Four Days, No Calls

A His First Man at Forty Bonus Scene
by Jace Wilder

⚠️ Spoiler & Content Warning: This bonus scene takes place during the final chapter of His First Man at Forty — February, the cabin on Seneca Lake. Read the novel first. It contains explicit MM sexual content, including edging, light bondage, and switching, and it is hotter than anything the retailers would let us print. Intended for readers 18+.

Four Days, No Calls

A scene TOO HOT for retailers. One cabin, one rule, and a penalty.

The cabin had one rule, and Marc had written it on an index card and stuck it to the refrigerator with a magnet shaped like a trout.

FIX NOTHING.

Under that, smaller, in the same slanting, not-very-good handwriting: This includes the faucet. This includes the screen door. I mean it, Varga.

Dennis stood in the kitchen at 5:40 on the second morning, in his boxers and a thermal shirt, and looked at the card.

Then he looked at the other piece of paper. The one on the counter, from the owner, held down by a jar of instant coffee.

Welcome! Wood’s in the shed. Hot tub heats fine but the jets are out — sorry! Guy can’t come till March.

He’d been looking at that note for nineteen hours.

It was snowing. It had been snowing since they turned off Route 414 yesterday afternoon, fat slow flakes coming down through the hemlocks onto the deck, and the lake below the cabin was a flat gray sheet with no far side. There was nobody for a mile in any direction. His phone was in the drawer under the potholders, where Marc had put it. Paula has the landline number. If the shop burns down, the landline rings. The landline had not rung. Dennis had checked it for a dial tone twice.

In the loft bedroom over his head, Marc was asleep on his stomach under two quilts.

Dennis put on his boots.

It took eleven minutes.

It wasn’t even a repair. That was what he was going to say. He knelt in the snow in his boxers and unlatched the cedar access panel, and it was an air lock. Somebody had drained the tub and refilled it and never bled the pump. He cracked the union with the pliers on his multitool, let it hiss and spit until water ran steady, snugged it back down, and hit the button on the topside control.

The jets came on with a roar like a truck starting.

Steam rolled up off the water into the snow. All eight jets. Dennis stood there with wet knees and his breath smoking and felt better than he’d felt in two days.

The sliding door opened behind him.

He didn’t turn around right away. He knew what he was going to see, and he wanted to finish enjoying the jets first.

“Dennis.”

He turned around.

Marc was standing in the doorway in Dennis’s red flannel and nothing else. Bare legs. Bare feet on the cold sill. The tiny bowling pin on his right ankle. His hair was flat on one side and his beard was mashed, and he was holding the index card from the refrigerator between two fingers like a cop holding a license.

“You fixed something,” Marc said.

“I bled a pump.”

“That’s fixing.”

“It’s not fixing. Nothing was broken. It had air in it.” Dennis put the multitool in the waistband of his boxers, which was a mistake, because it was cold. “It’s like burping a baby.”

Marc looked at the jets. He looked at Dennis’s wet knees. He looked at the card.

“There’s a penalty,” he said.

Dennis’s stomach dropped in the good way.

“You didn’t write a penalty on the card.”

“I’m writing it now.” Marc’s voice had gone slow and low, the way it went. He set the card on the deck rail, in the snow. Then he unbuttoned the flannel, one button, two, and let it fall off his shoulders onto the doormat, and walked naked across six feet of snowy deck with his jaw clenched and his cock already half hard, and climbed into the tub. He sank to his chin and made a sound like a man being forgiven.

“Get in,” Marc said. “Sit on the far bench. Hands on the rim.”

Dennis got in.

The water was a hundred and three degrees and the air was nineteen, and the difference went through him like current. He sat. He stretched his arms out along the cedar rim on both sides, the snow melting under his forearms.

“They stay there,” Marc said. “They come off, I stop. That’s the penalty. You don’t get to use your hands on anything for a while. Not a pump. Not me.”

“How long is a while?”

“Until I say.”

Dennis looked at him through the steam. Snow was landing in his auburn hair and not melting right away. Freckles across his shoulders. The hop cone on his left arm, dark and wet.

