A New Path

I hoped that didn't sound as suggestive and strained as I felt it was when I said it.

"I think I'd like that," he answered. "So . . ."

I watched in horror—not the least horror because of the effect it had on me—when he rose from the bed and slipped off his briefs. "So, are you going to fuck me now?"

"What?" I said, my voice strangled. "I don't . . . I hope you don't think—"

"That you picked me up and brought me to a motel and have said I can come live in your house . . . that you are nice to me at the Rainbow Connection and play ball with me there . . . and that you shower with me and show off how low you're hanging. That you get hard when you look at me? That you are hard now? With all that, do I think that you want to fuck me? Yeah, I do. And you can fuck me if you want."

"Neal. I didn't . . . I don't . . ."

"It's OK. I want you to fuck me. You got a great body for your age and you got the biggest dong I've seen at the rec center. All of the guys there want you to fuck them. We got a lottery going on who gets you inside them first. Looks like I win—unless you been ballin' some of the other guys and they haven't been boasting about it."

"That's . . . not . . . why . . . I brought you here, Neal. Maybe I should just leave."

We both tuned ourselves into the whistling of the wind outside and the raindrops slamming into the window like missiles.

"You're not going to go out into that tonight," Neal said. "It's OK. I want you to fuck me. I'm hard for you. And you're hard for me too."

Of course I was.

"Is there a sleeping bag in what you brought in, Neal?"

"Yeah, of course."

"Well, you can roll that out on the floor over there, and that's where you'll sleep tonight. I didn't bring you here to fuck you. I'm not offering you a temporary place to sleep in exchange for some construction work to fuck you. This isn't the way I'd do that."

"But you want to fuck me, don't you? I want you to fuck me. What's the problem? You volunteer at the Rainbow Connection to hook up, don't you? That's what the volunteers do. That's what Father Thomas does. Jarid, that big black dude? He fucks Father Thomas. I've heard even Father Thomas talk about the size of your cock and how he'd like to—"

"I . . . don't . . . want to hear this, Neal. I'm going to take a shower now. Then you can. I'll be in bed when you get out of the shower, and you and Petey can sack out over there. Tomorrow, when they've gotten the tree cleared out the parking lot, I'll show you the apartment. If you want to stay there until you make other arrangements, that's fine. No strings attached. I'm making no demands of . . . or moves on . . . you. I want to be very clear about that. We can forget any of this was said."

"But you're a top, aren't you?" he asked. "Maybe you'll do me sometime? It doesn't have to be any tit for tat. I'd like for you to top me."

I was having trouble breathing. I didn't want to answer. But for some reason, I did. He looked a little downcast, like I was rejecting him. Like he wasn't good enough for me. And that wasn't it at all. "Maybe sometime, Neal. Yes, you take my breath away. Yes, I want . . . but I'm going into the bathroom now."

I was in the shower, soaped up, when the power went out. There was a small square of a window, high up on the wall, at the back of the building, so the flashing of light in the fury of the storm kept the room from being totally dark, but the interior lights were out and the air conditioning, such as it was, had kicked off. The water was still running in the shower, though, so I started to rinse off.

But then I wasn't alone. Neal was in the shower cubicle with me, on his knees, taking my half-hard, but quickly filling out, cock in his mouth. Moaning, I leaned back into the tiled wall, widened my stance to give him plenty of room to kneel close in between my legs, and held the unruly blond curls of his head between my hands as he expertly sucked my cock.

He took his mouth off my cock long enough to murmur, "I knew you wanted it."

Yes, I wanted it. Grasping his head between my hands, I pulled his mouth back onto my cock.

When I had pulled him up, turned his back to the wall, and settled his channel on my cock to the sounds of his grunts and groans and his "You're so big; you're splitting me. Yes! Fuck ME!" he hooked his knees on my hips and I pushed his back up and down the soaping tile wall as I fucked him hard and deep.

On the bed, I covered him, doggie style, the palm of one of my hands on his belly, pulling him up to his knees, mounting him, and fucking him hard, while I milked his cock with the other hand. He stayed right with me, thrusting back as I thrust forward, egging me on to "give it to me good." I gave it to him good—the first total, all-out fucking I'd done since Diego in Denver nearly eight months earlier.

