Last Rodeo

Lattimore stopped at corner of the cookhouse as he was crossing from the main house of his ranch outside Laramie, Wyoming, to the corral to train the quarter horse he'd bought on the last cattle drive to Omaha. He leaned on a fence and watched young Kit chopping wood. The young man was stripped to the waist while he chopped.

Bulking up real good, Lattimore thought. Maybe it wasn't such a bad idea to agree to give him a job out of that special school in Rawlins. Kit was slow of thought and Lattimore had been afraid that he'd be more of a hindrance than help around the ranch. But he sure was a looker. And with the two months of manual chores under his belt since he'd gotten to the ranch, he was shaping up to be a hunk of a good looker.

Kit looked up and saw Lattimore looking at him and gave him a shy smile. "Hi there, Mr. Lattimore."

"You pay attention to what you're doin' there, boy," Lattimore said gruffly. "You slice that ax in your leg, and it will be a long, painful ride into the doctor's in Laramie."

The gruffness didn't bother Kit. Gruffness was pretty much all he'd faced in life so far, and he knew Mr. Lattimore didn't mean it. He had reason to believe that Mr. Lattimore liked him-a lot.

"You still taking me with you to the rodeo down in Cheyenne tomorrow, Mr. Lattimore? You said you would. You still taking me?"

Kit had a puppy dog look about him. Lattimore could almost see the tail wagging. And Kit had a very nice tail. Still, Lattimore gritted his teeth. Kit had asked for the same reassurance three times a day for the last week, ever since Lattimore had said he'd take him. He looked around to see if any of the other hands were about. None were. They all were supposed to be off at far corners of the ranch today anyway. He looked back at Kit.

"Well, that depends, Kit. It depends on how nice you can be to me today."

"I can be real nice to you today, Mr. Lattimore. Does this mean you want us to go into the house now?"

"Yes, Kit, this means I want us to go into the house now." The quarter horse could wait, Lattimore thought. His current need couldn't. Kit looked damn good stripped to the waist with his new muscles rippling from chopping that wood.

Kit sucked him about to bursting, kneeling between his knees as he sat on the end of his bed.

"Enough, Kit. Want you to ride it now. Ride it and think about that rodeo in Cheyenne tomorrow."

Kit stood, unbuckled and unbuttoned his trousers, let them drop to the floor, and kicked them away. He stood there, looking shy, waiting for instructions.

"Want you to sit on it right here, Kit. Knees up on the bed."

Kit went up on the bed, crouched over Lattimore's sitting body, and slid his knees past Lattimore's buttocks on either side.

"Sit on it now, boy. Think about the rodeo. Pretend you're on a bucking bull. Bounce on it. Yes . . . yes . . . yes!"

Lattimore grabbed Kit's waist to keep the young man from careening off onto the floor and grunted while Kit groaned at the effort to fuck himself on Lattimore's tool. Lattimore pressed his face between Kit's pecs, sniffed in the scent of honest-work in the youthful sweat, and tongued the young man's pecs and nipples while he waited for his send off.

Later, in the night, Lattimore entered the small lean-to shed built against the side of the barn, where Kit's sleeping pallet was located.

Kit was lying, naked, on his belly, softly snoring. He woke, still drowsy, as Lattimore lowered himself at full stretch on Kit's back, fingers that he'd greased before entering the shed going to Kit's hole. With a groan, Kit automatically spread his legs and moved the top of his feet to lay on top of the backs of Lattimore's ankles. Lattimore had already been here several times since Kit had arrived on the ranch. Kit at first had worried about this special attention Lattimore gave him-but he had settled down to accepting it in exchange for how nice they had been to him on the ranch. A couple of the other ranch hands had been nice to him too-as nice as Lattimore was being.

The fingers were exchanged for something bigger, thicker, and Kit groaned and whispered, "Mr. Lattimore."

