Vic and Matt Omnibus

Chapter 7

Parking Lot Hero

Vic Braunson stood, naked and still damp from his shower, in the hallway of the apartment he shared with his lover. The French doors that hid the laundry facilities were rolled back and he was bent over the open door of the dryer, digging through clean clothes in hope of finding a pair of boxers. He wasn’t having much luck. “Didn’t you wash anything of mine?” he called out.

In the kitchen, he heard the clatter of dishes in the sink, then the water turned on and Matt diLorenzo’s voice spoke up in his mind. ::I can’t hear you over the water.::

Through their mental connection, Vic shot back, ::You just turned it on.::

He felt his lover grin inside his head. ::You turn me on. What are you looking for?::

::Some underwear.::

The telepathic bond they shared stemmed from Matt—something in him brought out the best in Vic. More specifically, something in his semen triggered superhuman powers in Vic whenever they made love. The abilities came and went, wearing off eventually or replaced by others the next time they f****d, but the telepathy between them was constant.

Vic heard the water cut off and knew Matt was coming to help him look. Two seconds later, a randy wolf whistle pierced the hall. Vic turned to glance over his shoulder at his lover, who leaned in the doorway of the kitchen, a towel drying his hands as he stared appreciatively at Vic’s broad backside. “Underwear for what?” Matt wanted to know. “You can’t hide something that sexy. It’d be a shame.”

“If you want me to go to the store with you,” Vic started.

The towel snapped in Matt’s hands and cracked against Vic’s buttocks like a whip. “How about we cancel the store,” Matt suggested, pushing away from the jamb to tickle gentle fingers over one ample ass cheek. “You stay here au naturale, I’ll strip down, and we’ll both just curl back up in bed. What do you say?”

As tempting as it sounded, they did need to go grocery shopping. It was the Saturday before the Super Bowl, and somehow Matt had talked Vic into hosting a party for a few of their friends. What started out as three couples had grown into an elaborate shindig—the two women Matt worked with at the gym’s pool would be there, the receptionist Roxie and her date of the month, and a young man named Doug who’d taken to hanging around Vic in the weight room. Then word got out at the gym that the place to be on Super Bowl Sunday was their apartment, and Vic didn’t know how many more people planned to show up. As the evening of the dreaded ballgame approached, Vic was beginning to think he’d duck out once the guests arrived and maybe hide away upstairs with the landlady and her plethora of cats just for some peace and quiet. He wasn’t a sociable person by any stretch of the imagination.

But Matt was. And whatever Matt wanted, Vic made sure he got it, simple as that.

So they were having an apartment full of guests Sunday evening, and this morning they planned to swing by the grocery store to buy drinks and snacks. If Vic could just find a pair of boxers to wear. And if he couldn’t, maybe he could beg off going…

His lover’s hands rubbed over his buttocks, pinching, kneading, their warmth turning him on. His c**k jerked, knocking against the door of the dryer with a hollow ping that made Matt laugh. “What are we looking for again?”

Vic couldn’t remember. All he knew were the hands lifting his cheeks, spreading them wide, massaging them. He stood up on his tiptoes, arched his back, and leaned heavily on the top of the dryer to steady himself. Still, the first soft lick of Matt’s tongue over hidden flesh almost dropped him to his knees. “God,” he gasped as Matt traced the cleft between his buttocks. “Yes.”

Matt started with tiny bites on sensitive skin that trembled in his wake. Then his tongue swirled around Vic’s tight hole, over and over again. Dropping lower, he licked his way between Vic’s legs to kiss the back of his balls and tasted the length of his shaft before returning to the puckered flesh at Vic’s center. Vic’s breath hissed in delight. ::Yes, God, Matty, yes!::

One slick finger eased into him. Vic bucked back against it, taking it in. Behind him, he heard the tell-tale zrrp of a zipper sliding open, then heard the rustle of fabric as Matt’s jeans fell to the floor at his feet. Spreading his legs apart, Vic muttered, “Are you going to f**k me, or what?”

“Well,” Matt drawled, “when you ask like that…”

The finger in his anus slipped free. For one devastating moment, those hands holding him disappeared. A disgruntled growl tickled the back of Vic’s throat—he’d beg if he had to, anything for a piece of his man. “Matty—”

A wet palm slapped his ass. “Hush up,” Matt admonished. Vic glanced over his shoulder to see his lover squirt a healthy dollop of lotion into his hands. “You know I wouldn’t leave you hanging like that.”