“Okay,” Dennis said.

Marc came across the tub and straddled his thighs.

And put both hands flat on Dennis’s chest.

They were hot.

Dennis actually flinched. In five months he had never once felt those hands without bracing for the cold, and they landed on him now heavy and wet and hot, hotter than his own skin, and something in his brain shorted out.

“Oh,” Marc said, delighted. “Oh, look at your face. First time in my life my hands are warmer than yours.” He slid them down through the hair on Dennis’s chest, over his stomach, under the water. “I’m going to enjoy this.”

He wrapped one hot hand around Dennis’s cock.

Dennis’s fingers dug into the cedar.

Marc stroked him slow. Underwater, everything was slick and weightless and wrong in the best way, the jets he’d just bled pounding against his lower back, Marc’s fist twisting on the upstroke, Marc’s ass settled on his thighs, Marc’s mouth an inch from his.

“You could’ve stayed in bed,” Marc murmured. “I had a plan for this morning. I was going to wake you up with my mouth.” His thumb circled the head. “Instead I woke up alone, and I heard plumbing.“

“Marc — “

“Hands.”

Dennis hadn’t moved them. But they’d wanted to. He pressed them flatter on the rim.

“Good,” Marc breathed. “That’s good. Now stand up.”

“It’s nineteen degrees.”

“I know what it is. Sit on the edge.”

Dennis stood. The cold hit him everywhere at once, a slap from his hairline to his knees, steam pouring off his skin. He sat on the rim of the tub with snow under his ass and his calves in the hot water and his cock standing up hard and dark and wet in the freezing air.

Marc knelt on the bench between his knees and looked up at him. Snow in his eyelashes.

“Look at you,” he said. “Steaming. Like a fucking draft horse.”

Then he took Dennis in his mouth.

The sound Dennis made went out across the lake.

Nineteen degrees on every inch of him except the eight Marc had. Wet heat, tongue, the scratch of beard on the insides of his thighs. Marc took him deep and slow and held him there, swallowing around him, and Dennis’s hands spasmed on the rim and stayed.

“I can’t — ” His voice came out flat and wrecked. “I want to put my hands in your hair so bad I can’t see.”

Marc pulled off with a wet sound. “I know.” He licked a slow stripe up the underside. “Tell me what else.”

“I want to hold your head and fuck your mouth.”

“Mm-hm.”

“I want to come down your throat and watch you take it.”

“That’s nice.” Marc sucked the head, once, hard, and Dennis’s hips jerked. “You’re not going to.”

He went back down.

He did it for a long time. Dennis lost track. Deep, then shallow, then just his tongue; a hot hand on Dennis’s balls, rolling them; one slick finger sliding back behind them and pressing, not in, just pressing, until Dennis was shaking so hard the snow was coming off the rim. Twice he got close enough that his thighs locked and his vision went white at the edges, and both times Marc felt it and pulled off and sat back in the water and watched him, grinning, while the cold air closed over his wet cock like a fist.

The second time, Dennis swore for about ten seconds straight.

“There he is,” Marc said happily. He stood up, water sheeting off him, hard as a post, and kissed Dennis on the mouth. He tasted like salt. “Penalty’s half done. Inside. By the stove. You can bring your hands.”

The wood stove was down to coals. Dennis fed it two splits of ash and opened the damper, because nobody had said anything about dampers, and when he turned around Marc had dragged both quilts down from the loft and spread them on the rug in front of it.

He was kneeling on them. Still wet. Holding something in his lap.

The cuffs. The padded black ones. The gray duffel was open on the couch behind him, and Dennis could see the orange handles of the shears sitting on top.

Dennis’s mouth went dry. “Other half of the penalty?”

“No.” Marc’s voice had changed. It wasn’t the slow one. It was the careful one, every word set down. “This isn’t the penalty. This is the thing I brought the bag for.”

He held the cuffs out.

“I’ve done this to people,” Marc said. “I’ve never let anybody do it to me. Eighteen years. I always had a reason.” He swallowed. “I don’t have a reason anymore. I want you to.”