"Shush, Kit. Just lie there and take it. Think about the rodeo we're going to tomorrow. Think of yourself as a bull. A big, sexy bull. And I'm the rodeo rider. You can buck your butt like the bull, if you like. Yes, like that. That's nice. That's so nice."

Lattimore leaned over Kit's back, pressing the heels of his hands into Kit's shoulder blades, and raised a bit up on his knees, because, from the power of suggestion, Kit had gotten into the rodeo image Lattimore had woven and was bouncing his pelvis up to Lattimore's groin now, stroking himself on the cock Lattimore had buried in his channel. He was doing most of the work of the fuck.

"Wooeee!" Lattimore exclaimed, as Kit bucked underneath him. "Ride 'em cowboy. Ain't we havin' us a barrel of fun now! We got our own rodeo right here."

* * * *

"Look at that! Look at that, Mr. Lattimore." Kit was grabbing Lattimore's arm and bouncing up and down on the rough board of the stands.

Rodeos were the greatest entertainment you could get all across the West in those days. Those and traveling shows like Wild Bob Hickok's. Kit had never been to one before, and Lattimore turned in his seat and laughed at how much like a child Kit was being in his reaction to the rodeo. He'd lay him over on the seat and fuck him right here if half of southwest Wyoming hadn't come out for this.

They were watching a lithe young cowboy, who the menu card tacked on the nearby post identified as Howling Hank, buck around the ring on a horse that was snorting and rearing to beat the band. Hank was howling too, which Kit thought might have something to do with his name. Kit couldn't quite make out some of the names on the board. They didn't seem to be ones a mother would give a child, but what did he know? This was as far from Rawlins as he'd ever been. In any event, Kit watched the young, blond cowboy with special interest, because he didn't look much older than Kit was himself. Kit could fantasize about that being him. Traveling the world with the rodeo. He couldn't think of anything better.

His eyes really bugged out, though, when the bull riding started with the featured cowboy, Rodeo Bob. The man must have been destined for rodeo fame, Kit thought, from the time his mama had given him his Christian name. Kit could see why he got top billing. He stayed on the bull longer than the other man Kit saw ride a bull that day, and his bull was angrier and bucked more, kept red-hot angry by two clowns teasing and tempting him as he bucked Rodeo Bob around the ring-that and the strap they had bound tightly around bull's nuts.

The bull charged the edge of the ring right where Lattimore and Kit were sitting, and Kit reared back in fear and knocked the beef jerky pack Lattimore was holding out of his hands and down under the open stands.

"Wooeee!" he yelled, both scared and exhilarated, as the bull veered off at the last moment.

Lattimore started to admonish him about losing the beef jerky, but Kit looked so much like an excited child that he couldn't.

The clowns pulled out of the ring after one pulled the strap from around the bull's belly, and the animal quieted down. The audience applauded the skill of Rodeo Bob, giving no credit in the bull's loss of ire to the clowns having stopped harassing it.

Kit turned to Lattimore, eyes wide open and face flushed. "He's the best, ain't he, Mr. Lattimore? He's the fuckin' best."

"Yes, he's good," Lattimore agreed, his mind actually concentrating on how much pleasure he'd get out of fucking Kit that night.

"Oh, look, another bull rider," Kit exclaimed as he turned his attention back to the ring. "But he looks like he's dark brown, Mr. Lattimore. Don't he look dark brown to you? Have you ever seen a man who was dark brown like that?"

"Yes, he's dark brown, Kit," Lattimore said. "Don't see many this far north, but, yes, there's darky cowboys. A slew of them came into the West from the South after the war. Freed but not knowing what to do with themselves. He's too young to be one of those, but probably from a darky daddy and an Indian squaw mammy. No white women would have let a darky from the war touch them."

"He's good too," Kit said, but soon added, "but not as good as Rodeo Bob." He watched the black cowboy, identified as Black Tex on the board, careen off the bull in an arc that put his ass on the ground. The clowns cajoled the bull away from him, as the cowboy scampered up, seemingly unharmed despite the delicious sound of alarm that had gone through the crowd when he went soaring, and hobbled off to the side of the ring.

