Approved: moderated.stories@bigfoot.com Keywords: xmm xcons xws xromance
And Let There Be No Moaning at the Bar Copyright (c) 1998 Michael J. Spires. All rights reserved. musing@geocities.com
Copyright Notice
This story may be copied and/or distributed ONLY if no fees are charged for that service or to access the story, including adult verification fees. You may not change the story in any way and you must include this copyright notice.
WARNING
This story (but not this chapter!) involves consensual sex between men. If this type of story is illegal where you live, not your cup of tea, or you are not legally old enough, under the laws of your place of residence, to read it, stop right here!
This story is fiction ....mostly.
I welcome your constructive comments; flames are another matter, and will be killfiled.
I will respond to your e-mail.
Chapter One In the Beginning
I was just setting down my Bombay and tonic when I felt an elbow in my ribs. I looked over at my friend Di, who was tilting her head slightly toward the doors to the kitchen. She raised an eyebrow and said, "Look who just came in."
Following the direction of her gaze, I caught sight of a familiar figure coming through the swinging doors and toward the bar.
"Ooh, baby, come fuck me now!" I whispered appreciatively. "It's TDH."
"Not if I get to him first, butt boy," Di retorted. "And wipe the drool off your chin."
"In a pig's eye, you old fag hag," I shot back. "I keep telling you, that boy is family if I ever saw one."
"Dream on, Troy. Or have you finally gotten some dirt on him?"
"I wish," I sighed, appreciating the way he moved gracefully about his duties behind the bar.
Our banter, like our presence in this particular bar on Friday nights after work, was getting to be a regular routine. We'd been among the first to frequent the place after the brew pub/restaurant combo opened up in a converted movie theatre. The decor wasn't all that great, but the lighting was pretty good, the crowds and the noise nowhere near as bad as most other places in town, and the prices had the competition beat all to hell at least, assuming you wanted a place where you had a reasonable assurance of getting home in one piece with all your possessions intact, and not winding up with hepatitis or food poisoning.
"TDH" (which of course stands for "Tall, Dark, and Handsome," or possibly also "Tall, Dark, and Hung," if certain signs meant what they seemed to) was the name that Di and I had given to one of the bartenders who had begun working about six weeks previously. Di had been the first to notice him when he replaced one of the regular Friday night guys. Under a mutual- assistance pact of long standing between us, she pointed him out to me. By the end of that night we'd not only stayed several hours longer than usual, but also agreed that TDH was the hottest of the employees in the place and that was up against some pretty stiff competition.
We knew he had to be at least 21 to work as a bartender, but he didn't appear very much older than that. I'd guess he stood about 6'5" and probably weighed 190 when fully clothed and dripping wet. He wore his dark brown hair cropped short on the top and sides, but it hung at least a couple of inches below his collar in back; sometimes he'd wear it caught up in a short ponytail.
His face was on the narrow side, with a prominent nose bordered on either side by peat- brown eyes. His lips weren't as pouty as Mick Jagger's, but neither were they as practically invisible as Kenneth Branagh's. The nose, coupled with big hands, long fingers, and size 13 black Nikes, were the main reasons Di and I figured he packed a bigger than average pistol. Obviously neither one of us had been granted a private viewing, and his clothes tended to be tight enough to show off his physique to advantage, though not so much so that a keen glance could give one an estimate of his size and/or rule out a few possible religious preferences.
TDH was outgoing, with a pleasant tenor voice and an infectious grin that often matured into a laugh every bit as contagious. He never "hovered" in that annoying way that some wait staff have, but he either had eyes in the back of his head or uncanny instincts. Whenever a customer wanted something, TDH was right there. But tonight there were some new vibes in the air not bad ones, just different ones. I first twigged after the second round of drinks had been served, and Di commented on it when he'd brought us our dinner.
"What's different about him tonight?" she inquired as he went back into the kitchen, safely out of earshot.
"I can't quite put a finger on it," I told her honestly. "But he's caught me checking him out three times tonight and I'm pretty sure I've noticed him doing the same thing in reverse at least twice that often. It's almost like he's trying to decide what he's going to do, or if he's going to do anything at all. What's that for?" I asked, as Di laid a $10 bill next to my plate.
"I have a sneaking suspicion I'm going to lose our bet about which side of the street he hangs out on, and I want to pay up while I still have the cash. I've just realised what's different, at least for me. You know how he's usually just a little bit suggestive with the customers?"
I nodded.
"He hasn't done it once with me all night. Polite and attentive, sure: but no flirting. I think he wants you, Troy."
I left her money on the bar between us, and we argued over whether or not I had any reason to take it all through the rest of dinner when the question became academic. Di's bill had a generic "Thanks!" scrawled across its back. Mine, on the other hand, bore the following legend:
I go on break at 9:30. Meet me at the door to the banquet
rooms, upstairs by the dart boards. I'll make it worth your
while. Alex.
"Well, at least we know his name," I said, trying very hard not to tremble (and, if all the truth be told, to gloat) as I took Di's money and tucked it into my wallet.
"And that he apparently likes men," Di interrupted with a surprising lack of apparent rancour at having lost the bet. "Though if you want to find out for sure, you'd better hustle upstairs: it's already 25 after."
Glancing at my watch, I saw that she was right and Alex was nowhere to be seen. "I promise not to spend it until I've earned it," I told her as I hugged her goodbye. "See you at the rat races on Monday."
"I expect a full report, me bucko: with all the juicy details!" she said as she headed for the door. "Or else I'll want my money back."
"Don't count too heavily on either one," I said to her departing back as I myself began climbing the stairs to the upper level called the "mezzanine" by the regulars, since it was essentially a large balcony overlooking the main bar area. When I got to the door appointed for the meeting, there was no sign of Alex. The wait didn't do much for the state of my nerves but it certainly improved my figure, at least from the standpoint of having to make several discreet adjustments and rearrangements of my hard cock in my boxers.
After about five minutes of rising ...anticipation, the door opened and out stepped a somewhat breathless Alex, smiling from ear to ear and reaching for my hand. "Troy!" he said quietly, drawing me inside, "Good to see you again. C'mon back and I'll show you what you came up to see."
No sooner had I started down a long, dimly lit hallway than he'd closed and locked the door behind me. That done, he grabbed an arm to keep me from wandering off, threw both his arms around me, pressed his lanky frame against mine, and began a prospecting operation somewhere in the vicinity of my tonsils.
Coming up for air I said, "How'd you know my name? Have we met?"
He silenced me with a brief peck. Tucking a small envelope into my pocket, he said, "Read this before you leave tonight. There's a room at the end of the hall where we'll be able to enjoy ourselves."
Nodding, I followed him down the hall wishing all the while for more light, the better to appreciate his charms.
Alex opened the door and said, "C'mon in. Let me get the lights."
He snapped on the lights, and I was just about blown down the hall by some 40 of my friends and colleagues leaping out of concealment and shouting "Surprise!" Di, the wench, was kneeling down in front of the crowd, snapping away doubtless intending to use the photos for later blackmail. And here I'd thought I'd made it safely past my 30th birthday without anyone being the wiser...
"Bastards!" I snapped playfully at the crowd. "I'll get you for this!"
"Yeah, right," Di said, to nods and cries of assent from around the room. "You didn't have a clue, did you?"
"I refuse to answer that question on the grounds that it might come back to haunt me," I teased.
After an hour or so of working the crowd, I remembered the note Alex had slipped me. Finding myself in a quiet corner of the room, I opened the envelope to find a key and the following note:
Troy-
Sorry about the setup but not about what happened in the
hallway. That was my
idea, and not part of the game. I am gay, and I do find you
attractive. Since you seem to feel the same way about me (I've seen
you watching me, every time you were here when I was on duty), I
think I'd like to get to know you a little better. If you're
interested, meet me at my place tonight around 2: 1709 Greenleaf
Place. I live alone, so don't worry about waking anyone if you want
to get there a little early. If not, please just return the key
before you leave.
