A Note From the Author:
Many thanks are extended to all the readers who have expressed their pleasure with the story. I am as delighted you're enjoying it as I've been to read your compliments. To those of you who have been good enough to take the time out of your busy days to email me in order to suggest that the word "y'all" is necessarily plural, I point out that in parts of the South - including the section from which Dan hails, "y'all" is the singular form of address. When talking to more than one person, the construction is "all y'all."
In answer to the most frequently asked question in emails, no, I have written no other stories. This is the first time I have ever tried to write anything. I am somewhat amazed that I seem to have this skill, and am working on incorporating this surprising revelation into my self-image.
I remind you all that the entire Alpha Male story - the existing chapters and chapters yet to be posted to this thread - are fully protected by the copyright laws of the United States. You may not reproduce or repost them without the expressed, written consent of the Author.
To those who are surprised by the direction they find the story going, I ask you to review my comments at the top of the first chapter. I warned you there that the story would be "somewhat slow to get started." And all y'all thought I was talking about the sex! No, it has taken me 108 pages of foreplay for the story to arrive at its true destination. Where the story "is heading" is where the story has lived all along. I hope you are able to continue to enjoy it.
Finally, I would like to extend thanks again to G, my editor, for his patience, input and tremendous depth of knowledge about the language (see, G? No comma before the last element in the list. Aren't you proud?), to Biff, for his endless support and to the small cadre of regulars whose interest and devotion to the story have given me the ability to float and discuss ideas. I am in your debt.
Chapter 27: Endings and Beginnings (Sunday)
No dreams. I slept like a log despite the deadening heat and awoke in a tremendous mood. Well, with a tremendous hard on, at least. The no cumming thing was taking its toll. My dick longed for release. It had only been two days and yet my balls ached. Had I ever gone two days without at least jacking off I wondered? Not in years.
In the car, I had asked Dan again about the specifics of the relationship.
"Shouldn't I have a safe-word, or something?"
"No," he had said, patiently but with a hint of annoyance in his voice, "no safe-word. This is how it works, Mark. I do what I want with you and to you. You either trust me, or you don't. But you have the ultimate control, here. Always remember that. All you ever have to do is say, 'no'. You say no, I stop. It's as simple as that. But the second you do, it's over. That's it. You understand?"
I did. It was both a comforting and frightening thought.
On the way to breakfast Matt fell in beside me.
"Heya, mi amigo!"
"Pup!"
"Last night was great. Excellent idea," he said.
"Yeah," I agreed, "it was fun."
"Sam is great."
Score.
Without missing a beat, I returned, "he thinks you're great too. And hot."
"He's gay?"
I burst out laughing. "You can't be serious!"
"Well," he demurred, "I kind of thought so, but I wasn't sure."
"You knew I was was in the PPA right away."
"PPA?"
I smiled. "Perverted Person's Association. I'm saying you picked up on me pretty quick. How come you could tell with me but not anyone else? Am I using too much Eau de Queer?"
"Adam told us in the bus on the way up here," he said.
"Of course. Dopey me."
"So Sam likes me?"
"Oh, yeah," I said. "He couldn't stop talking about you." Would Matt figure out that Shmu and I were never alone since they met? "He's totally smitten."
"You're joking."
"Honest to God, pup. He said he wanted to come up and visit."
Matt fell silent. I looked at him as we walked. He was struggling with the idea. God bless Shmu.
The morning practice was much like the one the Sunday before, except, of course, for the stultifying humidity. Johnston's expectations were lower, and the boys more relaxed save for Dan, who was thrilled to be able to work out again. He was doing one-armed giants on the high bar. When he dismounted, he grinned and high-fived Adam, who had been spotting for him. Corey was teaching Brad, Doug and Matt how to moonwalk. Evan was standing on the parallel bars talking to Steven below.
