Heart Knot Mine Read online

  And then it came to me.

  Deliberate.

  His movements had been deliberate.

  Deliberate as he glided in. Deliberate as he pulled out. Deliberate as he focused on hitting that magical spot within his partner, the man’s cries of pleasure attesting to the accuracy of his aim.

  And the guy.

  Robert Callinan might have had me spellbound, but the euphoria of his partner was impossible to ignore. He was obviously in rapture. Definitely not in the agony I’d always been led to believe anal sex entailed. My rosebud clenched involuntarily as an image of Robert’s long, thick, sheathed cock, flushed and slick with lube, slowly disappeared between the guy’s pale, smooth cheeks, accompanied by the blond’s bliss-soaked moans.

  I groaned.

  My cock was rock solid again.

  So much for my being undersexed.

  Groaning in protest at the insistent aching throb in my groin, I took myself in hand. Image after image of flesh slapping against flesh flashed behind my closed lids. My reaction to the sex video playing in my head was the same as when I was a child watching a horror film—I wanted to cover my eyes and block them out, and yet I wanted to peek through my fingers too.

  With each stroke, I panted. And I fought.

  I pictured breasts that morphed into firm planes.

  I imagined soft curves that hardened into sharp angles.

  I envisaged a plump, shaved pussy that changed into a long, thick cock.

  A cock with its foreskin pulled back to reveal its flushed plum-shaped head.

  Robert Callinan’s cock.

  I masturbated furiously, wanting desperately to rid myself of my sperm… rid myself of my arousal… my desire. I wanted it gone from my body, from my mind. I leaned against the tiles as my climax erupted from me, but even the firmness at my back couldn’t stop my knees from buckling beneath me, and I slid to the floor. Shuddering as the last of my seed spilled from me to mix with the water before disappearing down the drain in a translucent swirl, I bowed my head, scared and confused.

  BY MORNING, after a mostly sleepless night, I had myself convinced the previous evening had been an aberration. Merely a symptom of my long dry spell. A sign of my despondence, or perhaps, simply the shock of seeing something so different from my own experience of sex.

  Regardless, to avoid temptation, I left the house early, traipsing all over the city, determined to fill my head with art… culture… anything that would banish the images of Robert Callinan from my mind.

  I succeeded—to a degree—good art always managed to fill the void. If only I had the talent to create it. I loved it, had a passion for it, could recognize it, I just couldn’t make it. I was mediocre at best. I was the cliché: those that can, do. Those that can’t, teach. Not that I minded; I loved teaching. My only hope was I expanded the horizons and knowledge of those that could.

  I returned late in the evening, footsore and weary, convinced that as soon as I showered and laid my head on the pillow, I’d be out like a light.

  I wished.

  Instead, I tossed and turned, cursing the moonlight that glinted on the polished stainless steel surround of the flat-screen. It taunted me. It teased me.

  And it mocked my resolve.

  Even as I walked naked to the sideboard, I told myself I was heading to the bathroom.

  Even as I pulled the second DVD from the box, I told myself I wouldn’t slot it into the player.

  Even as I picked up the remote, I told myself I wouldn’t press play.

  I was a rotten liar.

  My cock made a liar of me. It was rock hard before my feet hit the floor beside the bed.

  The sigh that escaped me at the sight of Robert, naked and kneeling, worshiping the ass of a new, different, dark-haired lover, was equal parts relief and agony.

  Walking backward, my gaze fixed on Robert’s closed eyes and pink probing tongue, I fell back on the bed, the same bed Robert was performing on. The same bed that seemed to be making soft sighing sounds that could only be heard between the pleasured keening moans of the recipient of Robert’s talent. Fuck, even the sheets were the same. Royal blue and silky soft….

  I dropped the remote and reached for my leaking dick, adding my own sounds of pleasure to theirs.

  MORNING FOUND me tired and sore, which wasn’t surprising, considering I woke three times during the night from torrid dreams featuring the one and only Robert Callinan. I wanted to hate him for what he’d unknowingly unleashed in me.

