Leaf-Blower Service

“There’s one. Who’s up?”

Eighteen-year-old Craig stepped out from the wedge of the shelter of the underpass where a stream passed under Highway I-70 and into Monarch Ridge Park outside of Frederick in the southern Maryland hunt county and looked down to the nearby Ed Crone Lane. There he saw a white double-cab truck with a logo on the door idling at the side of the road and flashing its light. “I think I recognize the guy. I’ll go,” he said.

Duane, the oldest of the homeless guys who used the underpass for shelter and who kept track of the younger guys who earned some money by hooking up with men who knew about the Ed Crone Lane pickup spot nodded and went back under the underpass to where it was warmer.

Half-way down the hill toward the road, Craig realized that he didn’t recognize the truck at all—that it had a logo on the door for the Tidings Gardening Service, when the guy Craig knew worked as an electrician. But the man’s muscular, tattooed arm was leaning out of the cab and he was beckoning Craig forward, so the young man went to the cab window.

The man, not more than in his late thirties, body-builder muscular, balding but not bad looking, had two hundred-dollar bills in his hand. That was quite a bit more than Craig usually got to do what he did for men. He reached out and touched the bills but the man held them and wouldn’t release them. Craig was trembling, but it was mainly from the cold. It was mid-November, most of the leaves had fallen to the ground, and the colder weather was finally deciding to set in. Craig was new to this, but something in the back of his mind said he’d need to find some sort of arrangement that got him inside for the winter. He just didn’t know how to go about that.

“This is for the night,” the man said.

That would be getting in from out of the cold for at least one night, and Craig had no trouble saying, “I could do that.”

“Before I say what I want?”

“As long as it’s someplace warm, who cares?”

“I could want something rough.”

“Yes, I guess you could—for those two bills.”

The man smiled. It was a nice smile. He had a better face when he smiled. He looked a little rough otherwise. The kid must be new, he thought. Two hundred was cheap for what was being hinted, although he wasn’t in for rough himself. He just wanted to be taken care of by someone looking like what he usually got. “I’d feed you and, if you want to bring your things, we can get them washed.”

“Thanks. I’ll go get my kit.”

“Before you go, how old are you? I was told this was where to come for young tail, but you look almost too young.”

“I’m eighteen,” Craig said. It was good the guy had given him a lead on that—that he wanted them legal. Otherwise, Craig would have wondered if he should age himself down. With his looks, he could manage that if he had to, although he was, in fact, legal. But he was young looking—small, willowy, smooth and hairless “down there,” and just on the cusp of manhood.

“Sweet,” the man said.

All that Craig had taken from home was in the duffel bag he returned with after telling Duane what logo was on the truck and what the man looked like and said he’d be gone overnight. Duane wasn’t nosey, but he always liked to know something to tell the cops if something happened to one of the guys renting themselves out from under the bridge. What they were doing out here under the highway was risky. It didn’t matter if this was one of the richest gentleman farmer counties in the region. Homeless was homeless. And sex for hire was illegal. And this was where men from the local area came to get themselves sex for hire from another guy—a homeless guy with no further to go down in life.

When Craig climbed into the truck, the man handed him the $200, and his hand immediately dropped to grasp the young man’s leg above the knee. “You’ve done this before, haven’t you?”

“Yes,” Craig answered.

“Good, because I don’t want no cryin’ or surprised guys on my hands. You ain’t done it too often, though, I hope. How long you been out here under the road?”

“Just a couple of weeks.”

“Good enough. My name’s John. We’ll go get you cleaned up and your clothes goin’ in the washer and then we’ll get something to eat before we get down to business. A bit of a drive to dinner. To Harper’s Ferry. Don’t want to be seen with you here in Frederick.”

“Yes, I can understand that,” Craig answered. “My name’s Sonny.”

“Sure, it is,” the guy, whose name wasn’t really John, said, as he moved the truck onto the road. Their immediate destination was Johnson’s Mobile Home Park south of Frederick and a doublewide trailer. And they didn’t wait until after dinner to get down to business. As they walked from the truck to the door of the trailer, John palmed one of Craig’s butt cheeks and Craig didn’t pull away.

