If my stupid phone would stop ringing.

  I lowered the stone as I left the bathroom. Rather than return the jasper to its usual spot, I held it and sat on the bed. My phone was ringing still, and I groaned as I saw the number of missed calls and texts.

  There would be no avoiding people on my birthday. While I didn’t have a bunch of friends to hang out with, I had acquaintances from work that I went out with on occasion. They were there for parties and fun, but if I’d been in a crisis, not one of them would have offered to lend me a hand. Still, that was better than being alone all the time.

  Usually. Even though I didn’t feel like doing anything, there’d be no avoiding going out with a group of people tonight. If I didn’t go, I’d likely find myself with not even any acquaintances to spend time with.

  When the call stopped then immediately began again, I grabbed my phone, flopped onto my back and placed the stone on my chest. There’d be no staying in bed all day, but I could lie there until I had returned all the calls and messages I’d missed.

  * * * *

  Instead of the usual club, Artie, Josie, Mark, Andre and Lola insisted on an overnight trip to Austin. We hadn’t been in months, and it actually sounded like fun once I gave it some thought.

  With the jasper in my pocket, causing a bit of an odd yet smooth lump in my tight jeans, I was determined to have fun.

  We hadn’t been in the club, Sparks, for more than ten minutes before Andre had twinks all over him on the dance floor.

  “At least he had a drink with us first,” Artie observed, raising his glass—a strawberry daiquiri, and he was unrepentant despite our teasing him about it—in a mock toast. “And told you happy birthday.”

  “And gave you a box of condoms and lube,” Josie added.

  “Yeah, it’s cool.” I hadn’t expected anything other than someone to pay my cover and buy me a drink or two at most. The condoms and lube were a definite bonus gift.

  “Did you get your hair cut?” Lola asked Artie.

  “I did,” Artie replied, smiling brightly. “And I got a date with the hairdresser. He is so fab, and his hands, mmm.”

  Mark thumbed in Artie’s direction. “He’s always been a hands man. Me, I like broad shoulders and a little bit of a gut.”

  “Yeah, that last guy you dated was nice,” Josie said, pushing her long pink hair back over her shoulders. “Fred? Frank?”

  “Fritz,” Mark answered, rolling his eyes. “And his idea of monogamy differed from mine, so we parted ways.”

  “Wow,” Artie said. “He lasted, like, a month?”

  “After we agreed to just see each other, yeah,” Mark agreed. “And he fucked all the waiters who’d bend over for him at our favorite restaurant. I can’t even go eat there anymore because everyone knows he cheated on me.”

  “You could have told us this sooner,” Lola pointed out, scowling before she leaned back in her seat. “I’d have beaten the shit out of him for you.”

  She could have, too. Lola was close to two hundred pounds and it was all muscle. She competed in body-building events and all that. Her girlfriend Kara was a model, and they’d been together for a long time. If Kara hadn’t been away on a shoot, she’d have been there in Lola’s lap, chatting with us all.

  “When will Kara be back?” I asked as I idly swirled my glass. The ice clanked every now and then, though I could barely make out the sound.

  “Next week. Fuckin’ fashion shows,” Lola groused. “We’re talking about having a kid.”

  “A baby, or an actual little goat?” Artie only sounded a little bit snarky.

  Lola flipped him off. “One of the diaper-wearing, bottle-needing ones.”

  “That doesn’t clarify anything for me,” Artie said. “Don’t people do that with baby goats, too?”

  Lola wadded up her napkin and threw it at Artie. “A human baby, smartass.”

  I smiled, watching and listening as everyone else at the table interacted, and answered and spoke up when I felt the need. Slowly, I was beginning to unwind and stop worrying over what had happened the night before.

  And the more I drank, the less I thought about Avery and disappearing bruises.

  I went from club to club down Sixth Street in Austin, dancing once I got drunk enough. Somewhere along the way, Andre disappeared with a trio of blond boys in their early twenties.

  “Thank God he got his own room,” Mark said. He looked around the latest bar. “Wonder if I could find a guy to fuck. Or maybe you and me ought to give it a shot, Matt.”