Lattimore remembered his beef jerky was gone. "Go to the food trailer and get me more jerky, Kit," he commanded.

"Yeah, sure, Mr. Lattimore. Sorry for losing it for you."

When Kit got down from the stands, he got the notion to look for the jerky that had gone under the stands before wasting Mr. Lattimore's money by buying a new pack. He could just wipe them off and save Mr. Lattimore the money. No thought of keeping the money crossed his mind, nor was there any thought that Lattimore might not want jerky that had been in the dirt under the stands along with anything else that had been thrown under there. Such thoughts were a bit complex for Kit to get his mind around.

When he went under the stands, though, he saw two men standing close together. They were kissing and rubbing their hands on each other's bodies. This didn't particularly disturb Kit, of course, because he'd been doing some of that himself with Lattimore and a few of the other ranch hands over the last couple of months. It didn't disturb him when one man pushed the other down on his knees in front of him and started to unbutton his jeans either. He'd had that done to him too.

But it did make him knit his brow when the guy wouldn't go down on his knees but, rather, broke away and walked off along the line of the stands to a break in them and back to the circle of wagons where the ticket and food wagons and a couple of game wagons were.

Kit pulled away from the stands. The man who hadn't gotten what he wanted walked right by Kit and into the circle of wagons. Kit gasped. It was Rodeo Bob. And he looked angry. Rodeo Bob, the biggest attraction at this rodeo wasn't getting what he wanted-what he deserved as the rodeo star. Would he be so angry that he didn't ride anymore? That would be a real shame, Kit thought.

He followed behind the man as Rodeo Bob moved to the second line of wagons. He was opening the door of one when he turned and saw Kit standing there.

"Yes, what the fuck you want?" he growled.

"I saw you under the stands."

"So fuckin' what?"

"I can give you what that man wouldn't."

Rodeo Bob looked Kit over-really looked at him for the first time. He liked what he saw.

"Come into the wagon then."

Kit decided this must be Rodeo Bob's own wagon. Mr. Lattimore said that they put the wagons on flatbed rail cars to move from major city to major city and pulled them with horses from there to the smaller towns. This must be Rodeo Bob's trailer because posters showing him on a bucking horse were plastered all over one inside wall of the wagon.

Rodeo Bob sat on a bed built into one side, his legs spread, with Kit kneeling between his thighs, and groaned as Kit serviced his cock to ejaculation.

"Pretty good, kid," Rodeo Bob said after he was finished and was standing and buttoning up his jeans. "Gotta go get ready for my next ride now, but you were pretty good. Here, here's a free ticket to our next rodeo down in Fort Collins, Colorado. I gotta go now."

"Fort Collins? Ain't never been there. I don't think-"

"It's what I have to give you. That's enough for a blow job. You liked it as much as I did, and you asked for it."

Kit looked somewhat bewildered. He hadn't expected to be given anything for the pleasure of pleasuring the rodeo star, and he didn't know why Rodeo Bob still seemed riled up.

Rodeo Bob left the wagon, leaving Kit holding a ticket to something that was way, way out of his world. The rodeo star had thereby made two mistakes. He'd given that ticket to Kit, and he hadn't specifically told Kit to leave the wagon.

* * * *

Rodeo Bob was on his back on his bed and Howling Hank was saddled on his cock and riding it-and doing a little howling, unrestricted by any thought that anyone could hear them, because the wagon sat on a flatbed railcar riding the rails overnight between Laramie and Fort Collins.

