Footprints in the Snow

"I have a cabin up at Massanutten. Why don't I give the key to that to you and you can go up there this weekend and just sack out?"

Reg3 was standing by my desk, having stopped in his periodic soaring through the offices, to notice that I was still in a morose mood. I was taken aback, though, both because he noticed and because he was suggesting that I could be two and a half hours away from Washington, D.C., at a snow-covered skiing resort, even on a weekend.

The word "soaring" had fallen into my mental depiction of Reginald Walker III's visitation to his Lobbyist firm's offices because it was descriptive. These offices were located in a Crystal City, Virginia, high rise overlooking a runway of the Ronald Reagan National Airport and, beyond that, looking to the dome of the capitol building and the Washington Monument obelisk across the Potomac. Despite his seventy years, Reg3 was still a soaring hawk, lean and mean and floating above it all, including his office staff, ready to swoop down and tear at someone's guts and dine noisily and lustily. No one in the office was fooled by the sweat-stained gym outfit he was wearing to "check in" on his office staff. He'd just been playing a vigorous game of squash, yes, but it had been with some senator or congressman or oil company lobby representative, and Reg3 had come away with more lucrative winnings for the firm than just a sports win.

By all appearances, Reginald Walker III was a one-man band of one legislation-influencing victory after another. Showing great stamina, he had been this energetic the entire twenty-six years I'd known and worked for him since I'd come out of graduate school at the age of twenty-four. But of course he didn't do it alone. His lobbyist victories were based on detailed research to provide a barrage of facts and secrets that Reg3 used to dive in for the kill just at the right time, at the right pressure point, and with the right argument.

I was one of those researchers. For twenty-six years I'd gotten little more credit than a nod and a vacant smile when I'd provided the information, enlightening or damning, it didn't matter which, that had enabled Reg3 to change some wavering senator's or congressman's vote on an oil bill. Yes, I'd been rewarded richly in monetary terms and in the perks of working in a high-powered firm in the nation's capital. But Reg3 was a hard and demanding boss-and he was all business. And he was ruthless in dealing with any employee whose impropriety led to his firm or himself being placed at a disadvantage in gloves-off, go-for-the-jugular lobbyist negotiations.

Reg3 was good at identifying who had really contributed what and to hand out generous bonuses appropriately and fairly, but he wasn't the one to know anything about the life of one of his employees outside of the office or to stop at someone's desk, note the family photos, and enquire after someone's wife or children. He expected an employee's life to be dedicated to him, Reginald Walker III.

Which made it all the more surprising that he noticed that I had been moping around the office for days-or, more surprising-that he cared enough to notice it and to offer me the keys to his mountain cabin and the permission to be more than a two-hour drive from his beck and call for a string of nights in a row. It was a Friday morning on the cusp of a three-day holiday weekend.

It actually sent a chill of apprehension up my spine. I had come to count on his disinterest in my life beyond the office. There was no framed photo of a smiling wife and children on my desk. If my boss had been more the observant and caring kind, I would have had to conjure up such a photo. There wasn't a photo because there was no wife and children. There only was a procession of younger men, men I picked up in gyms for their looks and their muscles and for their sexual preferences, men who were looking for someplace to live as they passed through the area from job to job-often, in my case, as personal trainers at the gyms I belonged to.

I was morose because the latest in a twenty-five-year string of these, Brad-the last in a progression of Brads and Chucks and Steves and Rods-had moved on, and not too amiably. I was fifty years old. I had reached a phase of looking for some form of stability, more a relationship than a progression of encounters that seemed like one-night stands even if the man fucking me was in my bed every night and had his own bureau and closet in my bedroom.

If Reg3 was more observant of a man who had worked for him for twenty-six years and had taken more interest in the few hours I spent away from his office and service, he certainly would have noticed that I was gay and opened my legs for a succession of bulked-up younger men. He couldn't have failed to link this with a chink in his office's armor to be discovered and used by the ruthless opposition at any moment-just as Reg3 didn't hesitate to use such information on the opposition himself, using data that underlings like me provided him.

"Are you sure, Mr. Walker?" I asked. "I would love to get away for a few nights, but with the wintery conditions out-and Massanutten could be completely snowed in-I would be out of touch."

