0 comments/ 47536 views/ 4 favorites If You Choose Not to Decide Ch. 01 By: SlickTony The doorbell rang. Terry waited a few seconds to see if his mother would answer the door, but he heard nothing. No footsteps, no sound of the door opening—nothing. She must have gone out without saying anything to him. With a sigh of resignation he muted the TV, and tossing the remote on the seat of the recliner, he went to the door and yanked it open. Gavin Taulbe stood on the porch. "Surprise, man!" he said. "We're on our way to Montgomery, but we thought we'd take a side trip and see you. Sid's been distracted—she saw a whatnot in front of that j—um, antique store on your main street and had to check it out. She dropped me off. She'll be around later. You alone? Great! Let's see how much fun we can have before she gets here." They didn't even bother with going into Terry's bedroom. After he'd literally yanked Gavin into the house and slammed the door shut on the outside world—after that first ferocious, lip-bruising, tongue-spraining kiss they'd exchanged, their clothes were off and flung all over the living room. He joyously gripped the other man's shoulders, kissed him again, and then ran his hands and mouth over his muscular, sparsely furred body. Soon he was down on the floor between Gavin's legs, one hand cupping his tensed, hair-husked nutsack and the other wrapped around his thick, veiny, big-headed cock. He had his tongue out to lick the tear away from its single eye, when Gavin said, "Wait, I have a better idea. Lie down." Terry did so, and the other man knelt over him, top to tail, leaning down to grasp Terry's cock, which had sprung to life at the touch of Gavin's mouth on his. That hot, skillful mouth covered Terry down to the root with the same desperate, years-unslaked hunger that had marked Gavin's first contact with him. Terry grabbed Gavin's ass and pulled him down, and his thick, formidable tool descended into his eagerly opened mouth. He felt a surge of energy, of pleasure run through them both. It was impossible to judge which felt better—Gavin's tongue spiraling around him, or the solid, meaty feel of Gavin in his mouth. It was nearly impossible to tell which was which. They rocked and rolled together, there on the living room carpet. Presently he felt/heard the vibration of Gavin's throat as the man groaned with ecstasy; above him, Terry could see his balls leap and tighten. Terry knew just what he was experiencing, because it was happening to him, too. He clamped his thighs around Gavin's head-- --and whimpered under his breath as warm gouts of semen hit his belly and chest. He felt his cock twitch and spasm in one hand and his balls contracting in the other. He waited for the rhythm of his heart to slow to its normal pace. Near him, in the bed, was the T-shirt he'd been wearing the previous day, kept there for just this purpose. Letting his long legs straighten to the end of the bed, where they hit the footboard, he cleaned himself up with the shirt, rubbing his chest and stomach vigorously to make sure that all trace of his deposit was gone. A canvas laundry hamper in a stainless steel wire frame sat on the other side of the room. Terry sat up and fired the soiled shirt at the hamper. "Two points," he murmured as the shirt disappeared into the basket. "Ter-ry!" His mother always called him in that fashion if they were in separate rooms, or if she were indoors and he were out, like the old radio program. He'd never heard it, of course, but his mother must have, even though that had to be at second-hand; his grandfather had told him about it. "Terry! You awake?" "Yes, Mom," Terry replied, pitching his voice so he could be heard in the kitchen. The smell of fresh, hot, strong coffee began to permeate the house and had now reached his room. "I'm going down to see your father and take him some fresh...supplies. They called me yesterday and told me he was out." Terry leaped out of bed and put on a pair of pajama bottoms. He never wore them in bed, except when it got cold, but he wore them around the house for decency's sake, when his mother was about. Barefoot, he padded to the end of the hall and stuck his head around the kitchen doorjamb. Victoria Pellegrin was putting two packets of Depends into a big plastic shopping bag, there on the kitchen table. A laundry basket, filled with freshly washed, dried and folded clothing, waited on the table next to her handbag. Terry looked at the kitchen window. It was still dark. Victoria appeared to have been up for hours already. "Mom, you took him some at the beginning of the week." "I know. They said he'd run through them all. I don't believe it. I think they're redistributing them to other patients." "Could be," Terry said. "Those sumbitches; you've got to watch them like a hawk," Victoria said. "Put the fear of God in them. I don't know how long I'm going to be, so can you go on and open the store?" "Sure, Mom." "Thanks, sweetie. And don't forget to turn off the coffeepot before you leave." "I won't." Terry helped his mother carry the laundry and the supplies out the back door and she loaded them into her car. He returned to the house and she backed the car down the long shell driveway and took off down the dark street. A faint blue tinge informed the sky to the east. It was still cool, but that was because the sun had not come up yet. Terry took a quick shower, thinking about his morning as he did so. He'd been dreaming, an inchoate mélange of sexual images and sensations; as soon as he'd awakened, it was easy to sharpen it up by mixing in fantasies derived from the memory of his last astounding day at Latham Construction Supplies, when Sidonie Taulbe, who was outside sales, and her husband had essentially double-teamed him right there in his own office. It had started with just her, and then he'd come in, and Terry had found himself doing things he'd never thought he'd do— --Like kneeling between another man's spread legs and enjoying the taste and feel of that man's cock in his mouth, enjoying the way he could make him gasp and shiver with just the movement of his fingers in his— Not surprisingly, he felt his breath crowded in his lungs; his own cock was suddenly horizontal and twitching. He looked at it, and then consideringly at the bottle of body wash on the edge of the bathtub... Enough outta you, he thought, and abruptly turned the faucet handle all the way to the right. The water wasn't truly cold, not in southern Louisiana at this time of the year, but enough to do what he needed it to do. He dried himself and pulled on a pair of boxers. Coming back into the bathroom, he looked at himself in the spotty little medicine-chest mirror. He'd been doing that quite a lot since he'd come back to Lac du Miel. Not that it gave him any new information. He saw the same thing he'd always seen: a tall, gangling, almost-pretty guy with fair skin and reddish-brown hair that started looking like it needed a trim a week after he'd had it cut. Victoria said he looked much as his father had when she'd first met him, and he would settle into his looks and age well. Terry supposed he would, but when he thought about how his father looked now, he got very depressed. He had come back to Lac du Miel because of family obligations. His father had suffered a stroke, and his mother needed someone to help run their hardware store. Of course, Terry had quit his job at Latham and come back. What else could he do? He was the only kid. Victoria did her best to prepare him for the changes the stroke had made in Thomas Pellegrin's appearance, but nothing ever prepared you. Even worse than the way Thomas' face was distorted on one side, the limbs that could not receive instructions from the brain to move properly, and the neural damage that had turned his speech to mush in his mouth, was the question of whether he would ever run his business again. He was young to have a stroke. But there might not be a business in the next couple of years. It had been in the Times-Picayune and the Lac du Miel Gazette that a Wal-Mart was going up a few miles down the road. "Even if it were ten miles closer to Houma," his mother cracked, "it would still be too close to home." She believed that stress over this coming event had contributed to Thomas' stroke—every bit as much as his long-standing smoking habit and inordinate fondness for fried foods, which he thought he could get by with because he was the kind of man who never gained any weight. Terry ran a hand over the russet stubble of hair on the lower half of his face. Opening the medicine cabinet, he took out the can of shaving cream and gave it a shake. It was too light and it made no noise. He pressed the button and a pea-sized glob of foam came out. That was the thing he'd forgotten last time he was at the grocery. He thought briefly about running up the hall and borrowing some of the pink girly gel type stuff his mother used, and decided that there was no time like the present to start a beard. His experience at Latham turned out to be helpful. True, there were more different kinds of inventory and more people to deal with, to say nothing of the direct cash and credit/debit card transactions when Latham dealt mostly in