I liked these boys. I liked them hugely, I was realizing. Team bonding had familial aspects to it. Yes, there were sometimes dysfunction and strife, but mostly there was easy familiarity and the safety of knowing what you could expect from people. They treated each other with a combination of playfulness, respect, competitiveness and rudeness that I imagined would characterize a family of ten boys.
I wondered what I had missed by not being a jock in high school. I had been athletic, running on my own, but had never joined a team. The problem, of course, was that these boys were different than any of the ones I had known when I was young. There seemed to be something special about gymnastics that drew a different kind of jock to it. When Shmu fantasized about making it big, there was a multimillion-dollar paycheck at the end of it. When these boys fantasized about making it big, there was only a ribbon with a small circle of metal. They were smarter than your average jock too.
Was that because of the intelligence needed for the sport? Probably not, I thought. Instead, knowing that they would not be tapped for sneaker or cereal endorsements at the ends of their careers, these boys took their studies seriously. Gymnastics was their passion, not their lives. They would retire from the sport at 24 or 26 and become like the rest of us, more concerned with making sure the alarm clock went off in the morning than how diverse their stock portfolios were.
Matt, having mastered the moonwalk, came up to the stands and sat next to me.
"I don't think having Sam visit would be a good idea," he said haltingly.
"Sure it would. You two are totally into each other."
"But I like you." Shit. This conversation was supposed to happen after practice, not during.
"That's just because I'm the first guy you've ever fucked twice," I said as tenderly as I could.
"How did you know that?!" he returned, amazed. I laughed.
"Honey, it's as clear as the perfect little nose on your perfect little face."
He frowned.
"Oh, don't worry. It's okay," I said. "I've been there." The frown didn't lift. "Look, Matt, this is something all gay men have in common. It's because we all have to go through the process of coming out and while in some ways it's different for everyone, in other ways everyone experiences exactly the same thing."
"Like what?"
"Like how special your first fuck is. You remember the first guy you ever slept with?" He nodded. "Me too. We'll remember them the rest of our lives. Then comes the first guy you've ever slept with twice. That's usually your first big crush. We'll remember them for the rest of our lives, too. I'm so glad I could be that person for you."
"It's not a crush..." he said.
"Shhhh." I interrupted him as gently as I could. "Well, it was a crush for me when it happened to me. It sure felt like love at the time and I was miserable when he dumped me, but looking back on it, I know now it was a crush."
"Are you dumping me?"
"No, pup, I'm not dumping you," I said.
He eyed me suspiciously.
"Who was your best friend when you were growing up?" I asked.
"Huh?"
"Who was your best bud when you were little?"
"Richie Hausmann."
"When did he have his first crush on a girl?"
He shrugged. "I don't know. Middle School. Twelve? Thirteen?"
"Right. So straight boys go through all the stupid, childish phases of learning how to like someone when they're thirteen. We don't get to start until we come out. So even though chronologically we're eighteen or twenty or thirty, emotionally, when we come out, we're thirteen. We're retarded. It takes us some time to catch up to the rest of the world because we're not allowed to experiment when we should - when everyone else does. Do you understand what I'm saying?"
"Yeah," he said. "You're saying I'm stupid, childish, and retarded."
"No! No. Listen...It's so important you understand what I'm saying...I can't tell you how much I want to hug you right now. Hug you and plant a big wet kiss on you. I want to do that because you're hurt and I want to protect you - to make you feel better. But we're in public and that would weird you out, right?"
He nodded. "See, it wouldn't weird me out at all. That's not because I'm better or smarter or anything. I've just had more…practice…being gay than you have. It's nothing more than timing. We're in different places because the timing is wrong."
"You are dumping me."
"Matt," I said, taking him by the shoulders and holding him parallel to me, "look into my eyes. Listen to what I'm saying to you. I adore you. Do you hear that? I adore every bit of you - your joy at living, your physicality, your sweetness, your looks, your heart, your sense of humor, your ability to fuck the world and just have fun. I adore that you dumped a glass of water on Brad's head. I adore that you're so passionate about gymnastics. I adore that you're not annoyed by a twelve-year-old girl asking for an autograph. I adore that you're so open about the way you feel. I adore being with you, I adore when we cuddle and hold each other and I adore when we fuck. Do you hear all those things?"
