Sail to the Sun

"Hello, Atid."

I turned, lifted my head, and brushed the hair out of my eyes with the back of my hand. "You remembered my name," I said.

"Sure I did," Buddy said in a low voice. "I remembered everything about you."

He was standing in the doorway of the inn's laundry room, next to the kitchen, his big, strong body backlit by the sunshine streaming in. I was washing table linen, stripped down to my shorts because of the heat rising from the rumbling washers and dryers. It was early afternoon. There wasn't any action on in the afternoon—usually. And Hoagie was away until the dinner hour. He had a chamber of commerce meeting in town.

"Hoagie . . . the owner . . . he isn't . . ." I stammered out.

"I know. I saw him in town," Buddy said. His voice was still low. "I'm taking you for a ride for an hour or so. There's something I want to show you."

"You saw Hoagie in town," I said. "You talked to him . . .?"

"It's all set. I'm taking you for a ride. You said you'd never seen the river. And it's just over yonder. You haven't been away from the inn, have you? Not at all. Not the whole time you've been here."

"No, I haven't," I answered, casting my head down, not wanting him to see my eyes. I hadn't even thought about leaving the inn—and Hoagie had never suggested it. There never would have been time for it anyway.

"Come here," he said. I looked up and he was holding a hand out to me.

I walked over to him and he ran an arm around my waist and turned me inside and beside the door, lifting me in front of him, and pinning me between his body and the wall. My legs were off the ground—he was a foot and a half or so taller than I was, and big-boned and heavily muscled. I felt like a rag doll in his grasp. But I felt safe and secure too. I knew he wouldn't drop me. I hooked my thighs on his hips. He was breathing heavily and I felt his manhood against my lower belly. Hard. A chill of thrill went up my spine. The other night, when we had just talked, I worried. I worried that he didn't like me—or that he wasn't turned on by me—or that maybe something was wrong with him, that he couldn't get it up. But he certainly felt like he could get it up now.

I gently moved my pelvis against his crotch and moaned softly and low, and I felt him shudder in response and his member hardening further against me.

He brought his face down close to mine and murmured. "The other night you asked me if I didn't want you. Do you still think I don't want you?"

"No, I can feel you want me," I whispered. "But Hoagie . . . does he . . .?"

"It's settled," he answered in a husky voice. And then he brought his lips down to mine, and we kissed. The kiss deepened. I opened my lips to him, and his tongue pushed inside. At the same time, his pelvis started to move against me, matching the rhythm I had set. I climbed his torso higher, so that his cock, still sheathed by the thin material of his trousers and jutting out now, pushed under my balls and I was riding it through two layers of material that might not even have been there.

I moaned for him—deeply—and he pulled away from the kiss and buried his lips in the hollow of my neck, without slackening the rhythm of the dry fuck motion.

I rarely took it this slow. It wasn't often that I had time to prepare for the fuck. I moved my hands down to his waistband and started to push his trousers down.

"No, not here, not yet," he lifted his head and whispered to me. "I want to show you the river."

He was right. The river was less than a fifteen-minute drive from the inn in his sports convertible. Not much more than a rapid stream, rushing over nearly exposed rocks, the river ran between a line of trees at the base of a narrow valley running between high, heavily forested mountains on either side, which showed bare sections here and there that looked like some giant had taken a bite of them but that were the remains of strip mining that Buddy told me had been banned a good decade earlier but that it would take many more decades for the mountains to recover from—if they ever would.

Buddy parked the car in a graveled lot, off the highway that ran parallel to the river through the narrow valley. He'd passed a couple of lots where cars were parked. There were none here.

"Here, you carry the blanket and I'll bring a bottle of wine and a couple of glasses," Buddy said as he exited the car.

We walked over to where a trail opened in the trees. We couldn't see the river, but I could hear it. I was exhilarated. This was an adventure for me. The air was clean, and although the trees had already started to change colors, the day was warm. I looked up before we entered the trees and I could see the sun up there, beaming down on me. I didn't know then what the pleasant feeling I was having was. Only later, much later, did I realize that it was the sensation of being free.

We followed the trial down to the river for only a few yards before Buddy veered off through the undergrowth until we came out at the edge of the river between two big boulders with a small patch of mossy ground between them.

My eyes went directly to the water, which was shallow and ran over small, rounded and smooth rocks with larger, nearly flat boulders hovering above the waterline and offering a series of stepping stones out almost to the middle of the river.

As he spread the blanket, Buddy looked over at me and smiled and said, "You want to go into the river, don't you? Well go ahead. Just don't try to walk on the wet rocks. You'll slip. It's too shallow to drown, but you might scrape yourself up."

I sat down on the moss and took off my sneakers and socks and then walked out into the river. I was alone in the world when I reached the center of the river. But then I was alone in the world anyway, and this was a very pleasant version of it—watching the water race around me on its way down the valley into some larger body of water someplace—with someplace to go. In contrast to me.