invoices and checks, but these factors were not that big a deal. In some ways, it was nicer than his old job. There were times at Latham when he saw no one for hours at a stretch. Here, on Lac du Miel's main drag, people came in and out all the time. He had helped in the store in the old days; another reason it was work he was familiar with. Surprisingly little had changed. The strap of jingle bells that used to hang on the door handle had given way to an electronic buzzer that sounded when you opened and closed the door. There was a security system which he had to disarm as soon as he had let himself into the building. There was a nifty computerized cash register that figured up the change for cash transactions and a computer so you could order stock on line. Although Pellegrin's Hardware sold most of the usual items you found in a hardware store, there were also specialized supplies for the cane farmers and fishermen who made their living in and around the town. You did that, or you worked in a town business, or you commuted to New Orleans or down to Houma. Right now, the store did a decent amount of business, and Terry adjusted to his new-old job easily. This was the easiest thing about being back in his hometown. After the initial flurry of greetings and reminiscences which had ensued upon Terry's arrival in town, things got dull again. People were glad to see him back, they thought, for good, instead of just infrequent weekend and holiday visits—they asked him how he was bearing up, with the news about his dad, and if he missed living in Houston, was he going to take over the business. But to quote Larry McMurtry, all his friends had gotten to be strangers. He'd been glad enough to leave Lac du Miel. He wanted to go out and see the world. He had somehow managed to get a basketball scholarship to UH, and while he had no illusions about turning pro when he was only a slender 6'3", he'd enjoyed college life and had not screwed up much. The job at Latham had started out being part-time and turned full-time later on. Now that he was back in his hometown, he felt as if everyone had moved on while his life had stayed at a standstill. All his old girlfriends from high school were married with children now, mostly married to the guys he used to hang out with. It was difficult for him to meet up with anybody. On Saturday afternoons and evenings, he saw the shoals of young girls promenading up and down the streets, giggling in groups; all of them, it seemed, in the regulation uniform of the tribe: the tight little belly shirts, the low-rise jeans, navel-studded to a woman (if you wanted to call them women), their hair streaming waterfall-straight down their backs. They carried their stuff in little backpack-shaped purses. They wore platform clogs that added three inches to their height and he still could not look any of them in the eye. What had happened to all the tall girls? Didn't they grow them here anymore? And not a one of the present crop had graduated from high school yet. For all he knew, they were still in middle school. He honestly couldn't tell. What his old pals would have said if he'd told them about his last day at work didn't bear thinking about. Especially the way it had ended. As soon as he got settled in, he set his computer up again—Lac du Miel still didn't have DSL or broadband service—and annoyed Victoria by tying up the phone with his e-mail downloads. One of them was from Sidonie, asking how he was and how he liked life back in his old stomping grounds. Jolene said hey. Included in the e-letter was an attempt to explain why she had orchestrated that Friday afternoon. She said that her husband came from a deeply conservative, if not entirely conventional background. In fact, his father was a tinfoil-hat-wearing wingnut who'd done time in a Federal pen for his involvement with The Sons of the Lone Star, a survivalist/militia organization. He'd done his best to indoctrinate his son with his prejudices; fortunately Gavin had a lot of them knocked out of him in the Army. But he had enough left to feel very, very conflicted when he had an encounter—which turned into an affair—with another man, in Vietnam. He never told her about it until she accidentally found out, and then she did not handle it well. After thirty years they were still working through this issue. Terry wasn't sure he wanted to know this. He'd had a grand good time in the process of being sucked in—and sucked off—but liked the event better as something like a freak weather occurrence, a tornado where tornadoes don't happen or a rain of frogs. Further, issues and insecurities and expiation were not concepts he was used to connecting with her. Not that she was apologizing. And from what he gathered, Gavin had gotten it out of his system—he'd made his decision, and wasn't going to look back now; he was more committed to his marriage than ever. So much for Terry's morning fantasies... The phone rang. "Pellegrin's Hardware," Terry responded automatically. "How may I help you?" A few times he'd had to stop himself from saying Latham. It was Victoria. "Is it very busy right now?" "No, it isn't, Mom. How are things at the care facility?" "I'll talk about it at a better time. I'm going to be here a while longer. I just remembered something I wanted to tell you. If Brent Primeaux should come in, could you tell him the yard needs some attention?" "Sure," said Terry. "I keep meaning to call him, but I've been so frazzled with this problem at the Home." "He comes in here, I'll tell him," Terry said. Terry remembered Brent Primeaux from the old days. Brent and his brother Martin earned money mowing people's yards and trimming their shrubbery. They drove and made their own money, so they counted as grown-up to Terry, even though they still lived at home. They went about town in an old dark blue Dodge Ram truck with magnetic signs on the doors saying "Primeaux Bros. Lawn Care." There'd been a sister, too, Sarabeth, but if he knew Brent and Marty only slightly, he'd not known Sarabeth at all. A mysterious scandal had blown the family apart, the summer that their cousin Russ Cannon came from Texas to stay with them. The kind of scandal that had the adults heating up the phone lines talking about it, but hushing up when a kid came into the room. Russ had been sent home very suddenly. And the next day, both Marty and Sarabeth were gone, scattered to different parts of the country. Even at the relatively tender age of nine, Terry was able to conclude that whatever had happened had something to do with either sex or money, but when he advanced any of his theories to Victoria she told him to shut up and mind his own business. Brent went away, too, but not far; only up the road to New Orleans where he studied at Tulane. His business expanded. Nobody called him the yard boy anymore. He had a landscaping business, and he had fleets of trucks and equipment and people working for him. Great, Terry thought. If I do connect with him and give him Mom's message he'll probably send a couple of kids around and I'll have to hang around and oversee them. A couple of days after his interchange with Victoria, the buzzer sounded and a man wearing khaki shorts, t-shirt and soiled athletic shoes came into the store. Terry was running the store by himself again. The man was vaguely familiar looking and Terry tried to think who he was. He was of medium height, which still made him shorter than Terry, and had the body of someone who worked as opposed to merely working out. He had curly black hair with a silver thread in it here and there, thick, quizzical dark eyebrows, laugh and squint lines around his eyes that he'd probably had even when he was very young, and a short, close-trimmed beard like the one Terry was starting. A tiny gold hoop adorned each of his earlobes. He was chewing gum—Juicy Fruit, as Terry found out when he got closer. He did an exaggerated double-take when he saw Terry, and pantomimed looking way, way up. "My God, it's the Pellegrin boy!" he said. "I haven't seen you up close in a coon's age. I heard you were back in town but nobody said you'd grown a mile." By this time, Terry recognized Brent Primeaux, the man his mother had told him to look out for. He was now in his mid-thirties; and except for filling out some, he had not changed that much. Brent moved toward the counter, extending his hand, and the two men shook hands over the counter. Brent's hand was warm, dry, and work-callused. "But I should have known. You played basketball for UH, didn't you?" "Yeah. I did my part. Not big enough or good enough to go pro, however." "You back for good?" "I don't know. It'll probably be a while. Hey, Brent, I'm glad you came in here; my mother said to look out for you. She said the yard needs attention." "No problem," Brent said. "I noticed it was looking kind of overgrown. I'll see to it." Terry felt embarrassed. He hadn't lifted a finger to do anything to the yard since he'd gotten home, and he didn't know that Victoria had taken to having it cared for professionally. Brent bought half the store's supply of rose food and said he'd contact them later on in the week. A few minutes after he'd left, Victoria came in and Terry was able to report