Date: Thu, 29 Jan 1998 09:40:11 -0700 (MST)
From: Boy-writer <bstory@anon.nymserver.com>
Subject: Stepdad (M/b)

Stepdad
-------

It was after ten, and the house was still.  Horace Rath looked over at his
wife.

Veronica wasn't pretty any more, even in moonlight.  Her body was wasted
from drug abuse, so thin she was nothing but bones, her breasts all but
gone.  She had a beatific look on her face, however - the contented look of
a junkie who had just gotten her fix.  Soon she would be sleeping, dreaming
sweet opiate-induced dreams.  Already she was lost to the world.

Horace had administered the shot.  It was hard to find a vein in her arms
any more; he had started injecting her in the feet.  He kept her supplied.
She had been a junkie when he met her, but she was worse now.  One day soon
he wouldn't be able to stand the sight of her any more and would give her
just a little too much, end her suffering for good.  Then it would only be
him and Sammy.

The boy was the reason for the marriage.  None of Horace's friends could
understand why he, a successful developer worth millions, would marry a
white-trash woman on welfare.  They would have been even more aghast if
they had known about Veronica's drug problem.  Of course, they had said, it
*was* time for him to marry - he'd been 36 at the time.  About time he
found somebody.

And so he had, but it wasn't Veronica.  She was tiresome, even during their
courtship, even before it got so bad.  But Horace was well-bred, the
product of good schools and good parents, and he knew how to deal with
tiresome people, how to laugh at their chatter, how to smile inanely, how
to seem interested.  He swept the woman off her feet, showering her with
expensive gifts that always seemed to get lost.  He saw her arms and knew.
He began to give her money instead; it was more efficient - no sense adding
the pawn broker's markup to the price of heroin.

When she discovered Horace's interest in Sammy, Veronica was more than
happy to bring the boy on their dates.  Those dates were wonderful for all
three of them.  They went to ice cream parlors, pizza joints, amusement
parks.  Sammy was full of life, enthusiastic for everything, and he latched
onto Horace immediately.  They tossed a football in the man's yard,
wrestled on the floor, rode roller coasters together, flew in Horace's
plane.  In fact, it was the look on the boy's face, sitting in the copilot
seat, managing the controls, and his smile, full of pride and gratitude
together - it was then that Horace decided to marry Veronica.  He proposed
to both of them at Disney World.  They moved into a house in his
development, better than most, but still a middle-class house.  Horace
didn't want Sammy to grow up isolated on some remote estate.

At first, the man told himself that his interest in the boy was pure, that
all he wanted to do was to give Sammy a good life.  Now he knew that wasn't
so.  He had been attracted to the kid from the start.  Sammy was somewhat
darker complected than his mother, the contribution of his long-gone
father, but he was otherwise a younger, prettier version of her.  But no,
it wasn't merely youth - it was innocence.  While the boy's eyes were clear
and open, his mother's were cold, empty, and devious - a junkie's eyes,
looking for her next fix.  But Horace had violated Sammy's innocence long
ago.

 ----

It started shortly after the marriage.  Horace and Sammy were wrestling on
the carpet in the family room.  Sammy was wearing an old pair of light
green shorts that were too small for him.  The game was going on as usual,
with much roaring from the man and giggling from the boy, Horace grabbing
Sammy, allowing him to escape, tossing the boy across his back, falling
over with Sammy's little pushes.  Then Sammy pushed Horace over, and the
man rolled onto his back.  Sammy jumped onto Horace's chest, his little
bottom right in the man's face, his thighs stretched wide across the man's
broad chest.  Horace began to try to grab Sammy's head with his knees, and
the boy fought him off gleefully, bouncing up and down.  The sight was too
much for the man, and his penis betrayed him.

It was time for Horace to end the playing, to stand up and say he had this
or that adult thing to get done, but before he could do so, Sammy, in the
course of his struggles, placed his hand directly on Horace's cock and
squeezed it.  Sammy laughed, still playing.  "What's this?" he asked.

Horace thought the best way to handle the situation was to act as if it
were not important.  "You know what that is," he replied, growling like a
bear as he grabbed the boy beneath the arms and pushed him off onto the
carpet.  Sammy landed splayed out, giggling.  Horace started to get up.

He didn't get all the way there.  Sammy blindsided him, running full force
into his stepfather with his head down.  Horace fell onto his back again,
and Sammy jumped on top.  He sat on the man's stomach, then reached back to
feel the hardon again.  He turned back to Horace.  "Mine gets like that,"
Sammy said.  He was more interested in that than in wrestling.

Time for a new approach.  Horace sat up, then picked Sammy up and sat the
boy next to him against the sofa.  "Guys get that sometimes," the man said.
"It's nothing to worry about."

"It gets hard so you can stick it in a woman, right?"

Horace sighed.  Well, all right, someone had to have "the talk" with Sammy,
and Horace had married into the responsibility.  "Yes, that's right,
Sammy," he said.  "But you won't be doing that for a long time."

"You do it with Mom, don't you?"

"Yes, having sex is part of being husband and wife.  It's the way kids are
made."

"I know *that*," Sammy said.  "Are you and Mom going to have more kids?"