“You’re a real honey and you got a nice ass,” the man said, with a laugh. “Maybe we’ll find something to do before going to dinner.”

“It’s your call,” Craig said.

“Yes, it is.” Closing the mobile home door behind them, John said, “Strip down and give me your clothes and anything from your bag there needing washed. No, do it here while I watch. All of it off and no clutching your jewels with your hands. I want to see what I’m buying.”

Craig took his time stripping down and John took his time looking at the young man getting naked. He was breathing hard and rubbing his crotch with a hand while he watched, and Craig knew that wouldn’t be putting anything off until later.

“Go on in to the bathroom over there, get yourself a shower, and do whatever you need to do for what you know is coming. I’ll put these clothes in the washer. I have some duds you can wear until your stuff comes out of the dryer. Don’t close the door. The duds come later.”

The reason John didn’t want the door to be closed became obvious when Craig got into the shower. John appeared in the bathroom, naked, muscled up and tattooed, and with a thick erection, which he covered with a condom, while Craig soaped up in the shower and watched him. John was bigger than Craig was used to—and it was true that he hadn’t gone with a lot men since he broken away from his family and was trying it on his own—but for $200, he’d take what he had to take. And he wasn’t moving into this life because he didn’t like men fucking him.

The guy who’d spiked him first was a good ten years older than he was. Since then, while operating from the underpass, the men had been even older. They were men who knew what they wanted and took full control. Craig felt better when he could feel like they were taking it from him. The first guy certainly took it from him—plucked his male cheery in the middle of the night with a hand over his mouth and just turned him over and did it again. It didn’t wake his mom because Craig was ripe for it. He’d wanted her boyfriend visiting him and doing this for some time.

John entered the shower and turned Craig toward the tiled wall. Craig didn’t resist anything. He let the man put him into position. John grasped Craig’s wrists and raised the young man’s arms, pressing his wrists high onto the tiles. He didn’t have to tell Craig to leave them there. The young man knew what the man wanted. When he was getting paid for it, Craig gave the man what he wanted. He jutted his butt back, pressed his cheek to the tiles, and stared into the bathroom.

“You like to be controlled, don’t you?” the man said in a hoarse voice, full of lust.

“Yes. Do me, Daddy,” Craig answered. He’d gauged that the man wanted to be some willing young guy’s daddy. The grunt from John told him he’d guessed right.

John palmed the young man’s belly, coaxing Craig’s hips and legs further back off the wall and then the man dropped to his knees and with one hand on the young man’s belly and the other grasping and stroking Craig’s cock, the man pressed his face in the young man’s crack and began tonguing his hole open. Once having gotten the young man in place, John took the hand that had been palming the belly back and used it to slap the young man on the buttocks periodically. Craig gave him the sighs and moans he knew the man wanted to hear. He didn’t have to act, though. He was trembling and ready for it—wanting it. This was one of the hunkiest and most experienced man Craig had gone under.

“Yes, yes. Do it. Fuck me,” he whispered.

Laughing, John rose, hovered over the young man’s back, mounted him from the rear, putting his mushroom cap in position, and held the young man close with one hand spread on his belly and the other pressed into his chest. Craig jerked and panted hard as the thick cock slowly possessed and stretched his channel, and then Craig dropped a hand to his own cock, and he stroked himself off while the man set into the rhythm of the pump and rode his ass in long, deep strokes.

“Nice. Tight. Sweet ass,” John murmured as he stroked.

“Shit, you’re big, Daddy,” Craig moaned.

“And you get all of it,” the man said, proceeding to make good on that promise.

* * * *

“These almost fit. These aren’t yours, are they?” John was a big muscular man. Craig most certainly wasn’t. These obviously weren’t clothes John wore.

“No,” John answered as Craig came out of the second bedroom of the doublewide dressed in jeans and a Henley shirt that were just a bit too large for him—but would have been the right size for many eighteen-year-olds. “Those belong to my stepson. He’s eighteen. Just like you.”

