Journey to Mirage

Groton had wanted to get off by 9:30 the next morning, avoiding the worst of the earlier morning rush hours around the Baltimore and Washington, D.C., beltways, but it was closer to 10:30 before the two vehicles got packed with luggage and photographic equipment and nosed into the I-95 traffic south toward Washington.

In addition to Groton, Spike, and Rick, the two cameramen who had helped with the cameras out on the football field were going too. Groton was driving his Saab and he took off with only Spike on board, telling the cameramen where they were to meet late that afternoon and telling Rick to ride with the cameramen because Groton had a couple of more guys to pick up south of Washington. The cameramen, who were introduced to Rick as Phil and Trace, had a Dodge Ram three-quarter-ton quad truck with four doors and half of its truck bed, closest to the back of the cab, outfitted with a covered container where the two men packed away luggage and photographic equipment.

Trace, a big brute probably in his late twenties, was doing most of the heavy lifting, just as Rick had noticed he did the night of the football field shoot. He was the coarser of the two, both in looks and language, and kept giving Rick side looks that left no doubt what he wanted to do. The other guy, Phil, appeared to be the more intelligent and responsible of the two. He was a redhead who looked to be in his mid thirties. He was tall and built thinner than Trace was, although when Trace wasn't there for comparison, it was evident he wasn't thin at all. He could probably be described more as sinewy. It looked like he could easily lift whatever needed to be lifted, but that he wasn't as frenetic and mouthy as Trace was and was content to let Trace do any of the grunt work that he was willing to do. And, in contrast to Trace, he looked at Rick shyly whenever he could be seen to look at him at all.

Trace took the driver's seat, with Phil riding shotgun—which left the cramped backseat of the cab to Rick.

It wasn't more than fifteen minutes before they lost contact with Groton's vehicle. Phil seemed perturbed at this, saying that Trace should be able to keep up with Groton at least past lunchtime, which Groton had mentioned he was having in Culpepper. But Trace just laughed and told Phil that if he didn't like Trace's driving, he should have volunteered to take the wheel. To this, Phil said he had offered to drive and Trace had gruffly stated he was doing it.

Rick was barely able to hear the guys talking in the front seat, not just because of the noise from the truck's powerful Hemi engine but also because they were speaking softly, as if he wasn't there. He just caught snippets of what they were saying, but it mostly was about photographic techniques and equipment.

Traffic was heavy around the Washington Beltway, and it was well past noon before they reached the town of Warrenton, some forty-five miles south of the national capital on route 29 and twenty miles short of the planned lunchtime rendezvous in the town of Culpepper.

Trace went off route 29 onto business route 17 and headed into the center of Warrenton.

"What gives?" Phil asked. "We're headed to Culpepper for lunch."

"I'm hungry now. Doug didn't say we had to meet up for lunch; only where he was going to have lunch and split off from us anyway."

"You've just passed up two restaurants," Phil said. They were both speaking loud enough now for Rick to hear, a bit of irritation bubbling up from both. It had been a tough ride through the traffic around the twin big cities.

"Yeah, but I know of a pool hall in the town that has great hamburgers. And I want to relieve the tension of the drive with a game or two of pool."

"We don't have the time."

"Sure we do; we're just going down into Nelson County—and it's for the night."

Phil stopped arguing.

Once in the parking lot, Trace popped out of the cab and sprinted to the tavern door. He was already carrying a hamburger and his first beer over to the pool room before Phil and Rick had entered and figured out the food ordering system there.

Rick was counting his pennies on what he could order when Phil put a hand on his arm—which Rick took notice of, feeling a slight charge of electricity in the connection—and said, "I got yours. Groton told me to pay for you."

They went to a table where they could keep an eye on Trace and try to determine when he was finished with his game of pool and might be convinced to get back on the road.

"Thanks for covering the food," Rick said as they sat down on benches across the table from each other.

"Groton's got you on a tight allowance, has he?"

"He hasn't given me anything toward this trip yet. I've got money of my own, but I don't want to be throwing it around until I know what the deal is on pay."

"Do you have any idea what Groton is piling in on you?"

"What do you mean?"

"It not the art film he's doing for the festival. Any money from that—which isn't guaranteed—won't come for some time. But he's already made a bundle in the still shots and videos he's taken of you completely outside the footage for the film."

