Hobbled Read online

  By JOHN INMAN

  NOVELS

  A Hard Winter Rain

  Hobbled

  Loving Hector

  Shy

  NOVELLAS

  The Poodle Apocalypse

  Published by DREAMSPINNER PRESS

  http://www.dreamspinnerpress.com

  Copyright

  Published by

  Dreamspinner Press

  5032 Capital Circle SW

  Ste 2, PMB# 279

  Tallahassee, FL 32305-7886

  USA

  http://www.dreamspinnerpress.com/

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Hobbled

  Copyright © 2013 by John Inman

  Cover Art by Paul Richmond

  http://www.paulrichmondstudio.com

  Cover content is being used for illustrative purposes only

  and any person depicted on the cover is a model.

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system without the written permission of the Publisher, except where permitted by law. To request permission and all other inquiries, contact Dreamspinner Press, 5032 Capital Circle SW, Ste 2, PMB# 279, Tallahassee, FL 32305-7886, USA.

  http://www.dreamspinnerpress.com/

  ISBN: 978-1-62380-855-6

  Digital ISBN: 978-1-62380-856-3

  Printed in the United States of America

  First Edition

  June 2013

  For those who have tumbled into love with only a glance,

  and in only a heartbeat. This book is for you.

  Chapter 1

  SINCE his clothes usually hung all over him like a forty-foot flag on a twelve-foot pole, Danny Shay was one of those people who look a whole lot better out of clothes than they do in them. Unfortunately, Danny was so damned inexperienced and shy that not too many people had found that out yet. Almost none in fact. And they certainly wouldn’t be finding it out for the next six weeks.

  Or so he thought.

  Danny sat in his upstairs bedroom, sprawled out with the recliner at full tilt, wearing nothing but a cast on his left leg that extended from just below his knee all the way down to his toes, and an electronic ankle monitor, courtesy of the San Diego Police Department, clamped snugly around the other leg, just above his right foot.

  Smack in the middle of those two extremities lay his dick, and at the moment, it was looking pretty darned depressed and unhappy about the whole thing. It was looking red and exhausted, too, since Danny had just whacked off for the second time that day, for lack of anything better to do to pass the time. A splash of semen was splattered across his chest all the way up to his chin, and another puddle was drying in his belly button because he was too depressed to wipe it away. As the semen dried, he could feel it crisping on his skin.

  The ankle monitor had a little green light that flashed continually. It looked totally high-tech and alien down there, wrapped around his ankle, three feet below his dick, like maybe some Venusian scientist from the Outer Nebulae had strapped it on him to track human migratory patterns. It felt heavy too. The cop who attached it to Danny’s leg told him if it started flashing red instead of green, that meant he had gone farther from the house than allowed, and he would immediately find himself in some very deep shit. The way the cop explained it, every policeman from Los Angeles to Baja would converge on the property and haul his ass to jail pronto, and he would quite possibly never see the light of day again. Period.

  Danny hadn’t liked the sound of that, so he made up his mind then and there he would try to avoid making the damn contraption flash red at all costs.

  But as horrible as it was, the ankle monitor was actually the least of his worries. It was not nearly as annoying and disheartening as the cast on the other leg. That was a miserably monstrous thing to have clamped around you, don’t think it wasn’t. It felt like it weighed fifty pounds, although it probably didn’t. It was hot, it was hard, it smelled funny, and his leg was so itchy and sore way down inside it that sometimes Danny just lay there in the recliner and gnashed his teeth.

  That was usually when he started beating off. Just to take his mind off the itchy, achy leg.

  Danny Shay was eighteen years old. He had wavy brown hair down to his shoulders, big brown eyes like a puppy dog, and a spray of freckles across his nose. His aunt Edna said he was as cute as a cup of butterscotch pudding, whatever the hell that meant. Oy. Relatives.

  By the way, Danny wasn’t Jewish. He just liked to say “Oy.”

