Day Zero–Friday, Part One
Pete’s General Store was a little shop out of its time. A small white building with a pitched red roof set against a backdrop of towering pine trees, it sat three hours from Saterville, nestled on its little corner of nowhere along the highway, and was a one-stop spot for the kind of customer who would add ‘live bait’ to their grocery list.
With a pair of sunglasses perched on his head, Brock stood guard at the gas pump topping off the tank of Jared’s silver Jeep Wrangler, watching from a distance as his brother paced back and forth in the gravel parking lot with his phone pressed to his ear. The early afternoon sun beat down overhead, glistening off the sweat on Brock’s tanned skin as he leaned against the rear passenger side door wearing cargo shorts and a black tank that did little to conceal the thick forest of hair on his chest. Behind him and tucked safely away in the back seat, Tyler slept with his head pressed against the glass.
Refueled, Brock replaced the nozzle and retrieved a hair tie from the pocket of his shorts. His sandals crunched against the loose gravel as he pulled his hair up off his neck into a small ponytail while sauntering across the parking lot to pay the clerk. Inside, the air was cool, yet thick and musty.
“Good afternoon,” a petite, wisp of a woman with a nest of gray hair and a Norman Rockwell smile greeted as she stood behind a counter with a display of lottery tickets flanking one side and a plastic case of shooters on the other.
“Yeah, I’ve got pump three, and can I get three packs of Lucky Strike Red 100s?” Brock said, pulling a strand of his dark hair behind his ear out of habit while retrieving his wallet with the other hand.
“That’ll be $67.22,” the clerk said, stacking the packs of smokes one on top of the other and sliding them across the glass surface of the counter as she ran Brock’s debit card.
While stuffing the cigarettes into the cargo pockets of his shorts, he glanced around the small mom-and-pop store. Claustrophobically narrow aisles were stocked with everything from candy and snacks to cold medicine and kitty litter, with a small automotive section against the back wall. In each corner, mounted to the walls near the ceiling, was a series of convex mirrors that gave a bird’s-eye view of the sales floor from anywhere in the store. No cameras in sight.
“Thank you,” Brock said when she returned his card. He then turned and headed out, halting once he hit the door. “Oh! Actually, do you have a bathroom I could use?” he asked.
“Sure thing, hon,” the clerk replied, casually presenting him with a key ring bolted to a small wooden truncheon with the words ‘men’s room’ scrawled across it in black marker.
“Thanks, I’ll bring it back,” he said, offering a little charm with a smile and a wink as he took the key and stepped back outside. Pulling his sunglasses down over his eyes, Brock’s attention shot first to Jared, still on the phone and cutting figure-eights into the gravel as he animatedly argued with a district attorney back home about an arrest. Tyler, meanwhile, was still passed out cold, fogging up the rear passenger window with each deep exhale.
Spinning the key ring around his finger and nearly thwapping himself in the face with the truncheon, Brock turned sharply and strolled to the east side of the building where Colby waited with his back propped up against the wall between the two bathroom doors.
“Did you get it?” Colby asked, pushing from the wall.
Brock held up the keystick in response as he hung his shades from the neckline of his tank.
“Thank god!” the kid exhaled with relief.
“We have to be fast, I don’t know how much longer he’ll be, and Tyler could wake up any minute,” Brock cautioned as he unlocked the door and shoved it open, leading his down-low lover inside.
Colby quickly slammed the door shut behind him and flipped the bolt lock. “I guess you better cum quickly then,” he replied, then launched himself at Brock.
The key stick clattered to the concrete floor as their lips collided. It was a tangled mess of arms and fingers, hands and lips, tongues and teeth, as Colby and Brock mauled each other beneath the buzzing fluorescent lights of a dingy backwoods bathroom. With deft fingers, Colby pried loose the webbed belt on Brock’s shorts, the metal rings clacking as he threw open the fly. Without a lick of hesitation, he stuffed his hand into Brock’s boxer briefs and palmed the man’s rigid prick.
“Oh, fuuuuck!” Brock groaned into Colby’s mouth as the kid kneaded his pulsating girth.
“Fuck me,” the blond panted back against Brock’s lips.
