by Rob Rosen
Feeling like an intrepid prospector and grinning from ear to ear, I rounded the corner and pulled up short.
There was a naked man sitting on a ledge of rock above a pool of steaming water. The pool was about the size of two large oblong bathtubs side by side. The man’s legs dangled over the edge and disappeared into the hot mist. His clothes lay neatly folded beside him, topped by a cream-colored Stetson. My sudden appearance caused him to start and look up.
“Sorry,” I stammered. I looked away quickly, but not before my eyes had registered significant details: blue eyes, straw-colored hair, small mustache of a slightly darker color, lightly muscled chest and abdomen, smooth, and a crotch sporting even darker hair. By glancing away, I caught sight of a horse tethered to a sagebrush. It regarded me with calm indifference, which was more than I would be able to muster if I looked back at this golden cowboy.
“No problem,” he said evenly. “Didn’t hear you, is all.”
If I continued to look away, it would be obvious that I was trying not to be obvious, so I turned around. He was looking at me with a bit more curiosity than the horse. I told myself to relax. “I parked a ways away and walked in.” My brain emptied. I looked at the water his legs disappeared into. “Is it hot?”
“Hot enough,” he said, without the slightest trace of mockery.
Feeling I couldn’t look or sound any more idiotic (where were all those words that had danced in the starlight?), I asked, “Do you mind if I join you?”
“Make yourself at home,” he said, a small smile on his face.
I turned away as I stripped, piling my clothes on the desert floor in a neat imitation of his.
“You’ll want to put those up here,” he said, patting the rock ledge he sat on. “Bugs.”
I nodded my thanks and set my bundle next to his, then stepped into the “tub.”
This was indeed one of the locally maintained hot springs. The bottom was rough concrete, and I soon made out the PVC pipe that brought the water from the actual spring about twenty yards away to this rocky shelter. The water near the pipe was scalding, but it dissipated through the pool; close to the rocks it was tolerable, but just. The tub wasn’t deep. I was completely immersed only if I sat on my butt and leaned back on my elbows. If I knelt, the water only came up to my navel.
After a few minutes of full immersion, I began to feel dizzy. “Whew!” I said, sitting up. My heart was pounding.
“It does it to you, doesn’t it?” my cowboy companion said.
“Yeah.” I felt a little out of breath. The water was cooler near the rocks, but still hot. There wasn’t much room on the ledge for two. How would he take it if I sat next to him? Would he feel I was coming on to him? There was no one around for miles. If he panicked and got tough, there would be no one to stop him or come to my aid.
Screw it. I was boiling in there. And so I hauled myself out of the pool and sat on the ledge. There was just enough room for the two of us and our two piles of clothes. Our legs dangled in the water. Our knees touched.
Steam curled up from my skin and a light breeze tugged the wisps away. As my brain simmered down from a boil, I took a glance at the man next to me. He must have cooled down already. His skin, smooth and tanned, glistened in the sun, but did not steam. He was looking down at his crotch. I looked down, too. His cock was sticking straight out between his beautiful thighs, hard as the rock we perched on. He didn’t look at me.
I gazed out over the desert. My heart rate was picking up again, but it wasn’t from the heat. I knew if I got back in the pool and faced him, there was a good chance I’d pass out before I could find out if his semaphore was meant for me or just a kind of morning salute.
I took several slow breaths and got my heart back under control, then took another look. Yup. It was still up. I reached into the water and pulled up a handful and ladled it slowly on the golden thigh next to me.
He exhaled audibly, his shoulders simultaneously relaxing and expanding as he leaned back and closed his eyes.
I scooped up another handful of water and poured it over the same thigh. He breathed deeply. Another scoop, this time poured on the other thigh, passing over his cock, which bobbed up and brushed my hand as it passed. A bead of precome stuck to my wrist.
“Mmm, that feels good,” he said, eyes still closed, face completely relaxed.
