Caught Between a Rock and A Hard...

[Note: This was written by request from a friend. It contains male-to-male contact. If this is troublesome, you may want to find an alternative selection for your reading pleasure.]

*****

"Did you ask him?"

A slow smile began to creep across his lips. I couldn't help myself, and I began to feel the contagious pull at my mouth drawing upwards as well.

"Well," I pushed, excitement and anxiety pushing for dominance. "What did he say?"

"He said - and I quote -" Dan said languidly, breaking out into a full grin as he drew out my anticipation, "'That's been my life-long fantasy.'"

I felt a sudden rush of relief, and placed my hand on my chest as I tried to control my breathing. I hadn't even realized that I was holding my breath awaiting the news. Underneath my palm I found my heart beating wildly.

"Really?" I asked. I was excited, but nervous. I had no reason to believe that Dan was messing with me - that would simply be cruel - but I felt that I needed to have additional confirmation. "Brian really wants to?"

Dan simply smiled back at me.

I shuddered at the implications, conflicting emotions criss-crossing through me in crashing waves. For months I had been on edge, holding back my schoolgirl crush on Brian at the risk of upsetting and alienating Dan. After being married for nearly fifteen years, he knew me well enough to know that I felt an attraction to Brian, and seemed to find it amusing more than threatening.

For some time, though, my attraction to Brian threatened to push me into actions that would have put my marriage at risk. What had started as harmless fantasies and casual masturbation fodder was beginning to evolve into active plans to seduce him. The desire to touch him, have him inside me, became almost an obsession. The more I tried to suppress it, the more I tried to hide the depth of my attraction from both him and Dan, the worse it got.

I didn't want to cheat, and I didn't want an affair. I didn't want to replace Dan with Brian, and the fear of losing Dan due to my uncontrollable urges was sending me into emotional fits. I wanted to keep my husband, but I wanted to progress my friendship with Brian into something more.

My frustration level was beyond description, torn in pieces as I was between two completely opposite emotions.

For his part, Brian was clueless. He was always respectful, and even though his mild, playful flirtation pushed all my buttons the right way, he never quite crossed the line. He was always mindful of keeping a proper distance from me, out of respect for me and Dan, despite the fact that I desperately wanted him to cross that line so that I wouldn't have to.

It drove me nuts.

Things came to a head this summer when Brian came over to hang out at our pool one weekend. What started as a calm, relaxing Saturday afternoon with a couple drinks and some pleasant company turned into the worst hormonal episode of my adult life.

It was one of those unbearably hot days where it seemed impossible to find any relief, where the pool felt like a jacuzzi and even staying still felt oppressive and exhausting. The three of us, familiar and comfortable in each other's company like always, did our best to cool off in our bathing suits with occasional dips into the water.

Brian had a pair of bright yellow trunks that happened to be the exact same color as my two-piece, which of course made him the butt of the afternoon's jokes. He took it all with good humor, as he always did.

"I don't know what you're talking about," he said, turning from side to side in a mock model-esque pose. "I find this completely fashionable."

"You two could be runway models," Dan said.

"Absolutely!" I squealed, and stood up to stand next to Brian. Seizing any opportunity to be close to him, I sidled up and wrapped my arm around his waist. I put one hand on my hip, and pouted my lips. "Ze world famous sup-ehr mod-ehls, Bree-uhn and Kee-lee," I slurred in my best French-sounding accent.

As had been the case for the previous few months, being next to Brian - and having the excuse to touch him and be close to him - was an instant injection of a libidinous opiate. I was immediately drunk with attraction.

"Now on the catwalk," Brian laughed, playing along, "This year's bathing sensation from the Nieman Marcus yellow collection."

We sauntered down the side of the pool, making wildly exaggerated movements with our hips in synchronous time. At the end of the pool, we turned around with a flair and begun our return towards Dan. I held onto his arm, perhaps a bit more tightly than I should have. The heat of the day, making the contact between us sweaty and clammy, did nothing to diminish my desire for him.

Suddenly self-conscious about my clinginess, I searched for a smooth way to detach myself from him. I didn't want to do it, which is probably when the pendulum of my emotions began to swing wildly in my head into a manic phase. About halfway, I bumped my hip a little harder against his, pushing him laterally into the pool.