Seizing Colby by the hair, Brock spun him around. Shoving the boy’s shoulders forward while pulling his hips back, he bent his brother’s stepson over the mildewy sink before grabbing the elastic band of Colby’s sweatpants and yanking them and his green boxers to the floor. Brock paused, stealing a moment to growl out his admiration of the boy’s alabaster butt, framed by his lightly bronzed back and thighs.
“Fuuuuck!” Colby groaned, bracing himself on the sink with a white-knuckle grip as Brock spat into his hand, shoving it between Colby’s smooth white cheeks, and rubbed saliva into the pink hole within.
More clacking metal and the rustling of fabric accompanied Brock’s shorts halfway down his thighs. Colby lifted his head, meeting his own lust-drunk face in the mirror as he watched Brock hock up another wad of spit, drool it down onto his eight-inch dick, and smear it along the length. Their eyes met in the reflection as Brock hiked up the bottom of his black tank, exposing his flat, fur-covered stomach, lined up his cockhead with Colby’s barely-lubed cunt and burrowed inside.
“Oh, shiiiit!” Colby groaned loudly, prompting Brock to clamp his hand down on the boy’s mouth, shushing him.
“Be quiet!” he scolded through clenched teeth, keeping his voice barely above a hoarse whisper.
Colby grabbed Brock’s wrist and threw his hand from his mouth. “I’ll get quieter when you get a smaller dick,” he grunted back.
Brock chortled. “Yeah, I’ll get right on that. You want to do this or not?”
The blond didn’t answer. His eyes pinched shut. His chest heaved as he adjusted to the invasion.
Finally, he nodded. “Yes…I want it. I want it. Fuck me, Brock. God, please, fuck me!”
With a salacious grin, Brock stood up straight and, gripping Colby by his pale hips, drew back only to slam forward again. Escalating the tempo rapidly, Brock was pistoning his dick into Colby’s pussy within seconds while the boy bit down into his forearm to muffle his own ecstatic cries.
The sound of wet flesh clapping against wet flesh echoed off the walls of that dingy gas station bathroom as Brock and Colby frantically fucked. Nothing but a door, a deadbolt, and unexplored curiosity standing between them and catastrophic discovery.
“How...the fuck…are you...still…so tight,” Brock panted as he plunged his cock in and out of Colby’s contracting hole. “We…just did this…yesterday.”
Colby threw a hand out, planting it flat against the white block wall behind the sink, and braced himself as Brock’s pummeling hips shoved his body violently forward. “I guess…I’m just…the best pussy…you’ll ever have,” the kid answered, keeping his eyes locked on Brock’s in the mirror.
“I changed…my mind…keep…the dick…oh!...you got…ooohh…Fuuuck meee,” Colby whined, his eyes rolling back into his head.
Brock snarled, curling his fingers in Colby’s blonde locks, and shoved his head down as he rocketed his dick harder and faster into the boy’s silky insides. He aimed the bloated head right at the irresistible little shit’s prostate, pounding and beating against it like a battering ram. Colby sank his teeth into his fist as Brock railed into him, huffing and grunting behind him while spewing out words like ‘fuck’ and ‘slut’ and ‘you’re mine’ like a broken record.
Yanking the bottom of his t-shirt up, revealing his tanned belly, and tucking it under his chin, Colby latched onto his own dick as it swung, stiff and drooling, between his legs. His fist was a blur as he beat himself off, trying to match Brock’s savage rhythm.
“Oh, fuck…oh, fuck…oh, fuck, BROCK!” he cried out as the pressure of climax surged through his slender, seven-inch prick and voluminous bursts of cum spewed out of the mushroom head and splattered across the sink.
“MOTHERFUCK!” Brock howled as Colby’s cunthole clenched and choked his dick mid-thrust. Arching his back and glomming onto the hand-dryer as his knees buckled, Brock unloaded inside him with a strangled moan. Colby rested his forehead against the cold steel of the faucet as Brock pumped the last few strings of cum into his body, flooding and seeding the boy’s guts with his DNA.
His body quaking, Brock eased out, the boy’s cunt expelling his dick with an obscene slurp as he collapsed onto the floor. With his bare ass resting on the cold concrete, he fell back against the door gasping for breath, his mouth dry.
