Big Sky Country

The same guy—the late-thirties rancher who had been the lone diner at a table—that first day Gabe had some into the Lone Star Diner in search of a job, was coming in three or four times a week by the time Gabe had been a waiter there for three weeks. He and Gabe were on speaking terms. His name was Frank Doyle, and he owned a cattle spread called Sunshine north of town that was more than a thousand acres but that ranked as small by the area standards. He said it was at least a forty-five-minute drive into Guthrie from his spread and he suggested more than once that Gabe might like to come out and see his ranch.

What was most evident was that he had a crush on Gabe and mooned over him but that he was too reticent to ask for what he wanted. Sam Waller made no bones about what Gabe would do for a customer if he had the money for it—although the man sex business wasn’t too brisk, Frank had seen more than one cowboy with his tongue hanging out and a bulge in his jeans go upstairs with Gabe and come back down with a silly grin on his face. And the few times Sterling Fisher came into town to lay Gabe, anyone in the diner could hear the thumping of the bed legs on the floor and headboard against the wall of Gabe’s room above the diner. But, although Frank surely had the money as easily if not more easily than the cowboys coming into town off the 6666 and Pitchfork ranches, into Gabe’s fourth week at the diner, he hadn’t made a move. Neither had Gabe made a move to leave for Lubbock. He had the money he needed now, but he was settled into life here and what he was doing—at least for now.

Men like Frank wanted more than the sex. Men like him often are looking for companionship and a long-term relationship. Gabe liked this about Frank but he decided that Frank wouldn’t make the move unless Gabe signaled he’d give it to him for free—that it was more than just a trick for Gabe. Gabe was attracted to Frank, who was all that aroused Gabe, but Sam had made clear there would be no giveaways or the progression on that would never stop. So, Gabe and Frank were friendly with each other in a Mexican standoff sort of way.

That was until the day that Collin Chisholm roared into town.

Gabe was standing by Frank at Frank’s table and the rancher had, for the first time, palmed Gabe’s ass in a hand while they were talking, which was a bold move for the shy rancher. Frank was quite good looking and he appeared to have a nice, well-worked body. Frank was a hands-on rancher, which was better than spending hours every day in a bodybuilder gym. Gabe found him easy to talk to and attractive. He had a couple of men working his ranch with him, but he put in a full day’s work outside himself, so he was lean and muscular and tanned. He dressed clean and neatly, in tight jeans, with a nice bulge in the crotch, and a plaid cotton shirt, cowboy boots and a ten-gallon hat.

He seemed to keep his body clean too, and he always smelled nice, not something to take for granted from cowboys in these parts. There were no complaints about him in that department and it was clear to Gabe that the man wanted him. So, Gabe was teasing the man along. They’d finally gotten to having established that, yes, Frank was interested, and, yes, he knew there was a price involved, and, no, that didn’t deter him. It was like Frank had gotten across that barrier at last.

“I like you just fine, Frank, and I think we’d be good together,” Gabe had said, following that with a “maybe you’d like . . .” It was midafternoon, after the diner had cleared of the lunchtime crowd—not that there ever was much of a crowd. Sam and his wife, the cook, were back in the kitchen and cleaning up. Carol was on a smoking break, but she could be called back to watch the front whenever Gabe had someone he needed to take upstairs.

All systems were go for Gabe and Frank to get together at last. Both men obviously wanted it.

But then they heard it, the roar of a motorcycle coming in from the west. It arrested their attention, as this wasn’t exactly motorcycle country, and Frank backed off from Gabe. Something strange was happening that demanded everyone’s attention. Everything was too far from everything else in the big sky country. Everyone around here moved in pickup trucks. You couldn’t have started too far away in terms of Texas distance and be riding a cycle.

But someone was. Someone was riding a motorcycle—someone who pulled up right outside the diner. Not long after the motor was cut, the door to the diner opened, and Mr. Magnificent strutted in.

He was an Adonis—a bit over six feet, movie-star handsome, not more than twenty-five, muscular, sultry and dangerous looking, decked out in black leather, and walking like he owned the place—not just the diner or the town, but the universe. Taking a look around the diner, with his eyes stopping on Gabe and giving him a million-dollar smile, the handsome stranger walked to the lunch counter and mounted a stool like he was seating himself on a horse or his Harley-Davidson, resting outside the diner at the hitching post—or mounting his lover. He was walking in one direction, but his gaze remained latched onto Gabe, leaving no doubt where his interest was. His legs were spread on the stool as a man would do who had to give his basket plenty of space to fill up. Gabe cut away from Frank and scooted behind the counter in time to be there when Mr. Magnificent settled on his stool.

