The Night Owl

 The sun had risen by the time we found a place to stay. I must have been driving north, judging by the direction of the light – driving away from the city, as far as I could get. My mind was blank, mired in cold shock, but it certainly knew where it didn't want to be.

 I found a small, shabby motel along the side of the empty state highway soon enough. It was a long, plainly bricked strip of rooms surrounded by the slow rise of the mountains and the lush emerald-green of the summer's end. I parked the van and nearly got out before I remembered how naked I was. I slid into the back. 

 Ben had collected himself at some point. He was curled up beneath the quilts, staring at the wall. He looked like a little boy who'd had a bad dream. 

 I said nothing to him as I got dressed, fishing my crumpled clothes from various corners of the van, where he'd tossed them what seemed like eons ago. “Be right back,” I muttered. He didn't answer.

 The clerk in the office was a small, wrinkled old husk of a woman in a faded dress covered with blue flower print. She squinted at me from behind her glasses and sniffed, saying nothing as I handed her a folded wad of cash. “Just twenty-four hours, if that,” I said flatly, and she nodded once before swiveling away from me in her chair and turning up the volume on her talk show.

 I returned to the van with the key. I'd chosen the room all the way at the end, the furthest from the office and the road. I pulled the van around the edge of the building and parked it behind the dumpsters, as out of sight as I could get it. I was being careful, but I wasn't too worried. No one would find Redding for quite some time. We could relax for the moment.

 I turned back to Ben. He'd let the quilts drop off of his shoulders and put on his glasses. He was buttoning up his shirt, still looking empty and lost. “Got us a room,” I told him, my voice carefully deadened. “We both need to rest, before anything else. But...” I rubbed the worn surface of the steering wheel with my fingers, the nervousness creeping back into my brain. “We need to talk, when you're feeling up for it. About...about where you're going to live now. You can't go back.”

 His head tilted towards me, if only a little. “What are you talking about?”

 I swallowed. “I mean...what happened tonight...” He grimaced. “It's not just gonna go away. I doubt the cops will care too much, when they...identify the body. If they find it – when they find it. But Pendrick...he'll take it personally, and he'll know exactly who did it...”

 “Let's just go inside,” he grumbled softly. “I can't handle this shit right now. I don't want to think about it. I don't want to think about anything.”

 “This is serious shit, Ben...”

 He put his hands on his head and shrank away from me. “I'm not an idiot, you fucking asshole! I get it! Just shut up about it for now. Please.”

 I sighed. “Fine.” I grabbed a few things, then led him into the hotel like the silent, tired child he'd become.

 The room was large and smelled of mothballs. Its walls were covered in planks of thin, cheap hardwood, and the drab purple carpet was thick and almost greasy. There was an old television against one wall and a mounted buck's head on the other, hanging between the two double-sized beds. 

 Ben glanced at the beds, then at me, but I couldn't read him. He went straight to the nearest of the two and crawled over the covers. He tossed his glasses on the nightstand and buried his face in the stale pillows that were piled under the headboard. His breathing had evened out mere seconds after I'd closed and locked the door. He had passed out. 

 I left him to sleep off the shock of the night and went into the bathroom, a narrow yellow room with a small window above the shower stall. I unzipped and took what felt like the longest piss of my life, letting out every drop of yellow that had been stretching the walls of my bladder for the last twenty-four hours.

 I avoided looking in the mirror, knowing I wouldn't like what I saw. It would look better after a shower. I began to peel off my shirt...but I thought struck me. I listened. Nothing. 

 I glanced around the edge of the open door. Ben was still on the bed, on his stomach. Still sleeping. What would he do when he woke up? Not two or three hours ago he'd been assaulting me just as roughly as the worst of them. He'd pushed me further than anyone ever had, anyone other than… 

 He'd seemed remorseful after that, genuinely so, but how well did I actually know him? Before it actually happened, I could never have imagined him attacking me, kidnapping me, forcing his cock into me...

 I shut the bathroom door. Locked it. I didn't care if he heard it.

 The water in the shower stall was steaming hot by the time I stepped into it. It ran down my naked skin in steaming, rippling rivulets that were quickly darkening, becoming brown and dirty oceans by the time they splashed at my feet. I scrubbed myself down with soapy lather, even covering my face with it. I pushed it deep into the used crevasse of my ass, grunting at the piercing sting but also feeling very much relieved. 

 I don't know how long I stayed under that hot torrent, but I do know I felt clean – finally clean – when I stepped out. As I dried off and got dressed, I chanced a glance in the mirror. Apart from a band of dark red bruising on each wrist, I was unharmed – at least outwardly. I looked a little pale, but that was all. I was still handsome, which was a relief for some reason, as if everything that had happened could have twisted my features somehow, mutated me beneath the skin. But no...I was still rugged, still had my short black hair and my thick stubble, my heavy brow and hawk-like nose. My eyes, though…purple bags of paper-thin flesh beneath empty, shimmering gray orbs...