to her that he'd gotten the yard situation taken care of. "That's good," Victoria said. "Mom, you should have said something. I didn't even think about the yard. When did you start having it done? We never did before." When Terry was coming up, he and Thomas always worked on the yard on Sunday afternoons. "Obviously I couldn't see to it all myself. Brent started offering to help me as soon as he heard that your father had to go into long-term care. He didn't want to take my money, but I insisted. Did he say when he was coming?" "No. I forgot to ask." "No matter. If he says he'll take care of it, he will." For no reason, Terry felt somehow lacking again. There was no reason for it. He'd given up his job and his place and his life in Texas to come back to his hometown when his mother had requested it, hadn't he? Terry had a split weekend. His days off were Friday and Sunday. Saturday was out of the question; the store was too busy then, with people catching up on all their home repair projects that they couldn't get done over the week. On Friday, he went to the grocery store, remembering this time to add shaving cream to the list Victoria gave him (although he was still growing the beard). When he came back with the groceries, he found one of the Prime Cut trucks in the carport. He thought this was a weird name for a landscaping company, as he tended to connect the name with meat. He pulled in behind the truck. As soon as he turned off his car he heard a lawnmower running. He got out of the car, opened the side door and carried the bags of groceries into the house. As he was putting the perishables into the refrigerator he glimpsed movement out the kitchen window. He looked out. Brent moved past him, pushing a lawnmower. He was wearing a pair of ragged cutoffs, work shoes and socks. If You Choose Not to Decide Ch. 01 Terry came out of the house. Brent was just coming around the corner. "Hey, Terry!" he said. His teeth were very white against the tanned skin of his face. He cut off the lawnmower. "I hope you don't mind I parked in the carport. I didn't know when you'd be back. I can move the truck if you want." "No, that's all right. I can move my car when you get done." "Works for me," Brent said, and started up the lawnmower again. It was warm outside, and his skin, naturally olive with an overlay of ruddy tan, was gleaming with sweat. He moved past Terry and disappeared around the other corner of the house. Among the things Terry had picked up while he was out were four cans of oil and a filter. It did not take him long to change the oil in his car, and then he went inside and logged on long enough to check his e-mail. Nothing. Nothing from any of his friends, he had no plans to buy a house no matter what the current prime lending rate was, and he did not need a larger penis, thank you very much. He logged out and abruptly decided he could use some fresh air. Brent had just finished up with the grass and was lifting the lawnmower back into his truck. He smiled as Terry approached him. "Hey, what's up?" "What were you going to do next?" "Edge, weed; there are some dead limbs on some of the trees that need to come off. Why do you ask?" "I thought I'd join you." "You don't have to do that. It's my job, and it's enough your mama is paying me." "I just want to do something. I should have been seeing about this, but I haven't even thought about it." Terry was beginning to feel silly, like a bored kid trying to find something to do. "Well, Ok, you want to do something, you can edge—edger's in the truck." There was a goodly amount of edging to do—long driveway, carport slab, front walks, and patio in back, and Terry hadn't operated an edger in a while. It took him longer than he expected. It was hot, so he took off his shirt and tossed it on top his car. He was partway through the edging when Brent came around and waved a hand in his face to get his attention. In his hand was a large, grubby plastic bottle of sun block. Terry turned off the edger and put it down. "You are gon' be red as a brick inside an hour, you don't put some of this on," he said. He handed the bottle to Terry and stood watching while Terry anointed his chest, stomach, shoulders and arms. Naturally, he had trouble getting his back evenly covered. "Here, I'll get that," Brent said, taking the sun block from him. "Turn around." Brent squirted a glob of the ointment into his hand and applied it to Terry's back. It was a little more than simply having lotion rubbed into his back and a little less than a massage, but it felt so good that he mindlessly closed his eyes and leaned back into Brent's hands, as if he were in fact being given a massage. Brent moved closer to him. Terry felt the heat from his body; smelled, over the lotion, sweat, cut grass, earth, a trace of gasoline, a whiff of Juicy Fruit. "You like that, huh?" His voice was pitched a tone lower than usual, and sounded intimate, as if they were in alone together in a room. Startled, Terry stepped away and turned around to face him. "Yeah. Felt real good. You, um, ever work as a masseuse?" "Nah, it's just something I know how to do. I did take a course in a school, but I haven't taken the exam for my license. Haven't gotten around to it." Brent dug in a pocket of his cutoffs and produced a small tube of something. "Here. Take some of this too." "This" turned out to be zinc oxide in a cool color, bright toxic green. Terry applied some to the bridge of his nose and under his eyes and handed the tube back to Brent. They continued to work on the Pellegrin lawn together, often on opposite sides of it, but the touch of Brent's hands on his back, and the way his voice had sounded, had raised Terry's late-developing antenna. He was aware of Brent's eyes on him from time to time, and he found himself stopping work frequently to look at the other man. Naturally he compared him with the only other man he had ever been with. They were of quite different types. Brent had the look of a Frenchman that many people in this part of the country had, with skin that tanned ruddy in the summer and faded to near-sallowness in the winter. He also had more body hair than Gavin—a sleek layer of dark hair on his chest and a line of it down the center of his belly, running down past the waistband of the worn cutoffs that were molded by heat and perspiration to his narrow hips and firm ass. He probably had quite a forest down there. Terry had just handed Brent a pruner and he was trying to saw off a withered, lifeless limb that was high up on a water oak. It was almost too high to reach without having to go to the trouble of fetching out a ladder, but Brent was giving it his best shot. It occurred to Terry that this was something he could better do, since he was three or four inches taller, but suddenly his eyes were filled with the sight of Brent's body at full stretch, calf muscles bunched as he stood on tiptoe trying to get a purchase on the limb with the serrated edge of the pruning saw, lean belly sucked away from the waist of his shorts. All he could see, all he could think about, was that line of hair and where it led to.... The limb separated from the tree but stayed caught in the branches surrounding it. Brent relaxed and lowered the pruner. He lowered his gaze and found Terry looking at him. There was no time for Terry to pretend he was doing anything else. Brent's eyes caught and held his, and he smiled, slowly, sensually. In the afternoon sun his eyes, which had seemed just brown, had golden streaks like dark tiger eye quartz. There was an infinitesimal chip in the inner corner of his right upper incisor. Terry moved closer to him. Their bodies were only a few inches apart. Brent let the pruner he was holding drop to the ground. He was wearing cotton work gloves and he pulled them off and dropped them, too. "You like what you see?" I'm on my own here, Terry thought. Accepting that, he took one of Brent's hands and pressed it against his rapidly stiffening cock. "What do you think?" "Oh, hey," Brent murmured, grasping Terry through his khakis and gave him a strong, firm caress. Terry put his other hand on the side of Brent's face and angled his head for a kiss. Brent's eyes momentarily slewed toward the empty (so far) and sunlit street. "We're kind of exposed, mon ami, he said. "We'll pick this up inside." He had placed his other hand on Terry's shoulder, and now slid it down and gave Terry's nipple a flick with his thumb. Terry gasped and his cock jumped like a caught fish in Brent's hand. There was a sudden crackling noise overhead and the limb which Brent had sawed off only a few seconds before fell free of the branches in which it had been caught. The two men jumped aside just in time to avoid it falling on their heads. Terry was very glad that the branch hadn't fallen on him; he was also relieved that the near-accident had distracted him so that he wasn't striding all over his front yard sporting wood for the benefit of whichever of his neighbors happened to be looking out. They were able to wind things up swiftly, even though Brent insisted on following his usual fussy and complex protocol for getting his lawn care equipment stowed back in his truck. Now, while they were working, they