0 comments/  9745 views/  1 favorites

Ravens Roost Ch. 02

By: sr71plt



I knew before we drove past it to the next lane, where we turned off to where the winery was being constructed, that I'd recognize it. And yet it caught me by surprise when I saw it, the stately manor house with the white columns that gleamed in morning light. Castleton. My grandmother had shown me faded photographs of it, of the family lounging on the steps. The fuckin' white family, that is. It had been a matter of pride for her to show where her family had grown up.

Her family wasn't in that photograph, of course. They was somewhere in the background—making it all possible for the fuckin' white folks. Where my grandmother had looked with pride, I could only look with shame and anger. That was the difference a couple of generations made.

I hadn't wanted to come here, at least not jus' yet, and Lucky couldn't understand why I'd think twice about takin' a fuckin' work project from someone like Dabney Belcastle. Some rich dude with money to burn. But I don't think Lucky would have been able to understand my aversion to workin' for fuckin' white "cousin" Dab even if I'd explained it to him. Lucky was a shitkickin' New Yorker, probably no better than second generation Italian. And a cute little piece of ass he was. But this was Virginia. This was the South. Lucky wouldn't be able to understand how Dabney Belcastle and I were related let alone why I wouldn't want to be in position to work for the man.

And perhaps if I hadn't seen fuckin' Belcastle at Sandy's that afternoon and the way he was lookin' at me and the ironic and fitting possibility that put into my mind, I would have just said no when Lucky said he had a job for both us over in Whitehall. The look on Belcastle's face as he heard me talkin' with that fuckin' businessman from over Harrisonburg at the bar at Sandy's. Knowing that I could be had at a price and wantin' me his fuckin' self. It hadn't been the first time he'd been in the bar and I'd caught him mooning over me. It amused me to ignore him, though, not to take the signals. I knew who fuckin' Dabney Belcastle was; I'd always known. I'd been brought up to know who was on the white side of the family, the ones still lordin' it over everyone else at Castleton. Them's that had it all and kept it from us others. It amused me that he didn't fuckin' know who I was, though—couldn't look beyond the chocolate and cream skin and the muscle and working man's talk and the attitude—couldn't recognize a Belcastle cousin behind the fuckin' race barrier.

I'd stood there at the bar, workin' the businessman bringin' his need to Waynesboro where he'd stand a good chance of not being recognized, and all the time knowin' that fucker Belcastle was just down the bar from us. Chattin' up the businessman as much for Belcastle's benefit—to tease him and put him and hold him in his place—as to see what I could get from the businessman. I made pretty good money from the house paintin', but I made better fuckin' money, faster at Sandy's bar. And all of that money could go to scratching my own itch. Lucky didn't need to know that I had that extra money to spend.

I had enjoyed the look on Belcastle's fuckin' face—the frustration and disappointment—when the businessman and I had concluded our dance of the deal and I guided him to the back of the bar, through the beaded curtains leading to the storeroom and that other special place, and passed the table where Sandy sat and ticked off the passage, givin' me the nod that sealed our own deal on his 30 percent cut. I left the door open between the storeroom and the private cell, fuckin' hopin' I'd get the added satisfaction of Belcastle bein' pulled in. And I assumed I had, as there was a shadow at the door all the time I was lettin' the businessman unzip me and push my pants down my legs.

I gave a little laugh as the fuckin' businessman discovered what they all discovered and gave an appreciative gasp and exclamation—findin' not only how low I was hung but how black my cock and balls was. Other than that, I passed—or at least caused speculation. But my cock and balls revealed who I was, what the fuckin' Belcastle genes hadn't been able to take from me.

The Harrisonburg businessman squealed in pain and delight as I took out all of my seething anger at the shadow at the door by poundin' away inside his ass, giving him more than his money's worth of ride.

It was while I was plowin' the fucker and he was writhing under me and clutching at my chest and nipples and subsiding from cries of filling him too fast and brutally to burbles and moans of pleasure that the plan blossomed full grown into my mind. It wasn't enough to tease Belcastle. I had to master him as his fuckin' kind had done my kind for generations.

And I had to laugh later, as I was settlin' with Sandy and he handed over the handful of dime bags of what was my real lover, when I found out that Belcastle had paid him more to watch me fuck the businessman than the businessman had paid for the actual servicing.

What I gave Lucky that evening was more a rent payment than anything else. He was OK, but he wasn't the satisfyin' lover that those dime bags was. I took him rough because I knew that was what he wanted from me.

I'd picked him up in Sandy's like I'd done most of the rest, but he wasn't a customer. I wanted variety that night, someone young and good looking, someone I was picking up for more than the size of their wallet. He was Italian with a New York accent and a nice slim, but well-muscled bod. Dark complexioned, with curly black hair. More my kind than most. More important to me, though, was his reputation as a painter. I was bustin' to do more with my painting—to make the walls talk to me and make love to me. And I thought Lucky could teach me a thing or two about making house paintin' an art. I was right about that. In turn, I thought I could teach Lucky a thing or two about fuckin'. And I was right about that as well.

That first night was a fumble in the room behind Sandy's storeroom. Lucky had been frightened when he saw the size and blackness of my cock, and he'd struggled away from me just as I was set to pork him. He surprised me then by pulling away from, mumbling and stumbling his way out of the room. I'd never been turned away like that before and it kinda turned me on. Good thing I still wanted him, or I'd have broken the fucker over my knee the next time I caught up with him. I went around paintin' the next day with my cock goin' hard each time I thought of that nice little piece of ass.

The next day, bein' a Saturday, I got in my truck early in the morning and waited outside of his house, a little stone cottage over near Jordan's mill. I'd heard him say he went up into the park on weekends to paint landscapes. And, sure enough, there he was loadin' his own truck with paint materials and takin' off over to route 250 and up to Afton and turning south on the Blue Ridge Parkway on the top ridge of the mountains.