He nodded.
"I'm not dumping you, Matt, because there's nothing to dump. I adore you and I adore being with you. But we never were, nor could we ever be a couple the way you're thinking of what a couple is. We're too different and we're in too different places. But that doesn't take anything away from all those other feelings I have for you. I just don't want you to misunderstand, or mistake my fondness for you with love, or confuse my fondness for being with you with love."
"So you're not in love with me?"
I shook my head, then added, "I adore you. I don't love you the way you're thinking about love."
"I love you, you know." My heart tore in two. I had worked so hard to spare him having to say those words.
"I know, pup. I realized it the last time we fucked. It made me very, very sad."
"Sad?"
"Yeah, sad."
"Why sad?"
"Because I do adore you. And I fear it's going to break my heart if I break yours."
He thought about that for a while.
"Does it bother you that I feel this way about you?"
"No, not at all."
"Then it doesn't bother me that you feel the way you do," he said slowly. "Can we still fuck?"
"If that's what you want, pup."
"That's what I want," he said. "And don't call me pup anymore."
He rose and walked deliberately back to the floor.
The boys had rotated. Dan and Adam were at the parallel bars, each holding on to one of the wooden beams and stretching their shoulders. Facing each other and in the same position, I was struck by the irony of the name of the apparatus. They were quite a pair. I crossed my legs, enjoying the little squeeze it gave the erection I had developed watching them stretch. Dan was facing me, arms over his head as he grasped one of the bars in a wide grip and bent forward under it. The triangular connection between his pecs and his shoulders strained to lengthen as he pushed his torso forward. Adam was doing the same, but I had a rear view. Another foot, and their heads would meet, centered under the parallel bars. Were they attracted to each other? Clearly they were, but was the basis of the attraction sexual? Dan had denied it, and I had never known him to misrepresent, but still.
What part of male bonding rested on homoerotic attraction? I had come back to my original question. How could one tease out that particular aspect of the relationship in a couple who actively denied its existence? One could not perform controlled experiments on a friendship. I was reminded of a discussion I had once had with a planetary science professor. It was when the data for the existence of planets outside our solar system began to be published. How could you tell something existed so far away without ever being able to go there, I had asked? How could you test the hypothetical model without being able to control the experiment? Wobbles had been detected, she had said. Wobbles and periodicity in brightness. One looks at the behavior of the system and asks the contrapositive of the hypothesis: what could explain the phenomena if the answer were not planets? Proving the absence of a plausible answer advances the theory.
So what could explain the attraction between my two stars if it were not homoerotic, I wondered? Dan had mentioned competition. The 'good' kind, he had said, and I certainly witnessed a bit of that in their race to the raft.
And hadn't Dan said something about being helped by Adam? Adam - the perennial helper, teacher, coach. What actualization had the two of them discussed? And Adam. Adam! What did he get out of this or any relationship? Surely the adoration those girls at the mall were lavishing on him, while enjoyable, must eventually get boring. What could a person possibly bring to the table of a man who could have anything?
Adam had said he hadn't changed in years. I had changed so much in only two weeks! Two weeks before, I had roiled at every encounter we had had. I had either fainted, cum, or both whenever we had interacted. The day before, I was able to keep my wits, within reason, while I tenderly bathed him. Two weeks before, I had been amazed by and fought the fog. Then, sitting there in the stands, it felt as natural as breathing, and, like breathing, I missed it sorely when it was absent. Two weeks before, the suggestion that I would enjoy - actively seek out, in fact - giving my will over to another man in a sexual encounter would have seemed absurd. Then, sitting there in the stands, I was agreeably hard in anticipation of just such an event. Two weeks before, I had been only answers. Sitting there in the stands, I was only questions.