kept smiling at each other and finding excuses to touch. Once inside the house, Brent said, "I could use a shower. Would you care to join me?" They shucked out of their clothes in a hurry, leaving them in a heap on the bathroom floor, erections springing free and swinging like booms. For some reason, this made them laugh. Terry leaned into the tub enclosure and turned the water on. He always liked to adjust the water temperature before he got in the shower, because that way he avoided the blast of residual cold water in the pipes. "There you go," Terry said. "Hope you like that temperature." The light in the bathroom was good, and the curtain was transparent. All the shower curtains in the Pellegrin house were clear—Victoria insisted on it. Terry blamed this on Alfred Hitchcock. Brent got under the spray and began wetting his hair and turning around to let the water get all over his skin. He had been perfectly serious about the shower, whatever else he intended. When he was thoroughly wet, he pushed the water out of his face and back through his hair. His hair slicked back, the tiny gold hoops in his ears, gave him a sleek, Euro look. The water had smoothed all the hair on his body down in a swimmer's pattern, but it started to curl again around his nipples and in his pits as soon as he was out of the stream. He smiled at Terry. He had parenthesis-like dimples on the corners of his mouth. Terry pulled Brent into his arms. It felt strange, holding another man in a full-body embrace. No soft breasts to press against him, and two hard dicks to get trapped between them instead of just one. There was one thing, though, that he didn't think would feel that different... Just before their lips met, Brent drew back, swallowed...then Terry understood. He was getting rid of the Juicy Fruit. Terry grinned and covered Brent's mouth with his. Brent's tongue spiraled around his and drew it in deep. Terry loved to kiss. To this he attributed most of his success with girls. It seemed to be succeeding with guys, too. He backed Brent against the wall of the shower, and they grooved mindlessly on the taste and texture of each other's mouths, rubbing their cocks against each other's bellies. Brent broke the kiss, breathless, eyes slightly glazed. "Man, you are one damn good kisser," he said. "Let's get cleaned up and out of here before I waste a shot." They showered with dispatch.. Terry would have loved to continue fooling around with Brent right there in the shower, but he knew the hot water would run out soon. They washed each other's backs. The landscaper had a great back—probably because of all the labor—with the double column of muscle and the little flat dimples just above his ass that one saw on the very fit. His leg muscles were so well defined you could almost cut yourself on them. He was past the lankiness of youth and looked strong, competent—and very hot. Terry was enjoying his first chance to look openly at another man's body with the anticipation of playing with it. With Gavin, he'd first been too nervous, and then too busy. Brent was mostly tanned, except for where he wore shorts—and the sun socks on his feet and ankles. The lush growth of dark hair around his sturdy, terra cotta colored cock, so thick that the skin beneath could hardly be seen, looked as if it had been trimmed. Terry was glad to note that what Brent had was not much thicker than his own. He had no idea what sort of things his new friend liked to do, but the thought of having something of Gavin's dimensions up his ass would have filled him with apprehension. Terry got another towel out of the linen closet and tossed it to Brent. While they dried themselves, Terry snapped his towel out and snagged it around the other man's hips and drew him close for another kiss. Their tongues glided and danced; their beards rasped together; their breathing quickened. Terry groaned into Brent's mouth, clutched his ass and pushed his cock against his belly. Brent broke out of the kiss again. "I can hardly wait to see what else you can do with your mouth," he said. "See how you like this." Bending a little, he fastened his lips to one of Terry's nipples, he sucked it, hard and quick, pulling the erected nub of flesh between his teeth, flicking it with his tongue. Sensation roared through Terry like a firestorm. He wasn't sure what he wanted to do or have done to him, but he wanted it badly and he wanted it now. "Let's go in my room." They tumbled onto Terry's bed, which he had not bothered to make that morning, not caring that they weren't completely dry. Brent rolled on top of Terry, pinning him down, grabbing his head and invading his mouth with a total kiss, which Terry ate and drank of until he just couldn't stand it any more, and he began tickling Brent's ribs. The other man rolled off him, laughing. "What was that for?" "Because I'm about to explode. Give me a chance to cool down." An inward, remembering look passed over the landscaper's face, but then he gave Terry an oddly affectionate smile. "I get you. But don't wait too long, I'm not cooling down any." He lay back in a relaxed pose, one leg bent and the other straight, his arms pillowing his head, but his cock was not at all relaxed; it lay stiff and twitching on his belly. Terry lay down next to him. He touched the tip of his tongue to one of Brent's nipples, and it emerged from the little nest of silky hair surrounding it, hardening to rubbery firmness. He drew it between his lips the way Brent had done with him, and was gratified to hear the other man's shivering inhalation, and see the goose bumps that suddenly roughened his skin. "Do the other one," Brent murmured. "Ohhhhh." He caressed the back of Terry's head, and then his hand nudged it gently southward. "Now suck my cock. Please." Terry squirmed down to where he was at somewhat right angles to Brent's body and took the man's shaft in his hands. Whoever said that they all looked the same obviously didn't know what he was talking about, he thought. The veins on this one were fine and rested below the surface; the head, smaller than that of the last one he'd handled, was a few shades lighter than the body, a subtle warm fleshy color. He thought it might be uncut, but since it had been erect all the time he'd been observing it, he couldn't be sure. The tip was as bare as any of the ones he'd seen in locker room or in movies. A clear drop of precum welled up in its slit. Terry licked it up, tasting the delicate salty liquid, and closed his lips firmly around the head. It was hard, as hard as his own, and a good, comfortable fit; he worked his way down, and down, tongue twirling and lashing. He flicked and sucked at the little underside place where head and shaft met, and Brent grunted with pleasure and freeing one hand from behind his head, reached down and began playing with Terry's cock so it wouldn't get bored. No danger of that, Terry thought; he was having too much fun seeing what kind of tongue caresses, what degree of suction he could use, to get a wild twitch, an involuntary thrust, some new sound out of Brent. Meanwhile, Brent's slow hand was driving him wild... The world narrowed down to the sensation of Brent's cock in his mouth, the hard body tensing and flexing under his hands. He sucked and licked extravagantly, letting the saliva flow freely, knowing he was making a bunch of undignified noises and not caring a bit. He cut a look upward at Brent's face. The man looked as if he was hurting—but it was a good hurt. He bobbed and pulled and plunged. Brent's breaths steepened into moans. "Uh—" he got out, and then his body pronated, his legs stiffened; his cock swelled, hardened, and began filling Terry's mouth with warm pulses of semen. "Oh! Oh, God..." His skin grew suddenly damp. The hand he had on Terry's cock gripped firmly; the other he ran through Terry's hair. Terry swallowed and kept on swallowing. The output seemed immense and like it was never going to end. It did, though. Brent sat up and raised Terry so that their faces were level. "Don't swallow it all yet," he said, and opened his mouth into Terry's. They shared the taste. "Damn, that was good!" He lay back on the bed. "Your turn. Come on up here, cher. Yeah, that's it. You're right where I want you." He was on his knees, his cock, which had lost some of its stiffness due to distraction, bobbing in Brent's face. Brent took it in his hand, and it revived at once. Brent's other hand cupped his balls. Terry was beginning to leak. Brent's tongue curled around his cockhead and pointed into his slit. "Mmm, good. " He pulled Terry forward. "You sure you want it like that? Once I get started...I mean, last time someone fucked me in the mouth I thought he was gonna kill me." Brent grinned around the end of Terry's cock. He thought of Sidonie, smiling at him the same way. "I can take it," he said. "Mm, what a hard piece of andouille you have!" He opened his mouth wider and took it all. Terry didn't know where he could be putting it and was past asking. He rested his hands on the headboard of his bed and had at Brent's hot, mobile, knowing mouth. After a few minutes, Brent stopped him and made him pull out so that he could wet two of his fingers. Terry knelt