  My wrist ached, and my cock was so sensitive even the soft sheets brushing against the head made me hiss. Oh, to have a foreskin. Had I not known better, I’d have thought I was a horny sixteen-year-old instead of a man of thirty-one. God, had I ever jerked off four times in one night?

  After throwing the sheet off, I rose and dressed before trudging into the kitchen and making myself a much-needed coffee—a headache was taking a firm grip at the edges of my mind.

  This was ridiculous.

  I was ridiculous.

  What on earth was I doing?

  In twenty-four hours, I was supposed to teach my first class, and I was behaving like an oversexed teenager.

  Sipping my coffee, I leaned against the kitchen counter, pushing my hips against the edge to the point of pain. I was furious with myself, because even as I castigated myself, even as my dick throbbed from overuse and my wrist ached, I was tempted to go upstairs and load the next DVD.

  So another day of art and culture it was, with maybe a bit of history thrown in on the side. If only the Tate Modern stayed open until midnight.

  LONDON, I decided, was conspiring against me.

  Not only was there a Robert Mapplethorpe exhibition, but also a Lucien Freud one that focused on his male nude portraits. Not that Freud’s male nudes were sexually appealing to me, or erotic in the way the black-and-white photographs by Mapplethorpe were—it just felt as if everywhere I turned I was confronted with male genitalia. A fact not helped by my mind, which was proving as traitorous as my body.

  I suppose I could have walked out of the exhibitions and gone and visited London Tower or some other historic landmark. London, after all, was filled with history. But did I? No, of course not. Instead, I studied each and every photographic print and painting, telling myself I was studying the brush strokes, use of color, composition, and lighting, but in truth, I was comparing every single image I stood before with Robert.

  And not just their cocks.

  I was a little taken aback at how much I’d actually noticed. Like, looking at one of Mapplethorpe’s self-portraits made me picture Robert’s lips, which even in repose seemed to be puckered, waiting to be kissed. Or the way one of the prints showing a smooth-skinned, bare-chested torso made me think about the sparse hairs Robert had surrounding his nipples and the barely there, almost invisible triangle of it between his pecs. And then there was that thin line of fuzz that trailed from his belly button down to where it met up with the trimmed rectangle of his pubic hair….

  Looking at Ken and Tyler, 1985, another Mapplethorpe nude, this one showing two men in profile, one black, the other white, from their shoulders down to their toes, made me realize how smooth Robert’s legs were. They were practically hairless—same as his balls. And how his buttocks were muscled, without being bulked up like those of the two guys in the photograph. I suppose that meant he didn’t have a classic bubble butt, but to me, his ass was sexy nonetheless. That in itself threw me—that I would think about another man’s butt sexually.

  Robert was long and lean and toned rather than bulked-up and ripped. He had definition, but he certainly didn’t have a six-pack or bulging biceps. He looked like a long-distance runner rather than a bodybuilder.

  I didn’t fare much better at the Lucien Freud exhibition. That man certainly pulled no punches in his depiction of the male form—he showed flaccid dicks, sagging balls, a paunch, and love handles with no mercy. His studies were definitely not an ode to male beauty. So why would his nude portraits m
ake me think of Robert, when Robert was nothing if not physically beautiful?

  Ironically, it was the cocks.

  Some were cut. Some were not.

  I was cut, and up until seeing one of Robert’s home movies, I’d only ever seen a few uncut cocks, and then for a mere second or two while standing at a urinal, or in some gym locker room. The idea of a foreskin fascinated me—not something I actually wanted to admit to myself, but like it or not, I was intrigued. I told myself it was simply the “otherness” of it. The fascination with something different.

  So my day was spent studying nude men, trying to convince myself my body’s reactions of the previous two nights had stemmed from viewing something completely foreign to my everyday world. It was the same, I told myself, as my love of a good horror film—great to watch, but I most assuredly didn’t want an ax murderer or an evil poltergeist to target me in real life.

  I wasn’t gay. I couldn’t be; I’d fucked women, after all.