Cool, damp fingers again fondled the crack between his buttocks. Vic arched into the hand as the faint, clean scent of cucumber melon filled his senses. “Couldn’t you find anything unscented?” he muttered.

“This was by the sink,” Matt told him. “You really didn’t give me much time to look—”

With a roar, Vic cried out, “Just f**k me already, will you?”

Strong hands gripped Vic’s hips, and the knotty tip of Matt’s c**k butted against his ass. With one hard shove, his lover slid into him with a burning that ignited Vic’s blood and stiffened his c**k. Pushing away from the dryer, he backed up against Matt and set the pace hot and heavy, the way he liked it. Each time Matt thrust into him, Vic felt as if his lover’s thick c**k struck sparks off his tender prostate. He was on fire, his body begging for more. Words were lost between them; Vic grunted his approval every time Matt drove into him, deeper, harder, faster.

In.

When he came, Vic’s orgasm ripped through him like a firestorm. He felt Matt’s d**k burst within him, which triggered his own release. ::Yes,:: he thought as Matt clung to him, unwilling to let go just yet. ::Yes,:: as his lover leaned down over Vic’s back, hugging him close. ::Yes, God, yes. Matty, you’re amazing.::

Matt kissed his shoulder, and Vic turned to catch the next kiss on his lips. “Now let’s find you those boxers,” his lover whispered against Vic’s mouth.

“I don’t know,” Vic admitted. “I’m not in such a hurry anymore.”

* * * *

Matt led the way down the frozen foods aisle at Ukrop’s grocery store, a fist full of coupons as he studied the rows of boxes inside the refrigerated case. He took shopping seriously—he clipped coupons every week, dug through the communal coupon bin in front of the store before he entered to see if anyone had deposited any he needed, and even printed out savings online when he could. Though Ukrop’s was one of the more pricey stores around, he shopped there on Saturdays simply because they were closed on Sundays, and usually marked down items that wouldn’t be as fresh on Monday. He had detailed notes of what he wanted to buy for the Super Bowl party, and the cart Vic pushed along behind him was already overflowing with bottles of soda, large bags of chips, and enough ingredients to make any number of decadent dips. All they were missing was the alcohol—Ukrop’s was a dry store, which meant they’d just have to stop by someplace else on the way home.

Matt didn’t mind. He loved shopping. Vic, on the other hand…

A glance at his lover brought a faint smile to Matt’s lips. Vic was holding up like a real trooper, leaning on their shopping cart with a murderous expression on his face. More than once, a frazzled housewife had started to snap at him to move out of her way, but one look from his stormy eyes put her in reverse to find a different aisle to navigate. Kids racing each other up and down the aisles stopped in his presence, their faces downcast, as if they hoped to slink past him without notice. If someone lingered in Matt’s way, he simply stood aside and let Vic barrel through. There was no, “Excuse me,” from his lover. The last jerk who took up half the aisle earned himself a snippy, “You gonna just stand there all day or what?”

As much as Vic hated shopping, Matt loved being with him, even in the grocery store.

Halfway down the frozen foods aisle, Matt stopped. Vic slowed beside him, then hunkered down into his jacket to glare at the people passing by. One woman pointed helplessly at an item on the other side of Vic, but one look at his thunderous face changed her mind about asking him to move. She simply corralled her children together, muttering under her breath in Spanish.

Matt watched her walk away. ::Smile a little,:: he chided his lover as he opened the refrigerator door to grab some mini pizzas. ::You’re scaring people.::

Vic’s reply was simply, ::Are we done yet?::

“Almost,” Matt assured him. Tossing the pizzas into their cart, he moved one door down and began to waffle over appetizers. “What do you think? The taquitos or mozzarella sticks?”

Vic groaned. “Matty. I don’t care.”

Glancing farther down the aisle, Matt asked, “Or hey, some kind of French fries, do you think? Or how about pierogies?”

From behind Vic came a shrill voice, elderly, female, and sarcastic. “O Moj Boze! Those plastic pierogies taste like psia krew.”

For the first time since they’d stepped into the grocery store, Vic cracked a smile. Matt turned, half-grinning, to find their landlady Melba Kowalewsky, a feisty widow in her seventies, pushing a cart over which she could barely see. The pillbox hat perched on top of her short, grey curls seemed in danger of falling off. Her ubiquitous cane dangled just as precariously from the handlebar on her cart. As she stopped beside Vic, effectively blocking the rest of the aisle, she slapped his arm and pointed at the case beside him. “Help your babcia out, Vic. Get me some collards, will you?”

