The Low Road (2 page)

He trotted me into the stable and dumped me face down over a bale of straw. ‘Stay there, you dirty little bugger, and I'll get you cleaned up.' I freed my head from my shirt, and looked round over my shoulder. Thanks to my clumsy attempts to undress, I had smeared mud all over my buttocks and the back of my thighs. Alexander pulled off his own shirt, which I'd also managed to ruin in the process, and pulled a handful of clean, golden straw from the bale. ‘Now then,' he said, ‘let's see what we can do.' He started dabbing at my backside with the coarse straw; it tickled, and I squirmed. ‘Stay still, will you? I can't send you back to your ma with a dirty arse.' He rubbed harder this time, removed the worst of the mud and discarded the dirty straw under the horses' feet.

‘That's better. Now, let's try again.' He took a fresh handful and continued his job, rubbing my arse until it glowed with the scratching. ‘Charlie, however did you get yourself into such a state?' he said. ‘Look at yourself!' With one huge, calloused hand he spread my buttocks; the mud had worked its way down into the crevice between them. ‘Get these off,' he said, pulling on the breeches that still constricted my ankles, ‘and let the dog see the rabbit.' Between us we managed to divest me of the filthy garment; I remained kneeling over the straw bale. Alexander kicked my feet apart, spreading my legs as wide as they would go. Picking up his discarded shirt, he dunked it in a pail of water, wrung it out and dumped it on my arse. The shock of the cold water made me yell. ‘Sorry, Charlie, but we'll soon have you cleaned up now.' He dabbed and scrubbed and rubbed with his soaking shirt, working it right down between my buttocks; the water ran down my thighs, over my balls and off the tip of my cock, which was pushed back between my legs and pressing against the straw. Goosepimples spread all across my arse and my legs; I felt my balls pulling up to escape another sluicing.

‘Just rinse you off now, Charlie. Brace yourself.' I barely had time to look round before a pail full of cold water hit me full on. It went in my face, soaked my hair, my shirt, everything. ‘There, that's better,' said Alexander as I spluttered in surprise. ‘Now let's get you dry.' I was going to complain, but held my noise as he started to rub me down with a thin woollen blanket. He dried my eyes and my ears with the patience and tenderness I'd seen him lavish on the horses; he rubbed my hair a little more forcefully, pulled the soaking shirt off over my head and dried my neck, my back, my legs. Soon, thanks to the friction of the wool, I was as warm as I could wish.

Alexander seemed in no hurry to stop, and I had no desire to prevent him. His movements with the towel became slower, firmer as he dried my buttocks with extravagant care and attention. I have said that my arse formed a perfect hemisphere in profile; now, jutting up into the air with my legs spread a yard apart, it exerted some kind of fascination over Alexander. Every so often I felt the contact of his fingers as the blanket slipped aside, then, more and more, the full touch of his palm against my arse. I heard him hissing quietly, the way ostlers do when they groom a horse. Aside from that, the stable was quiet. Occasionally one of the horses stamped or snorted, a bird sang overhead. I could hear the blood thumping in my ears.

The warmth that Alexander's rubbing had imparted to my backside soon spread to my balls, which had come out of hiding and were now flopping down in their pouch. My cock, still pressed back between my legs, was responding to his ministrations by doubling in size and getting hard; pressing against the straw, I was now in a certain amount of discomfort, which I could only alleviate by pushing my backside further into the air. This freed my cock, which sprang up against my belly, making a slapping noise as it did so.

Alexander took this as a sign of encouragement, I suspect, and
grabbed a buttock in each hand, kneading them roughly. New as I was to this kind of experience, I realised that a boundary had been crossed; we could no longer pretend that he was simply cleaning me up after a riding accident. Something altogether different was going on. Alexander stopped his mauling and stood bare chested, sweating slightly, rubbing a bulge in his coarse wool trousers, staring down at me with a dazed look in his eyes. I had no idea what to do, under the circumstances; half of me wanted to get up, laugh and wrestle him to the ground, to turn it all into a game. But I stayed where I was. I knew that there was further to go. My penis was throbbing so hard now that it was beating a tattoo against my stomach. Still looking at Alexander, I pushed it back between my legs so he could see that I was as hard as I could get.