"I'll be out of town myself for the long weekend, John," Reg3 said, not really focusing on me, his mind, as was often the case with him, skipping ahead to the next item on his agenda. But he obviously was serious, as he already was fiddling with a ring of keys attached to a loop in the waistband of his gym shorts. I held the prize in my hand while he wrote down the address of his mountain house and directions on a pad of paper on my desk.

He wasn't a bulky man, more lean and sinewy, but his hard-bodied musculature, clearly revealed in the T-shirt and gym shorts he was wearing-was apparent and proved out how active and energetic he was even at his age. My eyes couldn't help but follow the tight line of the meat of his thighs and calves as he leaned over my desk and wrote out the directions. There was a musky scent to him that brought to mind not only that he'd only recently come from a vigorous squash match but also that, at seventy, he was still a vital, virile male. It went with the territory of being a ruthless lobbyist in Washington, I thought.

Going to Massanutten really could put me out of touch with the rest of the world. The ski resort was a two-and-a-half hour four-wheel-drive trek in the snowy conditions of this Martin Luther King Holiday long weekend to the southwest of Washington, across the line of the Blue Ridge Mountains and nearly to Harrisonburg. I had been to the Massanutten resort before, but only in the summer months. It was one of the earliest minor ski resorts-mostly artificial snow and short runs-within a vacation-home strike for a busy and harried, but affluent, worker from the nation's capital. It had been designed and marketed heavily, but had been overtaken in sales decades ago by resorts offering better snow, longer trails, and more luxurious amenities. So, despite being one of the first, from the early sixties, it was only about half subscribed and a time share could be picked up for the price of taking over the payments.

Massanutten was a Native American name that I had always thought of finding the meaning of-but never did. I did know it had been a sacred mountain for the Indians, the last peak running south on a spur off the Blue Ridge and pretty much running down the center of the Shenandoah Valley. I had always assumed it had been chosen for this spiritual purpose because of its shape. Although I was told it wasn't, I had initially thought it had been a volcano of ancient days, the Blue Ridge being the oldest mountain chain on the North American continent in geological terms. It looked like a small, long-dormant volcano to me, with its bowl exposed by a collapse of the rim on the eastern side. The result was a natural bowl at elevation with steep rims on three sides-which now supported short ski runs. The higher-rise time-share condos were located in the bowl and on the lower slope of the rim to the west along with the central club building, and the separate houses ran around on the slopes to either side and then down the mountain on spurs off the main road rising up to the bowl from the eastern side. Reg3's separate cabin was at the end of one of these spur roads half way up the northern rim.

For me, Massanutten would be an ideal retreat. They didn't need artificial snow this week. There already were several inches on the ground in the valley below, most likely more already on Massanutten Mountain, and more snow was in the forecast. This was Virginia, the upper south. It didn't take much snow and ice to make the roads hazardous, because there wasn't much reason to invest heavily in snow-removal infrastructure, especially in the rural and mountainous areas between Washington and the middle Shenandoah Valley.

I needed the isolation a snowy Massanutten Mountain promised-not to ski, but to hunker down in front of a fire and replan my future. Brad had been a life changer for me. For months I had thought-and planned on-Brad being permanent. He was at the upper edge of his bodybuilder phase. He still had great muscle tone, but he was balding and slowing down. He hadn't done anything more professionally than work in, and work out in, gyms. He had passed forty, and he'd need to find something to settle down to more permanently. I had offered him that, with me, and I thought he was good with it. But there was another man, a younger man, a richer man than me. And in just a few moments of screaming and packing, Brad had crushed my plans and dreams and was out of my life.

I was too old to go through this again. I needed to get away and rethink all of this. I was doing something wrong. I had no idea what it was. It wasn't my ability to support a man or my looks or my body or my talent as a bottom-at least yet, I knew. I had to rethink everything. The offer of a long weekend on a snow-bound mountain fell into my lap like manna from heaven.

"Thanks, Mr. Walker. I appreciate this."

"Don't mention it, John," Reg3 said, as he let loose of the edge of the paper he'd written the directions on and then gone over with me. And "don't mention it" fit the circumstance. His mind and attention already were someplace else-somewhere else for his brief hovering over the busy, heads-down staff in the office on a Friday morning in his periodic flight overhead to check out that all were busy and productive before he went on to his next squash match or hunting trip or bar cruising activity that only looked like he was at play when he was actually adding up the billables of his successful lobbying work.

