Fire Down the Valley

“It’s just for ten days—until Samuel gets back from Denver.”

“I realize that,” Cal answered Levi Yost, the owner of the Hayden saloon.

“This is Samuel’s job. It’s his when he gets back.”

“Yes, sir, I understand that.”

“Although I’ll own that he’s gettin’ a little long in the tooth and some would like you instead. They’se tol’ me as much. So, it’s not like it won’t happen . . . someday.”

Cal didn’t see that there was an answer needed to that, so he kept his mouth shut. He wanted to say that he wasn’t looking for it permanently, that he was only doing it to pay for lumber for a shed that likely would be burned down as fast as it was built, but he didn’t want to close any doors. Besides, for a short period of time it scratched an itch he had. Truth was that after he’d done it before he realized he wanted more of it. Who was to say that he wouldn’t want to be doing it more here in this saloon? He’d found he liked doing it, so there was no reason not to do it for money, even though the pickings weren’t as good that way as they were when he could choose to take a specific man’s cock, or not.

“This is your place, right here at the end of the bar on this stool,” Yost continued. “Where you can get a full view of the room. Anybody come in here, they should know the stools at the bar are for you and Sadie, Katie, and Faye. That’s how a customer can tell who is a whore for hire and who isn’t. Everyone else at the bar stands. They give you trouble on that, William there behind the bar will put them right. Don’t you go gettin’ into any fights now, ya hear? Keep that face handsome.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Now we done a little rearrangin’ upstairs since you were here last. Two rooms for you, the big one on the east front and then the smaller one behind it. I say when you go up there and what room you are to use, got it?”

“Yes, sir.”

“You use the small room to sleep in too. You order the best drinks you can think he’ll pay for when it’s on a customer’s tab. And you drink anything you are given and act like it’s the best.”

“Yes, sir.”

“OK, then. It should liven up here in an hour or two. Maybe you should go take a nap till then.”

“I’d appreciate that, thanks. It was hard finding a river crossing,” Cal answered. “And it was a rough ride down from the valley. Had to go around the regular road.”

“I heard that was the case. Sort of surprised you made it at all. Use the smaller room.”

“Yes, sir.” Cal rose off his designated stool at the end of the bar, which was right in front of the staircase to the upper level. He wearily reached down for his saddle bags and stood and looked at the steep, rickety staircase—this was about the only two-story building in Hayden as yet. As tired as he felt, he wasn’t sure he even could make it up the stairs. And he was more than a little leery about stairs and upper floors anyway. He knew it was coming to Hayden, the taller buildings. But it could hold off for a while as far as he was concerned.

“And, Caleb,” Levi answered, putting a hand on Cal’s arm to arrest his movement, “I really am sorry about what’s about to come down. You best not talk anything but cattle in this town while you’re here, though. And I meant it about this bein’ Samuel’s job permanent like, but you decide you can’t go back to the valley, I’ll find somethin’ for you around here. We’ll take care of you. You got value here. There’s some private work possible.”

“Thanks, Mr. Yost,” Cal said, with a sigh, as he looked up at the challenge of the stairs again.

* * * *

Cal lay there, still exhausted, a two-hour nap not having been enough to erase the bone-weariness from the nearly three-day journey from Heaven. Wanting to be anywhere but here just now, he concentrated on listening to the monotonous squeaking of the bed springs and felt as much as watched the loose brass head- and footboards bend in with each thrust and then jerk back as the man was on the rise. The headboard thumped against the wall of the small bedroom while the smelly cowboy, probably straight off three days on the range, crouched on top of him and pounded his ass with a shaft Cal had no trouble sheathing. The man was scrawny and weather-beaten, his teeth—those that he still had—were stained with chewing tobacco, and his dick was nothing to challenge Cal, but he had stamina, Cal had to give that to him.

This was in contrast to Cal’s first, rather hesitant customer, who had stood by the bed, still fully clothed except for his dong hanging out of his fly, while Cal sat on the bed and gave him a blow job. That middle-aged man—or maybe not that old, but certainly worked hard—had come quickly and then was too embarrassed to demand more. Cal had to speak soothing words of encouragement to him to put him in the frame of mind to come back in a few days and plunk his money down again for a “real” fucking. Cal didn’t think the man would be ready for a real fuck even then, but as long as the man believed it, that was all that mattered.