still, trembling a little with nerves and excitement, as Brent's fingers slid up his ass. He had taken the trouble to purchase a slender probe in a sex shop in New Orleans, and it was fun to practice with, but living flesh was different. Brent pulled him into his mouth again, and he was caught in a current of sensation, rocking forward into the mouth in front of him and back on the fingers behind him. They narrowed the range of their stroking to circle and rub his sweet spot. He felt the charge of approaching ecstasy build in his whole body. Brent's free hand traveled up his chest and strummed one of his nipples. A triad of sensations slammed into him like currents converging in a narrow channel. Thighs tensed, knees gripping the mattress, hands gripping the headboard, he threw back his head and howled, firing his load down Brent's throat. --Spent, he lay curled up next to his lover, head pillowed on his chest. Brent laughed softly. "I might be just guessing, but I think you liked that!" "Wow. Just wow. Yeah, I did." Brent smiled at him with sweet, relaxed mouth and half-lidded eyes. "Well, I liked it too. You taste good and got a decent length on you; I like that in a man. I sure am looking forward to having you in stick that thing in my ass, by the way." "You'll have to guide me," Terry said Brent grinned wickedly. "I'll be happy to do that!" "Seriously. I've never done that before." "Yeah? No shit? You've only bottomed?" "I haven't done either one. This is the second time I've done—this—with another guy, that is." "I wouldn't have guessed. You sucked my cock like a champ. So, tell me about this other time." Terry gave a short account of his last day at his old job, the encounter that turned into a threesome, and the way that, toward the end, he and Gavin had gotten into each other... "Here, I'll show you something. Look in my bedside table, there's a little key in there; can you give it to me? Thanks." He got up and leaned over the edge of his bed. Under the bed was a small safe in which he kept important papers and, occasionally, illegal substances; he opened it up. In a folder, stuck behind a report on the 401K from Latham that he really needed to roll over into an IRA, were the two sketches Gavin had made and given to him. Leaning off the bed as he was having to do put him in a vulnerable position; he felt Brent shift behind him, and he was not surprised to feel teeth nip lightly at one of his buttocks and a warm tongue slide across his hole... He straightened up and handed the two sketches to Brent, who was now sitting back against the headboard, looking innocent. "Ça c'est une belle femme," the older man murmured. He looked up at Terry. "But she is taken, isn't she?" "Oh, yes. Very much so," Terry said. He was still trying to sort out his feelings about having been someone's thirtieth anniversary present. Brent viewed the other sketch. "That's the way you look, all right!" he said, laughing. "So your first man was an artist. He's pretty good from what I've seen here. Don't throw that stuff away; it could be worth something someday!" He gave the papers back to Terry. Terry put them away, locked the box, and shoved it back under the bed. When he sat back up, Brent was lying back down, as relaxed as a cat, if ever a cat lay on its back, now-flaccid penis lying in the crease of its groin. Terry noted with a little thrill of interest that he had guessed right: it was uncut. "Yes, I am as God made me," Brent said. "Don't tell me you never saw one of these before." If You Choose Not to Decide Ch. 01 "Well of course I have," Terry said. "Just not this close." "Ah, well, look all you want. You can even touch it if you like." Terry needed no further invitation. Lying next to Brent, leaning on one elbow, he took it in his hand and inspected it very closely, peering into the opening of its sheath at the tender head concealed within, rather like someone's head with a turtleneck drawn up around it, pushing it this way and that with his fingers. Flicking a grin at Brent, he stuck a pointed tongue into the opening, inserting it cautiously under the skin, running around the crown. Brent's cock hardened in his hand. The head emerged as it grew longer. "Push it back," Brent murmured. Terry pushed the sheath back, and it tightened around the shaft as it fattened, making it look like something he was more familiar with. Brent watched him, his eyes concealed by his lashes, lips parted a little. Terry slid his open mouth down on him. He could feel the drawn-back skin behind the head. Brent moaned low in his throat. Rolling toward Terry, he reached for Terry's thighs and pulled him closer. "Get over here," he said. "Mmmnh," he murmured around Terry. They completed a circuit of pleasure, each trying to demonstrate to the other what would please him. The room became full of sucking, slurping, breaths and little moans. Terry could hardly tell who was doing what to whom. Brent's hard thighs scissored his head, and with a strangled groan, he began to thrust, rhythmically and heedlessly, into Terry's mouth. Terry returned the favor, and they came together, tensed into a knot, making deliciously lewd noises as they tried to breathe and moan and swallow at the same time. "Come on up here," Brent said, when he could talk again. Terry turned around so they were lying in the same direction, and they kissed, sloppily. "Mmm, that was grand..." They lay twined lightly together, Brent's head tucked under Terry's chin. The effects of hard work, sunshine, and two orgasms each began to catch up with them, and they dozed off for a brief time. Brent woke up first. "What time is it?" Terry saw the red digits of his clock radio over Brent's shoulder. "Oh, Jesus! Mom's closing the store now. We'd better get decent, quick!" The two men sprang out of bed and dashed into the bathroom after their clothes. When Victoria let herself into the house, they were sitting at the kitchen table with a couple of beers. "I was glad to see your truck in the driveway. I'm out in the street; I didn't need to park you in as well as Terry. Thanks so much for coming and seeing to my place, Brent. You've no idea how much I appreciate your help." "It's no trouble to me," Brent said. "You staying to supper, Brent? It's just red beans and rice, but there's going to be lemon meringue pie for dessert..." Terry envisioned him and Brent and his mother all at the kitchen table, him looking at Brent and thinking about what they'd just done and wondering if and when he'd get a chance to do it again, and if there was anything—different—about him, about them, that Victoria would pick up on, and began to experience what he thought might be (although it had never happened to him) the symptoms of a panic attack. "Thank you, Mrs. P, that's mighty kind of you, but I've got to get going. I have some business I need to take care of." To Terry, he said, "You need to let me out." They stood near his truck. He clasped Terry's right forearm. "We've gotta stop meeting like this, boo," he said. "This désordre of scrambling into our clothes under your mama's nose is beneath all of us." His fingers moved in an invisible caress on Terry's skin. "I've got a weekend place out on the bayou; it's the last house on the road. Come to my house tomorrow evening, after you get off work." He gave Terry the same insinuating, sensual grin he'd given him earlier in the day.. "Come empty. I'll fill you up" "Ok," Terry said a little breathlessly. Brent released him, and he got into his car. After Brent backed out and drove away, he put the car into the carport and sat there a long time, gazing unseeingly at the setting sun, before he went back into the house. If You Choose Not to Decide Ch. 02 There really was a Lac du Miel in Lac du Miel. Once it had been wild and scenic and outside the city limits, but over the last couple of decades, what with the whole state sinking and the town expanding, town and lake had met and your view and access to it were obscured by a development called Honey Lake Estates. Houses started in the $120s and went up to McMansions. This was not where Terry was heading. He skirted the subdivision and took the road that led southward out of the town limits and ran parallel to the bayou. At this point it stopped being a blacktop road and was paved with pebble and shell. On the right side of the road were the houses, casual-looking buildings made of cinder block below and wood above. Apparently, people lived above and stored things below. The houses were close enough to the water so that you could sit on your deck and cast into the bayou. Bayou Row looked like an idyllic place for a water rat to live, but the unstated cost of living out here was expressed in the form of water marks—some marked, with dates, in paint—on the sides of some of the buildings. Terry was itching and sweating with nervous excitement and was a little sorry he hadn't stopped at home to take another shower, but he'd wanted to get away as soon as possible. He told Victoria that Brent had invited him to supper and if they got into drinking during the evening he wouldn't try to drive home. Victoria looked at him obliquely and told him to have fun, and try to see his dad sometime during the next day, if he