“Just like me?” Craig repeated, wondering in what other ways the man’s stepson was like him and whether that was why John was paying him to be here—and to do what they’d just done in the shower.

“Yeah, you’re the spittin’ image of him. My wife and he are off visiting family in Maryland this weekend. They’re taking a long weekend, so won’t be home for a couple of days.”

“By home, do you mean here, in this trailer?” Craig asked. There wasn’t anything here that looked feminine and nothing that looked like another young man was around, other than the clothes. The second bedroom was sterile looking. It didn’t look like anyone, let alone an eighteen-year-old guy man lived there. It looked like an infrequently used guest room.

“No, they don’t live here with me.”

“But you have your stepson’s clothes in the second bedroom.”

“He comes to me.” Craig caught that the man didn’t say his stepson visited him. He said the young man came to him here. Before Craig could probe more, though, John changed the subject. “How does Denny’s in Hagerstown for dinner sound?”

“Fine,” Craig said, getting the signal that he wasn’t to ask further about John’s family.

Hagerstown was more than a half-hour drive away, though, and the question of family was just hanging there in the air between them, until John asked. “Your family. You’re just eighteen. And you’re living under that underpass at Monarch Ridge Park. Doesn’t your family—?”

“My mom’s in Europe on business. I’m at college now. Her boyfriend went with her, but he came back early, and I didn’t want to . . .”

He didn’t take that further and it wasn’t, in fact, fully true. Both his mom and her boyfriend had gone to Europe. That much was true. And, yes, the boyfriend was messing with him as much as with Craig’s mother. The man who popped his male cherry was, of course, the boyfriend. Craig didn’t care for himself. The guy was a hunk and Craig was ripe for plucking. But it just wasn’t right with the guy spiking his mother too. That wasn’t the whole reason Craig had left Shepherd University in Shepherdstown, though. The professor there, a friend of his mother’s, the one who had gotten Craig into college there, also was messing with him. And then the boyfriend came home from Europe ahead of Craig’s mother and wanted Craig in the sack with him. It just had gotten too much for Craig. Once he’d taken off, though, he found that that was the only way to keep paying his way—letting men mess with him.

“So, your mother’s boyfriend is fucking you?” John said.

“So, you’re fucking your stepson—or at least want to and pick up guys who look like him to fuck as substitutes?” Craig shot back.

There was a tense moment of mutually belligerent looks, but John relaxed and gave a little laugh. “OK, I get it. We won’t talk about each other’s family situations. Let’s just leave it there and start over,” he said, and he’d heard enough to figure most of it out. “Still, I hope you have plans to get inside when it really gets cold.”

“Sure, I do,” Craig said. He planned to do that; he just didn’t know how he was going to get it done. He let the family stuff go, and “starting over” wasn’t really a thing. John had already fucked him. For what he was paying, he could fuck him again.

Somehow the conversation colored their relationship, though, because when they came back to the trailer, John wasn’t quick about messing with the young man. It was just a little late to pretend that he hadn’t already done so, of course. He made a big deal about getting Craig’s clothes out of the dryer and getting them folded and then asking if there was anything Craig wanted to watch on TV.

Out of the blue, he said, “You can sleep in the other bedroom tonight if you want. I’ll drive you anywhere you want to go tomorrow before I go to work. Timing will depend on where you want to go.”

Then they settled in on a sofa to watch a pro football game on TV. Craig finally got that he was going to have to be the one to make the moves if they were going to fuck again. He didn’t want to shortchange the man just because some sort of guilt had set in about humping a guy the same age as a stepson he might also be humping. He also wanted the intimacy again. He wanted to die in the man’s arms.

At halftime, Craig sank down on the carpet between John’s thighs, unzipped the man, pulled out his cock, and gave him head. Exhibiting no sign of or desire for resistance, John, murmuring “Oh, fuck, yes,” lay back into the sofa, running his fingers through Craig’s hair, and moaning his pleasure.

They made out on the sofa, slowly shucking their clothes, and by the start of the fourth quarter of the football game on the TV, they were both naked and humping. Craig was sitting in John’s lap, facing him and rising and falling on the man’s cock, both of them panting and grunting, as John clutched Craig’s waist and helped in the rhythm of the fuck.