Realizing what was happening, he reached out to try to pull me in with him, but the perspiration on our skin was too slick and he careened unceremoniously into the water, alone.

He came up, sputtering. "Why, you..." but he was laughing.

I squealed with giddy glee, and ran over to Dan and hid behind him to 'protect' me.

Brian lifted himself out of the water and ran his hands through his hair and wiped his eyes. In the split second it took him to do this, my throat seized as I saw the water's effect on his swimming trunks.

The fabric wasn't transparent, but the water had immediately clung to his body in a tight, form-fitting fashion. The wrinkles of the suit simply could not disguise the unmistakeable outline of his cock underneath. I felt something inside my lower stomach clench instinctively, and my playfulness was now instantly and totally replaced by something far more serious.

Brian was still laughing, however, unaware of my immediate shift in attitude. He adjusted his suit, and suddenly the outline of his body disappeared underneath the shifting fabric. I found myself both disappointed that I could no longer see him in some of his glory, and relieved that I wouldn't be caught staring.

Brian raced up to me and reached for my arms. My mood had radically changed, but either he didn't notice or he thought I didn't mean it. I didn't want him to touch me - I was barely keeping things together as it was - but found his hands grabbing my arms as I fought him off. In less than a second I found myself wrapped up tightly against his chest as he flung both of us into the pool.

The touch of his skin against mine once more electrified me. His arms, much stronger than my small frame could fight, held me securely in place, and I instinctively wrapped my legs around his. I was acutely aware of the thin fabric pieces that separated us, and some deep recess of my brain wished that neither of us had such barriers and that I could feel him against me.

The overwhelming emotion, though, was revulsion. Counter to all logic, I found an angry rage boil up inside and consume me. I needed to get away from him, needed to do it immediately. If I couldn't have him, I didn't want him to touch me at all.

When we surfaced, I screamed at him. "You asshole! Don't touch me!"

I hit him as hard as I could with my forearms on his chest, and he instantly released me, a stunned and hurt look on his face. I swam to the edge of the pool, lifted myself out of the water, and stormed past Dan.

"Kylie," he said, reaching for me. I yanked my arm away from him and entered the house, slamming the screen door behind me.

"What did I do?" I heard Brian ask, bewildered.

I found my way into the bathroom, and slumped down on the floor against the shower door. The tears began to well up in my eyes, and I reached for the closest towel so that I could bury my face in the soft terrycloth. I forced as much of the towel against my mouth as I could, and screamed until my throat hurt.

Even as I sat there, there was a part of me that realized my behavior was bizarre. Poor Brian didn't deserve my sudden chaotic mood swing, and there was no way he could know it stemmed from a deep-seated frustration and not from the dunking into the water.

That's exactly why it's his fault! part of me shouted in my head. He should see what I'm going through. Why can't he see what's happening to me? Doesn't he care? To me, it made perfect sense.

Men.

I had myself a good cry, letting my unfulfilled desires get the better of me and wallowing in self-pity. I must have lost track of time, because by the time that I finally extracted myself from the bathroom Brian had gone.

Dan sat by the pool, beer in hand, looking at me with a mix of concern and displeasure. "Are you okay?" he asked, the tone in his voice measured.

"Where's Brian?" I asked.

"He thought it might be best if he left," he said, stating the obvious.

I sat down next to Dan and reached for my cocktail, which had warmed considerably in the summer heat. I sighed. Dan just looked at me expectantly.

When I didn't say anything, he said, "I think you need to explain what just happened." He wasn't going to let me off the hook this time.

I swallowed. This was the conversation I had been trying to avoid for months. I had been trying to hide my feelings, repress them, bury them deep inside. Little had I known that they weren't being buried, but rather compressing like a spring waiting for the trigger to be released.

"I have a crush on Brian," I said, bluntly.

"No shit," Dan said, taking a sip of his beer. If I had expected him to explode in anger, it didn't seem like it was going to happen. "Everyone has a crush on Brian."

I looked down at my drink. "It's more than a crush," I confessed.

Dan paused, looking at me. "Are you in love with him?" he asked, his tone even.

"No," I said, truthfully. "But I love his company, I love being around him."