When practice ended, I dawdled in the locker room, mopping clean floors, refolding towels that were already in neat stacks. I wanted to give the boys time to finish their lunch. When I finally emerged from the building, it was beneath an overcast sky that had darkened ominously to the orange side of charcoal. The heat hadn't lifted, but a breeze had picked up, and the hair on the back of my neck began to tingle in recognition of an oncoming electrical storm. Were we not in the mountains, I would be concerned about a tornado. As it was, I was glad to know I would be indoors for the remainder of the afternoon.
When I got to Dan and Adam's door, I knocked tentatively.
"Yo," I heard from inside. I took a deep breath, opened the door and walked into the unknown.
Dan was alone. Power, definition, cut features, allure. How could I not be putty near him? Standing at his desk, he was digging through a pile of crap.
"What 'cha looking for?" I asked.
"A CD. It's gone. One of the guys must have taken it."
He continued to root through the pile on the desk. With no direction as to what to do, I found myself beginning to pick up clothes off the floor, folding them and placing them into a neat stack. He turned, saw what I was doing and laughed.
"Stop that, for Christ's sake," he said.
I shrugged my shoulders. "Thought I'd just help out a bit."
"I'm not looking for a maid."
"What are you looking for, Dan?"
He smiled, dumped what was in his hands back onto the desk and said, "c'mere."
I walked up to him tentatively. He was an inch taller than me and twice my mass. He stood looking slightly down at me, the blues in his eyes more complex than a Hockney. I smiled nervously. He simply stared back. We stood there, within inches of each other, for forty days and forty nights.
"Do you want me to do something?" I asked. "Can I kiss you? Would that be okay? I feel like I should do something."
"Shut up."
"Sorry. I'm just talking because I'm nervous. You know how I can..."
"Shut up," he repeated, this time more forcefully.
I stood dumbly in every sense of the word. After endless silent discomfort, I began to stop wondering what I was supposed to do and became, instead, fascinated by his face. His eyebrows, dark and full, contained small points on the outside of their upper lines, as if they were fractured rather than curved. His lashes were long and thick, warmly welcoming you into the intense ice of his eyes. The line of his beard was clean, orderly - a neat transition between paleness and shadow. He shaved closely and each follicle seemed placed to maximize the effect of smooth roughness. His lips, fuller than Adam's, still had the distinctive quality of disappearing by the corners of his mouth allowing him, with only minor motion, a range of expression from nuanced fondness to disdain.
Without releasing me with his eyes, he began running his fingernail lightly up and down my bicep as I had seen him do to the blond the day before. Rather than be annoyed, though, I was electrified - the lightness of his touch caused me to shiver and my knees to go weak. I could feel the goose bumps rise across my entire body. I knew nothing at that moment except that I would do whatever he wanted. I was the happy intersection of need and desire.
"Strip," he said. The guys who photographed bullets piercing the skin of apples couldn't have followed me, I moved so quickly. I stood before him, my clothes strewn on the floor with his and Adam's, my painfully strong erection reaching for him.
"Lie down."
He laughed when I did.
"On the bed, dipwad."
I had dropped where I stood. I smiled sheepishly and climbed onto his bed.
Dan had a smell too, and there in his sheets I was able to luxuriate in it for the first time. It was the floor of the woods at night. It was raw leather and honeysuckle. He came over and stretched himself out on the bed next to me, lying on his side and propping his head up on one hand. I was hyperaware of the fact that he was clothed and I was not. I was hyperaware of the sound of the wind picking up outside. I was hyperaware of his breath on my cheek, of the curvature of his Adam's apple, of the feel of his fingertips as they began to trace patterns on my stomach and chest, of the curious fact that I was cold despite the oppressive heat.
