Carolina Connections

"No, we're here, Megan dear. But now that's back there. Now we're here again; soon we'll be up there," Patrick answered from the driver's seat. It was boys in front--Patrick Thornton, who was the trip master on this expedition, and Kevin Grimes--and girls in back--Megan Grimes and Haley Thornton.

"We're about half way there," Kevin answered his wife, always taking her more seriously than she intended.

The four were on their second stab at a honeymoon in the late summer of 2007. They were nearly inseparable, and had been for two years. Recent students at Duke University, in Durham, North Carolina, the girls having taken their undergraduate degrees, Megan in commercial design and Haley in business, and the boys having both finished master's degrees in international relations, the two couples had gone off separately to honeymoons following a double wedding ceremony in the Duke chapel. The Thorntons had gone to Charleston and the Grimeses had gone to Myrtle Beach. But both honeymoons had been a disappointment. The weather had been miserable in both locations, the whole southeast coast having been socked in by stormy conditions. The girls spent nearly the whole time on the phone to each other and the men had kicked around aimlessly by themselves, realizing only then that they had been playing off each other for two years both in their classes and their social life and didn't know how to go it alone anymore.

To be sure, the couples had spent some of the time in bed, but it was the woman in each of the pairs that was the more aggressive and more interested in sex. Even here, the men had been more into the intimacy when it had been the four of them making out on double dates, culminating in Patrick and Haley fucking in the front seat of Patrick's Honda while Kevin and Megan fucked in the backseat. After that episode, it had been a steady, almost inevitable journey toward the men asking the women to marry them, on the same double date, and then going through the wedding process together. Realizing that they were a foursome after that one desperate attempt to split up for their honeymoons, they were having another go at it by taking a long weekend at Patrick's parents' lakeside house south of Asheville adjacent to the Gorges State Park, on the eastern slopes of the Blue Ridge Mountains. Patrick's parents conveniently were retirement community shopping down in Florida.

The four had met in Duke's mixed choir, the Duke University Chorale, where, it seemed prophetic, Megan was a soprano, Haley an alto, Kevin a tenor, and Patrick a bass. It seemed inevitable that they would be a perfect ensemble within their own foursome. This inevitability was projecting into the future. Both Kevin and Patrick had gotten future professional positions before finishing their master's degrees, and, indeed, they were able to tailor classes in their last year to meet the needs of their first assignments. Kevin was being trained to work in the cultural affairs section of the U.S. embassy in Bangkok, Thailand. Miraculously, in terms of the solidarity between the two graduate students, Patrick was being hired as a civilian to work in some sort of project Patrick didn't know all that much about, he said, south of Bangkok at an air base that the Americans had held through the Vietnam War and had now reverted to the Thai government. All he could say was that it somehow was involved in working with hilltribes on the Cambodian border.

The men had found out where they were destined to go after leaving Duke sometime after the night they fucked the two girls in Patrick's Honda, which was not easy to do and probably wouldn't have happened at all if the women hadn't pushed necking to groping to giving head and then in sitting on the cocks, facing their man, in almost identical fucks, and when the men popped "the question."

"Would this be fair for the girls?" Kevin had asked when the two were, somewhat bewilderingly, discussion the race to the altar. "I mean Bangkok. So far away, and what about their own careers?"

"I think their own careers are to land us," Patrick had replied. "And we won't be in the same place in Thailand. I'm not going to Bangkok, except on occasional check-ins at JUSMAG. It's like you being in Durham and me in Asheville."

Kevin gave that a minute to sink in. Seen that way, he wasn't as euphoric anymore that they both were going to Thailand. He hadn't thought about the separation they'd still have. So, he'd be there just with Megan. He'd never really been with Megan outside of the foursome. What did he think about just her being there in Bangkok with him? He'd have to think about that. But Patrick had just dropped another piece of his closely held "What am I going to be doing in Thailand?" secret. "JUSMAG? What's that?"

"It's what's left of the U.S. military presence in Thailand--the Joint U.S. Military Assistance Group. That's the office that will be overseeing my work at U-Tapao."

"Your work at U-Tapao. I'm not that clear yet on what--"

"When I told Haley I... we... would be going to Thailand in September, she was ecstatic. She'd already been looking into the import business, which is an area that matches her undergraduate degree, and she immediately went off to research what Thailand exports to the United States and what the possibilities are of a U.S. government spouse working in Thailand."

