Page 10 of View From the Bottom

Beads of sweat leaving salty trails of desire behind them as they coursed down his temples, his back, his tight abdomen.

Fuck. I had grown completely hard during my fantasy; a level of firmness that would require assistance to dissipate. That would necessitate a release to retract.

I wondered if I should touch it, that jockstrap. I knew I shouldn’t. It was an impulse. And the question wasn’t whether Ishouldor not, it was simply a matter of whether I could get away with it without Enzo finding out. Without feeling the guilt that would surely meet me later, the guilt that would come fromlusting over—from handling—another guy’s worn jockstrap. A steady client of mine, no less.

I looked back to the clock on this bedside table. 4:43. I’d been staring at the thing for two minutes, frozen in some kind of sexual trance. I felt like a kid in a candy store. A kid who was trying to get away with swiping a handful of something sweet while the shopkeeper was busy with another customer.

This is stupid, I thought.I know I’m going to touch it. Just fucking do it already.

My mind had been made up. I had only been hesitating in hopes that I would come to my senses, replace the lid, and walk away. But two minutes had passed—shit, three now—and I hadn’t budged. I leaned the lid against the wall to prop it up. The position would make it easy to grab it and throw it back on top of the hamper if I actually stopped to think about what I was doing. My hand reached out and grabbed the jockstrap quickly, as though I was hoping no one saw. I don’t know why. Not a soul was around.

The pouch felt cool in my hand as I gently rubbed the fabric between my thumb and forefinger. It was made of a soft cotton-spandex blend that gave it the ability to stretch, to shift with the movement of a body. Enzo’s body. Slightly damp at the edges, I panicked at the thought that it should probably be dry given how many hours Enzo should have been at work. Perhaps the lid of the hamper didn’t allow for much airflow. Perhaps Enzo had gone in to work late.

My dick stretched and punched at the fly of my shorts, looking for a way out, hoping to find comfort in freedom. It pulsed with excitement at the thought of Enzo’s cock being trapped inside the same jockstrap I was currently fondling just hours earlier, his balls tight against the fabric of the pouch.

Reason flew the coop and my sick curiosity got the best of me once again. I brought the pouch to my face and inhaled, softly atfirst, quickly. I wasn’t sure what I would encounter and I wasn’t sure if I would like it. The scent was light, an almost hollow musk dancing on the fabric. So, I went in again, inhaling more deeply as I brought the pouch closer to my face, touching it to my nose.

There it is, I thought.There’s the thick, heady scent of a man between his legs.

It was a scent I wasn’t sure I’d find at first, a scent I wasn’t sure I wanted to find: sweat and masculinity and sex. I swear I could smell sex clinging to the fabric. My rigid hard cock relayed to my brain that I could, anyway.

Fuck, I was horny. And I was sniffing the dirty laundry of a client. A client to whom I’d never given much thought. Not until just that moment, when that client became the only thought I had in my mind. Those distant memories of his kind, angular face: the laugh lines, the full head of hair newly graying at the temples, the sexy five o’clock shadow dotted with flecks of salt and pepper, clouded my head like a sandstorm. Memories a year old and probably outdated.

The rounded shape of his ass in those black slacks. Fuck.

And now, the way he smelled. That would be a new memory I’d carry with me. It would be the one that would put me over the edge the next time a heady release anxiously bounded across the horizon.

I couldn’t stop. I didn’t want to. I wanted him all over me. I wanted to be able to smell him on my face later that night when I was out with my friends, a naughty little secret keeping my dick hard and my mind racing with filthy thoughts during dinner. I wanted to lick my lips after taking a sip of my beer and taste him on me. I wanted to be able to sense him on me while I jerked off in my bed before falling asleep. I wanted to be able to picture him clearly; pushing his cock between my wet lips, provoking me, urging me to lick him, to taste him, to suck him. To swallow him.

I inhaled deeper, pressing his jockstrap to my face, imagining how it would feel to be fucked by him, for him to shove his cock into my…

“Stevie?” The voice that appeared from behind me was rugged but even, almost accusatory. It scared the shit out of me, shocked me into believing I’d imagined it. I hoped I had. Please, please let it have been my imagination. “What are you doing?”

Fuck.

Shit.

Holy motherfucking shit fuck.

My entire face turned red; cheeks set ablaze with rosy embers. I could feel my heart pounding in my ears. The room began to spin… quickly. I thought I might pass out. Then it slowed. I froze up, and sweat began to bead on my forehead and under my arms… again. Nervous energy coursed through my veins, doing anything it could to push itself from my body, from the tips of my fingers and the soles of my feet.

I dropped the jockstrap back into the hamper, doing my best to restrain my movements and conceal my guilt, and stood completely still. My back was to the door. Maybe he hadn’t seen what I was doing. His voice had appeared from nowhere, after all. It had taken me a few seconds to even realize there was someone in the room with me. Well, in the doorway, watching me in his room, sniffing his jockstrap. But maybe he hadn’t seen. What the hell was he doing home from work so early, anyway?

I wanted to fade away, to spontaneously combust, to find an open window and hastily fling myself from the safety of his house. It was no longer a safe space for me. It had become a hostile battleground, a stately courtroom in which I sat exposed on the stand being interrogated with a string of litigious questioning, forced to incriminate myself.

Wait. The bathroom light. That’s why I’d originally entered his bedroom in the first place. I’d pretend like I’d been turningthe bathroom light off before unceremoniously tripping over the hamper on my way out, causing the lid and some of the contents to tumble to the floor below. That’d be plausible, right? Except the bathroom light was still on and I was standing over the open hamper like a jerk, like a stunned idiot, like a deer in fucking headlights.

I couldn’t speak.

“Stevie,” the voice addressed me again, this time demanding, searching for a clue as to what I might be doing in his bedroom, trying to work out some scenario for why I might be standing over his open laundry hamper. He was attempting to shake me from my stupor. There was a depth to his tone. His voice was deeper than I remembered it being three seconds ago, and certainly deeper than I remembered it being during our initial meeting. His tone carried what few words had been spoken with some combination of confusion and unease, maybe even a twinge of anger.

That’s it, I thought.I’m going to be fired. And as soon as word got out around the neighborhood about what I’d been up to, no one else would even think of hiring me.I’d have to move, change my appearance, maybe even my identity.

My mom would be thrilled to find out that I’d have to start searching for work in some other field—thrilled that I’d started taking my future seriously.

Ugh.

I couldn’t turn around. I couldn’t face him. The situation was too humiliating.

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