I brought my hand up to stroke his upper arm as he stroked me, but he took it by the wrist and put it back at my side. He returned to lightly exploring the feel of my skin, and I found my hand again involuntarily seeking him out. Again he took it by the wrist and threw it to my side. When shortly thereafter, it began its third attempt, he frowned and this time, taking both my wrists in his hands, maneuvered them to the small of my back, wedging them under me as if I were in cuffs.
"Don't make me get the rope," he said, allowing me to understand from his tone both that this was no idle threat and that it was not his desire to have to tie me down. I clasped my hands together under the small of my back and nodded.
He explored my skin and the feeling was thrilling. He used no pressure, hardly making contact at times. I found myself rising to his touch, arching off the bed to satisfy my own desire. As I did, though, he withdrew, toying with my need.
"You trust me?" he asked. His voice was quiet, almost a whisper in my ear.
"I think so," I said.
"Close your eyes."
I did so. He brought his hand to my groin for the first time and began palming my balls. Full as they were, the sensation was glorious. He weighed them, rolled them lightly between his callused fingers, gently tugged them away from my body. I moaned in delight, the fingers of my hands intertwining lest I lose control and reach for him. As he tugged my ball sac down, my dick was lifted off my abdomen. He let go, causing my dick to snap back as a result of its rigidity. He repeated the maneuver - a tug, a gentle stretch, a release. Again, my dick thudded back onto my torso. He had found a way to make me dick-slap myself and he enjoyed exploring it, testing various angles and tensions.
Satisfied, he began a new assault. Extending his index and forefingers, he brought them under my scrotum resting my two balls on them. A flick sent them a quarter of an inch into the air. They fell back heavily onto his fingers. He bounced them again more forcefully. They arose and fell, this time accompanied by a mild, dull ache. Shortly, he set up a rhythm, flicking the underside of my balls with his extended fingers each time they landed as if he were playing paddle-ball. The ache built. Not to pain, but to something different. Each landing was only slightly uncomfortable but the cumulative effect was curious. It was how the dam felt as the lake behind it formed.
He returned to palming, reducing the building pressure and tension. He stroked the insides of my thighs, the patch of hair over my dick, my perineum. His hand withdrew from my body, and, eyes still closed, I smiled in lovely anticipation.
When it returned, it was with force. He had cupped his hand, making it somewhat convex and brought it to my groin in a moderate smack. The cup fit my balls - almost - and the force of contact brought my knees up and together in involuntary self-protection. The pain was - no wait. Again, it was not pain, per se. Despite my expectations that what he had just done to me should hurt enormously, the sensation was not quite pain. Eyes closed, hands in self-imposed restraint, I was able to focus intensely on my own body, acutely involved in proprioperception. No, not pain. A more severe ache. A dull throb. The dam during a rainstorm. The San Andreas Fault the day before a quake. He was palming again, soothing, gently rewarding. Slowly, the muscles in my thighs relaxed. Massaging, encouraging, he urged my knees back to the bed, allowing him, again, full access to me.
A second blow, more pronounced, sudden and powerful than the first. Having struck, his hand remained on my scrotum, holding it against my body with compassionate gentleness as the wave of sensation sped through my body. Again, my knees rose, this time clamping together to trap his hand, the very instrument of my torture, where it had come to rest squeezing my balls. Some kind of exclamation escaped my lips, indecipherable given the volume of air in which it was embedded. But again, not quite pain. Something else. An acute awareness of the circulation of my blood through the capillaries. When the dentist begins to extract the tooth after the Novocain has set in and says, "you might feel a little pressure." A submarine which, descending too far, blows bolts, only just managing to keep from imploding.
"Open up, little man," Dan was whispering into my ear. He rocked his hand, still in its protective embrace of my balls, left and right, urging my legs apart. Panting from the exertion, I fought to separate my knees. "There you go," he encouraged as they began their reluctant descent. "Stay open for me. You can do it. Stay open."