The arm she tapped was easily as thick as her entire body; Mrs. K, as Vic called her, was a small, slender woman, and Vic was built like a brick s**t-house, as she put it. But Matt knew his lover had a soft spot for the old woman—he helped her carry in her groceries every Saturday, using his telepathic powers to anticipate her arrival and meeting her at the curb outside their apartment building. Matt watched with amusement as his lover obeyed Mrs. K, picking over similar bags of frozen collard greens until finding one to her satisfaction.

“You boys don’t linger,” she said as Vic handed her the bag.

She didn’t take it—Matt hadn’t thought she would, and he had to stifle a laugh when Vic placed the bag in her cart for her. ::Whipped,:: Matt teased his lover silently.

::Between the both of you,:: Vic shot back, ::I give up.::

That small gloved hand struck Vic’s arm again, tapping his elbow because Mrs. K couldn’t reach any higher. “I’m expecting you to help me with these groceries, Vic. That other no-good tenant of mine can’t be bothered to help a stara baba out. Jesus, Mary, and Joseph. Do you think it would kill him to open a door for a woman?”

Now Matt did laugh out loud. Mrs. K was referring to the neighbor below them, who constantly knocked on their floor whenever they made too much noise. Unfortunately that seemed like a daily occurrence; the damn i***t took offense to the slightest sound, from the squeal of a chair across the floor to the creak of their bed springs during s*x. Matt suspected part of Vic’s reason for helping his landlady with her groceries was to keep him in her good graces. More than once, she’d threatened to toss the other fellow out when his lease was up.

As if noticing him for the first time, Mrs. K gave Matt an indulgent smile. “You’re quite a catch, Marvin. Or is it Michael?”

“Matt,” Vic corrected.

She nodded, distracted. “Handsome man. I tell you what. You want pierogies? I’ll make a special batch, just for you.” Turning to Vic, she patted his elbow again, gentler this time. “You two come to dinner tonight. I’ll make kielbasa y kapusta, and I have a few golomki I can warm up for you, too. I’ll get those pierogies started the minute I get home. What do you say?”

Vic glanced at Matt, who shrugged. “You make an old babcia happy,” Mrs. K said. “You both visit. Eat. You, Marty, you need more meat on your bones.” To Vic, she confided in a loud whisper, “He’s too thin.”

“He’s a swimmer,” Vic told her, as if that explained it.

Behind Mrs. K, someone started, “Excuse me—”

“Always pushing me out of the way!” Mrs. K whirled around, one small fist already shaking. “Głupia zasranà, can’t an old woman shop in peace in this place?”

With a grimace, Matt caught the end of Vic’s cart and pulled his lover a little farther down the aisle in an effort to avoid conflict. At the end of the aisle, Mrs. K called out to them, “See you at six!”

* * * *

Actually, they saw her a lot sooner—she pushed her cart past them as they stood in the self-checkout lane. “I don’t trust those things,” she said with a shake of her head.

“It’s automated,” Matt explained with a laugh. “What’s to trust about it?”

But Mrs. K was adamant, and turned her nose up as she went by, favoring a more traditional cashier-run lane. “All I’m saying,” she started, but there was nothing after that and Matt laughed again.

Vic placed a sure hand on his lover’s back. “Come on,” he chided. “Leave her be.”

To be honest, he didn’t much care for the self-checkout lanes, either. The damn machine talked constantly, which Vic hated. And heaven forbid if he didn’t put the scanned item immediately into a bag; the slightest hesitation prompted the machine to scold, “Please wait.” The one time he tried to remove one of the bags to make room for more purchases, he almost thought the police would arrive—the machine beeped at him and refused to ring up anything else until he had returned the bag to its holder.

Matt gently eased him aside and took over. “This thing’s a piece of s**t,” Vic grumbled as he shoved his hands deep into the pockets of his leather jacket to resist the urge to ram a fist through the touch screen.

“Big bad Vic,” Matt teased. “Brought down by an automated teller.”

“Every superhero needs an arch-enemy,” Vic muttered.

When they were finished and the groceries paid for, he grabbed as many of the bags as he could at once and set them in their cart. One ripped before he even managed to set it down. “I hate shopping,” Vic announced to anyone who would listen. A two-liter bottle of soda rolled out of the torn bag to hit the floor at his feet.

With a grin, Matt leaned down to retrieve the soda. “But you have so much fun when we go out.”