"No, we're not planning on it.  Sometimes it just happens."

"I think I just happened," the boy said sadly.  "When you don't want it to
happen, it makes the woman sick, doesn't it?"

"No," Horace said, wondering where that came from.  Then he remembered that
Veronica explained her addiction to her son by saying that she was "sick"
and needed medicine.  "You didn't make your mom sick.  When you get sick,
it's not because someone makes you, is it?"

"No," Sammy acknowledged.  He returned to the point:  "Then why do you do
it if you don't want more kids?"

"It's a fun thing to do.  It's a way for two people to show they love each
other."

"Oh."  The boy absorbed the point.  "Does Mom like it when you put it in
her?"

"Yes, she does.  It's fun for her too."

"Good."  Sammy stood up.  "You want to play ping-pong?"

 ----

Nothing was really much different in the house after that.  They got a maid
to take care of the place and a gardener to take care of the lawn.  Sammy
liked the maid, who was a kindly old Hispanic woman, but he harassed the
gardener, a middle-aged white man, something terrible.  It would have been
all right if the man had been somewhat indulgent, but he was very serious
about his work and quite short-tempered, so he was easy to tease.  The kid
must have known that the gardener, short and skinny as he was, could beat
Sammy to a pulp - but he also knew that he was the son of the owner and
could not get hit no matter how much he deserved it.

Except by Horace, that is.  Sammy was, in fact, pretty well-behaved; he had
been used to being responsible beyond his years, taking care of his "sick"
mother.  As the boy settled into his new suburban existence, though, he
became more natural and carefree - and the poor gardener suffered by it.
When Sammy threw the gardener's hedge clippers into the swimming pool, it
was the last straw for Horace, who had been trying to deal with the matter
by talking to the boy.

So Sammy got his first spanking in longer than he could remember.  He was
furious, of course, and the spanking lasted longer than Horace planned,
since the boy was spouting epithets that, at ten, he shouldn't even know.
After all, a spanking can't end until the kid is sorry for what he did.
Eventually, Sammy stopped swearing and started crying, so Horace gave him a
few more licks and stopped.  They had a very long talk after that, during
which Horace explained that he had done it because Sammy was misbehaving
and it was a father's job to correct him.  It didn't mean that he didn't
love Sammy, the man emphasized.  Sammy nodded like he understood.  Horace
hoped the boy hadn't noticed the hardon poking into his belly.

The man continued to get hard when he wrestled with Sammy, which was often,
since the boy enjoyed it.  They didn't talk about it after that first time,
but Sammy would grab Horace's cock playfully through his pants or just rub
his leg against it.  After a while, the man noticed that Sammy would also
get hard when they wrestled.  He seemed to like rubbing his little cock
against his stepfather's, though both of them acted as though it were just
in the course of the contest.

Unfortunately, Sammy continued to misbehave now and then, so he got more
spankings.  The teasing of the gardener ended after three or four more such
punishments, but then Sammy would pull a girl's hair or shoplift some candy
on a dare and get it for that.  A couple times, he got it for not cleaning
his room when he was told to.  Every time, Horace got a raging hardon.

Veronica sank fast.  Her husband urged her to kick the habit, even held out
on her once or twice, but he recognized that he couldn't make her stop if
she didn't want to.  She got so shaky at times when she needed a fix that
she stuck the needle right into the bone, causing painful injuries.  He
began to inject her.  Sammy worried about her, trying to bring her food,
but she wouldn't eat anything but Corn Flakes.  Being ten, his solicitude
did not last, though.  Soon he was back at his games, ignoring his mother
except to ask how she felt occasionally, and Horace was left to care for
his wife alone.

The woman ceased to arouse Horace, to the extent she ever had, and they
stopped having sex.  He did not stop getting aroused, though; his affection
transferred to Sammy.  The man hid in the bathroom and jacked off, a
hermaphroditic Sammy painted on the back of his eyelids.  Horace was filled
with guilt, but he couldn't help how he felt about the boy.  It was love in
every sense of the word.

Sammy noticed his stepfather's feelings, though he did not understand them.
He noticed how Horace got a hardon around him, and like the curious child
he was, Sammy started spying on the man, trying to catch him at it.  Sammy
caught his stepfather a lot, and the fact that Horace was embarrassed about
it only made it more exciting to catch him.  It was as if Sammy had a
secret kind of power over his stepdad, and the boy delighted in teasing
him, though Sammy didn't think of it that way.

The ten-year-old figured out what things he could wear to get a response
from his new dad.  Shorts were good, but not all shorts; they had to be the
shorter ones.  A swimsuit worked particularly well, especially the old one
that was briefer.  And Horace liked Sammy in his jammies, particularly if
they had short bottoms and were made of thin material.  In cold weather, of
course, the boy had to wear long pants, but there were a couple pair of
those that didn't have back pockets.  There were also certain poses that
Horace liked, like lying on his stomach on the floor watching TV, with the
man in a chair behind him.  Or lying on his back with his hand under his
shirt, feeling his chest.  Or bent over to pick something up.  Or (most of
all) sitting in his stepdad's lap in his pajamas, as they did almost every
night.