A.
Pocketing the key and the note, I looked at my watch: nearly 11, and the crowd in the room was rapidly dwindling away. I made my farewells to the last of my guests, then went to hunt for Alex.
I found him serving a round to a rowdy crowd of college kids. I waited until he'd taken care of all his customers, then motioned him to join me at the back corner of the bar, where we'd be safely out of earshot of anyone else. I smiled to myself at the look of apprehension that passed quickly over his handsome face as he walked over and again at the obvious relief that followed it after my first question.
"Do you have any candles at your place?"
"Tons of 'em. Are we gonna need some?" he asked, grinning from ear to ear.
"We might," I said, grinning back at him.
"Cool! Think you can find my place OK, or will you need directions?"
"Naah. I know where it is. I don't suppose you could get off before two, though?"
"Sure. I could jerk off, let you suck my cock in the men's room..."
"I meant from work, you sex-fiend!"
"Something wrong with being horny?" he said. "But seriously, I got someone to cover for me, and I'll be outta here by midnight. Cool?"
"Way cool. I'm gonna run by my place and pick up a few things, but I'll be at your house by 12 sharp."
"I can't wait," Alex said, leaning in close enough to nibble an earlobe.
"Me, either," I said, wishing I could do likewise.
When I arrived at his house, I had an overpowering urge to snoop around for clues, but I repressed it and concentrated on getting ready for his arrival. As he'd told me, there were candles all over the place: I didn't even have to hunt for them. I lit several around the living room, and also the gas log in the fireplace. I was quite pleased with the atmosphere produced by the warm, flickering light.
Then I lit a stick of cedar incense and loaded Alex's CD changer with some soothing music. Finally, just before midnight, I dropped my overnight bag in the bedroom, stripped off all my clothes, and put on a silk lounging robe. I stopped in the bathroom to take a piss and buckle on a black leather figure-8 strap around my cock and balls. I was just getting settled in the living room when I heard a car pulling into the drive, and then the garage door opening and closing.
Some moments later a door opened and shut and I heard something being dropped on what I guessed was the kitchen table or a counter. Then came the sound of shoes scuttling across the floor as if they'd been kicked off.
"Troy?" Alex called quietly.
"In here," I answered, trying to keep the pounding tightness in my chest from betraying itself in my voice.
Seconds later, Alex himself walked through the archway from the kitchen, naked as the day he was born excepting his ankle socks and a gold chain around his neck. He was even more beautiful with his clothes off than he had been while in them, and gratifyingly erect. He began walking toward the couch where I was sitting, his cock swinging proudly before him with every step a minimum of nine inches would be my guess, though not terribly thick, and uncut.
I rose and shed my robe as he drew nearer, continuing to feast my eyes on his physique. He wasn't fat by any means, but he had a certain roundness to his lines that made me suspect he didn't get his build or his musculature from a gym. He had a short, sparse bush at the base of his manhood and downy tufts under each arm, but no other visible hair on his body.
He had stopped walking when I stood up, giving my body no less thorough an inspection, after my robe hit the floor, than I was giving his. He was perhaps four inches taller than I, and a couple longer in the crotch department but apart from that, virtually the only thing to differentiate between us was the fairly light rug on my chest and down the middle of my abs. Oh, and the fact that I have absolutely no hair around my cock or my 'nads, as I've been shaving regularly down there for years.
Alex seemed to like what he saw (as I most definitely did for my part), because a smile spread itself lazily across his face. It was answered on mine, and when he saw it, Alex quickly closed the last few steps between us. He opened his arms wide and enfolded me in a warm embrace before leaning down to plant a very wet kiss full on my lips. As our bodies slumped toward one another, I felt something cool and round pressing into my chest. When we finally broke for air, I glanced downward to see a small gold bar with rounded ends transfixing his left nipple.
"What is it?" Alex inquired.
"Nothing, dude," I replied, flicking a finger lightly over the pierced nub. "Just wanted to see what was so cold against my skin."
"I'll take it out if it bothers you," he offered.
"No," I told him, "it doesn't bother me I think it's pretty fuckin' hot on you, in fact. I just wasn't expecting to feel anything down there but skin."
"You can feel any of my skin you want, Troy," Alex answered. "But first I'd like to grab either a quick shower or a medium soak in the hot tub. The one bad thing about working in a bar is the way you smell when you come home."
"I could go for either of those options myself," I said, "as long as it's a buddy shower you're talking about. But hey, if there's a hot tub tucked away, let's go for it."
"You won't need that," Alex said as I began pulling my robe around my shoulders. "The tub's out on the patio, and it has a privacy fence around it. Plus, there are eight-foot hedges all around the back yard, even if three-fourths of the people around here weren't in bed and sound asleep by 10 p.m. I walk around bare-assed outside all the time hell, I've even jerked off or had sex under the stars a few times and I've never seen a soul or heard a thing from the neighbours."
"What are you, some kind of exhibitionist?"
I'd only been teasing when I said it, but to my surprise, Alex answered in the affirmative. "Yeah," he said, "I love to be naked. I almost never wear clothes when I'm at home, unless I know there are going to be people coming over who aren't comfortable around skin. I also get off on taping myself when I'm jerking off or having sex as long as my partners don't mind, that is. Does that bother you?"
"Shit, no!" I said, my dick getting even harder than before. "I've always wanted to have sex on camera. Can we watch a few tapes, sometime?"
"All you want," he replied. "We can even make one if you like, but we'd better wait until the sun's up: the light on the video camera is pretty harsh. Why don't you grab a couple of towels from the bathroom over there," he added, pointing off to his left where a door stood open, "and I'll go ahead and get the tub ready."
A few minutes later, I was sitting next to Alex in a bubbling tub of hot water that came right up to our necks. We quickly became entangled, kissing and caressing each other when we felt like it, and talking in between times. Both of us were still hard, and each of us would occasionally rub a hand or a foot over the other's cock as we talked and cuddled.
"How on earth do you manage to afford all this on a bartender's salary?" I asked him, waving a hand to include the house and the tub in which we lounged.
"Dude, there's no way I could live on my salary from the bar, even if I was living in some firetrap with about six other people I'd have to be taking home tricks on the side to get eating money! I work at the bar because I enjoy it and most of the people I meet there, and because it gives me some time away from anything to do with school and books. As for this place," he continued, "I wish I could say it was mine, but in fact it belongs to some friends of my parents. They didn't think they'd get their asking price when they retired at the end of last year, and they knew I still had two years of law school to get through, so we worked out a deal: until I'm done with school, I pay the utilities and a ridiculously low rent, keep the place in good repair, and then they'll put it up for sale. If I decide to stay in this area after I graduate, I get first refusal."
"It may be a little presumptuous of me," I told him, "but I hope you do decide to stick around when you've finished your degree. I thought you were a hot item the very first time I saw you, and I knew you were good people by your second week at the pub. Now that I've had a chance to get to know you out of your work environment..."
"And my clothes," Alex interrupted with a teasing laugh.
"...And your clothes," I agreed, continuing, "I'd like to have some more opportunities of the same kind in the future."
"I think we might be able to arrange that," he said with a sly grin. "Much as I liked helping Di arrange your birthday party, I really wanted to do more than just kiss in that hallway."
"That makes two of us, Alex," I said. "I wanted to suck that dick of yours so bad I could practically taste it."
Smiling broadly he said, "That's actually one of the chef's planned specials this evening."
"Oh? And what might the others be?" I teased.
"Anything you want, most likely," he replied in a more serious tone. "I don't do scat, drugs, or anything that's either non-consensual or might involve permanent damage. Otherwise, I've probably either done it or thought about doing it."
Without warning, he picked me up out of the water and carried me over to a padded bench on the other side of the privacy enclosure. Laying me gently down onto the cushions, Alex continued, "But for right now what I want to do is suck your dick."
"Funny you should mention that, Alex," I said. "I was just about to ask you if you'd please let me get off before I explode." Once again, it seemed, his instincts were impeccable.