“No,” Vic corrected, “you have fun at my expense.”

Matt poked Vic’s stomach, a quick, ticklish touch that was gone before he could catch Matt’s hand in his own. “It turns me on,” Matt admitted. “If that’s a bad thing…”

Vic groaned. ::You’re lucky I love you.::

::Damn straight.::

Again, Matt took over, pushing the cart as Vic hefted the rest of their bags. Vic deposited them in the cart when Matt slowed to wait for the sliding glass doors to open. Outside Mrs. K was already crossing the parking lot, her cane tap tap tapping over the hard tarmac. A disgruntled bagboy had been coerced into steering her cart toward her car. Despite the distance, Vic could hear her scolding, “I’m over there, dupa. Open your eyes. I said a cream Lincoln. Cream. Does that look cream to you?”

Under his breath, Vic muttered, “I always thought it was tan.”

“Tan?” Matt laughed, and the scant January wind whipped the sound from his throat when he turned to wink at his lover. “I’d have said ecru maybe. Tan’s too dark.”

Vic didn’t really care. “I don’t think it matters—”

The sound of motorcycle engines flared and three small bikes zoomed behind them, the last one so close that Vic felt his jacket tug in the biker’s wake. Harsh laughter rose from the three young men, helmet-less, who goosed the bikes around the edge of the parking lot. ::f*****g idiots,:: Vic thought, projecting the thought not only into his lover’s mind but those of the bikers’, as well.

If it bothered them, they didn’t show it.

The bikes revved as they circled the lot, zipping between parked cars and shooting across aisles with dangerous moves that made Vic nauseous. They frightened the Spanish-speaking woman from the freezer aisle, now heading for her car, who stopped to clutch her small children close as the bikers zoomed by. Vic felt something surge in him, something terrible, something deadly, and in his pocket his hands curled into angry fists. ::Give me one reason…::

Matt’s presence soothed his mind. ::Vic, no. This doesn’t concern us.::

Then the first bike in the trio broke off from his friends, angling through the cars in the lot, heading for Mrs. K. Like rambunctious children, the other two bikes trailed after the first, engines gunning.

::Now it does.::

Before Matt could reply, Vic was storming across the lot. He felt the wind in his ears, a rush like blood that pounded at his senses, drowning out the rest of the world. All he saw were the bikes now bearing down on his elderly landlady. The young bagboy took one look at the motorcycles and must’ve decided the hell with it—Vic heard one thought clear in his mind, Let the old bat fend for herself, then he abandoned the cart to race back to the store. But when he turned, he ran smack into Vic.

Shouldering the kid aside, Vic closed the distance between himself and Mrs. K. The bikes were already circling her like birds of prey, waiting to swoop in for the kill. In her own ornery fashion, Mrs. K brandished her cane at them, shouting obscenities in Polish that were lost in the choppy sounds of the bikes’ engines. One biker reached out, grabbed the end of her cane, and tugged. The old lady stumbled, losing her footing—

Vic caught her around the waist before she fell. “Boze,” she gasped.

God.

The moment she was on her feet, Vic lashed out. Mentally he assaulted all three bikers, driving spikes of pain deep into their skulls, causing sudden headaches so sharp, one of the guys lost his seat and fell to the ground. His bike ran over him, riderless, then wobbled a few feet before crashing into a nearby pickup.

Another biker came at Vic, who stood his ground. At the last second, the biker turned, but Vic grabbed a fistful of his jacket and yanked the guy off. The bike skidded away, sliding neatly into place beneath a parked SUV, metal scraping and throwing off sparks. The rider Vic tossed aside; he struck another vehicle and crumpled to the ground, unconscious.

The last biker was the one who had grabbed Mrs. K’s cane. He still held it in one hand, tapping it at the cars he passed. When he saw Vic, he took off in a straight line, revving his accelerator as he zoomed away. Without thinking, Vic took off after him. The ground seemed to disappear beneath him as he picked up speed, and the gap between them closed with each step, until Vic raced alongside the bike. He ran like the wind, wild, blood pumping, body drenched in sweat. When the biker glanced over and saw Vic’s leer inches from his own face, he tried to swerve.

Vic reached out, his fingers closing around the driver’s throat, pulling him into a tight chokehold. The biker was jerked off his bike, which sped out into a nearby intersection and crashed into the front grill of a city bus. Fitting, Vic thought.

As the man’s body went limp in his arms, Vic slowed his breakneck pace. When the biker’s hand relaxed its grip on Mrs. K’s cane, Vic caught it nimbly in his own sweaty fingers.