I stood in the water and faced him. Leaning down, I took a handful of steaming water in each hand. But I didn’t pour the water on his thighs this time; instead, I dribbled it on his shoulders. Then I placed my heated hands on his cool shoulders and slowly ran them down his chest. There was a sharp intake of breath as I passed over his nipples. When I reached the top of his thighs, his legs spread and I knelt down, my knees resting on the rough concrete bottom of the pond. I was no longer worried about the heat.
I ran the length of my forearms slowly up and down his thighs, then I reached my hands around his hips. His legs rose behind me and rested on my back. I leaned forward and took his cock in my mouth.
His precome was salty and sweet. For a moment, I just held the head of his cock in my mouth, savoring the flavor and running the broad flat of my tongue around the ridge of his meat, teasing the slit with my tip.
His breathing had become audible. Looking up, I could see his chest expand with each inhale. His harms were hanging loose at his sides.
I slid my mouth down the length of his shaft. It thickened in the middle, then narrowed at the root. As my lips reached the bottom and my nose buried itself in the reddish hair sprouting there, I felt the head of his cock slip into the back of my throat. I heard him moan. The sound rumbled through his torso and turned me on something fierce. Despite the heat soaking in from the waist down, I knew my own cock was hard as the magma bed beneath us. I deep-throated him again and again. Looking up, I saw his muscles contract from his rib cage to below his navel.
Oh no you don’t, I thought. Not yet.
I pulled back. My man was panting, his eyes open, imploring me with blue intensity. I blew on his cock as he took several deep breaths.
I moved my arms under his legs and lifted them slightly. His balls now hung down between his legs and hovered above his ass. I leaned in again and took one of the nuts in my mouth, rolling it around from cheek to cheek. His breathing started coming short again. I got the second nut in my mouth and pulled back slightly, stretching his scrotum.
He grunted and put both hands on my head, pressing down slightly.
I knew what he wanted. I released his balls and let my tongue slide down his taint to his asshole. The second my tongue touched the rim, he let out a whimper. I flicked my tongue in and out of his hole, which opened and contracted around it in waves. I flattened my tongue and ran it over his puckered hole, then up to his balls and back again.
He was now moaning with each breath. He reached down and grabbed his cock. I knew there was no stopping him, and so I focused on getting him his release. I took both balls in my mouth while I inserted a spit-slicked finger up his ass. I slid it in and out in time to the strokes on his cock. The base of his shaft seemed to grow thicker and harder. His thighs tensed and clamped my face to his crotch.
When he came, he convulsed so hard I thought we’d both pop off the ledge and into the water. His abdomen contracted and he doubled over, bellowing one continuous animal sound as he came. I could feel his urethra pulse beneath my tongue as spurt after spurt ripped out of his cock and spattered over my face and hair. It seemed to go on forever.
His bellowing soon faded to silence. His cock still throbbed and shudders shook his frame. He was panting, exhausted. I started easing my finger out of his ass. A final shudder as one last pulse of come pushed its way up his cock and squeezed my finger from his hole.
And suddenly I was very, very hot.
I gently let his balls roll out of my mouth and, with my strength quickly fading, pulled myself out of the hot springs and onto the rock ledge beside him. He collapsed sideways into me, and I nearly collapsed my
self. Mercifully, the breeze picked up again, and in a few minutes I realized I was not going to pass out.
I looked down at my cowboy. His head lolled against my shoulder and his chest rose and fell regularly. His cock was slowly deflating between those two powerful thighs, dangling a thread of semen that trailed to the hot springs at our feet. I looked down at my own legs. Two bright red disks marked the point where my knees had met the bottom of the pool.
“Wow,” my man said.
“Wow,” I agreed.
I didn’t want to ruin this by saying anything more. There was a time for words and a time for the desert silence.
Sometime later, we did say a few words more, but they were mostly the ordinary things strangers say when they pass each other on the trail. We dressed. He mounted his horse and rode off to the north, where he worked at a kind of adventure ranch for rich kids. I stayed behind, sitting on the rocks beside the pool. Soon, an SUV pulled up with its radio thumping, and some local kids got out. It was time to go.