could. Terry said he would. On the way out of town he stopped at the liquor store and bought a mid-price bottle of Petite Syrah, which just about cleaned them out of that commodity. In his kit he had a tube of lube. He was very glad he'd bought it in New Orleans along with the probe; in Lac du Miel, if he was seen buying lube they'd figure out what he was up to at once and might work out the who-with part before the day was over. He'd dropped out of Boy Scouts before he got beyond Cub, but had never forgotten the Scout motto. The sun was backlighting a big bank of cumulonimbus clouds with a glowing, translucent edge, shooting rays out from behind them that were so intense that the sky between them looked like dark rays. Terry hoped that he was getting the right signals from Brent; that he'd be there the night and that Brent wasn't the kind who expected his friends to go home afterwards. He did not look forward to making his way out of Brent's neighborhood in the dark, if it was going to storm. Brent's house was the last one on the road. Terry could tell it was his because one of his trucks was parked in front of it. To his surprise, the grounds were attractively landscaped—the old saw about the shoemaker's children going barefoot did not apply here. Brent seemed to be into containers when it came to his house. Maybe they were easier to maintain when it was flooding all the time. The upper part of the house was made of cypress, already weathered silvery though the houses didn't look old. Terry didn't remember this area being built on before he left Lac du Miel. He parked behind Brent's truck and got out. There was a staircase leading to the door. Terry walked up it and knocked. "Hey, Terry! You made it." Brent was dressed much like he had been the previous afternoon, except he was wearing a snug gray t-shirt with his cutoffs and he was barefoot. Westering light filtered through the windows of his house and attractive odors filled the air. "What you got there?" Terry was holding, rather awkwardly, both his kit and the bottle of wine in his left hand, needing one hand to knock on the door. Brent smiled as he relieved Terry of the Petite Syrah. Terry shook the other man's proffered hand. If Brent had been a girl, he'd have felt it natural to greet him with an embrace and a kiss, in light of what they'd done the previous day, but here he didn't know what the rules were. "Thanks for the wine. You want to drink it with dinner?" "Sure. We can do that." Brent put the bottle of wine on the dining table, and the two men stood there looking at each other for what seemed to Terry like forever. Brent stepped up close to him. "Terry, Terry," he said, "It's me, remember? The one you were doing soixante-neuf with yesterday afternoon? I won't bite..." He waggled his eyebrows like Groucho Marx. "...unless I am carried away by passion—or you want me to." Once again they were in a full-press embrace, kissing voraciously. Terry grabbed Brent's ass and pulled him close. Their cocks sawed and rubbed against each other through their clothes. Terry's had hardened immediately, and he was so aroused it hurt. "Do we have to bother with dinner?" Brent disengaged himself. "We sure as hell do, young'un. You think I bought these shrimp to burn? I need my strength even if you don't." He turned away and stepped back to the stove, where he had been sautéing the shrimp in some butter and garlic. He had just put them in the pan when Terry arrived. Terry laughed and came up behind Brent as he stood in front of the stove. As if given the go-ahead by the kiss, he started doing his best to distract him, nuzzling the back of his neck, pulling at the neck of his shirt so he could nip and suck on the skin over his beautiful hard deltoid muscles, bringing his hands around to flick Brent's nipples into little hard points through the cloth, then down to caress the slight convexity of his belly, rubbing the bulge in his pants against Brent's denim-covered ass. Brent turned off the burner under the shrimp. When he bent to get a pot out of a lower cabinet, Terry slid his fingers up the leg of his cutoffs and tickled everything he could find; Brent was commando under them. "For God's sake, Terry, stop a minute so I can fill this up," Brent said, laughing. He filled the pot up with water and put it on the stove to heat. "What am I gon' do with you anyway? I can see I won't get anything done with you acting like this..." Using Terry's erection to steer him by, he backed Terry a couple of steps to the dinette table. "Lean on that," he said, and brought a chair around to sit on himself. He quickly undid Terry's belt and unzipped his trousers. "Boxers and briefs?" he queried, raising an eyebrow. "I didn't know you were that conservative." The old Terry, who had burned with embarrassment and nerves while the eyes of a Texas artist raked over all his particulars, woke to life briefly. He felt a blush pass over his face like fire. "You know I had to be at work," he said. "I couldn't stop thinking about...yesterday afternoon. When Mom was there, it didn't...it wasn't a problem, but when she wasn't...I couldn't go to the bathroom to jack off, but sometimes I had to come out from behind the counter!" "Mon pauvre p'tit, Brent murmured. "Let me fix that for you. Up—" He hauled down Terry's trousers and underwear and Terry's cock sprang up, hard, its head shining with precum. Terry closed his eyes and gripped the edges of the table as he felt Brent's mouth cover him. When he opened his eyes, Brent, grinning, was holding his cock and flicking his tongue around its head. He closed his mouth firmly around it and stroked down—once, twice, a half dozen times, and then Terry lost it. He heard his breath rasping in and out of his lungs with each spasm that sent his seed boiling and spurting out of him. "Sweet. That was a fine protein snack," Brent said, swallowing and licking his lips. "I could go on the Atkins diet." As he stood up, Terry noticed that the end of his stiff cock extended below his cutoffs, secreting a short dribble of precum, but he seemed unself-conscious about it. "I'll bet you're feeling a lot better now. Why don't you help me get dinner set up so we can eat and have fun afterward? Or you can go look at the radio and pick us out some music." Half the wall on one side of Brent's open-plan house was taken up with an étagère containing an entertainment system that looked as if it cost as much as the house. Terry, tucking himself back into his pants and zipping them up, wandered over to it. Once he had switched on the power button, he began twirling the dial without bothering to listen to what was initially coming out of the radio. "None of that Top 40 crap," Brent added. Terry found a station that played the kind of classic rock that he and Sidonie had sometimes listened to in the warehouse, and Brent seemed happy with it. At least he said nothing about it. He appeared to be preparing salads. Terry drifted around the room. On a low square table next to the futon was a photograph of a child: a girl with curly dark hair and green eyes. She did not appear to be old enough to be in kindergarten, but she already projected an air of catlike, potentially fatal loveliness. "Who's the kid?" "My daughter," Brent answered from the kitchen area. "You've got a daughter? Get out! I didn't know you had any kids!" "How would you know, when you've been away for so long? Yeah, I have a daughter. Her mama lives in town, and if you stay around for long enough, you're bound to meet her sometime." Terry didn't doubt that. Nobody didn't buy hardware. He wandered around the front part of the house, somehow shy about looking into the bedroom, although he fully anticipated being there later, and had to pass through it to get to the bathroom. A couple of built-in bookcases flanked the windows. The books were a wild and uncommunicative mix, Analog next to botany and practical horticulture texts from college next to Jorge Luis Borges next to Flesh and the Word next to, of all things, Nora Roberts writing as J.D. Robb. He wondered if the child's mother came here. "Dinner is served," Brent announced. "Come and get it or I'll throw it to the gators." At that point, a gust of rain-smelling air rattled the window shades and a clap of thunder shook the house. Brent lit the two candles in the center of the table. "I'm not trying to be romantic and shit," he explained, "but the power will probably crap out before the evening is over." They sat down to the small table and ate the salad and shrimp fettuccine Brent had prepared, and had a glass each of the wine. They talked about the sort of thing new friends talked about, although Terry felt that he was telling Brent a lot more about his life than Brent was sharing about his. Terry supposed this was due to the difference in their ages. He felt excited and nervous, looking across the table at Brent, watching him eat. It began to storm. Brent got up and closed all the windows on the west side of the house to a crack, and in the middle of dinner, the electric went out, just as he had predicted. "They probably have a special folder for me at LP&L," he said. "I'm all the time complaining about it. This never happens to me in town." Terry