‘My God, Charlie, you're a big boy now,' said Alexander. I knew that my cock had grown considerably in the last few years; having nothing to compare it with, I thought little of it. So I just smiled over my shoulder and waved my hard cock around, slapping it against each thigh as I did so. My own solitary experiments in front of the mirror during fencing ‘lessons' had taught me what happened if I played with my cock for long enough; now, however, I felt a new intensity as I displayed myself for Alexander's appreciative stare.

The feelings, in fact, were so powerful that I went into a kind of reverie, closing my eyes and resting my head on my left forearm, with the other hand continuing my exhibition. The smell of straw, the warmth of the sunshine that had just penetrated the stable's high ceiling and was belting down on to me, Alexander's heavy breathing and occasional muttered words, sent me into a dream.

I was awakened very suddenly by a new and totally unexpected sensation - something hot, wet and firm had made contact with my exposed arsehole. My body jerked as if a bolt of lightning had passed through it, and I whipped my head round to see Alexander's
face disappearing between my parted buttocks. His tongue pressed and probed against my hole, now licking, now pushing, as his great hands pulled my cheeks farther apart. I could feel his stubble, as rough as the straw, as his chin butted against my balls. I let out one great, noisy sigh as Alexander burrowed into my arse like a starving man, coating me with his spit and rubbing his face into me. My arsehole, to which I had never paid the remotest attention before, seemed to be melting or burning, I didn't know which. Alexander pulled back only to renew his assault, this time pushing his firm tongue right into the centre of my arse, which yielded slightly and allowed half an inch of him inside me. I yelped - ‘Oh my God!'—but that only encouraged him. Squirming up in my hole, he reached round with one hand and found my right nipple, pinching and pulling on it gently.

I was so overwhelmed by this barrage of new sensations that I had no real idea of what was happening to me, only that I was approaching something at breakneck speed. When Alexander rubbed his hand down my sweating stomach, through my wiry, golden pubic hair, and finally grasped my cock, my head stopped spinning and I had a moment of total clarity in which I seemed to see in sharp focus for the first time exactly what was happening to me. Then all hell broke loose. His tongue working up inside me, his hand gripping and rubbing my hard, swollen shaft - everything seemed to happen at once. My back arched up; I cried out and emptied myself in burst after burst. Alexander disengaged himself from my bum and watched me. When the feelings receded, and I lay spent and panting over the straw bale, he rubbed my back and arse with one hand, gently squeezing the last few tremors of sensation through my cock with the other.

‘Charlie,' he whispered. I looked round.

His brow was furrowed; he looked worried. ‘Are you... all right, boy?'

I turned over; he never let go of my cock. I sat in front of him
as he squatted at my feet, and smiled. I couldn't find any words, but felt a great need to reassure him. He hung his head - at first in shame, I thought, until I realised that one hand had returned to the mighty bulge at the front of his trousers. His face was flushed, his lips swollen. He looked up at me. ‘Please, let me...'

For answer, I knelt beside him, put an arm round his shoulder and eased him back until he was lying across my lap. I undid the tie at the top of his trousers and eased them down. His cock, now that he was lying back, extended as far as his belly button. Where mine was pale and thick, with a bright pink head when exposed, his was long and dark, lying on a bed of thick, soft black hair, the same as the fur on his stomach. I took it in my hand; it kicked appreciatively, and Alexander growled. ‘Now, Charlie, wank me off,' he said, looking up into my eyes. I did as I was told. Slowly at first - my hand could barely encircle its girth - but then, as I got the feel of another man's cock in my grasp, I increased the speed of my strokes. Before long Alexander's narrow brown hips were bucking up and down as jets of white, sticky sperm splashed across his hard belly, matting the hair there, reaching as far as his neck and shoulders.

We lay for a while in silence as I weighed the softening cock in my hand. Alexander lay with his eyes closed, breathing regularly, the sun shining down on us both. I could have stayed there all day.