I stood up and watched him float on down the corridor between the small office spaces, holding the precious key and directions in my hand. My name wasn't John. It was Sean. I'd worked for Reginald Walker III for twenty-six years, and still he couldn't remember my name.

I wasn't surprised. It went with the focused-on-cut-throat-business, dynamo that was Reginald Walker III.

* * * *

"Thank god for Chuck-or was it Steve?" I thought as I navigated my Subaru Forester along the ever-narrowing road-becoming more a track than a road-along the side of the ridge curving around on the northern side of the Massanutten bowl. It was getting dark, and I wanted to get to Reg3's cabin while I could still read the directions on the paper he'd handed me. I'd left the office right after Reg3 had. I was senior enough to come and go as I wished, and I rarely went before churning out ten hours of work. So I didn't feel at all guilty leaving early on the Friday of a three-day weekend. As it was, the rest of the office had started thinning out as soon as they heard the ping of the elevator taking Reg3 out of his realm. I went home and packed and was on the road south by 2:00 p.m.

I was thanking my earlier guys, whoever it had been who had given the advice, for telling me that, if I only had one car, even in the Washington, D.C., region, it should be four-wheel drive. The Forester wasn't flashy but it was reliable and I'd passed several nice sports car-and more than one SUV-in snow-bound ditches off to the side of Route 340 on my way down here. As it was, even the Forester was beginning to chug and catch occasionally on this spur road.

But then there it was, or rather they were. There were several undeveloped lots near the end of this spur road, but there, right where the directions said I would find it, was Reg3's log cabin, sitting well above the road on a pretty steep driveway. The driveway was asphalted, and it wasn't covered too badly with snow yet, that I could see, so I revved up the motor, turned left, and muscled the car up to inside a doorless carport underneath the log cabin, the first of two identical ones side by side on the road.

I had a slight scare right before I reached the base of the driveway. I was looking up at the house and rise of the driveway, estimating whether I should attempt the climb, when a blur of dark green slid out of the trees and onto the road to the left of me. Whatever it was, it almost hit the fender of the Forester before it turned and lurched back into the tree line. "A hunter, I wondered?" But I didn't think they would permit hunting inside the perimeter of the resort.

I called the house I was looking up at a log cabin because Reg3 had done so, but it wasn't the rustic structure I had expected. It was built of logs, yes, but it was one of those sleek Lindal cedar houses of thinner, more varnished logs and soaring roofs with large expanses of glass. My first thought was whether I was going to be able to keep warm in it.

That thought evaporated as soon as I entered the house. It was toasty warm, as if someone had come ahead and turned up the heater-a heater that worked efficiently. It wasn't hot, though, and my second thought of whether I'd have energy to set up a fire in the three-story rock fireplace I could see off to the right from the foyer was erased quickly as well. Logs were laid in the fireplace and, making sure the flue was open, lighting the fire was my first order of business before taking my coat and boots off.

The house was smaller on the inside than it appeared on the outside, this because most of the interior space, the living room to the right and the dining room to the left soared up two stories into a steep-roof ceiling in one open space. On the left, behind the dining room, was a large kitchen. Above the kitchen was a loft bedroom and bath, a balcony opened from the bedroom on one side to the living room and on another to the dining room. Two rock walls, more columns, separated the living room from the dining room. A staircase rose up to the loft directly from the foyer, climbing between the rock columns. Behind the living room was a commodious bedroom and bath. Completing the footprint to the left of this, behind the kitchen, was a screened porch. A rock wall faced both the far wall of the porch and the bedroom at the rear of the house, as the footprint for the house was cut right into the mountainside behind.

The house was tastefully decorated, but not overly decorated, in Southwestern style. There was beer in the refrigerator to complement the groceries I'd brought, and the built-in wine refrigerator was completely stocked. This was an expensively outfitted, but no-frills man's abode. I would feel the personality of Reg3 radiating from the house. In an off-hand manner, Reg3 had told me to be free with the liquor I found. I hadn't realized I'd find so much. There was a well-stocked bar between the dining room and the kitchen as well.

I found how to turn the music on and how to dim the lights. I didn't find any curtains to cover the soaring double-paned windows in the living room and the dining room, looking out, over the front deck, to the twinkling lights of the bowl of the mountain and the white stripes of the ski runs rising up the southern rim, across the bowl. I also figured out how to control the DVD part of the large-screen TV plastered to the rock chimney rising above the fireplace, and, just in a robe and with a glass of wine beside me and a flickering fire in the fireplace, I clicked into one of the several male porno DVDs I'd brought with me. I settled down to slowly masturbate my tensions away to a vid with a top who fondly and stirringly reminded me of the Rod of my experience of some twenty years earlier.