 I blinked and looked away. I took a deep breath and opened the door. The room beyond was glowing with warm, tawny browns and golds. The sun had fully risen outside, though the blinds and the thick drawn curtains were muffling most of its glory.

 Ben was a long, curved form on the bed, lying right where I'd left him on the far bed, nearest the door. The broad mounds of his shoulders were there, slowly rising and falling with his rhythmic, unconscious breathing...the smooth slope of his spine, where his shirt had lifted to expose the light fuzz that dusted the small of his muscular back, only so visible in this morning glow...the firm mounds of his strong ass beneath his belt…

 I could walk over to him right now and pull down his pants. I could shove my face into his big ass, eat him out while I played with his nipples, and he'd be ready to fuck in seconds.  He wouldn't be able to stop himself. He's scared out of his mind, and he wants to feel safe more than anything...and his body's got to be busting to come after all this time...I could fuck him right now...pay him back...

 I tore my eyes from him, trying to ignore the tightness in my boxers. If there were ever a time not to have sex with him, this was it. How could I even be thinking about it? 

 I sat down on the empty bed, facing him. “Ben.”

 He didn't move. I reached out and touched him, pushing his shoulder just a little. “Ben. We should really talk about what happened.” He went on breathing, went on sleeping. It wouldn't be any use. Shock had taken its toll. He was dead to the world for now. Some part of me know just how harmless he was now, and I was tired enough to agree with it. And, just like that, the heavy weight of fear was lifted.

 I sighed and lay back on the bed as exhaustion finally rushed over me. I stretched out, nearly put my arms behind my head – but the searing pain in my shoulders made me wince. I wrapped my arms around my stomach instead, and the throbbing ache in my joints began to dissipate. The dull, warm light of the room darkened, rushing through my ears, roaring and soothing and calm. Soon enough, I was dead to the world as well.

 I was woken up some time later, torn away from a restless sleep that had been swimming with visions of burnt flesh and bright red bone. 

 Ben was in the bed with me, his dense weight sinking into the mattress to my left. His body was pressed up against mine, hard angles and smooth, firm planes that shifted and swelled with his breathing. His breaths were heavy and rough and irregular, each grazed by a frightened whimper. I could feel heat and moisture on my arm, my chest – he was sweating through his shirt, drenching us both. The stuffed buck's head watched it all from above, stupid and dead.

 “Hey.” I pushed his arm off my chest and grabbed his shoulder. Shook him. “Ben. Ben. Wake up.”

 The sudden blue of his eyes startled me as they fluttered open, pupils shrinking, and he saw me. He was already red in the face, but he got redder. “Hey uh...sorry.” He'd been drooling a little, a dab of wet spit leaking from the corner of his rose-colored lips. “Sorry.”

 “You got in bed with me,” I said groggily, not sure why I was saying it.

 “Yeah...” He sat up, rubbing his neck sheepishly, looking around with a dazed expression. “Sorry...I don't remember doing that...”

 I grabbed his forearm, secretly hot at the feel of the corded muscles moving beneath his warm, furry skin. I didn't know why I was doing it, until I realized I wanted him to stay right where he was. “It's fine,” I told him. “I get it. Last night was ah...something else.”

 “That's a way to put it...” He shivered, falling back onto the bed like a mild, pleasant earthquake. I let him stay pressed against me. I smelled his sweat, his musk – so much of it, washing over me, threatening to overwhelm my senses. My cock was getting very hard. 

 He'd put his hands over his face, forcing his breathing into slow, even exhales. “I can't believe I watched somebody die.”

 My cock began to soften. “We don't have to talk about it,” I muttered. I really didn't want to talk about it.

 He took his hands away from his face, looking me over. “I thought I was going to die last night,” he blurted, looking me straight in the eyes. I glanced away, nervous for some reason, but he was still staring at my face when I looked back. The words were tumbling out of him, tripping over one another, dripping with an embarrassing amount of blatant emotion. “That guy – Redding – he had a gun on me that whole time. He kept telling me what he was gonna do to me...he said...he said he was about to give me the 'last fuck of my life,' and he was gonna make sure he uh...” Ben smiled wanly, as if it were the only thing he could do. “He was gonna make sure he hurt me doing it.” His voice was shaking. “You never scared me that bad, Johnny, not even when you...ah, when you were so angry with me. You're nothing like him...you never would have...”

 My skin was going cold listening to this. I knew how close it had come to happening. I wanted to kill Redding all over again for a second or two, before I remembered how monstrous the first time had been...the jolt of his jaw shattering on the other side of the whiskey bottle...the smell of the flames... 

 “I'm sorry,” I said, meaning it. “You never even should have met that bastard. If it weren't for me...” I felt my gaze drifting past him, past the room, into nothingness. Numbness. “Sometimes I wish you'd never met me.” 

 Ben was lying on his side, facing me, propping up his head with his elbow. He was still holding me down with his eyes. The thick, pleasant odor of his drying sweat was sour and sweet and intoxicating. He was silent for a long time. 

 “I don't know how to feel when I look at you.” His voice was even and calm. 

 I blinked. I knew exactly how he felt.