  Danny was tall and lanky, with hairy long legs, a lovely smooth chest with a sprinkling of hair around his belly button, and a beautiful circumcised cock that required a whole lot of attention, as most eighteen-year-old cocks do. Although he was gay, and he knew he was gay, he had never had sex with a man in his life, if you discounted the one time Larry Sullivan, back in the eighth grade, stayed at the house overnight and jacked him off.

  Larry Sullivan was really gay. Danny sort of wished he had him here now. He bet good old Larry could take his mind off that fucking cast.

  When his bedroom door rattled, Danny barely had time to yank his bathrobe off the floor and spread it over his come-splattered, naked body before his dad, Daniel Shay Sr., walked into the room.

  “What’s up, Son?”

  If you’d walked in five minutes earlier, I would have shown you what’s up. “Nothing, Pop. Jeez, can’t you remember to knock? I could be doing anything in here.”

  His father actually blushed as he cast his eyes over Danny, lounging there in the recliner with his naked legs poking out from under the bathrobe he had so obviously just pulled over himself. Danny’s dad decided to stare out the window for a while. He had been eighteen once. He knew what it was like, beating off every two minutes. Being ruled by your pecker. In fact, sometimes Danny’s father thought, even at forty-two, he was still being ruled by his pecker. Maybe all men were, regardless of their age.

  “Christ, Son, I’m sorry.” He cleared his throat and looked even more uncomfortable than he had already. “So—just got off the phone with your mom.”

  “The bitch?”

  “Now, Danny, I won’t have you—well, yeah. The bitch.” And they both chuckled.

  Danny’s chuckle was actually pretty perfunctory. He was wishing his dad would get the hell out so he could wipe the come off himself. It felt a little awkward, holding court with his old man while a puddle of come coagulated in his navel. He could feel it getting harder and harder and harder. Pretty soon he’d have to chip it out with a chisel. Or stick a firecracker in there and blast it out. Come on, Pop. Scram.

  But his dad wasn’t scramming. “I’m going to be going in a few minutes, Danny Boy. I just want to talk to you for a minute first.”

  Danny hated it when his father called him Danny Boy. It was like everybody should suddenly start singing in a high Celtic tenor and prancing around barefooted with fucking fiddles under their chins, like they did on PBS every Saturday night.

  His pop was still rattling on, looking out the window. “I’ve left you some money in the kitchen in case you decide you can’t live without having a pizza delivered.” He gave a wry chuckle and turned away from the window to give Danny’s ankle monitor a sly glance. “No pizza pickups, boyo. Delivery only. If you need groceries, call the number by the phone and the store will deliver. I left you a credit card for that. Don’t be ordering a truckload of stuff off the Internet with that credit card either. It’s strictly for food
and emergencies. And no beer! Got it?”

  “Got it.”

  “No trips to the mall, either. Guess you know that. And stay the hell away from your car. I parked it around the corner on the street so you won’t be looking at it out front and getting all tempted to hop inside and take off for parts unknown. They’ve temporarily revoked your license, remember. If they catch you behind the wheel, they’ll probably just take you out behind the police station and shoot you for being a pain in the ass. I’m taking the keys with me just in case you still get tempted. I think the cops left you enough leeway on your electronic leash to keep the grass mowed while I’m gone, and keep the hedges trimmed. I’ll be back in exactly three weeks. If you know what’s good for you, you’ll make damn sure that little light stays green. The judge said he’d throw your ass in jail in a heartbeat if you don’t pony up and do this thing right.”

  “I know, Pop. Sorry.”

  “I hate leaving you alone, but I don’t have a choice. This business trip is important. The judge would probably throw me in jail if he knew I was leaving.”

  “I know, Pop.”

  “Your mom threw a conniption fit when I told her.”

  “The bitch.”