"Warn me when you're about to come," he said quietly, then bent his head to my aching prick. Alex started by licking around the rim of my glans and slobbering all down my pole, spreading his saliva up and down my shaft with his left hand as he stroked me. After lapping up the copious amounts of pre-cum I was leaking by this point, he wrapped his lips securely around my throbbing meat and went to town.
I was quickly in ecstasy. His tongue was working some kind of frantic magic on the underside of my cockhead at each pass, while the tight seal of his lips against the sensitive skin of my prick was urging me rapidly toward the point of no return. He varied his tempo from frantic urgency to leisurely abandon, which was probably the only reason I wasn't pouring my load down his hot throat within the first two minutes. As he sucked my cock, he tugged and rolled my nuts around with his hands, occasionally backing off my joystick to lube my scrotum with some spit at which time his hands replaced his lips around my dick.
"Yeah, baby," I whispered, writhing joyfully under his ministrations, "suck my fuckin' dick! Take it all!" When I felt a spit-slicked finger enter my hole and probe for my prostate, I knew I was done for. "I'm almost there, Alex," I hissed urgently.
He pulled off my cock and said, "Beat your meat for me, Troy. I want you to come on me."
"You got it," I said as he took my place on the bench and I stood at his side, pounding my slippery prick for all it was worth. "It won't be long."
"Yeah, Troy, stroke that cock! Lemme see that fucker spew your hot cream!"
"Play with my nuts, dude," I begged him as I increased the pressure and tempo of my strokes.
Alex raised a hand to fondle my tight scrotum while I stroked myself for his pleasure. At the touch of his hand and the thought that I was actually standing buck naked and masturbating in front of the hunk I'd dreamed about for weeks, I hit the magic button. As I felt the first surge of sperm rising through the column of my iron-hard seven-incher I bucked my hips and hissed, "Here I come!"
My seed flew from the head of my cock as I arched my back in the throes of orgasm, and painted a white line from Alex's left eyebrow down his face and neck to his collarbone. Several more spurts followed, landing on his chest and stomach, as the tension seemed to drain out of me and my strength as well with the last dribbles of semen from my still-hard cock. My spunk glistened in the moonlight where it lay in puddles beneath me on Alex's skin.
I sank slowly to my knees beside his supine form, and lapped up my cream from his smooth, hairless torso. "Thanks, dude," I whispered in his ear before pressing my cum-covered lips to his. "I needed that! Let me catch my breath for a bit, and then it's your turn to have some fun."
He turned his head toward me and said, "Glad to help out, Troy. C'mere and lie down with me for a while, and then we'll see what you want to do with my joystick."
Chapter Two -- Love Looks Not With the Eyes But With the Mind
I didn't need a second invitation; I scrambled up onto the wide bench beside him, and quickly moved more-or-less on top of his body as the two of us passed several minutes making out like crazy. I could still feel some remnants of my seed on his skin, plastering our bodies together even more thoroughly than the humidity in the air and our own sweat could manage. We were still lying naked atop one another under the roofed enclosure of the hot tub when it began to rain.
Caressing my back with his free hand and jerking his head in the direction of the patio, Alex murmured into my ear, "You up for a bit of water sports?"
"Hell, yes!" I told him. "I love the way it feels on my bare skin."
Yet again Alex gathered me into his strong arms and carried me out onto the open portion of the redwood deck.
"I can walk, you know," I teased him.
"I know, but I like the way you feel in my arms."
"Good! 'Cuz I sure as hell like the way they feel around me!"
The rain was lovely -- cool enough to refresh after the heat and humidity of the day, but not so cold that it made me shiver and break out in gooseflesh. There was no wind to whip the droplets around, so they just fell softly on our bare skin, washing away the sweat and the remnants of my jizz.
Still holding me close, Alex squatted down to place me gently on a bench that ran around the outer half of the deck. Running a hand up my flank and caressing my cheek, he murmured, "Lie still and close your eyes, Troy."
I did as he asked. He gave me a sloppy kiss, then I felt his warmth receding from me. I heard sounds that I interpreted as Alex getting to his feet, or perhaps going into the house to fetch something he wanted. I was tempted to open my eyes to check, but decided to trust him and relax until he asked me to do something else. The night was warm and quiet, except for the sound of the rain falling around me and faint noises from the slumbering city and houses around us.
I lay still, drinking in the peace and contentment of being nude in the rain and under the gaze of my favourite bartender -- himself naked as well. Then there was something besides the early summer rain landing on my naked flesh -- a warmer flow that began at my feet and then moved slowly upward. Startled, I opened my eyes a fraction to see Alex standing at my side, holding back his foreskin with two fingers of his left hand and pissing on my thighs. His eyes were closed and his head thrown back slightly, or he'd have seen me start.
Once I knew the score, I lay back once more and closed my eyes, deciding to "go with the flow," as it were. I found the mix of cool rain and warm piss on my skin quite exciting, and was amazed to feel my cock -- only recently drained of a pretty major load -- growing hard again as Alex's golden stream fell warmly upon it, running down between my legs and the crack of my arse.
The flow of urine stayed centred on my cock and balls for several seconds, then stopped briefly. When it resumed in somewhat jerky fashion a few inches higher on my abs, I guessed that Alex's bladder was running dry. Another pause, followed by a healthy shot that landed squarely in the valley between my pecs, and then only the rain was landing on my body. I could faintly detect a slightly acidic odour, almost lost amid the pervasive scent of wet earth.
As the rain washed the last vestiges of his piss from my body, I felt something warm and velvety brushing my chin. Then the weight and bulk of Alex's cock were resting just beside my nose as he'd apparently come to straddle my face. I ran my tongue appreciatively over his hairless sack, rolling his nuts around inside it as I bathed his scrotum in my spit. There was a slight flavour of male musk in my nostrils, but mostly I smelt only the chlorine from the water in the hot tub on his skin.
Alex half-sighed and half-moaned at the sensations I was giving him with my lips and tongue. Reaching up, I felt for his arms and pulled him downward, without opening my eyes or saying a word. As if he could read my mind, I felt his cock dragging itself downward over my face and then my chest as he gingerly lowered himself onto the bench. I felt his hair brush my face wetly as his body came to rest atop my own, his legs resting to either side of mine on the bench itself, and his hands curled protectively beneath my neck. Our hard, wet dicks were trapped pleasantly between us.
"What...." he murmured, before my questing lips met his and my probing tongue cut off any further attempts at speech. We swapped spit passionately for quite some time, our hands flitting here and there in gentle caresses, and our hips twitching as we each, it seemed, strove to maintain the maximum amount of cock-to-cock contact. I desperately wanted a taste of that fantastic blind banana Alex sported between his thighs, so I lightly pressed upward against his biceps.
"Hmmm?" he grunted, raising himself slightly off my body.
I touched a finger to my lips and then pushed gently against his chest as I shifted my left leg off the bench where we lay together. A moment later, his warmth and weight were no longer pressing against my body. Then I noticed that the rain had stopped, and a cool breeze had arisen with the end of the storm. I'd been so wrapped up in Alex and what we were doing together that I hadn't noticed until his body was no longer there to shield me from the sensations.
I had just begun to shiver -- buck naked and still wet -- when I felt Alex's hands grip me beneath my arms and tug upwards. Taking hold of his arms I stood up and hugged his warm, soft flesh to mine. He disentangled himself gently from my embrace, one arm shifting behind my back just beneath my shoulder blades as the other caught me at the knees. Throwing my arms around his neck, I let him carry me through the quiet night.
I felt myself being lowered onto a padded surface. Alex's hand briefly pressed down over my breastbone, as if to say, "Wait here: won't be a minute." I heard the distinctive sound of plastic on plastic and a couple of muted thumps, and surmised that he'd stopped to put the cover back on the hot tub, now that we were apparently finished using it for the night.