 “Part of me wants to hold you down and fuck your brains out,” he said bluntly, his voice husky with the remnants of sleep. “Whether you like it or not. But another part of me gets all hot...” He indicated his lower stomach with an absent wave of his hand. “...You know. Up inside. Like I'm horny, but a lot more than that. Deeper and fuller, and...I guess it's not that different from what chicks feel, huh? When they think about getting fucked by a dude. You uh...you probably know.”

 His cheeks were quickly reddening as he talked, but his gaze remained firm. “Another part of me...wants to, uh...” He blushed deeper, and his eyes softened. “Wants to hold you. It's stupid, but I don't care. I could always tell you weren't just some cocky asshole, you know. That's why I was interested in you in the first place, I think, before I knew the game you were playing. You were acting out a part, always putting up that alpha-dog front so nobody knew how bad you're really hurting. I can see through it now, more than ever. I want to...” 

 He shook his head and finally looked away, the frankness of his words catching up to him. “My marriage was a sham from the beginning, but it was my sham. My choice. My life. After the shit you pulled, when my wife left me...I was only listening to the part of me that wanted to beat the shit out of you. It was...I don't know, the loudest voice. It got all mixed up and confused with everything else, and it just got worse the longer you left me alone. When you told me you were leaving town...and you gave me a chance to act on everything I'd...wanted to do...” He looked disturbed by the memory, but he also licked his lips absently. “I guess I just snapped. I don't really remember what I was actually thinking when I...uh...” He shrugged, at a loss, his face alight with deep red shame.

 “How do you feel now?” I asked tentatively. I didn't know which instincts I wanted to follow. I wanted to wrap my arms around him, wanted to suck him off, wanted to get up and leave as fast as I could.

 “Oh, I don't feel that way now. That part's gone. Everything else, sure...and then some...but I don't want to hurt you anymore. That's not something I ever really wanted...” His face was going slack, discovering the words as he said them. “I can see what's been happening, all this time. You were playing with my life, putting me through hell...but all you really did was make me feel fucking amazing...ultimately, anyway...at least, most of the time. What I mean is, I never would've known it was possible to feel the way you made me feel...like I could just let go with somebody, much less a guy...but I was being a total pussy about it. I didn't like losing control, even if that was the whole damn point. Even if I needed it. I think I sorta deserved to get handled the way I got handled, at least one or two times – the sex, I mean...” 

 His eyes were misting over, staring at the dead television screen. “I don't think I ever really loved her. My wife, I mean. Not really. Otherwise, I never would've fucked around with Tammy in the first place...never would've lied about it...and then you'd never have found those pics I'd saved, and you'd never have blackmailed me...”

 “Ben...”

 “No no, it's good. Let me finish. I just...I want to say that I know exactly what kind of person I've been. I was a fucking asshole who cheated on his wife and lied to her about it, and all you did was teach me a lesson for it. It was going to end badly the second I started sending dirty texts to Tammy, one way or another. It was easy to blame everything on you when my wife left me with nothing, but...after getting a gun pulled on me...” 

He closed his eyes. His cheeks were pink beneath his light brown stubble. His brow was soft now, smooth and free of strain. He was truly lovely in that moment. Serene. “It made a lot of things pretty clear to me. My wife's gone, my job's gone, and pretty much everything I own is in that fucking van of yours...but at least I'm alive, right?” He opened his eyes, and they were on me again. “I need to stop blaming everybody else for my problems. I have to start being honest…and, well...I guess that's all I have to say.” 

 I looked away, feeling strange. The silence that followed his long and crippling confession began to swell, to vibrate, to hum. I felt the idiotic need to fill it with something of equal value, though I wasn't exactly sure what it would be. 

 “Well...uh…” I cleared my throat and sat up, nervous now that he was looking my way. “For what it's worth, I'm much more of an asshole than you ever were.” God, I hated the way I sounded, like an awkward kid in a public speaking class. “You scared the shit out of me yesterday, you know...and I don't know if I'll ever be able to clench my ass shut again...” I laughed nervously, but he just frowned and crossed his arms behind his neck. 

 “But uh...anyway...” I rubbed the back of my head, feeling lame, feeling exposed. “I know why you did it. Why you handcuffed me in the back of my own van, I mean...why you roughed me up. I'm a fucking asshole who screwed up your entire life, and all you did was...teach me a lesson for it.” 

 He opened his mouth to protest, but I shook my head. “No, man – it's too late to try and sugar coat anything. I've always been like this. I've always lured guys in, played with their heads, used them like toys – and then I throw them away.” I tried to laugh again, I don't know why, but I just ended up feeling ill. “It's fun and everything – a real fucking thrill, actually – but I guess, more than anything, it just feels...safer that way. For me.” 

I felt myself grimace, felt my skin crawl at the thought of what I'd allowed myself to become over the years. “I covered it up with a shit-eating grin and played at being a coldblooded bastard for a long time, but it never actually made me feel strong. It just made everything worse, and all of the actual coldblooded bastards saw right through it anyway.” My stomach was sinking into the bed beneath me. The world felt like a disintegrating cloud of dingy vapor. “But I'm through with that life. I'm done pretending to be something I'm not. I'm not really a badass, you know. I carry, sure, but I'd never killed anybody before...” 

