dontravis.com
blog post #387
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Man,
did I get some reactions to last week’s “If Only….” Glad I could stir some
memories for you.
This
week, our story takes you to a northern New Mexico ranch to meet a couple of
young men, one sheltered, the other experienced. Tell me what you think of Liam
Spotsworth and Tommy Zachus
*****
LIAM
I wished I was Liam
Spotsworth, but I wasn’t. Liam was a curly-headed cowboy on the J-Bar-Z; I was
Tommy Zachus, the ranch owner’s son. He was edging toward twenty; I’d just
landed on eighteen. He was a man’s man; I was wary of them. He chased—and caught—women;
I was afraid of them. I’d been raised on our northern New Mexico ranch; he
hailed from somewhere in Montana and had been everywhere. I’d been nowhere. He
was handsome—heck, he was beautiful; I was… just me.
The summer of ’19 promised to
be a good one. I’d graduated from high school—sure wouldn’t miss that 20-mile
bus trip five times a week—and had opted for a 2012 GMC Terrain as a graduation
present rather than a trip to Rome and Venice. Don’t know who was happier with
my choice, me or my working pony, a pinto named Hopper. I drove that truck—that
how I thought of the SUV—all over the ranch. Even herded a few ornery cows with
it.
But even better than that, I
was teamed with Liam until I was scheduled to take off for New Mexico State
over in Las Cruces this fall. Liam had only been on our spread for about six
months, but he was a cowboy down to his boots and already knew more about the
place than I did. And, heck, I’d been born here. Well, to be accurate, I knew
the landscape better than he did, but he had more cow sense than me.
By the end of the first week,
we were down to talking about personal things. Liam stayed on the ranch for
five days straight, but on Friday evenings, after he slicked up so he looked
good enough to eat, he piled in his old ford F-150 and started on the ten mile
trip to town. We didn’t see him again until sometime Sunday night looking a
damned sight less slick and plumb wore out.
No matter how late he got in,
he was always up and at ‘em at first light Monday morning. Heck, I had more
trouble dragging my fanny out of bed at that early hour, and like as not I’d
stayed home the whole weekend. Then he’d spend the rest of the workweek telling
me all about his previous weekend. I lapped it up, but I always wondered how he
managed to do things like that to women. I mean, they were such prim things
according to my thinking, but they sure didn’t come off that way in his yarns.
The second week we worked together I couldn’t keep my mouth shut any longer.
“Are you spinning me tales?” I
asked right after him telling me what a rollicking good time he’d had with
Marybelle Spinner.
“Course not.”
“That’s not the Marybelle I know.
She was a year ahead of me in school, and she was the biggest prude in class.”
He paused in tightening a
strand of wire with the come along jack and looked me right in the eye. “She
just needed a man to loosen her up a little. You shoulda done it before she
graduated.”
I felt myself go red in the
face. “She… she was older’n me.”
“So?” He paused again and
fixed me with two eyes bluer than the broad New Mexico sky. “You ever been with
a gal?”
“Uh… sure. Dated a couple this
last year.”
“No, I mean ever been with a
gal.”
I figured my knees’d give way
any minute now, and my cheeks would have fried a hen’s egg. “You mean done it
with a girl?”
He nodded as a smile broke
across his handsome mouth. “Yeah. Fucked a gal.” He paused and the smile grew
wider. “You haven’t, have you? You never landed one of them have you?”
The hammer I was using to tack
wire brads to fence posts grew so heavy in my hand I almost dropped it. My back
pimpled so bad I thought my shirt moved. “Uh… not all the way. Not yet.”
“Man, we gotta repair that
hole in your experience.” He laughed. “How come you’re blushing?”
“Dunno.” I had trouble getting
that one word past my windpipe.
To my relief, he let it go and
we returned to stringing wire. Although I confess to snatching glances at him
now and then. How would his big shoulders look while… pleasuring Marybelle? I
admired the way his torso made a vee on its way to his small waist. I liked his
hips flaring so they were wider than his beltline. What did those trim buttocks
look like when he was throwing it to her? I had to quit thinking like that
because it was beginning to show.
We threw our tools in the back
of Liam’s pickup and got in so we could move down the line to the next
fence post. Like I always did, I scooted into the truck first so I could watch
him slide gracefully into the seat. This time there was something different,
and I gawked so much he caught me at it.
“Sorry,” he said, adjusting
his fly. “I guess talking about Marybelle got to me. Just ignore it.”
I couldn’t believe what came
out of my mouth. “Hard to.”
He chuckled, removed his hat,
and glanced over at me. “Hard. Yeah, that describes it, I guess.”
I almost passed out as the
next words came out of me without conscious thought. “I-I’ll take care of that
for you.” Oh, man! Did my cheeks burn then. “If… if you want.”
“You’d do that?”
I willed myself to meet his
gaze, noticing how his dark hair curled and looked like an unmade bunk. A
handsome unmade bunk. I licked lips suddenly thick and slow. “For you I would.”