Dennis looked at him. At this man, kneeling on a quilt with his chin up and his pulse going in his throat.

He took the cuffs.

He checked them first. He couldn’t not. He ran his thumb around the inside of each one, tested both clips, set the shears on the hearth where he could reach them. Marc watched him do it with an expression that was halfway between laughing and crying.

“Hands,” Dennis said.

Marc held out his wrists.

Dennis buckled them. Snug. Two fingers under each. Then he laid Marc down on his back on the quilts, lifted his arms over his head, and ran the strap around the leg of the cast-iron stove bench and clipped it.

Marc pulled. Nothing gave.

His whole body shuddered, head to foot, and his cock jumped against his stomach.

“Okay?” Dennis said.

“Green.” Barely a whisper. “God. Dennis. It’s — I can’t do anything.”

“No.”

“I can’t manage anything.”

“No.” Dennis knelt between his thighs and put both hands on him, flat, warm, on his ribs. “You’re done working. I’ve got four days and no calls. I’m going to take my time.”

He did.

He started at the cuffs and worked down. The insides of Marc’s arms. The hop tattoo, with his tongue. His throat, his freckled chest, each nipple until Marc was arching off the quilt. His stomach. He went past his cock without touching it, and Marc made a noise like he’d been robbed, and Dennis pushed his knees up and back and put his mouth where he wanted it.

He loved this. He’d known it since October. He ate Marc slow and wet and thorough, flat strokes and then pointed, pushing in, holding him open with his thumbs, and with nothing to grab and nowhere to go Marc just took it, twisting in the cuffs, heels skidding on the quilt.

“You’re shaking,” Dennis said against him. Flat. Plain. “You’re so open for me already. I can get my tongue all the way in. You feel that?”

“Fuck — yes — “

“I’m going to put my fingers in you now. Then I’m going to fuck you. I’m telling you so you can think about it.”

Marc sobbed a laugh. “You’re narrating. You’re writing up the ticket — “

Dennis slid two slick fingers into him and curled them, and the laugh turned into a shout.

He worked him open with the stove ticking and the snow coming down past the windows. Two fingers, then three. He found the spot and rubbed it, steady, unhurried, watching Marc’s face go red and helpless, watching his cock leak a long clear string onto his own stomach. Every time Marc’s breath went high and short, Dennis stopped moving and held still inside him and waited.

“Please — “

“You did this to me in a hot tub twenty minutes ago.”

“That was a penalty — “

“This is interest.”

By the fourth time, Marc wasn’t making words. Dennis slicked himself, hooked Marc’s knees over his elbows, and pushed in.

Bare. Hot. All the way, in one long slow slide, until he was buried and Marc’s mouth was open and no sound was coming out of it.

Dennis reached up and popped the clip off the bench.

He didn’t take the cuffs off. He clipped them to each other instead, wrist to wrist, and lifted Marc’s bound arms and ducked his own head through them, so that Marc’s hands landed on the back of his neck and stayed there. Tied. Holding on.

“There,” Dennis said. “Now you can’t let go of me.”

Marc’s eyes went wet. “You asshole. That’s — that’s the nicest — “

Dennis started to move.

Deep and slow. Face to face, six inches apart, Marc’s calves locked around his back and Marc’s cuffed hands hot on his nape. Dennis fucked him the way he did everything he cared about: steady, patient, all the way down on every stroke. The quilt bunched under them. The stove threw orange light up the side of Marc’s face.

“You feel so good,” Dennis told him. “You’re so tight around me. I thought about this in the truck the whole way up. I thought about it at the gas station in Ovid.”

“Harder — “

“No.”

“Dennis — “

“You don’t get to set the pace. You get to take it.” He ground in deep and held there and watched Marc’s eyes roll. “Good. That’s it, baby. Just like that. You’re doing so good.”

Marc made a sound like he’d been hit.

Dennis got a hand between them and wrapped it around his cock. Warm hand. Slow.

“Not yet,” Dennis said.

“I can’t — I’m — “

“Not yet. Hold it. Look at me.”

