Best Gay Erotica of the Year Read online

  BEST

  GAY EROTICA

  OF THE YEAR

  VOLUME FOUR

  BEST

  GAY EROTICA

  OF THE YEAR

  VOLUME FOUR

  Edited by

  ROB ROSEN

  Copyright © 2018 by Rob Rosen.

  All rights reserved. Except for brief passages quoted in newspaper, magazine, radio, television or online reviews, no part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the Publisher.

  Published in the United States by Cleis Press, an imprint of Start Midnight, LLC, 101 Hudson St, Suite 3705, Jersey City, NJ 07302.

  Printed in the United States

  Cover design: Allyson Fields

  Cover photograph: iStock

  Text design: Frank Wiedemann

  First Edition

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  Trade paper ISBN: 978-1-62778-284-5

  E-book ISBN: 978-1-62778-285-2

  For my husband Kenny, my light, my love, my life

  CONTENTS

  Introduction

  It’s Only Natural • LANDON DIXON

  Appetite • JORDAN CASTILLO PRICE

  Foursome • GREGORY L. NORRIS

  The Temptation of the Gargoyle • KYLE E. MILLER

  Carjacked • KENZIE MATHEWS

  Open Up • CLARE LONDON

  Blade of Grass • VINCENT MEIS

  Dirty Tricks • NELSON HOUSE

  Ministrations • T. HITMAN

  Out of Yoshiwara • WAYNE GOODMAN

  Eight Nights • RICHARD MAY

  Reflections • MICHAEL ROBERTS

  Legend • DALE CHASE

  Due Diligence • RHIDIAN BRENIG JONES

  Renaissance Miracles • MICHAEL AMPERSANT

  Forward into the Past • RICHARD MICHAELS

  About the Authors

  About the Editor

  INTRODUCTION

  Hello, Dear Readers, and welcome to Best Gay Erotica of the Year, Volume 4. This is my fifth time at the helm of this esteemed collection, and I’m thrilled, as always, to be able to offer you some of the best gay literary erotica around. I had close to two hundred submissions for this issue, and to be able to whittle it down to a mere sixteen slots was next to impossible. I could’ve made three awesome collections from what I received, but one is all I could do, and so one super-spectacular anthology lies ahead of you—somewhat spread-eagle, in fact, and occasionally on its knees.

  For those of you who are unfamiliar with my writing, I’m a romantic-comedy author by trade, frequently in the speculative genre. And so, whilst whittling—and since reading and enjoying what one is reading is oh-so subjective—I found myself choosing stories for you that fall into three categories: comedy/madcap, sci-fi/speculative, and general fiction, almost all of it of a romantic nature, a hundred percent of it of the high literary caliber that you’ve come to expect from this annual collection.

  For comedy/madcap, there’s Clare London’s after-hours romp in a dentist’s office in “Open Up”; Nelson House’s “Dirty Tricks,” with its dirty double-crosses and sneaky Republican senator; Richard May’s naughty Hanukkah-present-filled “Eight Nights”; the farcical romp through the streets of Florence, “Renaissance Miracles,” by the superbly imaginative Michael Ampersant; and closing out the collection, Richard Michaels’s “Forward into the Past,” featuring a private dick you won’t soon forget.

  Sci-fi/speculative takes center stage in Jordan Castillo Price’s vampiric-virus tour de force, “Appetite.” Kyle E. Miller chooses humanity over the divine in “The Temptation of the Gargoyle.” Vincent Meis’s “Blade of Grass” takes us on an unexpected journey into Turkey. And Michael Roberts has us howling with his cloning mishap tale, “Reflections.”

  Interspersed throughout the collection, the literary genius continues with Landon Dixon’s washed-up boxer saga, “It’s Only Natural.” Gregory L. Norris writes about four broke men shooting a porn movie with surprising results in “Foursome.” Wayne Goodman’s sensual male geisha story, “Out of Yoshiwara,” has us traveling to Japan. And the ever-remarkable Dale Chase offers a glimpse into the life of a has-been actor and a winsome pool boy in “Legend.”

  But, of course, there’re even more stories to follow, all of them expertly written and deeply erotic, all by some of today’s best and brightest M/M writers, hailing from all over the United States, plus Canada, the United Kingdom, and France. So, sit back and relax—perhaps spread-eagle or on your knees, just as a suggestion—and enjoy Best Gay Erotica of the Year, Volume 4!

