Journey to Mirage

When Rick came downstairs into the room that served as a dining room and staff lounge when it wasn't the main club room, he found only Phil from those of Groton's crew, sitting there and sipping on coffee and looking generally morose. A few other women and men Rick now knew were part of Lefty's establishment and rented by the half hour, were scattered about other tables, all in various forms of undress, the women keeping to themselves and the men the same.

On the whole the women looked well used and a bit scraggly and the men looked more fit. Rick wondered if guys were less picky with the women they fucked than the men they'd fuck. There were actually two groups of men, and Rick decided, surveying the beefier and rougher-looking group, that women came here as well to be fucked. The pair of staring guys Groton and Spike had stopped to pick up on their way here were sitting at a table in the corner by themselves. As soon as Rick came down the stairs, they turned their attention to him with licentious, hooded gazes, as they licked lips, flashed yellow- and blackened-tooth smiles, and held a private little conversation between themselves.

The only one moving around was Billy Dan, who was serving as waiter, taking coffee from table to table and looking cheerful despite a certain pained delicateness in his walk. He bestowed a shy smile on Rick as Rick hit the bottom step of the stairs and, signaling with the coffee carafe, put the question of whether Rick wanted a cup. Rick did and he smiled back with his return signal of shared experience.

Rick was relieved to find Billy Dan here and in good spirits. That erased most of the guilt of doing nothing when Billy Dan was being initiated into male sex the previous night. Obviously Lefty had been right about Billy Dan wanting it and just needing to get started.

As Billy Dan was pouring Rick a cup of coffee and giving him a "we have intimately shared, so we are brothers" look, Rick gave the cameraman who had shown some concern for Rick, Phil, a questioning look and was invited to sit down beside him. They both turned and watched Spike come down the stairs, his arm around the dark, then shirtless—and still shirtless—man in the window from the previous day, and the two sat down at a table to themselves, lost in each other like no one else was in the room. Rick had little doubt where Spike had gone after the near miss of Groton finding him in Rick's room—the room Rick had started out in—the previous night. What Rick wondered, though, was what had motivated Spike to interrupt his coupling with the shirtless guy to come to Rick's room.

Rick turned from that couple, wondering if Spike had gone off him now, at least for couplings outside of the film—and not being sure he liked that. He rather wanted to know what he and Spike could do together when it was spontaneous and not for the cameras. To stifle that thought, he opened the conversation with Phil.

"You're looking a little sad this morning, Phil. A bad night?"

"You could say more reserved and guarded than sad."

"Where's Trace? Has he already had breakfast, or is he maybe still up in the rooms with one of Lefty's men?"

"He's gone. Groton rather loudly gave him the heave ho earlier this morning. Groton's gone over to Charlottesville—and on to Richmond, if necessary—to try to find a replacement camera jockey by this afternoon."

"Oh? What happened?"

"I think you know what happened. You told Groton what Trace did with you. I thought we made it pretty clear that Groton wouldn't like that one bit."

"I'm sorry, Phil. Yeah, I told Groton about it—but he knew it already and he forced me to. I did it mainly because he was talking like both of you had been in on it, and I had to make it clear that you weren't."

"Thanks for that. I need this job."

They sat there in silence for a few minutes, sipping on their coffee, not looking at each other.

"Anyway, I'm glad Groton found out about it and gave Trace the gate. Trace and I have worked together off and on for years, but he can be a real crude mother fucker."

"Listen, I know you don't approve. I can tell it by how you—"

But Phil broke in. "Let's not talk about this here. There are picnic tables out back, by the creek that runs behind this dump. Let's refresh our coffee and go out there."

Rick's sensations soared. Getting Phil alone was arousing to him. For some reason he couldn't identify, he was gravitating toward Phil.

When they were sitting side by side on a table, their feet on a bench, facing the tumbling creek and their backs to the world of Groton and Lefty, Phil was the first to speak.

"You sure this is what you want to be doing, Rick?"

"You really don't approve, do you? You can't see how I'm at a place where the sex is good—that I just want to let loose. That doesn't mean I'll be like that forever."