After my third glass of Shiraz and second ejaculation to the DVDs, I'd gone to sleep on the couch facing the fireplace. The fire was out and the DVD screen showing a pulsing blue when I woke. I closed up and went up to the loft, where I'd decided to sleep rather than in the first-floor master bedroom because the view out of the tall windows in the living room and dining room gave me a feeling of soaring out over the valley below.

I had intentionally not permitted myself to do any thinking about where I was and where I was going this first evening. I'd do my thinking over the next three days.

* * * *

Virtually the first thing I noticed when I woke up the next morning and stood, naked and stretching at the balcony overlooking the dining room, the downward-sloping and wooded front yard of the cabin, and the valley below were the footprints on the snow on the driveway, leading up from the road below and then back down again. It had snowed several inches in the night. The footprints weren't there when I had driven up the driveway-I was sure of that. Of course, however, being sure didn't stop me from wondering how observant I'd been while muscling the Forester up the incline. They would have been right there in front of me, though. If they'd been there last evening. Not that it mattered if there had been footprints when I arrived. It had snowed in the night, a significant accumulation. No, they were fresh footprints-probably sometime this morning.

"Strange," I thought, "for someone to be walking up to houses out here near the end of a spur road." While mulling this, I saw the blur of a black SUV pass by on the road before me. This shouldn't have surprised me, but it seemed that I should recognize the vehicle from somewhere-but I didn't. It was bigger and boxier than most SUVs were these days, but it didn't look old.

I ruminated about both of these sightings while I sat at the kitchen table, drinking coffee, and chewing on a bagel. I came here to think deep thoughts about my life, but I found myself thinking about unexplained footsteps in the snow. And that blur of black of a car this far back on a spur road. There was that cabin next door, of course. That would explain that. Maybe even explain the footprints, although the houses were on the same level, with no obstructions between them. It wouldn't seem that someone going between the two houses would need to go down one driveway and up the other. Maybe someone was in residence in one of the other houses on the road and had some responsibilities for this house. The heat had been on and up to a comfortable level when I had arrived. Maybe there was a caretaker here of sorts. Reg3 hadn't mentioned one, though.

I found myself ruminating on what such a caretaker might be like. Would he be old or a young, fit man? I tried not to think that it might be a woman.

Then I thought back onto the previous evening. I'd slouched in a sofa, facing the fireplace, the lights dim, although there had been light, watching gay male porn DVDs, and jacking off-several times because I was highly sexed-in front of a nearly full-wall expanse of glass and no drapes.

I rose from the kitchen table and padded out to the living room. I was barefoot and only wearing sleeping pants. I told myself, as I carried my coffee cup with me, that I was only going to take in the view across the bowl of the mountain and down the valley, through the widely spaced tree trunks in the front yard, but when I got to the window, I looked down at the floor of the deck that ran across the width of the cabin. The footprints in the snow came across the deck and stopped in front of the window.

When had they been made? This morning, while I was asleep in the loft, or last night when I was masturbating on the sofa? How many times had I stroked off and shot off. Three? Four? I shivered and headed for the stairs to the loft. When I was fully dressed I came down the stairs and went back into the kitchen. I was putting the coffee cup and the plate from the bagel in the kitchen sink when I looked out of the window above the sink and into the screened porch at the back of the house. There were snowy footprints, not melted, because it was below freezing outside, on the floor of the porch-coming to this window and also to the door out onto the porch.

I went to the door and opened it, noticing that the lock seemed to be broken, that the door couldn't be locked. Sure enough, the snowy footprints had come to the backdoor, shuffled around and retreated. They'd also gone to the sliding glass doors-no curtains-to the master bedroom off to the right.

But I hadn't slept in that bedroom last night. I shuddered to think that someone might have been standing there, in the dark, watching me in that bed-if I'd been in that bed. I, of course, had masturbated again in another bed the previous night before going to sleep. I was highly sexed, even when I had to take satisfaction in my own hands.

