Noah Young was an angel. With a flawlessly handsome face, a beatific, innocent smile and blond curls haloing his head, and a perfectly formed, somewhat diminutive body, he was frequently described as angelic. The high tenor voice he graced the Shenandoah Conservatory's Chamber Choir with—not frequently risen to in one's freshman year at Shenandoah University in Winchester, Virginia—was angelic. His inspired artwork on theater backdrops for the conservatory's theater program was considered to be inspired by heaven. He even stood out as a graceful angel in his dance classes.
He hadn't realized he was gay until he entered the music program at Shenandoah University. He had suspected he was just neither this nor that and had been content with the oft-expressed projection that his angelic nature and musical gift was leading him toward a life of celibacy in the priesthood.
There wasn't much in the way of gay life in Gatlinburg, Tennessee, where he came from, in the shadow of the Great Smokies—at least anywhere Noah was looking. Noah didn't do much looking on his own. He was lost in his music and art and his love of hiking up into the Great Smokies, an activity that helped keep him trim and fit. There had been girls attracted to him—and even some boys. Who wouldn't be attracted to an angel? But he'd been so immersed in his own interests that he hadn't even noticed their interest.
Winchester, Virginia, was a bit more "of this world," though, and Noah certainly did notice the interest that a bass from the chamber choir, a senior with considerable stature both in the college social whirl and physically, celebrated a successful choir Christmas concert by trapping Noah in the backseat of his car on the side of a remote forested lane when coming home from an after-concert party, covering Noah with kisses and his considerably larger body, and missionary fucking Noah's virginity away.
They had both been high on the concert success and drunk on Christmas punch, and the bass apologized profusely, but Noah, more confused and embarrassed at having felt touched as never before by the experience, was ambivalent in his response, so the bass doggie fucked him again in the backseat of his car the night before they all went home for the Christmas break.
In Gatlinburg, at New Year's, Noah finally became aware that his high school vocal coach's interest hadn't only been for his talent.
"You have come home changed in some way, Noah," Mr. Connor had said when they met at the punchbowl after a New Year's Eve concert and found a table together in the corner of the hall.
"Yes, being up in northern Virginia and everything that has been happening at the conservatory has really opened my eyes."
"You have gained experience outside of music and art? If so, that's wonderful. I was so afraid you wouldn't discover there is more than that to life—and that your experiences with life can only enhance your music and art." Connor put a hand on Noah's thigh. Noah didn't flinch.
Noah looked into Connor's eyes and said, "I've opened my eyes to so much more than I knew existed. If I had known when I was still here—"
"Have you discovered woman at last at that university of yours?" Connor asked.
"No, not that."
"Men?" the former vocal coach asked. He squeezed Noah's thigh. This time Noah did shudder—and he covered Connor's hand with his, but quite obviously not to brush it away.
"I have some new compositions on my piano at home, Noah. Would you like to come to my place and hear them?"
"Yes, I'd like that."
Connor fucked Noah on a bearskin rug beside Connor's baby grand piano in a cramped living room. It was all so romantic, with candles and everything that Connor had moved around the room to provide atmospheric lighting as soon as they had entered the log cabin perched on the side of a mountain. There was a fireplace with a fire going as well. The scene was fit for an angel. It would have been a perfect setting in which to lose one's virginity if Noah's hadn't already been taken from him.
But it was Noah's first prolonged, languid fuck, lying on his back, his legs bent, with Mr. Connor crouched between his legs, first giving Noah his first cock suck and then hovering over him, leaning his face down to Noah's for a kiss, while he positioned his cock and entered, entered, entered Noah's channel. The penetration caused channel walls to stretch and shimmer and Noah to arch his back, claw at Connor's shoulder blades with his hands, pant and moan, and, when Connor began stroking, deep in the core of the young angel, to open and close his clutching at the older man's back to the rhythm of the fuck.
Connor thrust again and again, each time deeper, each time with less of an interval between thrusts. He was embracing Noah close at the chest, and Noah could feel the quickening of both of their heartbeats.
"Yes, yes, fuck me!" he cried out, and instinctively, naturally, he set his own pelvis in motion, moving with Connor's thrusts, pulling the long cock deeper, deeper. Noah's hand went between their bellies and found his own cock. They rocked and beat against each other for several minutes, no sound coming out of them but the animalistic groaning and snorting of two lovers in uncontrolled heat . . . until, with a cry, Noah exploded. Connor followed soon after, pulling out of Noah and releasing on his belly.
They lay there, in continued embrace, panting, their eyes locked together in satiated lust. But not completely satiated, no. Connor turned Noah belly to rug, ran an arm under the young man's waist to lift his buttocks, mounted him, thrust his cock inside the hole again, and started the pumping all over again.
It wasn't until the next morning, the start of a new year, that Noah was to hear Connor play his new compositions on the piano.
This was a whole new world for Noah, and he went back to college resigned to the knowledge that he not only was gay, but also that he was a submissive and enjoyed the sex. For the next four months he sought, but didn't achieve, the same exhilaration he had felt on that bear rug in Connor's apartment, with the long, long cock of the vocal coach caressing his channel walls deep at his core. What he did find, though, was the more vigorous, fast exploding cock of the bass waiting for him and new experiences of giving and receiving furtive hand and blow jobs.
As spring approached, one of Noah's old loves, mountain hiking, began to press on him increasingly. He had grown up in the shadow of the Great Smokies and walking sections of the Appalachian Trail. Here he was several hundred miles north, but the mountain chain—this time the Blue Ridge—could clearly be seen off to the east as he went about his way on the university campus. The Appalachian Trail also crossed the ridge of these mountains. The more frustrated he became at not finding a lover here to equal Mr. Connor in Gatlinburg, the more frustrated he became that he wasn't hiking the mountains. He'd brought all of his gear.
* * * *
The problem with going hiking on the Skyline Drive, which rode the ridge of the Blue Ridge up from the pass between Waynesboro and Charlottesville to the nearby town of Front Royal, a distance of 105 miles, was that provisions were expensive and hiking the Appalachian Trail was something you didn't want to do alone. There were too many opportunities to injure yourself or to get hopelessly lost on your own. Noah had already decided he'd do it during his spring break. He just hadn't found anyone else at the school who would do it with him or who he felt certain enough would be a useful companion.
"Why don't you advertise on something like Craig's List," his roommate, Mason, said one day. "There's got to be other guys out there looking for someone to hike with."
Mason was a second-year business major. His family owned a string of drycleaners in the Washington, D.C., area, and Mason was barely making it academic wise. He would have liked to have gone to a bigger university, playing football. He'd been a fullback in high school and had done well at that, but not well enough to be recruited when taken into account that his grades weren't good enough to make it into UVa or Virginia Tech. His parents wanted him to go to a Virginia school, and it didn't matter where he got a business degree from, really. He had a family business to go straight to from college. Thus, he was able to major in drinking and carousing at Shenandoah.
He would have liked to carouse with Noah, but Noah hadn't seen him as anything but a roommate who, thankfully, usually was off somewhere else.
