screaming wasn’t a pleasure I could deny him. “Aaah!” I cried.

He pul ed back. I felt blood dripping down my neck. I thought I would vomit from the pain.

I could stil get out of this. I just had to play along again until he let me up.

“Yes,” I said, “hurt me, let me…”

Michael put his finger to his lips. “No more games.

No more words.”

“I could make you feel so good,” I said, “if you’d just let me…”

Michael put both his hands around my neck.

“Maybe it would be better if you never said anything again.”

He leaned into his hands, cutting off my air. I felt myself panic as I struggled to breathe.

He took his hands away. “You like that, whore?”

I gulped in some air. “Are you going to kil me?

Like you did your father?”

“You little idiot,” Michael laughed again. “I didn’t kil my father.”

I coughed. “Made him kil himself, then.”

Michael leaned over and kissed me on the lips. I clenched my teeth. “You stupid little whore. Is that real y what you think? I haven’t spoken to my father since I was a child. I had nothing to do with his death.”

He laughed again. “Oh, maybe I convinced a couple of other guys that life wasn’t quite worth living.

Wel, not until they changed their wil s, of course.” He chuckled. This was al a game to him.

“But not my father. No, I think that old queen kil ed himself, you little idiot. But don’t worry-you’l get the chance to ask him soon enough.”

So, Michael hadn’t kil ed Al en either? I real y was the worst detective ever.

I bucked my hips wildly, but there was no way I was going to get him off me.

No one to help me either.

“Paul!” I screamed out one more time.

“No more of that,” Michael said. He brought his hands back to my neck. They tightened around me. I couldn’t breathe.

“Stryker,” I tried to scream, “help me!”

But with Michael’s huge hands on my throat I could barely be heard.

“Shhh,” Michael said. “Shhh.” He leaned in more.

“Tony!” I cried, but by now, only in my mind. “I love you!”

I felt a huge rush of heat as adrenaline surged through me, but there was nowhere for it to go.

The lights in the room flickered and dimmed until I realized it wasn’t the lights at al.

It was my life that was going out.

Michael’s face started to float away.

Blackness descended.

This was it.

Good-bye, world.

What a shitty way to go.

From a hundred miles away, I heard a sizzle and then a thud.

Michael’s arms relaxed and released.

I turned onto my side and gasped for breath.

Michael’s body rol ed off me and slumped to the floor. It was a minute before I could look up.

Paul Harrington stood there, naked, holding the Taser limply in his hands. Tears rol ed down his cheeks and his shoulders shook. “You bastard,” he said, looking at Michael’s unconscious body. “You bastard, you bastard, you bastard, you bastard…”

I pul ed myself up and put an arm around Paul. “It’s OK,” I told him. “It’s over. It’s over now.” He dropped the stun gun. He put his arms around me and sobbed into my shoulder. “It’s over.”

There was a loud bang and I felt Paul’s arms go limp as he slumped to the floor. A bright red bloom of blood spread across his chest. What? I turned to the door.

I saw who Michael referred to as “wifey.” Not his wife. His brother’s.

Paul’s wife, Alana Harrington, stood at the top of the stairs holding a smal pistol. She wore a black business suit, black pil box hat, and black leather boots.

Damn if she didn’t look a little like Darth Vader.

“You boys,” she said, descending the steps, “I can’t turn my back on my own husband for a minute without finding him making out with some guy in my own house.”

She shrugged. “Can you blame me for shooting him?”

I thought I had been in Michael’s house this whole time, but real y it was Paul’s. Somehow, though, I knew this sick little playroom wasn’t his. Looking at Alana, I understood who the real master around here was.

Or should I say “mistress?”

Alana walked over to Michael’s inert body and kicked him absently. “Useless piece of shit. Fun to play with, and not without his talents, but, stil, look at him.”

She went over to the cabinet and took out a long whip. She transferred her gun to her left hand and held the whip with her right. She flicked it with an expertise not seen since Michel e Pfeiffer played Catwoman in Batman Returns. The tip landed with exact precision on Michael’s exposed butt with enough snap to draw blood.

But not enough to rouse him.

“Useless!” Alana cried. She sneered at his backside. “Maybe if he could have kept it in his pants I wouldn’t have to clean up this mess.”

Michael had used almost the same words. Now that I had a chance to give his ass a good look, I saw that the lash mark Alana delivered today wasn’t the first one to scar him. “So,” I asked, “how long have you and Michael been having an affair?”

“Aren’t you the clever one?” she asked. “Paul had always been of little interest to me, but he was rich, and trying so desperately to be straight. I knew I wouldn’t have to put up with much sex from him so I figured ‘what the hel.’ We married, I had everything I ever wanted. Life was good.

“But, as you can imagine, things were a little boring. I had playmates, of course, men Paul knew nothing about. He was so busy with his own secrets he never suspected mine.