“You’re…you’re gonna fucking kill me,” he gulped, spying a trickle of jism oozing from the boy’s hole as he looked up.
Still doubled over the sink with his face in the basin, Colby chuckled. “No…not yet, anyway,” he huffed back. With a groan, Brock shuffled around behind him. Then, Colby felt the man’s beard bristle against the soft flesh of his ass. A lewd smirk pulled at Colby’s lips.
“No,” he blurted out, forcing himself upright and denying Brock what he desired. He slowly turned, the last of his own nut dribbling from the tip of his dick and onto the floor. “I wanna keep it this time,” he continued between labored breaths as Brock stared up at him with child-like disappointment.
A crooked grin then stretched across Brock’s face as he strained to his feet. “You’re a dirty little fuck.”
Colby laughed, adoration in his eyes as he stared into Brock’s roguish face, “I learned from the best. Besides, I lov–.”
Brock lunged forward and kissed him…cutting the word off before Colby could finish.
*
(One Hour Later)
Tyler sat cross-legged in the backseat, reading glasses perched on his nose, as he balanced a copy of ‘Dungeons & Dragons 5E’ on one knee and scribbled notes into a college-ruled notebook resting on the other. In front of him, Brock rode shotgun with the window halfway down and tapped a beat on his thighs in time with the Joan Jett song on the radio, his hair whipping behind him in the breeze. Next to Tyler, Colby sat behind Jared with his fist pressing into his cheek as he stared blankly out the window at the terrain as it zipped by.
“Are we there, yet?” Colby groaned.
“No, we are not ‘there, yet,’” Jared rolled his eyes. “We weren’t there when you asked ten minutes ago, and we won’t be there when you ask ten minutes from now. You get the picture?”
“Yeah, you’re a dick,” Colby snarked at his stepfather.
“I think of you every night and day…You took my heart and you took my pride awaaaaaaay,” Brock sang out in his raspy voice, swaying his body in his seat to the rhythm, and brought a halt to the conversation before Jared’s temper got the better of him.
“Come on, Jare,” Brock said, giving his brother a playful slap on the bicep with the back of his hand. “Belt it, bro.”
Jared cocked a brow as he cast an incredulous look at Brock. “No,” he shook his head and directed his attention back to the road.
“Fine, be a shit,” Brock dismissed then craned his neck to look over his shoulder into the back seat where Colby slouched against the door. “Colby?”
The blond merely stuck out his tongue suggestively and went back to pretending to stare out the window.
“Well, you suck, too. What about you, Ty?” Brock then asked, shifting the rearview mirror so he had the perfect view of his nephew behind him.
“No, thank you,” Tyler muttered back without looking up from his notepad.
“Fine! You all suck!” Brock declared, undeterred.
“Daylight, spent the night without you…but I’ve been dreamin’ ‘bout the lovin’ you do…I’m over bein’ angry ‘bout the hell you put me through,” he started up again, holding his phone up like a microphone as he leaned in toward Jared. “Hey, man bet you can treat me right…You just don’t know what you was missin’ last night….”
Jared broke when Brock suggestively, cheesily, wiggled his eyebrows at him. A tiny smirk pulled at the corner of his mouth. But it was enough for Brock.
“There HE IS! I knew he was in there!” the triumphant younger brother taunted, poking Jared in the cheek. Jared held out. And he held out. It was slow at first. A twitch of a lip. A silent mouthing of the words. By the time the chorus hit again, Jared was all in.
“I HATE MYSELF FOR LOVIN’ YOU…CAN’T BREAK FREE FROM THE THINGS THAT YOU DO!” the brothers belted out from the front seat, one in tune, the other disastrously tone deaf. Neither caring.
“You know, you’re not so bad when you lighten the fuck up,” Brock said, between lines, getting a middle-finger in response.
“I wanna walk but I run back to you…That’s why I hate myself for lovin’ you!”
“Okay, you bums in back, this is your last chance to not suck,” Brock teased. One more chorus went by before Colby’s pouty resistance cracked.