Horace was slowly being driven crazy by the innocent boy.  The man jacked
off more and more, but it helped less and less.  His mind addled by lust,
Horace began to wonder whether Sammy was actually trying to turn him on.
It was unbelievable that it should be so, but the man had to find out,
somehow.  And then what if it *were* so?  Well, they would have a long
talk, he told himself.

For his part, Sammy was beginning to tire of the game.  His new dad was so
predictable, after all.  He would get hard (and sometimes Sammy would too),
but what then?  What came after that?  He liked wrestling with Horace,
putting their penises together through their clothes; it felt good.  Was
there something more fun that the man wasn't showing him?  Sammy was
excited and a little scared at the possibility.  He concocted a plan.

The plan was pretty elaborate for a boy who was now eleven.  Sammy
persuaded his father (he no longer thought of Horace as only a "step") that
Martina, the maid, deserved some time off.  It was not too difficult, since
Horace also liked her and valued her services, but persuading him that she
should get two weeks paid was considerably more difficult.  Sammy finally
succeeded by saying that Martina wanted to visit her relatives in San
Antonio, and with only one week she would hardly have time to get there and
back on the bus.

The next thing was to volunteer to take on Martina's duties around the
house while she was away.  That part was very easy, since Horace was
delighted that the boy was showing such responsibility.  Sammy, thinking
ahead, mentioned that Horace would need to help with the cooking, and the
man reluctantly agreed (they wound up eating a lot of takeout).  After that
came a long argument about who would watch Sammy while Horace was at work
with Martina gone.  Sammy won that with a cheap shot - he pointed out that
he had always been alone with his mother before she met Horace.

For several days, Sammy kept the house spotless, but he didn't do any
laundry.  There were still too many towels in the bathroom, so he removed
some and put them downstairs with the dirty clothes.  Finally, after Horace
took his morning shower (relieving his aching balls as well), there was
only one towel left.  Sammy took it out and put it downstairs as well.
Then he did laundry, but he left everything hanging or folded down in the
utility room next to the family room.

That evening, about 7:30, Horace told Sammy to go up and take his bath.
The boy took a shower instead; he wanted to be extra clean, and he didn't
think a bath would do it - after all, you wash off, but the dirty water is
still there, right?  And, as planned, there was no towel upstairs.  "Dad!"
he yelled.

"What is it, Sammy?" Horace yelled back.

"There's no towel up here.  Can you bring one up?"

The man walked halfway up the stairs so he wouldn't have to yell so loudly.
"Why didn't you wash some?  You promised to take care of that while Martina
was gone."

Sammy walked out to the head of the stairs, dripping.  "I did, I just
didn't put 'em away yet.  They're in the laundry room.  Can you get me
one?"

Horace sighed heavily.  "Wait a minute.  Go back in the bathroom so you
don't drip all over."  He walked back downstairs.  He had only caught a
glimpse of his naked stepson, but it was enough to give the man his worst
boner yet.  He turned on the bare bulb in the unfinished utility room and
was amazed at what he saw - piles and piles of clean, folded laundry, rows
of clean, starched shirts and pants hanging from overhead pipes.  He picked
up a towel from the pile, then thought better and took the whole pile, and
walked up the stairs.

Sammy was standing on the bathroom rug, stark naked and shivering.  The
door was wide open.  He noted excitedly that his dad's large cock was
making its presence known through his slacks (Sammy was too cold to get
hard at the moment).  Horace set the pile of towels down next to the sink.
Taking no chances, Sammy turned and bent over to flush the toilet.  He
turned back.  Well, if anything was going to happen, it would be now.

Horace was unable to speak.  This vision of the real Sammy far surpassed
anything in his fantasies.  In large part, it was because that had been
imaginary and this was real.  The real Sammy moved and reshaped in ways and
places that his stepfather could not have visualized.  He was real and
alive, unbelievably so.  Yet another, more important, part was that Sammy
suddenly became a full person in his own right.  Not that Horace had ever
treated the boy as less than a person, but the man had always
subconsciously considered Sammy as a smaller version of his mother.  Now
the man could see how wrong he was.  Sammy did not have his mother's flaws
- the too-prominent ribcage, the wide hips that belied a flat behind.  He
was not his mother at all; he was much more beautiful.  Everything on the
boy was in perfect proportion, as if sculpted out of fine white marble, not
from life, but from an artist's dream of the perfect boy.  It had been
foolish to envision this perfect creature with a cunt.  He was sui generis,
the Platonic ideal of a beautiful boy.

Sammy had tried to prepare himself for various eventualities, including
angry rejection, but he hadn't thought that Horace would just stand there
staring at him.  He reluctantly took a towel and started to dry off,
looking at his dad the whole time.  Sammy dried his hair first, leaving
himself uncovered for as long as possible.  Then the worst possible thing
happened - Horace just walked off, without saying anything.