Just as I was beginning to feel chilled again, Alex's arms insinuated themselves beneath me at neck and knee, and I was once more being carried. When I heard the patio door slide home behind us, I knew he'd brought me back into the house, and presumably into his bedroom. He deposited me in a sitting position on the edge of something soft and warm -- his bed, I guessed -- then withdrew from my reach and waited silently for me to give him some indication of where I wanted to go next.
I slipped to my knees and rested my back against the bed, feeling my cock growing hard again as I did so. I let my hands fall to my sides and licked my lips suggestively, hoping he'd get the message. He put a hand on the top of my head and moved forward to where I could sense his legs to either side and just in front of my face.
He slowly pushed my head forward and down until I could feel the warmth of his flaccid prick and the tickle of his soft, sparse pubes on my face. Breathing deeply of his scent, I reached for his crotch with both hands. My fingers, running lightly over and around his genital region, took the place of the eyes I was resolutely keeping closed.
They eventually came to rest on a soft nipple of skin hanging beyond the end of his glans. As my fingers touched and teased his foreskin, he began to develop an erection. Leaning in carefully, I took the excess skin between the thumb and forefinger of my right hand and pulled it forward, lapping at it with my tongue. I caught the slightest taste there of his pre-cum that had gathered earlier that evening as we'd pleasured each other and then dried in place. Growing more daring, I wrapped my lips over my teeth and used them to nibble and tug at the sheath of protective skin while poking the tip of my tongue beneath it to lap at his sensitive cockhead.
The feeling of his foreskin moulding itself over the head of his cock and my probing tongue was incredible, as was the heady whiff of his scent that I got as I did so. From the trembling I felt in his hardening cock, and his increased respiration, I guessed that Alex was liking the feeling as much as I was.
I let his skin slip from between my teeth, as it was becoming more difficult to keep it from retracting as he grew harder and harder under my ministrations. Instead, I went back to using a couple of fingers to hold it in place, and drove my tongue even deeper beneath it, toward the super-sensitive rim of Alex's glans. A slightly salty, acidic taste waited for me there, most probably a bit of the urine that hadn't made it onto my body, out on the patio.
Alex's trembling grew even more pronounced, and his cock reached full erection, as I swirled my tongue around its head and milked his silky-smooth shaft with my fingers. When his love weapon had achieved its maximum dimensions, I let his foreskin pull back naturally from the head and began to run my tongue around and around the rim of his dick and down the shaft, wetting it and provoking a fresh dribble of pre-cum to well up from his slit. Slurping it down greedily, I worked my way steadily lower on his meat, leaving my tongue free to work down the shaft ahead of my sucking lips, until I had every bit of his nine hard inches inside me and the scent of his pubes was warm in my nostrils.
I held him deep in my throat for a few seconds, making as if to swallow his hard hot dog whole, and producing a couple of quiet grunts as the sensations registered in Alex's brain. When they had done so, his hips began to twitch in that age-old instinctive dance, and I let my hands fall away from his cock.
Alex's hands came to rest lightly -- but firmly -- on either side of my head as he fucked my face with his uncut meat. I let my lips and tongue work their magic pretty much on automatic pilot as I grooved on the sounds, smells, and sensations of having the man about whom I'd fantasised for weeks, buck naked, erect, and ploughing his hard cock into my throat several times a second. I ran my hands up his calves, finding them covered with a light fur of soft hair in front, and more of a heavy peach fuzz elsewhere. His thighs, as my hands moved still higher, were graced with an even shorter, finer down that I could only detect by the most careful brushings with my fingers against the grain of its growth.
I moved backward when I reached his hips, and let my hands come to rest on the rounded, firm globes of his arse. Gripping them firmly, I held on until Alex stopped grinding his hips, and then pulled his groin tightly toward me until I had stuffed in every last morsel of his cock that I could fit. I held him there for several seconds, milking his shaft with my throat muscles and tossing my head quickly up and down and from side to side, which I'm sure must have sent some truly intense shivers up and down his spine. I'd have tickled his prostate for him as well (as he had for me earlier), but I didn't want to run the risk of poking around back there without being able to see what I was doing. That particular stimulus would just have to wait for another time.
My own cock was rigid to the point of actual pain, but I knew that if I so much as touched it, I'd spew all over the rug in no time. Neither one of us had spoken for what I guessed was at least half an hour, since Alex had brought me inside from the deck. He'd made a few guttural grunts and quiet moans as I worked him over, and I could hear the hoarse rasp of his short breaths coming quite quickly now. Those few sounds, plus the pungent, spicy sweat and musk that I could smell in his crotch as I sucked him off, and the feelings I could gather from my contact with his body and his cock, suggested to me that he was getting very close indeed to the point of no return -- and enjoying the experience immensely.
That went at least double for me. I'd have been happy enough just to service my prime stud bartender after dreaming about him nearly every day for several weeks. But holding him naked in my arms beneath a warm rain, his pissing on me -- something I'd dreamed about and experimented with a couple of times, but never before experienced with another man -- him carrying me in his warm, strong arms, and my now going to town on his dick in sightless silence, all of that was taking this encounter to a level vastly beyond anything I'd ever known before.
For instance, I've been a cock-lover for many, many years. I love a good cock, bare and proud in all its glory, the way some people love ice cream or cigars. I have piles of skin mags, and megabyte upon megabyte of nude shots gleaned carefully from the 'Net and sorted by category. Now, Alex's cock was certainly among the prettier ones I'd ever set eyes on, whether in two dimensions or in three. It also had the advantage of being attached to Alex, a handsome, charming acquaintance I'd been dying to get to know better even if it never got to the stage of dropping trou.
I'd gone down on many of the cocks I'd admired, several of them more than once. I enjoy sucking cocks at least as much as I enjoy looking at them, but the act itself hadn't meant that much to me before: just another piece of meat slipping down my throat for me to work some magic on. This time, however, I was fascinated by the way Alex's foreskin felt, velvety-soft and warm, when I shucked it forward over my tongue, and by how hard the large vein that ran up the side of his shaft throbbed beneath my fingers as I ran them along the wet length of his dick. Everything about the experience was richer and more vivid than ever before: partially, I'm sure, because I had deliberately cut off my sense of sight, but also because the prick I was sucking belonged to a man I was more than halfway in love with.
Much though I relished having Alex's manhood buried to the hilt down my throat, I wanted even more to bring him to release. I wanted to taste and feel his seed exploding in me, on me, all over me. Increasing the suction of my lips as much as I could without actually driving my teeth into the surface of his cock as I moved over his shaft, I began to let him slip slowly from my oral embrace. Not being able to get at his prostate, I settled for rubbing a finger firmly but gently over the spot about midway between his nuts and his arsehole where the root of his cock bulged.
When my lips reached the very tip of his dick, and my tongue began a wild dance around the rim of his glans and into the folds of his retracted foreskin, Alex whimpered deep in his throat. Seconds later, I could feel the spasms at the base of his dick as he began to ejaculate. I held the head of his penis securely but loosely in my mouth and waited for the first dollops of cream. They weren't long in coming -- but he was.
His first shot was smooth nectar on my tongue, warm and sweet with just the slightest salty-bitter edge to it as it slid down my throat. I took the second and held it in my mouth before letting his prick slip from my lips to spew the rest of his cream on my face and over my body. Three more spurts thoroughly wet down my face, at which point my own dick began to shoot for the second time that evening, without my having laid a hand (or anything else) on it. A couple more gobbets of his cum hit me on my pecs before Alex slumped downward and came to rest leaning against me as he dribbled out the last of his load over my shaven pubic bone, where it mingled with my own juices.
Opening my eyes for the first time in nearly an hour, I brought my arms up to cradle Alex's heaving, sweaty, exhausted body against my own. At first I just let him catch his breath, running a hand through his damp hair, caressing a cheekbone or running my fingers lightly up and down his spine, supporting his weight and my own against the bed behind us. When his breathing became more regular, and the throb of his heartbeat against my chest had ceased to pound quite so hard, I gently pulled his head from its resting place on my shoulder, took his face between the palms of my hands, and drew his lips to mine.