Tyler remained stoically quiet as the rest of his family belted out one song after another. Don Henley was right on Joan’s heels, followed by Aerosmith, Santana, Jackson Browne, The Cranberries, Nirvana, Survivor, Journey, STP, and the Stones. The Tenney Family Traveling Sing-Along barreled down the highway at sixty miles per hour, then came to a screeching halt when the opening chords of “With Arms Wide Open” hit the airwaves.
Brock jacked the volume down to zero within the first few notes. “NOPE!”
Scowling, Jared shot his brother an incredulous look. “What’s wrong with Creed?”
“‘What’s wrong with Creed?’” Brock snorted, chuckling at his older brother’s awful taste in music. “Let’s start with ‘what’s right with Creed?’ It’s a shorter list.”
“It’s good!” Jared argued. “Just listen to it. He’s singing about his kid. There’s a lot of profound shit in that.”
Brock scoffed, glancing over his shoulder at Colby, who sat watching with an amused grin as the man whose cum was still dripping down his leg made the uptight cop look like a tasteless sap.
“‘Pretentious,’” Brock countered, “The p-word you’re looking for here is ‘pretentious,’ Jare. Not ‘profound.’ Pretentious. It’s garbage. Wait! I take that back. That’s an insult to Garbage. It’s trash, bro. Pretentious trash.”
“It is not,” Jared chortled, shaking his head.
“Have you ever noticed, in most of the videos, Scott Stapp ends up singing at the sky like he’s just experienced some kind of epiphany that the rest of us haven’t figured out, yet?” Everyone’s heads jerked as Tyler came out of left field, deadpan, without glancing up from his notebook.
“Ooo! We got ourselves a live one!” Brock hooted, cackling triumphantly as Tyler called his dad out like an ace detective in a mid-twentieth-century mystery novel.
“What? No, that’s not–,” Jared blustered, jerking the rear-view mirror back into place to look at his boy.
“He’s pretentious, Dad,” Tyler interrupted, dropping the mic on his father.
“Oh! Oh, oh, oh, OH! Now THAT right there,” Brock howled and jerked his thumb at Tyler behind him, “That alone was worth the trip!”
“Whatever,” Jared said, shrugging off his son’s betrayal. He then cranked the volume back up as the last few chords of the Creed song faded and were replaced by Amy Lee’s haunting voice.
“That was EVERYTHING, man,” Brock laughed, grabbing his water bottle from the cup holder and taking a drink.
“Are we there, yet?” Colby sighed at the first sign of a pause in the conversation and slumped back in his seat.
“NO! We are not THERE YET!” Jared snapped, “Why the hell must you keep asking?!”
“‘Cause my ass hurts,” the boy answered with a smirk.
Brock did a spit-take, water spraying from his mouth in a steady stream and arcing across the dashboard as he choked on a gasp.
“You okay?” Jared asked, Colby forgotten, slapping his brother on the back as Brock bent over, coughing up water into his lap.
“Yeah…yeah…I’m fine,” the younger brother croaked back. “Just went in the wrong hole.”
*
(Another Hour Later)
“Welcome to Saterville, fellas,” Jared announced, breaking the quiet that had settled over the group after Brock hosed down the front of the vehicle.
Tyler lifted his gaze as the dense pine forest parted, opening up into a small, rural paradise and giving the Tenney men their first burst of full sunlight in thirty minutes. While Jared called Hector to apprise him of their arrival, Tyler drank in the sights. The main street was lined with attached storefronts. A mix of novelty stores, coffee shops, and cafes with signs proclaiming their end-of-season sales and specials. A candy store selling homemade saltwater taffy sat next to a souvenir shop offering pieces of hand-carved woodwork.
A mom-and-pop grocer straddled one corner, across the street from the post office and a small dance studio promoting lessons in local folk dances. Glances down side streets revealed a sign for a hardware store, a vintage barber’s pole, and the marquee of a movie theater. Everything looked freshly painted and pristinely beautiful. It was as if some great hand had reached back into history to pull Saterville through time and drop it into the 21st century.
“Cool,” Tyler whispered to himself, just as Jared was hanging up.
“What’s that, bud?” his father asked, glancing at him through the rear-view.