  Rob Rosen

  San Francisco

  IT’S ONLY NATURAL

  Landon Dixon

  There was a knock on the door. Lloyd groaned and rolled over onto his stomach, smacking the greasy pillow with a left hook. His mouth felt like it was full of cotton, his legs heavy like after a fifteen-rounder.

  The knock sounded again.

  “Yeah! Come in!” Lloyd yelled into the pillow.

  A bellboy in a tight, wine-colored, shiny-from-wear uniform pushed the door open with a creak and walked the heaving floorboards into the room. “Your . . .” The kid stopped, staring at Lloyd laid out on the sagging single bed.

  Lloyd was naked, the dirty sheet and cover pushed down to the foot of the bed. He was clutching the pillow, lying on his stomach, his legs bent and back curved, bare buttocks mounding up high and plush.

  The bellboy licked his lips and set the jug of moonshine down on a wobbly wooden table, the only stick of furniture in the dilapidated hotel room other than an equally scarred and rickety chair and the bed. “Your, uh, hair of the dog, Mr. Lloyd.” The bellboy rubbed his damp hands on his lean thighs, still staring at Lloyd’s white, naked body; at those lushly humped buttocks.

  Lloyd let go of the pillow and rolled over onto his back. He smacked crusted lips and blinked bloodshot eyes, running his hands down over his broad chest. His body had slightly gone to flab, a little too soft and round in certain areas, but still fairly trim and muscular. His chest banded and stomach tightened in ribbed contours as he stretched out his well-formed arms and legs. His cock was large and languid in a nest of blond pubes, warming up like the rest of him at the sight of the jug of cheap contraband whiskey—that and the gawking young man in his room.

  “What’s your name, kid?” he asked, working some saliva into his mouth, then licking his red lips.

  “Joey,” the bellboy responded, his nervous brown eyes glued to Lloyd’s cock flopped over the man’s left thigh.

  “You know who I am?”

  “Uh, you’re Mr. Lloyd. Room 313.”

  Lloyd let out a phlegmy chuckle. “That’s who I am now—a bum in a crummy hotel. But I used to be Pretty Boy Lloyd, middleweight contender.”

  Joey grinned. “Yeah, sure. I heard of you. My dad and I went to your fight in ’49, when you KO’d Thunder Thompson in the fifth round.”

  Joey looked over Lloyd’s body, clearly noticing the scar tissue on the man’s heavy eyebrows, the cauliflowering of his left ear, the flattened bridge of Lloyd’s nose, the displaced knuckles on the big, meaty hands.

  “Yeah, sure. I know who you are. What happened?”

  Lloyd chuckled again, deep in the barrel of his chest. He knew he could barely get by with the moniker Pretty Boy these days, too much partying when he should’ve been training taking as much toll on his body and his twelve-year career as the fifty-two fights he’d amassed. Now his once striking golden boy features were more spread out, softer, riper—like the tomato can at thirty he’d become. Not a contender anymore, but merely an opponent.

/>   He looked Joey over and liked what he saw: a slender, slick-haired kid with a wet mouth and doe eyes. This was a kid who was after his own tastes, which he could tell from plenty of experience. “I’m just waiting for the right fight to come along, Joey. Training here at the hotel.”

  He reached down to his groin and lifted his semierect cock, then stroked it. “Want to go a few rounds with Pretty Boy, kid?” He didn’t have enough money to even pay for the moonshine, let alone the room at the end of the week. He was flat broke, a beaten-down pug. But he could still get by on some of his once latent physical prowess.

  Joey’s lips twitched, his eyes on Lloyd’s cock. The tool was swelling in the fighter’s pumping hand, thick and heavy and powerful. Joey turned and locked the door, then walked toward the bed, his fingers shaking as he popped the brass buttons on his monkey suit. Lloyd’s cock towered up in his swirling hand, flooding the fighter’s groin and body with a warmth that smoothed the rough edges of the ugly room and the even uglier day to come.

  Joey was naked by the time he reached the side of the bed where Lloyd lay on his back stroking his cock. His boyish body was pale and hairless, smooth, nipples pink and puffy, cock standing as tall and slender as he was. Lloyd reached out with his left hand and gripped Joey’s cock, pulling him closer. Joey buckled and groaned, his taut buttocks clenching.