We again swapped spit, and this time the remnants of his cum, between us for a long moment. Then his arms lifted slowly, tremblingly from his sides and wrapped themselves tightly around my back. Fiercely he hugged me to himself, then pulled his head back just far enough to allow our eyes to focus on the other's face as his eyes -- as deep and dark as an ancient Irish bog, yet burning with an interior fire that fairly lit up the room, at least where I was concerned -- bored into mine in silence for the longest time. I don't think I breathed at all while he fixed me with his intense, yet supremely tender, gaze. There was no need for words; his eyes said everything I needed to hear from him.
At length, he brought his right hand up to run it through my buzz cut before resting his palm against the back of my head and pulling my face down to his shoulder to cradle it there against the strong pillar of his neck. I lapped at the pulse of his carotid artery, just at the angle of his jaw and slightly forward of his ear, which I also nibbled gently from time to time while he held me in his embrace.
Finally, his strength back at least approximately to full, he wrapped my legs around his waist and supported my butt with his hands as he lifted me the couple of feet from the floor to the surface of his bed. Still without speaking, he deposited me atop his soft comforter and motioned to me to stay there as he walked into the adjoining bathroom. I heard the sound of water running for a minute or two, then Alex came back into the bedroom, carrying a damp washcloth and a large towel.
He'd cleaned the sticky remains of our jizz off his body, and proceeded to do likewise for me, running the warm, wet cloth lightly over my whole body to get the cum off, and then folding it over for a second pass that included my armpits and the crack of my arse, presumably to take care of any remaining sweat, piss, or chlorine on my skin. Then the process was repeated with the towel until I was at least reasonably clean and dry, and perfectly content.
Alex ducked into the bathroom once more and came back without the towel and cloth he'd used to clean me up, at which point he turned down one side of the bed and motioned for me to crawl into it before settling himself on the other side.
"You'll stay the night?" he murmured as he pulled me to him for a kiss.
"Of course I will -- as long as you want," I told him. "But before we settle in for the night, I'd like to pee again, and someone should probably go and blow out those candles in the living room."
Chapter Three -- There's Got to Be a Morning After
I awoke the following morning to dappled sunlight coming through the sheer curtains over the patio doors, a heady aroma of fresh-brewed coffee, and the invigorating sight of Alex lying nude beside me. His hair was wet, suggesting a recent shower. When I opened my eyes, he was propped up on one elbow, looking down at me and smiling broadly.
"Good morning, Troy," he said. "Sleep well?"
"Wonderfully, thanks," I replied. "How long have you been up?"
"Just long enough to grab a shower and make some coffee. There's a tray with all the fixings on the table there," he said, jerking his head toward the other side of the bed. Now, would you care for breakfast, a shower, or me?"
"What a decision to have to make first thing in the morning!" I said.
"Nearly noon, actually," Alex replied, still smiling.
"Details, details," I answered him. "Besides which, it's always 'morning' until I've been awake and functioning for at least two hours. Didn't you know that?"
"Must've slipped my mind after last night," he said before kissing me. Then he continued, "Why don't you get yourself cleaned up and I'll get myself down to the kitchen and see about rustling up some sustenance for the both of us, and when you're done in here we'll go have brunch on the terrace."
"Sounds like a plan to me," I said. "Clothing-optional?"
"But of course," he answered with a mock posh accent. "Though you might want to grab some sunblock and a pair of shades. It's pretty bright out there today."
"So noted. Now g'wan, get cookin', boy, while I get clean and pretty again."
"The view from here looks pretty good just as it is," he replied, getting to his feet. "Don't be long, though, or you may have to scrounge for crumbs in the pantry."
With a little help around the edges from me after I'd gotten out of the shower, the two of us were seated at a low table on the patio three-quarters of an hour later. A faded floral print umbrella and two nearly identical pairs of Boll aviator sunglasses constituted our sole defence against the brilliant early-summer sun. We gobbled up French toast, bacon, assorted fruit, and swilled enormous amounts of Alex's excellent coffee as we got better acquainted than had ever been possible with the 24-inch-wide expanse of black faux-slate bar between us.
"How -- or when -- did you discover you were an exhibitionist, Alex?" I asked him during a pause in the conversation.
"Depends on what you mean by 'discover,'" he replied. "My folks raised me not to be self- conscious about my body. I don't recall ever having seen either of them in the nude, but they never even turned a hair if us kids ran around the house without a stitch on. In that sense, I can't ever remember a time when I didn't enjoy going naked whenever an opportunity presented itself.
"But if by 'discover' you meant when I figured out that I was actually turned on by being naked in front of other people, that didn't happen until I was in high school. My best buddy in those days was a boy called Ben. He lived down the block from us, and the two of us had become damn near inseparable in the first grade. It helped that he was an only child and both his parents worked, while my mom, being an editor, could usually manage to work from home in the afternoons when school was in session. Consequently, Ben would usually walk home from school with me and then stay at our house until his folks got off work and picked him up.
"They owned a farm on the edge of town: mostly corn and soybeans, but also an old orchard where our families would go for picnics or to pick whatever fruit was in season. Otherwise, Ben's folks would only go out there to pick up something from storage or to get the RV they parked in the old barn. They leased the land to a neighbour about a mile down the road, whose land ran up to the edge of their property line."
"Didn't they live there?"
"No. The house had been destroyed many years previously -- fire or tornado, I forget which. The only buildings left were the barn where they kept the RV and their tenant stored some farming equipment, and an old mobile home that had once been used as a bunkhouse for workers during harvest time. Ben's parents kept the power and water connected there, as they used it for storage and would sometimes spend a night there when they wanted to get away by themselves. Otherwise, the place was deserted.
"Anyway, Ben and I loved that place: trees to climb, a small stream for fishing and swimming in summer and skating in winter, the old barn to explore. But until the summer after our freshman year in high school, we never got out there together without our families. I'm not sure whether they figured we were old enough to be trusted on our own that year, or whether they just wanted a convenient and inexpensive way of disposing of two rowdy teen-agers, but that was the year his parents told Ben where they hid the key to the mobile home and said we were welcome to spend as much time there as we liked, as long as we were home in time for dinner or called if we wanted to stay later, and didn't invite everyone in town over and trash the place.
"After that announcement, neither of our families hardly laid an eye on us in the daytime. It was about a half-hour's ride away on our bikes, so we'd leave early in the morning before it got hot, and stay as long as we could before heading back in the evenings. One scorching day in August, a few weeks before school was due to start again, Ben and I were out messing around in the orchard, and he announced it was 'too fuckin' hot' to be stuck wearing even the brief shorts we had on. Both of us got naked -- nothing too unusual for us by then -- but there was something about the whole experience that felt different for me. That was the first time I can remember experiencing the thrill of being naked in front of someone else."
"Did you guys ever get it on together?"
"A few times, starting that same summer. We'd jerk off together once in a while, and occasionally did each other for variety. Even traded BJs a few times, but all that stopped just before our senior year."
"What happened?"
"Officially, he started going steady with a girl he knew from the diving team. Unofficially, though, I think he was getting spooked."
"Did he find out you're gay, or what?"
"No, he'd known about that as long as I had, even before we started jackin' each other off. That didn't faze him at all, as far as I could tell. What scared him off, I think, was when I asked him to do to me what I did to you last night."
"Right out of the blue? How'd he react?"
"'Out of the blue' only in the sense that we hadn't ever talked about anything like water sports before. Bear in mind that by the time this happened, we'd been best friends for a decade: to the point that our families had pretty much come to think of us as an interchangeable matched set. Wherever one of us was, the other was sure to be about sooner or later, if he wasn't there already. And we'd never kept secrets from each other: we knew each other too well, both inside and out, for that to have been possible."
"So what happened?"