I followed the little fucker to the Ravens Roost Lookout and held back in the truck 'til he was well set up and just beginnin' to dole out his paints on a palette. He did a double take when I sauntered up to him, my thumbs in my low-rise jeans pockets and my shirt hangin' open so he'd get a good look at the goods, and the resigned stare he gave me told me everythin' I needed to know right then. He'd been thinkin' of me this past day and of what he'd walked out on. And it had made him hard too.

I told him I'd come to fuck him and pointed to a trail goin' off into the woods along the ridge where the stone wall of the overlook gave out to the north. And Lucky put down his brush and stood and started walkin' in the direction with me behind him, my hand cupping his buttocks. As we neared the opening to the trail, the little fucker started a runnin' and stumblin' toward the trees. But I caught him up without any trouble.

I fucked him against a tree well off the path and down the slope in cruel, upward strokes of my cock that sent his belly rubbing up and down on the rough bark of the tree and had him sobbin' and moanin'. He broke away from me again after he'd come and before I did and slithered down the slope between the trees. But I hunted him down and slammed the fucker on the ground on his back, spread-eagled his legs with my hands, and finished him off with deep, stabbing strokes. Then I covered his body close with mine and held him until his trembling and sobs died out.

This was the crucial moment. But when he whispered his request that I do him again, I knew I'd won. And I took him rough again. And this time he let loose of all restraints and clawed at me like a wild animal and couldn't get enough of my cock inside him. 

After I moved in with him, I'd sleep with him on the bed, but we always fucked on the floor or up against a wall or over a straight chair. And the fucker never told me to leave. Each and every time was a new excitement for him. For me, it was telling him he didn't own me and that I decided what was what. Ain't no white man who owns me.

Imagine my surprise that night after I'd decided what I wanted to do about Belcastle when Lucky laid the whole plan right out there on my plate with the steak he served me after he stopped purring from the fuckin' I gave him.

"What'ya fuckin' mean you got us a combined job over the mountain?" I growled. I liked gettin' my own work. I didn't like Lucky—or any man or woman—plannin' my life for me.

"Painting the public rooms of a fancy winery over in Whitehall," he'd answered. "I'm doing some murals and he wanted somebody to do a striking paint job on the rest of the interior. I have his card around here somewhere. The guy's name is Belcastle. Drives a Bentley, wears a fur coat, and didn't bother to bring up pricing, so I'm sure he's good for the money. And we'd get to work together."

I had frozen already at the sound of Belcastle's name. But then I came alive, and I surprised myself even by what I said. "Castleton. The bastard's not cuttin' up Castleton, is he? Ain't makin' it like the old folks cemetery they've made out of this place, is he?"

"Castleton? So, you know the place? No, the way he described it, the winery and vineyard are set well away from the house. He isn't subdividing or anything."

I didn't answer his question about knowing Castleton. Lucky didn't need to know that about me. "Asked for me, did he?" was what I asked instead. I wanted this to be my plan, not fuckin' Belcastle's.

"No, not in particular that I remember," Lucky answered. "He just asked if I knew someone who would do the walls. He asked me if I did that."

I almost said no, and I, in fact, gave Lucky a rough time about sayin' yes. I let him know in no uncertain terms that he didn't speak for me or my services—not any of my services. But he assured me that he hadn't said yes to anything but he hisself visiting Castleton and looking at the work that needed to be done.

When he asked me if I wanted him to find someone else to bid on the wall painting, I backpeddled and said I'd go over the mountain with him. I put my hands on my knees under the table, though. I didn't want Lucky to see them shake at the prospect of seein' Castleton after these years of avoiding it. I'd come up from Birmingham just to see what my grandma had found so compelling about the place—but once here, I hadn't built up the courage 'til now to drive across the mountain.

I shoulda thought deeper about the whole thing, though, as Belcastle admitted to me later that, in fact, it had all been his fuckin' plan to get at me.

He was standin' in the double doorway of a contemporary wood and stone building with big picture windows looking out onto a small lake and the slopes of the Blue Ridge when we rolled through a vineyard and into a newly graveled parking lot. He was tall and slim and wore his gray hair real good. I had decided he was fuckable back there in Sandy's, but he was even more compelling and inviting here in his element, on the family plantation at the foot of the Blue Ridge.

Belcastle didn't look directly at me while we were doing the introductions, although I could tell that he was seein' as much of me as he could in sidewise glances. Most of his attention was goin' to Lucky, as was proper, since he'd be doin' the most artistic work. But Belcastle was showing his nerves too. He came off all so suave, but I could tell he was keyed up. Probably wondered if I'd say anything about him givin' me the eye at Sandy's. At the time I didn't play him for knowin' I was fuckin' Lucky, but, of course, as I later found out, he knew exactly who was doin' who.

"If you gentlemen would come this way, I'll be happy to show you what work needs done," Belcastle said as he ushered us into a stone-floored foyer large enough to handle a crowd comin' and goin' and then into the main tasting room, which was large and airy and had a long bar on one wall and large expanses of glass on the two walls juttin' out toward the view.

I could hear Lucky startin' to hum, which he often did when the creative juices started up.

"And the wall where you want the autumn vineyard scene is . . .?"

"The long expanse behind the tasting bar, if you please," Belcastle ran off with Lucky's sentence.

"Splendid," Lucky exclaimed.

"I'm happy you're pleased. There's a party room wall I'd like done in a summer mode, and the walls of the men's and ladies' walls need scenes as well. I was thinking for those perhaps you could do what they'd see if there were no back walls on the bathrooms. As you'll see, their ceilings are skylights that I plan to have living grape vines wind across."

Lucky was umming and uhhing, and he may have taken in what Belcastle was saying, but he was largely lost to mapping out the wall behind the tasting bar in his mind.