Suddenly we both leapt to our feet; a horn had sounded nearby. The mail coach was approaching. How long had we lain there? It must be nearly nine o'clock. I was due back at the house for breakfast, and Alexander was behindhand with his duties. Barely looking at each other, we struggled into our clothes; I brushed the now-dry mud from my breeches and ran out of the stable. I stopped, looked back, hoping to exchange one final smile with the groom, but he was bent over the saddle rack, furiously rearranging the bridles and bits that hung there in sorry neglect.

I ran back across the field and reached the house just as the wheels of the mail coach crunched across the courtyard. I hurried up to my room, planning a quick change of clothes and then to breeze down to breakfast as if I had been studying quietly upstairs, should anyone comment on my absence. I stripped and stood for a moment naked in front of the mirror. My buttocks were still pink from Alexander's ministrations, and there was a splash of dried sperm on my stomach. I picked at it idly, and my cock, although so recently drained, started stirring into life again. I felt the phantom of Alexander's hot, insistent tongue at my arsehole. No, there was no time for this. I struggled into my clothes, hoping that my erection would subside by the time I got downstairs.

When I descended into the hall with my excuses at the ready, I found that my absence had not even been noticed. My mother greeted me with a distracted frown and a dismissive gesture, and returned to reading the letter in front of her on the table. I enquired after her health, as was our morning custom, and she replied with an inarticulate ‘Oh...'. After repeated attempts to get marmalade, butter or cream passed to me, I served myself. I had never seen her like this: dark-browed, troubled, almost tearful. But, selfish and hungry youth as I was, I soon forgot my mother's worries and concentrated on consuming a hearty breakfast, my appetite sharper than ever after the morning's exercise.

The rest of the day passed in an atmosphere of silence and melancholy. Mother closed herself away in her study; passing the window, I occasionally saw her pacing, praying and writing at her desk. Ethel shooed me out of the house, and I wandered around the grounds, enjoying the sunshine, dwelling, I'm afraid, more on my recent experiences with Alexander than on the troubles looming over the family. My lessons were suspended; the last of the Hanoverian trollops had been despatched to Edinburgh the previous week, and I was left to ‘independent study' of my Latin and Greek texts. An eighteen-year-old boy, on a sunny day, his cock
and arse still tingling from a thorough working-over by the groom, could not find it in his heart to return to the parsing of Menander. I roamed down by the lake, hoping to see Alexander exercising Starlight, as he sometimes did. I took a diversion from my afternoon run around the estate to drop in unexpectedly at the stables; there was no one there. I swam in the freezing waters of the loch, wishing it was Alexander's tongue, rather than the icy waves, lapping at my naked arse. Finally, after such a day of exercise, I retired to bed a little after ten and went straight into a deep sleep.

The last thing I heard was the sound of my mother's voice raised in anger somewhere in the lower part of the house far, far beneath me.

The next day was Sunday, and so riding, alongside other frivolous pastimes, was forbidden. The stables were out of bounds, and besides I knew that Alexander would spend the day with his family in religious observance, leaving the feeding of the horses to MacFarlane, an elderly local busybody who had helped out on the estate since before I was born. I sat in church, the stiff collar chafing against my neck, my mind a million miles from the sing-song responses and the priest's uninspired homily. I greeted our neighbours, I shook hands with the fathers, bowed to the mothers and was agreeable to their daughters. In the carriage home my mother and I did not exchange a word, absorbed in our own meditations. My mother did not comment on my uncharacteristic silence. I imagine she welcomed it. Scowling out of the window, she fretted the fingers of one glove until they split at the seam. She tutted, suppressed a curse and shoved the offending article into her bag.

On Monday morning I awoke before dawn after a disturbed night in which I could think only of Alexander and the hours that would pass before I could see him again. I had rehearsed in my mind every detail of our last time together, had summoned up memories of each sensation - his hands on my buttocks, his tongue on my arse, the pinching of my nipples and the firm grasp as he milked the juice out of me. And I saw again and again Alexander's big, dark
cock jumping and jerking in my hand. I suppose I should have felt shame or guilt - I'd been brought up strictly enough - but all I could feel was anticipation. I knew dimly that there was a great deal more that Alexander and I could do together. My cock was stiff all night. I woke up several times from dreams that, unchecked, would have ended with me spewing all over the sheets - an experience with which I was quite familiar. I resisted the temptation to take care of myself. I wanted to save it, to share it.