“I like this place. It’s neat,” Tyler answered, eliciting a scoff from Colby beside him.
“Of course, you do. Because you’re boring. And this place is boring. You’re perfect for each other,” Colby spat, rolling his eyes.
“That’s enough,” Jared barked at his stepson. “Can you just be quiet for, like, ten minutes?”
“Obviously. I haven’t said a damn word for the past hour,” the kid countered. “Don’t ask stupid questions.”
Jared’s grip tightened on the steering wheel, and his lips pursed as he shot a warning glare at Colby through the mirror. “Listen, you little….”
“So, Hector isn’t even in town?” Brock interjected, derailing another argument before it could get off the ground.
Jared shook his head and exhaled in frustration. “No, apparently not. Now, we have to find the place ourselves and get this ‘Bach’ guy to let us in. Should be fun.”
“Turn right on Burgundy. Drive two miles. Take a left onto 16th Street. Follow that five miles out of town. It’ll be on the right with a big sign that says ‘Roaring Bull Lodge’,” Tyler recited the instructions back without diverting his attention from the sleepy town that held him in its captivating charm. “And his name is Denis, Denis Bach. He works in the kitchen.”
“At least there’ll be somebody that can cook worth a damn when we get there,” Colby remarked, dryly.
Jared’s grip tightened again. “I wouldn’t count on it. Hector said he gave the staff the week off so we could have the place to ourselves. Get acquainted with it. This Bach guy just had an arrangement with Martin to let him keep a trailer on the property. He isn’t working. The only reason he’ll be there is ‘cause he lives there. So, we’re going to have to fend for ourselves a little. Or weren’t you listening?”
Colby shook his head. “Nope. I was busy shutting up. It takes a lot of focus.”
Jared shot an icy glare at the pouting teenager “Sit up,” he ordered.
“You gonna make me?” Colby challenged, stubbornly folding his arms across his chest.
“If that’s what fucking it takes, you’re damn right, I will. Now, sit up, shut up, and don’t fuck with me right now. I’ve had about enough of you,” Jared scolded, holding Colby in a firm, steady gaze.
Colby held Jared’s stare for several moments, trying to ignore the darkness in his stepfather’s steel-blue eyes.
With a disgruntled huff, Colby obeyed.
*
Gravel popped under the tires as the silver Wrangler ambled up the lane to its destination. The imposing pines of the dense forest surrounded the vehicle like a military formation and seemed to open ranks as the Jeep crept forward, only to close up again behind them once it had passed. The route curved and meandered, snaking through the trees like a creek seeking the path of least resistance.
Inside the vehicle, Colby had removed his seat belt and shifted to the center of the back seat. Scooting forward, with a hand on each front seat, he dipped his head down, trying to peer through the windshield to get a first glance of the lodge.
Meanwhile, Tyler sat with his head stuck out the window, drawing in deep breaths as he inhaled the pungent fragrance of the pines as the family passed through their ranks. Ribbons of sunlight glittered like stars overhead. Where they pierced the dense canopy, their beams illuminated the forest floor like a thousand heavenly spotlights. It was the kind of place that Tyler thought only existed in fantasy books or the imaginations of him and his D&D party.
“We’re not going to get killed out here, are we?” Colby asked, breaking the heavy silence that fell over the vehicle after it turned off the road.
Jared grunted, “Well, if you do, there’s no one out here to hear you scream.”
Before Colby could respond, the break in the forest widened as the Jeep coasted out of the shadows of the trees and into the radiant afternoon light of a massive clearing. Like a stream emptying into a large pond, the lane opened to a gravel parking area.
And there she was.
Standing, majestic, at the center of the clearing was the Roaring Bull Lodge.
A massive, three-story log structure, she hugged a steep incline to her right that descended to a shimmering lake whose waves lapped faintly against the rocky shore, as if murmuring sweet greetings to its dear friend upon the hill. A sloping path covered in trampled grass curved down to a long dock, flanked by a pair of canoes, that jutted into the water and pointed like a finger at an island almost a hundred yards from the shore.