  LATER, WHEN I was reclined on the bed, succumbing yet again to the siren call of one of Robert’s DVDs, all theories as to why I felt so drawn to his movies were conspicuous by their absence.

  All thought was absent.

  There were only my senses.

  And they were overwhelmed.

  This movie was different.

  It was as erotic as the previous two. And Robert was as sexy as ever. This one, however, was much more intimate.

  They were having sex face-to-face.

  It shocked me. Surprised me. For some reason, I’d thought men only fucked other men doggy-style. Seeing the young guy with his legs hooked around Robert’s waist while Rob slowly and sensually undulated his hips into him made me just about hyperventilate.

  Their faces were but a few inches apart, the guy with his head pressed back into the pillow, perhaps the very same pillow I was reclining against. His eyes were closed and his neck arched, and he was emitting one long continuous moan while Robert hovered over him, staring intently down into his face. I gasped when Robert leaned in and ran his tongue up the entire length of his partner’s throat, and I couldn’t resist licking the back of my own hand, wondering if Robert’s skin would taste both salty and sweet, like mine did.

  The sexual tension between them was palpable. I gulped, stroking my straining cock in time with their surging bodies.

  The guy looked enough like me with his soft blond hair falling over his forehead that I could imagine it was me lying beneath Robert. I whimpered, my sphincter spasming rhythmically, yearning to know what it felt like to be filled. After lubricating one finger with some of the juice leaking from my weeping dick, I circled my hole, and before I could second guess myself, I pressed it in.

  And then I came harder than I ever had before.

  Robert continued to thrust into the guy, his pace becoming more urgent, as did their mutual cries, which drowned out my panting breaths. As my semen cooled on my skin, I continued to watch, unable to drag my gaze away. I needed to see Robert’s face as he came.

  He didn’t disappoint.

  Within moments of his jerking hand and unerring aim bringing his partner to explosive completion, he tossed his head back, emitting a guttural groan that seemed to come from his very core. His eyelids fluttered shut, and the muscles in his neck corded with tension before relaxing when he dropped his head forward until his chin rested on his chest.

  I noted it all. Noted the way the ends of his hair, moistened with perspiration, curled up. Noted the flush to his cheeks and the panting breaths that pushed over his parted lips.

  And I saw the look that passed through his eyes before being quickly concealed by a half smile.

  And then the screen went blank.

  I lay, stunned, trying to pinpoint the right word to describe the look. A look, I realized, with hindsight, I’d seen in the previous movies but had been too mesmerized by the action to absorb, let alone name.

  Hitting the rewind button, I played the final moments again. And again.

  What was that look?

  Sadness?

  Disappointment?

  Disillusion?

  Hollowness?

  Emptiness?

  It was the look of someone who had sought and thought they’d found, only to find that which they’d sought was not what they imagined it would be.

  I didn’t understand that look. I didn’t understand it at all.

  That both he and his partners derived a great deal of physical pleasure and satisfaction from their coupling was obvious.

  So why the look of longing for more?

  5

  CHECKING THE bottom corner of my computer screen, I saw it was almost 5:00 p.m. In five minutes, I’d be able to say I’d survived my first day teaching at Central Saint Martins.

  Actually, I’d done better than merely survive—I’d thrived. My lecture series for the semester for first-year students was about the postmodern era. It was exciting subject matter to lecture on, covering many art forms that, up until then, had never been seen before in previous art movements.

  Today’s lecture had been on Conceptual art, and being as controversial as it was, it was a personal favorite of mine. I always enjoyed the discussion it engendered in class. It often polarized people, what with the way it involved deconstructing what made a work of art “art.” Conceptual art was often designed to confront or attack the notions held by those who viewed it, the premise for many conceptual works being the viewer was necessary to complete the work, that the viewing of the object or act was what created the art, rather than the intrinsic qualities of the work itself. Hence, Duchamp’s Fountain, a wall-mounted urinal, was a sculpture because it was exhibited.