Whereas the one riding him now, Cal felt, would have to be told that when he came the first time, that was it for the money he’d paid. More than once Cal had thought the man would come but he seemed able to hold it off to gain more time inside Cal.

Cal wished that the men were told they had to bathe before they could get their lay. There was a tub in the larger, much-better appointed front room. But Cal knew that wasn’t going to be required—or permitted—for the basic fuck price.

Cal hoped that sometime tonight he’d get a young, big man who would give him a fuck he could think about until he had to start this all over again. There were enough such men around. One should be along soon.

It was a busy night, a Saturday night, and Cal assumed it would get busier. He permitted his thoughts to go to the rhythm of the headboards bouncing off the walls up here on the second floor of the saloon. Not just his; he could tell that all three of the women were entertaining as well. There were sounds of straining sex all around him. He worried a bit whether the building was strongly built enough to take this jarring but decided that was Levi Yost’s problem. For now, he needed to concentrate on making this grizzled long-endurance cowboy come.

Cal moved his heels to the backs of the man’s calves and rubbed them, snaked one hand between their bodies and rubbed one of the man’s nipples—he was still wearing his shirt, but it was open, and other than that he was just wearing his wide-brimmed hat and his boots. Cal had made him take off the spurs; the man obviously wasn’t going to think of doing that himself. Cal’s other hand went to the man’s buttocks and squeezed one cheek, he started calling out that the man was killing him with his giant cock—a great exaggeration—and that Cal had never had it that good, and he began squeezing his channel muscles in a steady rhythm on the thrusting dick. He’d fucked enough to have learned how to use his channel muscles to grip and caress a man’s cock.

The man didn’t hold off much after all of that started. He shot off, and, with a groan, rolled off to the side of Cal in the three-quarters-wide rope bed.

“Fuck, you’re good. Really sweet,” the man said. “Maybe we can—”

“Don’t think there’s time,” Cal quickly interjected. “I think we’ve gone too long now. I lost count of the time because you were doing me so good. But, yeah, I want you inside me again sometime soon. Maybe you can come back. It’ll be hard waiting time till you’re fucking me again. A real man’s man you are. I like it especially good when a man knows what to do with his dick and can keep on giving it good.”

That seemed to please the guy. He slapped Cal on the butt and then let his fingers enter him and come back with his own cum and rub it around on Cal’s buttocks. “How long you gonna be here? Sam gone now and it’s you?”

“I’m just here for a little more than a week. Samuel’s in Denver on personal business.”

“Don’t tell Sam I told you so, but, damn, you have a sweet ass. And you’re a real looker. A lot fresher than Sam is. I’ll be back next Saturday night.”

“I’ll count on it. Can’t wait. You’re a great fucker,” Cal answered, almost automatically, although he tried to sound sincere. He told them all they were the best. He’d even found a way to tell the reticent premature shooter he was the best. They all believed it, because they wanted to believe it.

He was making money. But usually there were one or two who made the sex worthwhile—who were all muscle and manhandling and who gave him a big-cocked ride that he felt all the way to the quick. That hadn’t happened yet. But it was early and he’d only taken two so far this evening. The man who could touch him in the soft, spongy core should be along soon.

* * * *

The evening was still early and Cal was on his designated stool, now hoping that business would pick up because if he was going to do this thing, it needed to be profitable. He’d taken two guys, but only the last one was in any way taxing and that was from the man’s vigor and stamina and how he purposely kept edging off an ejaculation to keep his time with Cal rolling more than challenging endowments. He sensed that he was being watched. Well, he was being watched by more than a few guys, but not that intensely. Most of the men here were zeroed in on Sadie, Katie, and Faye, who were doing brisk business. Most of the men who were looking at him were doing so more out of curiosity. A curiosity borne of thoughts a lot of guys would have out here in the West, where they might be out on the range for long periods of time with only guys to look at and be with. Thoughts they wouldn’t have had in the more urban areas of the East—or, if they had them, they wouldn’t act on them as readily.

But Cal sensed there was one guy . . . and he scanned the crowded barroom, trying to pick him out. When Cal saw him, he did a double take. It was the sexy half-breed cowboy he’d had the quick-fuck encounter with in freeing the calf in the gully.

A half-breed. Cal had hardened right up for him when they were working together, saving that calf—Cal was hardening up even now. The man had fucked him, but not in the way or for as long as Cal would have liked. The young man was a hunk, and he had a good cock on him.