Sammy was crestfallen.  He closed the door and dried off as fast as he
could, trying not to cry, trying to be quiet about it so that Horace would
not hear.  Sammy realized that he had been wrong, that his stepfather
wasn't interested in him like that, that the man just thought of him as a
little kid.  It was immensely depressing - all the games Sammy had played
were just that, games.  And beneath it all, and more depressing still, was
the realization that his stepdad didn't love Sammy like his mother.  She
was the one the man wanted; Sammy was just - baggage.  The boy wrapped the
towel around himself and went to his room to change into his pajamas,
which, just on this one occasion, he hadn't taken into the bathroom with
him.

Horace went into the master bedroom, hoping that his wife would be in that
increasingly infrequent interval of sanity between stupor and frantic need.
No such luck.  She had injected herself, and the needle still stuck out of
her arm as she slept.  He pulled it out, swabbed the vein with alcohol, and
cleaned out her 'fit.  Then, inexplicably, he kissed her.  She had brought
Sammy into the world, so she was worthy of love on that account.

Sammy did not go back downstairs.  He got in bed and pulled the covers over
his head, but he couldn't breathe like that for long, so he lowered them
back to his neck.  If his dad came up to check on him, Sammy would say that
he was sick.  No, if he said that, he realized, there would be an inquiry.
He would just say he was tired.

Horace paced the floor, staring at his wife, bitterly angry at her.  He
wanted his conjugal rights, and he couldn't get them from an unconscious
woman.  He told himself that it was illogical, knowing that she was in the
grip of an addiction she was powerless to break, that even if she were in
some sense to blame there was no point - but it did not matter.  His cock
was rampant with lust, and the smaller head demanded satisfaction even as
the larger one attempted to deny it.  Horace wanted Sammy, wanted to bury
himself in the boy and fuck his brains out, and only the hope of
consummating the act with his wife had enabled Horace to walk away from the
bathroom.  Now that was denied him.

The man walked out of the room and down the hall, his mind seemingly
floating above his head, detached from the action.  He had no choice.  He
was going to commit a felony, a crime worthy of death, but he could not
stop.  It did not matter if he lived another day; Horace had to be with
Sammy *now*.  Tomorrow, the man told himself, I'll turn myself in to the
police, tell them the whole story, I won't seek any mercy from the judge,
I'll die in prison.  They'll put Veronica in rehab, and Sammy will inherit
everything.  Horace did not think of what he was about to do as anything
but a rape.  He did not even wonder whether Sammy might consent.  Horace
held the boy completely blameless.  But right now, there was only one thing
the man could do.  He opened the door to Sammy's room and stood in the
doorway.

Sammy was not asleep, but he was pretending to be.  He was wearing some
light cotton "Superman" pajamas, with the covers pulled up to his neck,
facing away from the doorway.  He remained as still as possible, hoping
that his dad would just go away.  Sammy did not want to deal with his
stepfather right now; the boy was too ashamed.

When he saw Sammy's little head, Horace lost his detachment.  His lust did
not abate in the slightest, but the beauty and helplessness of the boy who
was its object banished the man's thoughts of rape.  Horace walked forward,
now only hoping that Sammy would let him near, let him touch his pretty
head.  It was, if you will, a love as devoted as any Romeo felt for any
Juliet, if anything made more profound by the fact that Horace, at 36, had
never loved anyone before.  But Horace was no stripling easily moved, and
this unaccustomed ardency was tearing his soul apart.  He wished earnestly
to die so that the pain in his heart and loins would stop.

Acknowledging that he would not get his wish, Horace incongruously closed
the door behind him (who would disturb them?) and stepped into the moonlit
room, making his way to his stepson's bed.  The man sat down gingerly, as
near to the edge as he could, and reached over to stroke the hair of the
seemingly unconscious boy.

Sammy, who was more wide awake than he had ever been, started slightly.  It
was completely unexpected.  Horace withdrew his hand, then put it back.  As
the man continued to stroke his hair, Sammy started to cry in confusion.
His dad was acting as if he loved Sammy after all, and that couldn't be,
could it?

Seeing Sammy cry, Horace was more convinced than ever that death was his
proper punishment, but the man could not withdraw.  He needed to be here,
with this boy, now, no matter what.  "I - I'm sorry," the man croaked out,
leaning down to kiss Sammy on the cheek.

Sammy turned to look up, the moonlight making his dampened cheeks glisten.
His eyes were questioning.

Horace bent over and kissed him again, on the mouth but slightly off
target, giving them room for denial should Sammy choose that route:  they
did not really kiss, it was Horace wishing Sammy good night.

For Sammy, though, it was enough.  He leaned up quickly and threw his arms
around his stepfather's neck, suspending his upper body on the cables of
thin arms from the strong support of Horace's well-attached head.

That was enough for Horace as well.  The man kissed Sammy directly on the
lips, then quickly crawled into bed, kicking off his shoes.  His arms
roamed over the boy's back, not to catch a feel, but to make sure that
every part of Sammy was held close.

They both slept soundly, content to be together.

 ----

Arthur seemed glad just to have an ear to talk into.  He had a fixation
with sex.  He was always talking about wanting to see this or that girl
naked, saying that he would "slide naked down a razor blade" (his favorite
phrase) to do so.  He talked about a girl he imagined was interested in
sex, saying that he would like to get her in bed, where he would make her
"all hot and wet."  Finally, disappointed in the way that Sammy seemed to
be ignoring him, Arthur poked him in the side and said that Sammy's clothes
were really turning on all the girls.