"Perhaps you'd like to stay in here and plan and I'll take your Mr. Hemings off to the party room and pick his brain on what color to paint the long wall."

"Umm, umh," Lucky murmured, lost in his thoughts, and for the first time Belcastle looked directly and openly at me. I slightly tilted my head and gave him a little smile that told the fuckin' bastard that I was willing to play his game at least up to this point, and he extended his hand toward a doorway at the end of the one of the window walls.

I followed him into the next room, which was even larger than the first and had a second long bar in it.

"Take a seat at the bar, Mr. Hemings, and I will fetch you a beer—Millers is what you drink, if I have observed correctly. Am I right?"

I inclined my head again and gave him the little "go ahead" smile. So this was the way he was going to play it—cutting through the crap and lettin' me know he knew who I was and what I did.

Smug with himself now, Belcastle went on as he moved behind the bar and pulled a can of beer out of a refrigerator below the bar top. "We'll start with that long wall over there. What color do you think would be able to hold its own with the view through the windows?"

"I'll have to think," I answered, but I didn't look at the wall; I kept my eyes on his, which were looking amused now.

"And while you think, Mr. Hemings, perhaps you might tell me how much your services go for—and I'm not talking about house painting now."

"I told him, and he had the presence of mind not to swallow his teeth."

Ravens Roost Ch. 03



Lucky

I was blind that fall to anything but the murals I was painting at the Castleton winery. I tackled the bathrooms first and then the bar surround in the party room and only then, after I had let the design germinate and perfect in my mind, I started on the wall behind the long bar in the tasting room. By the week before Christmas, I had all but the lower right portion, where bunches of grapes cascaded to the floor at the open side of the bar, painted, and that was sketched out and ready to fill in.

I was living alone now and crossing the mountains over the gap at Afton several times a week, fitting in working on the vineyard murals with other jobs I'd picked up. Dab—Dabney Belcastle—had told me I could take my time with his work, as the winery wouldn't be opened to the public until the following summer.

Hank's move out was about as amicable as it could be with someone that domineering and sensitive. We still saw each other on the days when we were both working, and Hank still took his breaks by surprising me and hauling me out between the rows of grapevines and fucking me roughly—which I continued to play like it was an annoyance when, truth be told, I was keyed up on the days we weren't there together—and even on the days we were, I began to fidget and lose concentration on the painting when he waited too long to do me.

Hank had told me he'd found a cabin up at Afton, where he could easily drop down to either the Piedmont or the valley for his work. And Hank was a hunter and I knew this put him closer a group of guys who hunted up in that area. I'd asked him where he'd gotten the money from, but that had made him angry and all I got out of that was a good fucking. He really did have the cabin though, which, at first I'd doubted, and sometimes he'd take me there and do me on the floor or the table—never on the bed, though, which I found both curious and exciting.

Hank finished the work on the walls by Thanksgiving, but then he stayed around Castleton, doing odd jobs and helping to get the winery facilities finished off—and he told me that Belcastle had asked him to work part time there helping with the wine tasting after they opened.

Belcastle hadn't made any such suggestion to me.

All of this had gone right over my head, so December 21st came as a real eye-opener to me. I'd finished the painting from Ravens Roost that I'd been working on when I first met Dab, and, as he promised, he'd offered me top dollar for it. I hadn't said I'd sell it to him, though. I was holding back, because I'd decided to give it to him for Christmas in appreciation for his patronage on the winery murals. I'd meant to bring it with me on the day all of the workers were being released for Christmas, but I'd forgotten it.

When I got home, I fixed myself something to eat, but the painting was bugging me, so I wrapped it up, taped a Christmas card to it, and went out again in a light snowfall to cross the mountain and drive down to Castleton.

I drove straight to the manor house, which was decorated with miles of light strands, all in white, and a profusion of red velvet bows. The windows on the first floor were ablaze with lights, and all of the drapes were drawn open. I saw them in the living room, through the French doors out onto the portico, before I had a chance to ring the doorbell.

They were on a white Flokati sheepskin rug in front of the fireplace. Dab was on his chest, raised on his knees with his hips in the air, and Hank was crouched over him from behind, covering him and fucking him hard. I just stood there, dumbfounded for several minutes, calling myself all forms of stupid. And then I was drawn into the fuck and watching it for pleasure—and growing increasingly angry with myself for doing so.

At length, I gave a sigh of resignation and walked over and placed the wrapped canvas beside the front door and walked out of both Hank and Dab's lives.

I didn't return to finish the mural behind the tasting bar, and I didn't answer Belcastle's calls until he just stopped trying. I'd been paid in increments for the mural work, so I was only out the last installment of payment. Belcastle, in turn, had a not-quite-finished mural behind his bar—unless, of course, he'd found someone else to try to finish it. I doubted that he'd be able to find anyone who could match my work enough to make the difference unnoticeable, and in my angrier moments I hoped that Hank had tried to do so. As good as Hank was with wall work, he was no fine artist—and I'd put paint mixes and technique into that mural that no one else could duplicate. I'd put my all into that work, and I carried the grudge of betrayal for a good long time. 

Hank hadn't even bothered to try to see me or call me after that night. It was like I'd never been anything to him but a meal ticket and an entry to someone richer.

In time, I'd forgotten both of them. And I swore off men altogether. I didn't go over to Sandy's anymore, because, as far as I knew, Hank held sway over there still. There were several new restaurants opening up in Staunton and an old resort hotel up there was being refurbished and reopened and they all latched into my services and I spent most of my time a half hour north of Waynesboro for the next year.

I'd had my suspicions at first about all that work coming my way at once and from a new source, and I asked several of my new patrons who had referred me, but none would acknowledge that anyone had. After a while, I just dropped that question, because the more I worked up there, the more work I got, and soon my referrals obviously were from earlier patrons.