I woke in the morning, on my back on the bed, under a sheet, no sounds of a storm coming from outside the room. The sheet was rustling and rising and falling before me. Neal was under the sheet, between my thighs, giving me a blow job. Petey was sitting on his haunches beside the bed, cocking his head back and forward, looking quizzically at the rise and fall of the sheet. Feeling suddenly free and amused by the sight of Petey and wondering what he was thinking, I relaxed and luxuriated in the masterful job Neal's mouth was doing on my cock and on how he was squeezing, rolling, and distending my balls with one of his hands.

It was only after I creamed his tonsils and he started to move up on my body . . . after Petey began to whine when he saw that his master was in the room, coming out from under the sheet . . . and after Neal voiced an "Oh, shit. I know he's got to get out to take a dump" . . . and after I was alone in room, Neal's parting, "When I get back, I want you to fuck the shit out of me again" resonating in my brain, that I was coming back to earth. I knew this wasn't the path I intended to take. I had to return to reality.

When Neal and Petey came back, I'd already packed out of the room and was sitting in the car.

"The IHop OK for breakfast?" I asked, trying to keep my voice cheery. "There's one nearby, and we can get something for Petey too. Then I'll show you the apartment. Deal's still on offer, but last night didn't happen. OK?"

"This morning didn't happen either? I thought you liked the blow job."

"I loved the blow job. Nope, this morning didn't happen either."

"If you want to pretend it didn't," Neal said. Something in his voice, though, told me that he didn't believe that for a moment.

I wasn't sure I believed it, either. But I'd be damned if I would give in so easily. It wasn't the path I needed to be on.

* * * *

I held off for two weeks. Neal wasn't persistent, but it was like he knew. He was fine with the apartment the way it was, had better ideas than I did on how to upgrade it, and he was a good carpenter. He must have really had a construction job, because he left in the morning on a regular schedule and returned in the evening at about the same time. At my insistence, he left Petey behind and I walked him regularly. The apartment had an outside entrance but it also had an internal staircase running down from the cross hall between my kitchen and dining room, with a door at the head of the stairs with a lock on my side. So, I'd just go downstairs, leash up Petey, and take him out the apartment's outside entrance. When we got back, I'd leave him downstairs, go back up the stairs, and lock the door behind me.

Petey became attached to me—and I to him. I admit I let him up into my part of the house more often than not until it was close to time for Neal to return. Neal and I were OK, too, though, with Neal calling me downstairs from time to time in the evening and on Saturdays and Sundays to check what he was doing on the construction of the apartment and to give me lists for supplies. He was good about not calling me down too late or running power tools too early on Saturday and Sunday mornings. While he dressed skimpily and gave me "those" looks while I was down there, he didn't press the issue. He did, though, say more than once, "Anytime you want it. All you have to do is signal."

And that, ultimately, is what happened. I, of course, told myself it was unintentional. But I knew it wasn't.

One evening two weeks after Neal and Petey moved in, I walked Petey late, my bringing him back coinciding with Neal coming out of the shower, where he'd immediately gone upon returning from work. He'd had a towel around his middle when he'd come out of the shower, but when he saw me come in from the street with Petey on the leash, he dropped it and didn't pick it up. He asked me if I wanted a drink. I was just wearing tight jeans myself that evening. The day had been hot. I stripped off my T and stuck it into the back waistband of the jeans before coming inside. I'm sure I knew what I was doing.

I accepted the drink, but I pretended that all I wanted to talk about was what color the walls in the bedroom there should be painted. We were in the bedroom, looking at each other across his bed. He was naked and in erection. We each had a glass of scotch in our hands. I was hard too, which I'm sure he could tell.

"Well, I think it's time I went upstairs. An early night tonight. Not going out. You?"

"No, I'm not going out either," Neal answered in measured tones.

He probably expected me to fuck him there on his bed, then. But I didn't. Saying it was good to see him—which was a little ironic as I could see all of him, and a significant piece of him was erect—I bid him goodnight.

He stood at the bottom of the stairs, watching me walk up them. He didn't hear the door at the top of the stairs close or lock—because I left it wide open.