"It got really quiet in the tent. All I could hear was the hiss of the Coleman lantern and the patter of rain on the tarp above us. That, and the pounding of my own heartbeat in my ears. Ben sat there, sunk in thought or in shock -- I still don't know which -- for what seemed like an hour but was probably no more than about five minutes. Finally, I couldn't take it anymore and excused myself to go take a walk."
"Bare-assed? In the rain?"
"Sure. We'd done it together at the farm lots of times. I still do it, at least out here in the yard or someplace where I know it's safe. Anyway, I was gone about half an hour: just enough time for a short cry and to recover from its effects. When I got back to the tent, Ben was rolled up in his sleeping bag, facing the wall. I couldn't tell if he was really asleep or just faking it so he wouldn't have to talk to me. I puttered around for a few minutes, hoping he'd decide to say something, but when it became clear that wasn't going to happen, I crawled into my own sleeping bag and turned out the light.
"I can't really say I slept much that night, but I did at least close my eyes. That has to have been the longest night of my entire life to date. It seemed like morning would never come: and if it did, I wasn't at all certain I wanted to face what it might bring. It sure seemed like the hours were passing a lot more slowly than they should have!
"When the sun finally did come up, and Ben started stirring around the tent, I tried to apologise for upsetting him like that, but he cut me off cold. Totally refused to discuss anything at all about the previous night. 'Nothing happened!' was all he'd say on the subject."
"How horrid!" I exclaimed. I was breaking into a cold sweat just listening to Alex tell the tale. I can't imagine what it must've been like for him to actually live through the experience, much less tell the story all over again and to someone whom he really didn't know all that well.
"That wasn't nearly as bad as the weeks that followed," Alex said, taking up the thread of his narrative once more. "Ben acknowledged my existence -- barely -- and would make social chit- chat when circumstances threw us unavoidably together. But otherwise, it was as if I'd dropped off the face of the earth, at least in his world. Fortunately there were only a couple of weeks before school started again. That didn't do anything to improve my relationship with Ben -- rather the opposite, in fact -- but at least it kept me busy enough not to brood about it too much. By midterms, he was dating one of the easier girls on the diving squad, totally avoiding me, and taking every possible opportunity to brag about what he and Meg were allegedly doing to one another when they were alone."
His tale at an end, Alex fell silent. I let it ride for a few moments, then caught hold of his hand and squeezed it gently before saying, "I'm glad you told me that story, Alex, but if I'd known how it ended I wouldn't have asked you to. That had to have been one of the shittiest days of your youth, and here I come and make you live through it all over again. I'm sorry for that -- I've an idea of what it cost you to tell the tale anew. But maybe this will help make you feel a little better: last night, when you asked me about water sports, I thought you were only talking about having sex in the rain. You're the first partner I've ever had with the guts to bring up piss, and also the first guy ever to do that to me -- and I fuckin' loved every minute of it. I've tried it a few times myself before jerking off, but it never turned me on the way you did last night. Thanks for having the guts to ask, Alex, and also for a totally new, totally hot experience."
Alex's jaw had dropped open when I confessed my misunderstanding, and it continued to hang slack for several seconds after I finished talking. Then it worked again as he tried to speak, but couldn't get any sound to come out. Finally, he settled for squeezing my hand tightly in reply.
He ducked his head and sat in silence for quite some time. Whether he was quietly rejoicing at his good fortune in not repeating a past mistake, or trying to cram the memory of that mistake back into the bottle I'd inadvertently gotten him to pry open, wasn't clear to me. Then I caught the sparkle of a tear as it rolled languidly down his cheek, hung briefly off the angle of his jaw, then flashed prismatically downward to rest on the bronzed skin of his belly.
I was torn. Part of me wanted to leave things well enough alone, not knowing how much "give" there was in a relationship that, for all intents and purposes, wasn't even yet 24 hours old. The rest of me, though still knotted with anxiety and not exactly sure precisely what to do, was certain that something should be done. That part eventually won out, though there was a small and highly vocal minority opinion that called for tracking down this Ben person and roasting him to a turn over a slow fire, along with sundry other refinements that are simply too hideous to include in a family-oriented story like this.
Alex, slumped bonelessly in his chair, was quite unaware of the struggle being waged inside me -- as he was of everything else around him, for that matter. His eyes, though at least half-open, looked sightlessly past me and out into the dark green depths of the hedge at the back of the yard. The tears that still welled from his eyes can't have done much to help his visual clarity, either.
Squatting down beside him, I laid a hand gently on his trembling shoulder. I said nothing: I didn't want to startle him, or to sully the moment of his catharsis with "It's all right" or any of the other cheap platitudes our culture has allowed to corrupt the vocabulary of true compassion. It wasn't "all right," and there wasn't a damn thing I could do to make it so.
Slowly, Alex turned his head toward me and got his eyes to focus on my face. When he recognised me he seemed surprised to find me there beside him at first. But that quickly gave way to an open, soulful glance that reminded me of nothing so much as a beagle puppy who'd just been spanked. Before I could lose myself in the depths of those dark brown eyes gazing up at me, they brimmed over with tears once more and a long, shuddering sob of a sigh escaped from Alex's slack lips. Turning his body toward me in his chair, he reached up to clasp the hand I was resting on his shoulder and then all but pillowed his head on it, still weeping bitterly.
Looking about me on the deck, I spotted a padded chaise over by the enclosure surrounding the hot tub. It wasn't under the canopy but was at least out of the direct sunlight and partially in the shade. Whatever other problems Alex might have, I didn't want to add a second-degree genital sunburn to their number. Scooping him up from his chair just as he'd done for me several times the night before, I carried him over to the chaise and sat him down on the edge.
Scooting in behind him, I ratcheted up the back a few notches until it was comfortably positioned for me, and stretched out my legs along the rest of the chaise. Then I wrapped my arms loosely but firmly around Alex's torso beneath his arms and pulled him against my chest. I cradled him there, running my fingers through his soft hair and humming tunelessly for a few moments. Then I kissed him tenderly and murmured in his ear, "I'm here, Alex, and I'm not leaving unless you ask me to. Let it all out, love: I won't tell anyone."
Eventually he cried himself to sleep. I held him for a while longer -- not that I minded -- until I was fairly sure he wouldn't wake up if I moved. Slowly, I extricated myself from beneath him and then gathered him once more in my arms and carried him to his bed. When I had him settled under the bedclothes, I left the door ajar and went back out to the patio to tidy up after our interrupted breakfast. As I worked there, and later in the kitchen, I kept an ear cocked toward the bedroom where Alex slept, alert to the slightest noise. I poked my head through the door frequently to make sure he was all right and still asleep.
Once the chores were done, I considered taking a leisurely soak in the hot tub. I needed to do some thinking, and the warm caress of the water would have been a welcome relaxant while I did so. But I didn't want Alex waking up unexpectedly and not finding me there. I settled into an overstuffed armchair that sat in a sunny patch next to the bed and watched the fleecy clouds roll across the deep blue of the sky as the sheer curtains fluttered in the slight breeze that came through the open door. Half an hour later, still mulling things over, I noticed that my head was beginning to droop to my chest and then bob jerkily upright now and then as my consciousness ebbed and flowed.
I rose from the chair and tottered sleepily over toward the unoccupied half of Alex's bed. Drawing back the sheet and the summer-weight bedspread, I slid gratefully into the cool embrace of the water mattress and a pillow that still bore Alex's scent. I eased myself closer to the warmth of his nude body and snuggled up to his back. I'd only intended to give him a quick peck on the cheek and then withdraw to my side of the bed for a short nap. But even in his sleep, it seemed, he recognised that I was there: his breathing grew deeper and more regular, and the tension drained from his body as he turned toward me and clasped me to him as a frightened child would cling to a favourite teddy bear. In no time, I fell into a blessedly dreamless slumber.
Chapter Four -- I Am My Beloved's: But Is He Mine?
