Big Sky Country Ch. 03

The same guy--the late-thirties rancher who had been the lone diner at a table--that first day Gabe had some into the Lone Star Diner in search of a job, was coming in three or four times a week by the time Gabe had been a waiter there for three weeks. He and Gabe were on speaking terms. His name was Frank Doyle, and he owned a cattle spread called Sunshine north of town that was more than a thousand acres but that ranked as small by the area standards. He said it was at least a forty-five-minute drive into Guthrie from his spread and he suggested more than once that Gabe might like to come out and see his ranch.

What was most evident was that he had a crush on Gabe and mooned over him but that he was too reticent to ask for what he wanted. Sam Waller made no bones about what Gabe would do for a customer if he had the money for it--although the man sex business wasn't too brisk, Frank had seen more than one cowboy with his tongue hanging out and a bulge in his jeans go upstairs with Gabe and come back down with a silly grin on his face. And the few times Sterling Fisher came into town to lay Gabe, anyone in the diner could hear the thumping of the bed legs on the floor and headboard against the wall of Gabe's room above the diner. But, although Frank surely had the money as easily if not more easily than the cowboys coming into town off the 6666 and Pitchfork ranches, into Gabe's fourth week at the diner, he hadn't made a move. Neither had Gabe made a move to leave for Lubbock. He had the money he needed now, but he was settled into life here and what he was doing--at least for now.

Men like Frank wanted more than the sex. Men like him often are looking for companionship and a long-term relationship. Gabe liked this about Frank but he decided that Frank wouldn't make the move unless Gabe signaled he'd give it to him for free--that it was more than just a trick for Gabe. Gabe was attracted to Frank, who was all that aroused Gabe, but Sam had made clear there would be no giveaways or the progression on that would never stop. So, Gabe and Frank were friendly with each other in a Mexican standoff sort of way.

That was until the day that Collin Chisholm roared into town.

Gabe was standing by Frank at Frank's table and the rancher had, for the first time, palmed Gabe's ass in a hand while they were talking, which was a bold move for the shy rancher. Frank was quite good looking and he appeared to have a nice, well-worked body. Frank was a hands-on rancher, which was better than spending hours every day in a bodybuilder gym. Gabe found him easy to talk to and attractive. He had a couple of men working his ranch with him, but he put in a full day's work outside himself, so he was lean and muscular and tanned. He dressed clean and neatly, in tight jeans, with a nice bulge in the crotch, and a plaid cotton shirt, cowboy boots and a ten-gallon hat.

He seemed to keep his body clean too, and he always smelled nice, not something to take for granted from cowboys in these parts. There were no complaints about him in that department and it was clear to Gabe that the man wanted him. So, Gabe was teasing the man along. They'd finally gotten to having established that, yes, Frank was interested, and, yes, he knew there was a price involved, and, no, that didn't deter him. It was like Frank had gotten across that barrier at last.

"I like you just fine, Frank, and I think we'd be good together," Gabe had said, following that with a "maybe you'd like..." It was midafternoon, after the diner had cleared of the lunchtime crowd--not that there ever was much of a crowd. Sam and his wife, the cook, were back in the kitchen and cleaning up. Carol was on a smoking break, but she could be called back to watch the front whenever Gabe had someone he needed to take upstairs.

All systems were go for Gabe and Frank to get together at last. Both men obviously wanted it.

But then they heard it, the roar of a motorcycle coming in from the west. It arrested their attention, as this wasn't exactly motorcycle country, and Frank backed off from Gabe. Something strange was happening that demanded everyone's attention. Everything was too far from everything else in the big sky country. Everyone around here moved in pickup trucks. You couldn't have started too far away in terms of Texas distance and be riding a cycle.

But someone was. Someone was riding a motorcycle--someone who pulled up right outside the diner. Not long after the motor was cut, the door to the diner opened, and Mr. Magnificent strutted in.

He was an Adonis--a bit over six feet, movie-star handsome, not more than twenty-five, muscular, sultry and dangerous looking, decked out in black leather, and walking like he owned the place--not just the diner or the town, but the universe. Taking a look around the diner, with his eyes stopping on Gabe and giving him a million-dollar smile, the handsome stranger walked to the lunch counter and mounted a stool like he was seating himself on a horse or his Harley-Davidson, resting outside the diner at the hitching post--or mounting his lover. He was walking in one direction, but his gaze remained latched onto Gabe, leaving no doubt where his interest was. His legs were spread on the stool as a man would do who had to give his basket plenty of space to fill up. Gabe cut away from Frank and scooted behind the counter in time to be there when Mr. Magnificent settled on his stool.