Cal melted to the Arapaho, Ilesh, too. He got hard for these two faster than he’d ever done for a full-blooded white man. Maybe it was because emotionally, if not physically, Cal was a half-breed himself—changed by those first eight years with the Arapaho.

Seeing that he’d been caught looking, the man rose from the table he’d been sitting at with hard-drinking—from the look of the empty bottles on their table—other young cowpokes and moved slowly toward Cal. Cal was sure that they’d just be touching base from recognizing each other out on the range. But he thought that with a tinge of regret. The man was sultry and arousing. Cal’s eyes went to the curve of the young guy’s basket and he caught his breath. He’d known and felt the sheathing of that cock—just not long enough. His trained eye picked out the long, thick bulge of the cock snaking over on top of the man’s right thigh under the tight material of his britches. The leather chaps he was wearing, exposing the basket between them at the midsection, put the focus on the man’s crotch. Cal felt himself go even harder and he had to restrain his hand from moving to his basket as the young man walked toward him.

“So, this was where you were headed,” the half-breed said as he slipped in between Cal and an older man in a suit, indicating he was from the town, who was chatting up Katie at the bar. “Not just Hayden but Yost’s saloon.”

“You knew where I was heading,” Cal answered. “I noticed that you followed me practically to the door of the saloon.”

“Only as far as the river. You’d done the Double O a favor; I didn’t want to see you get into any trouble from any of the other guys out on the range. But was I that obvious?”

“I don’t think you would have been to most.” Cal didn’t mention that he’d been raised with the Arapaho and therefore trained to track and notice tracking in ways the white men never perfected. “But you were noticeable to me.”

“You wanted to know where I was?”

“Something like that. I got the impression our business wasn’t finished.” That brought a smile from the guy.

“I was that obvious back there, when we were helping that calf?”

Cal wasn’t sure how to take that, so he let it pass.

“My name is Frank,” the young man said, and held his hand out to offer a strong shake. His hand was calloused, even more so than Cal’s was. He’d done some rough work. The West was rough and the men working in it were rougher and were prone to violence, so men interested in men out here—which were a quite high proportion as women were scarce and the sex drive didn’t respect the restrictions of location—had developed some secret signals to identify each other. Lingering in the handshake and folding the thumb under to rub the palm of the other guys hand was such a signal of checking whether a guy would take cock. Frank knew Cal would take his cock, because he had. The question was whether Cal wanted to take Frank’s cock again. In the scheme of such a handshake, an interested receiver would grasp the other man’s thumb before they came out of the handshake. It took no more than this to establish interest and willingness, and a contract between a bottom and a top. Another top would push the hand away; a man interested in going both ways would move his thumb between the hand palms to join the other and rub against it. A man not knowing what was being signaled would merely end the handshake, maybe with a bit of a confused look.

Cal merely ended the handshake—not from lack of interest, but because Cal wasn’t in the world of white men who were signaling each other this way. He had no idea it was a signal. In this saloon, men didn’t need signal. Their money answered for them.

The Arapaho were much more direct. In the Arapaho camps, they managed the man-on-man by keen observation and the top isolating the bottom in the forest and fucking the stuffing out of him no matter what pretense of not wanting it that he exhibited. That’s what Ilesh had done with Cal the first time, with Cal crying out that he didn’t want it while Ilesh was wrestling him down, and then demanding that it never end after Ilesh had gotten his dick inside him. As far as Cal had any idea of how this worked out, if Frank had wanted him, he would have taken him out there on the range. Cal would have let him.

Even another white man, a burly lumberjack up at Mather’s mill, had done the same the previous summer—lured Cal into the forest and fucked the stuffing out of him. Perhaps it was Cal’s upbringing—the naturalistic views of the Arapaho and that neither Mrs. Thornton nor the Cowdens were Bible thumpers—but he saw nothing unnatural about a dominating man manhandling him and fucking him. Ilesh had made him aware that he liked to be fucked, and the hierarchy of size and power seemed natural as far as he was concerned. There was nothing in his mind that made him think that he should only let one man fuck him either. He hadn’t sought it out from a specific man—at least yet. It had been that lumberjack who had told Levi Yost of how enticing Cal could be for a man—and that, once subdued, Cal was a firecracker bottom in the fucking.

As Cal released Frank’s hand, he smiled and said, “I’m Caleb, but folks mostly call me Cal.” Levi had told him he should make up another name to give these guys if they asked, but Cal had forgotten to do that with this Frank, he was so besotted with him.