  His father gave a nod as if he couldn’t have stated the facts better himself. “Bitch indeed. I’m sorry you share her DNA, Son. I was thinking with the little head at the time I porked her, not the big one.” He glanced at the bathrobe Danny was tucked under. “Guess you know what that’s like.”

  And finally, his father got the smile he was shooting for when Danny laughed. “Porking my mother, no. Being ruled by the little head, hell, yeah.”

  They grinned and giggled for about fifteen seconds; then suddenly his father started looking uncomfortable again. “Got the bill for the ice machine you destroyed when you threw your little tantrum at the burger joint. Care to know what it’s going to cost?”

  “I’ll pay you back, Pop, I promise. As soon as I get out of this thing, I’ll—”

  “Nineteen hundred bucks.”

  Danny almost jumped out of the chair. If he hadn’t been naked and splattered with come, he would have. “What! That’s robbery!”

  “No, Son. You’re getting your felonies mixed up. That’s destruction of property and vandalism. Robbery would be if you sneaked the thing out the back door of the restaurant and rolled it home. The owner said if I paid promptly, he would call off the lawsuit. So I paid.”

  “The peckerhead.”

  “Yes, well, be that as it may. We’re pretty well strapped into doing whatever the guy wants. You did tear up his place of business pretty good.”

  “He was a dick.”

  “Yes, well, that’s no excuse to—”

  “He cheated me on my time card. We even proved it to the judge.”

  His father sighed. They had been through this a hundred times. “And the guy said it was a simple arithmetical mistake. And even if it wasn’t a mistake, and the guy had tried to cheat you out of some of your wages, it was still no excuse for flipping over the ice machine and throwing all the hamburgers out the window, although I keep expecting a shitload of thank-you cards from all the homeless people in the neighborhood who got free sandwiches out of your little snit.”

  Danny laughed. “Yeah, that would be pretty funny.” Then he spotted his father glowering down at him and decided maybe he shouldn’t be laughing after all.

  Although it was pretty funny.

  “As soon as the monitor comes off, your anger management classes will commence.”

  “Fucking judge.”

  His father chose to ignore that. “It would have been nice if you had at least been smart enough not to slip in the ice and break your own leg after you were finished tearing up the restaurant. That cost another eighteen hundred dollars, as you know.”

  “Sorry.”

  “Sorry doesn’t pay the bills, kid. And speaking of bills, there’s also the matter of forking money over to the State of California for the privilege of keeping you out of jail. That ankle monitor is racking up charges even as we speak. It costs a pretty penny every single day you wear it. So please don’t do anything to lengthen your period of house arrest. I don’t think I’d be able to afford it.”

  “Sorry,” Danny said again.

  “And I don’t think I’d be sitting there insulting the judge, either, if I were you. It’s because of him you’re not sitting in a cell counting off the days by scratching them on the wall with a spoon you stole from the jail cafeteria.”

  “Sorry,” Danny said again.

  His dad sighed. “Keep a low profile while I’m gone. Whatever you do, don’t call the cops and get them over here. I’d rather they didn’t know I left you on your own. They might not be too happy about that. If they come by to check on you, try not to say anything about me at all. That way, hopefully, they’ll just think I’m at work. Got it?”

  “Sorry. I mean, got it.”

  “The judge restricted your phone privileges but you can still use the Internet. I’ve got my laptop with me. If you want to contact me, shoot me an e-mail. As for the phone, I can call you, but you can’t call me. Or anybody else for that matter. Okay?”

  “Okay. Sir.”

  His father sucked in a deep breath of air, as if he had just swum up from the bottom of the pool in the backyard after having his toe stuck in the drain for five minutes. “Your mother wants you to move back to Indiana and live with her full time as soon as everything is completed to the judge’s satisfaction. I told her you’re an adult and you can do whatever you want.”