 Something inside me shivered, threatened to crack. I held it down. Pressed on. “I've got no legitimate job history, no family, and no home. I'm just a mean, bitter, scared, used-up...thing.” It felt right to say it out loud. It also felt terrible. I couldn't look at him. “Anyway...I guess we're even, now.”

 I started to get up, but he grabbed my arm. He was strong, insistent, and I didn't have the energy to resist him. He pulled me back down onto the quilts, pressing his body against mine once more. I opened my mouth to say something dreary and self-pitying, but instead found it filled with his tongue. 

 I grunted with surprise. I tasted his breath as it flooded my mouth, felt his lips lock around my own as the pleasing scruff of his trimmed beard bore down on my skin, claiming everything below my cheekbones. 

 I responded instinctively, meeting his sudden lust...no, passion, with a raw explosion of my own. I grabbed a handful of his hair and pushed my tongue against his, each of us taking turns pinning the other's to the roof of our mouths. This intimate oral sparing created a hot mess of struggling, slippery gyrations that mingled each lazy gush of spit that lathered our lips. We were kissing, actually kissing. It was better than I'd ever given it credit for.

 “You saved me,” he was saying between each sloppy, sucking kiss. He was holding my head in his hands, pulling my face against his in a desperate way, an honest way. I felt the hard knob of his cock pressing against my thigh with all the rest of him, and my own swiftly stiffening shaft ached in turn. “You saved me...” I did, didn't I?

 I put my hand over his hard crotch and rubbed the swollen head of his cock through the moist patch of fabric that covered it. He grunted lustily into my mouth, and my entire body tingled in response, ready to devour him from the inside out. The rage was gone from him, truly gone. He still wanted me. Badly. There was nothing to hide, no reason to.

 I ignored the pain from my cramping limbs and rolled on top of him, straddling him with my thighs. He looked dazed, gazing up at me with his bright blue eyes above the auburn scruff of his beard. I pushed his arms away and unbuttoned his shirt, pulling it open to reveal the firm, subtly rolling muscles of his furry chest and stomach. I put my hands over the mounds of his pecs, gripping them completely like the luscious breasts they were. His nipples were stiff and sharp against my palms, pinpoints of arousal clearer than any words could ever be. This made his entire body stiffen, including his hard cock where it lay pinned beneath my own. My hands went lower, over the meat of his ribs, then the trail of soft hair that ran down the middle of him and the taut belly beneath.

 “I was afraid you'd never want to do this again,” he was saying breathlessly, watching me feel him up with a tentative expression of pure joy on his handsome, masculine face. “I thought I fucked everything up...”

 “Quiet,” I said. I hadn't just barked an order at him, I realized. My voice was soft. Soothing. He obeyed.

 I got off of him and stood at the foot of the bed, gazing down at him. I unbuckled my belt as he watched, ready to explode. “Take off your clothes,” I told him. “I want –”

 He launched himself off the bed and fell on me like a predator, pushing me back against the wall with a hard thump that knocked half the wind out of me. He was kneeling now, pulling my belt off my waist, clumsily yanking my pants and boxers down around my ankles. My long cock was in his strong hand a moment later, hard and naked and tightly squeezed. 

 “What're you –”

 “Shut up.” His voice was soft. Soothing. I obeyed, and grabbed two handfuls of his hair as his mouth fell around my cock. He immediately began to suckle, tenderly, as I felt the length of my shaft slide down the back of his impossibly hot, wet, constricting throat.

 He gagged a little, but not much. He was growling hungrily, happily, deep-throating me by sheer force of will. I felt his tongue working its way around my shaft as he took me in, pushing against my meat as it flexed, exploring every inch of it as my nerves pulsed and imploded. I was in to the hilt, and his nose was sniffing deeply where it lay buried in the dark mound of my pubes. His bearded chin tickled and teased my hanging nutsack below, impossible to escape. I groaned happily, my reedy voice filling up the warm, still room. My hips were pumping slightly into his mouth, wanting to fuck but loving the attention. He was devouring me completely, quickly easing me into a final state of calm acceptance.

 He pulled away after long moments of this, taking a deep, gasping breath with a dazed smile on his face. He held the base of my cock firmly, making it bob in front of his mouth. A drooping string of wet spit linked his lips to my cockhead, glistening in the muffled sunlight before it split apart and became vapor. “Fuck, I missed this thing,” Ben exclaimed, voice deep and thick with lust as his eyes took in my spit-soaked cock. His free hand left my hip and ran up beneath my shirt, raking over my tensing stomach, my sinewy flanks. I was close to being putty in his hands. “I missed this, man...”

 How deep his voice sounded, how ruddy. Lusty. I knew what he wanted. I knew what he missed.

 “Come on,” I said. “Get up.” 