  “How about giving my cock a workout, kid?” Lloyd husked, pumping the pair of pricks. “And then I’ll give your cute little asshole a good hard sparring session. We’ll split the jug after-ward.”

  Joey moaned, his body bowing with the strong, gripping tug of Lloyd’s hand on his throbbing cock. Lloyd gave a hard jerk, yanking Joey right over the side of the bed and on top of him. Their cocks pressed together, pulsating against each other. Lloyd scooped up Joey’s ass and kneaded the hot, humped flesh, swarming his hungry tongue all around Joey’s spit-slick, open mouth. Joey grabbed on to Lloyd’s close-cropped blond hair, pumping his surging cock against Lloyd’s even harder prick.

  They wildly kissed for a minute or so, the heat building and building, like the spunk in both sets of balls, their cocks thumping together. Then Lloyd pulled his tongue out of Joey’s mouth and his hands off of Joey’s rump. He gripped the young man by the bony shoulders and shoved him down to his throbbing cock, where Joey’s mouth could set to work.

  Joey nestled in between Lloyd’s spread legs, nuzzling the man’s pubic hair. Then he looked up at the twitching slab of meat and gripped it, pumping it with his hand. Lloyd bucked and grabbed on to Joey’s hair. Joey shot out his pink tongue and licked up the middle of Lloyd’s hairy sack, swabbing all around the man’s tightened balls before grasping the cock up above.

  “Yeah, that’s working the bag, kid!” Lloyd grunted, riding Joey’s bobbing head with his hands, his balls getting basted in a wet warmth that spread like wildfire through his tensed body in waves.

  Joey licked up to Lloyd’s cock, dragging his tongue all along the underside of the hard prick, leaving Lloyd’s balls wet, pubes matted. He slurped the rigid pipe, painting the meat with his tongue. Lloyd arched and twisted on the creaky bed, howling when Joey finally pulled his stiff cock down and poured soft lips over the swollen tip.

  “Yeah, suck it, kid!” Lloyd shouted like a trainer barking out instructions to a prospect in the gym ring. It was too much of this kind of sexercise that had set Pretty Boy’s promising career on the skids. His brain had been willing, but his body had been dissipated.

  Joey lifted his head higher in Lloyd’s hands, sunk his mouth down lower, swallowing half of the man’s wide shaft. Then he bobbed his head, pulling with his mouth, sucking Lloyd’s cock quick and tight and hot and wet. Lloyd thrust his hips up, plunging his cock deeper into Joey’s mouth. He pumped in rhythm, driving his cock back and forth in the young man’s face.

  “Fuck, kid, I’m gonna come!”

  Joey sucked even harder and faster, his face burning bright, lips blossoming around the shaft, breath billowing out of his nose. He squeezed Lloyd’s balls with his left hand, pumping the part of the man’s shaft that wasn’t in his mouth with his right, vacuuming Lloyd’s cock airtight. He thumped his own leaking prick into the bed, his buttcheeks bouncing and clenching.

  “Here it—”

  There was a loud knock on the door.

  Joey twisted his head in Lloyd’s hands, his buttocks clutching. Lloyd locked Joey’s head tight on his cock, the muscles popping all along his arms and on his chest. He urgently pumped into Joey’s mouth.

  There was another loud rap on the door. “You in there, Lloyd?! It’s DeSalvo! I got a fight for ya!”

  Lloyd spasmed and shouted, shooting his cock down Joey’s throat. He jerked repeatedly, violently, heavy load spurting out of his face-buried prick with a blistering intensity. Joey gulped and bobbed and bounced, his own pressing cock erupting against the sheet, spouting out his own dirty joy.

  “You hear me, Lloyd?! I got a fucking fight for ya!”

  “Yeah! Yeah!” Pretty Boy gasped, bucking and blasting out the last of his lust into Joey’s mouth. He flopped back on the bed, utterly exhausted and bent way out of shape.

  * * *

  His opponent was Amos Washington, aka The Natural, a tall, powerfully built young man with a smooth style and a thunderous, crowd-pleasing left hook. He was shy and polite, with dark good looks and an articulate way of speaking, that and a fearsome work ethic. He was an up-and-comer with a perfect 15-0 record and a telegenic personality perfectly suited for the Friday Night Fights that were now being broadcast by the network into American homes. Pretty Boy Lloyd was a pale, pudgy contrast, an over-the-hill fighter with a decent record and little chance of improving it, an opponent that would look good on The Natural’s record.

