Always Conditions

Chapter One

"You said you wanted to know when the bitch dropped them. And if you want to see them before I put them down, you'd better get over here fast."

Clyde had jolted Ken out of a deep sleep. It had been a rough day. Classes at the college, followed by football practice. Then he had to stop at the pharmacy on the way home and pick up Laurie's prescriptions and tend to her needs and get a meal ready for her. And then straight over to Clyde's to help with Daisy. She was about to whelp and was having a difficult time with it. He thought Clyde was breeding her too close together. But that was Clyde. Always the bottom line with Clyde.

Ken was in such a hurry to get out of bed and over to Clyde's, up the block from his mom's house, that all he did was pull on his jeans and pause at Laurie's bedroom door to make sure she was sleeping OK before he left.

Good thing he checked, because she had a live cigarette lying on the nightstand. It wasn't close to anything flammable, but one never knew. It was close to an open bottle of bourbon standing on the floor between the bed and the nightstand, though. If the cigarette had dropped in there, chances were Laurie's bed would go up in flames—with her in it.

As much as Laurie demanded of him, Ken wouldn't want anything like that to happen to her. She was the only one he had left in the world in the way of family. And family had always been important to Ken.

Laurie coughed in her sleep and turned away from Ken as he stubbed the cigarette out in an overflowing ashtray and picked up the bourbon bottle. He had half a notion to pour it out and tell her in the morning she'd drunk it all. But they couldn't afford it, and Ken knew she'd just open another bottle—or send out for another one. Ken couldn't get the booze for her, but that's what she kept Suzy around for—why she still held onto Suzy as her last friend. She didn't need the friends so much as someone to buy her booze for her.

Ken exploded out of the house and padded up toward Clyde's along the grass lawns in his bare feet.

Clyde lived in the original farmhouse that had been on this tract of land, where cheap bungalows had been built as close together as county code would permit around the farmhouse. Clyde had kept a sizable chunk of the land running back of his house, though, including the original barn area, where he'd installed fenced pens and a couple of dog runs. He had pens inside the barn too, and an office.

Clyde bred Labrador Retrievers. And Ken had been helping him part time since he was a junior in high school. Ken had been there when Daisy was born, and she was his favorite of all the Labs Clyde kept.

Clyde wasn't big on affection with his dogs—for him they were just dollar signs—or debits. When they got to be debits, he had them put down. He wasn't sentimental about them. Half the reason Ken stayed with Clyde was because he didn't want that to happen to Daisy. When she came close to that, Ken wanted to be there to tell Clyde he'd take her, which would be less trouble to Clyde than putting her down.

Ken had tried to provide the dogs with what Clyde wouldn't. Clyde worked him hard in the few hours he paid him for, but Ken had stayed on for extra hours and given the dogs exercise and affection. Daisy had been the one that returned the most affection to him.

When it was time for Ken to go away to college, he'd had several options, having been a state standout on the football field and an outstanding student as well. But there were impediments to him leaving home. It was just he and his mother—had been for years, his father having died in a trucking accident on a snowy mountain road—and his mother was plagued with illnesses real, imagined, and self-induced and was incapable of taking care of herself. She also was a holy terror to anyone else who tried to help her other than Ken, which was one reason her circle of friends was down to just Suzy, who wasn't the sharpest knife in the drawer and would just as easily accidentally kill Laurie as to keep her going. And another big reason Ken couldn't leave for college was Daisy and the other Labs at Clyde's.

Ken knew if he didn't help give the dogs at Clyde's some attention and affection, no one else would. Ken even could have gotten some better jobs, ones with better pay and better hours. But then there wouldn't be anyone to help take care of the dogs. And Ken liked working with the dogs.

As fast as Ken had rocketed out of the house and displayed his running skills in covering the distance between his house and Clyde's at three in the morning, he wasn't in time. Daisy was already dead when he got there.

She'd whelped five pups, two of them stillborn, in a wrenching delivery during which she hemorrhaged so much blood that she had lost the ability to sustain her strength.

Ken found her lying on a gunny sack in one of the pens in the barn, all five pups around her. She was alone. Clyde was off in another part of the barn, running water into a galvanized tub the size of a small bathtub.

Ken knelt beside Daisy and ran his hands across her cooling body. He lowered his face to her neck and cried. He'd seen dogs die here before at Clyde's. But none of them had been Daisy. Daisy had been born the first day he'd come to work for Clyde, back when he was barely out of elementary school and felt he needed a job because his father had just died. It was the first day Ken had seen the wonders of another living being coming into the world. He'd followed her all through what was an entirely too short life. She had been bred too close together. He knew that.