Nonplused by the lack of reaction to his signal, Frank seemed confused and almost stuttered out, “You do know who’s stool this is you’re sitting on?”

“Samuel’s in Denver for a week,” Cal answered, not realizing that this wouldn’t be seen as a clear-cut answer. This just confused Frank more. He was saved from pressing the question further, and Cal was left thinking they were just casually chatting and that Frank may not have any idea what Cal was here for, when Levi sauntered over and pushed himself into the conversation.

“You men just having a friendly chat, or do you want to talk business, Frank?”

Cal had no idea how Levi Yost knew Frank’s name—although it stood to reason that, as a ranch hand with the nearby Double O, the young man probably frequented the saloon a lot. But having uppermost in his mind not wanting Frank to know he was part of the sex service in the saloon and would expect Frank to pay for what Cal was willing to give him for free, Cal nervously answered before Frank could say anything. “He was just passing the time with me, Levi. We met out on the range in passing as I was riding into Hayden, and we were just introducing ourselves. We’ll just—”

“Yeah, we can talk business, Levi,” Frank said. “I’ll buy an hour.”

“I’ve heard an hour with you is a hard ride, Frank,” Yost said. “I’d have to add 50 cents to the rate to do it on time rather than a finish.”

“I said I’d buy an hour,” Frank repeated.

“The small room, Cal,” Levi said, as Frank counted out money in Levi’s hand—with Cal being so set on edge that he didn’t consider that Frank didn’t have to ask how much the hour would cost at the base of the extra being demanded.

It was too noisy to talk as they slowly mounted the rickety stairs, being very careful about the strength of the boards as they placed their feet on them. They were following the man at the bar in the suit and Katie, who he’d been chatting up at the bar. The pair were starting the foreplay on the stairs, so they were moving slowly and seemed threatened to go over the banister on every other step. This didn’t help with the jitters Cal was feeling. Was he really going to be fucked again, at greater leisure, by this hunk? Why was he melting in anticipation of this more than he did for any other man, other than Ilesh?

At the door to the small room, Cal turned, finding Frank very close behind him. “You know you don’t have to pay . . . just for us to talk. I can return your money and we could just meet somewhere else . . . to talk or whatever else you want . . . if you’ll still be in town tomorrow morning.” Not even Cal knew why he had proposed this. He did want Frank to fuck him, just not here, but somewhere where it wasn’t a financial transaction? Somehow, Cal didn’t want it just to be another casual, getting his rocks off, natural and impersonal act like had been out on the range. Could it be something purer, more concerned with mutual giving and taking? He just didn’t know. He did know, though, that he didn’t just want to talk. He wanted Frank to fuck him. He was so hard for it he couldn’t walk straight.

“This is on the clock,” Frank said, with a bit of amusement showing in his eyes. “I want to fuck you twice—wanted to fuck you out on the range more but didn’t know you’d do it—and that’s a tall order to get done in one of Levi’s short-changed hours. You don’t think I can’t see that you’re hard for me?”

“I was hard for you on the range,” Cal murmured. “I was hard for you to do it again out there.”

“Then we’re wasting time here.”

He pushed Cal into the room, hooking an arm around the younger and smaller man’s waist while he slammed the door behind them, and pulled Cal to him in a deep kiss while his hands stripped off Cal’s shirt and unbuttoned Cal’s fly. He quickly went to his knees and had his mouth on Cal’s cock, with Cal moaning and digging his hands in the sultry half-breed’s thick black head hair, before Cal could even start to gather his thoughts. “God, I wanted to do this out on the range,” he growled as his lips came up to Cal’s trembling belly and then went back to suck Cal’s balls into his mouth cavity.

“The bed, the bed. Fuck me,” Cal whimpered, completely off the script he’d memorized to handle customers.

“That bed’s got more fleas on it than that old hound out on the porch of the saloon,” Frank answered. “We’ll fuck standing up. At least I ain’t goin’ on that bed ever again. Too much noise in thumpin’ against the wall, anyway. And I always think the damn thing is gonna collapse when I get into a good fuck.”

Cal was too taken up with what was happening to him and discovering, by feel, that Frank was horse hung, to latch into how Frank would know about the condition of this bed. But then it sank in. “You been here before?”