"What'll you have?" Gabe asked.

"What are you giving?" the young Adonis asked. He had a slow and easy smile, one of possession.

"Would you like to see a menu?" Gabe asked. He spread his arms and placed his hands on the surface of his side of the counter. The Adonis wouldn't know it, and Gabe himself didn't realize it, but he was already taking the cruciform position of total, sacrificial sexual submission that Pastor Parker had trained him to. But, somehow, from the look the young man gave Gabe, the Adonis did know it. The seduction was over. The Adonis could have laid Gabe out on the counter there, in front of Frank and the other diners, and fucked him, and Gabe would have submitted to him.

Gabe curled his fingers and set his hand down on the knuckles, touching the tip of his thumb of each hand to the index finger, making an "O" opening. He did it with each hand. It was a signal he'd been told to use to identify upstairs business. He was symbolically offering up the sheath for a man's cock--either mouth or ass, customer's choice. His heart and cock took a lurch when the gorgeous young man spread his arms on the customer side of the counter and inserted his middle fingers in the sheaths Gabe was providing with his hands. He knew the code, and he was a dominant top. The offer and dominant assertion were complete. The rest was just preliminary banter and a question of price. They both knew where this was going. What was on edge here was price. The Adonis had thrown down the gauntlet with his "What are you giving?" He was signaling that his cock was so hot, it didn't have to pay for servicing.

"I was told this was the place in town to come to get a man's itch scratched. If I were to look at a menu, would you be on it?"

"You were told--"

"That this was the place to get male tail, yes. Are you the male tail here?"

"If you wanted me to be, I could be--and if you had the money."

"And what if I didn't want to spend the money before getting a sample? Suppose I might be a repeat customer if I liked what I was served the first time--and maybe the second and third time? Maybe you should be paying me."

"Well, that's not the way it works here."

"You serve beer here? Break out a couple and let's talk a few minutes."

They stood there, across from each other, with the counter between them, attached at the fingers of one hand, Collin Chisholm's middle finger rubbing inside the sheath provided by Gabe's hand--having established each other's names--and lifting beers with the other hands. And then a second beer for each of them.

They were leaning in to each other, eventually with their foreheads pressed together and their eyes locked onto each other's. Somewhere before the first beers had been finished off, Frank stood, took one last, forlorn look at Gabe, and left the diner.

Collin was whispering to Gabe and Gabe was mesmerized by him.

"You're a real honey. I want to get my dick in you. You'd like that just fine, I guarantee it. But I want you to want it so much that I don't have to pay for it. That cheapens it."

"Well, we couldn't go upstairs," Gabe murmured. "Maybe around back. My boss can't see us, though. Go on out and around the side of the building. I'll meet you there."

When Collin had left, Gabe went to the kitchen door and called for Carol, saying he had to run an errand and could she cover for a while.

The area for the trash cans at the side of the building was walled off. Collin fucked Gabe against the wall next to the trash bins. Gabe was naked. Collin had wanted to touch him everywhere and Gabe had moaned for him and gone hard as he did so. Then Collin had unzipped his black leather jacket and pulled it off his back, revealing a magnificent smooth chest, as Gabe knelt in front of him and made Collin's cock hard with his mouth. Only Collin's cock and balls jutted out of his unzipped and flared black leather pants, as he lifted Gabe up from his knees, growled for Gabe to hook his legs on his hips, entered him, and fucked him hard and deep.

"Wasn't that all you ever could have wanted?" Collin asked after they'd both come.

"Yes," Gabe answered. Then he added, "Yes, yes, yes."