Do you and your stepson do it this way? Craig was thinking—because he and his mother’s boyfriend did it this way. But he didn’t say it out loud. He didn’t want to go there out loud with John again.

They were done and in close embrace when John’s cell phone rang and he answered it. After expressing an irritated, “Shit” and “Fuck,” he rang off.

“What’s wrong?” Craig asked.

“My crew is short tomorrow,” John said. “I supervise a gardening services crew. This time of year we’re up to our necks in leaf removal for regular customers. I never can keep a full crew going to keep up with the demand. We’re one too short tomorrow to keep up with the schedule.”

“You just use those hand-held leaf blowers?”

“There’s more to it than that, but nothing more difficult to learn. And the pay is good for seasonal work like that.” There was a pause, while Craig gave the man an “are you going to ask?” look. John did. “You’ve ever used a leaf blower before?”

“Sure, lots of times. We have a big yard.” He didn’t want to admit that his mom actually had one of the palatial estates that dotted the rolling Maryland hills in this area and that she was stingy enough that Craig did a lot of yardwork. So did her hunky boyfriend, and as far as Craig knew, that’s what she kept the boyfriend around for—that and because he was all muscle and sex.

“It’s good money. You want to fill in on the crew tomorrow? You could stay with me another night.”

“Sure. Why not? Maybe we should get to bed, though, if you have a full day of work for us tomorrow removing leaves.”

“It’s too early for me to go to sleep,” John said.

“Who said anything about going to sleep? I just said maybe we should go to bed. And I don’t want to use your second bedroom.”

Prospects were looking up for Craig, and he wanted John to continue to like him, so, when they got to the bedroom, Craig gave the man the best servicing he knew to give. They were standing and kissing at the foot of the bed and Craig gently pressed on John’s chest. The man understood what Craig wanted and he sat down on the bed. As he was going down, Craig sank to his knees, grasped John’s knees, and spread the man’s legs.

John was lost to him. “Oh, shit, baby, you got one soft mouth,” he murmured in anticipation as he cradled Craig’s head between his hands, “Just don’t make me come this way. I want you to ride it.”

John groaned as Craig unzipped and released him, took the man’s cock in his mouth, and started into giving him another blow job.

“Yes, baby. What a soft mouth,” John whimpered.

After a few moments of running his fingers into the young man’s hair and guiding his head as it bobbed up and down on his shaft, John groaned and reclined back on the bed.

Taking his mouth off the cock, Craig asked, “You want to come in my mouth or . . .”

“I want you to ride it, baby,” John answered in a low, husky tone.

Craig stripped off the man’s trousers and the jeans he was wearing, moved up to saddling himself on John’s lap, and slowly descended his channel on the shaft, making a cowboy man ride the first of three events on the bed in the night. This your favorite position with your stepson? Craig thought as he rocked back on the buried shaft. It’s what my mother’s boyfriend likes best.

It wasn’t lost on Craig that the man called him “Rob” at one lift-off point during the night.

* * * *

“This is Craig. He’s filling in for Jack, who couldn’t make it today.”

John was introducing Craig to the three other guys gathered at a two-acre plot in the exclusive Chestnut Grove subdivision north of Frederick. They had called John Dave, which Craig, prepared to understand John wasn’t really the man’s name, heard but let go by, getting a grateful look from the man now to be known as Dave. Dave, in turn, covered up for Craig. Craig had slicked up quite nicely even now in outdoor work clothes and one wouldn’t have known that he had been homeless, living under a highway bridge.

“How old is he,” one of the three guys, all of whom were fit Hispanics, asked. Craig looked younger than eighteen to them and, if so, he couldn’t legally be doing this for a gardening service. Some of the Hispanic workers weren’t legal, so it was natural that they didn’t welcome scrutiny of the company’s employees.