"I didn't know that."

"He's already paid Trace and me a couple of thou off the top to travel. You really need to talk to Groton about an advance. You're the talent here."

"The talent?" Rick laughed at the use of that term.

"Of course. I've seen you in action, you know. I know talent when I see it."

Rick looked up into Phil's face and he thought he saw interest there. Rick hadn't thought about the cameramen being turned on by what they were filming. He realized he hadn't thought about a lot of things—other than getting out of Baltimore. But he didn't know if he was brave enough to approach Groton for an advance.

"What is it you want, Rick? What's your goal in life?—I mean what is this film going to get for you? You want to go to California and be a porn star?"

"No, that's not what I want," Rick said, with a nervous laugh. "I guess I haven't thought much beyond getting out of Baltimore. But I do have dreams. I want to work on cars. Maybe in the West, Arizona or New Mexico or some place. I want to fix them. Nothing is more thrilling than hearing a well-tuned engine."

"Nothing?" Phil asked. "Watching you in action indicates you are thrilled by more than that."

Rick laughed nervously again. "I like to be fucked, yes, if that's what you're asking. But I don't see that as a career."

"I'm glad to hear that. I kind of thought that you saw this movie as reality—that Doug had made you see it that way and was using you falsely. It's all a mirage, just like the title,

Journey to Mirage

, says. I think it will make a good movie, but it's not real. There's nothing lasting in it for you."

Rick shrugged and made an exaggerated effort to check on Trace, who was now on his second beer and his second game of pool. Trace was scowling, so Rick decided he must not be winning.

"You know I've been thinking of going out to Arizona too," Phil said, as he laid a hand on Rick's arm to stay Rick from rising out of his seat and going into the pool room. "I want to open a photographic studio of my own. Legitimate stuff—although maybe some gay male glamour shots on the side just to keep life interesting."

"Sounds like a good plan," Rick said, rising in spite of Phil's hand on his arm. He didn't know what Phil was working around to say, but life was complicated enough just now. All the same, his butt was twitching—not necessary just for Phil, but because Groton's encouraging him to have sex fantasies was sending him off into frequent reveries—he had been in heat for days, and, without even thinking about it, he was in the zone of thinking about his next cocking as soon as his last one had ended. He'd been having images of being bound and taken as they were driving down through northern Virginia, and he was still keyed up by that—and finding that it was an arousing concept. He'd never really thought of that before. Thanks to Groton, he was fantasizing almost constantly these days.

They didn't have to pull Trace away from the table, though, he'd run the balls on his last game and was happy now. He downed his beer and came out of the men's room and told them it was time to shove off.

When they got to the truck, he turned to Phil and gruffly said, "You drive now. I want to sit in back with Rick for a while."

"I don't think that's a good idea, Trace," Phil said. "Groton said . . . I know what you said when you heard the kid was riding with us, but Groton would flail you alive if―"

But Trace was already shoving Rick up onto the backseat of the Ram and was climbing in behind him. "You're the one who wants to make tracks and meet a schedule. Stop standin' here and jawing about it, and let's get rolling."

Phil turned around in the seat and spoke directly to Rick. "You can come up here, Rick, if you want. You don't have to stay back there."

"It's OK. I'm OK here," Rick answered in a small voice. He knew what was happening, and Trace wouldn't be his first choice—even against Phil—but it was becoming an addiction for Rick. His own dick was already straining at his jeans pouch. The very musky aroma of a horny man was a stimulant to his libido—and there was no doubt that Trace was horny.

Trace's bulk was taking up a lot of the room in the back of the cab, and he had an arm around Rick and holding him close before they were out of the parking lot.

Before they were back out on 29, Trace was feeling Rick up good and could tell from Rick's heavy breathing and the feel of his cock through the material of his blue jeans that Rick was going to let him have his way. Trace moved his hands under the material of Rick's armless T—the hand of the embracing arm snaking through the deep arm slit, with a thumb and forefinger going to one of Rick's nipples, making him flinch and moan. The other hand went, first, to Rick's trembling belly and then down, brushing across his basket, and then back up to the zipper pull of Rick's jeans.