“What’ll you have?” Gabe asked.

“What are you giving?” the young Adonis asked. He had a slow and easy smile, one of possession.

“Would you like to see a menu?” Gabe asked. He spread his arms and placed his hands on the surface of his side of the counter. The Adonis wouldn’t know it, and Gabe himself didn’t realize it, but he was already taking the cruciform position of total, sacrificial sexual submission that Pastor Parker had trained him to. But, somehow, from the look the young man gave Gabe, the Adonis did know it. The seduction was over. The Adonis could have laid Gabe out on the counter there, in front of Frank and the other diners, and fucked him, and Gabe would have submitted to him.

Gabe curled his fingers and set his hand down on the knuckles, touching the tip of his thumb of each hand to the index finger, making an “O” opening. He did it with each hand. It was a signal he’d been told to use to identify upstairs business. He was symbolically offering up the sheath for a man’s cock—either mouth or ass, customer’s choice. His heart and cock took a lurch when the gorgeous young man spread his arms on the customer side of the counter and inserted his middle fingers in the sheaths Gabe was providing with his hands. He knew the code, and he was a dominant top. The offer and dominant assertion were complete. The rest was just preliminary banter and a question of price. They both knew where this was going. What was on edge here was price. The Adonis had thrown down the gauntlet with his “What are you giving?” He was signaling that his cock was so hot, it didn’t have to pay for servicing.

“I was told this was the place in town to come to get a man’s itch scratched. If I were to look at a menu, would you be on it?”

“You were told—”

“That this was the place to get male tail, yes. Are you the male tail here?”

“If you wanted me to be, I could be—and if you had the money.”

“And what if I didn’t want to spend the money before getting a sample? Suppose I might be a repeat customer if I liked what I was served the first time—and maybe the second and third time? Maybe you should be paying me.”

“Well, that’s not the way it works here.”

“You serve beer here? Break out a couple and let’s talk a few minutes.”

They stood there, across from each other, with the counter between them, attached at the fingers of one hand, Collin Chisholm’s middle finger rubbing inside the sheath provided by Gabe’s hand—having established each other’s names—and lifting beers with the other hands. And then a second beer for each of them.

They were leaning in to each other, eventually with their foreheads pressed together and their eyes locked onto each other’s. Somewhere before the first beers had been finished off, Frank stood, took one last, forlorn look at Gabe, and left the diner.

Collin was whispering to Gabe and Gabe was mesmerized by him.

“You’re a real honey. I want to get my dick in you. You’d like that just fine, I guarantee it. But I want you to want it so much that I don’t have to pay for it. That cheapens it.”

“Well, we couldn’t go upstairs,” Gabe murmured. “Maybe around back. My boss can’t see us, though. Go on out and around the side of the building. I’ll meet you there.”

When Collin had left, Gabe went to the kitchen door and called for Carol, saying he had to run an errand and could she cover for a while.

The area for the trash cans at the side of the building was walled off. Collin fucked Gabe against the wall next to the trash bins. Gabe was naked. Collin had wanted to touch him everywhere and Gabe had moaned for him and gone hard as he did so. Then Collin had unzipped his black leather jacket and pulled it off his back, revealing a magnificent smooth chest, as Gabe knelt in front of him and made Collin’s cock hard with his mouth. Only Collin’s cock and balls jutted out of his unzipped and flared black leather pants, as he lifted Gabe up from his knees, growled for Gabe to hook his legs on his hips, entered him, and fucked him hard and deep.

“Wasn’t that all you ever could have wanted?” Collin asked after they’d both come.

“Yes,” Gabe answered. Then he added, “Yes, yes, yes.”

When they came back around the side of the diner and Collin was mounting his motorcycle, Gabe spied Frank Doyle standing across the street in front of a shop and watching them. Gabe’s eyes followed Collin riding off to the west of town. The touch on his arm made him turn. Frank was right there, lust and need in his eyes, a wad of bills in his hand. He fucked Gabe to the quick of him with a long, thick dick in a clutch missionary position in Gabe’s room above the diner, the two of them working together like long-time lovers and coming together. And then, after a rest, Frank fucked him again, with Gabe on his belly and Frank stretched out on top of him, every square inch of the two that could be in contact caressing each other, and just Frank’s pelvis languidly moving, rising and falling, as he fucked Gabe thick and deep. Gabe had fallen into an exhausted sleep when, twilight falling on the town, Frank rose, dressed, gave Gabe a look of raw love, and slipped out of the room.