"I understand, but—"

"Trace didn't rape me, you know. I wanted it then. But I've got to say—"

"I know. I'm trying not to judge. I just think you're worth more than that. That the act should have more meaning. This way can steal and dull your senses and, in time, can make it all meaningless. It can numb you to the good things that can come from making love with someone you actually love. It's not so much that you're doing it for money, either, but that you're doing it for money that Groton hasn't given you. At least that's what I think, what I believe."

"It's just something that's come over me all of a sudden and is sort of overwhelming. I don't mean for this to be forever. I have other things I want to do. And Groton did give me some money. I asked him again last night and he gave me some."

"How much?"

"A couple of hundred bucks."

Phil sighed a deep sigh. "Chickenfeed," he finally said.

There was a short pause while both concentrated on the foaming, racing water in the creek and avoided looking at each other.

"And what I was going to say when you interrupted," Rick said, returning to safer conversational ground, "was that the one thing I wished yesterday was . . . was that it had been you rather than Trace."

There was a pause long enough for Rick to think that maybe he'd said the wrong thing.

"Me too," Phil mumbled.

"What did you say?" Rick said, as if he hadn't heard Phil.

Phil turned his face toward Rick and started to speak again, to repeat what he'd said. But Rick took the opportunity to take Phil's lips in his before Phil could speak.

They kissed, deeply, hungrily.

"You can fuck me, Phil. I want it," Rick whispered.

But then Phil pulled away as Rick was putting his hands on him.

"We can't. You know what happened to Trace. I need the job . . . and, more to the point, I'm not going to do it easy. I want it, but I can't do it when you're like this. It means more to me than a toss in the hay—or a layout on a picnic table."

"I think it could mean more to me too . . . with you, Phil."

They were interrupted by the sound and sight of a Saab rounding the curve in front of the roadhouse. The car roared on. It wasn't Groton, but they both knew that it could have been. Phil quickly rose from the picnic table and put some distance between him and Rick. And Rick, fully appreciating the danger Phil had spoken of, didn't try to stop him. But, as Phil started to walk back to the roadhouse, Rick did stop him by posing a question.

"You said Groton was trying to find a cameraman for this afternoon."

Phil turned to face Rick. "Yeah, we're here because we're filming another one of your fantasy scenes today. Groton didn't tell you?"

"No. What . . . scene?"

"If you don't know, then I'm not the one to ask," Phil said almost gruffly. "These are your fantasies, not mine. Your choices, not mine. You know now what Groton's going to do when you tell him a fantasy. If it's a rough one, it's because you've described such a dream. I just hold a camera. And I don't go in for anything as wild as we've already shot. And, trust me, it's gonna get . . ."

He didn't complete that sentence. He stood there and looked at Rick for a moment, and then he turned and strode back around the corner of the roadhouse, making Rick feel diminished as he sat on the picnic table. His hand went to his lips, where Phil had been, if ever so briefly. And he trembled and felt a sense of regret.

* * * *

Phil and the new cameraman, a guy named Roger, who kept taking furtive glances at Rick with a "caught with a hand in the cookie jar" expression on his face as they went along, were in the front seat of the Dodge RAM and Rick in the back as they left the roadhouse and drove farther up in a cutback between one mountain and another. They were following Groton's Saab, occupied by Groton, Spike, and the two staring hillbillies Groton had picked up the previous day. Between the Saab and the truck cruised an old Cadillac Seville, driven by Lefty and with some other guys from the roadhouse inside. Rick didn't have any trouble identifying the guys from the roadhouse as having been in the rougher-looking group in the lounge earlier that morning.

They reached a turnoff that went up hill toward an old farmhouse and a meadow covering the rise of a hillock, and Phil stopped the Dodge as the two other cars proceeded to the farmhouse.

"Why have we stopped here?" Rick asked.

"If you don't know, don't ask me," Phil answered. "Like I said this morning, it's your fantasy. I just know we're to wait here ten minutes and then drive up there behind that old tumbling-down barn. Roger here, and I, are to get our gear together. I'm to go out in the meadow and Roger into the house and you're to wait in the truck for ten minutes after that and then go up and knock on the door to the house. Ring any bells, does it?"

Rick shuddered and shrank into the seat because it did, indeed, ring bells in his head.