I returned to San Francisco, that ironic city, but I brought two things with me from my time away: the first faded away after only a week—the second-degree burns on my knees; the second, however, lasted long enough for me to find my voice again.
The Ballad of Cowboy Springs
’Twas in the perfect desert air
Beneath the rising desert sun
I found a cowboy stripped down bare
Beside a hot springs, all alone.
“Oh pardon me if I intrude,”
I said as I approached the spot.
“I’d like to join you in the nude
And soak there if the water’s hot.”
“Oh yes,” he said and grinned, “it’s hot,”
And by his look said something more.
I wondered if, as like as not,
There might be something else in store.
The breeze that teased our skin was cool.
The desert blossomed all around.
I blew him there beside the pool
His sighs and moans the only sound.
The desert air is clear and sweet
And sweet the desert solitude,
The perfect place for men to meet
And come upon each other, nude.
COMING HOME
Andra Dill
The text alert ping saved the fool from being throttled. Tomas leaned forward, his wide hands on the desk, glaring at his two subordinates, neither meeting his eyes. Just under six feet, he had an intimidating build: short, thick neck that flowed into broad shoulders and chest, thickly muscled arms and thighs. Dark brown eyes glanced down at the phone. Carter shone on the screen. Clenching his teeth to grit back the tongue-lashing he wanted to deliver, he picked up the phone.
He read the text: Need to talk. Wake me nmwt. POD people. And just like that, the red haze of fury died. How did Carter do that? Tomas believed his husband was psychic. He had the uncanny knack of reining in the tempest that was Tomas’s emotions with a word, a look, a touch, and, in this case, a text.
He smirked at the message. Nmwt was Carter’s shorthand for “no matter what time,” but what was POD people? Payable on death, print on demand, passed out drunk? What the hell?
He rubbed a hand over his long-past-five-o’clock stubbled jaw.
“Paul, can you take over the Barron negotiations?”
The young fool opened his mouth to protest. Tomas lifted a hand, silencing him.
“Yes, I’ll get my team up to speed this weekend.” Paul fidgeted with his cuffs, looking at a spot just over Tomas’s shoulder.
“Good, let’s hope that we can salvage this.” Another ping; he glanced down at the new message, this one from his daughter. “Gentlemen, I haven’t been home in four days. Fix this. We’ll talk on Monday.”
The built-up tension from the meeting in Portland, the mess he had found when he returned to the office, and the too-long commute home dissipated as he walked through the front door. Coming home was a gift. Twenty-one years. They had built this home, this life together. The entry hosted a soul-soothing display. His hand came up of its own volition to touch their wedding photo. His fingers stroked over Carter’s image, looking dashing in his tuxedo, the two of them grinning like fools. His fingers glided down to tap the photo directly below of the four of them taken this summer as they hiked through Yosemite.
Inhaling deeply, familiar aromas greeted him: the signature scent of orange from products the cleaning lady used twice a week; from the kitchen, the lingering aroma of bacon and tomato sauce. He flinched, looked down at the partially unzipped duffel bag on the steps, the pungent smell of a teenage boy’s gym clothes. Zipping up the bag, he went upstairs.
It was peacefully quiet; unusual that one or both kids weren’t still up. He dropped the offensive duffel into Brandon’s room, then peeked into his daughter’s room before making a beeline to Carter.
Tomas threw his jacket over the ancient chair, one of their first purchases together. The television volume was on low, its flickering light the only illumination in the bedroom. His attention was riveted on Carter, on his long, lean body propped up by a mountain of pillows in the center of their king-size bed, mouth open, softly snoring. Tomas removed his tie while watching his husband’s sleeping form: golden skinned, bare chest rising and falling rhythmically; head resting on one arm, his brown hair just starting to gray and in need of a trim, the other arm resting on his thigh. Tomas smiled at the garish red-and-orange plaid sleeping pajamas, a Christmas gift from the kids. They were seriously ugly, but still Carter’s favorite pair.