Twenty minutes later, we were on my bed on the second floor of the townhouse, Neal under me, his legs spread and bent, my knees pushed under his buttocks, raising his pelvis to my best penetration angle. His arms were splayed out from his body, his fists gripping the fabric of the bedspread, his back arched, his head arched back too, with his eyes open wide, his mouth forming a big O, and him crying out, "God, it's huge. You're killing me! Yes, fuck me. Fuck the shit out me!"

I was thrusting hard and deep, relieving two week's worth of tension and frustration, both of us having known all along it would come to this. It may have been the grinding noise of the brass headboard against the wall or the scream of bedsprings, as, crouched over him, I held him pinned to the bed with my fists pressed into the curves where his arms attached to his torso and pounded him deep and hard, that drew Petey up to my bedroom out of curiosity. When he arrived, though, he just crouched down beside the bed, crossed his front legs, and looked up to where I was moving on his master's body. Petey gave a calm, "it's about time" expression.

I had to acknowledge that Petey was right.

Over the next month, Neal slowly worked his way up into the house and into more control of our relationship. The door to the basement remained open. Neal started showing up for dinner upstairs, so I more than doubled the portions I cooked. He roamed the upstairs at will, advising me on how the nearly untouched third floor could best be restored. He was in my bed, under me, most nights—at least for the first couple of weeks—with Petey taking up station beside the bed.

As Neal became more comfortable with our relationship, the relationship loosened up. He started to bring other men home. These were usually older men—not as old as I was, but older than Neal was. It became obvious to me that he was renting himself out to them. Some of them were there for fun, though.

Then came the evening that he brought one upstairs—a young black man. Very good looking, slightly effeminate, but very well put together.

I was already in bed, in sleeping trousers, reading a book, when they appeared at my bedroom door.

"Trax here wants to see it," Neal says. "He doesn't believe it's bigger and thicker than his." Both obviously had been drinking. Both were just in their briefs.

"Neal," I said, but he already was at the side of the bed, pulling my dick out of the fly.

"Holy, shit, that is big, man. I want a piece of that," the black guy exclaimed. He was between my legs, taking my cock in his mouth, while Neal took my head between his hands and took me into a kiss.

I wound up giving them both what they wanted. I fucked them both, first Trax and then Neal and then, embarrassingly, watched Trax, who did, indeed, have a really big one, fuck Neal on the bed beside me. I couldn't help myself, and I had one hell of a time while it was going on.

After they left, though, and I'd had time to think about it, I crept down to the kitchen. The door to the basement was open. At the bottom of the stairs, Neal was on his back on the floor. Trax was holding Neal's legs out and up with grips on his ankles, and was fucking Neal again.

I closed and locked the door to the basement when Neal and the black stud had gone downstairs. It wouldn't be open again while Neal was in the apartment. I didn't throw him out but I told him that the police would surely be calling if he kept bring men home and taking their money. After that, it was only the younger men he brought back to the apartment—presumably the ones who didn't pay.

I didn't throw him out later either. I had grown too fond of Petey. I didn't want to lose the dog. And although I told myself that I couldn't give Neal and his friends the run of the house anymore or be just another of Neal's johns, I couldn't rule that out either. I just didn't know.

* * * *

Giving up with a sigh, I surrendered to him, letting my body fall back on the bed and letting my senses concentrate on the shaft he was fully sheathing as he rode my cock in long rises and falls, his claws digging into my pecs, his breath coming in fast pants, his eyes slitted in lust.

"I have to. I must," Thomas hissed as he rode me. I couldn't think of him as Father Thomas under these circumstances, just Thomas. As his vigor lagged a bit, having ridden me for over fifteen minutes, turning to a reverse cowboy and gripping my knees for a few minutes before turning back to face me, lowering his face periodically for a kiss, I accepted responsibility. I gripped his waist and slammed him up and down on the cock, loosing seed deep inside him as he arced his own ejaculation up to my chin and neck. Lowering his chest, matted with black, curly hair, down to mine, with its salt-and-pepper mix, he licked his cum off my throat and chin and we shared it in a kiss.

I hadn't any conscious idea when I invited Father Thomas to the house for a late dinner after a Rainbow Connection board meeting that we'd wind up on my bed. But I guess I should have seen it coming. I didn't know whether to believe the taunt Neal had given months ago in that fleabag motel about Father Thomas taking cock and wanting mine, but the idea bugged me and festered inside me.