When they came back around the side of the diner and Collin was mounting his motorcycle, Gabe spied Frank Doyle standing across the street in front of a shop and watching them. Gabe's eyes followed Collin riding off to the west of town. The touch on his arm made him turn. Frank was right there, lust and need in his eyes, a wad of bills in his hand. He fucked Gabe to the quick of him with a long, thick dick in a clutch missionary position in Gabe's room above the diner, the two of them working together like long-time lovers and coming together. And then, after a rest, Frank fucked him again, with Gabe on his belly and Frank stretched out on top of him, every square inch of the two that could be in contact caressing each other, and just Frank's pelvis languidly moving, rising and falling, as he fucked Gabe thick and deep. Gabe had fallen into an exhausted sleep when, twilight falling on the town, Frank rose, dressed, gave Gabe a look of raw love, and slipped out of the room.

Three days later, on Sunday afternoon, Gabe's weekend half day off, Collin roared into Guthrie on his motorcycle again and pulled up in front of the diner. The noise of the motorcycle engine brought Gabe to the window of his room and then downstairs to the wooden walk in front of the diner.

Collin didn't have to say anything. He just sat there, on his motorcycle, staring at Gabe. Gabe saddled up behind him on the motorcycle and the two of them rode out to parkland north of town where there were a few small groves of trees running by a riverbed with a trickle of water in it. Gabe had brought a cold six-pack of beer from the diner. After they'd each finished off their third, Collin coaxed Gabe, naked, onto his back, with his legs spread and raised, and Collin, also naked, after sweet-talking Gabe and languidly working Gabe's body with his hands as he would a lover he was coaxing into gentle sex, lowered himself between Gabe's legs. He enclosed Gabe in an entrapping embrace, entered him deep, and, once inside him, set up a vigorous pistoning of his passage. He fucked the shit out of him as Gabe writhed under him, crying out for mercy but receiving none, and, quickly, becoming so taken with the dominating sex not to want mercy.

The next Thursday night, after the diner had closed, Gabe stole silently down to the front door of the diner and let Collin in. Collin had left the motorcycle at the western end of the town so that it didn't alert Sam and his wife, whose apartment was on the first floor at the back, off the kitchen, that he was there. They pulled the mattress off the bed and laid it on the floor so as not to alert Carol, in the next room, with the grinding of the bed against the wall. Collin put Gabe on his belly, coaxed the young man to raise up on his knees a bit to present his pelvis at a good angle, mounted him, and fucked him for nearly an hour. They rested for a half hour, drinking beer Gabe had brought up from the cooler in the diner, and Collin fucked him again for nearly an hour, once in the missionary position and then with Collin on his back and Gabe riding the cock at all four points of the compass. Three hours later, Collin was slipping back out of the front door of the diner. It still was pitch dark outside.

Thus far, Collin was still sampling. He'd paid for practically nothing. Not the beer and not for Gabe's time. He had covered the cost of the gas for the motorcycle, though.

* * * *

Gabe had told Collin it wasn't a good idea, but Collin said he couldn't wait and he wanted to do it in bed, and Gabe hadn't ever been able to tell Collin he couldn't do whatever he wanted to do. Collin was the perpetual dominant and Gabe the total submissive. Gabe had told Collin they'd have to be very quiet as Carol's light was still shining under her door. Collin was sure Carol wouldn't report them to Sam anyway, and so they fucked on the bed. The issue with the bed was that Sam wanted it to be a position so that it bumped against the wall during the rhythm of sex. That's what let Sam know what was going on in that room. The bumping could be heard all over the upstairs area of the building.

They'd both had more than one beer too many, and their judgment was impaired. They shushed each other and giggled as they both stripped, not noticing that just the sound of their boots hitting the floorboards reverberated through the building. Once stripped, they almost immediately went into a sixty-nine position, with Collin stretched out along Gabe's body on top of him. Collin's fingers went to Gabe's ass as they sucked each other off and whispered and giggled to each other. It wasn't long until Gabe was on his back, legs spread and bent, arms over his head gripping the brass rungs of the headboard, and his pelvis raised. Collin was kneeling between Gabe's legs, his knees pushed up under Gabe's buttocks. He was hovering over Gabe and looking intensely down into Gabe's eyes. His fists were balled up and pressed into the hollow of Gabe's shoulders on either side of his chest, and Collin was stroking Gabe's channel in long, deep thrusts. The top curve of the headboard was doing a rat-a-tat-tat against the bedroom wall. Carol's bed in the adjacent room was backed to the same wall.

Maybe if either of them had been the least bit sober, they would have realized that it wasn't just the shared wall with Carol's room that was being banged, but that it was a noise that could be heard in the middle of the night throughout the structure.