To the lodge’s left, kept at bay by a line of hedges, was a sea of tall prairie grass that half swallowed a weathered gazebo surrounded by a half-dozen apple trees. Through the grass, tire tracks cut a path to what appeared to be a break in the tree line on the far side of the clearing. The magnificent pines that ringed the perimeter stood like guards, vigilantly defending a sacred territory.
The Roaring Bull loomed over the space, rustic and regal, like a wild queen presiding over her untamed kingdom.
Jared brought the Jeep to a gradual halt, and the four men slowly crawled out of the vehicle. Leaving the doors wide open, they all inched forward, jaws slack as they stared awestruck at the edifice before them.
Nestled on a stone and grout foundation, she rose from the earth as if she had sprouted from it. A patio with stone inlays wrapped around her like a bodice, extending upward to an elevated deck that circled the second floor. Ivy laced up her walls and support posts before fanning out like a blanket across the deck railings and swaying like valances over the ground-level porch.
“Holy shit,” Colby muttered, stepping between Brock and Jared as the four men lined up in front of the Wrangler. “When you said ‘lodge,’ I thought you meant like some hunting shack in the woods. This is….”
“...a fucking mansion,” Brock finished, lifting his sunglasses.
“Hector said it was a hotel. But this looks bigger than I remember,” Jared added. “I wonder if Martin expanded it.”
“How much of this is ours?” Brock asked, struggling to grasp the scale.
“All of it,” Tyler answered flatly, “The lodge, this part of the lakeshore and forest, it’s all yours. Acres and acres of it.”
“I looked it up, didn’t you?” he explained when the other three stared at him with perplexed looks.
“No…but we should have,” Jared replied, his attention back on the lodge. “There’s no way this is only worth $2.5 million. It has to be at least ten times that.”
“Yeah, but why would Hector lie about that?” Brock countered.
“I don’t know,” the elder brother shrugged, “Maybe he didn’t want to scare me off with the full value.”
“Well, you were ready to run for the hills at the thought of two-and-a-half mil. Not to mention clock me in the face over it. I can only imagine how you would’ve reacted to twenty-five million,” Brock added.
Jared shook his head, unconvinced. “That doesn’t make any sense. He’d have to know me. I’ve never met the man before in my life, and I haven’t spoken to anyone from around here in over twenty years. There’s no way he could’ve known I’d tell him to take that kind of money and shove it.”
The four men stood in the gravel lot, their eyes transfixed on the Roaring Bull, for ten minutes without uttering another word between them or moving from where their feet were planted.
It was Tyler who broke free of the lodge’s spell first. Turning on his heel, he started trudging across the clearing to the vehicle path that cut through the prairie grass.
“Where you going, dork?” Colby called out.
“To find Denis Bach and get him to let us in. Where else?” Tyler called back.
“What makes you think you can find him?” Colby smugly shouted back.
Tyler halted and did an about-face. “Hector said Denis’ trailer was north of the lodge at the end of a dirt road. If you had listened, you’d know that. That’s the lodge,” Tyler fired back, pointing his finger at the Roaring Bull. “And that’s north,” he added, gesturing in the direction he’d been heading. He then spun back around and resumed his quest.
“I’ll go with him. You two stay with the car,” Jared sighed, then trotted off after his son, leaving Brock and Colby behind.
Falling into step with his son just as Tyler reached the edge of the gravel, Jared planted a hand on the back of the boy’s neck and affectionately kneaded the muscles beneath, pretending not to notice Tyler’s body stiffen from the contact before finally relaxing. Together, they hoofed their way along the route that had been stamped down by tire treads and gradually disappeared from Brock’s and Colby’s sight as the prairie reeds swallowed them up.
After a quarter-mile, Jared fell back to an easy clip, keeping Tyler ahead of him and to the right. Stealing occasional glances, he kept casual watch over his son as the kid strolled, hands in his pockets and his head drifting side-to-side, absorbing the environment. A crooked smile tugged at Jared’s lips as he admired his boy and just how much of his mother was in him.