I was making more than enough to live on now, and I was finding time to add to my own portfolio. So, in the spring more than a year after I had left Dabney and Hank at Castleton on the December night, I returned to the Blue Ridge parkway to resume my landscapes.

I was so engrossed in watching the ravens and hawks reeling on the updrafts overhead at the Raven's Roost Outlook one spring afternoon that I didn't hear the automobile pull into the parking apron.

"Still trying to capture those birds on canvas, are you?" The voice was a well-modulated, cultured baritone, the accent slightly English. I knew who it was and didn't look up.

"You still have the magic touch," Dabney said. "I would like to bid on that one when you've completed it. I see you've made progress in capturing those birds in flight."

"What do you want, Mr. Belcastle?" I asked. I tried to keep the hurt and snottiness out of my voice, and I think I managed that about as well as he could expect. "If it's about the incomplete mural—"

"It's not, the mural as it is is rather a hit. All of the customers remark on it and are intrigued. And they stay around and buy more wine. The winery is a bit of a success, I'm happy to say."

"How nice for you," I said as I loaded my paint brush again, quite obviously signaling to him that I didn't intend to stop doing what I was doing to converse with him. I raised the brush, but I didn't bring it anywhere close to the canvas. My hand wasn't steady enough to do any painting. "You and Hank must be very happy."

"Hank's gone, Lucky. He was gone the following spring, before we opened. He followed what he said was a good employment offer in Richmond. That July, he was arrested for prostitution and drug peddling. He's in the Coffeewood prison now—or so I'm told—serving a couple of more years."

I didn't say anything, but my hand was steadier now, so I tried some strokes with the brush that I knew even while I was applying them that I'd have to paint over later. It was good I was working with acrylics that day.

"I'm sorry, Lucky. But I think you're better—"

"Is there a reason you've sought me out now, Mr. Belcastle? After all this time?" I'd given up on the brush work and put the brush down on the palette and turned to him now. He had aged, and not in a good way. He'd lost weight and muscle tone, and there were bags under his eyes. His hair was stringy and lifeless now, where before it had been a luminescent gray and perfectly coffered.

If both of us had suffered, there was no question that he had gotten the worst of it.

"Yes, there's a reason, Lucky. I have a major favor to ask of you. With just a touch, I hope, of atonement."

* * * *

Dabney

I think I shocked Hank when I accepted his asking price for his body so readily. If so, it was probably the only time I managed to have him off guard. I owned much of the land up at Afton, near the summit of the Blue Ridge Parkway, and it meant little to me to give him a piece of that with a log cabin on it.

He fucked me quickly and expertly that afternoon in the winery's cooling room, on a dusty, rough-wood preparation table, while Lucky was still in the tasting room planning out his wall mural. Hank was always detached in his fucking of me. In that regard, he was a disappointment to me. I had seen him expend more emotion in the backroom of Sandy's fucking some businessman for an hourly fee than he ever expended on me. No, it wasn't that he was emotionless. It's more like he felt like he had to master me completely and to give as little of himself to me as possible in the process. As if I personally had committed some grievous wrong against him.

When Hank asked me, I was honest with him—that, yes, my invitation to have Lucky and him paint the winery interiors was largely my scheme to get possession of Hank. Largely, but not wholly. I, indeed, was impressed with Lucky's artwork, and I was sure that both of them would do a bang-up job of the painting.

Hank hadn't liked to hear that. Neither did he like to hear my proposal that he move into the rooms above the garage at Castleton so that he could be closer to me when I wanted him. That had set him off in a rage that I didn't understand for the longest time—not until the day of our final altercation and his storming out of my life.

Hank was such an angry young man. And his love making was angry too. I found it almost unbearable, and if I hadn't become a slave to the feel of the big black cock of his working deep inside me, I could not have borne his anger and his resistance to being civilized and to at least pretend some level of affection for me.

And I couldn't figure out myself in all of this either—what my emotional attachment was to Hank, and why I wanted so hard for him to bend to me, to love me—to join me in my bed at Castleton, which he relentlessly refused to do, insisting that we have sex only outside the house, in the service areas of the estate. All I knew was that I did, in fact, have some sort of attachment to Hank that I could neither understand nor turn my back to.

I tried to clothe him better and to show him how to appreciate and use the finer things in life, but he resisted everything I did for him except lay on my back in the most primitive of conditions and open my legs to him and beg him to give me what I was paying for. He always made me beg for it. And it always made him laugh.

Eventually, I tried some reverse psychology. There was an arrogant young assistant professor at the University, Stuart Pendleton, who I had played tennis with at Farmington. He was a beautiful young man, but he was much too much full of himself. I reasoned that if I added a conquest to Hank's collection of men, perhaps he would be less angry and less forceful and demeaning to me sexually. But, although I managed to put the two together, there was little change in Hank.

He wouldn't leave me, but he took every opportunity he could to embarrass me and to put me in what he perceived as my place. I was fully prepared to accept Hank as an equal—but he clearly wanted more. If only he hadn't been so enticing and didn't have such a lovely big, black cock . . .

I had written Stuart off as a lost attempt to manipulate Hank, but, to my surprise, Stuart redeemed himself by bringing Paul into my life.



Ravens Roost Ch. 04



It was a mistake to have come to Central Virginia, but not, I think a mistake to have stayed. Stuart had seemed so right when we found ourselves in New York as we both were completing our English doctorates at Colombia, but in the four months between when he had taken a position in the English department at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville and when he had enticed me to come down to occupy another opening, he had changed.

In New York, Stuart, hailing from a small town in Indiana, had been all "oh my gosh" awed by the big city and enthusiastic about everything—especially by our love making. He had been completely submissive to me, and I loved to hear him moan and sigh as I covered him and he moved his hips in rhythm with me. Everything in New York was new and "terrific" with him, and I enjoyed opening him up to new discoveries and sensations—and to new, increasingly exotic forms of love making.