 He got to his feet, pulling off his shirt as he did, eager to be naked with me. His beefy pecs and his lean stomach flexed gracefully as he freed himself, and I watched with supreme appreciation. “Take off your pants.” He grinned and unzipped, letting them fall to his feet. “Everything.”

 “Hold your horses,” he shot back, bending over as he pulled his bunched underwear off his ankle. He'd only been naked for half a second before I jumped him the same way he'd jumped me. I pushed him over and let him fall on his back across the bed, hard cock slapping against his stomach as it flopped about gracelessly, beautifully. He looked surprised, but only for an instant. I wasn't looking at his face after that; I'd pushed my shoulders up under his thighs, his knees, and I'd buried my face in the sweaty heat of his crotch. 

 “Oh, oh shit,” he whispered, as I pulled back his foreskin and stuffed his thick, pink cock into my mouth. He lay back, arching his spine and firmly thrusting his hard tool deeper into my maw. “Oh fuck, fuck yes...” There he was. There was my slut.

 I pushed my hand up the warm flesh of his stomach, over the rapid beating of his heard, and found his mouth. I pushed two of my fingers past his lips. He took the cue, sucking on my knuckles and groaning around them as I gave his cock a hungry, thorough tongue massage. His body flexed and undulated beneath me, consuming me with the sight of so much naked, ruddy, horny flesh. I groaned and growled around the thick piece of meat in my mouth, shoving my tongue along the sensitive edge of the mushroom-shaped cockhead, tasting every thick drop of precum that oozed from its tender tip. His cock twitched and throbbed between my lips, swelling to even greater dimensions as his beefy thighs squeezed and quivered around my neck.

 I looked up the rolling landscape of his naked, blushing body and found him looking down at me, sucking on my fingers like teats. I locked eyes with him, bobbing on his delicious cock, letting it dip into the back of my throat again and again and marveling at the fact that I wasn't gagging on it. His hands were running through my short hair, massaging my scalp, tickling my ears. 

 I pushed his legs apart. I guided his hands to the undersides of his thighs, and then he was holding his legs open for me, watching intently as his chest heaved hotly beneath his bearded chin. I took his cock in hand and pulled away from his body, stretching it down and out and toward my mouth, where I could still taste him. His lightly-furred balls sagged below it, cradling his fuzzy, swollen taint. Every muscle of his body was tense and taut, every line of thick sinew pointing toward the soft, sweaty bush of his crotch and the hefty tool I was squeezing so deliciously. I lowered my mouth around it once more – all the way around it. I ate him alive in one go, opening my throat to his thick, cream-soaked cock until my nose was buried in the dense musk of his pubes. I felt it swell in my mouth, larger than ever, but I had it trapped.

 He threw his head back and sighed deeply, throatily, until it became a groan of immense pleasure. I held him there, pulsing in my mouth, my throat, swallowing hungrily as hot pearls of precum dripped down the back of my gullet to be digested like the nectar it was. I withdrew after several intense seconds, and slowly released his cock as my lips squeezed and slurped around its escaping girth. 

 I let his cock pop out of my mouth with a wet squelch, and he sighed. He'd thrown his arms over his eyes, and I could only see his lips as they trembled. “Oh god, oh fuck...don't do that again, Johnny...I'll come if you do...”

 Of course. During all the long hours leading up to this moment (don't think about that), Ben hadn't come once. His balls were huge against my chin, brimming with juice and ready to burst. 

 I left his cock alone and sucked up half of his velvety scrotum, along with one of his large nuts. His legs opened wide, releasing my neck. He hissed, moaned, and clenched his eyes shut as he grabbed the pillows behind his head, left listless by the sensation. Ah – he liked this. Most guys I'd fucked didn't care for it. Why had I never sucked on these prizes before?

 I forced my jaw open and carefully took the other large, delicate morsel into my mouth, loving the musky taste of his crotch and the fuzzy softness of his nutsack as it became even softer and wetter between my cheeks and above my tongue. I began to trace my tongue around my plump, tender prisoners in tight, smooth circles. I loved watching him writhe, loved listening to his voice melt into the shameless whimper of an utter slut. “Oh, fuck Johnny – what're you doing to me...”

 I let his balls slip out of my mouth and pushed them up away from his taint, revealing the twitching pink pucker of his hole. It was soft and almost mysterious in the dim light of the room, but I could see everything, remember everything. I traced the rim of his hole with a spit-slick finger, watched it quiver and pulse with anticipation. “I'm gonna turn you over,” I told him. “Ready?” He only nodded his head beneath his crossed forearms, but it was clear he was more than fine with it.

 A clumsy moment later I had him on his knees and elbows atop the ruffled bed, his gorgeous, meaty, fuzzy bubble butt perked above the downward slope of his back, the intimate pink pucker of his hole now open and exposed and hungry for whatever I wanted to feed it. I put my hands on each of his firm ass cheeks and gently pulled them apart. His hole twitched beneath my hot breath, pushing out slightly, eagerly, growing even pinker in color as it blushed.