couldn't stop looking at Brent, thinking that he'd never thought of a man as beautiful before; thinking at the same time that most people looked good by candlelight and wondering if the other man saw him the same way. He watched the end of a piece of pasta flick between Brent's lips and disappear, and wished he was sitting next to him so he could lean over and lick or bite them. The meal tasted as good as it had smelled in the preparation; Terry found he was hungrier than he'd thought he was. The single glass of wine was relaxing whatever residual inhibitions he might have had. He surreptitiously kicked off his shoes and socks and caressed Brent's feet and legs with his toes. As his toes were so long as to be almost prehensile, this was something he considered himself to be good at. Brent looked at him in astonishment, and began to laugh immoderately. "Jesus, Brent, are you that ticklish?" "Almost," Brent managed, "but that's not the only reason I'm laughing. It reminds me of a story involving my cousin. I'll tell you about it one day." "Do you want me to quit?" "No." Brent relaxed in his chair. However, once Terry got past his knee, he bumped his own knee smartly against the bottom of the table, due to the length of his legs. "I knew there was some reason this wasn't going to work," he said. "That's all right. C'mon, let's clear the table." They got up. They cleared the few dishes away and put them in the sink to soak. "Is there anything for dessert?" Brent picked the bottle and the two glasses up from the table. "I think you know the answer to that, cher, he said. If You Choose Not to Decide Ch. 02 Presently Brent reached over to the table on his side of the bed, where the wine was, and managed to pour himself a little without seriously disturbing Terry, who was still using his other arm for a headrest. He took a swallow, then gave Terry a kiss. He took two or three more drinks of the wine, leaving a little more of it in his mouth each time, so that he was transferring it from his mouth to Terry's. It was a very agreeable way to drink wine. He sucked luxuriously on Brent's tongue. He could feel the alcohol warming his system through his mouth tissues. "You trying to get me drunk?" Brent put his glass back on the table. "Maybe," he said. "I just want you to be relaxed, that's all." "I am relaxed," Terry said. He turned toward Brent and poked a stiff cock between his thighs. "Well, mostly relaxed." The other man grinned. "You know I'm gonna have your ass cherry before the night's over." Terry went still. Doing and being done to were two different things. "Terry, don't worry about it." Brent's voice slid lower on the scale. "We've got the night ahead of us." He wet his thumb and circled it tightly on the aureole of Terry's left nipple. "You're gon' be asking me for it before we're done." "I will?" "You will," Brent said. "Just lay back and let me do the work for now." He kept Terry on tenterhooks for what seemed to be better than an hour, touching all parts of him with hands and mouth, always pulling back and stopping when he thought that Terry was too close to coming. Terry felt as if he were burning beneath his skin and as if he could scarcely draw a full breath into his lungs. At last, looking at Brent, who was down between his legs, sliding a heavily lubed finger (but only one) into his ass, he said, "Go ahead and do it. Please." "Tell me what you want." Brent lifted his mouth off Terry's cock and smiled teasingly. "Go on. Say what you want me to do." "Fuck me." Brent rose over him. Terry gripped his arms; lifted his legs to wrap them around Brent's body. "Tell me," Brent repeated. "How do you want me to fuck you?" "Up the ass," Terry half-whispered. His could feel his face flaming. "Bust my ass cherry like you said. Do—do something, you've got me so goddam hard it hurts—" "Good," Brent said. He reinserted his finger in Terry, adding another. He had done this before, but now Terry knew he was being opened, being prepared. Instinctively, he clamped down. "Relax, Ter." Terry, breathing hard, tried to relax. Brent inserted a third finger and moved them around inside him. He felt as if the movement were gigantic, and tried to move up in the bed to get away from it. He couldn't. But then Brent withdrew his fingers and pushed Terry's legs back "I feel fucking ridiculous like this," he complained. "You look fucking hot," Brent said hoarsely. "You just don't know. I can't wait any longer." Terry felt Brent's cock, warm and blunt, against his newly opened and lubed hole. "Open for me. I'm coming in." He'd had Brent's cock in his hands and in his mouth and he thought he was familiar with its dimensions; why did it feel as big as a flashlight—one of those big flashlights that security guards carried—now? "Hold up a minute," he said, "I don't know if I can do this—" "Too late for that, boo." Brent thrust again. "I don't think I—oh, man, this hurts—" "You're tightening up on me. Push down. It'll get easier." "I'm—what if I—" "Don't worry about it. Come on, one more push, I'm almost—oh, yeah. There." The other man's warm, muscular body curved against him, and the bristly ends of his trimmed body hair tickled his ass. Terry tried to concentrate on his breathing. He felt as if Brent's cock were halfway up the inside of his body. "There, I'm in. Can't go any further. That isn't so bad, is it?" "N—no." He rose over Terry and began to move, slowly and gently at first. It did not hurt, now; in fact, Terry could identify a streak of pleasure somewhere inside him which sharpened and deepened when Brent's cock rubbed against it. Brent smiled down at him. "You like this?" "Um, yes—feels real good. But I don't know if I'll get there from that alone." Brent shifted his position and wrapped a lubed hand around Terry's cock. He jacked it as he moved, almost as well as Terry himself could have done it. The new angle was driving him wild. It was enough to offset the discomfort in his legs and the undignified position he found himself in. But after a few minutes Brent replaced his hand with Terry's own. "Take over, Ter. I've gotta move. This feels too good..." He settled over Terry and gave himself to his rhythm, his pleasure, his thrusts becoming sharp and concentrated, his breathing heavy and shivering. "Oh, Terry, you're so hot—I can't last much longer—" "Don't leave me like this, man—" "I won't. Keep up with me, cher, work it, babe—" He felt himself tautening with every stroke Brent made inside him, and he felt it in his cock, too, as he gripped and pulled it. Suddenly everything came together, the clenching around Brent and the wild eruption out of his cock, the contractions almost hurtfully strong. "Ahh—ahh—oh, fuck, I'm—oh, God--" He heard himself shouting with every spasm that ripped through his body. He could feel dollops of semen hitting his belly and chest. Brent managed a few more strokes and then he finished up in Terry, close and hard, holding him down, his cries mingled with Terry's. He settled inertly on top of Terry for a few minutes, warm and sweaty, while they got their breath back. Then he withdrew. Terry felt as if he were still wide open. He was glad to be able to lower his legs and straighten out. Brent smiled at him. "I'll say this, you don't leave me in any doubt. You really, really liked that!" Terry could feel little aftershocks of the climax he'd just had rolling through his body, like the low rumbles that went through the air after the main force of a storm. Outside, unnoticed by either of them, the rain had dimmed to a low drizzle. Brent rose to open the window a little, and let in some fresh air. It blew in damply, making the candles flicker. "Man, I can't believe how noisy I've become. I couldn't help it. You think anyone heard us out there?" "Probably not. It's been raining too hard. And it doesn't matter if they did. Nobody's gonna complain. I'll raise their rent if they do." "Shit, you own all this property?" "Yeah. I had a chance to get this land at a good price, a few years back, and then I threw up these buildings on it. As way the hell and gone as this town is, there's always someone who wants to live further out..." Terry rubbed his face into the pillow he was lying on and looked up at Brent again. "Holy fuck, you're rich?" Brent sat up and laughed. "Ha! That's a good one. Me? Rich? Not on your life, mon jeune ami. All I've got is this land and my business, both of which require constant maintenance and some of which is a pain in the ass. Sometimes I feel that all my money, what doesn't go back in the business, goes to support my little girl and my tax accountant." Terry, who owned his car, his computer, and his stuff, felt abashed. "Hey, it doesn't matter to me." Presently they got up and cleaned up in the tiny bathroom. Shortly thereafter, the power went back on. The sound of music and air conditioners kicking back on filled the house. Brent blew out the candles. "Man, I hate it when the power goes out. All those clocks to reset." "I know. It's why I don't have any out here. You noticed I don't have a clock radio in the room, didn't you?" "You could have had a small nuclear device back here, and I don't think I'd have noticed." "Time means nothing when I'm out here. If you