Whether or not it was Carol reporting Gabe had a man in his room, Sam was at the door, using his key to open it, when Collin was too far along in fucking Gabe to stop pumping. Sam stood there and watched them finish. He calmly told Collin what the price would be for a go at Gabe. He was still calm when Collin said there had been no agreement to pay and that he'd had Gabe several times before, hadn't paid for it then, and wouldn't pay for it now.

There was some hard eyeballing between the two as Collin pulled his clothes on, but Sam kept his cool and stood aside as Collin walked past him through the door. Sam didn't let him get past, though, without saying, "I don't want to see you around here again--not unless you bring the twenty dollars for this fuck and for every previous fuck and another twenty in advance for the next fuck--and that includes coming to eat at the diner. Let's say $100 will clear the bill. I don't want to see you in there until you've squared the bill."

"I wasn't planning on coming back anyway," Collin growled as he passed by. "I got as much as I want here already. I didn't agree to no bill. I don't need to pay for it, and Gabe ain't the only whore in this state."

Gabe felt stung. He forgot all about where he was--that he was naked, in his room, having been discovered doing one of the things that Sam had told him Sam wouldn't tolerate.

"This is being docked from whatever else you make around here," Sam said to Gabe in a menacing voice. "Two-hundred dollars--twice the price as punishment."

"More than twice as much" Gabe remembered then murmuring absently, "because five dollars of each twenty should be going to me."

He only dredged this up later as what he thought he'd said--without thinking, certainly, as he was quite aware that Sam was wound up tight and barely controlling himself--because at that moment, Sam strode across the floor, raised Gabe, naked, up out of his bed by a one-handed grip on his throat, and proceeded to beat the shit out of him.

Gabe offered little resistance. After the first blow was landed, he was in no condition to fight back. Only the arrival of Sam's wife and Carol and the mention of the danger of killing Gabe got Sam thinking straight.

* * * *

"Ah, there you are, back with us."

Gabe slit his eyes open, batted them to become accustomed to the bright light, and then looked into the face of the rancher, Frank Doyle. The face was showing concern. Gabe's own face was swollen and sore, as were his ribs. He had been numbed with something, so the pain was a dull somethingorother in the background, but it was giving notice that as soon as the drugs wore off a bit more, Gabe would be moaning in general body pain.

"Where... what?" Gabe murmured through swollen lips, the sound not his voice--something hoarse and thick.

"You're in the doctor's clinic. I brought you over here from the diner. Don't worry, Sam Waller doesn't know you're here. I was in the diner when his wife told me you had been beaten and would I take you out of the building before something worse happened? Sam's over at the sheriff's, giving his story. He says some guy on a motorcycle stole into your room and beat you up last night. But it was Sam, wasn't it?"

"Not the guy who rides the motorcycle," Gabe said, with a groan. "But I won't say--"

"Do you want to go back to the diner--to your room there--to rest? Or do you want to get out of town and away from Sam? If you want to go, you can come back to Sunshine with me. The doctor says he'll give you some painkillers you can take with you that will help until you can take the pain on your own?"

"Back to Sunshine?"

"My ranch. If you don't want to be at the diner when Sam gets back from the sheriff's, you can come out to my ranch until you decide where you want to go, what you want to do. I won't lay a hand on you there... if you don't want me too. You won't be in shape to do much of anything for a while anyway. Mrs. Waller has packed up your duffel and I have it here. If there's something else you want that was left at the diner, I could--"

"There's nothing else there I want," Gabe answered. Through swollen eyes, as he lay on the floor after Sam had beaten him, he'd watched Sam find his small stash of cash and pocket it--it didn't come close to the $200 that would satisfy Sam. There was nothing left at the diner to hold Gabe there. He was back to square one again. He looked at Frank, whose stare of concern, longing, and hopefulness would have made Gabe laugh if it wouldn't pain him too much to work his facial muscles. Thinking back on the sex they'd had, he knew that it had been more than just paid sex for Frank. It had been very nice for him too, but Gabe couldn't risk falling into that trap. But, for someplace away from Sam--and even Collin--until he recovered and could get on the road to Lubbock? OK, why the hell not? "I wouldn't mind a bit of sunshine right now," was all he said, before he sank under the influence of the drugs again.