Best Gay Erotica 2002, page 8
The intercom buzzed, and Clyde opened the door for Mr. Benten. I let Clyde close the door, then took two steps in the direction of my guest with my hand stuck out.
“Mr. Benten, a pleasure.”
“Mr. Townsend.” His voice was quiet, soft, and low as a slow cat’s-purr. “Call me Preston. Please.”
“Edgar. Refreshment, Preston? It’s nearly evening.”
“Thank you, Edgar.” He rapped his leather portfolio twice with his knuckles and smiled as if deferentially. “Yes. One is for ‘no,’ two is for ‘yes.’ A cognac?”
I buzzed, two hots and a trot. Clyde came in with the tray, poured, and left. Preston said, “No need for small talk?” I smiled and shook my head. He sat on the couch and opened his portfolio, and spread some photos out. I sat down beside him, picked one up, and felt a rush go through me like the days of wine and poppers. The boy was stunning on his hands and knees: naked, smooth, well-built, and well-hung, wearing a full head harness complete with bits, reins, and bridle, and a big fluffy ponytail just the soft brown color of his hair arching like a fountain out of his ass. The next boy was saddled, with very short stirrups, and the standing man holding him close on reins was wearing shiny lizard cowboy boots with rowels on his spurs. There were saddled boys standing up with hoof-shaped boots, standing boys harnessed in traces pulling sulkies and carts, ponyboys in poses, ponyboys at ease. They all seemed to be five or ten years younger than I, as Preston was probably that much older.
“When?” I asked Preston.
“Saturday. Come for the afternoon, stay for dinner. You’ll enjoy the company.”
After Preston left I buzzed for Clyde again. “Close the door,” I said when he entered, “and take off your clothes.”
“Sir?” he asked.
“Take off your clothes. Don’t make me repeat myself.”
“Yes, sir.”
I never understood why people are obedient, but Clyde did as he was told. Not bad: he could use a gym, but he was young yet. I said, “Get me some ties.”
“Ties, sir? Yes, sir.”
“And a harness.”
“Yes, sir.”
Clyde was clearly puzzled, but his naked ass shimmied as he stepped to the closet and brought me a leather harness dotted with cone studs and a handful of Monday-go-to-Meetin’ ties. I cinched the harness tight around Clyde’s chest, put his back to the side of my desk, strung four of the ties together with bowlines, and ran the thousand-dollar rope I’d made through the O-rings in the back. Then I climbed up on the desk holding the two ends of the rope like reins.
“Now: pull,” I said. “Lean into the harness and pull. Strain, damn it, let me see your muscles work.”
And he did strain, pulling at my huge, landlocked mahogany desk as if it were a lightweight cart on wheels.
Clyde is such a good boy. His shoulders bunched, his rib cage heaved, his back bulged, his thighs and ass cheeks crimped, and he set his jaw so firmly I thought the desk might even move.
I like to see naked men at work. I leapt right down on top of him and threw him to the floor. Before he could say a thing I had my pants open and was fucking him right there without condoms, lube, or anything. I came very quickly, and almost immediately felt his sphincters clamp around my dick a half dozen times. Clyde turned his head around to try to see me over his shoulder.
“Edgar!” he whispered.
One is for “no.” I rapped his skull once with my knuckle. “Shush,” I told him. “Relax. It’s only lust.”
2.
Saturday I left home earlier than necessary and made a slow drive up into the wine country, consulting the map Preston had given me. I had to get off the Silverado Trail and follow the county road a little less than three miles. A quick right, an obscure left, look for the orange Road Work sign, turn left, and the rest would be apparent.
And it was. Two private guards who were decked out to look like Royal Canadian Mounted Police sat their exquisitely turned out horses—real ones—before a rustic wooden gate. I had the top down on the Quattro, so over my windshield I sang out the word Preston had advised. The Mounties parted like a bright red sea, and the gate swung open like an obedient boy’s mouth. I drove in and followed the trail to a tree-shaded parking area full of Boxsters and Benzes and Lexi and one bubble-gum pink Bentley convertible, where more
RCMP look-alikes were stationed this side of a huge burgundy velvet curtain. The velvet was artfully suspended between the tops of a couple of telephone poles and draped with old gold ribbon. It had to be thirty feet high and twice as wide, and was perfectly designed to block from sight whatever was on the other side of it. I heard distant music as one attendant took the keys to my car and another passed me through the curtain. On the other side, the world was altogether different.