Something clicked in Sammy's head, but he didn't quite grasp it yet.  "You
think so?" he asked, just to keep Arthur talking.

"Yeah, Teresa over there really likes your shorts, you got her all hot."
Teresa was bending over a book and talking to her friend Laura; she didn't
look any different.  "And that shirt really shows off your pecs."  Sammy
didn't have any visible "pecs," of course, and didn't know what they were,
but he looked down at his shirt.  Arthur was delighted; he'd finally gotten
Sammy's full attention.  "You like her, too, huh?  You think she's hot?"

"What would she do, I mean, what would we do, you know, if ...?" Sammy
asked.

"You dummy!" Arthur said, and Sammy looked at him angrily.  "Sorry, you're
not a dummy, you're the smartest kid in class, just - you really don't
know?"

Sammy shook his head.

Arthur's breast grew about two inches - nothing improves one's self-image
like a willing pupil.  "Okay.  Well, first you take off your clothes, real
slow.  Both of you."

"Why slow?"

"Because it's better that way," Arthur said irritably.  "Just trust me.
You both strip off down to your underwear."

"Okay."

"Then you take her panties off, real slow, and you lick her vagina."

"Her what?"

"Her cunt."

"Oh."

"Then she takes your underwear off and she sucks your dick."

Sammy tried to imagine the girl across the room doing such a thing.  She
noticed him staring at her and turned to her friend, giggling.  He looked
down.

"Then you fuck her," Arthur whispered, since the teacher was approaching.
She told them to hurry up and get their work done.  Sammy went back to the
schoolwork, pasting states onto a large construction-paper map.  Arthur, as
usual, did not help.

"How does it feel?" Sammy asked when the teacher was gone.

"Are you kidding?  It feels great!"

"What about for the girl?"  Sammy was still thinking about his mother.

"It's great for them too," Arthur said authoritatively.  "Fucking and
getting fucked are the two greatest things you can do."

"Have you done it?"

"Well, not yet, but I plan to as soon as I can."

"Yeah," Sammy said, for once joining in his friend's enthusiasm.

The teacher announced that time was up and ordered each pair to hold up
their maps.  Sammy hurriedly stuck New Jersey and Delaware on, then pushed
the map to Arthur, who held it up.  As usual, their work was the best in
the class, only marred by the fact that Delaware stuck out into the
Atlantic a little.  A lot of people had mixed up Colorado and Wyoming, but
Sammy got that right since he remembered that Wyoming was slightly smaller.

As they walked back to their regular seats, Arthur invited Sammy to come
over to his house after school.  Sammy said he had to take the bus, but
Arthur said his dad would take Sammy home, so Sammy agreed.

 ----

Arthur's parents were not home when the boys got to his house.  They each
got a pear out of the refrigerator and went to Arthur's room.  They spent a
little time looking at Arthur's model cars, and more time looking at the
posters of supermodels on his walls.  To Sammy, with only his mother for
comparison, their breasts seemed too big, and they seemed too fat, but he
didn't voice those opinions to Arthur.  In any case, the scantily-clad
women didn't do anything for Sammy, though he acted as interested as he
could.  It was no more exciting that "Baywatch," which was a pretty stupid
show.

They didn't stay in Arthur's room long, though.  They went back down the
hall through the dining room and out the sliding glass doors.  Arthur ran
ahead to a wooden ladder extending down from a large tree.  He had a
treehouse!  Sammy was full of envy, almost deciding to tell the other boy
that his dad owned the whole development.  Well, at least he would bring
Arthur over to see their swimming pool, which Arthur's family did not have.
Sammy climbed up into the tree after him.

"I got lots better pictures up here," Arthur said.  He moved an old chair
out of the way, then pulled away a loose board and reached into a hole in
the tree trunk behind.  He brought back several magazines, which he handed
to Sammy, then reached back in and got several more.  Arthur put the board
back and replaced the old wicker chair.

"Cool, huh?" the boy said, taking the magazines from Sammy and adding them
to his own stack.  He sat down in the chair.  Sammy looked around for a
place to sit and pulled up a folding chair.  "I look at these a lot,"
Arthur said.  He grinned.

"Hurry up," Sammy said.  He was worried that Arthur's parents would get
home.  He was also eager to see the pictures.

"You want to see some fucking, huh?"  Arthur opened a magazine and held it
out.  "Look at that."

Sammy sat with his mouth agape.  A woman was lying on her back with her
legs up, a man shoving his cock into her.  The boy wanted to see more.  He
turned the page.  More pictures of the woman being fucked, with some
closeups of the penis entering her.  It was the most amazing thing Sammy
had ever seen.

Arthur closed the magazine.  "You know what's better?" he said.  "Looking
at these when you're naked."

"Okay," Sammy said.  He wanted to see more.

"Cool," said Arthur.  He put the stack of magazines on the floor and stood
up, removing his shirt.  "Aren't you gonna take your clothes off?" he asked
Sammy.