When I turned and worked my way back to the very private little dell between the boulders, I saw that Buddy was stretched out on the blanket. He'd stripped down to his briefs, which were tented out arrestingly, and already was sipping wine straight from the bottle—and watching me with a big smile on his face, vicariously enjoying what I was enjoying for the first time. I decided that this West Virginia was a beautiful place and that I was very lucky that Hoagie had brought me here.

"Come, lay down here beside me," Buddy said. He patted the blanket beside him and poured me a glass of wine as I approached and came down on the blanket. I didn't lay down, though. I folded my legs underneath me and sat beside him as he reclined back again, with one arm propping up his head and his other hand holding the wine bottle. I put the glass he'd handed to me to my lips and tasted the wine. It had a sharp, crisp taste to it. Hoagie didn't let me drink alcohol. But he also told me not to do anything to displease the customer, and Buddy had handed me the glass without asking me if I wanted it. So, I drank it. And as I drank it, I gazed out at the river, enjoying once again watching the freedom and abandon of the water racing down the trace.

I leaned toward him and put my hand on the front of his briefs, lightly grasping his member through the white cotton. He laid back and purred, letting me know this was just fine with him. We shared our first sex in that fashion—not an overpowering and frenetic jackhammering of me by him—but with me gently fondling his engorged cock through the cotton of his briefs and him moaning softly with his eyes closed. And then moaning more deeply and groaning as I pulled the waistband of his briefs to below his balls and leaned over and took his cock in my mouth. His hands went to my head, and he ran his fingers through my hair as his cock tightened and I took and swallowed his flow. He lay there afterward for the longest moment, savoring our first sex. Then he thanked me and dozed off. I sat there, watching him in repose, happy at how gentle and fulfilling our first time had been.

Buddy didn't doze for long, though. He woke with a start and opened his eyes and gave me a smile. He reached around me with an arm and I felt his hand on the small of my back. He began to run his free hand up and down my back and then he propped his torso up on his elbow very close to me and his hand came around and started to stroke my chest and play at my nipples. I looked down to see that his cock was already coming back to life. I wanted him to fuck me now. And he could take me hard; I didn't care. I was lost to him.

My wine glass drained, I put it down on a flat stone next to the blanket and turned to him and moved my lips to his.

When we'd kissed, I decided it was time to find out where this was to go, if any further. "What do we do . . . what did you pay Hoagie for me to do? Have I done what you expected . . . wanted so far," I asked.

I was half afraid that I had already used up what he had paid for, and even without Hoagie being here, I was so conditioned by him, that I naturally thought in terms of services contracted and no more.

"I have a confession," he said, in a voice somewhat muffled, because he'd dropped his lips to one of my nipples, while his encircling hand was playing with the other nipple. "There are no arrangements with Hoagie. He doesn't know we're out here. And he needn't know. He won't be back at the inn for a couple of hours."

"Hoagie doesn't know?" I went rigid with fear.

"What's the matter, Atid? You're trembling."

"You don't know," I muttered. "I can't . . . if Hoagie finds out, he'll beat me. He doesn't let me . . . I can't take money directly. And I don't know how much . . ."

"Well, there's no need for that," Buddy said. He was sitting up now next to me, but he still had his arm around me. "We don't even have to do anything else. But I'm not paying for this. I'll come to the club and pay for you there, if that's what you want. But anything more that happens here today is because you want it—because you freely give it. And if you don't want to, we won't do anything. I thought you made love to me because you wanted to."

"Yes, of course I did. But you don't understand," I said, my voice shaking. "You just don't understand how it is. I want to. You know I want to. But Hoagie owns me. I can't. Hoagie owns me."

"Hoagie doesn't own you," Buddy said, his voice sharp. "Nobody owns anyone else in this country."

"You don't understand, you just don't understand," I whimpered. "Somebody has always owned me. Even the men who fuck me own me for the time they are with me."

"Not today. Today you do exactly as you please. I won't force anything on you. I didn't force you to do what you did; I had no idea you would do it until you started it—and then I couldn't stop myself from enjoying it. If you don't want to do more or it's too difficult for you to, we'll just talk again and watch the river run by. Or we can just go back to the inn. Do you want me to take you back to the inn now?"

He went up on his knees and fished around for the cork for the bottle and pushed it in, assuring me that he was ready just to leave if that was what I wanted.

But that wasn't what I wanted. He was hard again. He'd pulled up his briefs, but they were tented again, and I knew what a nice cock he had already. And my channel was twitching. It wanted him inside me.

I would be betraying Hoagie if I stayed, knowing now that he hadn't received payment for this. But I ached for this. I was weak. Hoagie didn't have to know. And there was a distinct thrill at the thought of doing it just because I wanted to. Several of the other guys who worked at the inn wanted me to give it to them for free. But that was different. That would have been right under Hoagie's nose. And I felt nothing for any of them—although I held no animosity toward them either, and I knew Hoagie would beat any of them senseless if he caught us together.

I wanted this man. The feel of his manhood against my belly back in the laundry room—and then the throbbing of it inside my mouth. I realized that if he'd taken me then and there, at the inn, I wouldn't have asked him about payment at all.