  The press conference where they signed the contract was brief but well attended. Lloyd wasn’t asked a single question. As he shook hands with the clean-cut, smiling Washington, he tried to rattle the young fighter, gripping the man’s hand hard and jerking on it, sticking his pug-shaped, pretty face into Washington’s. But it was Lloyd who was rattled, especially when Washington’s winning white smile blazed wider and his dark hand gripped harder, shoving Lloyd back with a strength that surprised the older fighter.

  “This is it,” DeSalvo told Lloyd later at the gym. “You gotta train serious for this one, Pretty Boy. There’s big TV money at stake now. The ratings were gangbusters in ’57 and they’re still gettin’ better. You can maybe sock away a nice retirement egg with a few good fights. Whatya say?”

  Lloyd nodded his blond head, sticking his swollen hands into the sixteen-ounce training gloves as he chewed on his rubber mouthpiece, mulling over his strategy for the fight. He was going to train hard this time; he badly needed the money. But he also knew he needed more than mere training—he needed an edge. The Natural was simply too young and strong and quick, had too many tools that made up for his lack of experience.

  DeSalvo scrambled out of the ring as Lloyd spun around, taking a left hook square to his headgear from the young black fighter they’d brought in as a sparring partner. Lloyd staggered back against the ropes, dazed. Yeah, he was going to need an edge, all right.

  The Natural’s camp was ten miles outside of the city, on a farm. He was putting in the long, hard hours of training: roadwork and sparring and skipping rope, push-ups and sit-ups, throwing in some clean-living wood-chopping and brush-clearing to go along with the regular rigorous workout routines. Lloyd showed up at the camp just after nine at night, parking out on the highway before traipsing through the trees that formed a windbreak on one side of the white clapboard house and barn.

  Washington was still in the makeshift ring in back of the barn, doing some shadow-boxing in the deepening evening shadows. Lloyd watched the young fighter from behind a tree trunk. It was a warm spring night. Washington was only wearing a pair of white shorts, his muscles gleaming in the moonlight as he jabbed and danced and hooked and crossed.

  Lloyd gripped the bark of the tree, mesmerize
d. The Natural was a natural. He moved with a powerful fluidity that would put the Pretty Boy to shame. Lloyd’s reflexes were still pretty good and he still packed a wallop, but not to this kid’s extent.

  He moved out from behind the tree and walked up to the ring. He had to do something to disrupt Washington. Only, he didn’t know what—at least not yet.

  “Working hard, huh?” he said in greeting.

  Washington stopped popping the left and looked down at Lloyd. “Hey, Mr. Lloyd! What are you doing all the way out here?”

  Lloyd grabbed on to a rope and swung up onto the ring apron, slipping through the ropes and into the ring with his opponent. “Just thought I’d get some fresh air.”

  The Natural looked huge in the small, tight, white shorts, his legs long and lithe, thighs corded with muscle, torso flaring up out of the trunks into a broad chest humped with more muscles, his arms long and powerful looking. Lloyd felt his legs weaken—and not just with well-merited fear.

  “Mind if I do a little shadow-boxing myself?”

  Washington grinned and pointed a gloved hand at the discarded set of boxing gloves lying in a corner of the ring. Lloyd smiled back, then stripped off his shirt and picked up the muffs and popped his mitts into them, then started jabbing the air like Washington.

  They spun and weaved around the ring, shooting out combinations, grunting and snorting. Inevitably, they drew closer and closer to each other inside the ring. Washington’s speed was astonishing, his gloves slicing dangerously through the air. Lloyd bumped into him, good-naturedly pushing him up against the ropes before landing a soft, quick combo to The Natural’s shoulders.

  His gloves bounced off the hard muscles. Washington good-naturedly cuffed him on the side of the head with a punch Lloyd never saw coming. Pretty Boy staggered to the side, The Natural’s god-given strength shocking him all over again.

  He backed off, feinted a left to the midriff, brought the left up in a jab to the face, testing Washington’s commitment to his handsome exterior. Some fighters were just plain afraid of getting their features rearranged, would do anything to avoid a punch to the face. Pretty Boy knew all about that himself.