Three days later, on Sunday afternoon, Gabe’s weekend half day off, Collin roared into Guthrie on his motorcycle again and pulled up in front of the diner. The noise of the motorcycle engine brought Gabe to the window of his room and then downstairs to the wooden walk in front of the diner.

Collin didn’t have to say anything. He just sat there, on his motorcycle, staring at Gabe. Gabe saddled up behind him on the motorcycle and the two of them rode out to parkland north of town where there were a few small groves of trees running by a riverbed with a trickle of water in it. Gabe had brought a cold six-pack of beer from the diner. After they’d each finished off their third, Collin coaxed Gabe, naked, onto his back, with his legs spread and raised, and Collin, also naked, after sweet-talking Gabe and languidly working Gabe’s body with his hands as he would a lover he was coaxing into gentle sex, lowered himself between Gabe’s legs. He enclosed Gabe in an entrapping embrace, entered him deep, and, once inside him, set up a vigorous pistoning of his passage. He fucked the shit out of him as Gabe writhed under him, crying out for mercy but receiving none, and, quickly, becoming so taken with the dominating sex not to want mercy.

The next Thursday night, after the diner had closed, Gabe stole silently down to the front door of the diner and let Collin in. Collin had left the motorcycle at the western end of the town so that it didn’t alert Sam and his wife, whose apartment was on the first floor at the back, off the kitchen, that he was there. They pulled the mattress off the bed and laid it on the floor so as not to alert Carol, in the next room, with the grinding of the bed against the wall. Collin put Gabe on his belly, coaxed the young man to raise up on his knees a bit to present his pelvis at a good angle, mounted him, and fucked him for nearly an hour. They rested for a half hour, drinking beer Gabe had brought up from the cooler in the diner, and Collin fucked him again for nearly an hour, once in the missionary position and then with Collin on his back and Gabe riding the cock at all four points of the compass. Three hours later, Collin was slipping back out of the front door of the diner. It still was pitch dark outside.

Thus far, Collin was still sampling. He’d paid for practically nothing. Not the beer and not for Gabe’s time. He had covered the cost of the gas for the motorcycle, though.

* * * *

Gabe had told Collin it wasn’t a good idea, but Collin said he couldn’t wait and he wanted to do it in bed, and Gabe hadn’t ever been able to tell Collin he couldn’t do whatever he wanted to do. Collin was the perpetual dominant and Gabe the total submissive. Gabe had told Collin they’d have to be very quiet as Carol’s light was still shining under her door. Collin was sure Carol wouldn’t report them to Sam anyway, and so they fucked on the bed. The issue with the bed was that Sam wanted it to be a position so that it bumped against the wall during the rhythm of sex. That’s what let Sam know what was going on in that room. The bumping could be heard all over the upstairs area of the building.

They’d both had more than one beer too many, and their judgment was impaired. They shushed each other and giggled as they both stripped, not noticing that just the sound of their boots hitting the floorboards reverberated through the building. Once stripped, they almost immediately went into a sixty-nine position, with Collin stretched out along Gabe’s body on top of him. Collin’s fingers went to Gabe’s ass as they sucked each other off and whispered and giggled to each other. It wasn’t long until Gabe was on his back, legs spread and bent, arms over his head gripping the brass rungs of the headboard, and his pelvis raised. Collin was kneeling between Gabe’s legs, his knees pushed up under Gabe’s buttocks. He was hovering over Gabe and looking intensely down into Gabe’s eyes. His fists were balled up and pressed into the hollow of Gabe’s shoulders on either side of his chest, and Collin was stroking Gabe’s channel in long, deep thrusts. The top curve of the headboard was doing a rat-a-tat-tat against the bedroom wall. Carol’s bed in the adjacent room was backed to the same wall.

Maybe if either of them had been the least bit sober, they would have realized that it wasn’t just the shared wall with Carol’s room that was being banged, but that it was a noise that could be heard in the middle of the night throughout the structure.

Whether or not it was Carol reporting Gabe had a man in his room, Sam was at the door, using his key to open it, when Collin was too far along in fucking Gabe to stop pumping. Sam stood there and watched them finish. He calmly told Collin what the price would be for a go at Gabe. He was still calm when Collin said there had been no agreement to pay and that he’d had Gabe several times before, hadn’t paid for it then, and wouldn’t pay for it now.