  “Friends don’t fuck friends when they’re drunk,” Lola said.

  “Yeah,” Josie agreed.

  “For sure,” Artie added. “That’s just asking for some regrets ya can’t get past.”

  “Who says there’d be regrets?” Mark slurred.

  I was wondering that myself, though I hadn’t really ever thought of fucking Mark or vice versa. I guessed that was why there might be regrets.

  “Have you wanted to fuck Matt before?” Artie asked.

  “Sure,” Mark replied, looking me over and leering. “He’s okay.”

  “Okay?” Well there was a ringing endorsement. I tossed back the rest of my vodka while my friends started giving Mark shit for that.

  “See,” Artie said after a couple of minutes of bickering. He twisted and pointed to the left. “If you really wanted to fuck Matt, you’d have looked at him like that guy is doing.”

  My heart pounded painfully hard again. Maybe I was going to keel over. I was afraid to turn and see who Artie was pointing at.

  Chapter Nine

  To get up or not to get up, that was the question. When I turned around, the man Artie was pointing at was doing the same—turning, not pointing—and a group of men walked between us.

  “Who—” I stood up. Asking anyone around me was a waste of time. They wouldn’t know who the man was. “What’d he look like?” Has Avery found me here?

  When I realized that I was afraid, I immediately became pissed off. I was low on the flight instinct, although the night before, yeah, I’d hauled ass.

  That was because I also wasn’t stupid, most of the time.

  “He was hot,” Artie said.

  That wasn’t helpful.

  “Blond?” I prodded, fisting my hands as I debated what to do. The figure moved toward the exit. Of course he’d have to be wearing a hoodie. I couldn’t tell what color his damned hair was.

  “Um.” Artie cleared his throat. “Well, I was too busy noticing him staring at you to really pay much attention—”

  “Well, I’m just going to go say hi,” I muttered, narrowing my eyes. I wouldn’t run from Avery. If he was stalking me, we were about to have it out, whatever ‘it’ was.

  As my friends whooped and cheered me on, I was glad they had no clue as to the happenings with Avery.

  Then I thought it might have been wiser to ask one of them to accompany me when I reached the doors to the club.

  What if I stepped outside, and it was Avery I’d been chasing? Was I walking into an ambush? I didn’t even have a makeshift weapon on me.

  All I had was my wallet, keys…and the stone. I paused at the doors. The stone had flared hot when I’d met Avery. I’d have sworn at the time it had actually burned me. Then I’d decided I’d imagined the whole thing. The last couple of days had been fucked, for that matter.

  But the stone was neither hot nor cold now. It was just…there, in my pocket. For some reason, that reassured me. Maybe I was looking for a way to not be terrified of the impending confrontation. I had no idea. It sounded crazy to believe I was putting my trust in a stone, so I tried not to think about it at all as I opened the door, then left the club.

  Outside, the heat and humidity swamped me. The sidewalk was crowded, with people standing and talking, and passersby everywhere. Cigarette and pot smoke hung in the air, as did the taste of beer and puke. Somebody had lost it already out there—not really a surprise considering where I was.

  I looked right first, but saw no one wearing a hoodie. In fact, shorts and tank tops seemed to be the clothing of choice for most people. There were some folks wearing jeans and dresses, but it was too hot for a hoodie.

  Which was why the man stood out so much when I looked the other way. He was tall, like Avery, broadly built, wearing solid black as he strode away. He was already at the middle of the next block by then. I seemed to just…zero in on him, my focus narrowing to nothing but that form.

  “Scuse me,” I mumbled as I ran past people. I didn’t bowl anyone over, but I did think people would have seen someone running their way and maybe moved just a few inches over.

  Nope. I had ’em stare right at me and refuse to move. If I was a violent man, I’d have been throwing elbows and fists. As it was, some pushing did occur, and it wasn’t all on my side. I stumbled once when a thin, wispy man shoved at me. I wouldn’t have thought he had so much strength in him.

