I scrambled for my clothes and shook the hay from my hair. Lola Belle stumbled, pulling on her panties and giggling. She was chattering on about something, I didn't care, and I wasn't listening. I walked out of the barn before she was done talking. I was preoccupied with whoever had been spying on us from the barn doors. I checked all around the area and saw no trace of anyone. All the lights in the house were dimmed, no obvious movements. My head swam with beer.
Jesse's truck was gone. It was late, after all. Candy had so many wine coolers I imagine she made herself sick. A few uncles sat on the front porch smoking and dipping chewing tobacco. They laughed, teasing about me getting lost on the ranch I grew up working. I said my farewells and set to walking the seven miles back to Jesse and Candy's. The humid night air was cooled by a pleasant light breeze.
The stars were so beautiful. Wispy clouds raced across the sky with the prairie breezes. The night wind kissed my face and wicked the sweat from my chest. I still tasted Lola Belle on my lips, smelled her on my fingers. The roar of the chirping bugs filled my ears, loud as the ocean waves in California. Rustling in the brush, like rabbits and foxes chasing each other, is the only occasional noise. A lonesome hound bellowed from a house somewhere in the distance.
About halfway back to Jesse and Candy's, I took my eyes down from the sky and found myself blinded by truck headlights with high beams. I recognized the roar of the engine, and Jesse's long lean figure stretched across the cab to open the passenger door. He'd changed from his good suit to a thin white t-shirt and jeans. His blue eyes all the bluer for being bloodshot, his face pale but his cheeks rosy. Drunk as a skunk.
"I was headed back that way to fetch you, Lee. Candace was tired; I thought I'd take her home first. I could not find you anywhere to tell you," he said. Jesse's voice was so soft and deep, like the purr of a tall, thin tomcat. I climbed in the cab and he handed me a frosty can of beer from a cooler. I looked concerned and took a sip.
"My brother is a deputy sheriff, as long as I'm not speeding, he don't care if we drink on the back roads." Jesse winked at me and turned his eyes back to the road. "Where were you anyways?"
I shifted uncomfortably on the long bench seat. "I was..."
"Where ever you was," He interrupted. "You stink like pussy."
We both laughed. The remainder of the car ride was quiet until we reached the main gate.
"I lied about not being able to find you, there. I wanted to apologize for ..." That velvet voice of his faltered. "I want to apologize for interrupting you earlier."
So it was Jesse! At least it wasn't my Mom. "Well that's what happens. " I said, "No harm done."
We both laugh again. His cheeks flush nearly purple, embarrassed to be talking to me in such a way. We had only ever exchanged polite words, little jokes here and there. The silence is awkward and Jesse does not move the truck. He finally reaches across my legs for the gate remote; his unsteady hands brush my knee. The glass of his eyes catches mine as if he's going to say he's sorry. A nervous laugh escapes his throat. Jesse rests his hand on my knee. My thigh.
There is such a tentative look on his face. His knuckles are white, his fingers tremble. He's chewing the dark pink of his thin cupid lips as he leans towards me. Partly out of shock, maybe even a part of curiosity, maybe I don't want him tattling on me about the barn to Candy ... I hold perfectly still and let my brother in-law brush his lips against mine. His face is prickly with stubble. My beard had grown out long enough to be soft. We seemed stuck together, like Velcro, two unshaven beards slick with sweat.
His lips taste like beer, and his tongue slips between my lips slick and sweet with a tinge of smoky barbeque sauce and baked beans. I feel how sharp his teeth are through his thin delicate lips. His fingers are in my hair now, half gripping, and half petting. I have my hands around his waist. I don't know if I'm holding him, or just holding the weight of him off my chest. I'm not even necessarily aroused, but I feel my body responding despite what my mind may think.
Jesse's smashing himself into my face. With all the desperation and awkwardness of a virgin his tongue dives unskillfully in my mouth. I feel his hands roving the muscle of my thighs, across my belly, up my chest, down my back. He's leaning back and pulling me down on top of him. He rests his hands on my ass, one of his knees pressed nearly onto the dashboard, his legs are so long. He calls me baby. I laugh a little. He may be so drunk he's thinks I'm a woman.
He shifts his weight and I sit back up. I almost say, this is crazy, Jesse. I almost say we've just had too much to drink, but those long slender fingers of his are fighting with the zipper of my slacks. He sits up a moment and yanks my fly open, his eyes on my boxers, sticky with sweat and Lola Bell's juices. I'm half hard just for the cool air conditioning kissing the sweat from my balls, for the adrenaline of kissing another man. I thought I'd never do it. I thought I'd be disgusted to be with another man. It wasn't half bad, actually.
Jesse's fondling my pubic hair, the way you would pet a kitten. His hands dip lower and he's gripping the base of my shaft. I will say this about being with men, there are no fluttery, weak little tugs. It's never too fast or too hard or too dry. Men naturally know what pleases other men. Perhaps I was just allowing Jesse to do this out of vanity, perhaps no one could make love to me as well as I could make love to myself, as if Jesse were my mirror image. You rationalize like that, in these situations.
He nips the tender flesh of my neck, where it dips into my collar. That perfect sensitive spot that makes me squirm under his hands, my hips rolling forward. He strips his sweat soaked shirt off his back, leaving it in a damp heap on the cab floor. I see now that Jesse is not my mirror image at all. In contrast to my soft, pale skin, my dark curls and dark, inconstant colored eyes, Jesse was all gold.
The hair of his head was spun straw gold. The fleece of his arms and chest was a paler gold than the other gold. His skin was the warm honey color of working long hours in the fields, dotted with cinnamon freckles. There was a delicate little trail of golden fuzz just above the crack of his ass that poked tentatively out of his jeans, and I slid my hands down the long, lean muscles of his back and stroked it idly. The waist of his jeans dipped lower, revealing a firm expanse of his little milky white ass.
Jesse lowered his face into my lap and stroked me a moment more. He looked up at me curiously. I don't know if I moaned or nodded or just sat there, but he flicked his curious tongue against the side of my shaft. Then a longer one. I imagine I tasted terrible, like a long sweaty day and a short sweaty roll in the barn. Jesse didn't seem to mind. Before long he had worked his way down my length and rested the stubble of his chin in my pubes.