The older man was holding HH by the waist and slamming him up and down on his cock. His head was turned to the side, his eyes focusing on nothing until he saw the slight movement in the door under the counter across from the bed as it opened a crack and then closed and then opened again. It registered in RB's brain that this wasn't natural. Once the door had opened, it should just swing open and move with the lurching movement of the train. It didn't. And what should be in that cabinet-a chamber pot and piss bowl and a stack of towels-were sitting on the floor of the wagon. They were lurching from side to side, with the porcelain bowl in imminent danger of being shattered. The perilous bowl clicked with him first; the opening and closing cabinet door only later. He leaped from the bed, pushing an "ooofing" Hank aside; held the bowl steady with one hand; and opened the cabinet with the other to return it to where it belonged.

"What the fuck?" he and Hank exclaimed almost in unison.

Kit was folded up into a tight ball inside the cabinet. It was only with effort that Rodeo Bob managed to haul him out of there. "What the fuck are you doing here?"

"You gave me a ticket to the rodeo in Fort Collins," Kit answered sheepishly. "And I was told this here train was going to Fort Collins."

Rodeo Bob laughed and Hank gave a snort from behind him. The two were horny in an interrupted way, and were frisky to boot.

"Well, you gotta earn your ride to Fort Collins, boy," Rodeo Bob said.

Kit didn't seem to object, although he got in a lot more howling than Hank did.

Rodeo Bob settled on his back on the bed again, and Kit was set down on his cock, facing him. They really started going to town, though, when Howling Hank crouched down behind Kit over Bob's thighs, pushed Kit forward onto Bob's chest and worked his cock in above Rodeo Bob's inside Kit's channel.

They fucked him good and for nearly an hour together as the lurching of the train and monotonous clack, clack, clack of the rails they went over helped with the rhythm of the fuck.

In the morning, as the wagons were being taken off the flatbeds in Fort Collins, Rodeo Bob sat up on the edge of the bed and scratched his balls languidly. Howling Hank was already gone. Curled up on the floor, though, was Kit. Bob nudged him with his foot.

"Gotta get up, kid. We'll put you on a train back to Laramie. Sorry about last night. We got carried away." He didn't sound sorry, though. He sounded quite self-satisfied.

Kit sat up on the floor and rubbed the sleep out of his eyes. "I don't want to go back to Laramie. I want to stay here with you. And you gave me a ticket to the rodeo here."

"How old are you, kid?"

"Nineteen."

"Don't look like it, but I'll take your word for it. No parents looking for you in Laramie?" The young guy looked good naked, even in the daylight streaming through the wagon windows. He'd been a good, willing fuck last night. Weird about doubling him, but he'd gone with it.

"Raised in an orphanage. Can I stay here with you?" Kit was looking up at Rodeo Bob with eyes full of worship.

Bob fucked him again on the bed, with Kit on his back, and Bob laying on him between Kit's spread thighs and Kit rubbing the heels of his feet on Bob's calves. He was as good a fuck one on one as he had been as a double.

"We could see if Stan can find a job for you. But you can't stay in this wagon."

"Why can't I stay with you?"

"Hank sleeps in here with me most nights."

"But there are other times, other nights?"

"Yep, there are."

Stan, who was the manager of the rodeo, was happy to sign on another hand when Kit didn't balk at feeding and cleaning up after horses.

"We always seem to have need for help, especially working with the animals," he said. "Gotta find me a second ringmaster too. It's about to wear me out with all the rest I have to do. You look fit, but I don't want to take on anyone who is going to be more trouble with sickness than help. Go see Doc Pender. Tell him I want him to look you over real good. A job here depends on him saying you're fit."

Kit worried about that on the way to the doctor's wagon. He sure wanted to be fit. He didn't want to go back to Laramie. He wanted to be close to Rodeo Bob. He wanted to be declared fit. And he wanted to use that free ticket to the rodeo here in Fort Collins. No one bothered to tell him that employees of the rodeo got in free.

Doc Pender gave him a complete examination, with Kit stripped down to his birthday suit. So impressed with the young man's physical conditioning was the doctor that his hands were trembling as he felt and probed, and his cock was hard and throbbing. Kit was squatting down on the back edge of the bed in the doctor's wagon, his fists pressed into the bed in front of him, leaning a bit forward. The doctor was standing close behind him, supporting Kit with a hand on his belly and listening to his heart beat through a stethoscope pressed between Kit's shoulder blades.