“You ever done it for anyone
else?”
I shook my head so hard my
thatch whipped around. Did it make noise like moving hay?
“Just yourself, huh?” he
pressed.
I swallowed a lump in my
throat. “Sometimes?”
“Like every day, I’d guess.”
“N-no. Once a week, maybe.”
“You like it?”
“Used to. Not so much anymore.”
His smile sent my stomach
plunging. “Outgrowing it, most likely.” He straightened in the seat and
switched on the Ford’s motor.
I was relieved… and disturbed.
That kinda talk had been disturbing and… I don’t know, exhilarating all at the
same time. But it was over now.
We hadn’t moved ten yards when
he clapped his hat back in place and said, “After the shift’s over, maybe we’ll
mosey down to the pond and take a dip. Then we’ll see.”
My stomach didn’t just fall
away, it near disappeared. My heart pounded hard enough for me to hear.
From then on, Liam didn’t even
try to hide his condition. Sometimes he looked normal behind the fly, and
sometimes he looked all puffed up. But for the last hour before we quit, there
wasn’t any sign of excitement. So he’d probably forgot all about the swimming
hole… and my offer.
Finally, he squinted skyward
and beat the dust from his hat against his leg. “We put in a good day’s work,
kid.”
Kid. He called me that
sometimes. Other times, he called me Tommy. Wished he’d treat me like a grownup
and settle on Tom.
We stowed our tools and wire
in the bed of the truck and piled in. My belly did it’s disappearing act again
when Liam headed down to the pond. I was almost breathing normal when he parked
along the shore. Our pond’s the only freshwater body of water on the ranch. Dad
had dammed the one perpetual spring on the place years back and allowed a body
of water maybe fifty yards across to build. Too bad it wasn’t near the house so
we could all take a dip whenever we wanted.
Slower getting out of the
truck than Liam, he’d already dropped the blanket he grabbed from behind the
seat, shucked his shirt, and kicked off his boots and denims while I was fumbling
with my shirt. When he rolled off his jockeys, my legs dumped me on the ground.
We were going skinny dipping. And the guy with me was as handsome as could be
from top to bottom. I couldn’t measure up, but I couldn’t weasel out, either.
He hit the water. So I finished stripping and scrambled into the pond, hoping
he didn’t get too good a look at my skinny frame.
When Liam heard my splash, he
swam over to where I was and gave me that great smile.
“I-I thought you forgot,” I stammered.
He grabbed my hand and guided
it to himself. “Does that feel like I forgot?” His deep baritone was throaty as
hell.
“N-no, feels more like an iron
bar!”
He laughed and pulled away to
swim about twenty yards out before going underwater. I stood where I was and watched
for him to reappear. But he didn’t. I’d started to fret when something grabbed
me by the legs, and Liam burst up out of the water right in front of me, chest
to chest, groin to groin, that iron bar probing between my legs. He rested his
hands on my shoulders. I wished they were somewhere else.
“Aren’t you going to swim?” he
asked as he shook water from his eyes.
“You bet!” I said, but I didn’t
move until he swam away. Then I followed him across the pond and back, where he
splashed up out of the water onto shore and spread the blanket on the ground.
Water draining from him followed the contours of his muscles. I’d never seen
anything so sexy.
I crept up out of the pond,
half ashamed of my condition until he turned to face me and I saw he was in the
same state of excitement. Although his “state” outweighed mine, it wasn’t as
bad as I feared. A shiver went down my back as his eyes raked me.
“Nice,” he said.
“T-thanks. But not as nice as
you. You’re….”
He sat on the blanket. “Aren’t
you gonna come over here?”
“Sure,” I gasped and got my legs
to moving. I plopped down beside him as close as I dared.
He lay back on the blanket,
leaving his impressive condition totally exposed. I gaped, muscles frozen.
“Well?” he asked. “Did you
mean it?”
“You bet!” I took him in hand.
Stroking him gently sent such shivers through me I thought I was having tremens
like Uncle Luke used to get after a binge.. Here was my idol, my Adonis, lying
naked and submitting to me. Unbelievable. Wonderful.
He pulled to his elbows and fixed
me with those blue eyes. “Hey, dude. I can do that for myself. I thought you
meant take care of me.”
“I-I am.”
“Not that way.” He reached out
a lean bronzed arm, clapped me on the back of the head, and pulled me down.
I
only hesitated for a minute.
*****
Where’s this going? Liam
has already woven his magic over the younger, more innocent Tommy. What more
can happen? Check in next Thursday and you’ll see.
Until next week.
The following are buy
links for the recently released The Voxlightner Scandal.
Barnes
& Noble: https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/the-voxlightner-scandal-don-travis/1132632844?ean=9781640809260
Now
my mantra: Keep on reading and keep on
writing. You have something to say, so say it!
My
personal links: (Note the change in the Email address because I’m still getting
remarks on the old dontravis21@gmail.com. PLEASE DON’T USE
THAT ONE.)
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See
you next week.
Don