Marc looked at him. Blue-gray, blown, desperate. He was trembling everywhere. Dennis stroked him once, twice, and fucked into him on the same beat, and waited until he could see it, until Marc was right at the edge with nothing left to hold on with.

“Now,” Dennis said.

Marc came like something breaking. Silent for one second, then loud, his back bowing, his cuffed hands dragging Dennis’s head down, pulsing hot over Dennis’s fist and both their stomachs. He clenched so hard around Dennis that Dennis had to shut his eyes and count pinsetters.

He didn’t come. He held it. It was the hardest thing he’d done since lane two.

When Marc finally stopped shaking, Dennis eased out of him, slow, and lifted the cuffed arms off his neck and unbuckled them, one and then the other. He turned Marc’s wrists over in the firelight. Checked the skin. Kissed the inside of each.

“Fists,” he said. “Open. Any tingling?”

“No.” Marc was looking at him like he’d hung the moon on a bracket. “You didn’t finish.”

“No.”

“Why not?”

Dennis rubbed the back of his neck. “Because I want you inside me when I do.”

Marc stared at him. Then he rolled, fast, the way he did when he’d made up his mind, and pushed Dennis flat on his back on the quilts.

“Other half of the penalty,” Marc said hoarsely. “Hands over your head. Hold the bench.”

Dennis reached back and gripped cold iron.

Marc was hard again already, or still. He slicked his fingers and opened Dennis up quick and sure and filthy, the way you could with a body you knew, and Dennis was so far gone from the tub and the rug and holding back that he was pushing down onto three fingers inside a minute, saying come on, come on, I’m ready, I’ve been ready since the deck.

Marc slid into him in one stroke.

Dennis’s grip nearly bent the bench.

There was nothing slow about it. Marc braced his hot hands on Dennis’s chest and fucked him hard and deep and fast, hips snapping, the smaller man driving into him like he’d been saving it up, the slap of it loud over the stove. Every stroke hit the spot. Every one. Dennis had been edged for an hour and he was not going to last and he didn’t care.

“Look at you,” Marc panted. “Big man. Holding that bench like it’s going somewhere. You fixed my hot tub. You tied me to a stove. You called it interest.” A deep, grinding thrust. “I love you so much I can’t stand it. Come for me. You’ve earned it. Come on.”

Dennis came.

Untouched, on his own stomach, with a shout that knocked snow off the roof. It went on and on, wave after wave, all of it he’d been holding, his whole body clamping down. Marc swore and slammed in twice more and went rigid and came inside him, hot, groaning into his neck.

They lay there.

The stove ticked. A log shifted. Outside, the jets were still running.

“Nobody’s called,” Dennis said to the ceiling, after a while.

Marc laughed into his chest until he wheezed.

At dusk they were back in the tub, with the jets on and two bottles of Last Call wedged in the snow on the rim.

Marc had his back against Dennis’s chest and his head on Dennis’s shoulder. His hands were hot. Dennis kept picking them up and holding them, one and then the other, like he was checking.

“Fine,” Marc said. “It’s better with the jets.”

“I know.”

“Don’t be smug. You violated the card.”

Dennis reached past him for the index card. It was still on the deck rail, damp, with a little hat of snow. He had a pen in the pocket of the flannel on the mat, because he always had a pen. He turned the card over and wrote on the back, in block capitals, against the cedar.

PROBLEM REPORTED: JETS.
CAUSE: AIR.
REPAIR: 11 MIN.
PENALTY: PAID IN FULL. WITH INTEREST.
WARRANTY: LIFETIME.

He handed it over his shoulder.

Marc read it. He was quiet for a second.

Then he took the pen out of Dennis’s hand and turned the card back over, to the front, to FIX NOTHING, and added one line at the bottom.

Except me. Twice a day.

“That’s three more days,” Dennis said. “That’s six.”

“I can count, Mr. Fix-It.”

Dennis put the card on the rim, under his beer, where it wouldn’t blow away. He wrapped both arms around Marc in the hot water and looked out at the snow coming down on Seneca Lake, with nobody for a mile and nothing anywhere that needed him.

The landline never rang.

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