The dark hair that swept low over his forehead, the thick brows and blue eyes, even the shape of Tyler’s nose and ears, were all his father’s, but that was the extent of Jared’s contribution. The boy’s slender body, his long fingers, his lips, and the way he smiled–when he smiled–were all gifted to him by Cassie. Even his quiet, thoughtful demeanor and the awkward gait when he walked, graceful in its own way, reminded Jared of his dead wife. The last piece of a woman who no longer walked the Earth.
“What do you think, bud?” Jared asked, breaking the silence that had hovered over them ever since they breached the tree line.
“I like it,” Tyler answered, his voice full of awe as he continued to take in the beauty of his surroundings, as if committing them to memory.
He drew the scent of the pine from the air into his nose as he inhaled deeply. He turned an ear to the sound of the breeze moving through the trees, as if it carried whispered secrets that it wished to share with him. Heavy pine cones dangled from the limbs of branches, just one swift gust away from plummeting to the ground and joining their brethren.
“It’s pretty,” the boy added reverently.
Jared nodded, permitting himself only the quickest of glimpses at the forest around them, always keeping his attention firmly on his son. Something had changed, somewhere. He didn’t know where or even when. But this was not the same Tyler who had climbed into the back seat of the Wrangler almost seven hours ago. It wasn’t even the same Tyler that had sat down with the family for a spaghetti and meatballs dinner two weeks ago.
He was different. Calmer. More relaxed. He stood taller with his shoulders back instead of slouched forward. He brushed his hair back from his forehead, clearing his view, rather than hiding behind it like a mother’s apron. Something about this place seemed to gift his son a sense of peace that Jared hadn’t seen in him in years.
“Yeah, it is,” Jared agreed, though whether he was referring to the forest or the sight of his baby boy beginning to discover some kind of harmony within himself just by being here, even Jared didn’t know.
“Although…,” Tyler began, only to fall silent again, leaving his thought unfinished.
Jared let the word hang in the air for several moments, not pushing, not rushing, not charging the walls. Just waiting, like Vanessa had told him. Waiting for Tyler to open up, to let him in, or at the very least, to crack open a window.
“Although…?” Jared prodded tenderly as they approached the end of the path and another clearing.
“Oh, never mind. It’s probably nothing anyway,” Tyler shrugged. “Just me being stupid.”
“Hey,” the father said, placing a hand on his son’s shoulder and gently turning him. “Nothing you say could ever be half as dumb as the shit that comes out of Colby’s mouth,” he continued, patting Tyler’s cheek as the corner of the boy’s mouth twitched. It was almost a smile. “If something is bothering you, I…I want you to feel comfortable sharing it with me.”
Tyler fidgeted, awkwardly averting his eyes and looking anywhere but at his father. “It’s just…It’s weird.”
Jared’s brow furrowed as a look of confusion overtook his features. “What’s weird, exactly? This place? I thought you just said you liked it?”
“I do!” Tyler insisted, willing himself to look the man in the eye, still hoping that Jared wouldn’t see right through him and see all the things that filled Tyler’s head. “It’s just…it’s a little bit of a strange coincidence, right?”
“I…I don’t understand,” Jared replied, the befuddled look deepening. “What’s a coincidence?”
“The attorney. The lawyer you and Brock met,” Tyler answered.
“Hector? Yeah, what about him?” Jared pressed gently.
“Well,” Tyler shifted his gaze again, looking down the path where the end of their quest to locate Denis Bach lay ahead. For a moment, Jared was sure the boy would shrug it off and crawl back behind the walls. But he didn’t.
“It just seems a little weird that a guy who works for someone who owns a place called ‘Roaring Bull’ would have a last name that means ‘of the bull.’ That’s all,” Tyler explained.
“Huh! Yeah, you’re right, that is kinda fucking weird,” Jared huffed, slipping his arm around his son’s shoulders as they resumed their trek.
*
“Oh, my god…,” Brock groaned as he leaned up against the Jeep, his back pressed against the driver’s side door. His shorts and boxer briefs were around his ankles, while his black tank top was hiked up to his chest. At his feet, Colby squatted in the gravel, bobbing back and forth with Brock’s dick in his mouth.
Brock combed his fingers through the boy’s golden hair as Colby took his time, bathing the man’s glans with his tongue. Savoring the flavor of the soft, velvety skin of Brock’s cock, the boy moaned, sending vibrations through the shaft and right up Brock’s spine, forcing his eyes closed and his head to loll back against the Jeep.