Dan didn't say anything, choosing instead to take another sip.

I looked at him. "And I want to fuck him."

Dan swallowed. "I'm not surprised," he said. "Brian's a very good looking guy."

The entire conversation was becoming surreal. Here I was, telling my husband that I wanted to have sex with another man, and he was acting as if I hadn't yet gotten to the devastating news.

Dan leaned back in his chair and cast his gaze forward. "Hell," he added. "I'd do him."

This made me upset. "Dan, I'm not kidding," I said, hurt that he was not taking this seriously.

He looked at me. "Look, Kylie," he said. When he said my name in the middle of a conversation, I knew he was being serious. "You're not as good at hiding your feelings as you think you are. You've been struggling with this for months."

I was stunned. Had I been that transparent? I felt my heart pounding in fear.

"I haven't done anything," I stammered. "Nothing's happened between..."

He smiled a little. "Oh, I know," he reassured me. "If you had you wouldn't be such a powderkeg right now."

I relaxed a little and took a drink from my unpleasantly warm cocktail. Still, I needed a little more liquid courage. "Even if I wasn't married," I said slowly, "I wouldn't necessarily want to be with Brian. I just want something more than what I have. Something in-between the friendship and a committed relationship."

"Friends with benefits?" Dan asked.

Up until that moment I had detested the phrase, finding it a euphemism for an excuse to have sex with people without needing to feel guilty when it came time to reject them when they wanted to take it further. Now, though, I realized that this was exactly what I wanted. I wanted to explore my friendship with Brian into a physical realm, because it felt like it was the natural place for that relationship to be. I began to realize that much of my frustration was coming from the arbitrary ceiling that my marriage had placed on my friendship with Brian.

I nodded, slowly.

"So this is why you've been all over the place with your moods," Dan said. "I've been trying to figure this out for months."

Here I was thinking I was hiding it so well. "Have I been that bad?" I asked.

Dan gave me a sideways glance, and then laughed. "Darlin'," he said. "You've been wound up so tight that if we stuck a lump of coal up your ass, in two weeks we'd have a diamond."

I grimaced. "Thank you very much, Ferris Bueller," I retorted. After a moment, I asked, "Why didn't you say anything?"

Dan looked at me and raised an eyebrow. "Oh, yeah," I said, realizing the silliness of my own question. I hadn't exactly been approachable about this.

Even so, I felt better. In fact, I felt like a tremendous weight had been lifted off of me, that I'd been suffering under thousands of tons of guilt and shame for feeling this way about another man. Dan had removed all of it, and it confirmed why I loved him so much.

"It was his cock, wasn't it?" Dan asked, causing me to spit out my mouthful of drink.

"Excuse me, what?" I sputtered.

He looked at me, a twinkle in his eye. "When he got out of the pool after you knocked him in, you saw his cock underneath his swimsuit when he got out."

So he had noticed too. He took my silence as an affirmation, and smiled broadly. "I knew it!" he said, taking a drink. "Your attitude changed as soon as he straightened out his swimsuit. I knew you were disappointed."

Dan was half-right, but I didn't see any reason to contradict him.

"Tell me," he said, facing me with a devious smile on his face. "What happened when he took you in the water?"

I was confused. "What do you mean?"

"See, I think Brian feels ashamed that you had an affect on him," Dan said.

Now I was completely lost. "Dan," I said. "I have no idea what you're talking about."

He raised an eyebrow. "You mean you really don't know?"

I shook my head.

He laughed uproariously at that. "Oh, that's too precious!" he exclaimed. "Kylie, you stormed off into the house, and he got out of the pool with a raging hard-on."

My mouth opened in shock.

Dan started laughing so hard he was finding it difficult to breathe. "Whatever happened in the water turned Dan on so much that he couldn't control himself," Dan managed to get out the words. "He thought you were upset because you had felt him get hard in the water! That's why he left so quickly."

I vaguely remembered wrapping my legs around him when we fell into the water, but had been so wrapped up in my conflicting emotions I completely missed feeling Brian's erection against me. Goddamn it! I had missed an opportunity I had been wanting for months! I replayed the brief moments in my mind, trying to find some recollection of feeling his hardness against me, hoping that the memory would surface. I felt my pussy twinge.