"Oh, yeah, right," Sammy said, doing likewise.  Soon both boys were naked.
Both were hairless, of course, but in contrast to Arthur's long (3-1/2"),
semi-hard dick and low-hanging balls, Sammy's soft penis was only about an
inch or so long, his balls tightly held to his groin.  Both were
circumcised.  They inspected each other, Arthur with pride and interest in
his new friend, Sammy bashfully, sneaking glances.  Self-conscious, Sammy
covered himself with his hands.

Arthur would have none of that.  "Hey, look, it's okay.  I used to be like
that.  You're just not grown up yet."  That made Sammy even more bashful.
"Just be cool," Arthur said.  That still didn't work.  He walked closer,
his (to Sammy) large cock waving.  "You're still pretty hot.  I bet you're
just what Teresa wants.  She's probably still a virgin, so you'd be just
right for her tight little cunt.  You might not even bust her cherry.  I'd
probably bust her right open with this thing."

It was not much consolation, but Sammy took it.  He still had no more
interest than before in Teresa, but the mention of her name seemed to bring
a third party into the situation that made it less tense.  Not that Sammy
had a clue what Arthur was talking about, except that it involved fucking,
which was the reason they were here.

Seeing that Sammy had calmed down some and was letting his hands hang by
his sides, although fidgeting, Arthur said, "It's better if we lie down.
Pull that beanbag over here."

Sammy looked behind him and grabbed a large beanbag chair, dragging it over
to Arthur, who pulled it next to another one.  It had taken all of Sammy's
strength and both hands to pull the chair over, but Arthur adjusted its
location with one arm.  Sammy noticed the other boy's strength, which
didn't show on his slender body.  That would have to be the reason Arthur
didn't get beaten up much, as obnoxious as he was.  For his part, Sammy was
pretty much safe since he stayed away from people and rode the bus home.

The combined beanbags looked very inviting, and Sammy jumped on top of
them.  "Wait," Arthur said, motioning for Sammy to get up.  "We'll stick to
them like that."  The treehouse owner took an old quilt that was sitting in
a corner and tossed it over the beanbags.  Sammy helped adjust the quilt so
that it covered the bags.  "Okay, now," Arthur said, lying down on the
beanbags.  He moved over to one side, and Sammy lay next to him.  There was
barely room for the both of them, so they were touching from their
shoulders to their toes.  Sammy was just settling in when Arthur commanded
him, "Get the magazines."  Sammy got up and retrieved them, handing them to
Arthur, and lay down again.

They sat and looked at pictures for a while, Arthur making lewd comments
about each, Sammy asking questions.  "What is a 'cherry'?" he finally
asked.

"Oh," Arthur said, "when a girl gets fucked for the first time, she bleeds
some, so when you fuck a virgin, it's called 'busting her cherry.'"

They looked at more pictures, not talking.  For a while, Arthur held the
magazines, but that got tiring for him, so then Arthur held one half and
Sammy the other, but that didn't work too well since they weren't
coordinated.  Finally, Arthur reached his arm behind Sammy's head, and
Sammy put his head on the other boy's shoulder.  That seemed to work best.

"These are hot, I got to jack off," Arthur announced, without warning.
Sammy sat up a bit and saw what the boy meant - he had his 4-1/2" hard cock
in his fist and was stroking up and down.  Arthur saw him looking.  "You do
it too."

"How?"  Sammy had a little 2-inch hardon himself, not from the pictures but
from the proximity to Arthur.

Arthur was more than willing to demonstrate.  "Here, lick your hand."
Sammy did so.  "More."  The boy again complied.  "Now put your hand over
your cock like this."  Sammy watched as Arthur enclosed his erection in his
fist.  Sammy tried to do the same, but it didn't work too well - his dick
didn't fit all the way up his fist like Arthur's did.  The smaller boy
wound up clutching mostly empty air.

"Wait," Arthur said, pulling Sammy's hand away.  "This is not going to
work."  He sat up and thought for a minute.  "I got it!" he said.

"What?" Sammy replied sheepishly, by now feeling very inadequate, though no
less turned on.

"You can't tell anybody," Arthur warned.

"I won't."

"Okay," the other boy said excitedly, "I can do you like a woman does, you
know, suck you, and you can jack me off!"

"All right," Sammy replied, smiling.  That way his small size wouldn't
matter that much.  He was all for the idea.

Arthur wasted no time.  This, after all, was what he had been after in the
first place.  He had had many younger boys up in his treehouse, but Sammy
was the first one his own age.  In truth, Arthur had no more interest in
pictures of naked women than Sammy did.

Arthur got up and moved around backwards on the makeshift bed, placing his
mouth near Sammy's genitals and his own hard cock at Sammy's shoulder.
Sammy licked his hand again and started to stroke.  Arthur lowered his face
over Sammy's cock and balls and swallowed them in one gulp.

Sammy could hardly keep his mind on his work, and his stroking of Arthur
was erratic.  Not that the other boy minded - he was intent on Sammy's
pretty little cock and balls.  Arthur's tongueing skill betrayed his
experience.  Sammy shuddered, trying to concentrate on moving his hand over
the cock less than a foot away.