“Lots of times. Maybe twice a week. Most of my money goes into Sam’s ass. I’ve got lots of practice at this. I’m gonna fuck you three ways from Sunday. Can’t wait to get into somethin’ fresher than Sam.”

Cal moaned and relaxed in Frank’s arms. “Fuck, do me now. I can’t wait for it.”

Within minutes they were beside the bed, and Cal was leaning down on the bed on his elbows and trying to widen his stance as much as he could as, behind him, Frank, his shirt open but not off his back and his boots and britches, covered by the leather chaps, still on his legs with the fly flaired out on each side, huffed and puffed to get his dick stuffed up in Cal’s ass.

“Oh, shit,” Cal called out as he was being penetrated. This was it. The big one of the night that would hold him over to the next evening, reminding him that he was doing this for more than the money. “Oh, fuck, yes,” he exclaimed with a moan as the big cock started to plow him.

Once mounted, neither young man spoke other than the occasional “oh shit” and “fuck yes” as each worked to get as much out of the fuck as possible. Not even Cal’s Arapaho lover, Ilesh, had a dick this thick and long, which made up for Ilesh’s better technique—but not a whole lot better. And there wasn’t a damn thing wrong with Frank’s technique. Cal was luxuriating in the fuck. This was why he was willing to do this—because of the possibility of a man coming along who could scratch his itch deep in his spongy core like this Frank guy was doing.

“God, yes, you’ve had a lot of practice at this,” Cal said, with a groan.

“Told you. Never had an ass this sweet, though. Jack yourself while I’m doin’ this. Try to come together. Shit, I wanted to do it this way out on the range. If I knew what I’d be gettin’, I woulda done you out there longer and better.”

“You would have saved the money out there,” Cal whimpered.

“I woulda been willing to pay for this out there. God, your ass is sweeter than Sam’s was when he was a baby.”

A long slide in and a long slide out, powered by Frank’s strong, calloused hands on Cal’s waist, ending in a gulp from Cal. And then four, five, or six, fast, deep plunges, never the same, to keep Cal off guard, and Cal gasping and begging for more of it. Each time.

Halfway through the fuck, Frank turned Cal so that Cal’s shoulder blades rested on the bed and his legs were wrapped around Frank’s waist. They each fired off in this position, Frank now having taken over jacking Cal’s cock and the two coming almost simultaneously, and then Cal raised his torso and flung his arms around Frank’s neck, at Frank’s command, and the half-breed backed up and sat in the straight chair that was just a few steps away in the narrow room. Cal sat, facing Frank in his lap and on the cock in its momentarily flaccid condition, as they kissed and talked dirty to each other in low voices, coaxing Frank to go hard again, which he did well before the hour was up, giving them time for a second fuck.

“You said you’d be here for a week?” Frank whispered when they were cooling down in the last minutes of their time with each other, Cal still sitting on the cock in Frank’s lap.

“Nine more days after this,” Cal answered.

“Ah, a couple of days longer. I might—”

“That would be nice. But any morning . . . anywhere you can come. Just tell me when and where and I’ll be there. I’d like it better if it weren’t on Levi’s clock.”

“I understand. You then could keep every—”

“No, you don’t understand. I’d like it better without money involved. I want you to take it from me by right . . . by the right of the biggest, best cock in the West.”

“Well, when you put it that way . . .”

Cal could feel Frank starting to grow to the “biggest in the West” dimensions.

“Oh, shit,” Cal said with a groan.

“We got six minutes. And I got money for another half hour beyond that,” Frank murmured, already starting to raise and lower Cal’s channel on the cock. “And I ain’t gonna stop now for no one. Even if you wanted me to stop, I wouldn’t.”

“That’s exactly the way I like it,” Cal answered. And he wasn’t just sweet-talking the customer with this admission.

“You mean you like it harder and rougher? Harder and rougher, like this?”

“Oh, fuck yes. Oh, fuck yes. Oh, Fuck YES!”

* * * *

“Good work in getting’ him to buy another half hour. Want you to go in back and sluice down now and take a clean change of clothes. Then wait in the smaller room upstairs. You’ll be going to the bigger room.”

Cal had barely had time to settle—gingerly this time—back on his stool. He was still watching Frank stride off toward the saloon entrance from the back and thinking that, despite how wildly they’d fucked, he hadn’t seen Frank bare-ass naked yet and wanted to, when Levi Yost came over and told him to be on the move again.

“An important customer?” Cal asked.