“Old enough, more legal than you are to be working in the States, Alvaro,” Dave shot back. And that ended that. “You be nice to Craig and maybe he’ll be nice to you,” Dave continued, giving the crew meaningful looks. The crew, in turn, gave Craig meaningful looks, conveying the idea that they all knew, because of some of the guys Dave brought into the work, which way Dave swung and they were happy to swing in that direction too. And they’d be happy to swing Craig if he was a special friend of Dave’s. this, in turn, gave Craig a clue on what was what in this crew. Dave obviously wasn’t the only one on this crew who fucked men.

“Now, let’s get to work. This guy’s lot should take us about three hours to clear and we then can go on to another job this afternoon. This guy owns some sort of tech company in the D.C. area and he gave really good tips last year, so do a good job. Craig, why don’t you work up near the house?”

They dispersed, but Dave held Craig back. “This guy—his name’s Nathan Somethingorother—gives great tips for other services too—and he likes young guys. Let me make clear off the top that we specialize in services beyond the lawn work and have clients who always call us because we do. This is one of those guys. You and I both know you do it for money. If you’re interested and he’s interested, I could set something up for you with him that would bring both of us profit. But not during working hours here. Anyway, if you’re interested, give good poses while you’re cleaning out around his bushes near the front of the house. He’s looking now, so you are on display.”

Craig turned and looked up at the house, which was a good hundred feet up from where they were standing by the trucks on the road. The windows in the front of the house were full length. A man was standing in one of the windows. He was tall, wearing a silken bathrobe and drinking coffee as he watched the leaf-blowing crew fan out over his vast yard. Craig could see the graying hair at the temples and the trim athletic build. The robe wasn’t pulled all the way closed. The man was in baggy sleeping pants, but his chest was bare, tanned, and well cut. He was hirsute, with dark, curly hair swirling around his pecks and descending to a flat belly. He noticed Dave and Craig looking at him and he saluted the two at the street. Dave waved back, gestured to Craig, and pushed Craig forward to start blowing the leaves out of the bushes at the front of the house.

“I guess this would be a good time to tell you that the company gets 50 percent of your tips,” Dave said, “for whatever work you do,” as he laughed and moved off to check on the other workers.

The display time for possibilities commenced.

There were lots of bushes in front of the house and a mountain of leaves had become trapped behind and entangled with them. It didn’t take long for Craig to become proficient with the leaf blower, and he moved like a slow-motion dancer as he worked his way across the front of the house. Nathan Jenkins, the tech company CEO, moved from window to window, keeping the young man in sight. He seemed to have a bottomless cup of coffee and no intention of changing out of his robe and sleeping shorts anytime soon. The sleeping shorts didn’t leave much to the imagination. The man was interested.

The day was quite warm for November, and after Dave happened by and suggest that Craig go bare-chested, nodding his head toward the man at the window, the young man did. Alvaro and Diego found reason to use their leaf blowers near the front of the house as well, and they took advantage of that to ogle the young man.

Before Craig was finished, Jenkins’s sexual interest in him had become quite obvious. The man had his cock out and was stroking it as he watched Craig work. Craig acted like he didn’t notice, but it heated him up. He didn’t even notice when the man splashed his seed on the windowpane and withdrew into the darkness of the house. Therefore, it wasn’t much of a stretch to lead into lunch in the trucks, where Alvaro showed Craig a couple of fifties and climbed into the backseat of Dave’s double-cab truck, put Craig under him, readjusted both of their clothes, and fucked Craig in a missionary. Diego and Dave stood outside the truck and watched Alvaro’s buttocks rise and fall in harmony with the clutching and unclutching of the fingers of Craig’s hands pressed into the Hispanic’s shoulder blades. Dave and Diego, both rubbing the material taut over their crotches, let out their breath in a long sigh, as Craig exclaimed, “Fuck, yes!” and Alvaro tensed, jerked, and came, tensed, jerked, and came.

When they were getting ready to leave after lunch, having sucked up and mulched all of the tech company CEO’s leaves, Craig looked up and the man was standing in his front doorway, beckoning to them.

“He wants us to come up to the house,” Craig said.

“What he wants and what he gets right now are two different things,” Dave answered. “He’ll be lusting for it more if he has to wait. I’ll have to tell him what the deal is. Get in the truck. We’ve got another job to do this afternoon. I’m still short a crew member.”