Beneath the shade of a white canvas tent-top big enough for a modest circus, a lawn party was in full swing, composed of well-turned-out men of a certain age dressed in casual silks and linens who would not have been uncomfortable one way or another with my bank account. Sculpted, undressed, and scrupulously shaved rather younger men about my age, wearing bright chrome collars with understated locks, circulated among the guests with trays of food and drink, while a small clutch of strolling musicians played gentle melodies. I took a flute of bubbly off a passing tray and cruised the lawn, taking its measure. I was curious to see a politician I would not have expected to be so bold, and a publicly conspicuous neighbor of mine whose hands on the help appeared to be as forward as his magazine tongue. But a different kind of movement at the lawn’s far side caught my eye, so that was where I went, and that was where I found what I had come for.
Beyond the backs of a couple dozen serious connoisseurs, the stock was being put through its paces. Lawn chairs were strewn here and there and some were free, but I found a comfortable tree to lean against and watched the show from the shade that it provided.
Among several ponies, each with his own handler, the boy who took my eye completely was the very definition of horse-dick, cut by Michelangelo from warm Sienna marble and hanging lower than the five-pound disk of lead weight swinging from balls so swollen they looked like a bulging pairs of chestnuts sheathed in fascia shells. He was got up with silver, blue, and white streamers pinned to his silver bridle, and his arms were locked behind him with his elbows stretched around a chrome bar that matched his collar and pushed his shoulders high and forced his breasted chest forward. He lifted his knees one after the other and brought his feet down with great precision so his fat cock looked like a third leg, while his handler held the owner’s end of a ten-foot lead and paced him in a circle where the wide swath of lawn was just beginning to show dark stains of hoofwear. He didn’t even glance to the sides, though he was wearing no blinders. He really knew how to prance.
The boy had started to perspire, and the weight kept bouncing up and down just above his knees. Even though it had to be causing him some kind of pain every time he took a step, his handler made him jump a couple of bars, which he did very gingerly, then stopped him, whispered in his ear, removed the arm bar, and led him away. Everyone else was engaged by a couple other show ponies, but I was so attracted to this boy I wanted to know more about him. I pushed off my tree to follow where his handler led him.
Almost immediately beyond the tent-top they passed a big yellow sign that said No Entry, walked through a gate with automatic locks, then passed a second, similar sign. I slipped my wallet into the gate latch so it couldn’t close completely, and when the handler and boy had disappeared I pushed the gate open, retrieved my wallet, and went on after them while the gate closed behind me.
Handler and boy had gone past a structure that looked as if it had once been a small barn, but now seemed like something from a surreal 1960s movie. The wind had torn the roof off long ago, some of the walls had gone with the roof, and what remained was irregular anyway because whole boards and slabs of wood had fallen off, holes had been ripped out here and there, and whatever glass had once stood in the large window frames must have turned to dust long before the ponyboy was born. Inside the remaining weather-whitened fragments a dozen men lounged on leather furniture much too fine for the ruins and watched two well-muscled boys Greek wrestle. The handler had taken his ponyboy behind the structure, and I could see at my distance where a split-rail paddock held a dozen other ponyboys more or less like the first who all stood nearly motionless in the shade of a stand of black oaks. I watched from beside a small thicket of madrone.
Inside the corral the handler bent the ponyboy over a sawhorse and pulled out his tail, stuffing it dildo-end down into an obvious bucket of disinfectant. He rubbed the pony from head to hoof with a towel soaked in so much witch hazel I could smell it where I lurked, gave him a pail and let him drink, then chained his hands behind a smaller elbow bar. He lifted the weight suspended from the boy’s dark balls, slid it into a narrow slot in the fence in front of the boy, and closed it, then took up the reins of two other boys. He bent first one and then the other over the same sawhorse, and tailed them with ponytails that matched their own hair, then led them out toward the lawn with the same kinds of big weights swaying from their balls.