And, indeed, both Megan and Haley were even more enthused about marrying the two close buddies when they heard they'd be assigned to the same country. They also didn't give much thought to the distance between Bangkok and the U-Tapao Airbase, south of the capital, on the Gulf of Siam.

"Patrick tells me there's no housing for me at U-Tapao anyway and I'd have to be housed in Bangkok," Haley said. "Wouldn't it be a kick if we could get something together--you, me, and Kevin?" she gushed on one of those dates.

"That would be perfect," Megan had agreed.

"That would be nice," Kevin said. "Too bad Patrick couldn't live there too," he added, purposely not looking in the face of his buddy, not wanting Patrick to see how disappointed Kevin was to know how separated Bangkok and U-Tapao were. It wasn't the mileage. It was pretty much jungle between the two places--not a journey you'd make when you were just going on a picnic.

* * * *

"This is... nice," Megan said as they arrived at Patrick's parents' place on the eastern bank of Jocossee Lake, which was shoved up into the underbelly of the Gorges State Park. They had lunched in Asheville, and it seemed clear that both of the women would have been just as happy to do their second honeymooning there. They were immediately and fully taken with the artsy little city sitting in a bowl of the Blue Ridge Mountains. But after a couple of hours of walking around Asheville, Patrick had herded them back into the CR-V and they were headed south, through Hendersonville, to the lake.

It was now clear from the inflection of Megan's voice that she most definitely didn't think that the old, remotely located clapboard farmhouse sitting on a rise with a view between the trunks of trees of the lake was anywhere as "nice" as the chic Asheville downtown area had been.

"It's been the family's vacation home for a couple of generations," Patrick said, for the first time taking a critical look at the basic colonial two over two farmhouse that had been the base of many a happy fishing and boating vacation. The house had a center hall, with staircase, with a living room on one side downstairs and a combination kitchen and dining area on the other side. Upstairs were two bedrooms and a bathroom that had been added at the end of the hallway between them some thirty years earlier. The kitchen and bathroom were basic, but they regularly had been updated so that they were functional and presentable. The staircase continued up to an attic that had been finished off as a third bedroom, as needed.

What was really nice about the house--or so Patrick loyally thought--though, was the deep screened front porch stretching across the face of the house, where most of the living was done during the summer and that had a panoramic view of the lake, the pier, and the boathouse that shielded a fully functioning motorboat that had always been kept in better condition than the house was.

"I want to get out onto the water," Kevin said, already shedding his shirt and shoes, ready to go "vacation."

"What I really want to do is take a bath and get a nap," Haley said as she supervised the men bringing the luggage and groceries in from the car.

"Assuming this place has running water," Megan chirped in.

"Har, har," said Patrick. "We had it put in last Tuesday, just for you." In fact, the water system and electric line were less than twenty years old. The septic had been renewed just in the last five years. Patrick's parents--his father owned a furniture store in Charlotte, North Carolina--were mulling retiring to Florida and had been upgrading the lake house for the last couple of years, contemplating selling it if they didn't decide just to pass it on to Patrick. Knowing now that Patrick was leaving the country, they were leaning toward selling. Still, Patrick thought, if his wife's best friend thought the house was a dump now, she should have seen it five years ago. His own wife wasn't running it down--Haley seemed to have some sense that it was an asset that would best go to her husband and her rather than being sold to pad the retirement account of Patrick's parents.

Uncowed, Megan said. "I'm for the bath and nap myself too. Then I suppose I'll start contemplating cooking dinner, even though my idea of dinner would have been back in Asheville at the Grove Park Inn. I'll look into dinner, unless, of course, one of you boys wants to give it a go." She looked meaningfully at her husband.

Patrick jumped in. "I'm with Kevin. Directly out onto the lake in the boat and exploring, picking out likely fishing spots for tomorrow."

"No, I didn't think so," Megan said, as she took a grocery bag from Patrick and headed for the kitchen.

* * * *

"I don't see any houses on the banks of the lake," Kevin said. They'd been puttering about at low speed for an hour, running generally toward the northwest.