Then Sammy felt Arthur's deceptively strong hands reaching under his
bottom, lifting him up.  Sammy became a piece of cake or pizza that Arthur
nibbled from.  Then, suddenly, Sammy lost all control, forgetting about the
other boy's penis entirely, though his hand remained there.

"Oh, man!  Oh!" Sammy moaned, delirium flowing through his body like a
drug.  The boy could not cum, and the feelings, less than orgasm perhaps
but on the verge of it, continued on and on.  Not sexual satisfaction, but
physical exhaustion intervened.  "Wait, stop," he managed to pant out.

Arthur obeyed, reluctant as he was to remove his mouth from a willing boy-
penis.  He set Sammy back down.  "You like that?"

"Yeah, that was, like, a mind-blower."

"Do it to me," Arthur said.

"What?"

"You were supposed to jack me off, but you quit in the middle.  So do it to
me.  What I did."

Sammy wasn't sure he liked the idea, but Arthur's logic was impeccable.  A
debt was owed.  "I don't know how," the boy temporized.

"It's not that hard.  Just open up your mouth and keep your teeth away.
I'll show you something else later if you do."  Sammy still seemed wary.
"Something really good."

That sealed it.  Arthur lay back down the opposite way, and Sammy got up
and crawled next to him.  He looked at the other boy's hard cock from a few
inches away.

"Lick it first," Arthur prompted, "or kiss it then lick it, if you want
to."

Sammy decided he didn't want to kiss it.  He licked it from about the
middle to the end with the tip of his tongue.  It didn't seem to have much
taste.

"That's good.  Lick it some more.  Lick it all over."

Sammy did as he was told.  It became kind of a job, like mowing the lawn.
But he was still conscious of the fact that he was licking a cock.  He
licked it completely, stopping once or twice to work up some more spit.

"Now put the head in your mouth."  Seeing that Sammy did not understand,
Arthur corrected:  "Put the tip of my cock in your mouth.  Keep your teeth
off it."

Sammy did so.  It made him feel small, but in a pleasant sort of way.  He
knew he was making Arthur feel really good.  He licked it a little, even
sucked some, afraid that Arthur would pee in his mouth.

"Oh, that's good.  Just do like that for a while."

Sammy kept licking and sucking.  He got curious, though, wondering what
Arthur's balls, so different from his own, felt like.  He reached out and
felt them.

The response was immediate.  "Oh, yeah, do that.  Don't squeeze too hard."
Arthur sighed.  "Put a little more in your mouth now.  Keep licking."
There was a faint scraping.  "No teeth!" Arthur reminded Sammy.

Arthur kept urging Sammy to take a little more, then a little more cock in
his mouth.  For Sammy, it fit quite well, at least down to the last half-
inch or so; Arthur's penis was no monster.  Sammy was very conscious of
acting in the "feminine" role, judging by the pictures he'd seen, but
Arthur had done it for him already, so it was okay.  Nobody was going to
know anyway.  Arthur was feeling down Sammy's sides, massaging his bottom -
it was not like Sammy was alone here.

"Okay, just," Arthur paused, "stay still and keep your mouth open."

Then came something Sammy didn't expect.  Arthur grabbed his head on both
sides, covering his ears, and held Sammy's head still while he lifted his
hips off the beanbags, thrusting his cock into Sammy's mouth.  For a
moment, Sammy twisted, trying to get away, but Arthur held him firm.
Finally, the smaller boy calmed down and let it happen, making a furrow for
Arthur's cock to plow with his tongue.

It didn't last too long, and Arthur didn't release anything any more than
Sammy had.  Arthur just pushed his hips up so that his cock was completely
in Sammy's mouth, then shook and twisted a bit, after which he relaxed and
let go of Sammy's head.  Sammy rested against Arthur's hip, not tired but
surprised and somewhat confused.  "Come here," Arthur said.

Sammy crawled up to the bigger boy's face.  "Kiss me," Arthur said.

"Why?"

"Just do it," Arthur replied, smiling.

So Sammy kissed Arthur, but it wasn't like any kiss he'd ever given his
mother, since Arthur put his tongue in Sammy's mouth, again holding his
head so that he couldn't get away.  Finally Sammy was released from the
kiss, but not from Arthur's grip, since Arthur had his strong arms around
Sammy's back, holding him close.  "Thanks," Arthur said.

"You're welcome," Sammy answered softly, not really knowing what to say.

Arthur smiled.  "You did a good job.  You suck better than most boys."

Sammy didn't know what to say to that for a moment, but then he came up
with something:  "You suck good too."  That made them even.  Sammy
stretched out his legs and lay down against his new friend.  "Do you do
this with a lot of boys?" he asked.

"Yeah, pretty much," Arthur said proudly, stretching out the arm that was
not around Sammy's shoulders and putting it behind his (Arthur's) head.  He
amended:  "But you're the best."  Arthur said that to every boy, but in
Sammy's case, it just might be true.  This rich kid was definitely the
cutest in the whole sixth grade.  Sure, Sammy was shy about how rich he
was, but everybody knew anyway.

"It's supposed to be boys and girls, though?" Sammy said.  It was stated
like that, as a question.