“Fuck, I love when you do that,” he called out to the sky, dragging his nails across Colby’s scalp as the boy washed his dick with spit.
Jared and Tyler had barely disappeared behind the trees before Colby jerked Brock’s shorts down and swallowed his prick, coaxing it from flaccid to rock hard with terrifying ease.
“You’re fucking insane!” the man panted, his hair falling forward like a curtain as he dropped his gaze down to the blond sucking him off in broad daylight.
“You could’ve said ‘no,’” Colby teased, pulling the cock from his mouth and dragging his tongue along the length from root to tip, circling and poking at the pre-drooling slit.
“I did say no,” Browl groaned weakly.
The boy answered with a dismissive chuckle. “Be more convincing next time,” he taunted then opened his mouth wide and sucked all eight inches down his throat. He gagged and spit, choked and gurgled around Brock’s dick as he dug his fingers into the man’s hairy butt and jammed the girth right down his gullet.
“FUCK!” Brock howled as Colby inhaled him. The kid drilled his head back and forth, hammering his nose into Brock’s bush as he hacked and spat and slobbered all over his delicious erection.
Colby was brutal and demanding as he greedily devoured Brock’s glorious beast, relishing and worshiping every inch of his favorite muscle. He cranked up the pace and pressure, hoovering the man’s dick until he felt Brock’s stomach begin to convulse.
“You’re about to cum,” Colby taunted, moving his fist up and down the slippery length with an impish twinkle in his olive green eyes.
“Y-yes,” Brock panted.
“Do you wanna cum?” the boy grinned.
“Oh, fuck yes. I wanna cum,” Brock groaned pitifully.
“Say ‘please.’”
“What?” the man sweated.
“Say ‘please’ or I stop right now,” Colby threatened, gleefully tormenting him.
“Fuck! Fine! Shit! PLEASE!” Brock caved.
“Please, what?” Colby was just being a fucking brat now.
“Please, I wanna fucking cum!”
“I love when you beg,” the little blond shit mocked then enveloped Brock with his mouth. He was in the home stretch. He wasn’t stopping, wasn’t letting up. He gagged and spit, choked and gurgled Brock’s dick all over again. He drilled the bloated head past his gag reflex and slurped his tongue along the shaft. Saliva spilled from his lips, into Brock’s pubes, and coated the man’s balls.
He massaged Brock’s sac, drool spilling over his hand as he toyed with the man’s nuts, rolling them between his fingers. The dick in his mouth twitched and throbbed, copious amounts of pre-cum flowing out onto Colby’s tongue like nectar.
He was close. Almost there.
And Colby was going to send the gorgeous bastard right over the edge.
“Fuck! Fuck, I’m gonna cum!” Brock whined, not noticing Colby slide a hand between his thighs until the kid had jammed a middle finger right up Brock’s backside.
“FUUUUUUUUUUUUUUCK!!!” Brock howled, pinching his eyes shut as his body seized up and flooded Colby’s mouth.
Colby sputtered and gulped as Brock erupted, inundating his throat with rope after rope of syrupy cum. The deluge spilling past his lips as he endeavored to swallow every molecule.
“God, you’re delicious,” the boy cooed, holding Brock’s dick at the base with one hand while dragging his tongue across it like it were a treat, and lapping up every last droplet of jism he could find..
“No, don’t! That–,” Brock's eyes shot open as he winced at the rough texture of Colby’s tongue dragging across his sensitive prick. “Oh, shit!”
“What?” the boy giggled. His smile melted when he looked up at Brock and saw panic on his face.
Glancing over his shoulder, Colby stared wide-eyed.
Behind him, a figure ascended the slope from the lake.
A ginger-haired man stripped to the waist and wearing a pair of cut-off jeans that were soaked through and clung to his body like a second skin, marched up the path. The sunlight reflecting off his damp, ivory skin was blinding in its brilliance. When his bare feet sank into the rocky gravel, he didn’t flinch. Instead, he strode across it like it were polished marble as he sauntered right toward them.
(To Be Continued)