"No, the lake hasn't built up. Most of the land around here is owned by timber companies," Patrick answered. "That's what my family was doing out here--harvesting and supplying high-quality hardwood for furniture making. It's how my folks got into furniture sales."

"So, will you wind up in furniture sales someday?"

"Yeah, maybe. It's in the blood. I can look at a tree and envision the furniture it could be. But we're moving toward the western part of the lake now, anyway. This is in the state park. No buildings here. Not much of anything other than forest. We're pretty much alone out here." He had maneuvered the boat into a large, deep cove. He extended a leg and pushed at Kevin's bare foot. Both men were down to their briefs. Kevin was reclining back into the bow of the boat, stretched out, his arms bent over the gunwales, his fingers dragging in the water. Patrick was reclining into the stern. He'd turned the motor off and thrown the anchor out.

"Are you happy, Kevin?"

"Yeah, it's great to know that we're both going to Thailand. That the four of us will be somewhat close together again. Wish you were going to be in Bangkok too."

"I will be frequently, I'm sure. But, no, what I'm asking is whether you are happy with Megan."

"Yeah... sure... who wouldn't be? She's a great gal. The four of us have a great thing going."

"Yes, we do, but is it because there are four of us, or because we still are sort of paired off separately--not you and Megan and then Haley and me, I mean. But strangely enough, it seems more like it's Megan and Haley and then you and me. You know what I mean?" As he was concluding, he pushed the waistband of his briefs below his balls and fished his cock out. He was half hard. He began to stroke himself.

"Patrick," Kevin said, in a shocked voice.

"Come on, Kevin. Pull yours out too. It's just the two of us out here alone, in the lake. Remember how we used to do this before we started dating the girls?"

"That was about tension relieving," Kevin said.

"Yeah, it was, but it also was because we were both great-looking guys with great bodies and we enjoyed watching each other jerk off. We stopped doing that after we started dating. I miss that. Don't you?"

There was a pause and then Kevin admitted it. "Yeah, I sort of do. Yeah."

"You're tenting those undies out, Kevin. I know you're hard and would love to be jacking yourself like I'm doing. Come on, take it out. Stroke it off. Like old times. Stroke yourself off watching me stroke myself off. Like old times."

Kevin didn't answer, but he sighed and fished his erect cock out of his briefs. The two reclined there, opposite each other, in the belly of the boat, slowly jacking themselves off. Patrick caressed Kevin's feet with his toes.

"Much more of this and I'll come," Kevin murmured after several minutes. "It's nice out here. Nice and quiet. Yes, I do miss this, Patrick. But this is nicer than when we were crash studying in our campus apartment late at night. I think I could--"

"Don't come. Don't bring yourself off. Let me do it," Patrick whispered. "I've wanted to do it with you for a long time."

"No, Patrick, we shouldn't..." But his demur turned into a groan as Patrick came forward in the boat and went on his knees on either side of Kevin's calves. He brushed Kevin's hand off his cock, grasped it, and took over the stroking. His face was hovering over Kevin's.

"Patrick. Patrick," Kevin whispered, not revealing where he was at, whether it was a "we shouldn't" or a "please do me" request. Patrick lowered his face to Kevin's and they kissed. They'd never done this before. They did it like they both had wanted to do it for some time.

"Patrick, no. We can't... oh, Patrick. Oh, shit. Oh, fuck." Coming out of the lip lock, Patrick had continued kissing down Kevin's cheeks to his throat, to his nipples, down his belly, through his bush. He opened his mouth over Kevin's cock and pushed his lips down the sides of the shaft as far as they would go. Back up and then down further, the tip of his tongue going to Kevin's piss slit and flicking there. Patrick had obviously done this before--never with Kevin, though.

Haley probably loved his tongue and teeth work on her box, Patrick thought, embarrassed because he knew he wasn't good in that department with Megan. But then he forced the women out of his mind. A man was giving him head here--and not just any man. Patrick was giving him head. Kevin realized that he had been dreaming about that for some time but continuously throwing it into the back of his mind. He wasn't throwing it into the back of his mind now.

But he was married--to Megan. He'd made his decision and he was bound to it. He'd be a creep to... but, shit, Patrick was giving him such good head. Megan gave him good head too, but nothing like this--and with Megan... "Fuck, Patrick, I'm gonna come." And then he did.

