Gabriel and the Devil Read online

We pressed our foreheads together. I don’t know what he was thinking, but I was already offering up a prayer of thanks.

  HOW COULD I even try to pretend that a week of passionate kisses and hand jobs passed uneventfully? It had been the best week of my life. Not even Father Bramble could put a dent into my happiness when he substituted for Father Christopher at the Wednesday-evening mass the day before Thanksgiving. He actually did his Star Wars sermon again. Midway through he raised his eyebrows. The old guy must have figured out he was repeating his sermon from last week. I remembered back to my altar boy days. More than once Father Bramble had made this mistake. He’d look at the date on the sermon and forget that he was supposed to read the Christmas sermon at midnight mass on the twenty-fourth, or in this case, the Thanksgiving sermon on the Wednesday before. I’d saved him a few times, rushing out at the last minute to swap out the sermon at the pulpit. Nobody saved him this time.

  Listening to him recite the same words again didn’t sway me. In fact, the second time around his argument sounded even weaker than before. I wasn’t a big fan, but I decided that Marcello and I needed to see the next movie and that I’d have to catch up on the previous ones.

  I tried to get out the side door when we left, but I hadn’t told Marcello my plan and the flood past Father Bramble swept us along with it. Reluctantly I reached out my hand to him. I had a moment of satisfaction knowing that it was the same hand I’d masturbated Marcello with. That moment quickly faded when I thought about the fact that Father probably used his hand on himself—yuck.

  “Thank you, Father,” I dutifully acknowledged.

  “Gabriel” was his gruff reply.

  When he glanced beside me, he dropped his hand and stared Marcello down.

  Marcello was animated. “Thank you so much, Father. Your sermon really highlighted my evil ways. I’ll never enjoy sci-fi entertainment again without recognizing how much it disrespects God.”

  “See to it” was his stern warning. He never took Marcello’s hand, but Marcello never offered it either.

  Once away from the crowd I had to ask, “What was that all about?”

  “Eh? Father Bramble and I go way back.”

  I could only imagine how far back.

  With a big meal coming up on Thursday, we opted for breakfast after our evening mass. Marcello had pancakes at his place, so we didn’t have to worry about fighting the crowds at IHOP. I had his shirt off before he mixed the batter. He was mixing while I was pulling his pants off. I claimed that I didn’t want to see him getting pancake mix on his nice church clothes. The truth was that I didn’t want to see clothes on him. I loved seeing Marcello naked, and he was all too happy to oblige.

  We sat cross-legged on the bed feeding each other pancakes and making sure syrup dripped down a face or a chest so we could lick it off. Marcello was naked but flaccid. I’d seen him like this a few times over the last week, although most of the times that we were naked together we were both hard. His foreskin and the way his cockhead was completely hidden in the folds intrigued me. I purposely dripped syrup onto it.

  Marcello giggled. “You going to lick that off?”

  “Maybe,” I started. I didn’t take my eyes off it, and if I didn’t do something soon, the syrup would drip onto the sheets. “Yes,” I confirmed.

  I set my plate aside and licked the syrup dripping from the end. Then I gave his foreskin a little nip with my lips. I pulled and stretched it with my lips, not using my hands. Marcello moaned as he began to plump up.

  I changed positions to lie on my stomach and free up my hands. I pulled back the skin to reveal the pink tip and gave it a lick too. His cock jumped. I laughed and gave his stomach a gentle push. He didn’t need any more encouragement to set his plate aside and lie back.

  His breathing was stuttered when he said, “You don’t have to do this.”

  “Do what?” I asked innocently. “I made the mess. I need to clean it up.”

  I licked the length and did find a bit more syrup that I had missed. He was hardening quickly, and soon more than a little pink head was exposed. I started at the base of his balls and made one long lick up along the growing shaft. It seemed as if every inch I covered made him grow two more inches. When I reached the tip, a bead of precum was waiting for me. I touched my tongue to it and looked up into his eyes. He looked lustfully at me as I proudly showed off the bead that had been transferred to the tip of my tongue. Then I closed my mouth and made an exaggerated swallow.