“Would I ask you to clean yourself and go wait to go to the big room otherwise? I’ll be losing money here, while you are sittin’ around doin’ nothin’ but playing with your dick. But don’t you go doin’ that unless the customer asks for it. Don’t want you wearin’ out the goods. And remember what I said about you not wantin’ to start fallin’ for any of these guys and givin’ it away for free. Only a damn fool would hurt himself—and me—in the money making to be doing that.”

Cal fought hard not to blush. Was Levi giving him a knowing look? Was Levi listening at the door when he and Frank were fucking? Of course that was a possibility. Or could he just tell by how Cal watched Frank move away? Frank wasn’t revealing any special feelings for Cal when they came downstairs. Frank had just banged him hard and treated him rough that second time and been all business. Well, that was OK with Cal. He wanted big-cocked muscle men who used him hard. No deeper entanglements for him other than with Ilesh.

“Yeah, that would be stupid,” he answered Yost. “Out back, did you say? The shower stall,” he said, trying to get out of this dangerous area of discussion.

“There’s a pipe and fence around it in back. When there’s a petticoat hangin’ over the fence, stay away. Don’t want you wearin’ out those goods either—unless you want to buy time for yourself. Otherwise you are free to sluice yourself down there whenever you want. The hired help does the laundry, so you can get into clean clothes whenever you want too. Evenings you’ll probably decide just not to have underlinens. They just get in the way. You’re just a bit smaller than Sam, so you should be able to get his clothes on. Do it right and you won’t be in the clothes long anyway. Sam hasn’t worn them out, and he has some pretty snazzy duds. Gettin’ clean is up to you except for customers using the big room. For those you come in clean unless he asks for otherwise. Some men get excited about the smell of other men on their doxies. That’s their call.”

“You want me clean for this guy, though?”

“Yeah. And it will be your last customer for the night. I don’t think you’ll be up to taking on any more anyway.”

As far as a sore and well-reamed ass, Cal didn’t feel like taking any more tonight after Frank, but he didn’t tell Yost that. Yost obviously was nervous about and intimidated by this next mystery customer.

And then Levi was moving off. He stopped halfway across the room to talk to what looked like a town guy who was looking Cal up and down real good to give the guy the bad news that Cal was booked for the rest of the night.

Feeling clean for the first time since he bathed under the waterfall on the slopes of Hahn’s Peak with Ilesh in what seemed to be a lifetime ago, Cal took the back stairs to the second floor and the small room assigned to him. He pulled on a pair of tight woolen britches and a billowy sort of white cotton shirt he’d found in a drawer in the small room and he was going to just rest a bit on the bed, but he went to sleep almost immediately and it was dark in the room when the house boy came to tell him he was wanted in the big room at the front of the building.

The room wasn’t all that big, but it was set up more like a parlor than any of the other rooms he’d seen. He assumed that the girls had a room or two like this for important customers. The walls were covered in a red velveteen-type wallpaper that wasn’t torn or smudged in too many places. There was a big braided rug on the wooden-plank floor, which insulated the room a bit. In other areas of the upstairs the gaps were big enough to see movement down in the saloon and you could hear the honky-tonk piano going and hubbub of the boisterous men below nearly as well up here as you could downstairs.

There were two Victorian armchairs set off to one side with a marble-topped mahogany table between them. The four-poster bed with red velvet curtains dominated the room. What was most prominent, though, to Cal, when he entered the room, was that there was a big brass bathtub set out in the middle of the room, and in the bathtub reclined a huge-boned man, bullet-headed and bald, with a craggy face with a scar slicing down from the edge of his right eye to his chin. The size of him made the bathtub look small, and it wasn’t small. He had a cigar in one hand and a bottle of whiskey in the other. One of the serving girls was sponging him down when Cal entered the room, but when the man saw Cal, he waved her away and out of the room and told Cal, in a booming, bass voice, to come take over the sponging.

Cal walked over to the side of the tub and pulled up the sponge from the surface of the water where the serving girl had dropped it. After he got his hand on the sponge, though, and before he could lift it, the man gripped his wrist in his fist, managing to hold both Cal’s wrist and a cigar, and held it there, glowering at Cal until Cal gave the man his full attention.

“Just so you know, I’m gonna fuck you into the next county,” the man growled.