It turned out that Neal was right. I don't know which of us pushed this over the edge, but neither of us had resisted it.

"We can't come together like this again," he whispered into my chest hair.

"No, we can't," I agreed.

"This has to be the only time."

"Yes."

"But since we're here now, anyway."

"Yes," I agreed.

I was still inside him. I already was hardening again. He obviously knew that. As if by unspoken agreement, he raised his torso off of mine and arched his body back as I scooted us both down to where my butt was on the end of the bed, my spread legs reaching down to the floor, where I could leverage thrusts off the balls of my feet. Thomas' head reached the carpet below the bed. He extended his arms out from his side in a cruciform, completely open and surrender stance. His ankles went to my shoulders, and I pulled him on and off my shaft by gripping his waist until, with a sigh, we both came again.

Later we sat on stools at the kitchen island, drinking coffee and looking sheepishly at each other. We both were in terrycloth robes—and nothing else. Both robes were gaping open, revealing that we both were hirsute and muscular—Thomas dark and sultry; me more of a Scandinavian build—both with cut cocks, both of which were half hard.

"Look at us," Thomas said with a slightly nervous voice, looking straight at me over the rim of his coffee cup, his gaze quizzical. "I think we performed marvelously. I know you did. Biggest cock I've ever had."

I sat there, looking straight at him, feeling a little sad, knowing I showed that, not responding to him.

"What? What's wrong?" he asked. "You knew we were building to this. It's just biological urge. We both can intellectually get past this."

"Oh, really?" I asked. "I am sitting here wondering who I confess this to. You have been my confessor."

"I do suggest that you hold it until you take a trip out of town," Thomas said. And then, when I didn't laugh, "This has to be the only time, Wade, but this did no harm to anyone, and you need this wake-up call. You need to accept that this is what you want, what you need—being with a man. You need to accept that there's no harm done, no one to answer to if you take a man. And you need to realize that you need a man permanently in your life. Not me, unfortunately—I'd like that cock of yours inside me every day—but of course I'm not free for an open relationship. But you are. And that's the point. You're capable of an open relationship and you need one. Not with Neal, of course, you need a greater commitment than he will provide. But, dammit, Wade, find yourself a man to live with you here and share the rest of your life with—openly. I wish I had that freedom. It's a freedom you can have. You need to fully get on to a new path, one that you know you want to be on."

"Are you finished with the homily?" I asked, giving him a reassuring smile. The message had sunk in. I knew exactly what to do.

"Yes, why?"

"You said we couldn't do this again after tonight. So, I was thinking of fucking you again right here on the floor."

I lay on top of him, between his spread and bent legs, as he clutched my shoulder blades in his hands, and cried out with each hard thrust. The third time was just as sweet as the first two—and accompanied by far less guilt.

* * * *

I went straight from Stapleton Airport to the hospital, having called his service and found out that he was there with a terminal patient.

I arrived after the patient had died and while Diego was sitting on a bench outside of the door into the hospital room. He looked a little dazed when I sat down beside him.

"Wade," he said, as if maybe I was someone else and he was just conjuring me up because he wanted me to be there. It had been a year. We had exchanged letters—letters that hadn't talked around our feelings but didn't, really, hide them from each other.

"Yes, it's me. Are you—?"

"She's gone," he murmured. "I've lost another patient. Almost a year caring for her."

"A year that both you and she knew would end here, wasn't it?" I asked. "It's OK, Diego, you were there. You provided what she needed. Did she go peacefully, with a smile on her face?"

"Yes," he said, sniffing back a tear. "She was clutching my hand."

"There you go then."

"It's hard," he said. "I'll have to start again . . . knowing . . ."

"You don't have to do this alone, though," I said. "I want you to come with me."

"Yes, of course. I want that. Do you have a hotel room. We can't go to my place . . . I have roommates."

"Yes, I have a room we can go to, and I'm glad you're willing to go there with me—I want to take you there—but that's not what I meant. I want you to come back to Richmond with me. I have a big house and it's within walking distance to a major hospital. We can do this together. Any hospital in the country would be glad to have a nurse who does what you do. We can be together. Will you come home with me?"