  “Umm, yum,” I pronounced.

  Actually, it was sweet. Marcello and I had both been drinking lots of juices and water, and he’d laid off the spicy food for a week. I took his shaft in my hand and guided it into my mouth. I sucked on the head while I slowly jerked off the base. I couldn’t manage to keep the saliva in my mouth as I worked him over, but that just gave us more lubrication to make my job easier. I surprised myself by how much I was able to take of him. At first my mouth would only go down as far as my fist before I’d start to gag. He’d gently stroke my hair and tell me to relax and take it slow.

  But I didn’t want to take it slow. He was leaking more and more precum into my mouth, and I wanted the full explosion. I moved a hand down to his balls and played with them while I sucked him off. It didn’t take long before his hips started thrusting up to meet my mouth. He shivered and put his hands on my shoulders.

  “Fuck, I’m gonna cum. Pull off.”

  That only made me tighten my mouth around his shaft. I didn’t want anything to leak out.

  “Fuck! Oh fuck!”

  His cock throbbed and I could feel the geyser boiling up his shaft through my fist, past my lips, and finally erupting into my mouth. His hips bucked as he filled my mouth with jets of hot cum. I kept my mouth sealed as tightly as I could, but he was cumming in bucketfuls again. It was leaking out the sides and down his shaft. I swallowed as quickly as I could without gagging, and I waited for his spasms to end.

  “Oh man, pull off! It’s too sensitive! Pull off!”

  I took one long pull, with my lips tightly sealed, trying to keep every last drop in my mouth. When I reached his sensitive head, I polished it off with my tongue while he writhed on the bed.

  “Stop! No more.” His hoarse voice was urgent.

  But I still needed to clean up the rest of the mess that had managed to escape my lips. I licked his sweet, yet still salty, cum until he was as clean as before I started—except for the slick spit I’d left behind. I figured that would air-dry.

  He’d stopped writhing and was still trying to catch his breath when I scooted up his body to lie on top of him. He wrapped his arms tightly around me and kissed me deeply.

  “You are a miracle,” he whispered softly. “I don’t know what I ever did to deserve you.”

  I was wondering the very same thing.

  Chapter Seven

  I’D BEEN intending to tell him all about my family ever since he’d agreed to come to Thanksgiving. But it seemed like something always distracted me. That something was usually Marcello’s naked body. Now I’d run out of time.

  I had to keep him awake long enough to give him the basics. I shook his shoulder.

  “Not again, Angel. You’re insatiable.”

  “You’re the guy with the one-track mind now. I need to tell you a little bit about my family before you’re thrust into the middle of a huge Turner family gathering.” Then I thought about it and changed my adjective. “No, I mean that I have to tell you a lot about my family, because there are a lot of them.”

  Marcello didn’t even roll over to face me.

  “I know. Your parents are John and Emily Turner. Your siblings are Matthew, Luke, Mary, and Bernadette—does she still go by Bernie?” he asked.

  “How do you know?”

  “Bernie is like ten years older than you so you’re the youngest by a long shot. They’re all married with kids. Luke only has two kids; the rest have three.”

  “I suppose you know all of the kids’ names too?”

&nb
sp; “Eleven of them? Not without nametags.”

  I reached my arms around his chest and snuggled my nose into the nape of his neck to breathe in his scent. I closed my eyes, ready to drift off myself, but I had one more observation to make.

  I whispered in his ear, “Of course you know everyone in my family. What kind of devil doesn’t know everything?”

  For some reason, he tensed up before we both drifted off.

  I WAS anxious about having Marcello meet the family. When I called Mom to tell her that I had a friend I wanted to invite, she just said, “What’s one more?” Then she went off about something with my nephew David and his ice hockey. I think she mentioned that my brother Luke’s family might have to leave early to get David to a game. Of course, she complained about making little kids play tournament games on holidays. She never even asked Marcello’s name.

  The car service had said they’d call when the driver was outside of Marcello’s apartment, but I was still anxious. Not anxious to get there, but anxious to make sure Marcello made a good impression on the family. I was also anxious about giving Marcello some rules in order to be sure he made a good impression.