* * * *

Twenty minutes later, Matt had finished stowing their groceries in the trunk of Vic’s car and now waited to be released. Oh, he could go, no question—he’d only been a witness to the events, and the police on the scene already had his statement. But Vic was still getting the third degree.

The three bikers were just college-aged kids. They stood together by one of the shopping cart carrels, handcuffed to the metal bars so they wouldn’t wander off. Their bikes lay crumpled around the parking lot, cheap motorcycles that hadn’t stood a chance against a man like Vic. His super strength came from Matt, from their love, and as much as Matt hated when his lover was put in danger, he couldn’t deny that a very small part of him had swelled with pride to see Vic step out among the bikers, eyes fierce, fists clenched.

Damn. For the first time, Matt felt flushed and bothered at Vic’s heroics. Weren’t the police through yet? He needed to get home and have a piece of his lover, now, or he’d probably spontaneously combust.

But the officers were taking their time, interviewing the bikers and any witnesses who had seen what had happened. Mrs. K paced around the parking lot, staggering without her cane as she hobbled from one police officer to the next, spouting off in Polish as if speaking in tongues. Matt couldn’t understand half of what she said, and from the way the officers tried to avoid her, he suspected he wasn’t the only one.

Vic stood by Mrs. K’s car, her cane still in his hands. A young police officer spoke with him—spoke to him, really, as Vic wasn’t saying much of anything at the moment. The officer’s nametag read Jones, and for some reason she looked familiar to Matt. She’d even surprised him by already knowing their names before they spoke. Glancing into Vic’s mind, Matt found the reason why—she’d been on the scene months earlier when Vic had telepathically supported a falling school bus to allow police to rescue the children inside. Officer Kendra Jones.

“So help me understand this, Mr. Braunson.” She ran a hand over the top of her head to push back her cap, then smoothed down the blonde hair tied at her nape before replacing the cap. “You’re saying these boys came tearing through the lot like bats out of hell, and you basically just stood there? And they what, fell off the bikes? I mean, don’t get me wrong, you’re a very intimidating man, but seriously…”

Noticing Matt, the officer stepped forward to cut him off. “A few more minutes, Mr. diLorenzo, if you please.”

But Vic sidestepped around her and took Matt’s hand to pull him closer. “Don’t you send him away.”

With a look of relief, she rounded on Vic. “So you can speak. Tell me—”

“Assault!” one of the bikers cried out. The others picked up his cry, and soon all three were yelling at the top of their lungs. “Assault! He attacked us! We know our rights!”

“Shut up,” the officer muttered. To Vic, she appealed, “See what I have to deal with? You know what they did. I know it was wrong, I’m sure of it. But I can’t just write down that they did it all themselves—”

“Young lady.”

Officer Jones turned to find Mrs. K hobbling up to her. As she approached, Vic held out her cane; she took it almost gratefully, and leaned on it with both hands as she looked up at the police woman. “You listen to me,” she said, each word short and curt. “This man saved me. Don’t you dare harass him. I need to get home and feed my cats, and he needs to help me with my groceries. I have pierogies to make, missy. Do you know how long that takes? From scratch?”

“Ma’am,” Officer Jones tried.

“Don’t ma’am me,” Mrs. K snapped back. “I have liver spots older than you. Them boys need a good whipping, if you ask me. Now that I have my cane back, I ought to…”

She brandished the cane, menacing; Matt took a step back out of her way and found himself in Vic’s strong embrace. His lover’s weary mind spoke up inside his own. ::Are we about through here?::

Officer Jones seemed distracted by Mrs. K, and Matt didn’t see any point interrupting them to ask if they were free to go. Slipping his hand into Vic’s, he led his lover toward their car, relief and pride coursing through him. His man had taken on all three bikers, brought them down, kicked their asses. His man had saved the day.

His.

Squeezing Vic’s fingers, Matt asked silently, ::Can I just tell you how f*****g hot that was?::

::What?:: Vic asked.

Matt grinned as he raised Vic’s hand to his lips and kissed his lover’s bruised knuckles. ::As if you don’t know. I’m going to ravage you the moment I have you all to myself.::

::We’ll have to wait for Mrs. K to get home first so I can take up her groceries,:: Vic reminded him. ::I’m not going to want to get dressed again once you get started.::

Hell, Matt would help her himself, if it came to that. He didn’t want either of them dressed again for the rest of the day.

THE END