"What's that?" Rick asked with a hoarse voice, writhing already at the action of Trace's hand on his freed cock, as Trace pulled him over onto his lap and extracted a black rubbery device out of his pocket that was a good six inches long and bulbed out in oblong protrusions at either end.

"This? This is a blackjack. Never seen one before? It comes in handy for when I go clubbing in rough parts of town at night. And these are just leather strips. Ever done it bound before?"

"No," Rick said in a breathy voice.

"Ever thought of it?"

"Yeah. But just for the first time earlier today."

"First. I wanna fuck you. I'm horny as hell, and you feel like you are too. Any objections to that? You do it for anyone Groton points to, so I think you can do it for me."

A pause, as Trace moved the blackjack under the hem of Rick's T and slid it up to his chest and started playing with his nipples with it?

"No, I guess not." And then. "No, not at all. Hurry please."

"So, wanna try it bound?"

"Yes, yes, anything. Just don't make me wait too long." Rick was trying not to whine, but he wasn't having much success at it.

"Now ain't that nice," Trace muttered. "Our pretty boy's a nympho."

A warning word of "Trace" was called out from the front seat, but Trace just ignored Phil, and Rick was too far gone to do more than groan and repeat, "Hurry, please hurry."

Rick watched in fascination as Trace pulled his T over his head and bound his wrists together. And, unexpectedly, Trace raised Rick's arms and lodged the bound wrists behind his neck, causing Rick to arch his chest toward the back of the front seat. Rick could feel Trace's cock engorged underneath him, and he was more than ready for the fuck. Occasionally he'd look into the rearview mirror and could see Phil looking back at them, a worried expression on his face. But he had his hands full keeping the truck on the road headed south.

"OK, pretty boy. I want more time. But I'll give you something to think about while you're waiting for Joe—I call it Joe—to fill the darkness."

Trace pulled Rick's jeans and briefs off his legs and then raised up and stripped his off as well. He moved Rick's butt up and into his belly. This put Rick's cock more or less on top of Trace's. With one hand, Trace encased both cocks and began a slow jack off, while he moved the blackjack around Rick's arched chest and his belly and thighs with the other hand, gliding on flesh and making little flicks of rubber on delicate skin.

When Rick ejaculated, unable to keep himself from going over the top quickly, he expected Trace to move his cock to his ass canal and start fucking him—to give him relief there—but again Trace surprised him.

"Find someplace private to pull off. Where we won't be seen," Trace called out to Phil.

"Trace, no. If Groton finds out―"

"Groton won't find out unless you or pretty boy here tells him. You want to be fucked by a real man now, pretty boy?"

"Yes. Oh, god, yes," Rick moaned.

"You heard him. He wants it. He wants it bad. So, pull over, Phil."

Phil, as demanded, found a spot behind a stand of bushes down a driveway to a house with boarded up windows that obviously was deserted. Then he sank deeply into the driver's seat, staring straight ahead, obviously pretending he wasn't even there.

Without untying Rick's wrists, Trace manhandled him out of the cab and back to the rear of the truck, where he let down the tailgate and laid down a tarp for Rick to lay his back on. Then he raised Rick's arms over his head and hooked his wrist bonds on a hook at the side of the container wedged in back of the cab and pushed the young man's ankles through plastic hoops that were dangling from the back corners of the bed on either side.

Thus bound, Trace opened the container and took out a duffle bag and forced it under the small of Rick's back so his ass was rolled up presented with a straight shot for the penetration of Trace's cock, while Rick moaned and groaned for the exotic fuck. Trace didn't start fucking him immediately, though. He used the blackjack as an enticer on Rick's bare skin for a while and then as a dildo for a while, and Rick was begging for the cock—not caring whose it was—before Trace gave it to him.

First the handle end of the blackjack and then the bulbier oval of the business end, covered with Trace's spit and worked slowly in as Rick panted and strained at his bonds. Rick was finding he loved the sensation of having no control, being forced, bound. This was the balance that contributed fully to his arousal and satisfaction, taking the guilt away. All responsibility was taken off him for doing what he knew wasn't right, that was telling about his base needs and desires, and at the same time he no longer had any control over it, was a prisoner to the wants and urges of the other man.