There was some hard eyeballing between the two as Collin pulled his clothes on, but Sam kept his cool and stood aside as Collin walked past him through the door. Sam didn’t let him get past, though, without saying, “I don’t want to see you around here again—not unless you bring the twenty dollars for this fuck and for every previous fuck and another twenty in advance for the next fuck—and that includes coming to eat at the diner. Let’s say $100 will clear the bill. I don’t want to see you in there until you’ve squared the bill.”

“I wasn’t planning on coming back anyway,” Collin growled as he passed by. “I got as much as I want here already. I didn’t agree to no bill. I don’t need to pay for it, and Gabe ain’t the only whore in this state.”

Gabe felt stung. He forgot all about where he was—that he was naked, in his room, having been discovered doing one of the things that Sam had told him Sam wouldn’t tolerate.

“This is being docked from whatever else you make around here,” Sam said to Gabe in a menacing voice. “Two-hundred dollars—twice the price as punishment.”

“More than twice as much” Gabe remembered then murmuring absently, “because five dollars of each twenty should be going to me.”

He only dredged this up later as what he thought he’d said—without thinking, certainly, as he was quite aware that Sam was wound up tight and barely controlling himself—because at that moment, Sam strode across the floor, raised Gabe, naked, up out of his bed by a one-handed grip on his throat, and proceeded to beat the shit out of him.

Gabe offered little resistance. After the first blow was landed, he was in no condition to fight back. Only the arrival of Sam’s wife and Carol and the mention of the danger of killing Gabe got Sam thinking straight.

* * * *

“Ah, there you are, back with us.”

Gabe slit his eyes open, batted them to become accustomed to the bright light, and then looked into the face of the rancher, Frank Doyle. The face was showing concern. Gabe’s own face was swollen and sore, as were his ribs. He had been numbed with something, so the pain was a dull somethingorother in the background, but it was giving notice that as soon as the drugs wore off a bit more, Gabe would be moaning in general body pain.

“Where . . . what?” Gabe murmured through swollen lips, the sound not his voice—something hoarse and thick.

“You’re in the doctor’s clinic. I brought you over here from the diner. Don’t worry, Sam Waller doesn’t know you’re here. I was in the diner when his wife told me you had been beaten and would I take you out of the building before something worse happened? Sam’s over at the sheriff’s, giving his story. He says some guy on a motorcycle stole into your room and beat you up last night. But it was Sam, wasn’t it?”

“Not the guy who rides the motorcycle,” Gabe said, with a groan. “But I won’t say—”

“Do you want to go back to the diner—to your room there—to rest? Or do you want to get out of town and away from Sam? If you want to go, you can come back to Sunshine with me. The doctor says he’ll give you some painkillers you can take with you that will help until you can take the pain on your own?”

“Back to Sunshine?”

“My ranch. If you don’t want to be at the diner when Sam gets back from the sheriff’s, you can come out to my ranch until you decide where you want to go, what you want to do. I won’t lay a hand on you there . . .  if you don’t want me too. You won’t be in shape to do much of anything for a while anyway. Mrs. Waller has packed up your duffel and I have it here. If there’s something else you want that was left at the diner, I could—”

“There’s nothing else there I want,” Gabe answered. Through swollen eyes, as he lay on the floor after Sam had beaten him, he’d watched Sam find his small stash of cash and pocket it—it didn’t come close to the $200 that would satisfy Sam. There was nothing left at the diner to hold Gabe there. He was back to square one again. He looked at Frank, whose stare of concern, longing, and hopefulness would have made Gabe laugh if it wouldn’t pain him too much to work his facial muscles. Thinking back on the sex they’d had, he knew that it had been more than just paid sex for Frank. It had been very nice for him too, but Gabe couldn’t risk falling into that trap. But, for someplace away from Sam—and even Collin—until he recovered and could get on the road to Lubbock? OK, why the hell not? “I wouldn’t mind a bit of sunshine right now,” was all he said, before he sank under the influence of the drugs again.

To see Frank’s face light up as Gabe was starting to drift off made Gabe embarrassed that he hadn’t been more attentive to the man before then—and that he had no intention of giving Frank what he really wanted. Yes, he’d let Frank fuck him when he had recovered, but Frank obviously wanted more. Gabe couldn’t afford to want more with Frank. Still, he couldn’t not say what he said.

“And, Frank,” he said. “If you want to fuck me—whenever you want to fuck me—there’d be no charge.”

“It’s OK, this isn’t the time—” Frank started to say.

“Because I like it from you as much as you do.”

Frank smiled at that and patted Gabe on the shoulder. “I’m glad you do—and that you told me.”

“If, when we get to your place—to Sunshine—I’m sure we could manage to . . . I’m not hurt where it matters for that.”