"Do you want me to take you back to the inn now?" he asked again in a low, husky voice.

"No," I responded after the longest minute of inner struggle. "I want you to fuck me. Here. Now. And I don't want you to pay for it either. I want to do it just because we want to do it."

"What do you want me to do with you?" he murmured.

"Whatever you want."

He leaned over me, his arm encased me close once more, and his lips went to my nipple while his hand moved down my belly and under the waistband of my shorts. He fondled my cock and then brought his hand back out and stripped off my shorts and briefs.

His lips came back to mine and he held me close, while his hand returned to my cock and he slowly stroked me. I writhed and trembled in his embrace, which his low moaning told me he enjoyed. I whispered to him that I was ready to prepare him, but he stroked on. I begged him to let me up so that I could service his cock again and then I said I wanted his cock inside me—which was true and an admission rather than artifice—but he just gave a low laugh and stroked on.

I warned him in a deep moan that I would come if he didn't stop. But he didn't stop. And when I did come up my belly, he moved his lips down my torso, cleaning me up as he moved, and then he swallowed my cock, while my hips started to move of their own volition and my cock came back to life again. And he held me inside his mouth, putting pressure on the base of my cock with his teeth as I moaned and felt myself harden again. His hand went to my balls and he pulled on them and squeezed and rolled them, coaxing the honey to rise in me again—which it did after some time of languid attention. My hips began to jerk and roll involuntarily, but he kept with me, pressuring my encased cock close with his tongue and teeth and moving his mouth up and down on my cock until I cried out and lurched in a second coming. No man had ever done this for me before—concentrated completely on me and my enjoyment. I melted to him and started to cry softly, lost to him.

His mouth then moved to my balls, and he moved to below me and started rimming my channel entrance with his tongue—and then moving deeper inside my channel, until I was groaning and begging him to take me.

He fumbled inside his trouser pocket then and came up with a condom and rolled it over his hard dick. He turned me and brought me up on all fours on the blanket and mounted me from behind, his arms enclosing my chest close and his lips in the hollow of my neck. And he fucked me in long, deep strokes, worrying and stretching my channel so that I knew I was being fucked by a magnificently equipped man.

At length he rose on his feet, not losing purchase in my channel and stood, facing the racing river, with me draped on his front and him raising and lowering my body on his digging cock. I exploded once again almost simultaneously with his own ejaculation deep inside me.

Afterward we lay with me cuddled against his stomach as he brought up the concept of my being owned again.

I listened to him then, wanting to believe him, but, while not daring to contradict him, not fully understanding what he was saying either. I had always been owned, and I had always worked every waking hour for whoever owned me, doing whatever they wanted. My mother had owned me. And she had sold me. Then the American Air Force major had owned me and used me. Even the young pilot, as caring and gentle as he was, had owned me. Now Hoagie owned me.

But Buddy kept saying over and over again that this just didn't happen this way in the States. And he went on to say he wanted to be with me and that I could come live with him.

And I told him that maybe he could buy me from Hoagie but that I would still feel so alone here—the only Asian here. I mused on whether he could just buy me.

He became exasperated then, said, rather angrily, that he only wanted me if I came to him of my own free will—and that he lived that way. He repeated that he wouldn't have to buy me from Hoagie—that I could just walk away if I wanted—and that, although, no, he didn't know of any other Asians around, he was out of place here too—that this was a society of miners and he wasn't even from West Virginia—that he had come here from the outside, and not being connected in any way to the mines, was an outsider himself.

I didn't argue with him, but I knew I would have to think long and hard about this freedom thing. But maybe I didn't. I was beginning to feel more free myself just from what he had said. He told me to leave it to him. That he'd set up a way for us to be happy and that I could just walk away from Hoagie.

"Just walk away?" I asked, in awe.

"Yes, just walk away," he answered.

"And I can do anything I want? I can give sex without Hoagie having to be paid?"

"Yes, if you want. Hey what are you doing?"

What I was doing was testing that theory—giving sex, because I wanted to. I was moving down Buddy's body and taking his cock in my mouth and starting another expert blow job, as I had been taught to do and that I did frequently in the basement club at the inn.

Buddy didn't struggle against me for very long. He laid back and started a low moan, fully appreciating once more what I was now freely giving him.

A week later when I had not heard from Buddy again, I began to realize that our little outing had just been his way of getting free sex. I should have been angry, but I wasn't. I certainly was disappointed and despondent for a short time. But I wasn't surprised. This was my lot in life. And I also was grateful. Whether he had meant it or not, I now had a new sense of freedom. I wasn't actually free. I was under Hoagie's thumb as much as ever. But now it was only my body that was owned by Hoagie. Now my soul wasn't owned by Hoagie or anyone else. Now my soul soared above the inn, through the clouds, toward the sun.

This I owed to Buddy, even as I damned him under my breath—damned him because this new-found freedom was bitter sweet, giving me something now to pine for that was beyond my understanding—and thus beyond giving me pain—before Buddy had come into my life. And also pining for Buddy himself. Because I had given myself to him in ways that went much beyond mere sex.