  Keeping upright was imperative, however, because the hooded figure was turning a corner.

  He hadn’t looked back, not once.

  My footsteps sounded loud to me, but then again, so did my heartbeat. The guy probably couldn’t have heard the former, and I know he couldn’t have heard the latter. He must not have known I was chasing him. He’d been on his way out of the club by the time I’d spotted him.

  “Hey!” I called out, already breathing heavily from running just a few blocks. I really needed to get in shape. Then again, the air was so thick with humidity, I felt as if I was inhaling sludge. “Hey, you, wait!”

  He didn’t wait, or even seem to think I was yelling at him. Considering how many people were out, who could blame him?

  “Avery!” I bellowed as loud as I could.

  Not a pause in the man’s step.

  That made me run faster, my lungs burning as I pumped my arms and legs, trying to catch up to the mystery man.

  I don’t know why it was so important to me, why I needed to see him. I just did, and if that meant running and sweating and possibly dying of a heart attack because I was too damned lazy to work out regularly, then I guessed that was what would have to happen.

  But it didn’t. I rounded the corner and saw him a whole block ahead of me. He shouldn’t have been that far away—I’d been running, he’d been walking, albeit fast. However, I wasn’t so slow that my running was lagging behind his walking speed.

  Or I shouldn’t have been. And yet, there he was, a block ahead. It didn’t seem possible. He must have run once he turned the corner.

  Except, I realized after another block, he still wasn’t running, and I was, but I hadn’t gotten any closer.

  The complete weirdness of that sent a jolt of fear through me. “Hey!” I screamed, “Stop fucking with my head!”

  The figure paused.

  I did not. Gasping, pretty sure I was about to keel over, I ran faster. When the man moved back into the shadowed alleyway, I should have stopped. Sometimes I was too impetuous and…well, stupid. Why else would I have run right into the alleyway?

  Which I did. I skidded to a stop. I could just make out his dark shape as he leaned against the brick wall. The lighting was faint. He’d done well if he wanted to remain hard to see.

  I couldn’t discern more than that. The stone remained unchanged in my pocket. I was scared and something else, something I couldn’t pinpoint, at the same time.

  And I didn’t know what to say. I’d just chased a stranger down—why? I scratched my chin. I could feel him watching me. It was so odd. His presence seemed huge, as though he’d supplied a buzzing electrical current to all the air around us.

  No, the buzzing was in my ears, my head. I couldn’t find words, so instead, I reached for the edge of the hoodie, aiming to push it away from his face.

  I know I touched the fabric. I know I did! But one second, my fingers brushed cool material—and that coolness registered like an alarm in my head, considering the heat of the night—and the next, the buzzing in my ears grew louder and the man before me simply…disappeared.

  Chapter Ten

  So close. So close and yet… And yet he didn’t know whether he was relieved or disappointed. He’d been held in stasis, enclosed in the jasper, for so long he wasn’t even certain who he was anymore. Or if he was even real.

  But there’d been a pull, a tug he couldn’t resist, and he’d been yanked from the stone. It had been incredibly painful and terrifying. He had no idea why, or what had happened, except the next moment, he was standing, staring at a man, unable to look away from him.

  Vaguely aware of the music, he continued to wait, watch, held in place by some unnamed force. He wasn’t exactly whole, yet he was…something, something real enough to hold up clothes that were on him, something real enough to draw attention of other men.

  But not the man he wanted to see him.

  Until someone pointed, and as badly as he wanted to stay, to meet the guy calling to him, he had to turn around. His body—what there was of it—was not his own.

  If he could have stayed there in that alley, and let himself be bared to the man, would he have?

  It was a question he would never have an answer to. The jasper encased him before he could do more than wonder what was happening.

  I think I passed out. That wasn’t something I was admitting to anyone, either. I remember chasing the guy in the hoodie, and the particular feeling that I had to see him, to speak to him. Then there was the whole weird thing with me not being able to catch him when I should have done just that.