He sat for fifteen nervous minutes alone in the truck in advance of his appointed time before he virtually stumbled out and slowly dragged himself toward the door of the old farmhouse. He was trembling with anticipation. In doing so, his emotions were mixed. If this had come before he and Phil had talked at the picnic table that morning, he would have walked swiftly, ass twitching in anticipation, although still a little fearful at the magnitude of what the playing out of the fantasy could entail—the multiplicity of men that this fantasy had evoked. What he had imagined them doing. But now, he had reservations.

If only his conversation with Phil had not made him think.

Groton was standing near the door, the camera pointed at Rick as he crossed the hardscrabble yard toward the old house. Rick tried to calm himself, steeling himself to play for the camera, searching his mind for how he should be acting like not knowing what he was to find when that door opened to him—but not being able to force what he knew he would find out of his mind.

Lefty opened the door to his knock. He was naked, as were the other men in the room, in various stages of high suck. In contrast to most of the thin and stringy men in the room, Lefty was a veritable bear, a monster of a man, with a slight paunch and low hanging and heavy balls and cock. The new cameraman, Roger, was at the other side of the room. He had been panning the orgy in what had been the house's living room, but the camera had come up, focused on the door to get Rick's expression, when Lefty opened the door to him.

The sight of Lefty alone, the leer on his face if nothing else, brought out the expression the camera desired from Rick even though the element of surprise was incomplete. Rick was so expressive that those seeing the film would never know it wasn't a complete surprise.

Lefty put out a hand to take Rick's arm and pull him into the room, but the gesture was feigned. If he wanted Rick in the room, he would easily have been able to effect that. But the fantasy was the fantasy and must be the reality of the moment, and Rick turned and ran for the meadow.

Most of the mountain men were in their element and were fleet of foot on this terrain, even barefooted. Lefty and Spike and the two cameramen at the house, Groton and Roger, all could have easily been outdistanced by Rick, if that was what he was trying to do.

But the other five men—the two Groton had driven in to the roadhouse with the previous day and the three Lefty had brought into the hidden hollow in the mountains from the roadhouse that afternoon—were faster than Rick. And they had been well versed in what to do. They were all salivating at the roles they were to play.

Phil, at the far end of the meadow, filmed the action as Rick ran toward him and was caught in the trap of a circle of leering, taunting, naked men. Groton and Roger were filming from behind.

The circle tightened, and the men began to reach out for Rick, to turn him in circles. Their bare feet caught Rick at the ankles and made him tumble.

He rose and lunged to one side, trying seemingly desperately to break through the circle. But strong, sinewy hands, backed up a lusty laugh, clutched him and spun him back into the circle and to his knees. He rose again, and turned in a circle, looking for an opening or the weakest link. But there was no weakness there in the men of the mountains. They were all nimble and determined and working in consort.

A foot flashed out, Rick went down again—this time to stay down, as the circle had closed in upon him and five pair of hands were tearing at his clothing, rendering him as naked as the mountain men were.

What flashed through his mind was the image of his clothes being rendered unusable after this was over. But this was just a movie. There was nothing sinister to anticipate from that. Was there? Groton will have brought something else for Rick to put on. Wouldn't he? For the first time, doubt crept into Rick's mind on where this movie was headed.

He had one—and then two—cocks pressing at his lips and strong hands clutching his hips and the bulb of a hard cock at his channel as Spike and Lefty reached the circle.

"Smallest to largest. It looks like Lefty last—right after me," Spike called out as he reached down into the swarming pile and pulled a body off Rick's. "You don't really want to claim smallest, do you?"

Rick moaned.

Then the fucking began, while Rick was moved from belly to back and to belly again, as a succession of progressively larger cocks slid inside him and cameras whirred from three directions. After the third cock, Rick was numb from the waist down and felt little—until Lefty moved between his legs. Rick cried out and arched his back, panting and gasping, fighting for breath and scrabbling his hands out ineffectually in search for stability, as Lefty pulled him up into the air with strong hands on his hips, rolling him up on his shoulder blades. And began fucking down into his now-gaping hole with a monster cock.

Rick thought he had endured it all when he felt Lefty shudder and come, but over the ringing in his ears, he heard Groton chime out, "For the finale, what's bigger than Lefty?"