When they got to Sunshine, they did manage to and, after he’d come after rocking gently with and inside Gabe, Frank left Gabe’s bedside with tears in his eyes.

* * * *

Gabe rolled over onto his back from his right side, where just a few minutes before he’d been held close in the embrace of Frank at three points. Frank’s knees had been pressed into the fold behind Gabe’s knees; Frank’s left arm had been slung over Gabe’s chest, his hand palming Gabe’s right pec; and Frank’s cock was buried in Gabe’s channel. He had gone flaccid again, but even when soft, he filled Gabe.

The young man had barely recovered before he’d moved to Frank’s bed and Frank was covering him nearly every night. It had been Gabe, not Frank, who had pushed this. Gabe knew that Frank was pining for it and he felt the obligation to give Frank what he was too polite to demand for giving him shelter and care. Besides, having been a whore in the diner, Gabe realized that he wanted it regularly. Two of Frank’s cowboys, Russell and Lewis, were fucking him too, but that was occasionally, in the barn, and it served to dispel any tension that the rancher was getting in the ranch house what his cowboys couldn’t get in the bunkhouse. Gabe didn’t throw it into Frank’s face that Gabe was giving it to more than him.

They had slept in this position, but before and after that they had fucked. Frank was virile and vigorous for a man in his mid-thirties. He was hard as a rock in both muscles and cock. He also was the attentive lover that Gabe had never had before—what Collin had promised to be during initial seduction and then had dropped when he was in the saddle. The more comfortable the two became with the relationship, the more forceful, dominating, inventive, and demanding Frank got with the cocking, although he never was cruel. Gabe tried not to move a muscle, not wanting to do anything that would cause Frank to withdraw from him and rise to the responsibilities of the new day.

Frank was normally an early riser. He had to be to manage this cattle ranch of his north of Guthrie—even though it was a small ranch on the scale of ranches here in northern Texas and even though he had four men to help him. It was past time for him to be up and at it now—and for Gabe to be so, as well, but Gabe didn’t want him to go. He wanted to feel the man’s wet lips in the hollow of his throat, his fingers start again to pinch and roll Gabe’s nipple or descend to his cock, to experience once more the cock coming to life inside him, engorging and filling him to the limit and beginning to move inside him, coaxing him to move with it, for the two of them to become one—for Frank to hold him close, a prisoner, for those times when he was more forceful and demanding, times when Gabe loved losing himself in the heat of Frank’s need.

As he held his breath, wanting more, even though it was too late in the day to justify the want, especially considering how many times Frank had come and made him come as well in the night, he looked out of the window beside the bed, up into the big blue sky. The sky here, on the Texas plain, was much different from the sky in Louisiana. It was bigger, broader. It even was bluer. In Louisiana it extended in all directions from treetop or from one building to the next. Here in Texas, it extended from horizon to horizon. Here you could actually see that the earth curved.

He sighed as Frank pulled away from him and rolled up, first, into a sitting position on the bed, where Gabe pulled himself up, as well with a groan, and plastered himself to Frank’s back, his thighs encompassing Frank’s hips, his arms reaching around to palm Frank’s pecs and play in the dark body hair swirling there, and his face buried in Frank’s throat.

Frank laughed, unwound Gabe’s arms, and stood up from the bed. He turned back toward Gabe, and Gabe gasped as he always did when he saw how heavy the rancher was hung. Who would have known that a shy, always modestly dressed, mid-thirties rancher was hung like a bull? Gabe moved to take Frank’s cock in his mouth, but, with another low laugh, Frank pulled away from him.

“Later. We both have work to do today,” he said. His voice was infused with joy, though, at the relationship that the two men had achieved. It wasn’t a partner one—not yet at least. Frank knew that two of his hired hands, Russell and Lew, had fucked Gabe too since he’d come to the ranch. But that was happening less and less and he felt that he and Gabe were coming closer together. It was only a matter of time, he hoped, before they could become what he wanted—partners, Frank dominant, of course, and Gabe submissive. He had hopes that Gabe would be with him only, but he understood what Gabe had come from, recognized that Gabe was highly sexed, and had the patience to wait for a deeper relationship to develop.

“I want you to go to the south quarter with Russell today and count how many head we have down there—keeping a separate count of ones ready to go to market. It’s nearly time to make up another shipment for the Omaha stock yards,” Frank said. The Union Stockyards, here in the mid-fifties, had become the premier destination for cattle across the West. “I have to pick up a shipment of the feed supplement in Lubbock I’ve ordered for some of the ranches around here and deliver it.”