I didn't know what I could do. I felt violated, but I had to laugh at that. I'd never felt violated by a stream of younger, hunky men doing far more than watching me nearly naked or masturbating before. It was mostly the strangeness and mystery of it that put me on edge, I guessed-and being out here all alone. And all I had to do was wear more clothes and keep my personal sex to the loft overhead. No one could see me in the bed up there. And there was a TV with a DVD player up there-and even a fireplace. I could spend the weekend up there.

I went back down to the dining room and looked down the length of the driveway that rose to the carport under where I stood, and contemplated the footprints in the snow again.

That's when I saw him-bundled up in a dark green hunting jacket and leaning on a snow shovel-at the base of the driveway. He started moving when he saw me standing at the window. I watched him trudge up the driveway, slowly, carefully, because the snow was several inches deep and who knew what ice there was lying in wait underneath? His footsteps followed, but didn't obliterate, the footsteps in the snow that had preceded his.

I went to the front door. I'd already ascertained that he was a hunk. A Hispanic maybe, or Mediterranean in origin. Built big and sold; thick, curly black hair pushing out from underneath the hood of his jacket.

His smile was tentative when I opened the door to him. "Open a door to him," I thought, already horny enough again to open my legs to a man. I tried to keep my own smile from spilling over the sides of my face. He was a young-maybe twenty-five or so-muscular hunk. I could tell that despite the bulk of his clothing. If he had been watching me last night . . . and if he knew and was knocking on my door . . .

But the footprints must have been made in the night. I didn't think it was snowing when I went up to bed.

"Hi," he said. "I saw a car in the garage, so I knew someone was here. I thought maybe you'd like to have your driveway cleared."

"Thanks, but I was thinking I'd go out and do that myself this morning. For the exercise."

Was I being too forward in drawing his attention to my conditioning. I was in great shape for a fifty-year-old. And I knew I was good looking enough, in a blond, Scandinavian way. A good contrast to his olive tones. My mind went off into flights of fancy of olive skin on milky white, hands gliding on curves and in crevices of contrasting color, my eyes latched on curly black pubic hair as my mouth sank down the sides of a brown shaft.

I shook my head to clear it. If I said I wanted to clear the driveway myself, would he just back off-forever. He was probably straight. You never could tell. But that was just it; you never could tell. "Of course I have no idea if there even is a snow shovel here. The house belongs to a friend. I'm just hiding out here-alone-for the long weekend. And I see that you came prepared . . . I mean that you have a snow shovel."

I checked his expression. Was that a slight smile when I'd said "alone?"

"How much would you charge?" I asked.

His face lit up then. So, he was offering because he could use the money. I wondered, briefly, what else he'd do for money. It struck me then that maybe that was a good part of my trouble with men-I threw money at them; I bought their hard cocks. Not time to think about that now, though.

He named a price, which was fine, and I left him to turn toward starting the job. He turned back then, though, and said. "I see there's no firewood stacked up here. The firewood pile is against the side of the house. I could carry some of that up for you-enough to last the weekend."

"That would be good," I said.

"I could even bring some of it into the house if you didn't have enough inside."

"That would be nice too," I said. All of the signs were there. He'd even thought of a way to get into the house with me. "When you're done, I'll make you some coffee to warm you up before you have to go out again."

"That would be thoughtful," he said. A radiant smile before he turned back to the driveway.

Yes, I'm a quick thinker, I mused as I, reluctantly, closed the front door.

* * * *

The warming coffee afterward didn't work out quite as I expected. He did a quick job of the driveway and the wood and I saw that he was every bit the hunk I had estimated when he unburdened himself of a couple of layers of padding as he stood in the foyer and I admired what nature had formed.

But we didn't fuck.

I certainly wanted him to fuck me. He was a god in body and facial beauty, and he radiated a woodsy, fire-ash scent that turned me on-contrasting with, but similar in my response to the musky smell Reg3 had exuded the previous morning.

But we went no further than sitting at the dining room table, sharing a couple of cups of coffee and waltzing around the question of the bedroom. He was reticent and I didn't want to be the one to make the proposal. I laid a few hints, and he seemed to understand. But he didn't act on them.

"I'm Tony," he said. "No, I don't live in the area, not really, just moving through, and doing odd jobs here and there. Snow removal is there for the taking here on the mountain. Needed some cash to move on-toward D.C. or Baltimore or up the coast more, I guess. There should be work up there. I'm a carpenter; work in construction. Work with my hands."