"Am I OK?" Kit asked for the fourth time. "Gotta have you say I'm fit for me to get this job." This was the sixth time he'd mentioned that.

"Am I embarrassing you, young man?" the doctor asked. "You seem to be tense. You've gotten hard, I see. That's a good sign of health in a young man, though."

"Naw. It's just that Mr. Lattimore, he puts me like this a lot when he fucks me. I'm just anxious that you tell them I'm fit to work here."

Doc Pender took in a gulp of breath at the casual way the young man had talked about being fucked. He dropped his stethoscope, which was on a string around his neck, so it didn't hit the floor, and his hand went to his crotch, where his cock was painfully pushing at the material inside his fly. He unbuttoned the fly and let the cock flop out, fully erect.

"If . . . if you let me pretend to be Mr. Lattimore, I'll tell them you're fit," he whispered into Kit's ear.

"OK, that's good," Kit answered cheerily, happy he could work here-and would get to use his ticket to the rodeo in Fort Collins. "But you don't have to pretend you're Mr. Lattimore. You can fuck me as you; that's OK."

With a little laugh and a sigh, the doctor pushed Kit farther forward, with Kit's fists pressing into the bed farther up toward the head, and started to work his cock into Kit's hole. Kit grunted a bit, but the cock went in without too much difficulty. The kid had fucked often and quite recently too, the doctor realized. He was still open. He was still wet inside. Someone had fucked him right before he came here.

The doctor lost all inhibitions and plowed Kit hard and deep to an ejaculation.

Kit just grunted and groaned and took it. Afterward, with the doctor still embracing him closely and letting his cock go flaccid in his own cum and that of at least one other up in Kit's channel, Kit asked his important and hopeful question again.

"So, you're gonna tell them I'm fit to work here?"

"I'll tell them that if you sleep here in my wagon with me while we're traveling."

Kit gave no consideration to the fact that the doctor had told him yes before, even without that stipulation. He was more happy that the dilemma of where he was going to sleep-although that was really the hiring manager's problem, not his-was so easily solved after Rodeo Bob had said Kit couldn't sleep with him.

"OK," he said, as if the doctor had solved his problems rather than raised other ones. Kit really wanted to be with the rodeo to be close to Rodeo Bob. It didn't occur to him that moving into the doctor's wagon would mark him in the rodeo community as being the property of the doctor.

"You understand what I mean by sleeping in my wagon with me, don't you kit?"

"Yes, I think so. It means you're going to fuck me in your bed but then not make me sleep on the floor."

"Oh, jesuzzz, Mary, and Jehovah," Pender exclaimed.

* * * *

Everything was cooking along just fine for Kit in his estimation down through Colorado and into New Mexico. Rodeo Bob had only had a couple of nights to give to Kit, but what he gave in terms of a fuck left Kit humming like no one else could. Kit wanted nothing more than to be with Rodeo Bob, and although it wasn't happening enough for him, it was happening.

Hank gave him a pretty rough time, but Rodeo Bob was calling the shots, and Hank was getting most of the nights. Kit actually enjoyed working with the horses. They reacted well to him and he'd shoveled shit all his life, both literally and figuratively, and the atmosphere of the rodeo was just too exhilarating for Kit to resent doing it here. Even though Doc fucked him once or twice a night when Kit wasn't with Rodeo Bob, Kit considered it a low price for having a place to sleep, and Doc didn't give him grief about Rodeo Bob doing anything he wanted with him.

Some others, seeing how slow Kit was and how much he put up with while still maintaining a cheery disposition and an aura of innocence, talked among themselves, though, about how much advantage Rodeo Bob and the doctor were taking of him.

Once even, in the wee hours of the morning of the third day in Santa Fe, when Black Tex saw Kit coming out of Rodeo Bob's wagon, while Howling Hank sat across the compound and glared daggers at the wagon door, Tex pulled Kit aside.