  He stared at Danny’s face until Danny got the message and decided to be courteous enough to stare back and pay attention. As soon as their eyes connected, his father said, “I’d rather you stayed here, Danny. I want to make sure you know that. I know you weren’t happy living with your mom and that dickhead she married, and only coming here to be with me during the summers. But that was how your custody panned out in the divorce, so we had to put up with it. Well, you’re of age now, Son. You can do anything you want. Anything legal, I mean. When this house arrest business is all over, you stay here with me from now on in, okay? We’ll find you another job, or maybe get you enrolled in a college where you can learn a trade. We’ll get you squared away, and while you’re doing all that, you can live here at the house. Rent free, till you’re on your feet. Hell, even after you’re on your feet, if you can still stand to be around me by then. What do you say? Is that a deal?”

  Danny was touched. He really was. And the last thing he wanted to do was move back to Indiana with the cows and the chickens and his mother, who was a true pain in the ass, and her husband, the fucking farmer, who was also a pain in the ass, the putz, and that tiny one-stoplight town where he went to school all the way from first grade through high school graduation.

  “Don’t worry, Pop. I’ll stay here. It’s what I’ve wanted all along. And—thanks. I mean, well—thanks. I’ve always wanted to be here with you. I guess you know that.”

  Then, as if he were nine years old, Danny added, “I’ll be good from now on. I promise.”

  His father looked touched, and he looked relieved on top of it. “I know you will, Danny. And I’m glad you’re staying. Honest.”

  He clapped his hands together like people do when they’re about to set off to search for the source of the Nile or something. “Now, then! Don’t forget to feed Frederick.”

  They both looked up at Danny’s bookcase by the window where Frederick the cat was eating the cover off of Danny’s childhood edition of Tom Sawyer. He had been going back to it periodically for about a week now, gnawing at the binding, tearing through the pages with his claws. Really getting into the story. Danny figured the cat must have a thing for Mark Twain.

  “I will, Pop. And I’ll empty his litter box. Don’t worry.”

  His father stared at Frederick for a moment as if maybe he had never seen a cat digesting Mark Twain before. Literally digesting it. Which was probably true. “He’s humping
the cat next door, you know. I’m seriously thinking of nailing the pet door shut. Or having his nuts removed. If somebody delivers a paternity suit with Frederick’s name on it, just hold it until I get back. Then we’ll ship Frederick off to your mother. Nuts and all.”

  Danny laughed. “Gotcha.”

  His father looked uncomfortable again, shuffling his feet and clearing his throat. Finally, he bit the bullet and leaned over Danny to give him a kiss on the forehead. “I’ll be going now. Don’t get up. That was a joke. I mean about getting up. Well, no it wasn’t. Don’t get up. I’ll see you in three weeks.”

  “Have fun. And don’t worry, Dad. Like I said. I’ll be good. I promise.”

  His father nodded, as if he expected no less. He headed for the door, and just before opening it, turned back with a grin, and said, “When I’m back from my trip, maybe you might think about locking your door whenever you get the urge to pleasure yourself.”

  “Uh. Pleasure myself?”

  His father laughed. “Yeah. In vulgar parlance I believe it’s called pounding the pud. You know. Jerking the jackrabbit. Stroking the lizard. Spanking the monkey. Choking the chicken. Polishing the piccolo. Whatever you want to call it, just don’t beat it to death. You may need it later in life, whether you think you will or not. So lock the door next time. Save us all a lot of embarrassment.”

  And now they were both blushing. “Okay, Pop. I’ll try to remember.”

  His father nodded, gave him a wink, and eased himself out the door, latching it softly behind him, obviously glad that was over.

  Danny just shook his head and grinned.

  Spanking the monkey?

  DANNY waited until he heard his father’s footsteps descending the stairs. Then he waited until he heard the rattle of the front door as the old man juggled his luggage out onto the porch. Then Danny waited until he heard the slamming of the car door out in the driveway. Finally, with bated breath, he waited five seconds longer for the sound of his dad’s car starting up and the sound of his dad’s tires crunching their way down the gravel driveway and out onto the street.