Cal didn’t need to pretend to shudder at that declaration and the manner in which it was delivered. The man freed his wrist then, though, and Cal lifted the sopping sponge, pressed it into the man’s neck, and moved it down over a bulging bicep. Everything about the man bulged. He was stocky. He wasn’t fat; it was all hard muscle. But he was built in oversized proportions. Cal could see through the soapy water that the man’s dick was standing up from a patch of red hair with gray streaks. Other than the hair here, though, the only other patches were between his bulging pectorals and in the pits of his arms.

“Well, you’re a big one, ain’t you?” Cal said. “I think you’re gonna be real good to me.” It was what Cal knew a man paying for his ass wanted to hear. There was no question the man was big—everywhere—though.

He wasn’t a handsome man. His face—and his body too, judging by the scars—had been in too many fights. His nose had been broken and was tilted off center, and his right eye drooped, which called attention to the angry red scar there, obtained most likely in a knife fight. He exuded an aura of command and meanness and, when Cal looked at the scar, he shuddered at the thought of what the other man who caused that must look like—most certainly he was six feet under. This man didn’t look like he lost fights—or appreciated another man taking a slice out of him.

He was a thug through and through and Cal was already having fantasies of being held captive in his arms and being fucked hard.

The man’s age was indeterminate, but it must be somewhere between forty-five and sixty. Cal would have thought he was on the high side of that except that his body was still hard as a rock.

His cock was hard as a rock too. It didn’t look super big on the body he had, but Cal reasoned that it likely would look well over average on a man of regular size.

“Put these over on that table and come back here,” the man growled. He handed Cal the whiskey bottle and the cigar and Cal took them over to the table between the two Victorian chairs. There was a dish there where he could put the cigar. He went back to the side of the tub, where the man encircled his waist with a wet, beefy arm and unbuttoned Cal’s fly with the other hand. He fanned out the sides of Cal’s britches, pulled the young man’s cock out, gave it a couple of jerks, and then grabbed Cal’s balls and jerked them down a couple of times too.

Cal grunted and gave a little cry of surprise and pain. The man laughed and, while alternately pulling Cal’s balls and cock again, slapped him a couple of times on the rump.

“Take them off.”

“Both? The britches and the shirt?”

“Yaw, just the britches. I like the shirt.”

Cal stripped the pants down off his legs and tossed them aside. When he turned back to the man in the tub, the man grabbed his ass again with one hand and his balls and dick with the other and went back to prodding and pulling. He slapped the ass hard and Cal went up on the balls of his feet, gasped, and almost tumbled into the tub as the man pushed his index finger up into Cal’s ass canal.

“You like this, boy?”

“Yes, sir, I like it fine,” Cal answered, his eyes watering. But his dick was hard.

“Hard for me already, are you? I like that, boy. Levi tells me you’re new. Still tight enough for a man to enjoy?” He dug around with one finger and inserted another. He was grunting and Cal was writhing in his grip and gasping and tears were welling up in his eyes. He was fighting for his balance, but the man wasn’t helping him any there, and, with the man laughing in deep tones, Cal was pulled into the tub on top of the man.

“You want me to fuck you hard, boy?”

“Yes, sir. Please fuck me. Fuck me hard.”

The man managed to reverse Cal on this body and dug the fingers of one hand in the back of Cal’s head.

“Suck it,” he commanded. He pushed Cal’s head below the level of the water and was pressing the head of his dick into Cal’s lips, which dutifully opened to him. The cock pushed up into Cal’s mouth cavity, under water, and the man thrust up three times before pulling Cal’s mouth back out of the water. Cal came up gasping, water streaming out of his mouth and down his chest. His shirt was soaked, a transparent film now, glued to his heaving chest. The man did it again. This time after Cal was allowed up to take a breath, the man thrust his hips up out of the water, following Cal’s head up, and pumped up into Cal when Cal thought he would have his passageway open to breathe. He sputtered and gagged and the man laughed again, obviously very entertained by this.

But then they settled down for several minutes, with the man holding his pelvis up to the surface of the water so that Cal could work the cock above the waterline. At Cal’s other end, the man was roughly eating his ass out and making sounds of pleasure.

Just when Cal thought they had settled into a rhythm, though, the man turned to his side, pushing Cal over and moving their bodies so that Cal was belly down in the tub and the man was on top of him. Pinning Cal’s hips between his strong knees, the man, again with a grab hold on the back of Cal’s head, pushed Cal’s face under the water, again and again and again. Cal came up sputtering, all but the last two times, when he came up half drowned, with water shooting out of his mouth and over the raised back end of the tub.