I looked at his hands. Big, the fingers meaty and strong. I yearned to have them working my body.

The explanations came out in short phrases between sips as he did more looking out of the dining room window down toward the valley floor than at me, although I did my best to pose my body to the best advantage. When he looked at me, I maybe saw a bit of approval and interest, but I couldn't tell the nature of the interest. And I didn't want to be the one to make the proposal. Last night, to the extent that I had thought about where I was in life, I had come to the conclusion that part of the problem with me and my men was that I'd always been the one to make the proposal-to say I'd keep them financially, just in exchange for the sex. It hadn't been their fault to see it as a temporary arrangement. I'd set the conditions too low, and, from the beginning, I'd made clear that it was because I wanted it, needed it, had to have it.

If this Tony wanted it, he'd have to tell me. I didn't mind that it meant I'd be paying for it somehow. It already was an employer-employee arrangement. I had already given him money for the shoveling and wood carrying. And I'd added enough in a tip-enough for him to fuck me, as a matter of fact. But it had to be his move. The tip had been generous, whether I'd consciously piled it on or not. I did realize that this often was the approach-a generous tip to a personal trainer who I knew fucked men, for instance, was a recognized silent contract for added services. It always had worked before.

But he didn't make the move. He was polite and all and we got along just fine in discussion. But he didn't take me up to the loft and fuck me. More arousingly, he didn't bend me over the dining room table and fuck me right there. It was something that gave me pause in thinking he'd been a voyeur the previous night-responsible for the footprints in the snow up to the windows. And hadn't the footprints come after I'd gone to bed?

If he'd watched me last night, surely he could latch into the signaling today.

He seemed to be open with me until I'd quizzed him about where he was staying now. But he revealed enough for me to think he was camping outside, probably just inside the timber line at the end of the driveway. It was clear to me that he had been the one who had lurched out of the trees and almost into the Forester the previous afternoon. And it explained the woodsy scent of a campfire on his body-and even that he had known where the firewood for this cabin had been stacked. He probably was poaching wood from the cabin.

I didn't probe, though. I didn't want to lose him, and I didn't feel a responsibility for Reg3's woodpile. I needed to find out if he would or wouldn't if he were cultivated more-if he had been the man of the footprints in the snow.

And I also had to acknowledge that maybe this was all just me falling apart up here, wanting a man's cock inside me, and having just lost my steady fuck.

* * * *

That evening I turned all of the lights on in the living room and stood naked, in front of the living room window, wine glass in one hand and dick in the other, and slowly masturbated-twice-for anyone out there to see, shooting my cum off in a splatter against the glass of the window, my eyes moving from the twinkling of the lights in the Massanutten bowl and valley below to the shadow of the trees, looking for movement. Not seeing any.

I went to bed, hyped up, not dissatisfied, though, because my mind was racing about the possibilities of what my exhibitionism might engender-especially in the mind and arousal of the Mediterranean hunk named Tony, who probably was camping in the cold snow at the base of the driveway below the cabin. And who might be scouting around the house at night, looking for what he might see, what could give him pleasure. Leaving his footprints in the snow.

While I had been masturbating in front of the window, it had begun to snow, and it was accumulating nicely before I had shot off the second time. If it stopped snowing soon, I'd be able to check for footprints in the snow the next morning. I would know if anyone had been watching. Tony's feet were big and his boots had a distinctive sole pattern on them. I'd carefully checked that out when I'd had him in the house after he'd shoveled the driveway. I probably would know if the footprints were his.

I drifted off to sleep, masturbating myself before, completed once again, but not fully satiated, I rolled over onto my belly with a groan-not wearing the sleeping pants tonight. As I drifted into sleep, I conjured up the naked, muscular body of Tony-with me; beside me, stroking me with his hands as I reciprocated; under me, as, nose in curly black pubic hair, I sucked him big and throbbing; on top of me; inside me; fucking me hard, me bucking against him, crying out for the cock.

I moaned and raised my rump to him to give him a deeper angle. It was so beautiful, so real. And then I realized that it was real. I cried out as the cock withdrew, nearly the whole way, and then slammed down hard, deep inside me. Out and then in again. Strong hands were fisting my wrists, entrapping my arms above my head and spread, holding me gloriously in thrall to him. He was covering my back close, the hair on his chest scratching my back as his torso slid against me in rhythm with his cock pumping my channel.