That evening, crew members Alvaro and Diego came back to the doublewide trailer with Dave and Craig to drink beer, eat delivered pizza, and watch another pro football game on the TV together. Dave had paid the guys for the work they’d done that day in under-the-counter cash. Craig wasn’t the only one in the crew being paid this way.

The guys had put in a day’s manual labor and had cash money in their jeans pockets. They had downed countless amounts of beer in cans and satisfied their hunger for food. The football game was boring and they had other hungers. In the kitchen, where Craig had gone to do some tidying up, Dave approached him and whispered in his ear. “The guys have money burning in their pockets now. Remember that the company gets 50 percent.”

Craig nodded and went to the bathroom and then into the master bedroom, where he stripped and lay down on his back on the bed, leaving the door open to the rest of the trailer. He spread and bent his legs, feet flat on the mattress. His hips were raised by a pillow. He fisted his cock. There was a direct line of sight from the living area of his puckering hole.

Bringing more cans of beer back to the living area, Dave distributed it to the two muscular Hispanics sitting on the sofa and said something to them in low tones. Both grinned from ear to ear. After a few minutes, Diego tossed off his beer and went to the bathroom. He was stripping down as he left the john and headed into the master bedroom. The trailer was like a shotgun house. From anywhere else in the living and kitchen area you could see into the master bedroom and the full length of the queen-sized bed if the bedroom door was open, which it was.

Dave’s and Alvaro’s attention moved from the TV screen to the bedroom, where a naked, hunky Diego was on his back and a young, willowy, and naked Craig was saddled on the Hispanic’s hips, facing his head, leaning back, with his hands on the Hispanic’s knees, and riding Diego’s cock in the cowboy man position.

Craig could be heard in the other room. “Shit. Fuck. Yes. You’re huge!”

When a commercial came up on the TV, Alvaro stood and stripped by the sofa, went into the bathroom, came out, entered the bedroom, climbed up on the bed, and embraced and mounted Craig from behind, with the two Hispanics now fucking the eighteen-year-old Craig in a double penetration.

The glimpses of the young man writhing between the two Hispanic hunks and his cries of taking, told Dave this was probably Craig’s first DP. The young man was sexy and enough of a slut that Dave didn’t think it would be his last. In any case, he’d survive it and was making him—no, them—good money.

After Diego and Alvaro had had all their hunger satiated and had left for the night, Dave turned off the TV and the lights in the living area; visited the bathroom, where he disrobed and showered; and went into the bedroom, standing at the foot of the bed, naked. Craig lay on his back on the bed, legs spread and bent, feet flat on the mattress again, one hand stroking his cock, and the other arm slung across his face.

“Had enough for tonight?” Dave asked.

“Depends on who’s asking,” Craig answered.

“I’m asking.”

“No, I haven’t had enough yet.”

“You’re such a slut,” Dave growled, but he was smiling.

Craig was panting lightly and moaning in low tones. There was a slight smile on his face too, though. There was a pile of cash on the nightstand next to the bed, amounting to more than a third of what Diego and Alvaro had earned that day. So, Craig’s earnings for the day were really, really nice. Despite the arm over his face, he knew Dave was there.

“You OK, kid?” Dave asked.

“Couldn’t be better,” Craig answered.

“You sure you couldn’t be any better?” the man asked.

“Try me. Are you gonna fuck me now too, Daddy?”

“Yes, son, I’m going to fuck you now too.”

“Do I give as good tail as your stepson does?” Craig asked.

“For that you get fucked hard,” John growled.

And then Dave did fuck him hard. He climbed up on the bed, knees between Craig’s spread legs; moved an arm under the young man’s back, lifting Craig to him; and put the head of his erection in place.

“Now, now! Put it in! Fuck me!” Craig cried out, digging his fingernails into the man’s biceps and hugging his knees to Dave’s hips. He cried out again as Dave thrust up into him and began to pump hard and fast. The dance of the fuck had started again, the man amazed at what a sexual firecracker the eighteen-year-old was.