"He's probably home right now, trying to finish off what you started," Dan said, still chuckling as he took another drink. The vivid image pushed me over the edge.

I couldn't help myself. I lunged for Dan's swimsuit, pulled the elastic away from his stomach, and took the head of his flaccid cock between my lips. He smelled and tasted vaguely of chlorine and sweat, but I felt raw and hungry for some satisfaction. He quickly began to swell and grow, and I felt the soft spongy head and shaft begin to fill with blood against my tongue.

"Oh my," he said. "The thought of him jacking off really got you turned on, didn't it?"

Not just that, I though, but mumbled an affirmative without lifting my face from his groin.

"Poor Brian," Dan continued. "I just know he wishes he were in my shoes right now."

I moaned, thoughts of Brian taking out his cock as soon as he got home and stroking it filling my mind's eye. I imagined him playing with himself, picturing me sucking the knob exactly the same way I was doing to Dan.

"Tell me more," I gasped to Dan, and went back down on him.

"Oh baby," he gasped. "He doesn't know what he's missing. The poor guy would never last more than three minutes in your mouth."

The thought of Brian shooting in my mouth made me quiver. I lifted myself up once more, took Dan out of my mouth, and said. "He was that hard, was he?"

Dan smiled. "Oh, you have no idea," he said, and I slipped him back in my mouth. I placed the elastic of his swimming trunks behind my hand, holding it far enough away as I fed him deeper into my throat, my other hand now free to slip under my own bikini.

"He was so hard he didn't even know how to stand," Dan said, jumping in my mouth as I sucked him. "It was probably a good thing that you got out of the pool when you did, 'cause he probably would have come right there in the water with you."

I could almost imagine his erection pressing against me during that split second of an embrace earlier, but I knew it was just that - my imagination. I started to let my mind wander about what would have happened had I actually felt Brian push into my bikini bottoms, how desperate I would have been to finally feel him hard against me.

I stood up suddenly, leaving Dan with a momentarily surprised look on his face. His grin returned as I straddled him on the lounge chair, pulling my bikini to the side and lowering myself upon him. He slid in easily, and I rested my bottom against his balls, just feeling him filling me up.

Dan had given me a new freshness to my masturbatory fantasies about Brian, and hearing him describe our friend in this way cut deep into my ego. I wanted to know more about Brian wanting me, about being turned on by me. I was luxuriating in the news that I was not alone in my attraction, that he had wanted me too. Dan's description of Brian's arousal had triggered long-lost memories of finding out that school crushes actually reciprocated my own feelings. I was in emotional ecstasy.

My husband knew me long enough and well enough to see through me, and fed me with exactly what I needed to hear. He continued to talk to me, tell me how hard Brian had been, how I had missed the poor man's condition and how much I would have loved it. He told me of how Brian was likely firing load after load of hot, sticky cream into the air, imagining it flying into my mouth or deep inside my pussy.

I felt my legs tense in the familiar acceleration of arousal, knowing my orgasm was moments away.

"Go ahead, Kylie," Dan said softly. "You know Brian wants you to come for him, too."

My orgasm hit me like a stutter, each staccato wave stronger than the last, my entire lower abdomen convulsing so strongly that it almost felt like it was cramping. The final seizure was the longest, and I didn't realize I was holding my breath until I collapsed onto Dan's chest in exhaustion.

I could barely move, and didn't want to. I knew I had to finish Dan off, but suddenly the summer heat was even more oppressive and I wasn't sure I had the energy to milk him to orgasm. I would be fine if he just wanted to use my body, though, as long as I didn't have to make an effort.

"Do you want to come?" I asked, surprised at how difficult it took to form the words.

"I came when you did," he said, stroking my hair.

He did? I honestly didn't notice. He was still hard inside me, though I could feel a faint pulsing against my vaginal walls. Maybe he did, after all. At the very least it meant I didn't have to move, so I was content.

That is, I was content until I started realizing that I was still in the same frustrating situation I had been in. I wanted something more with Brian, something physical - just not too much more. I mean, I already had a husband and didn't need another one.

"You're in hell, aren't you?" Dan asked after a moment. "You want him."