I moaned a long, low, guttural moan, "Yes, yes, fuck me hard. Fuck me deep."

He growled into my ear, "More up on your knees, Sean. I can go deeper. You want me deeper."

Obediently, I raised myself more up on my knees and he was doggy fucking me. Hard, deep, pumping faster. I cried out in ecstasy.

"Yes, scream. Let me know you like it, that you want it. I've wanted to give this to you for so long."

I did scream out then, in passion and pleasure, bucking my butt back into him to meet his deep, hard thrusts.

I heard myself crying out, "Yes, god, Reg. Shit, yes. Fuck me hard."

I tensed with shock at what I'd called out. But of course I knew. I knew as soon as he began fucking me. The scent was musky, not woodsy; even in the dim light, I could tell the hands holding my wrists were not those of a young man; and the forearms were sinewy, tough, not smooth and hairy like Tony's had been as I watched him drink coffee at my dining room table.

I was being fucked by my boss, Reginald Walker III. And no matter how nonsensical that was, I didn't care. He could fuck every bit as well, could reach farther inside me even, could pump as long and as vigorously as any of the Rods, Stevens, Chucks, or Brads I'd had inside me. In the dark, like this, he was giving me a glorious fuck.

Between fuckings-there were several that night; he was a virile man, and I was a needy bottom-he whispered, "Here, only here. But you will take the key to this cabin again, won't you?"

"Again and again, if that's what you want," I whispered back. At last, a man richer than me, a man who made the decisions and that I didn't have to proposition and be a sugar daddy to. Fuck being seventy. He had a big cock and still was able to do what he wanted with it-what I wanted from another man's cock. "But how . . . we're almost nowhere, in the snow."

"I own the cabin next door too," he said. "I came here as soon as I left the office-as soon as you accepted the key to this cabin. When I watched you stroking yourself to that gay porn last night, I was sure of you."

Of course, the familiar blur of a passing black vehicle. Reg3 owned a black Land Rover. I'd only seen it a couple of times, but it had registered in my mind.

"How did you? How did you know?" It hit me then that he'd called me Sean. He knew all along who I was. "You planned this. You set this up, didn't you?" We'd been side by side, but he was on his knees again, his strong hands on my hips, turning me onto my belly. I don't know if it had come out as an accusation. I didn't mean it that way. I was in awe of what he'd planned, that he wanted to fuck me. I realized suddenly that, over the years, I'd fantasized him fucking me, without ever having put the face and the name to the dream. The cock, though, and how it could make me both scream and moan, I knew all too well from my fantasies.

"This is just for here," he admonished me again, his status and reputation in Washington foremost in his mind. "You understand that, don't you?"

"I understand." It came out as a moan because of what his hands were doing as they explored my body. "But you set this up, didn't you?"

"Yes, I've been planning this for years," he growled. "But you always were with some younger man. Not now, though. You were mooning about being left. You were ready; you are ripe for it. You like my cock, don't you?"

"Oh, shit, yes, I love it. But I don't understand. You knew I was with men?"

"Of course. I know everything that goes on in the office, and don't you forget it. But this is completely separate from the office. Don't forget that either. Only here, but you'll be here when I want you, won't you?"

"Yes," I answered meekly-happily, even. A man to take care of me, to order me around. And one who could fuck like this too. That was what I was missing in my life. I knew that now.

"Up on your knees," he hissed, and exhilarated, aroused, I complied. I cried out in ecstasy as, gripping my hips with his hands and me fisting up wads of the sheets with mine, he thrust inside me again, immediately setting to pumping me hard and deep. I came almost immediately.

And later, I came again and again and again.

"I'll be back tomorrow night," he whispered as he pulled out of me for the last time and I could feel his weight lifting off the bed in the loft in the darkness.

"Please, please come earlier," I murmured back, in glorious exhaustion. "There's something I want."

"If you want," he whispered. He slapped me on the bare butt. "This ass is mine at last," he said with a low laugh.

"Yes," I agreed, with a sigh.

* * * *

Reg3 came after dark Sunday night, entering the cabin through the back porch and the kitchen door. It was snowing again. He surprised me by entering in the back and was already half naked before reaching the living room. Again I had all of the lights on and a fire going in the fireplace. I had hoped to see his boots, but he'd left them in the kitchen. I did see his feet, though.