But Virginia changed Stuart. I don't know, maybe it was the smaller environment combined with his "position" at the University. But he suddenly was more urbane—or wanted to come across that way—and assertive and snotty. I shouldn't have just moved into the apartment with him that he had picked out and where he had established himself before I got there. I should have established my own ground and made him come to me.

He suddenly wanted to lecture me rather than learn from me—although I'd been out in the world and experienced life for several years before going back to graduate school, and he'd merely plowed on in school, chewing his way through his family's small fortune fed by a Coca-Cola distributor franchise.

It was the same way in bed. No longer did he take my lead, let me call the shots, and move slowly and deliberately toward a mutual climax. He now wanted everything at once—and forceful and rough. And he wanted me to take him in other places than on the bed. And I got the distinct impression that what I was doing to adjust just didn't completely satisfy him. I wondered what he'd been doing for the four months he'd been in Charlottesville before I arrived.

I think I found out at a Winter Wonderland charity dinner sponsored at the Boar's Head Inn in February by the Whitehall Hunt Club.

When the invitation came, it had taken me by complete surprise. The charity was a worthy one—the county SPCA—but I couldn't fathom how and why two new University assistant English professors had been invited. Stuart told me, however, that the University was so entrenched in Central Virginia society that all events built in a smattering of faculty representation and that we could expect such one-off invitations from time to time. He also said we should snap this one up, as the Boar's Head was nearly the ritziest venue in the region.

Stuart was beyond anxious to rub shoulders with the First Families of Virginia and to become "in" with them.

I found that the invitation wasn't all that random, though, when Stuart took me over to meet the master of the Whitehall Hunt, who Stuart already obvious knew.

Dabney Belcastle was a striking man. Tall and slim and what I would call distinguished gray. I gauged him to be in his mid fifties, and he quite obviously was in his element here.

As Stuart introduced me to him, I felt that his sparkling blue-gray eyes penetrated deep into me and that he understood all that I was and had ever been. His smile was captivating, and when he said he was delighted to meet me, I felt that the declaration was totally genuine.

"I'm so glad to meet you at last, Paul," he said. "Stuart has told us quite a bit about you. A scholar of Southeast Asian literature, are you not? I admit that I was surprised that the field was deep enough to study as a separate discipline."

"You would be surprised," I answered. "The cultures in that region go much deeper than ours do. They have a rich heritage of literature. I'm finding the field fascinating."

"And I find that, in itself, fascinating, in return," Belcastle said in a rich baritone with a light British accent that sent chills of interest up my spine. I gave him an intense stare to try to discern whether he was mocking me ever so lightly, but his smile wasn't mocking at all, and his returned stare screamed of interest that went beyond literature.

I would have liked to talk to him at greater length, but Stuart was already turning my attention to the hulking, dark-complexioned man at Belcastle's side, who he was introducing as a painter, Hank Hemings, and with whom he was sharing a knowing look that explained so much to me about the strain and stiffness in my relationship with Stuart since I had arrived at the University.

Hemings was even taller than Belcastle was, but he had the same look of authority and domination about him. The look he gave Stuart as we were being introduced was one of possession, and the look Stuart returned was of the possessed.

Hemings was built large but perfectly proportioned. His light chocolate skin spoke of early New Orleans society, where the beautiful people mixed and matched frequently and without hesitation, but Hemings's features weren't the least bit negroid. He had the same patrician visage and carriage as the man standing beside him, Belcastle, did, and, if anything, the two, juxtaposed like that, almost looked like they were cut from the same cloth.

But whereas Belcastle was willowy elegance and high culture, Hemings was all muscular power barely sheathed, barely tamed or civilized. It looked like he could turn animal very quickly and no one could stand between him and what he wanted. Just the way he and Stuart exchanged looks, I knew where Stuart's sudden taste in rough and al fresco sex was coming from.

Hemings was certainly not anyone I could compete with for the affections of any man susceptible to what Hemings could give—and I certainly had no interest in competing with him that way. When I had mastered Stuart, it was with a concern for mutual enjoyment and fulfillment. With Hemings, I could tell that it always would be all about Hemings's needs and wants—and a deep, seething anger.

Although we continued living together—and even making love—for a couple of months after that, life and sex with Stuart was never again as free and natural and fulfilling as it had been in New York when we were struggling graduate students and I was showing Stuart the ropes of living and loving in the Big Apple.

That doesn't mean that we stopped encountering Dabney and Hank. After the Boar's Head dinner, we found ourselves on the guest list of whatever event Belcastle was involved in, and he soon had both of us pulled into his Hunt Club. I was from Long Island and had played polo and Stuart was a farm boy from Indiana, so we had no trouble with the horse riding, although the vagaries of riding the fox hunt in Central Virginia took quite some adjustment and a steep learning curve. I took to it well, but Stuart wasn't competitive, which meant he lost interest almost immediately.

Hank never rode. He spent his time working on the winery that Belcastle was establishing at his family estate, Castleton, in Whitehall. And, increasingly, Stuart decided to spend the time with him while Dabney and I were riding the hunt. I could tell that Stuart's eyes were swimming in Hank's cum when we returned from hunting the rolling meadows at the base of the Blue Ridge, but that was OK with me now. Because now Dab and I had something going as well, and quite often the hunt had ended with me fucking Dab in the backseat of his Bentley convertible before we returned to Castleton.

I don't know whose idea it was in the beginning. Part of the beauty of it was its spontaneity and the natural "rightness" of the feel of it. The fox had been lazy that early spring day and had been quickly found twice when storm clouds started to roll in from the west over the Blue Ridge, and Dab called an early close to the hunt. I'd left my car back at the winery at Castleton and so was riding with Dab in the Bentley. I sat in the car while he talked with the groomsmen loading our horses in the Castleton horse van. When he climbed into the car, I turned my head to him. I was in a joyous mood. I had ridden well, and the trees were blossoming forth with their spring color. The world was gorgeous—and even the thunderheads rolling in over the mountains spoke of majesty and God's gift to the world. My mind was spinning a short story and I was itching to get home and to my study so that I could begin to let it free in the computer.