"Sorry, Daisy," he mumbled through his tears. "I should have been here. Oh, god, I wished I had been here." He sniffed and then continued, "But don't you worry. I'll take good care of your pups."

That's when he looked up to see that Clyde was reaching down and had the tiniest of the pups, the runt, by the scruff of the neck, was lifting it from where it had instinctively been trying to find a nipple, and carrying it toward the tub of water.

"What? Whatayer doin', Mr. Snepp?"

"Putting them down. They've got to be put down."

"No! Why."

"There's no bitch around ready to take them on. They have to be put down."

"No, no, you can't. Please."

"I'm not taking care of them," he said. And with the hand he wasn't holding the new-born puppy with Clyde put a hold on Ken's shoulder and let it move down to where he was palming Ken's shoulder blade.

That was when Ken realized he had only come out in jeans. The palm of Clyde's hand on his back felt hot, and at the same time Ken felt shivers raiding out of the center of that and down his spine. He could tell by the look Clyde was giving him that this had not been a good idea. Not a good idea at all. Clyde had been increasingly showing interest in Ken—the kind of interest Ken didn't want shown to him by Clyde, although he'd been doing so ever since Ken had turned eighteen.

There was a time when Ken had substituted Clyde as a father figure, when Ken's life at home was rotten, and he needed someone to confide in. Then Clyde had been all sympathy and compassion. That hadn't been the real Clyde, though. Clyde had been interested in being more than a father to Ken even then. And Ken had let it slip—what his interests and inclinations were. And this had fit into Clyde's plans perfectly. Ken had even told him about Lawrence—the friend who lived further up the block and had gone through school with Ken and then enrolled in the same local college and played on the same football team.

All of this had been a bad mistake. Not that it was a mistake that Ken had Lawrence—but that it dovetailed so well with the desires and plans that Clyde had of his own. If it weren't for the dogs—especially Daisy—needing Ken, he would have left Clyde's employ—and plans—a year ago, when Clyde first made it clear that he wanted Ken to sleep with him.

"Please, Mr. Snepp. Please. You can't. These are Daisy's pups. We can't."

"I don't have the time or inclination to take care of them and wean them, Ken. It's got to be done."

Ken looked behind Clyde and saw the tub of water and knew what that was for.

"No, you don't have to, Mr. Snepp. Daisy was good stock—so was the sire, General Crisp. They can pay for themselves. The pups can pay out. I . . . I'll take care of them. I'll wean them."

"You don't know what you'd be signing up to, Ken. They'd have to be fed every couple of hours for weeks. You'd have to be here almost constantly."

Ken felt Clyde's hand on his back tremble a bit when he said that.

"You'd have to be here frequently in the day and than a couple of times at night, too," Clyde said as he hunched down more over Ken and his hand slid down Ken's spine and his fingers went under the waistband of Ken's jeans. Ken heard the intake of breath when Clyde discovered Ken was wearing nothing else under the jeans.

Ken knew the avenue he'd have to take. He'd always known that Clyde could be controlled with the hint of sexual contact. Clyde was a touchy feeling kind of guy, and this hadn't been the first time Ken had his hand run down his bare back like this. And Clyde could be mean and brusque with the people working for him, but he'd always been nice to Ken—as long as Ken hadn't balked at having Clyde touch him.

"I'll do it, Mr. Snepp. I'll take care of them. I'll make sure I'm here every couple of hours. I'll take care of everything." Ken straightened his back, giving Clyde an eyeful of his well-developed chest and gave him a doe-eyed little smile. He could see that it sent chills through Clyde's body. Ken knew he had won.

"Well, OK. But if you can't keep up with them, they'll have to be put down." He leaned back over and let the runt drop beside its dead mother's body again. "You'll find formula over in the supply room. I don't think you can manage it, but you can try."

"I can. You'll see."

"You'll owe me one, though," Clyde said. "There are conditions that'll have to be met."

"Conditions?"

"Yeah, you'll find in life there always are conditions, Ken. I'll be straight with you. You know I've always been interested in getting a piece of what your friend Lawrence gets, and—"

Hey, there's a car that's pulled up outside, Mr. Snepp, Ken said. A couple are getting out of it. Ken had been saved—or at least given a reprieve. He didn't have to ask what these conditions might be, and he had every intention to avoid them if he could.