He laughed when he entered the living room, to find me standing there, naked, my dick in my fist. "So, you want me to fuck you in front of the fire, is that it?"

"No, I want you to fuck me in front of the window," I answered.

He gave me a strange look and a crooked smile, but he did as I asked for the first fucking-we both knew we'd want as many fucks as we could manage, he to affirm his virility to himself each time as age caught hold of him, and me because I was so needy and, admittedly, because I was worried about the onset of age as well.

He fucked me from behind, him standing and crouched behind me and me with the heels of my hands and the knees of my widespread legs pressed against the window glass. As I was nearing completion, he reached around, fisted my cock, and finished me off, my cum again splattering against the glass of the window. He took longer to come, but he did so finally, starting with a grunt and releasing me so that I could sink to the floor and offer him a cheek while he ripped the condom off and ejaculated on my face.

"You want to do it in front of the fire next?" I asked.

"No. I want to use the downstairs bedroom. I like the mattress in there better than upstairs."

I had in my mind the whole time that I would check the new-fallen snow the next morning for footprints. It hadn't been just a whim that I wanted to be fucked in front of the living room window. But, although I did check, and found what I was looking for, I didn't really need to check.

Reg3 fucked me on the master bedroom bed, with me on my back, pillows under the small of my back to elevate my buttocks to a deep penetration angle, and Reg3 kneeling between my spread and raised legs and holding my ankles up and out with his encircling fists. He was spending enough time leaning down to nip at my nipples as he fucked not to see what I could see-my head dangling over the far side of the bed, staring through the sliding glass doors out onto the darkened screened porch.

Tony standing here, on the porch, near the door, just inside the shadows, fisting and stroking his cock as he watched Reg3 fuck me.

I opened my mouth in a broad "O," exhibiting my willingness, my desire, to give Tony suck. He moved, briefly, closer to the glass, which he splattered with his cum before withdrawing into the shadows and fleeing the porch.

I had seen that Reg3's feet were regular sized and I didn't have to check out the soles of his boots. I did find the footprints in the new-fallen snow the next morning, both on the deck in front and leading up to and inside the porch in back. The size of Tony's feet; sole prints to match the pattern of Tony's boots. But I'd already seen what I needed to see to be sure of Tony now.

Still, I was a bit surprised Monday afternoon as I drove the Forester down the driveway-hopeful but until then not completely sure-to find Tony waiting at the bottom of the driveway. He was all bundled up in his forest-green coat and beside him, on the ground, was a pack of camping gear.

He raised his hand as I reached the bottom of the driveway, and I stopped and rolled down my window.

"I want you to drive me up to D.C.," he said. I didn't hear much in the way of request in his voice. The commanding tone aroused and exhilarated me.

"Where in D.C.?" I asked, my voice full of hope.

"You said you have a house and that you roomed guys from your gym sometimes. We can go there."

"You want to room with me for a while?"

"I got your message this weekend. No playing games here. You take cock, I know you want mine, and I want to fuck you into next week," Tony said with a growl.

There it was. That's what I wanted to hear. It was nice to hear it from Reg3. But this was best of all. I hadn't lost my interest in young hunks fucking me. I just wanted one who pitched me, who would take control of me.

"Climb in," I said, but then I clarified that as he was moving around to the passenger door. "Climb into the backseat."

"The backseat?" he asked, raising an eyebrow.

"I'll take you to D.C.-and home-but I can't wait that long. I want you to fuck me right here, in the backseat of this car."

"Right out here?"

"I don't give a fuck who sees us doing it." I answered. "That is, if you don't," I continued, cautioning myself to let him control-knowing now that that was what I wanted from a man.

"Shit no, I don't care," he answered, opening my door, and, to my delight, manhandling me out of the front and into the back.

As I sat in his lap, our clothes only open enough to expose his thick, hard dick and my yielding channel, the car rocking up and down in the snow, he raised and lowered me on a divinely big cock and I ran my fingers through the thick, curly black hair of his head and turned my head up to the ceiling of the car to cry out my pleasure. I had already sucked his cock and found his pubic hair as thick and black and curly as I had imagined and his woodsy scent more intoxicating than ever before. While he fucked me, I had the presence of mind to thank either Chuck or Steve again. They hadn't just recommended I get a four-wheel-drive vehicle, they'd also said that the Forester had better springs than any of the others in its class.