He had been padding around the bedroom, naked, and gathering the clothes together for the day. It had only been recently that he had overcome his modesty and walked around naked in front of Gabe. He was doing so at Gabe’s request. Gabe had told him how beautiful his body was. Frank apparently hadn’t been aware of that before. He didn’t know that he was hung like a bull until Gabe told him—or that young men would lay down for a man with a big cock. He hadn’t made the effort to compare himself to other men. But knowing that Gabe became aroused at seeing him swing free encouraged him to be nude in the house more.

It also encouraged him to play with himself. Before he had masturbated in private, in the dark, and only by necessity of relieving tension, embarrassed that he was compelled to do it. Gabe said he enjoyed watching Frank masturbate, so he was doing it in front of Gabe more. He had also learned not to feel guilty or embarrassed when Gabe sucked it—or when he sucked Gabe’s cock. He was learning to revel in sex.

He noticed that Gabe’s eyes were downcast.

“Is something wrong, Gabe?” he asked. “Did you want to go with me to Lubbock today? Did you want to try again to find your friend?”

“No, no, everything’s fine,” Gabe said, looking up and producing, with a bit of effort, a smile. “Checking out the south quarter is just fine.” He didn’t want to reveal that it was going out on the range with Russell was what wasn’t all that fine. Having become satisfied with and feeling safe with Frank in bed, Gabe had started denying other guys—he didn’t need the extra money now, either, as he’d given up on the Lubbock idea—but Russell hadn’t been as cooperative with that as Lew had been.

Life thus far at Sunshine Ranch had been complicated for Gabe, but it was all starting to settle down. Although the ranch had a bunkhouse for the hired hands, Gabe had been put in a bedroom in the main house when Frank had brought him from Guthrie—and he remained in the main house even after recovering and starting to work for Frank.

Frank had cared for him for two weeks until he could comfortably walk again and then had offered him a temporary job.

“I know you told me you were just passing through on your way to Lubbock,” he’d said, “but one of my men, Art, has had to go off because his mother is having a rough time dying and I don’t know when he’ll be back. It takes five men to run this place. If you can stay on for a while, you could fill in for Art until he gets back. And maybe you could use the money I’d pay you. We’d see what was what then. I don’t really want you to leave—unless that’s what you want.”

Gabe had been waiting for Frank to say what other way than sex Gabe could earn money from him. He knew Frank wanted to fuck him—once or twice a day if he didn’t restrain himself. And he’d tentatively brought this up. “Sure, I can fill in for your guy, but is that really how you want me to earn my keep here? You’ve been great to me. I want you to have what you want. You want me to remain here in the house, or, if I’m going to work the ranch, do you want me to move over to the bunkhouse?”

“I want you to stay in the house,” Frank answered in a hoarse voice. He didn’t follow that up, though, and he didn’t look at Gabe directly.

Gabe had had to take matters into his own hands. That night, he came, naked, into Frank’s bedroom. He pulled the sheet off Frank to find that the man too was naked—and Gabe gasped at seeing how hard bodied he was and hung. Frank had been furtive with him the few times they’d fucked before, not letting Gabe see what Frank was putting in his ass. Once they had started into it, Gabe taking Frank’s cock in his mouth and running his hands over Frank’s body and, when Frank was hard and groaning, positioning his channel over Frank’s cock, sinking on it, and riding it to a mutual ejaculation, Frank showed, for the rest of the night, that he was ready, willing, and very, very able.

After that, there increasingly was less and less awkwardness between the two and no possessiveness either. When Art came back after Gabe had been there for six weeks and, over three weeks, had worked his way into full-time duties on the ranch, nothing was said of Gabe not having a job. Frank said nothing, either, about Gabe going with both Russell and Lew for money or, more often, establishment of good will on occasion, although he surely knew this was happening. After Gabe had been there for two months, Frank brought Lubbock up.

“You have said you have someone to go to in Lubbock,” he said. “You probably have saved up enough money to get there now, but if you want to go, I’ll drive you there.” This obviously meant that Frank knew Gabe was making money on the side and also knew the most likely way Gabe was making the money. Although he paid Gabe for his work on the ranch, it wasn’t much, as room and board were included.

Gabe was taken aback that Frank would be so willing for him to move on, but he hid as best he could that this hurt him a bit. Indeed, he didn’t realize that he would be hurt that Frank was willing for him to leave until Frank mentioned it. It wasn’t until now that Gabe realized that he was growing as close to Frank as he was.