The pleasure of it was freeing and excruciating for Rick, and when the blackjack was gone, replaced by Trace up on the tailgate on his knees, lifting Rick's pelvis to him with hands cupping, squeezing, and separating Rick's butt cheeks, the preparation of the blackjack aided Trace's cruel plunge into the quick of him, and as Trace began churning away inside him, he was not even looking at Trace, not caring who it was as long as he had a dick inside him. Rick strained in delightful ineffectiveness against his bonds, arched his back, let his eyes roll to the waving branches of trees above his head, concentrated on fantasizing a big, black bruiser—Pete—between his thighs, wailed his total satisfaction—and ejaculated a second time.

With a humming Trace behind the wheel again, they drove the rest of the way down 29 and over toward the foothills of the Blue Ridge with no more than the tersest comments between Phil and Trace and with Rick lying along the backseat of the cab and moaning.

* * * *

At Charlottesville, the RAM turned toward the mountains and then, just before the start of the incline up to the pass over the Blue Ridge at Afton, they turned south into a valley. They were driving into Virginia's Nelson County now. They proceeded for a couple of miles and then turned back toward the mountains and pulled up into a graveled parking lot at a rambling log roadhouse with a neon sign in red over it that said "Lefty's" inside a heart shape.

To the surprise of neither Phil nor Trace, Groton had already arrived. He was standing out at the end of the walk up to the door of the roadhouse talking with a monster of a man in brown trousers with suspenders over a red flannel shirt. Spike was standing several yards away from the two, staring up at an upper window of the roadhouse, where a shirtless black-headed guy with good musculature was staring back down at him, framed by the molding on the window. Spike may or may not have been listening to the conversation between the other two men, because he was gazing pretty intently at the man in the window. Behind the monster man, close in his shadow, his arm under the grip of the big man, was a young blond guy, barefoot, and in just low-slung jeans, shyly looking at the ground.

Lounging at the door of the roadhouse were two buxom bottle blondes in tight-fitting blouses and shorts.

And leaning against Groton's Saab that Trace had parked beside were two lanky and slightly mean and unclean looking country boys with bad teeth, who leered at Rick as he struggled with some effort out of the backseat of the RAM well after Trace and Phil had descended and were walking toward Groton. The two guys at the Saab leaned in to each other and were talking quietly as they eyed Rick and laughed.

Groton looked appraisingly at Rick as he slowly walked up to the gathered group. Although he was looking at Rick, when he spoke, it was to the monster man. "See what I mean? Isn't the resemblance uncanny?"

"Yes, I do see it," the man spoke on a rich bass voice. "Course ones blonder than the other. This must be Rick, your film's star. He's dynamite. Where did you ever find him?"

"He found me, you could say. But I'm bringing him along. Rick, come over and meet my old friend Lefty Drake. He's going to help us with some of the filming."

Then he turned to Phil and Trace and said, "You two can go on in. The girls will show you where your rooms are. The rooms are pretty utilitarian and small, but they serve their purpose—and will serve ours too. We'll just be here for a few days. Oh, and I'd like to talk to you both separately this evening, please." The last sentence was spoken somewhat ominously. Phil winced, but Trace just smiled a sloppy smile.

As they went back to the truck for their bags and joined the buxom blondes at the front door of the roadhouse, Spike touched Groton's arm and said, "I'll go in too and they can show me where I'm bunking too."

"Yeah, go ahead," Groton said, but Spike wasn't looking at him now, he was looking up to the window where the shirtless young man, his chest covered with curly black hair, was still smiling down at those below—or rather at Spike himself.

"You should meet Billy Dan, too," Groton turned and said to Rick. "I've just met him myself, but I thought maybe I was meeting you again. The two of you are the spitting image of each other."

Lefty pulled the young blond guy out from his shadow and into the light. "Say hi to Rick, Billy Dan," Lefty said.

Billy Dan looked up but only briefly and gave Rick a shy smile and a quiet, "Glad to meet ya," before returning his gaze to his toes, which he was curling and uncurling in the grass beside the walk.

Rick gave him a brief "Hello," while he looked for where the others were seeing the resemblance. But he, like most folks, wasn't really able to see himself in others.

"He's certainly acting virginal enough," Groton said to Lefty and then laughed. "Sure he's unused?"

"Yep, he's willing enough—says he needs the money to get out of Nelson County but also that he's that way inclined—but I've been saving him for something special. Maybe you and I can get him started."