"I can manage," he said to Clyde's retreating back, trying his best to exude confidence. Truth was, though, that he didn't have the slightest notion how he would manage. All he knew is that he owed it to Daisy to try to save the pups she'd given her life for. He owed that much to Daisy.

Chapter Two

"Whateryoudoin' home at this time, Ken? Aren't you 'supposed to be in school?"

"I told you, Ma, I'm taking the semester off."

"Taking a semester off? Coach is letting you do that?"

"No, I told you about that too, Ma. I'm taking time off from the sports too. Coach will take me back, I'm sure." But Ken couldn't be all that sure of that. His close friend, Lawrence, had taken his position on the team after Ken had dropped out. And Ken couldn't be sure he'd get it back the next semester, even if he could get back on the scholarship. And if Lawrence liked it at that position, Ken wasn't sure he wanted to take it away from him again.

"Why'd ya do that?" Laurie asked. "School don't suit you? You was so high and mighty about that. And you was goin' a get a great job and take care of me. You find it too much to chew off?"

"No, Ma, I told you. There's a litter of pups I have to get weaned up at Clyde's. He was going to put them down—Daisy's litter—and I promised I'd take care of them. But that means I have to be up there and feed them and clean up after them every couple of hours. So, that and taking care of you means I've had to put school aside for a semester."

"That Daisy. She was the only one you could talk about," Laurie snorted. She turned the volume of the TV down a bit with her remote, took a puff on her cigarette, coughed, and put the cigarette in the ash tray on the table next to her La-Z-Boy. "You would'a thought you were shackin' up with her or something. You and that dog. And what do ya mean havin' to take care of me? Don't you go blamin' your wantin' to drop outta college on me. I can take care of myself."

He didn't tell her that his intentions to avoid Clyde's conditions had run out just the night before, when lights had gone on in the house as Ken had done a 2:00 am feed, his mother having been dead to the world and not knowing he'd been slipping out at need to feed the pups.

Clyde had come into the barn in just his sleeping pants and with a blanket over his arm that he spread over a couple of bales of hay while he was telling Ken in no uncertain terms that the pups would be put down the next day unless Ken gave into his conditions right then and there. Again Ken had come down just in his jeans, and while he was still trying to sweet talk Clyde out of his "conditions," Clyde pushed Ken's back down on the covered hay bales and was unzipping the jeans and flaring them out to expose Ken's cock. Ken moaned and buried his fingers in Clyde's hair as Clyde worked up his cock with his mouth.

Clyde was good as sucking and when he rolled Ken's pelvis up and moved his mouth down to Ken's hole while pumping Ken's cock with his hand, Ken came quickly. Then he just laid back and whimpered, having no will to fight it as Clyde coaxed his thighs apart and moved his hips between them. The first thrust was hard and deep, and Ken involuntarily arched his back toward the floor at the far end of the hay bales. Clyde's powerful chest followed him down, and Clyde's lips and teeth went for Ken's nipples as the older man pumped Ken hard and deep and fast—giving Ken less time to adjust to the cock inside him than Lawrence gave him. And it was all over in just a few minutes and Clyde had turned and flipped his sleeping pants over his shoulder and was heading back up to the house with no further word to Ken.

Ken laid there, dazed, for several minutes more. Clyde didn't last like Lawrence did, but while he was in there he churned harder and faster. And from what Clyde was mouthing and the grunts and groans he was making during the fuck, Ken knew this wasn't the last time Clyde would want him.

"Sure, Ma. I left some dinner for you in the microwave," Ken said in answer to Laurie's question. "I've got to get up to Clyde's for a feeding of the pups."

"Well, don't forget to drop by the drugstore on the way home and pick up my prescription—and at the gas station and get a carton of Virginia Slims. I'm about out, and they've got the best price in town."

"Yes, Ma, I'll do both of those things."

"And the Laundromat. Did you get the wash back you put in the machines this morning?"

"Yes, Ma. I've already brought those home. Folded and in the drawers."

"Well, then . . ." The volume went back up on the TV. "Grab me a Coke from the frig on your way out."

"Sure, Ma. Coming right up."

Ken hoped he could get in and back out at the kennel before Clyde even knew he had been there, but he was out of luck with that.

"Not a bad job with these pups," Clyde said from the doorway to the barn. And he said it with a bit of admiration in his voice. "I sure as hell didn't think you could manage. But you did. Another couple of weeks and they'll manage on their own."