didn't bring a watch with you, you'll just have to tell time by the sun." The array of electronic equipment in the étagère included a VCR. Its digital chronometer flashed 12:00. "Don't worry about resetting it," Brent said. "I never do. It's said that ever since the first time the power went out here. Like I said, it's always doing it." He opened the freezer. "Want some ice cream?" "What kind is it?" "Homemade vanilla." "Sure." Brent filled two bowls and they carried them back out into the living room. Brent sat down on the futon and Terry lowered himself gingerly to the floor. His ass felt sore, but not unpleasantly. He felt delicate about sitting naked on the furniture. "Come over here," Brent said, patting the space next to him. Terry moved over so he was sitting next to Brent's left knee. Brent ruffled his hair; then picked up the remote and flicked the television on. Terry had not noticed a dish attached to the house when he'd driven up, so he was not surprised to see that two of what they once had called the Big Three came in decently, and two UHF stations came in with confetti. The static and imperfect reception collided with the music coming out of the radio. "This is crappier than usual," Brent said. "Want to watch videos?" "Whatcha got?" "Oh, old movies, porn of various kinds." Terry had read a few of those stories where two guys got into watching porn and then ended up doing each other. "I thought we skipped past that part," he said. Brent laughed. "So we did," he said, clicking off the television. "Let's go back to bed and skip past it some more." They finished the ice cream and put the bowls in with the rest of the dishes. The switch to the overhead light was near the door of the bedroom, so they did not have to feel their way across the living room. Brent switched on the light in the bedroom. Other than the candles, which they had put out, and a small reading lamp that attached to the headboard of the bed, there was only an overhead fixture. "You don't mind if I keep this on for a while, do you? I want to look at you..." "I guess not," Terry said. He lay down, and Brent sat next to him. Looking down at Terry, he ran a hand lightly down the front of Terry's body. His fingers flickered over Terry's nipples. Terry's cock twitched and began to harden. He could feel his nipples hardening, too, pointing up under Brent's hands, sensation zipping from them down his body like electricity on fine gold wires. Brent grinned and bent down to flick his tongue over the tiny erectile points of flesh, now one, then the other. Terry ran his fingers through Brent's curly dark hair. He felt his cock leaping and thumping on his belly and heard an inarticulate sound coming out of his throat. His command of the English language was deserting him. He had no other language but the language of gesture. He pressed gently on the top of Brent's head, urging him downward. Brent didn't need much urging or direction, but he took his time, licking his leisurely way down Terry's belly as he had done earlier. Terry had no thought of interrupting him this time. Brent's mouth, slightly cooler than usual from the ice cream, enveloped his cock. The throat opening yielded and grasped; his tongue flicked and twirled. Terry groaned with pleasure and his hips flexed upward involuntarily. Brent was kneeling over him, facing away, his body at an angle from his. Terry pulled at Brent's near leg to get him to lift it, which he did, and Terry wiggled over and slid under him, looking up at Brent's lightly furred ass and hairy crack and balls. His hard cock slanted down and Terry reached up to take the end of it in his mouth. It swelled and twitched as he sucked the precum out of its sheath. As they had the previous day, they completed a circuit of sensation. He felt Brent's mouth making wet and lavish love to him; as he licked and pulled at Brent, he imagined what the other man must be feeling...the hard stalk of flesh in his mouth swelled and above it, the balls tensed in their sack. Brent released him suddenly, and turned around so that he was facing him. "Aw, man, why'd you quit? I was having fun." "I know. Don't worry, you're going to have fun all right. But there's something else I want to do." "Yeah, what?" "Just lay back, cher." Brent straddled him. Terry's cock had snapped wetly back onto his belly as soon as Brent had released it. He took it in his hand and pointed it up. The other man positioned himself and softly, gently settled down on it. Terry chewed on his lower lip as he felt Brent's tight ring and blood-hot depths engulf him. He thrust upward, aware that Brent was heavier than he. "Just let me show you what I like, Ter," Brent said, and he began to ride Terry's cock in long, slow strokes. He presented a piquant sight to the man underneath him, with his well-toned body, tanned but for sun shorts, muscular legs spread wide, vulnerable but shameless. His rigid cock lay back on his belly, obscuring part of the trail of fur that had first entranced Terry the previous day. Below his scrotum, Terry could see the other man's anus stretched and gripping his dick. Brent occasionally grimaced and emitted quick little gasps of pleasure. "Jack me," he ordered. Terry fished around for the lube and found it. He anointed his hand and wrapped it around Brent's cock, enjoying the way it pistoned up and down in his fist. He handled it as he would have his own, but his own was buried in Brent's tight hold. It didn't matter; it felt good. "Let me," he grunted. He meant: let me move, let me thrust, let me speed up. "A little bit longer—" The other man's breaths became heavier, deepening into vocalizations. "So good, this feels so good—oh, now—" Terry dug his heels into the mattress and started thrusting upward, joyously oblivious to everything except the pleasure he was getting from the primal movements he was making and the tight hot slide of Brent's asshole enveloping his cock. He could feel the climax approaching, uncoiling in cock and balls and all the muscles he was using to form this perfect machine of sexual energy. "Now, now, Ter, I'm—" His grip on Terry's cock became fantastically tight. Little spurts of warm liquid came streaming down over Terry's fist, and then Terry's Unhhhh and Oh! and Ahhhh and oh, fuck! rose up to the ceiling, tangled with Brent's long, shuddering cry of ecstasy. The machine had shaken itself to pieces. They stayed in that position a few seconds longer, feeling the aftershocks running through their bodies, letting their breathing get back to normal. "You're heavy," Terry said. "I'm dead, is what I am," Brent said, raising himself off Terry's lap. The air seemed cold where he had been. "You know they call this le petit mort, don't you?" "Yeah. I can believe it." He felt too heavy to move. Brent bent down over him and kissed his forehead before flopping down next to him. "And you say you're new at this," he murmured. "Well, you're a natural." He turned and snuggled close to Terry. "Who's gonna get the light?" "You are," Brent said. "I'm dead, remember?" Terry rose up and snapped off the light. In the small room, the switch wasn't too hard to reach. He dropped back down into the bed with Brent and was as out as the light in minutes. If You Choose Not to Decide Ch. 02 "Here, catch!" he said. Terry caught it. It was a small can of pineapple juice. "I see you've figured out my secret," he said, smiling as he pulled the tab. He had been drinking pineapple juice for breakfast for years. He'd heard about how it was supposed to make one's spunk taste better, which was why he had started with it, but over the years he had grown to like it for its own sake, and he went to a good bit of trouble to obtain it, even requesting it in diners and hotels when he didn't see it on the menu or the buffet. Since he was still feeling a little dehydrated and pH-unbalanced from the wine last night, it tasted especially good. Brent smiled back at him and started frying eggs in the grease in the pan. "What're you gon' do today?" he asked as they ate breakfast. "I told Mom I'd go to the rehab place and visit Dad," Terry said. "And then, back to work. Mom opens the store up at noon." "How's he doing?" "It's hard to tell. Some days he does better, some days worse. He's fighting this thing as hard as he can. It's frustrating for him." "I hope to...I hope he gets better. He's always been good to me. He didn't deserve this." "Who does?" Brent got up and cleared the table. Terry started to help him. "Don't worry—I'll get these. I wish you could stick around a while longer, but you've got work and so do I. I've got a couple of Sunday gigs in the next town." Terry got his kit and Brent walked with him to the door. "Last night was fun, boo. We need to do it again." He lifted his head and kissed Terry. His mouth was warm and tasted of coffee. Terry's lips parted; he couldn't help it. Brent's tongue brushed against his. "Don't tempt me," he said. "Next week. OK?" "Ok," Terry said. He opened the door of the house and descended into the humid sunlight. He got in his car and backed it onto the road, scanning the radio for something to listen to. He settled on a blues station, and, not feeling the least bit blue, headed northward towards town.