It was about half-past two when I woke up, thanks to a call of nature induced by all the excellent coffee I'd consumed at breakfast. When I had relieved myself of that which enriched me not, I went back into the bedroom and sat in the padded chair beside the bed. Alex was still sleeping peacefully, curled up on his side and facing me. A few tendrils of his dark hair had fallen down to veil part of his face, which made him look even younger than he usually did, and considerably more vulnerable.
"I love this man." The thought blossomed in the depths of my consciousness with all the force and speed of an atomic explosion. I suppose, to carry the analogy a little farther, there was at least the potential there for some hazardous fallout as well.
At least when the veil first parted and displayed that bit of myself to me, I was rather surprised to find it there. The more I thought about it, though, the less reason I could find for being surprised. There had been hints of the way I really felt about Alex pretty much from the time I'd first seen him, six weeks or so previously. The infatuation I had felt, the desire, had all been merely the visible tip of the iceberg that ran much deeper inside my psyche than had been initially apparent.
New though the insight was, it felt right. This was a part of me, even a welcome part, just as much as my name was, or the fact that I'm right-handed, or that I'm sexually attracted to other men. I sincerely hoped that I might someday come to occupy a similar position in Alex's affections, if I weren't there already. But only time would tell on that.
Looking at him lying there, I was wracked by two conflicting drives of roughly similar intensity. Half of me wanted to kiss him everywhere, and the other half argued that he needed his sleep after what he'd been through earlier this afternoon. I was nobly resigning myself to postponing the kissing for awhile when it occurred to me that I really ought to find out if he needed to go to work before I let him sleep the day away.
I laid a hand on his shoulder and bent to give him a peck on the cheek before murmuring in his ear, "Alex, wake up a little, OK? It's Troy."
"Wha...?" he said groggily, blinking sleep from his eyes and trying without much success to get them to focus in the bright afternoon sun streaming in the patio doors. When he caught sight of me, his eyes brightened and that patented smile of his spread lazily across his face, melting my heart completely once again. "H'lo, Troy," he said, raising himself slightly in the bed. "What time is it?"
"About a quarter to three," I replied. "I'm sorry I had to wake you, but I didn't want you to oversleep if you had to work today."
"That's OK. I should be up anyway, even though I have today and tomorrow off. 'Tisn't polite for a host to fall asleep on his guest, you know."
"Just this once I'll forgive you," I said, matching his light, bantering tone. "I'll even understand if you want to nap a little longer: I'd say you've earned it."
"Time enough for that later," he replied, sitting fully upright.
We looked at each other for several moments, but neither of us said anything. I was wondering whether to share my insights into how I felt about him, and he looked as if he were struggling to come up with something to say as well. Finally, he broke the silence.
"Thanks, Troy," he said. "This afternoon can't have been easy for you, and I want you to know how much I appreciate your being here."
"Shit, Alex," I said. "You were the one laying bare your soul to someone you've known less than a couple of months: I had the easy part of the bargain! Besides, what else could I do? I was the one who got you started down the memory lane to hell."
"Don't do that!" he snapped at me. "You asked a reasonable question that you had no way of knowing the answer to, or what kind of an effect it would have on me, until after it was too late for you to do anything about it. I won't have you beating yourself up for something you had no control over."
"Just so long as you cut yourself the same amount of slack as you're asking me to leave myself," I told him, laying a hand over his where it rested on the comforter, "I'm OK with that."
"Would you be OK with staying another night?" he inquired with a semi-pleading tone. "I'd like to do what I can about not knowing you as well as I'd like."
"If you're asking, Alex," I replied, "I'll be happy to stay here again tonight. But I'll need a few things from home first, and you may have cause to regret the invitation in the morning -- I have to be up at the crack of dawn."
"If it gets me a chance to have you up my crack," he teased, shooting a come-hither glance in my direction, "I'll do my damnedest not to mind the other, even though I really hate mornings."
"They aren't terribly high on my list of favourite things, either," I said. "But since I work for an afternoon newspaper, I don't have much choice in the matter. Still, I suppose it could be worse -- I could work in radio, and have to be at work at 3 a.m. instead of 6. But enough of my bitching. Why don't you try to catch a few more Z's while I run over to my place and grab what I'll be needing for tomorrow?"
"I have a better idea. You go get what you need, and I'll go get in the kitchen so we can have an early dinner, some time for conversation or other stuff afterward, and still get to sleep at a reasonable hour."
"Not a chance, lawyer-boy. I've got dinner covered, and you're taking the rest of the day off. You need the R&R after what you've been through today."
"Yessir!" Alex teased, snapping off a mock salute at me as I was pulling on a pair of walking shorts and a tank top.
"Tease me all you want," I said, "as long as you get some rest while I'm gone. I won't be long, I promise."
"I'll hold you to that," he replied, curling up on his side again and apparently composing himself for a nap.
Before I left, I ran a quick check of the supplies Alex had on hand so I'd know what I needed to bring back with me. When I got to my apartment, I riffled through my mail (nothing important) and played back the few messages on my answering machine (much the same, except for a bantering one from Di wanting to know how things had gone with Alex) while I gathered my things. That done, I ran by the grocery store and bought what Alex didn't have on hand for our dinner.
It was just past four when I got back to his place. He was either asleep or doing a perfect imitation of it when I poked my head into the bedroom, so I dropped what I was carrying in an out-of-the-way place and retreated once more to the front of the house. I spent some time familiarising myself with the layout of things, and then got to work in the kitchen.
About an hour later, things were just coming together. I was on the point of going to wake Alex when he appeared in the archway, rubbing the sleep out of his eyes and clad in a loose-fitting lounging singlet.
"Whatever that is, Troy," he said after kissing me hello, "it smells simply marvelous."
"Spaghetti alla carbonara, Caesar salad, garlic herb bread, and there's raspberry trifle in the refrigerator for dessert."
"Where'd you learn to cook like that?" he asked, somewhat incredulously.
"Are you kidding? My mom's family are Italian: cooking is an old and noble calling where they come from. I was finding my way around a kitchen long before I was old enough to see over the top of the stove. Mom tells me the first word I ever said was `hot,' after I touched the oven door one day when she was baking.
"But the centrepiece of this particular meal I owe to my Zia Caterina, God be good to her. She was from the old country, and was more of a distant cousin than an aunt, though we all called her that. Anyway, not long before she died, about mid-way through my high school days, she decided that I was the only one in this particular generation of the family who understood pasta well enough to be trusted with her secret recipe for carbonara. Pissed my mom off something fierce, let me tell you!"
"So where the hell do you put it all, Troy?" he asked, looking me over thoroughly from head to toe in the process.
"Shoot, boy, you don't think I put on this kind of a nosebag all the time, do you? Most days when I get home from the office the last thing on earth I want to do is spend an hour hanging over a hot stove. I love doing it for special occasions or when I have company -- but if it's just for me, I'm quite happy with a sandwich, or a frozen pizza, or even a bowl of cereal and some toast. But let's leave that for now. If you'll get yourself cleaned up, dinner's almost ready."
"I'm set when you are," he said. "D'you need help with the table or anything?"
"No, thanks. You might pour the wine, though, if you like."
It pleased me to see Alex digging into his food with gusto. Apparently he'd come to terms with the demons of his past while he slept, or at least gotten a good start in that direction, at least judging by the amount he was tucking away. I was even more pleased by the compliments he paid me as each new dish was sampled.
Our conversation during the meal was mainly light banter, plus a few funny stories from our respective jobs. It seemed we were both determined not to allow a repeat of the afternoon's events to spoil the pleasure of a quiet evening in each other's company.
When dessert was over and the mess cleaned up, Alex and I repaired to the living room.
"What's on the agenda for tonight, Troy?" he asked as he settled down onto the couch.
"Depends on you, my friend," I said. "Personally, I'd prefer to spend the rest of the evening lounging about and not doing much of anything: maybe soak in the hot tub for a while and look at the stars, that sort of thing. I could probably be talked into a bit of massage if you're interested as well. But I'm open to discussion if you have other plans in mind."