And almost immediately, Rick found out. Lefty lifted him, and was putting him down on his back, which Rick discovered wasn't going to be on the grass of the meadow. There was a body stretched under his, its cock in full erection.

Rick's channel was lowered on this cock—which belonged to one of the staring hillbillies Groton had brought in the previous day.

As Rick groaned and almost hyperventilated, he watched the approach of the other hillbilly between his legs.

And then Rick was being double worked by two cocks at once. These men must have done this before. They knew just how to keep both cocks inside his channel with at least one of them stroking at a time.

All the time, three cameramen moved around him in an intricate dance of "catch it all" as the film whirred away.

* * * *

Latter, in the night, lying there in Groton's bed in the roadhouse, his channel throbbing from the multiple fuckings it had taken—but also swept by a feeling of awe and waves of arousal that he did, in fact, take it and revel in it despite the fright of it all—Rick lay perfectly still, feigning sleep. He wasn't so recovered that he wanted Groton at him tonight. He was exhausted and needed to rest—and needed the throbbing inside his channel to recede.

But Groton wasn't bothering Rick—at least not yet. As the night before, Groton was in the middle, with Rick on one side and Billy Dan on the other.

Groton was turned toward Billy Dan and embracing him, one hand slowly working the young man's cock.

"Tell me a fantasy, Billy. I know you have dreamed of exotic takings. Spin me a tale. It will help you come more satisfactorily."

"Exotic?" Billy Dan whispered back. Was it possible he'd never heard a word like that before? Had Billy Dan ever been out of the foothills of the Blue Ridge, Rick wondered? Would he have any idea what might lay ahead of him? How easily he might be taken advantage of and degraded?

Rick almost laughed out loud at this thought. Where had he come from if not a backwoods of his own—an ethnic urban ghetto? And how open had his mind been before he began spiraling down to where he was today?

But at least Rick had been disposed to it—without knowing it until Tony had forced him. But he'd quickly discovered that he liked it, wanted it, was even seeking it out now. Was Billy Dan blessed with that propensity too, or did he have a tough road ahead of him?

"Special, unusual, that's what exotic is," Groton murmured patiently. "Something that you might be ashamed for others to know makes you feel sexy. Although here, like this, you should not feel reluctant to tell me anything. You are laying with a man, who is working your cock, and, after you have come, is going to fuck you."

Rick heard Billy Dan's deep moan at having that spoken.

"A man who has already fucked you in many ways," Groton continued. "There is nothing you can't tell me about how you have fantasized about being fucked by a man. Relax, as I stroke you, and tell me of how you have imagined being taken in an unusual way."

Don't do it, Rick screamed in his mind. At first, since there was no sound from the other side of the bed for a moment other than Billy Dan's deep groaning, Rick was afraid he'd said it out loud. But he hadn't. His concern was no less, though, in wanting Billy Dan to stop and think hard before he went down that road with Groton. It had only been a mental exercise of Rick's to want to be gang banged—being doubled was beyond his imagination at the time he had spun that fantasy for Groton. Having experienced it now, Rick understood that reality far outstripped curiosity. But if he was honest with himself, he had never risen to the heights of arousal and the feeling of being completely taken as during what he had done this afternoon.

But why should he feel so concerned for Billy Dan? Was this some complication Phil had imposed on him—not speaking of his disapproval of this behavior but asking questions of Rick that he didn't want to face?

That was when Rick's eyes went up to the ceiling—to the corners of the room, where he saw blinking red lights. Groton had set cameras that could see in the dark, that Rick instinctively knew were trained on Groton and Billy Dan. Starting with Billy Dan the same process that Groton had enticed Rick into.

Billy Dan spoke softly, haltingly through the grunts and groans of what Groton was doing to his cock.

"Somewhere where there are others, not in private. Somewhere public. And one man has followed me and has cornered me and is fondling me, making me want him."

"Yes, go on."

"But he is too big. Not long like you. Big thick, like I'm afraid he'll split me. He scares as he crowds me. Doesn't let me think or give me time to consider. He is overpowering and I know he's going to get his way, and slowly but surely he does."

There was a pause there, as if that was all Billy Dan was going to say.