“You’d drive me there?” he said, trying not to look disappointed. “Yes, that’s what I’d like then.” If Frank didn’t think they were becoming close—that Gabe was just a nice, convenient lay—then maybe it was best Gabe moved on, he thought. He realized he’d been dropping hints of Russell and Lew fucking him to see if it would get a rise out of Frank. But it didn’t. Frank wasn’t the least bit possessive of Gabe. He didn’t criticize his lifestyle or his promiscuity or hem him in in any way.

There was no way for Gabe to know that this only was because Frank was afraid of losing him.

The road trip to Lubbock had been a disaster for Gabe, though. Frank drove him into the center of the city and stopped at a telephone booth.

“Maybe you want to call him before we go there,” Frank said. In his mind, from what Gabe had said about this Adrian friend of his, the guy sounded like a real player. Frank didn’t think he would have waited for Gabe to show up on his doorstep even though he’d invited Gabe to join him.

And Frank turned out to be right. The telephone call got someone speaking Spanish and not producing anyone else when Gabe provided the name of Adrian.

“OK, we tried advance notice. I’ll drive you on over there. Now that we’re here, I know you won’t want to leave without being sure.”

“Over there,” turned out to be a three-story adobe apartment house in a seedy part of town. And those at the apartment address Adrian had given were still solely Spanish speakers. The super, though, answering the door of the apartment marked as the office, was quite happy to see them and focused his attention on Gabe.

“Lover boy Adrian? He got in with some guys making TV commercials and other kinds of movies. They liked what he’d do and took him off to tinsel town. He’s in L.A., I think. You look like the film guys would like you too. Maybe you could follow him out there. You want, I’ll put you in contact with them. You could stay with me until you’re set up if you’d like. I’d like. Adrian and I got along real well. Real well, if you know what I mean.”

Both Gabe and Frank knew what the guy meant. He was a little greasy but he wasn’t a slob. Gabe knew what was behind the leer the man was giving him. He hesitated. He didn’t see much in the way of options.

“You could come home with me—back to Sunshine,” Frank said.

Was that a tone of hopefulness or “put-upon” resignation in Frank’s voice, Gabe wondered.

“I don’t know. I can’t live off your generosity forever he said.”

“It’s not generosity, Gabe. It’s deeper than that. I’d like you to come home with me.”

Gabe looked up at the sky. Even here in Lubbock, everything looked flat. Everything was covered by a big, deep-blue sky. “I guess we could give it a try,” he said, “if I wouldn’t be too much of an imposition for you.”

When they got back to the Sunshine Ranch, Frank showed Gabe how much of an imposition it wouldn’t be. They stayed in Frank’s bed for a day and a half, while Frank showed Gabe that lovemaking went way beyond mere fucking.

* * * *

“You know it won’t take all day to do the cattle count on the south quarter,” Russell said as he and Gabe rode out from the ranch compound on horses. Gabe was surprised they hadn’t taken the Jeep, but Russell had said the south quarter actually had some hills and gullies where water ran into a shallow river during the wet season, making Jeep travel problematic. There were some places on the ranch that could only be reached by horseback. Gabe hadn’t been to that quarter of Sunshine and hadn’t really seen much in the way of hills and gullies in Texas yet, and he hadn’t experienced a rainy season here.

“In the rainy season, we could get some real gushers where we’re going,” Russell said. “No place for a vehicle then. Caught by a gusher, we could be out there cut off from the rest of the world for days, just the two of us. How would you like that, Gabe—all alone out there for me a couple of days? We’d have time for me to do you royally. How would you like that?”

“Yeah, that would be something, Russ.”

“You’re pretty much with Frank now, right?”

“Right, Russ.”

“But we really had it on, didn’t we? I can’t think of Frank giving you what I gave you.”

Gabe wondered what Russell would do or say if Gabe told him that Frank had two more inches to give him than Russell did. And, like a lot of submissives, inches and thickness counted with Gabe. Russell had a short fuse. A little bit of crazy, Russell was.

“We really got it on, didn’t we?” the cowboy continued. “You’d like some more of that, I’ll bet. There are some cottonwoods by the river where we’re going. Some shade. I brought some beer. The ice packs should hold till we get to the river. We can do the count later. And, yeah, I brought money. I know you do it for the money.”

There wasn’t much more to say. Russell was a big bruiser. He outweighed Gabe by a good sixty pounds—sixty pounds of muscle. And Russell had gotten it from Gabe before. It’s not like Gabe didn’t do it for money and hadn’t done it with Russell before for money. It was clear that Russell was going to do him, money or no money.

And Russell was right about doing guys like Frank never had or would. Russell had a mean streak in him and that’s how he did it.