He clicked off the television, the countdown in his head ticking off the seconds, knowing what Carter would say. He wasn’t disappointed.
“Hey, I was watching that,” Carter grumbled three seconds after it shut off. He rubbed his eyes, blinked a few times before squinting at Tomas’s shape.
“Sure you were.” Carter usually fell asleep to the drone of the television. Tomas couldn’t stand the noise. The first year living together, it had been one of their most persistent fights. Funny how it was a little joke between them now. Tomas leaned down and kissed Carter, pressing him firmly into the mass of pillows. He breathed in his scent, vetiver and pepper, before breaking the kiss.
“Hi.” Carter’s fingers twined into Tomas’s sable brown hair, now edged at the temples with white, messing up the meticulously combed strands. Carter’s hands drifted down to embrace Tomas’s nut-brown face, thumbs brushing over cheekbones. He pulled him in for another kiss, deeper this time, slower, more demanding.
When they parted, Carter asked, “What time is it?” He twisted toward the nightstand, turning the lamp on.
“Just after midnight.” Tomas walked into the bathroom, fingers combing his tousled locks, and flicked on the light. “POD people?”
“You remember that movie? You know, pod people.” He looked expectantly at Tomas. Getting no response, he huffed, “Invasion of the Body Snatchers.”
“Okay,” Tomas said neutrally. Picking up his toothbrush, he applied a thin line of toothpaste.
“Aliens replace normal, rational people with pods that have aliens who look like the sane person, but they’re really aliens who want to take over the world. Or something like that.”
Tomas stuck his head back into the bedroom. “Who have the aliens, uh, podded?”
“Your daughter—”
“Ah, that good, huh?” He couldn’t wait to hear what their twelve-year-old demon/angel child had done. The Longfellow poem about “the little girl who had a little curl” flashed through his mind. When she was “really bad,” she was his daughter.
“Your daughter had a meltdown about dance lessons. Let’s see, in addition to ballet and pre-pointe, she wants to add lyrical. Of course, lyrical is only taught on the same night as karate, and she is willing to forego that class to fulfill her dreams.”
“What the hell is lyrical?” Popping the toothbrush into his mouth, he started brushing.
“A class that
Petra, Ellie, and Mia are taking, according to Brandon. He got smacked for that answer, by the way. Anyway, Zoe is willing to drop karate and volleyball so that she can take this extra dance class.”
Speaking with a mouth full of paste, Tomas interrupted. “Volleyball is over.”
Carter nodded. “Uh-huh. The teacher is brilliant.” That last word was accompanied by air quotes. “Personally asked Zoe to join the class. I could go on, but I’m too tired. She was so worked up that she carried on the argument-slash-conversation for ten minutes before she realized I wasn’t answering her. Zoe screamed, actually screamed, at me that we would be ‘ruining her dreams’ if she couldn’t take lyrical. She stormed out, slamming her door for good measure. I didn’t see her for the rest of the night.” He added, sotto voce, “Thank god.”
Tomas rinsed his mouth. “You’ll love this.” Striding across the room, he dug out his phone and handed it to Carter.
Carter read aloud, “Daddy, we need to talk. Wake me nmwt.” He smiled and returned the phone. “Daddy, huh? When was the last time she called you that?”
“When she was nine?” He shrugged out of his shirt, watching Carter watch him, that intense hazel-eyed perusal igniting a familiar need within him. Tomas’s fingers twitched, wanting to touch that golden skin.
Carter flopped back on the pillows, sighing heavily. “I talked to my mom. She says this is normal. The next few years we’ll get to see an escalation in dramatic outbursts and far fewer glimpses of our beloved daughter until the summer before she goes to college, at which time she will be, more or less, back to normal.”
“Your mom is such a smartass.” He sat down on the bed picking up Carter’s bare foot and began massaging. “Anything going on with Brandon?”
He worked his fingers between each of his partner’s slender toes, rocking them gently. Pressing his thumbs into the arch, he received a satisfied moan in response.