But Dab had other ideas. No doubt playing off my jubilant expression as I turned my head to him, Dab leaned over and kissed me—the first such intimacy we'd ever shared. The kiss deepened as I, at first, opened to him, and then took command. He had a hand on my throat and he worked it down my riding shirt, unfastening buttons as he went, and ended with his hand on my basket, receiving the assurance he sought that I wanted him.

"Is there someplace we can go?" I croaked as we came up for air and both guiltily looked over to the horse trailer to assure ourselves that the groomsmen were fully occupied with loading the horse.

He didn't answer, but he turned back in his seat and put the Bentley in gear. The convertible purred as he backed out and drove out onto the county road. He drove toward Castleton, but when we got to the drive up to the manor house, he drove on—as he did when we got to the entry drive to the winery. I remember being thankful that he hadn't turned in there. I had no doubt what we would find Hank and Stuart doing there.

He drove on, along the white-painted cross-slatted fencing that marked the boundaries of Castleton, and came almost to the foot of the Blue Ridge, where he turned right into what he cursorily told me was the "back forty," and rolled slowly down a dirt track road almost into the mouth of a deep ravine cutting into the towering mountains. We crossed a stream coming down from the ravine, with the Bentley's wheels making a rumbling noise as we bumped over a small bridge's loose boards, and then we were in the grassed yard of a pristine white-painted old farm house that only appeared small because of the scale of the mountains it was set against.

"Used to be an overseers' cottage," Dab muttered.

He drove around the side of the house and parked next to a well-tended flower garden undulating around a small pond.

Dab stopped the car and got out and started taking his clothes off. Without comment, I did the same on the passenger side. Both of us neatly folded our clothes when we were naked and placed them on our respective seats.

Dab was smiling at me across the roof of the Bentley and then he ducked his head down below the roof and looked at my midsection through the car windows. The gasp and his strangled "Oh my God" utterance didn't hurt my libido one bit.

He pushed the driver's seat in onto the steering wheel and rummaged around in the backseat of the car and came up with a full-length luxurious fur coat, which he wrapped around himself and entered the backseat.

I laughed at the incongruity of the fur coat out here in the wild foothills of the Blue Ridge and moved into the backseat and on top of him.

I made slow love to him, covering his body with kisses and caresses as I opened the fur coat and revealed his lithe, lightly muscled, but well-toned body, and he moaned and sighed for me. He murmured what he liked and what he liked better and let me know in his whisperings that he wasn't used to being taken this slowly and prepared this well. He gasped and his hips began to roll and he moaned deeply as my lips reached his rim and spread him, and my tongue invaded.

He was gaping full open to me, when I finally moved my knees between his thighs and spread them and slowly entered him. Still, as open as he was, I was stretching his channel walls to the edge of his endurance, and he cried out and began to pant heavily. He refused my offer to desist or to go more slowly, though.

And then he was clinging to me and digging his fingernails into my shoulders and his teeth into the hollow of my neck, and we began to move our hips in consort as I stroked him in long and deep slides and he whimpered and began to sob and shot his load up my belly.

I pumped on, and he moved his hands to cup my buttocks and to help maintain the rhythm of the stroking. As I ejaculated deep inside him, the clap of thunder exploded over the car and nearby lightning flashes illuminated our world and the clouds opened in a torrent of heavy raindrops.

There was nowhere for us to go now but to ride out the storm here in our own little luxurious, fur-lined world. And so I fucked Dab again. And then again. And I was as lost to him as he was to me.

I did write a story when I got back to my apartment that night, but it was a far steamier story than the one I had intended to write, and I just left it in an electronic file when I was finished for my future enjoyment alone.

It wasn't more than two weeks before the storm clouds entered our four-cornered world. In the end, Stuart was no real problem. He was so obsessed with himself that he rode out losing both me and Hank with little difficulty and moved on to an undergraduate football player.

But Hank was another matter. Stuart and I drove up to the Castleton manor house one afternoon because the winery was almost finished and Dab had wanted to toast his new venture. As soon as we got out of the car, though, we heard all hell breaking out inside the house, with guttural exclamations of fuck this and bastard that, that could only be coming from Hank. As we reached the bottom of the portico steps, Hank burst out of the front door and clumped down the stairs right past us.

"Hank!" Stuart exclaimed and put his hand out.

But Hank roughly brushed the hand away with a "Git outta my way. I've had fuckin' all of this I'm gonna take." And he slammed into his truck and roared down the entrance road in a cloud of dust.

Stuart gave a primeval cry and bounced back into my car, having grabbed the keys from my hand, and he was off down the road in Hank's wake.

I entered the house and found Dab sitting, hunched over and dejected, in a chair in the foyer.

"What was all that about?" I asked.

There was no answer other than a distinct sob coming from his Dab. His shoulders were shaking. I went to him and knelt at his side.

"He's gone, Paul. Hank's gone," Dab stuttered out.

"He said I asked too much, that I wanted to control him . . . just like . . . oh, God, how could I have been so blind? How could I not have seen it?"

"Just like what, Dab?" I asked, while I tried to sooth his emotional pain. It didn't look like Hank had struck him, and I'm sure there would have been visible damage if he had done so.

"I can't say . . . I just can't . . ."

"Then don't, Dab. You don't owe me any sort of explanation. Hank may be right. Some creatures are meant to be free to make their own way . . . and their own mistakes."

