bed. I grabbed an extra pillow and lay down on the sofa. I was asleep myself within a few minutes, despite the noise emanating from the other side of the Japanese screen.
It was just after daylight when I woke up to see Mike, naked, standing at the foot of the sofa. “What happened to my clothes?” he demanded.
“Good morning to you, too,” I said, yawning.
His body looked good-better than good, actually. Muscular forearms dusted with black hair. A broad chest that narrowed to his waist, meaty calves, and a half-hard dick that I remembered well. “What happened last night?”
“You showed up at my door drunk off your ass,” I said, sitting up. I pulled the comforter over my crotch so he wouldn’t see that I was hard just from looking at him. “You threw up all over yourself, me, and my floor. Then you passed out. I washed your clothes for you-they’re over there.”
I pointed toward the front door.
“For real?” he asked.
“For real. You don’t remember?”
He shook his head. “I guess I am fucked up.”
“Guess so.”
I watched as he pulled on his clothes. “I’m sorry,” he said, as he was getting ready to leave.
“Me, too,” I said. “For everything.”
THE FIREMAN OR THE TIGER
On Friday, Ray and I went around to homeless shelters and showed pictures of Jingtao, without making any connections. I was glad we had Saturday and Sunday off; maybe something would break over the weekend.
Ray was doing special duty both days-security for a gun show at the Blaisdell Center-so he was fine with an easy Friday. Me, I was bored and antsy, trying not to think about Mike, or about my dinner that night with Haoa, Tatiana, and Sergei.
Sergei, like his sister, was tall, sturdy, and blond. He’d bummed around a bunch of jobs in Alaska-working the pipeline, cooking at a diner, helping train dogs for the Iditarod. It didn’t sound like we had anything in common except being gay. Not the kind of fix up I was looking forward to.
I arrived at my brother’s house just before seven. My truck was making some unhappy noises on the steep, twisting climb up into St. Louis Heights, and I thought that I’d have to make an appointment to take it in for what would turn out to be some very expensive repair.
Most of the houses in the neighborhood had no yards to speak of, front or back, but Haoa’s was on a wedge- shaped corner lot. Walking into his backyard is like entering a tropical exhibit at a botanical garden. Combine my brother’s intuitive feel for plants and flowers with Tatiana’s artistic sensibility, and you get a lush landscape full of short and tall palms; spiky red and orange heliconia; the five-petaled plumeria with orange centers and a frosting of white at the edge; dark red anthurium; and single, double, and triple hibiscus in red, pink, purple, and white. The sensory overload is amazing-from the bright colors of the flowers, to the glossy green leaves, to the scent of the tuberose. It’s like being draped in a full-body lei.
I’d met Sergei before and liked him. Maybe it was a physical thing; I prefer my men big and beefy, and he had that in spades-six two, broad-shouldered, with thighs like tree trunks. He had tribal tattoos around both biceps, which bulged out of his short-sleeved aloha shirt. He wore long board shorts and rubber slippas, and his hair was the same honey blond as Tatiana’s and nearly as long.
My brother was grilling steaks, and Tatiana went inside to get the salad. I asked Sergei, “What brings you to Hawai’i?”
He laughed. “It’s Tatiana’s turn to watch me. Everybody else in the family has given up.” He downed his wine in one big gulp. “I was staying in our sister Natasha’s guesthouse until her husband caught me screwing the neighbor’s teenaged son in the sauna.”
I raised my eyebrows. “Hey, he was eighteen, and horny. Nothing illegal about it. Of course, Arnie had the whole sauna ripped out and rebuilt afterward. Tasha was pissed about that.”
Tatiana returned and the meal passed quickly. I laughed and joked with my brother, my sister-in-law, and Sergei. At some point his bare toes were tickling the inside of my leg, and at another point he reached over to touch my hand and an electric current shot through my body.
I helped Haoa clean up the grill after dinner. “You ever go over to the center on Waialae Avenue?” I asked, scrubbing a grate with a bristled brush.
“The one that burned? Sometimes.”
I knew Haoa placed the occasional bet on ball games, and that he and his college buddies played poker together. “You know anything about gambling over there?”
He looked up from tying up a bag of trash. “You still investigating that fire?”
“Yeah. We think there might have been gambling going on out of the acupuncture clinic.”
He shrugged. “Not that I knew of.”
Sergei was house-sitting for Haoa and Tatiana’s neighbors who were on a round-the-world cruise, and after dinner I walked down the hill with him so he could show me his digs. I was pretty sure he’d be showing me something else, too, and I was fine with that.
The living room, dining room, and kitchen were all fine; what I wanted to see was the master bedroom suite. Sergei flipped on the overhead lights as we walked in, and I flipped them off.
He turned to me, and I wrapped my arms around his broad back and pulled him in for a kiss. “Hey, there, sexy,” he said, when we parted.
Sergei unbuttoned my aloha shirt and dropped it to the floor, then attacked my nipples with his mouth. First one, then the next; starting with a gentle licking and sucking, then just the hint of teeth, then it felt like he’d grabbed them in his jaws and started twisting.
All I had to do was whimper and moan and rub his head and shoulders. Every now and then he’d pull off for a deep kiss, and by the time my nipples were tender and achy the rest of me was hungering for his touch. We stripped in the moonlight and tumbled into bed, talking in low voices as we touched and stroked each other.
Sex with Sergei was like a return to a more innocent past, before all the kinky stuff I’d gotten involved in. I was relieved that I could enjoy sex that was romantic and gentle once again. Though he was wild, everything he did was approached in the spirit of fun. “You like that, Kimo?” he asked, as he tickled my butt hole with his tongue. “That turns you on?” he whispered, as he stroked my sensitive inner thigh and I squirmed under his touch.
His body was like a candy shop I hadn’t visited in a long time. I remembered how much I enjoyed sucking cock, kissing a guy, feeling the weight of a big man sprawled on top of me. We had sex in a couple of different positions, him in me, me in him, until we both were so wiped out all we could do was lie there and breathe.
As Sergei was drifting off to sleep I remembered the sound of Mike in my bed, me on the other side of the Japanese screen, and despite the thorough fucking I’d just gotten from the sexy Sergei, I missed the touch of my hunky fireman.
I drove down to Waikiki the next morning, cheerful after a little more romping with Sergei. I’d had some great sex with a guy who knew how to enjoy another man’s body, and I had two days off to relax and forget about the arson and murder at the shopping center. I was just trying to decide what to do with my free time when my cell phone rang.
Harry wanted to know if I’d join him and Arleen for lunch. One of her many cousins had opened a little cafe in Aiea and they wanted to give him some business. I arranged to meet them at noon, and spent the morning rollerblading, reading, and puttering around the apartment.
My truck groaned again as I climbed up Aiea Heights Drive, and I reminded myself to make an appointment at the garage. “We’ve got some news,” Harry said, after we’d been seated at a cafe table. “Arleen and I are getting married.”
“About time,” I said.
“We wanted to make sure Brandon was okay with it,” Harry said. Brandon was Arleen’s eight-year-old, from a guy she’d forgotten before the boy was born.