This time, he caressed longer, waiting for my breathing to return to normal. By the next slap, I was gyrating my hips to his tender strokes, rising to meet his hand, eager for his touch, dripping precum in response to the delicious manipulations. The slap was even harder than before, but this time, emotionally prepared in the foreknowledge that it would be followed by such delightful reward, I struggled to keep my knees wide. Instead, my back arched, driving my hips upward until my body rested on heels and head. Muscles I didn't know I had clenched in response to the electricity passing through my system. Dan held my balls tightly to ease their plight. "Good...good..." he whispered as I struggled to incorporate what was happening to me. "Keep open to me...keep open."
When I collapsed again onto the bed, he stroked me fully from chest to knees, purring his approval into my ear. This time, he had crossed the threshold well into pain. And yet. And yet. Could it be that some pain was to be sought out? There was the pain of an increased run. That ache, that weariness, that tenderness after a long distance was something I looked forward to. The boys put themselves willingly, eagerly, into pain each and every day. And Dan was masterful at what he was doing - pairing it with the intense joy of his light touch. I was being operantly conditioned, but my ego was happily subordinated to my id. I didn't care. All I cared about was the moment. The moment as his fingers brushed first my left then my right nipple. The moment as his hand swept down, tracing an ogee on my stomach, to my crotch where it playfully rubbed the drop of precum at my piss-slit into a circle of tackiness on the head of my dick. The moment as it reached down to massage my hamstrings loose from the contraction of the arch. He was playing me, tuning my body to chords he wished to hear, strumming my soul acoustically or percussively as he saw fit.
"You're doing so well," he said. "Give me your hand." Eyes still tightly shut and only slowly becoming aware of lines of dampness on my cheeks - had tears escaped? - I unclasped my fingers. He took my hand by the wrist and brought it to his groin. He was devastatingly hard, his dick straining against the material of his shorts. "This is what you're doing to me, little man. I could fucking jizz just looking at you."
I pressed it, squeezed it, measured its length and girth with my grip. But he took my hand off him and wedged it again under the small of my back. "In time, little man," he said. "Now, brace yourself. Here comes a big one. Stay open. Can you do that? Stay open for me for a bad one? You let me do that to you?"
His very voice was an opiate. How could I not respond to it? It seemed as if my entire life had led directly to this moment of crushing, imminent pain. How could I avoid my destiny? How could I even want to when I needed so desperately to see what was on the other side of it? How could I have come to a place where I would allow a man to punch me, full force, in the balls? How could I have come to a place where desire trumped self-preservation?
Dan was how. Dan was magic. Dan was a wizard. And I was firmly in his spell.
I nodded and took a deep breath, clenching my jaw, my cheeks, my whole body. Eyes squinted closed, I sensed the rise of his hand. I don't know how, but I could feel it high in the air. Then there was the pronounced whoosh of air as it fell. The sound allowed me to gauge its speed. It was coming in as fast and strong as a hurricane barreling up the East Coast. And like a hurricane, it was sure to carry a punch. My hips again rose off the bed in preparation. I had not reclasped my fingers, and without my intending it to, my hand shot to him, grabbing the first thing it found - the bottom of his T-shirt - in a tight fist. Every muscle strained, every joint locked. I prepared myself for sickening pain. Air escaped my lungs in a preemptive yell as his hand flew at me. But my knees remained apart.
The whoosh ended with a breeze. Pseudocyesis. His hand fanned my crotch, coming within millimeters of it but not striking. I opened my eyes in wonder. He was smiling, and the fondness in his gaze was clear.
"That's so fucking hot," he said.
Totally confused, I stammered a question. "What was?"
"You. You're very hot to me right now."
I was dazed and perplexed. "What about that gets you off, Dan? I mean, that was so...awesome...for me. But it was all about me. I didn't do anything for you. What's in it for you? The beating me?"
He brought his hand back to my scrotum. The quickness of his move made me jump despite his sudden gentleness when he got there. He chuckled at my reaction, and began to massage my aching balls.
"What do I get out of it, little man?" he asked. "Simple. It's not the beating. It's that you let me."