  “Don’t be so tense, Angel,” he told me while massaging the back of my neck.

  “I’m sorry. I just want to make sure they like you. I love you and I want my family to love you too.”

  “I’m not worried,” he assured me.

  “Well, I am.” I decided I had to plunge in and just say what was on my mind. We were already waiting on the street, and the car would be here any minute. I couldn’t say anything with a driver eavesdropping. “Listen, you can’t tell them that you’re really a devil. They’d never accept you the way I have. None of your little tricks like popping in out of nowhere, or telling people all of the things you already know about them. You have to act like you’re meeting them for the first time. We’re Catholics and they’d never understand.”

  “Angel?”

  I didn’t let him finish.

  “And you can’t call me Angel. They can’t know that you’re my….”

  “Boyfriend?”

  We hadn’t actually used the term, and I wasn’t so sure that I liked it. I liked being with Marcello and everything that we did. I just didn’t like the idea of being gay and having a boyfriend.

  “Yeah, that’s right. We’re just friends. You can tell them that you go to Cal State Glendale too. You look about my age, so tell them you’re a senior.”

  “Maybe I can tell them I’m in film studies?” he suggested.

  “Yeah, that would be good. They’ll believe that.”

  “Angel—I mean, Gabriel, I think that we need to talk.”

  I turned to face him and took both of his hands. While looking deep into his brown eyes, I pleaded, “Please do this for me. I’ve given you my eternal soul. I don’t think I’m asking a lot.”

  Just then a car pulled up to the curb, and I quickly dropped his hands.

  “Please.”

  He let out a heavy sigh. “I’d do anything for you, Angel.” He grabbed the door handle to open it for me. “I mean, Gabriel.”

  HE DIDN’T say a thing during the ride up into the hills of Glendale, but he kept looking over at me like he was ready to say something, only to stop. I wondered if he had a problem with me asking him to keep his true identity a secret. That was a crazy thought. Why would a devil have a problem telling a lie—or just not admitting to the whole truth? What if he’d been lying to me about how he felt? Yet every time I looked into his eyes, all that I could see was sincerity.

  I didn’t expect him to be impressed with my house. He already knew everything about me. Why wouldn’t he know that we had a nice midcentury modern five-bedroom Eichler home, that just happened to have a view of most of Glendale out the back? Still he seemed impressed with the neighborhood and the house once we’d pulled up. The boys had to scatter out of the street when the car arrived. They were annoyed until they realized it was me.

  “Uncle Gabe!” Brandon shouted.

  The guys all came running to greet us.

  “Hey, guys, this is my friend Marcello. He’s joining us for Thanksgiving.”

  “Hi, guys. A little street hockey?” Marcello asked.

  “Yeah, David’s got a game today, so were giving him a little workout to warm up,” Brandon answered.

  “I don’t expect you to remember all of this,” I told Marcello. “But this is Brandon. He’s the oldest. He’s…?”

  “Sixteen,” Brandon filled in. “Jim’s my brother. He’s fourteen. And David and Logan are my cousins, although they aren’t brothers. They’re both thirteen.”

  Marcello held out his fist and all the guys fist-bumped him. I’d never done that before. Marcello was fitting in better than I was.

  We headed to the house, where the door stood open flanked by frosted glass side panels. Just beyond the front door was a private garden court that the house wrapped around on the remaining three sides. A couple of bedrooms, the multipurpose room, and the living room all looked into the court through glass sliding doors. Inside I could see most of the women in the kitchen and multipurpose room, while the men were in the living room watching a game on the big-screen television. A long table had been set up in the dining room that, thanks to the open plan of the house, stretched out into the living room. I guessed it would accommodate us all. Twenty-three, if everyone had shown up. That’s the Catholics for you.

  “Are you ready for this?” I asked Marcello.

  He gave me a wide grin, not his devilish one.

  “Sure, I’m ready. Let’s do it.”