Later as they lay in each other’s arms and were cooling down, Dave said, “My wife and kid will be home the day after tomorrow. I’ve made an arrangement for you, though. Nathan Whatshisname wants you—bad. We’ll both make a bundle off him, if you’re game. And as long as you’re good to him, you’ll have someplace warm to stay this winter.”

“Sounds good,” Craig said as he drifted off into sleep.

* * * *

The next day, as the gardening service’s crew was having its lunch before finishing up the leaf blowing on the lot of one of the older Victorian mansions in the town of Frederick, a Mercedes SUV rolled up to the curb and the driver honked its horn. Craig looked out toward the street and then back to see that Dave was standing there with Craig’s duffel bag in his hand. Craig hadn’t seen that go into the truck when they’d left the doublewide that morning.

“You’re moving me on?” he asked Dave. He recognized the Mercedes. The garage door at Nathan Jenkins’s Chestnut Grove subdivision mansion had been open. Two Mercedes had been inside the garage—a two-seater sports car and this SUV.

“I phoned Jenkins,” Dave said. “He’s hot for you. He offered fifty a day for you—for your cut—plus housing and board for as long as you stay with him. He does it rough, though. I should warn you of that. That’s over $73,000 a year, free and clear of maintenance, It’s a good deal. And my family’s coming back to town tomorrow. You’ll have to go somewhere.”

“But your family isn’t moving in with you when they come back, are they?” Craig said.

“No. But my stepson comes over, sometimes without notice.”

“The young man—your stepson is the main thing here, isn’t he?” And Craig knew the stepson’s name was Rob. His name was on some of the stuff in his room at Dave’s trailer. “Will I see you again if I agree to go to Jenkins?”

“I don’t think so, unless that doesn’t work out and you need to have some work. I’ll always take you back on to blow leaves, if you need the work.”

“But I won’t be blowing you again?”

“I don’t think so,” Dave answered. He had decency to look regretful.

“Because of the stepson? Because I remind you of your stepson?”

“You are so much like him—and you two look alike and are the same age. It just doesn’t seem to be right.”

That was when Craig knew for sure that Dave was fucking his stepson. It was as close as Dave was coming to admitting it. And he’d come looking for it when his family was gone and he’d found someone just like his stepson. The young man was coming back, though. Craig was a complication Dave no longer needed. Craig was sort of sad. Dave had fucked him right.

“This is a way for you to keep out of the clutches of your mom’s boyfriend,” Dave said. “You want what the boyfriend gives; you just are conflicted because he’s doing your mom too. This just moves you on to a better hookup. This Nathan guy doesn’t have anyone else for you to worry about.”

The car horn sounded again.

“It’s a good deal,” Dave said. “Don’t let it get away from you—unless he gets too rough.”

“I’d be making fifty a day. How much will you be making to pimp me?” Craig asked.

“It’s a good deal,” Dave growled, thrusting the duffel bag at Craig. “You know what the company’s cut is. Leave the leaf blower here and go to the car.”

Craig took the duffel bag, said, “Sorry. Thanks for making the hookup.” He knew that Dave really was trying to set up a better situation for him. He turned and walked across the newly bare front lawn as the passenger door to the Mercedes opened.

* * * *

“And this is the master bedroom. Your bedroom will be down the hall—if you want to use it.”

Nathan Jenkins was showing Craig around his large Chestnut Grove house. Craig had been wondering how the man took care of all of this himself until they’d gotten to the kitchen and Jenkins introduced Craig to two young Hispanic men, Ricardo and Carlos, in the kitchen. Both were relatively young, not more than late twenties, both were trim and good-looking, and neither looked at Craig like he was competition. Their scrutiny of and smiles for him indicated more that he was an infusion into the sport of the house. This impression was because both were stripped down to just athletic shorts, which is what Jenkins reduced his clothing to as soon as they got to the house.

Craig felt overdressed, but he had the definite feeling he wouldn’t remain that way for long.

Craig didn’t have time to remark on the possible sleeping arrangements when they got to the master bedroom, because Jenkins had come in close to him and was pressing down on Craig’s shoulder with one hand while slipping his athletic shorts off his hips and stepping out of them with the other.