I had enveloped him in my arms and was rocking back and forth. And one thing led to another, and in the space of only a few minutes we were in Dab's bedroom and tearing at each other's clothes and I was on top of him on his bed and pushing my cock into his channel as he willingly raised his hips to me and we were making love in his bed for the very first time.

When I came back downstairs, my car was back and Stuart was hunched over in the passenger seat and sulking.

"Did you catch up with Hank?" I asked when I climbed into the car. But Stuart was silent. I hadn't the least bit of doubt that he knew what Dab and I had been doing in the house. I didn't feel an iota of remorse, though, as he and Hank had been at it long before Dab and I had coupled. I knew in that moment that I'd be moving my clothes and stuff out of the apartment tomorrow. But this was just saving me an unpleasant surprise scene. I'd already promised Dab that I'd move into Castleton the next day.

Opening day at the Castleton winery was marred somewhat by one last remembrance of Hank. The day was glorious and a good-sized crowd had floated through, when the atmosphere was shattered by the sounds of sirens and four cop cars sliding up to the winery from as many different directions. They had come for Hank, who apparently had finally blipped across their radar. But Hank hadn't been here for weeks.

Dab knew Hank was in Richmond now, and I found it curious that Dab didn't pass that information on to the police—that Dab somehow was still held under Hank's sway. I wondered what that influence was, but I had told Dab I wouldn't pry into that, and so I didn't. Still, I followed the policeman out of the building and told them what I knew about where Hank may be. Dab didn't need Hank showing up more panicked and angry—and desperate—than the mood in which he had left Castleton.

It was all wine and roses—and mostly roses—at Castleton between Dab and me into the late fall. The winery was a huge success, and Dab and I still rode to the hounds twice a week. My classes were going well at the University, and Stuart was even talking to me again—and using every excuse he could to let me know what a stud lover his young football player was. I pretended to be a bit jealous just to keep him as a functional colleague, but I was, of course, delighted that the young man had taken Stuart off my plate. I was doing quite nicely in that department with Dab, who fit me like a glove and was a whole hell of a lot more experienced and giving in sex than Stuart would ever be.

Then at Christmas time the mysterious grant came in to the English department at the University, and all of the senior professors turned green at my good fortune. It was called a Crawford Prize, and it was pegged to a three-month, all-expenses-paid spring study in Jakarta of eighteenth-century Indonesia literature. A dream come true for me. And it didn't matter if I couldn't find any record of a Crawford Prize. My department chairman was pleased, and he held the full check for the stipend in his hot little hands, which included a companion grant to the department, so it was left for Dab to save me from myself and tell me he wouldn't let me go.

But Dab was all in favor of it, and so, come early April of the next year I was bundled off at Dulles International Airport for a nineteen-hour flight into a region I had studied for years and never actually visited before.

I will never forget the happiness in Dab's face as he stood in the center of the concourse in his fur coat and bid me good-bye while I waited for the line to bring me to the security checkout machines. And I'll always appreciate the brave front he put up in seeing me off—because I never saw him again, and he knew that this would probably be the case.



Ravens Roost Ch. 05



It didn't occur to me until I had driven up to the Ravens Roost Lookout on the Blue Ridge Parkway in response to that long ago request by Dabney Belcastle to be here at a precise time on this date that this was the same date, two years later, of my first meeting of Belcastle in this exact spot. I'd had the date circled in red on my calendar for several months; I gave no thought to not showing up. Belcastle had cut me a hefty check just to be here, although he'd made no secret of why he'd asked me to be here or how he hoped it would make up in some small part for taking Hank Hemings from me.

The irony there was that a heavy burden lifted off my shoulders the moment I was free of Hank. He was an indulgence that had become a ball and chain for me—a sex-driven habit and fetish that I could not break until Belcastle arranged the divestment.

The day was perfect, so I had come up early. I saw no reason why I shouldn't multipurpose this trip. I'd brought my easel and my canvases and paints and I, once again, was trying to capture the light just at the right time on the Torrey Ridge opposite the lookout ledge as I had done in the painting I had left by the front door at Castleton when I had discovered Hank fucking Dab on the floor in front of Dab's fireplace.

I was so engrossed in trying to capture the reeling ravens and hawks flying over the little valley created by the spur of the Torrey Ridge pushing out from the main Blue Ridge range that I didn't hear the car pull into the parking apron off the parkway.

"I think you've gotten it just right." The voice was melodic, a basso profundo. The sort of voice you'd hear narrating a PBS documentary. I turned and looked, and for the briefest moment my attention was drawn past the young man standing there to the white Bentley convertible parked beyond him. My heart leapt into my throat, and my gaze snapped back to the man, half way expecting to see Dabney Belcastle, but knowing that wasn't really possible.

"Are you Paul?" I asked.

The young man did a double take but quickly relaxed and smiled.

"He arranged this, didn't he? This is why he specified the day and time."

"Yes, I suppose he did," I answered. This Paul was quite a good looking young man. Belcastle had told me that he was an English professor, so I was expecting something academic and anemic. But he was strongly built, achingly handsome, and deeply tanned. Ah yes, I then thought. He's been off in Southeast Asia the last few months.

I felt my hand trembling at the sight of him. He was much more presentable and alluring than I had thought. I had wondered what Belcastle was up to in this, but now I could see where he might have been as manipulative as ever—but even more promisingly so in this than in some of his other controlling schemes. I turned back to the painting to play for time and to catch my breath from having taken in the beauty of him.

"You're not wearing the fur coat," I said.

"It doesn't seem to be me," he said, and then he gave a rich and rumbling chuckle. "It's in the car, though. Still in the backseat where he left it."

"Ah, yes, the car. I can see that you're 'wearing' that, though."

"Yes, I think that's me perfectly," he answered with another chuckle. Then he moved in close behind me and put a hand on my shoulder as he peered into the painting. "Yes, I think you've got it just right."

