Linda Alvarez - The Mammoth Book of Threesomes and Moresomes

“All right, but don’t come crying to me when your hide gets hard and leathery like somebody’s old wallet.” I held out my hand for the bottle. Jamal cut his eyes at me, but he put the sunscreen on.

An older man came walking past us. He looked white, but he was tanned a deep brick red. His skin had settled into soft folds on his body, and he clanked when he moved. I spotted a pinkie-thick rod through each nipple, plugs and multiple rings through his ears, and a bunch more rings and rods through his dick. There were probably more I wasn’t seeing. Tad shuddered, but I thought he looked really interesting. Had to admire his dedication.

Then I got a better look at one of the men coming out of the water. Could it be? I wasn’t sure. He saw us, altered his trajectory so that his path would cross ours. Dragonfly tattooed on his left thigh. Yes, it was him!

As he passed by, he looked Jamal up and down, slowly. “Mm,” he said, “chocolate.” He walked on, gazing back at Jamal now and again. He flagged down the Martini seller.

“The fuck was that?” said Jamal.

I chuckled. “He didn’t recognize me.”

“Where you know him from?” Tad asked.

“Shuck,” said Jamal, “can we find somewhere to sit that’s a little bit private? All of a sudden, I’m not digging on these guys so much any more.”

Perfect. Just my chance. “They’re not all like that, you know,” I said. But I led them to the place I had in mind: a private little patch of sand surrounded by scrubby trees. Good, no one was using it just now.

“Where do you know him from?” asked Tad again.

I pointed to a large, flat-topped rock. “You can sit there,” I told them. “It’s almost like an armchair.”

“Susanna … I know you when you get like this,” Tad said. “What’s the story with that guy?”

I grinned. “You gonna take those clothes off? It’s warm down here.”

Jamal put his clothing down on the rock and went to undo the fly on Tad’s jeans. Tad made a show of slapping his hands away, then submitted. I sat on the boulder that was conveniently near the flat rock and watched. Triumphantly, Jamal yanked the zipper down.

“Wait, sweetie, wait,” Tad said. “Gotta take the shoes off first.” With a shy glance at me, he sat on the rock, put his balled-up shirt next to Jamal’s clothing, and started taking off his runners. To keep him company, I took off my sandals, put them on the boulder beside me. Tad got his shoes and socks off, snuck me a glance again, rocked his jeans off his hips, and pulled his legs out of them. He was wearing black cotton shorts underneath. So modest. He rolled the jeans up beside the other clothing.

“Stand up,” I said. “Let me see you.”

Slowly, he did. His thighs were thick, his calves full and muscled. “Well, look at you,” I told him.

Jamal was smiling at me thoughtfully. Was he egging me on?

“Lover,” he said to Tad, “turn all the way around for your friend. Let her look at you.”

He was egging me on.

“Two of you are shameless,” muttered Tad, but, to my surprise, he did what Jamal asked. I took my time admiring his butt, the fullness of his belly. He turned to face me, but I’d barely glanced at his package in his shorts when he sat down. “So,” he said, faking nonchalance, “you gonna tell me about that guy?”

“You wanna know what happened, you have to take the shorts off.”

He cocked his hand on his hip. “Is the story worth it?”

“Worth seeing you in the full, glorious flesh? It’s a high price, baby, but I think I can meet it.”

He made a face at me. But he looked pleased, too. This felt good. This felt like the way we used to tease each other. I just wanted to push it up a notch, that’s all.

Maybe Tad was thinking the same thing, because all of a sudden he pulled his shorts down, stepped out of them, grabbed them up off the sand, and sat down. He tossed the shorts on to the pile of clothing and turned back to me. “There,” he said. He crossed his hands in his lap, conveniently hiding his crotch. “So, tell me the story.”

Jamal sat on the warm sand beside Tad’s knee.

“All right,” I said. “You asked for it.”

I settled comfortably on my boulder, leaned forward. “Well, Sula and I have this game, right? Every so often, one of us dares the other one to do something outrageous. If you chicken out from doing whatever it is, you lose, and you have to be the other person’s sex toy for a night; do everything they say.”

“Oo,” said Jamal. “Kinky.” He stroked Tad’s calf.

I snickered. “You don’t know the half of it. One time I lost on purpose. Could barely stand the next day, after Sula got done with me.” The memory of that night was making my nipples crinkle up. All those girly pantyhose that Sula owned had made the most fiendish restraints. I didn’t know I could bend in some of those positions.

“You’re stalling, Shuck,” said Tad.

“No, just setting the story up. Cause, this one time, I took her up on her dare. There’s this gay bar called Pump Jack’s, a men’s bar. I’ll take you there on Friday. Sula said she wanted me to go in there and get one of the guys to let me jerk him off.”

“No!” from Tad.

“Yes. And I did it.”

“With that guy we just saw?”

“With that guy.”

“How?”

“I went to the bar in drag …”

“In a dress?” asked Tad.

Jamal chuckled. “No, silly. She went in guy drag.”

Though come to think of it, I pretty much look like I’m in drag when I wear a dress, too. “Yeah,” I said. “Little goatee, little bit of extra swagger in the walk. Wore my regular clothes. Walked right in. I mean, I go in there as a chick, so I thought the bouncer would recognize me. He got this look like he almost did, but then you could see he didn’t make the connection. I didn’t speak the whole time. Ordered a beer at the bar by pointing at the draught spigot. When I started drinking it, I knew I’d have to do something soon, before I needed to go and piss.”

Tad was shaking his head. “Susanna, you are something else.”

“Susanna left home. I’m Shuck.”

“What happened then?”

“I saw this guy looking at me. That guy, the one on the beach. I started staring him down, looking him up and down. If I did that to a woman, she’d probably run a mile. But this guy, he came and sat next to me. Said hi. I didn’t answer, just pointed with my chin over to the bathroom. Shit, I didn’t think it would work! Figured he’d see I was a woman, and I’d have to pass it all off as a joke.

“But that didn’t happen. He just gave me this rude, slow smile. Leaned over and whispered that he’d see me in there. And off he headed, to the john.

“My heart was fucking hammering in my chest, I tell you. But I put down my beer, followed him. He slipped into a stall, and I slipped in behind him. He reached for me, but I didn’t want him touching me too much. Women’s skin has this soft feeling, you know? Even mine. Didn’t want that to give me away. So I pushed his back against the stall door. I sat on the toilet, unzipped him …”

“Shit, that’s hot,” said Jamal. He was leaning forwards, his mouth a little open. His cock was firming up. I was getting a tingle in my shorts, too, telling this story.

“He was hard the second I got his dick out of his pants. I slid my hands up under his shirt, grazed his nipples, pulled on them a little.”

Tad swallowed.

“I ran my tongue around the head of his dick. He moaned, kinda low. I held on to his dick, gave it a good squeeze. It jumped in my hand.”

Tad got this odd look. He squeezed his knees together and said, “You know, you better stop talking like that, else you might see something you don’t wanna see.”