“Dave tells me you have a soft mouth,” he murmured.

Craig got the hint, went down on his knees, grasped the man’s hips with his hands, took Jenkins’s erection in his mouth, and gave him head.

The first fucking was nearby, on the bed, with Craig, now stripped, bent over the foot of the bed, and Jenkins folded over his back, grasping the young man’s wrists with his hands, Craig’s arms forced over his head, and Jenkins mounted on and rhythmically fucking the young man’s ass. Craig hadn’t been in the house for more than a half hour.

Once Craig had been initiated, those in the house went without clothes altogether. Lunch was in the breakfast room, served by Ricardo and Carlos. All four of them were in erection, thinking of what came after lunch. Craig was given a good idea what that might be. Dave had warned him that Jenkins could be rough. He hadn’t warned him about Ricardo and Carlos and that Jenkins liked to watch too, although perhaps Dave didn’t know there was a Ricardo and Carlos. He may not have expressed worry anyway, having already watched his own grounds crew DP Craig in his trailer the previous night. He’d watched Craig handle that just fine and then wanting more from Dave. The way the two Hispanic houseboys hovered around Craig during lunch, touching him and each other, Craig wasn’t surprised that they wanted to use him together.

The question was whether Jenkins would be willing to share. It was his money. The answer was the he was willing to share, but he wanted to watch.

The hint of what Jenkins would want for himself, though, was provided by what, besides food, was displayed on the lunch table—restraints and a riding crop. During the meal Jenkins kept touching these and looking at Craig. He finally cleared his throat and started to speak, but Craig anticipated him. “I’d been told about this,” Craig said. Jenkins smiled and resumed his lunch.

“I’ve been told about these,” Craig repeated, touching the restraints and riding crop on the table, “but I wasn’t told about them,” he said, gesturing to the two houseboys.

“And, so, if you stay it will become a pleasant surprise,” Jenkins said, smiling again.

“Pleasant for you certainly.”

The smile remained on Jenkins’s face. “Let us be clear. As long as I am paying what I’m paying, it’s my pleasure that counts.”

And that was that. Craig clammed up.

After they ate, Ricardo and Carlos guided Craig into their bedroom off the kitchen, put him between them, and fucked him together, Ricardo, in front, and Carlos, behind, sharing his hole. They did as well with him, and brought as many moans and groans out of him, as Alvaro and Diego had the night before. Jenkins stood in the doorway and watched, stroking himself off, waiting for his turn on top, first with Ricardo and then with Carlos. Each DP was becoming easier and more pleasurable to Craig, which was a good thing, as the arrangement in Jenkins’s house indicated he would get many of them as long as he stayed here.

The afternoon and evening were for Jenkins alone. Craig was bound at all four points, spread-eagled, face down, not in Jenkins’s bed, but in Jenkins’s sexual workout room in the basement of the mansion. Here, the man used his riding crop on the young man’s bare buttocks, not striking too hard, and opened the young man’s hole wide—not really required after Craig’s session sandwiched between the two Hispanic houseboys—with a Doc Johnson Master D dildo. Then, running an arm under the moaning young man’s belly, he raised Craig to his knees, mounted him, and fucked him.

Later, the young man was introduced to the room’s X-frame and kneeling bench. That night he was in the man’s bed, Jenkins too exhausted to demand more than a sixty-nine blow job until sometime around 3:00 a.m., when the man was rejuvenated and “requested” and received a cowboy ride. Ken was accommodating. He’d been told that he could sleep in the next day as long as he wanted to.

Lying there, in the man’s embrace, near dawn, Craig contemplated whether he enjoyed this—whether he would receive pleasure from it, which, so far he did more than suffering from it. Chances were that this was a flurry of initial activity that would settle down into something less taxing and strenuous soon enough. But was it worth the effort? He went to sleep thinking that, yes, it was, given that it was predicted to be a cold winter. He could endure it for four months of cold weather. Overall, he was having a good time with it.

It certainly beat sitting and shivering under the underpass bridge over the stream into Monarch Ridge Park west of Frederick.