"The birds," I muttered, pleased that he liked the painting but not that pleased that he was so forgiving. I had expected the eye of an artist, but I was being unfair. He was an artist of an entirely different eye. I continued with the demur. "I don't have the birds right. I never can seem to do them justice."

"That's because they value their freedom too highly, I think," he countered. "They are free spirits up here; not static and showy like the mountainsides in their autumn mantel. They defy capture, and maybe that is as it should be."

Ah, a discerning artist after all, I thought. All of this time and it took an artist of words and concepts to free me of the need to control even the birds reeling on the updrafts of the mountain slopes. Be free and loose, go with the flow, they were telling me. Follow the moment. I suddenly felt more relaxed and free than I had for years.

"I would like to buy this painting when you are done, if you wish to sell it," Paul whispered over my shoulder. He had his other hand on my other shoulder now. I saw that he had placed a silver box on the ground beside my chair as he had moved closer to me.

"That's what he said—two years ago today, right here," I answered in a low voice.

"Ah," Paul said. "Do you think he planned all of this?"

"I'm sure he did," I answered.

"Do you mind?"

I let that float in the crisp mountain air for a moment. "No, no, I don't think I care."

"I was angry with him," Paul then said.

"Yes, I suppose you were. But I'm sure he was thinking more of you than himself at the time."

"I'm not sure I follow," Paul answered. I could hear the slight anguish—the barely controlled anger and disappointment in his voice now. "There was no grant, you know. I went to Indonesia because Dab manipulated my being gone."

"That would be like him," I answered. "But again, he wanted you well away."

"So he could shoot himself while sitting in a rocker on his portico? So he didn't have to face me and tell me why he needed to do this to get away from me—how I had failed him?"

"Is that what you thought?" I asked, now tilting my head up and looking up into his tear-stained face.

Silence.

"He didn't tell you he had pancreatic cancer?" I asked. "That he had only a few painful months to live anyway?"

"No." The voice was strangled. Disconsolate.

I let that hang in the air for a few minutes, giving this beautiful young man time to absorb this basic kindness and act of self-sacrifice Dabney Belcastle had accorded him.

"Maybe that's why he asked me to be here then," I said when I broke the silence. "Maybe he loved you so much he couldn't tell you himself. And maybe he didn't want to prolong the grief."

I looked up into his face. His lips were trembling and he eyes were pleading with me.

"Would you like to . . .?" I whispered.

"Yes, I think I would. I think that's what Dab wanted."

I lifted my hands up to each side of his head with its fetching tousled blond curls and brought his mouth down to mine and we kissed. It was a sweet kiss. Not yet a kiss of lust. More of a discovery and a question and a promise kiss.

When we broke away, I looked down at the silver box. "Is that . . .?"

"Yes."

"Perhaps you might like to do it now, and then we can move to the car."

"Yes, I'd like that," he answered. He picked up the box and walked over to the stone parapet and stood on it. With a flourish, he opened the box and spread his arm wide across his body, scattering the ashes of Dabney Belcastle down the cliffside toward the vineyard in the small valley below, it's vine leaves now turned a golden yellow—the same color the vines back at Castleton would be.

He then turned back to me and held out his hand, and I stood up from the easel and walked back to the Bentley with him. We slowly stripped, he on the driver's side and me on the passenger side.

As we were doing so, I asked him a few more questions. "So, you inherited the Bentley and the fur coat?"

"Yes, that and the winery and a section of the estate he called the back forty. It has a very nice farmhouse on it with a terrific close-up view of the eastern slope of the mountains. I would like you to see it if . . . if you are interested."

I looked at him, now standing there in his full, naked glory, and I gasped at the beauty and size of him. "Yes, I'm quite interested," I whispered. And I wasn't just talking about seeing the house. And Paul knew I wasn't. His eyes were twinkling, and he obviously was pleased that I was pleased.

"But what about the rest of the estate? Castleton? The manor house?"

"He has left that to Hank Hemings," Paul answered. "I think he tried to tell me why the evening Hank left him, but I didn't press and he wasn't ready. In his will, though, he said he was leaving it to Hank as the last of the line, so I think I understand now."

I said nothing, but I understood as well—and I gained added respect for Dabney Belcastle. If anything would take the anger out of Hank and save him in this life, it would be this gesture of long-withheld justice.

"I'm to hold and maintain the estate until Hank gets out of prison," Paul continued. "And now that he has some place to come to, I'll bet he'll be out on good behavior in short order."

We stood there, looking at each other. I had no idea why I was doing this, and I doubt Paul did either. I'm not sure it was enough for either of us that Belcastle had taken matters into his own hands and manipulated the situation yet again. But I, for one, had been keyed up ever since Belcastle had taken Hank from me—at loose ends, tense, and trying to put everything in its designated box. Perhaps it was what Paul had said about the ravens and hawks soaring above us that had set me free and let my inhibitions melt away. And perhaps there were some demons Paul was exorcising also.

"If you're the owner of the Castleton winery now, I think I owe you the completion of a painting," I said to break the spell of the two of us standing there, beside the parkway, stark naked and neither making the next move.

"Leave it," Paul said. "The patrons find it intriguing, and it gives me a sense of freedom and of perfection to come."

I think I'm going to want him to interpret all of my paintings for me, I thought. He sees far more in them than I can. He can see right to the center of me. And I knew at the moment that I wanted him to make love to me—I wouldn't do it because it was what Dabney Belcastle wanted but because it was what I wanted.

And he could see in my eyes that I was ready. And this made him ready as well.

He opened the driver's door and pushed the seat over onto the steering wheel and pulled the fur coat out of the backseat.

"Here, could you put this on and wrap it around yourself, climb into the backseat, and lie on your back, please?"

I gave him an amused, quizzical look, but he just laughed and said, "Indulge me, please. I think you'll enjoy it."

And so I did—both indulge him and enjoy it.

The End