"You know he's just using you, don't you?" Tex said. "And Doc too. They're just taking advantage of you."

"I know I'm a bit slow," Kit answered. "But I'm getting what I want. I want to be with the rodeo and I want to be near Rodeo." Kit had gotten on a first-name basis with the rodeo star, but he hadn't grasped that his given name was Bob, not Rodeo. The others sniggered at that, and some mimicked him behind his back, but if Kit noticed, he hadn't said anything or reacted defensively. It was part of the reason Tex had pulled him aside. He was conflicted. The young man was gorgeous and he'd like a piece of him himself, but he was letting people make a dupe of him.

"But they are fucking you-Bob and the doctor-and people are making fun of you for just laying on your back and opening your legs for them. You're better than that. You deserve better than them."

"I like to be fucked," Kit said, as if it was the most natural thing in the world to say. "Rodeo has the greatest cock in the world and Doc P is good to me. I'm doin' what I want to do."

"Others could think they can fuck you too, though. You could wind up giving it to everyone."

"I don't mind. If I like them, I'd let them fuck me. I like to be fucked."

Black Tex couldn't help himself; Kit was just too luscious and open to it. "Do you like me?" he asked in a low-pitched, husky voice.

"Yes. I've been wondering about brown men. I been told they have really big ones."

Black Tex fucked Kit against a wall on the dark side of the wagon, pressing Kit's back against the wall, with Kit's arms around Tex's neck and his legs hooked on Tex's hips. Kit found that Black Tex might not be as thick as Rodeo Bob was, but that what they said was true about his length.

Still in position and nuzzling afterward, Black Tex asked Kit if he'd let him do it again sometime.

"Sure, anytime I'm not with Rodeo or Doc P," he answered. And he would have been happy with Tex's long cock inside him again if what happened during the rodeo later that afternoon didn't happen.

Everything was as usual, except that maybe Rodeo Bob had a more recalcitrant bull than usual. The bull sure as hell didn't like to have Rodeo Bob on his back, and he wasn't the least impressed with the antics of the clowns.

When he threw Rodeo Bob off his back to the gasp of the audience and the clowns tried to distract him from the fallen rider, the bull circled around quickly, took a run at Bob, and gored him in the back with one of his horns as Bob was trying to rise. Bob went down again in a heap. The bull backed off, went into a tight circle, and faced Bob again. It pawed the ground, huffed through its nose, and lowered its horns, preparing to charge again.

Men were pouring into the ring to help. Kit was among them. The others went for the bull to try to distract it. Kit went to Bob and covered his body with his own.

The distraction worked, though. The bull turned its head and steamed over toward the edge of the ring-and into the corral set up for the animals and riders to enter and leave the ring.

The manager, Stan; Howling Hank; and Kit were all at the hospital in Santa Fe while they were working on Rodeo Bob.

When the doctor came out of the operating room, he gave the three men a gloomy stare and said, "Mr. Crandell will live. But there was nerve damage. He will be able to stand again-with support-but he won't be able to walk again. And he certainly can't ride. This was Mr. Crandell's last rodeo riding the bulls, I'm afraid."

Hank muttered an, "Oh, shit," which was echoed by the rodeo manager. Kit just looked confused.

"Sorry to hear that about Mr. Crandell," he said, "but how is Rodeo?"

The doctor gave Kit a confused look. Hank uttered, "Fuck," and stood and stomped off. It took a few minutes for Stan to explain the situation to Kit, who then broke down in tears.

Stan and the doctor discussed hospitalization and treatment. The doctor said that Bob needed to have a private nurse for a while-mostly to be there and help keep Bob comfortable-but that the wound would heal quickly. The long-term paralysis in his legs wouldn't. There was no reason why he couldn't be released within a couple of weeks. But Bob would need extra help in the hospital.

Kit lifted his head and said, "I'll stay with him."