Patrick went up on his knees, swiped the back of his hand across his mouth and gave Kevin a grin. "There. I've wanted to do that for two years. And you?"

"Yes. Me too."

"Now it's my turn. Blow me." He went back onto his haunches and then laid back into the bow of the boat.

"Patrick. I can't. We shouldn't."

"You want to do it. I did you. You do me now. I know you want to."

"Patrick."

"Do it. Give me head. Make it good."

Kevin rose up onto his knees, bent over Patrick, took the man's cock in his mouth, and made it good. Patrick had Kevin's head in his hands and manipulated his head, putting him into positions that aided him in giving Patrick major pleasure. After a while, Patrick rolled his pelvis up, placed his ankles on Kevin's shoulders, and whispered, "Rim me."

Kevin moved his mouth to Patrick's hole and tongued him there.

"Fuck me. Put it in me and fuck me," Patrick demanded.

Kevin came up on his knees and gave Patrick a shocked look. "Put my dick in you? I've never thought of being a top, Patrick. I've imagined fucking with a guy, yes, and with you, yes. I'll admit that. But I've never thought of being a top. I thought of you fucking me. Being a top isn't what I want."

For a brief few seconds the two of them held in that position, looking at each other, both in shock. They both had imagined being with each other in exactly the same way--the other topping, the other being the one to bury his cock. Patrick's expression changed the first. Suddenly he smiled and laughed. "Well, shit. After all this time we don't fit--at least in that way. Well, fuck."

Kevin wasn't as quick to laugh it off. He'd never done even this with another man. He'd only jacked himself off with Patrick. No one else. He hadn't worked any of this out. Patrick obviously was more experienced with other men.

"So, now what?" He asked.

"Now we go back to the house, back to the women, back to our wives," Patrick said. "We won't go all the way with each other now. We both want the same thing. But we can go further now with each other than we did before." He gently pushed Kevin back into the bow of the boat and he readjusted his briefs and reached for his shorts. Still somewhat in shock, Kevin mimicked Patrick in slow motion, getting his briefs back in place, pulling his shorts back on. Patrick, still chuckling, pulled up the anchor and got the motor going again.

All was quiet when they got back to the boathouse. Kevin stood on the pier while Patrick did all of the work in putting the boat back, not knowing what to do, how to act around the women now. Something had changed. Almost everything had changed since Patrick had taken him out onto the lake. How could he face Megan without her knowing something had changed and being able to guess what it was? She was so smart--and earthy. She was always looking for the sexual angle in everything. So was Haley for that matter. Nothing could be the same now, and it was all his and Patrick's fault.

They went up to the house. All was still quiet, except for the hint of a moaning sound. Patrick put his fingers to his lips and they silently climbed the stairs. Haley and Megan were on the double bed in one of the bedrooms. They were in a sixty-nine position, each eating out the cunt of the other, both stark naked and writhing against each other, both moaning deeply.

Kevin stood there, at an angle to the door, where the women couldn't see him without effort, but he could see them. He had no idea how long he would have stood there, watching, if he hadn't felt the light touch of Patrick's hand on his forearm. He looked into Patrick's face and Patrick pointed up and guided Kevin to the stairs that led up to the attic.

There, in the attic, Patrick and Kevin lay, naked, on the bed, their bodies reversed on each other, writhing against each other, sixty-nining, and moaning softly.

Before That: Swede and Sully and Ty

"What gives? I didn't think I'd be released until tomorrow."

Swede laid a big mitt on Sully's forearm and the soon-to-be-released young prisoner, having served his time on a dealing and male prostitution conviction, couldn't help but shrink away a bit. Swede was one monster of a dude--Mr. Universe body built, bald as a billiard ball, thick necked--a real thug in looks. And after the first few run-ins a couple of years earlier, Sully had backed away from him whenever he could. A couple of times, when Sully had gotten surly, he hadn't been able to back away. Those times, Swede had taken him into a guard room and beaten him down and fucked the shit out of him. Sully had been a fast learner on that deal, and ever since Swede had turned Sully over to the big black bull trustee Big Mike, Sully had remained on the cooperative side of Swede and had been protected from the rest of the prisoners by Big Mike.