"Yep, it looks like all three will pull through," Ken said. He was busy petting the runt, a male he'd named Dusty and exercising him by making him follow his hand with his nose. This one had had the toughest time to survive—and it had been the one Clyde had picked up to drown first that panicked night. So, naturally it was the one Ken was attached to the most and also the one who gave him the most loving in return. He'd named the female Daffodil, to complement Daisy, although of course he quickly went to calling her Daffy. And the other male he'd named Dexter, although he felt he might as well have called him Dopey, as this was the slowest of the pups to pick up anything—but the quickest to the food and bottle. And, of course, he was the biggest and the most robust.

"Well, I guess they'll turn out OK," Clyde said. "The two biggest there should be worth something. The runt, though, I don't know."

Ken pulled Dusty to his breast protectively. "Dusty's the smartest of the bunch, Clyde. He'll do fine."

"Well, I don't know," Clyde answered.

Ken thought that no time to ask was better than now—now when Clyde was actually acknowledging that Ken had made something worthwhile of not putting Daisy's pups down. And he'd been thinking about it for some time. What he made from Clyde was just about enough to keep a puppy—so he asked.

"You want one of the pups?" Clyde asked.

"Yes. I figure leaving you with two you weren't counting on should be enough to justify me taking one," Ken said. "So what do you say?"

"I guess it would be possible to do that," Clyde said after glowering a bit and looking like he'd given it some thought. "But not for free, of course."

Ken was afraid of this. It was with a bit of trepidation that he asked. "How much, Clyde?"

"Doesn't have to be a 'how much,'" Clyde said softly, coming closer, crouching down by Ken's side, and putting an arm around his neck. "You know what I want. I've told you what I want from you. I liked it last night; you've got such a nice, sweet little ass that I've been thinkin' about it all morning. Give it to me twice a day when I want it, and I'll give you one of the pups."

Ken shuddered and looked up into Clyde's face, trying to keep his composure. "How much in money, Clyde?"

Clyde paused, not appearing to like how the conversation had been deflected. "$800, Ken. These are purebred Labs, Ken. I'd get $1,200 for one on the market. I can't just give one away. Is what I really want that much of a deal next to $800? Think about it. Those are my conditions."

"I'll think about it," Ken answered. And he guessed he should think about it. It wasn't like it wasn't the same thing he was doing with Lawrence—although certainly not twice a day. But somehow Ken didn't think it would be the same—as easy—with Clyde. Clyde had a mean streak in him. Ken didn't really want to have a relationship like that with Clyde; the conditions were just too dire for him.

"I'm keyed up, Ken. You done that to me. I'll let you think about the deal but only if you'll put out again right here and now.

The blanket was still on the hay bales, and Clyde pushed Ken down on them on his belly this time and took him like a dog, holding Ken's head down with a strong, veiny hand on his neck. Again a searingly fast and hard and deep first thrust. And this time Clyde was able to pump him a bit longer than the previous night before he ejaculated.

Clyde stood away from Ken when he was done and said, "There that was nice," Again he turned and walked away, adjusting his pants, and left and Ken, unable yet to move from the position Clyde had left him in, looked over at Dusty, squatting on the dirt floor of the barn. The pup was nosing his muzzle into Ken's hand and licking him and wagging his tail like he was on cloud nine.

"Where am I going to get $800?" Ken thought. But he knew something had to be done. The pups were getting old enough to either sell or turn loose in the general kennel population. Ken had to do something.

Later, he told Lawrence something of his dilemma out in the woods behind Clyde's barn. They had met and driven into the woods there in Lawrence's car and gotten in the backseat and worked the tension out of each other with Lawrence lapping Ken to a mutual release.

Ken was facing Lawrence and using his knees and forelegs on the seat on either side of Lawrence's hips to raise and lower himself on Lawrence's staff, which was considerably longer than Clyde's but possibly not as thick. Ken liked running his fingers through Lawrence's tight, kinky curls and down along the milk-chocolate muscle curves of his lover's well-develop arm and chest muscles. Lawrence was playing with Ken's nipples with his mouth, which Ken found a bit painful after the brutal attention Clyde had given them—but was arousing enough under Lawrence's more gentle touch that Ken didn't want him to stop—while his broad palms cupped, squeezed, and separated Ken's butt cheeks to give Lawrence's cock maximum depth inside Ken.