"Actually, I did," he said. "But I like your ideas better. Can you go get the tub ready? I have a little surprise I'd like to share with you tonight."
"Sure. Just pull off the cover, check the temperature, and start the jets, right?"
"You've got it," he said, going into the kitchen. "Won't be a minute."
I had just settled into the water when Alex came out the kitchen door and began walking up the patio toward me, a tray in his hands. As he drew nearer, I could see that there was a bottle and two wineglasses on it.
"What do you have there?" I asked. "The bottle's too small for wine, and too big for a split of champagne. Cider?"
"Nice try, Troy, but your first guess was right. It's an Eiswein, which is why the bottle is an odd size. You aren't allergic to sulfites, are you?"
"Not that I'm aware, no. Why's it called ice wine, though?"
"Because the grapes have to freeze on the vine under just the right conditions and at just the right stage of ripeness before they can make it. You can never bank on being able to make one in any given year, and you never get very much, so they put it in smaller bottles and charge more for it. It's very sweet, but I really like it after a meal or to relax with in the tub. You game?"
"I am if you are," I told him as he opened the bottle and poured two full glasses -- which took care of the whole bottle. He handed me a glass, and set his down on the edge of the tub before stepping out of his singlet and sinking into the water. When he'd gotten himself situated, he picked up his glass and raised it to me, saying, "Sant!"
I clinked my glass gently against his and answered "Salute!" then took a sip of the wine. He was right -- a little went a long way, and it was powerfully sweet. But I liked it.
"What do you think?"
"My dentist would probably have a fit over the sugar content, but I like it -- a lot. It almost tastes like apples, wouldn't you say?"
"Mmm-hmm," Alex murmured his agreement as he sipped his wine and sank back against his seat. He stretched his long legs out across the tub to entwine them with mine, and I returned his caresses.
We lounged in silence and watched the stars as we sipped the wine slowly, for quite some time. Now and then one or the other of us would run a foot up or down the other's leg, but otherwise we were caught up in our own ruminations -- a companionable sort of silence, not at all irksome or frightening.
"Penny for your thoughts," Alex broke in upon my idle reverie.
"Hmm? Oh, nothing much. Just wondering if you shaved your body."
He sputtered and nearly choked on the last of his wine at that. When the coughing fit had left him, he smiled across at me and said, "Sorry, Troy. It's just that I didn't start growing body hair until I was 14, and you couldn't hardly see it until I was nearer 17. I was a junior in college before I needed to shave more than once or twice a week to stay presentable. So what I've got, I intend to keep -- as long as possible!"
"Late-bloomer?"
"Native American," he replied. "Dad's a bit of a mongrel by some standards, but it's all native -- mostly Lakota."
"So the dream-catcher above your bed isn't just there for decoration?"
Looking quite serious, Alex said, "No, it's not. My great-uncle One Feather made it for me as part of my naming ceremony. He was quite old then, and died not long afterward. People joked that I was such a difficult child that he just couldn't handle another one like me, but he was very highly respected as a medicine man."
"A winkte?"
"Bonus points for you!" he exclaimed. "`Shaman' isn't actually the correct term, but it's at least a word most people know. You've obviously done some homework."
"Well, I did minor in anthropology as an undergrad," I rejoined. "But is there a gay man with an interest in spirituality who hasn't at least riffled through Walter Williams' classic The Spirit and the Flesh?"
"You're preaching to the choir, here, Troy," he said with a smile that rivaled the stars for brightness. "I devoured that book even before I was a teen-ager: my folks figured it would be a good antidote to some of the crap I'd likely get exposed to in school."
"They know about you, then?"
"Oh, yes. Uncle One Feather told them when I was still a boy. Then he told me. I suspect that if my folks had been just a little bit more traditionally minded, I might have wound up following in his footsteps."
"Do you regret that at all?"
"A little bit, yes. Then again, I have no way of knowing whether or not I'd have had what it takes. And besides," he added mischievously, stroking my leg with his left foot, "living away from the reservation does have its benefits from time to time."
"Was that a proposition, then?"
"Could be if you like," he replied in a jocular tone.
"Well, then," I said, "I propose we get out of here. I'm turning into a prune!"
"It'll cost you," Alex said.
"Oh? What's the toll?"
"Today, one back rub."
"Done. I'll throw in a free front rub, too, if you like."
"We'll have to see how you do on the back side, first," he said, rising from the tub and shutting off the jets.
As he moved gracefully through the evening twilight, wrestling the tub cover into place and gathering up our empty glasses, I found myself marvelling at his beauty. I was just about to tell him I loved him when the phone shrilled inside the house.
"Damn!" he said, setting down the tray he was carrying and heading into the bedroom to answer the call.
I echoed his sentiments to myself, then picked up the tray and carried it to the kitchen. While I was rinsing out the glasses and putting them in the dishwasher, I decided that it was probably just as well that I'd been interrupted before I could tell Alex I loved him. One major shock to the system is all anyone should have to endure in any given day, even if the second shock is likely to be a pleasant one.
I'd just gone into the living room to unroll my massage futon and set the oil to warming when Alex came out of the bedroom. He didn't look happy.
"Something wrong, Alex?" I asked.
"No, I'm just pissed I didn't think to turn the ringer off so we wouldn't be interrupted tonight. To make it worse, it was a damn wrong number."
"No worries, mate. I have the perfect antidote for all that right here," I said, patting the futon. "Come on over and let me work a little magic on you. Oh, and before I get started, you aren't allergic to flowers, are you?"
"Only pollen," he answered. "Why?"
"The oil I'm going to use is compounded with several others, all from flowers. Just wanted to make sure I wasn't going to give you a horrible rash or anything."
"I'm not going to come out of this smelling like a cheap tart or anything like that, am I?" he inquired a bit anxiously.
Keeping my tone light, I answered, "Never having made the acquaintance of a tart, I can't say about that. But I can guarantee you won't smell at all cheap," I added, unstopping the oil bottle and offering it to him.
He sniffed at the flask cautiously before lying down on the mat and pillowing his head on his crossed arms.
"Smells great, Troy," he said, his voice muffled against the cotton padding beneath him. "What's in it?"
"An olive-oil base, blended with ylang-ylang, lavender, chamomile, and a touch of rose. Oh, and don't feel you have to make conversation while I work. Talk if you like, but I won't mind if you just want to relax and drift."
"Ylang-ylang? What on earth is that?"
"A kind of tropical flower. I think it comes from Malaysia or the Philippines. Like it?" I inquired as I spread some oil between my palms and began to knead away at his broad, muscular shoulders.
"Very relaxing," he murmured. "Make it yourself?"
I couldn't help but smile at his comment. I'd picked this particular blend of oil precisely for its relaxing and calming properties, given the kind of day he'd had. Fortunately, he couldn't see me smirking away as I stroked my way up his spine and around his lats.
"Uh-huh," I murmured, not wanting to break the mood or my concentration to say anything more. I was glad that I'd gone lighter on the essential oils when compounding this blend than my recipe had called for: with these particular scents, a very little went quite a long way, especially when they were being spread all over an expanse of warm flesh as big as Alex's strong back.
His skin glistened beneath its thin film of oil, but positively glowed on its own as I worked with it, kneading, pinching, rolling and stretching all the major muscle groups from his butt to the nape of his neck. Moving from my position beside him I moved in to straddle his legs so I could really lean into my upward strokes along his spine. As we were both naked, my cock came to rest in the cleft of his ass cheeks and grew a little excited at the prospect, but I paid it no mind: I had quite enough to think about, and all of it pleasant, with my hands all over Alex's beautiful, warm body.
To be continued....
Mike musing@geocities.com polytropon@hotmail.com http://www.geocities.com/Athens/6985/ http://www.geocities.com/WestHollywood/3528/ ------------------------------------------------------------------------- The above post is the sole responsibility of the poster ASSGM Moderator - Mykkhal - moderated.stories@bigfoot.com Info & Archive: http://www.assgm.com -------------------------------------------------------------------------