  Only we didn’t get a chance to do it on our own. Mom was at the multipurpose room sliding door heading out to meet us.

  “There’s my baby,” she greeted me, before giving me a hug and a sloppy kiss on my cheek.

  I broke away to say, “This is Marcello.”

  “Hello, Marcello,” she said before pulling him into a warm hug. “You’ll have to forgive me. We’re a family of huggers,” she informed him by way of apology.

  “If you haven’t guessed, this is my mom, Emily Turner.”

  “It’s nice to meet you, Mrs. Turner,” Marcello politely answered.

  “Please, you’re old enough to call me Emily. Or you can call me Grandma. Everybody else around here does.” She laughed.

  “Emily is a beautiful name. It reminds me of the poet Emily Dickenson.”

  “Well, aren’t you the charmer?” my mother gushed.

  If she only knew.

  We headed in through the multipurpose room. My sisters were busy in the kitchen, helping Mom out. My sisters-in-law were setting out covered dishes on the extendable table that I’d used for my school projects when I was little. Marcello met Amanda, my brother Matt’s wife, and Stephanie, my brother Luke’s wife.

  Seeing all the activity, I offered, “Is there anything that we can do to help?”

  “Yes,” Bernie told me. “Get out of here and let us work.”

  “And gossip about you, Gabe,” Mary added.

  I grabbed a carrot stick from the veggie platter.

  “Maybe we’d better stay in here?” I suggested.

  “No!” rang out in a chorus.

  “Here, Gabriel,” my mother began. “Take this out for the men.” She shoved the veggie platter at me. “Before you leave, would you boys like something to drink? We have apple juice, soft drinks—oh and if you’d like a beer, Marcello, there are some in the ice chest behind you.”

  “What if I want a beer?” I asked.

  The women all laughed.

  “If you’re really good, maybe Marcello will let you have a sip of his, baby brother,” Mary snarked.

  Marcello grabbed a couple beers out of the ice chest while I took in the tray.

  Out in the living room, Matt saw the tray and groused, “What’s that, Gabe? We men need real food. Ask Amanda where the pretzels are.”

  “Hey, at least they brought us beer,” my brother-in-law Nick said.

&nb
sp; “Guys, this is Marcello,” I announced. “Marcello, my lazy brothers and brothers-in-law.”

  Dad laughed and stood up with his hand outstretched.

  “It’s nice to meet you, Marcello.”

  I set down the platter on the coffee table and took one of the beers from Marcello to give him a free hand.

  “I’m pleased to meet you, Mr. Turner,” Marcello said while shaking Dad’s hand.

  “You too, Marcello. And call me John. How do you know Gabe?” Dad asked.

  Before Marcello could answer, I butted in.

  “We met at school. He’s a film student there, and he doesn’t have any family nearby, so I invited him here. It just seemed like the polite thing to do, you know. With Marcello not having anywhere else to go and all. Right?”

  By then everyone was staring at me, Marcello included. I’d only shut up once I noticed all of the attention I’d drawn.

  Dad stared me down before turning his attention back to Marcello.

  “So, a film student? Do you have anything posted on YouTube that I can look up? I’d like to see some of your work.”

  My eyes went wide. Why’d we choose something like film student for Marcello’s cover? Now he’d have to conjure up some films on YouTube to show my dad. And I’d made him promise not to do any of that kind of stuff.

  “Of course, sir. I have a whole channel. There’s quite a bit to go through, so I’ll have to make sure to show you the best stuff first.”

  “In the meantime,” Matt cut in, “I’ll take that beer, Gabe.”

  Dad turned on Matt. “Matthew, there’s a commercial on now. Why don’t you fellas go out and get your own beers and snacks.” Then he turned back to Marcello. “We can check out your channel now if you’d like. Unless you’d rather watch the game.”

  I tried to pick the least of the two evils.

  “We can watch the game with you, Dad. We wouldn’t want to interrupt you.”

  Dad narrowed his eyes at me. He knew I never liked watching sports.

  “If you don’t mind, sir”—Marcello tried to soften the blow—“I wouldn’t want to be any trouble.”