  After that, the alley, shivers racing over me, goosebumps as I reached for him—

  I sat up in the alley and rubbed the back of my head. It ached, but there was only a small knot. The fact that I was, or had been, lying in an alley? Good God on speed, that’s disgusting!

  After I scrambled to my feet, I immediately regretted moving so fast. I was dizzy. Without really thinking about it, I reached for the stone in my pocket.

  It wasn’t there.

  “No, no, no,” I muttered, more panicked than ever as I shoved my hands into my pockets. “No, no—”

  I don’t know how I found it. Someone must have flashed a light somewhere—maybe a headlight?—and the stone picked it up just enough to sparkle.

  “Oh, thank God,” I said as I grabbed it. I clasped it hard and held it to my chest. Weird, but whatever. I couldn’t lose the stone. “No more of that.” It didn’t matter who or what I was talking to. More than anything, I just needed to hear my own voice. No one else was going to pop in and say, “Wow, Matt! I am glad you found that stone!”

  Snorting, I put the jasper back in my front right jeans pocket. “No more escaping on me.” I left the alley, noticing that I didn’t feel like I’d hit the ground back there. A touch to the back of my head and I could tell the knot was almost gone.

  Maybe having hallucinations wasn’t a bad thing if they came with rapid healing? Or was I hallucinating that I was injured, or healing, or…

  Too much to think about. The sidewalk wasn’t crowded now that I was off Sixth Street. In fact, I didn’t see anyone else around. My phone was still in my back pocket, but when I took it out—well, what would you expect would happen to an iPhone not in a case if you fell on it? Yeah, it was wrecked.

  “Great.” That’d make getting hold of my friends or calling for an Uber difficult. I’d just have to hoof it back to the club. It really wasn’t far.

  But the heat and humidity grew more oppressive and I felt more and more uncomfortable, until I was almost certain someone was watching me, maybe even following me. I kept looking back and never saw anyone. It didn’t make any difference. The sensation only grew stronger.

  Fuck it. I wasn’t made to be some brave, dashing, selfless hero. I took off running, knowing if I hit Sixth Street, I’d probably be safe.

  I made it there, and back to the club, where I found Artie and the others. When they asked me about the mystery man, I just told them I hadn’t been able to find him.

  But the rest of the evening, I couldn’t shake the feeling of being watched by something bad, evil. I don’t know. Maybe it was a portent. All I did know was danger seemed to be hovering around me and I didn’t have a clue as to why.

  Chapter Eleven

  The next night was when the dreams started. Hot, sensual dreams that made me hard, made me wake with my hand on my dick, cum spewing as I orgasmed.

  I hadn’t had wet dreams since I was a teenager, and even then, they’d never been anything like these. The vividness of the dreams haunted me in my waking hours, because everything about them felt so real.

  And, of course, because I never could see my lover’s face. I could feel his lips on mine, his tongue pressing mine into submission, his hands pinning my wrists down beside my head, the heavy weight of his body, the thick, wet glide of his cock breaching me, the whole length of his dick slicked with lube.

  It wasn’t all fucking. He spent what seemed like hours learning every millimeter of my body. He played with my nipples and the lobes of my ears, two places where I’m extraordinarily sensitive. He tongued my belly button, licked my arm pits—a hot button for me. Want me to beg you to fuck me? Bury your face in my pits and have at it. There was just something so masculine about it, though what did I know? Maybe there were plenty of women who liked doing that too. I’d only ever been with guys, so that was the only perspective I had.

  I could just about come from doing another man the same way. Yes, I had a pit fetish. There were worse things I could have been fantasizing about. I wasn’t about to be listing examples.

  The dreams lasted all night long. I’d wake up when I came, then eventually fall back asleep, only to be roused right before my alarm was to go off with an even more intense, perfect climax.

  Wet, hot mouth on my dick, the suction exquisite, my dream lover would tongue the underside of my crown while playing with my balls, or fingering my ass. Sometimes he seemed to have more hands than possible, because I felt like I was being touched all over, every single part of me, coated and covered in this fantasy partner of mine.