 For a sickening moment I was afraid I'd feel the old rush of sadistic excitement, now that I had him like this – bent and submissive and vulnerable. Perhaps the person I'd been before would have jumped at the chance for vengeance, would have smothered him into half-consciousness with a pillow and force-fucked my way to feeling better about myself, just to keep the viscous cycle churning.  

 I felt none of that, however. Instead I saw the moment for what it was. I wasn't blackmailing him any longer. I hadn't drugged him, or plied him with liquor, and his hands weren't bound or tied to a post. Ben was giving himself over to me because he wanted to. He wanted me inside of him, even after seeing me fucked like a whore by strangers, even after I'd used my cock to hurt him, even after he'd emasculated me himself. Whatever he'd felt for me before that shit storm, it had survived. There was no way to misinterpret naked lust for me; the heat of his arousal was washing over my face even now.

 I slapped the broad meat of his ass, felt it jiggle firmly beneath my palm. His head popped up, turning back to glance at me as a startled yip escaped his lips. “Fucking prick,” he muttered, smirking dreamily beneath his half-hooded eyes.

 “I couldn't help it,” I replied, rubbing the buoyant flesh of his ass as it reddened and firmed. “I missed this fine thing.”

 He blushed further, nodded, and buried his nervous smile in the pillows once more, knuckles gripping the pillows on either side of his head. His body jerked when I planted my mouth over his musky, velvety hole. I let waves of spit wash down my tongue and into the widening gap of his horny cunt, then shoved my tongue into its hot, wet warmth. The entire thing clenched deliciously around my tongue, but I was in. The spit-soaked rim of his slick hole couldn't stop the jabbing fucks of my tongue at that point, not that it was trying all that hard. In fact he was opening up, softening, loosening on his own. 

 Ben was groaning loudly enough now that even the pillows and quilt did little to muffle it, his toes curling against my flanks. His muscles danced frantically beneath my arms, my hands, my mouth. He was pushing his hips back to meet my mouth, nearly smothering me with his sweet musk of his plentiful assflesh. I could feel his hole gaping wide around my tongue, trying to pull more of me into him. 

 I pulled away and slid two of my fingers into him. I watched, drooling, as his hungry hole sucked them in – milking them, devouring them as he grunted and whimpered above. I found the small, swollen lump of his nut deep inside the crushing heat of his cunt, and I grazed it, kneaded it. He all but wailed like a woman as his body rocked into the bed frame. He already wanted more – much more, and fast.

 “Fuck,” I muttered.

 “What?” he breathed into the pillows, barely coherent.

 “The lube's out in the van. I've gotta –”

 My fingers slid out of him and he pushed himself off the bed and darted across the room, into the bathroom. He emerged a millisecond later with a large pump bottle of economy body lotion in his hands.

 “Oh, shit,” I exclaimed as he rushed back to me, eyes hooded with lust. “Nice of them to leave that for us –” He pressed the bottle into my hands and shoved his face down into mine, his naked body hot and hard through my shirt as he simultaneously towered over me and trembled in my arms. I kissed him happily, reveling in this new mode of lust, enjoying the subtle taste of his writhing tongue. 

 He hummed happily, his voice reverberating within my lungs, against my chest. He stepped back and pulled my shirt off, almost violent in his passion. I had his broad shoulders in my hands a moment later, gripping hard and pulling the lean muscles of his neck against my mouth as I ran my tongue over his strong flesh. His hands felt their way down my stomach, my hips, and then he had my cock in a death grip. “You dropped the lotion,” he said, a smile in his voice.

 I looked at the bottle down at our feet, shrugged into his cradling muscles. “Guess I did.” My hands were sliding down the curve of his back, fingers invading the hot crack of his ass…

 He bent and grabbed the lotion, then threw himself back onto the bed, splayed on his back like a slab of fine, fine meat. His big thighs were spread, rock hard cock jutting into the air above his hanging balls. He squirted a thick dollup of the cream-colored lotion into his hand, lifted his balls, and sneered slightly, handsomely, as he concentrated on shoving the mound of lotion into the cleft of his horny ass. The sight was entrancing in its haughty lewdness, and surprising in its beauty. The thick, wet air of the room smelled of sweat, of loins, of sweet vanilla cream.

 I stepped up to the bed and keeled over him, pushing his hands away from his ass, letting the bottle of lotion drop to the carpet with a heavy thump. “Think this stuff'll –” be began, only to hiss between his teeth when easily I shoved two, then three of my fingers into his now incredibly slick hole. The gobs of oily lotion had seeped into the deepest part of him, well past the tips of my fingers.

 “I think it'll be just fine,” I told him. “As long as you're good? It's been a while for you...” I arched my fingers, found his nut. His eyes fluttered, mouth half-open, and his next exhale was the deep, swooning moan of a man in heat. My cock throbbed painfully against the meat of his spread ass cheeks. My entire body was hot with wanting, bright rivers of excited lust dancing up and down my spine, my skin, my groin. I was about to fuck him again. Ben. About to…

 I held his thighs apart and pushed his hips back, bending him in half and opening his wet, glistening hole. His breathing was heavy, thick – and it turned into a shrieking gasp when I pushed  the head of my cock past the quivering ring of his slick, muscular cunt. “Oh shit, it's been a while – ”  

 “Relax...” I rolled my hips forward, slowly but firmly. The rim of inflamed flesh around his hole bulged as it parted around the unrelenting invader, and then I watched in subdued awe as my entire cock steadily disappeared into his splayed cunt. 