I waited until the handler had taken the boys away, then moved closer to the fence. The boys saw me, but none of them moved and none of them talked. All their hands were locked behind them and they all wore the same kinds of weights that were pushed through slots to rest on shelves at about thigh level in a way that was designed to relieve the ponies and still secure them. In effect, I had before me a dozen pretty ponyboys, hobbled in the paddock by their balls. None of them could move. No one was going anywhere.
I took a bag of chocolates from my jacket and approached the fence, closing in on the ponyboy I’d first seen prance. I admired his companions, and admired him in particular. I opened the bag and nibbled at a little mint.
“You pranced very well on the lawn. Are you hungry?”
It was a little like talking to a real horse. Some of the other boys snickered and one cleared his throat with a kind of luffing warning sound that horses make with their cheeks, but my ponyboy said nothing. Why would a young stud show off his muscle this way? I figured maybe he got off on all the attention, so I gave him some.
“I’d like to see you really run,” I said. “I’d like to see you straining at a cart that I was riding in. I’d like to drive you, see your muscles growing taut, see you pulling on the harness, see your veins bulge out, see the sweat run down your back and in between the cheeks of your ass. You have such gorgeous legs, I’d like to see how fast you run. Do you like buggy whips? They feel so elegant in the hand, they sound so vicious in the air, they really sting, they hurt like hell, but the marks they leave are gone in a day. Unless you cut the skin with them. Draw blood. You could really mark a ponyboy with one, you know. Do you like to pull a cart?”
I held a chocolate out to him the way you’d hold a piece of sugar toward a horse, but he was having none of it. He didn’t come and lip it up the way real horses do. He couldn’t turn or move because of the hobble, but his eyes seemed to widen as he leaned away from me and turned his head. I moved closer to the fence and made the chocolate last.
“So I guess you’re not supposed to talk with the buyers, is that right? To let us make our minds up on our own? But how can a man know what property he wants unless he has the chance to get to know it. Can I count your teeth at least?”
I finished the chocolate finally, reached out and took his hair in my hand, and tried to turn his face toward me. I don’t know now if I really wanted to count his teeth or if I was just goofing around with him, but he held his head back with a kind of stubborn equine pride. I shook his head by the hair.
“Don’t make me angry, boy. I might just buy you.”
“Edgar,” I heard Preston’s soft voice behind me, “let go of my pony, please.”
3.
I dropped the boy’s hair as if I’d been shocked, and turned around. “Preston! Well, hello! I didn’t know he was your pony. He’s such a handsome lad, and he prances so well—you must be an excellent trainer.”
“Thank you,” he said in a cool, matter-of-fact tone. He wore jodhpurs and a riding blouse, and slapped at his bootleg with a crop. “I’ve had experience.”
“And you give excellent directions, too. I found the place first try.”
“How good,” Preston said. The voice I had thought of was as warm as a cat’s-purr just a couple of days ago now sounded feline in a different way: Deep in his throat it was almost predatory. “Edgar, how do you come to be back here in the paddock area?”
“Here? I just followed the handler when he brought your boy back from show.”
As if on cue the handler appeared from around the Fellini barn, but this time he had no ponyboys in tow. Instead he had a handful of tack, and was accompanied by a couple of Mounties. Preston turned to the handler.
“Gardiner, did you bring Mr. Townsend back here?”
The handler looked at me and back at Preston. “Mr. Townsend? Why, no, sir, I don’t bring anyone. That would be against the strictest rules.”
Edgar turned back to me.
“I didn’t say he brought me, Preston. I said I followed him.”
“Past the No Entry signs? Through the locked gate?”
“Well, yes. I was just so enchanted with the pony that turns out to be yours.”
Preston closed his eyes and seemed to meditate on his feet, and time slowed down for me, the moment stretching out so I felt I filled an hour just taking and releasing a single breath. When Preston opened his eyes he was already walking toward the paddock, but when I turned as if to follow I found myself hemmed in by Gardiner and the Mounties. For the first time I felt a wave of apprehension.