  Smiling, I leaned back, happy with both how the day had gone—students, it seemed, were students, regardless of which side of the Atlantic they lived on—and the way I’d managed to avoid thinking about Robert Callinan in a sexual way all day.

  Well, until the last thirty minutes. I looked around his office, studying it more closely. I was comforted to see it was similar to mine in Chicago. It was a typical faculty office, with a large desk facing two generic-looking chairs. Their seats were padded, but despite that, they didn’t look very comfortable. The occupants of those seats weren’t meant to feel at ease—they were meant to feel the opposite. The students who sat on them were probably there to be told to get their act together. For the more mentoring, encouraging teacher-student conversations there was the plush-looking couch, upholstered in rich brown suede, which sat against one wall with a low wooden coffee table in front of it. Now, it was comfortable. This I knew firsthand, having taken a brief nap on it when my late-night shenanigans had gotten the better of me a little earlier in the day. On the opposite wall was Robert’s bookshelf, which covered the entire wall and was filled with many titles identical to those found on my shelves back at SAIC, though considering we taught the same subject, that was hardly surprising.

  A ping from the PC drew my gaze back to the screen. It was Skype. A message had just come through. Robert and I had set the program up on each of our work computers, in case we needed to communicate about our students or homes.

  My heartbeat took off like a runaway train, a wave of panic flooding me. I was convinced he’d know I’d been jerking off watching his private movies. For a long moment, I could only stare at the screen, frozen.

  Inhaling slowly and deeply, I clicked on the Skype icon with shaking hands and opened the conversation. A rush of relief hit me like a sledgehammer to the gut—thank God Central Saint Martin’s PCs didn’t come with webcams. At least Robert wouldn’t be able to see my guilty face.

  Robert Callinan: 5.01pm

  Hey, Noah, how did your first day go?

  Relief washed over me at the innocuousness of the question. It made me feel more than a little ridiculous over my panic attack—of course, he wouldn’t know I’d been watching his home movies. How could he?

  Noah Daniels: 5.02pm

  Good. If the heated discussion that went on in cla
ss is any indicator. Gotta love Duchamp’s and Rauschenberg’s ability to stimulate debate. You?

  Robert Callinan: 5.03pm

  Lecture went well. About to head off to class. Any tips?

  Noah Daniels: 5.03pm

  Don’t take any shit from Nick Carstairs. The kid’s talented, but a jerk of major proportions. You know the sort—thinks if he argues every point it makes him look more intellectual.

  Robert Callinan: 5.04pm

  Oh, joy of joys a pretentious arse!

  Noah Daniels: 5.04pm

  Of the Grade “A” variety! Good luck. You’re going to need it!

  Robert Callinan: 5.05pm

  Thanks! Best go prick a not so little ego…

  My recently achieved calm shattered at Robert’s use of the word “prick.” It sent me off into a tailspin, my guilt-ridden inner voice screaming at me that he knew. I sat, trembling, clutching the mouse like it was a lifeline.

  THE WEEKS passed quickly. I discovered Robert was right—Roger Dempsey was a pompous ass, and Stephanie Walters was not only an interfering old biddy, she was also an enthusiastic matchmaker. She’d already managed to try to set me up with three women—one of them her recently divorced niece! Needless to say, I wasn’t interested. Robert’s movies had me so obsessed I was practically blind to the appeal of the female form.

  The same could not be said of men. I caught myself looking at guys I passed on the streets, at the pub, at work. Everywhere. I checked out their chests, their asses, their packages. I’d wonder if they were hairy or smooth, cut or uncut. Grow or show. In some ways, I felt like I was having a mental breakdown. Prior to coming to England, I couldn’t recall ever having looked at another man in a sexual way, and now I couldn’t seem to stop.

  My days were spent busy at the college or exploring the city, nights spent socializing with my colleagues and trying to avoid Stephanie’s latest offering, or attempting to wear myself out at tae kwon do training in an effort to fight my urges. Some battles I won. Some I lost… and when I lost, I lost spectacularly… and repeatedly.