"Kit," Stan said. "It'll be tough on anyone who's caring for him. I don't know about paying for an extra nurse, but-"

"I'll stay with him," Kit repeated, his voice laced with determination. "I want to stay with him."

And stay with him, Kit did. Bob was understandably angry and bitter about what had happened to him and how his career-and, to him, his life-were over. Before taking the rodeo on to Albuquerque, Stan assured him that the hospital expenses would be covered and that there would still be a job for him in the rodeo when he could return to it. They still needed that second ringmaster and the doctor had said that, if Bob were braced, he could stand in the ringmaster's box well enough. At all other times, though, he'd have to be in a wheelchair or a bed.

Rodeo Bob wasn't assuaged. He railed and groused at everyone in the hospital, Kit more than others, because it was Kit who was there, with him, all of the time. At some point Kit was doing almost everything for Bob because the hospital staff was tired of putting up with the abuse.

But Kit put up with the abuse-with a smile on his face.

When the two left the hospital, it was Kit who the hospital staffers wished well to and their regrets that he was leaving, not Rodeo Bob.

The moment after Kit lifted Bob's wheelchair up through the door of his wagon when they rejoined the rodeo in El Paso and started to come up the steps himself, Bob turned, backed up the wheelchair, and cried out, "Get the fuck away from me. Just leave me alone. Everyone leave me alone. Just let me die."

Howling Hank seemed quite willing to just leave Rodeo Bob alone. He'd found another rider to shack up with and made no effort to visit Bob.

It was Kit who delivered Bob's meals and took away the chamber pot and who, when he wasn't working with the horses, sat in a chair beside the door to Bob's wagon and waited.

People would pass the wagon by, cluck their tongues, and give Kit a sympathetic look. When they had walked past, though, they more often than not looked at each other and rolled their eyes. "What a dummy," some of them even said.

Kit told Doctor Pender that he'd be staying in Bob's wagon with him when Bob wanted him and he hoped that the doctor understood.

"I understand," Doc Pender said, knowing and valuing the effort Kit was making and acknowledging the deep affection for and loyalty to Bob that this represented, "but it could be a good long time before he realizes he isn't going to die just because he wants to and that he needs the help."

"I can wait," Kit said.

He didn't actually have long to wait. The fifth night in El Paso, Bob fell out of his bed and couldn't get back in again. He lay on the floor for hours, hitting bottom in his anger and frustration. But the only direction he could go from there, because he didn't die there on the floor, was up. Near dawn, he called out, "Kit!" and Kit was there in an instant.

Kit sat Bob up on the side of the bed and cleaned him up with a wet cloth. He sat down beside Bob and held him in his arms.

"I'm good for nothing," Bob said in a dull monotone, accompanied by a sob. "I might as well die. Nothing works. I'm good for nothing."

"Not true," Kit whispered. "You still have a job. You'll be a ringmaster. And your legs still work a bit. But the best of you still works and hasn't been exercised in weeks."

"What? What do you mean?"

Kit showed Bob what he meant by moving his hand into the fly of Bob's skivvies and pulling his cock out. He stroked it as Bob began to moan and pant hard.

"It works, doesn't it?" Kit asked. He turned his face to Bob's and they kissed, Bob tentatively as first and then, as he lengthened, thickened, and hardened, hungrily.

Tears were in Bob's eyes. "You're too good to me. You're too good for me now. I can't . . . the others will be after you to . . . and they'll be right."

"Fuck the others," Kit answered, having no interest in seeing anything complex in this.

"You'll wake up some day. You just don't know . . ."

"Never. Shush now and fuck me."

"How?"

Kit showed him how. He stood up from the bed, lowered his trousers and skivvies, tore off his shirt, and lowered himself on Bob's staff, coming down on the bed with knees on either side of Bob's hips. He wrapped his arms around Bob's head, pulling the man's mouth into his nipples.

Bob let out a sob as Kit began to rise and fall on the cock.