Preston went directly to the ponyboy, who was clearly glad to see him: He smiled and bent his head to nuzzle at Preston’s touch. Preston spoke a few words to him and actually kissed his pony, then he turned and rejoined me.
“I think, Edgar, you have misunderstood my invitation.”
“Excuse me?”
“I think you expected to enjoy the flesh of other ponyboys.”
“Of course I did. What else would I expect here?” Suddenly I felt hollow. “What do you mean, ‘other’ ponyboys?”
Preston nodded, and I could not have counted to “one” before I felt Gardiner pinning my elbows from behind and a Mountie slipping a halter over my head.
“Do not cause trouble, Edgar, and I think you will not be unhappy with the outcome. Or, of course, you can rebel and pay the price.”
Gardiner was enormously powerful: If I were to judge by this one encounter, he could have wrestled genuine horses and won. Over my protests he held me gently but firmly as the Mounties lifted, twisted, and handled me bodily until they had stripped me naked and set me on the ground among them. To my horror I found myself extremely hard, a fact that Preston did not miss.
“You respond to discipline quite favorably, Edgar. That’s a good sign. Get down on your knees. The time has come for a little change.”
“Preston!”
“Do not cause trouble, Edgar. I can be very patient, but I am not always.” Preston slid his crop across his thigh. I heard blue jays squabble. The first Mountie returned from leaving my folded clothes in a neat pile well outside the circle the four men made. Reluctant and peevish but confused by my combination of growing alarm and mounting excitement (because by now I was sporting a raging hard-on), I knelt facing my host, which gave me a chance to notice the delectable bulge in his cavalry twill jodhpurs. Apparently Preston too responded quite favorably to discipline.
“Good boy,” Preston said to me. Good boy? “Now, kiss my boot.”
“Preston!”
“Kiss my boot, Edgar.” He moved so quickly I did not even see the crop slash through space, and the stick whipped the back of my thigh in exactly the spot that allowed the crop to keep on flying and slap hard against my balls. “Now.”
With the fresh sting racing around my tingling nerves, I nearly fell on my face to obey his command, and as I did I felt rough hands take me from behind. I tried to sit up, but Preston’s crop on my other thigh stopped me cold.
“Not a peck, Edgar. Not a little buss. A kiss. You know, with your mouth open, and your tongue wet. Kiss my boots, Edgar. Both of them. Wash them nice and clean.”
I tried to comply. Really I did. But those rough hands worked my ass and started to open me with a slick, smooth, relentless pressure. For an instant I felt sharply stretched and I cried out as if I were being torn, then the dildo sank home and I knew that I’d been tailed. One of those same rough hands worked the dildo until I felt that deep-down need for release that has nothing at all to do with cumming, then the other grabbed my balls and stretched them back like salt water taffy, making me ache so that I started to buck.
“Kiss my boot, Edgar,” Preston said again, and I felt his crop land fast on one cheek and then the other, back and forth even while the dildo pumped my ass and the big hand that squeezed my balls now like silly putty punched them into the deep root of my cock and I tried to say, “Yessir,” but it sounded to me as if I were drowning in a grilled cheese sandwich when I suddenly realized it was Preston’s fine, supple, well-grained, tawny, casual riding boot I was sucking off as if I could get the whole toe of it in between my lips and down my gullet.
Gardiner took my head in his strong hands and pulled me away from Preston’s boot. I smelled the thick aroma of deeply soaped tack-leather, very different from the soft, fragrant scent of a well-kept boot. With consummate smoothness he slid a full bridle over my face, cinched it tight, and locked it into place. It braced me across the forehead and held my jaw in a soft pocket sewn to straps that ran up the sides of my face and met at the crown of my head. There, one cross-strap ran down in front and split in two around my nose, and became one again at the jaw pocket. The other continued down the back of my neck and locked on a collarpiece that extended from the bottom of the jaw pocket and closed at the back of my neck.