 His balls jerked violently up toward his thick, drooling cock, which visibly swelled and twitched against his stomach as I impaled him, not softening one bit. His face fell, mouth opening wide to let out a desperate, breathless moan of pleasure, spiked with pain. “Fuck, godamn – fuck!” he bellowed, deep and sexy and manly. “You're-so-fucking-deep-already-you-fucking-bastard-fucktard...slow...slow down...”

 “Already in, actually,” I told him proudly, rubbing my black pubic bush against his sensitive taint and drooping balls, making it plain to him that I was buried to the hilt. I could feel the tight, clenching heat of his ass as it trembled and twitched around my hard cock, every inch of it. He was already groaning wantonly despite himself, eyes looking beyond the room as he gripped the quilt on either side of his hips. “You okay?” I asked, suddenly afraid I'd hurt him.

 “Fuck, that's intense,” he heaved, eyes coming back into focus. “I've never felt something hurt so good...” He smiled, grimaced, and then smiled again, panting. “We're gonna have to work on your uh…technique, though...”

 I pulled out slowly, just halfway, his bowels clamping down on the length of my tool, puckering around it. I paused for a breath, and felt his ass relax into a slack, quivering channel around my cock...and then I pushed back into him again. Slow and steady. 

 His body twisted on the bed, around my cock, urging me to keep breaking him in. “You feel so fucking good,” I murmured down to him, barely aware of the fact that I was speaking. “Relax...take your time...I could do this forever, you big, sexy fuck...”

 He was gritting his teeth with concentration, his eyes shut, his chest and neck and face glowing pink with blushing skin. He found my slow, steady rhythm soon enough, milking me in time with my patient fucking. I suddenly picked up my pace before he could get too comfortable, and then he was whimpering openly, his hands gripping his thighs beneath his knees, pulling his legs wide open for me, welcoming me into him. 

 I rested my arms on his knees and watched my cock pump into the pliant flesh of his hungry hole and the ass-meat around it. I watched his thick cock leak a near steady stream of glistening precum onto the healthy skin of his belly and chest. I was enchanted. I was entranced. I was hitting the swollen knob of his sweet spot with each strong, deep, deliberate thrust, making his muscled meat quiver with heedless delight.

 “You like that?” I asked softly, picking up the pace even more, keeping it steady, steady, right into the center of his hips, right where it counts.

 He groaned throatily, arching his back, and then his bloated, reddened cockhead began to spurt all by itself, taking on a life of its own. Rope after rope of steaming hot cum shot out its tip, landing on his chest, his shoulders, his face and hair. His ass loosened up and opened wide as he shot his pent-up load, becoming a steaming-hot chasm that still fit my pummeling tool like a glove. He groaned loudly, deeply, shamelessly as I fucked him harder, faster – fucked him right through his long, lewd climax. I only slowed when the last spurt was long gone, and his dick was merely oozing again, steadily oozing…

 I scooped up half a handful of the sticky jism that now covered his lovely body, bringing it to my mouth without a second thought. It tasted salty, mineral-rich – delicious. I sucked it off my fingers, enjoying the fact that I was consuming his orgasm, digesting something his very sex had churned out, something I'd just fucked out of him. Making it part of me.

 “Don't stop,” he was muttering lowly, breathlessly, stroking my sinewy biceps with his hands. He was dazed and listless, lost in the dream of his aftermath, but he knew what he wanted from me. “Keep fucking going, Johnny...fuck, holy shit...you're not done...”

 My cock was still hard and throbbing in his well-plowed hole. Not done, indeed.

 I grabbed his arms by the wrists and yanked his entire body down the bed, towards my hips, pulling his ass around my cock until it was buried as deep as it would go. His spine and his muscles stiffened intuitively, turning his body into a rigid, sweaty, musclebound fuck toy. He bellowed deeply as I slammed my cock into his open ass as hard and as fast as I liked, abandoning all restraint and simply reaming the shit out of him. 

 I knew that this was exactly what he wanted. I knew he loved every second of it. It was in the sound of his voice, mewling and moaning and wordlessly begging me to fuck him. It was in his legs, wrapped tightly around my waist, gripping me as his toes curled against the small of my back. It was in his body, flexing and tensing up as I pulled out, then loosing and sucking as I slammed it back in again. It was in his cock – still hard, still oozing as it flopped about aimlessly between the taut meat of his inner thighs. All the while his intense blue eyes focused on mine as he yelped and moaned, not letting me look away from his whimpering face. Not that I wanted to. We grunted and moaned and rutted together, each watching as the other's face sneered and grinned and rippled with base lust. This was new to me. This was nice.