Satisfied that Cal was totally subdued and half gone, the man pulled Cal’s chest up over the end of the tub, with his arms dangling down the outside of the curved surface, mounted Cal’s ass with a thrust upward inside the young man with his hard cock, gripped the sides of the brass tub with his fists, and plowed Cal hard and fast for twenty minutes to his ejaculation deep inside Cal’s channel.

Cal just lay there, floppy and totally subdued under him, and moaned and groaned.

He was nearly unconscious when the man finally lifted the weight of his body off him and sloshed out of the tub. Cal lay there draped over the end of the tub, his arms dangling, without the energy available to move a muscle, and watched the man towel himself off. His body looked even more massive and muscle bound with him standing up on the floor than it had seemed in the tub. And on this frame, the cock and balls, if anything, looked slightly undersized. But Cal had had the cock inside him and could compare it with other men. He was no Ilesh or Frank, but he was close.

Everything about the man exuded anger and meanness—even his attempts at smiles were more like domineering sneers. The red bush at his groin and between his pecs and the red slice of a scar on his face supported that impression.

And it became clear that the rough assault on Cal in the tub hadn’t calmed the man’s demeanor down. Cal watched with tired, dull eyes but with his brain screaming fear and concern—and, dammit, arousal and anticipation—while the man walked over to the foot of the four-poster bed, fiddled around in the red drapes at the top of the posts on either side, and pulled down black leather restraints. From a bedside drawer, the man extracted a short, multithonged horse whip.

Tossing the whip on the bed, the man turned, with an evil grin on his face, and moved toward the tub. Cal whimpered and whispered, “No, please. Oh, god, no,” as the man reached him and, ignoring Cal’s plea, pulled him up from the tub with the strength of an elephant. Cal was carried over to the foot of the bed and trussed up by the wrists in the restraints, his arms spread wide, and his body sagging on the bonds.

The man ripped off Cal’s sodden cotton shirt, now clinging to his body, and the flogging began. It wasn’t too onerous, but Cal’s back, buttocks, and thighs were criss-crossed with welts, a few bleeding in driblets, before the man released him, tossed him up on the bed, turned him on his back, spread and raised his legs, rolled his pelvis up, and fucked him hard for another thirty minutes.

Cal had remained hard throughout the flogging, much to the man’s voiced amusement.

“It’s what you like, isn’t it, boy?”

Cal murmured, “Yes, sir, it’s what I like.” It’s what he had to answer. He had no idea what the truth of the matter was, though. Nobody had ever flogged him before.

“Fuck me again, sir, please.”

This also went over well with the man, but he didn’t comply. After he had bathed again, leaving Cal to moan and to breathe wheezily on his back on the bed, and had dressed and left the room, a serving girl and the house boy came in and helped Cal over to and into the tub. He was asked—a couple of times before their words got into his brain—to turn over in the tub, and the serving girl applied salve to the welts on his back.

He looked up at the sound of his name. “Did you manage all right? Yes, I see that you’re fine.”

Levi Yost was standing in the room.

Cal certainly didn’t feel fine, but somehow he felt that, as mean and nasty as the man had been, he’d been holding back. Cal felt like the man would have drowned him without the slightest remorse and that the whipping hadn’t been with anything of the full force the man was capable either.

“He said you did very well. He’s pleased,” Levi said.

Cal felt like saying something nasty, but he needed this money and he’d been warned that some of the men would be rough. He hadn’t equated that with cruel, but he knew that was his own naiveté. What he managed to mumble was, “Will he get rougher than this?”

Levi seemed to be pleased by the response—the acknowledgment that, the man being pleased, he likely would be coming back again before Cal left the brothel—and that Cal knew it and wasn’t fighting it. “Not unless he becomes dissatisfied with you—or, perhaps, feels that there will be no further visits with you. I haven’t told him that you are temporary. And, as I said, he was very pleased.”

“And it’s important that he is pleased? Who is he?” He watched as the serving girl and house boy stripped the bloodied sheets off the four-poster bed. His blood. He winced.

“Oh, I didn’t realize you wouldn’t know. It seems everyone knows. That was Warren Savage. He owns the Double O ranch, the biggest ranch in these parts.”

Oh, Cal thought.

“He’s also the silent partner in this saloon. He gets what he wants here.”

Oh shit, Cal thought.