Russell fucked Gabe in the shade of a grove of cottonwood trees on the bank of a shallow river running through a gully that indicated that, when the rains came, it would hardly contain a raging torrent.

Russell fucked Gabe hard and vigorously and bound and then he slapped him around and whipped him. He just tended to beat the young man enough to help make Russell hard. He knew better than to main the boss’s poke. Once started, it was hard to maintain control, though.

Gabe had gotten a taste of the cowboy’s cruelty before but nothing like this. Being out in the raw, arid wilderness like this brought a heightened sense of power and wild-man entitlement to the big, leather-skinned brute. On top of this, he had leave to play out his resentment that Gabe got to sleep in the main house, under the rancher, even though he was a rent-boy and that he’d been avoiding Russell. Well, Russell’s money was as good as Frank’s, his cocking was a damn sight more interesting, Russell believed, and he was as much a man as Gabe could take.

He put Gabe, naked, belly over a saddle resting on the ground, tied off the young man’s wrists, his arms over his head, with a leather strap wrapped around the base of a young cottonwood tree, and he had Gabe’s legs spread and staked out. He mounted Gabe’s ass from above and behind and rode him hard.

“You love it, don’t you?”

“Yes, yes, I love it,” Gabe cried out—and embarrassingly, he did.

He didn’t love it so much when Russell laid into him with a hand whip, striking him on the back, buttocks, and thighs. But Russell didn’t put his full force behind his strikes, and the welts he’d left Gabe with would have done nothing more than sting for a while if then, after Russell mounted and fucked him again, they hadn’t had to ride the section and do the cattle count they’d been sent out there to do.

“You’re walking gingerly,” Frank said when they returned and Gabe climbed the stairs of the ranch house. “Saddle sores? I would have thought you’d be used to the saddle by now.”

“Yeah, saddle sores,” Gabe mumbled as he passed Frank and went into the ranch house. He wasn’t about to tell him all that had happened out there in the south quarter. He had to fit in in this outfit. Russell was the senior cowboy here. And Russell had paid him well for what Russell got. Gabe would just have to suck it up—and try to avoid being alone with Russell in the future. “I just haven’t done as much riding before as I had to do today,” he said as he disappeared into the ranch house. Or been ridden as hard, he added in his mind.

Frank sensed something was wrong, though, and followed Gabe into the house. As Gabe was going to the shower, Frank came into the bathroom and saw the welts on the young man’s back, buttocks, and thighs.

“You didn’t get that from riding a horse,” he said. “Russell did that to you, didn’t he?”

Gabe turned and gave Frank a scared look. “I don’t want to cause trouble at the ranch, Frank. I want to fit in. I’ll figure this out.”

“I want you to fit in too,” Frank said. He turned and walked back to the living room and to the gun safe, which he opened. Gabe came in as he was taking a rifle out of the case.

“No, Frank. You don’t want to do this. I’m a whore. Russell didn’t take anything away from me that I haven’t given other men. He paid for it.”

“You gave him a price for letting him whip you?”

“Not exactly.”

“Other men have flogged you?” Frank asked.

“Not yet . . . none other than Russell. You saw how Sam beat me, though.”

“Sam didn’t do it to have sex with you, to get hard and to jack off from breaking you. He just couldn’t control his anger at something you did that he told you not to do.”

“Just don’t do anything on my account,” Gabe said. He didn’t want to say that he’d enjoyed most of what Russell had done with him. “He paid for it, Frank. I took the money. I’m trying to cut down on anyone other than you. But if you want, I’ll leave. You need Russell here more than you need me.”

“You don’t know, do you?” Frank said, his voice shaking. “You still don’t know where you fit in at this ranch. Don’t worry, I won’t shoot him. I just want to motivate him.”

Within the hour, Russell was packed up and gone.

When Frank came back into the house, he made Gabe, who had showered by now, lay on his belly on the bed and he dressed his welts with salve.

“You just can’t seem to understand it,” he murmured, “but there’s no one in this world I need here more than you.” He had wanted to say this to Gabe for weeks, but he knew Gabe was a free spirit—that he’d have agreed to go with Russell today showed that he still wasn’t tamed. And Frank didn’t know as he ever wanted Gabe to be tamed. He hadn’t had the courage to tell Gabe before how fully he was invested in the young man. And it didn’t mean much in telling him now. Gabe had drifted off to sleep.

He didn’t use the “love” word. But Gabe wasn’t dumb. He didn’t need the word to be spoken now. He just wasn’t ready to say the word himself.