 My balls suddenly shrank and trembled, and my loins rocked and spasmed. My vision blurred for a reeling instant – and then I was shivering, stiffening, and roaring softly as my engorged cock exploded inside of him, pumping load after load of hot juice into his welcoming ass.

 “Oh fuck yeah man, fuck yeah...” He was whimpering wantonly, no doubt reveling in the sudden, intense heat of my seed filling up his gut, running down the sweaty crack of his ass…

 I leaned down, still pumping into him, pressing our bodies together and mingling our scents. I pushed his arms above his head, rolling my stiff cock inside of him, and kissed him hungrily. I was enjoying this fresh form of pleasure, of intimacy. It felt exceedingly right. 

 He moaned into my mouth, accepting my advance as I bullied his tongue around with my own. My fingers were in his hair now, holding his head against the pillow as I explored the inside of his mouth, his jaw, his throat with my tongue. His thighs flexed around my waist, holding me inside of him. His strong hands were running down the taut, sweat-slick muscles of my back, my ass, my shoulders, my neck. His hard cock twitched where it lay pinned between the pressing heat of our stomachs, sticky and stiff and ready to explode again.

 I pushed myself off him, letting my cock slide out of the comfortable heat of his hole. He started to get up, to follow me, but I pushed him back down. I kept his legs spread and planted my face in his crotch, sniffing deeply, licking his swollen nuts. He whimpered. I took his throbbing cock into my mouth – all the way in again – and began to slurp on it like a hog, running my tongue in and out of his foreskin, over the hidden, sensitive ridges at the head of his sex. He tasted like cum – lots and lots of cum.

 I ran a hands up his body and found his heaving pecs. I flicked and tweaked his nipples, turning them from pink to red as they became erect within their rings of light brown hair. He moaned loudly as I worked him over, as I suckled at his cock for the stuff of life. His broad back arched under my arms, sweat trickling down his belly and pooling in his naval along with the drying cum of his earlier orgasm. He was leaking into my mouth, accepting me without any resistance, open in every way. He'd given himself to me. He was mine.

 He squealed pleasantly when two of my fingers found their way into his ass. I immediately dove deep and began kneading into his sweet spot, as by now I'd long memorized its exact location. He tried to say something, to cry out in some way, but his voice was sloppy and primal and wordless, utterly consumed by raw sensation as his swollen, desperate cock burst its heat into my mouth. 

 I ignored his shameless gyrations and held him down, sucking the seed right out of him. I grunted and moaned as it washed over my tongue, and I swallowed every last pungent, steaming-hot spurt. Even when he'd finished, and his hips were jerking away from my insistent maw, and his sticky cock was softening between my lips – I kept coaxing the last dribbles of hot, runny cum out of his piss slit with my tongue. I couldn't get enough of him. I had to have more.

 “Okay – Jesus, okay, okay – stop!” He slapped the back of my head, his voice urgent and shrill. I let his wet, inflamed cock slide out of my mouth like a thick red slug. It settled on his hip like a lounging sea lion, visibly shrinking, but not by much. He was trembling, holding himself, barely present. “That was...that was...”

 “Shut up,” I told him, and he grinned beneath closed eyes. I crawled up his body and pressed myself into him, my stomach swelling into his and I breathed, and his into mine. We wrapped each other in the sweaty embrace of our limbs, breathing hot against the slowly pulse of our throats, lost in the smell of sex and the post-coital thrum of our bliss. 

 I began to slide off him, and he let me. He rolled my body over onto the side, facing away from him, and I let him. I was fading rapidly, every bit of anxious energy exhausted. He was holding me now, arms wrapped around my chest and shoulders from behind. I could feel him breathing against my back, warm and furry and strong. It felt safe. 

 After a time all I could hear was our breathing, deep and even...but strained somehow. I was staring at the wall past the empty bed, at the dull glow of the passing afternoon beyond the thick cloth of the curtains. Everything was rushing back into my brain, filling the pleasant void left by my orgasm with something much colder. I could feel the bottle jerking against my palm, could feel the reverberating crunch of Redding's skull at the other end of it…

 “Let's just sleep now,” Ben's voice whispered into my ear, its steamy, warm caress almost tickling. His hands were running over my elbows, my wrists, holding them firmly against my chest. His body was broad and strong behind me, against me. I could feel his semi-hard cock nestled comfortably in the warm crack of my ass, safe and sound and making my stomach flutter ever so faintly. Ah, that's right...I was safe. “We'll figure it out, right?” Ben was saying. “That's what you said...”

 I nodded against his mouth where it was kissing my hair, and that seemed to curb our creeping panic for a time...for long enough, anyway. At some point we'd both passed out again. I didn't dream, and I don't think he did either.

 We woke in the same huddled, intimate position later that night, when the sky was black and the crickets were singing. We showered off one at a time, each lost in his own quiet world of worry and dark imaginings. We slipped away from the motel in silence, stuffing all we owned into duffel bags and backpacks. We were in the van soon after, rumbling softly down empty highways, headed I knew not where.