Arthur propped his head up and looked Sammy in the face.  "It can be boys
and boys or girls and girls," he said, grinning.

Seeing Sammy's dumbfounded look, Arthur retrieved the magazines, fished
through them, and found a couple.  They settled back in their previous
position, with Arthur's arm around the back of Sammy's head.  Arthur leafed
through the magazine, finding a picture of a woman licking another woman's
cunt.  Sammy wanted to see more, but Arthur closed the magazine.  "Two
women can do it," he said.  He picked up the other one from his lap.

"Two men can do it too," Arthur said.  The picture in front of Sammy was
unbelievable.  A young man - about eighteen - was on his hands and knees on
a bed, and an older man was putting his cock into the teenager.  For Sammy,
this was the hottest picture yet, but Arthur again put the magazine down.

"Where does it go when they do it like that?" Sammy asked.

"It goes in his butt."

"In his butt?"  The idea was totally bizarre.  Sammy shifted uncomfortably.
"Doesn't it hurt?"

Arthur had never thought about that.  "Probably at first.  It hurts the
girl when she first gets fucked, but she likes it anyway.  Later it doesn't
hurt.  Maybe it's the same for boys too."  He paused, a thought forming.
"You want to get fucked?" Arthur asked, disbelieving.

"No," Sammy said quickly.

"You sure?" the other boy said, pressing his advantage.

"Arthur!  You up there?" a man's voice called out from below.

"Yeah, Dad," Arthur called back.

"Just checking," the man said.  "Dinner will be in about forty-five
minutes.  Your mom will be working late again."

"Okay," Arthur said.  "Dad?" he called back.

"What, son?"

Arthur got up and walked over to the door of the treehouse, sticking his
head out the burlap-covered door, holding the cloth so that only his face
could be seen.  "I got a friend up here," the boy said in a more normal
voice, now that he could see his father's face.

"Arthur, we told you before ...."

"Dad, he's from my grade at school."

Sammy appeared from the burlap next to his friend.  "Hi."

"His name's 'Sammy,'" Arthur said.

"I go to school with him," Sammy helped.

The man looked at Sammy very warily, making the boy uncomfortable, then
relaxed.  "Sammy, do your parents know you're here?"

"No, Arthur said you would take me home."

That left a hard row for Arthur to hoe, but he did it.  "Dad, can Sammy
stay for supper?" he asked, changing the subject.  Hell, it worked for the
Democrats in the campaign finance scandal.

The man shook his head.  Well, at least his son finally had a friend his
own age.  Arthur's father knew what his son had been doing with younger
boys, but with the eternal optimism of a parent, he thought that Arthur
would grow out of it.  And here was proof, in the flesh.  "Okay, but Sammy?
You have to call your parents right now and tell them where you are."

"Okay, just a minute," Sammy said, diving back behind the burlap, putting
his clothes back on as fast as he could.

"We'll be right down," Arthur added.  The man waved and walked off.  "Whoa,
that was close," the boy said, turning back to Sammy.

"We better get down there," Sammy answered.

"Yeah, right," Arthur assented.

The boys got dressed and went down into the kitchen.  Horace agreed to
Sammy eating over at Arthur's house with no trouble.  The man had very much
looked forward to seeing Sammy that evening and had worried when the boy
wasn't home to greet him.  The two men talked briefly, saying little, but
it was agreed that Arthur's dad would take Sammy home.  Horace gave him the
address.

They had sloppy joes, Hamburger Helper.  It did indeed take about 3/4 of an
hour to cook, what with browning the meat beforehand.  Arthur's dad, Mr.
Fishbein, was Jewish and a bus driver for Greyhound.  He didn't get home
much, Arthur said, but now he was home and father and son showed their
affection by arguing.  It took a long time for Sammy to figure out what was
going on, but when Arthur smiled at him between trading barbs with his dad,
Sammy decided it was all right.

What bothered Sammy more was that Arthur kept feeling his leg under the
table, and Sammy couldn't really respond since Arthur was wearing jeans.
Sammy kept pushing the other boy's hand away, but it always came back.
Arthur really had a one-track mind.  Sammy was not averse to doing it
again with him, but he wanted to call, "time out!"

Then it turned out that Mr. Fishbein was the same.  He got out a large
folded piece of paper and handed it to his son.  When Arthur unfolded it,
it was yet another bikini-clad babe.  "Thanks, Dad," Arthur answered, and
they exchanged kisses (on the cheek).  Arthur showed the picture to Sammy,
who agreed that it was nice.

Dinner was done just in time.  Sammy finally gave up on keeping Arthur's
hands out of his lap, but both boys were soon using both hands to eat.  It
was pretty good food.  Sammy ate fast, which only meant that he got served
another burger.

When the meal was over, the boys washed up in the kitchen sink.  Sammy
noticed that Mr. Fishbein was standing behind his son, feeling his bottom.
Arthur ignored it.

The man took Sammy home.  Mr. Fishbein talked a lot, mostly about how bad
the other drivers were.  He was very funny, and Sammy laughed a lot.  The
man liked to pat Sammy's leg, but the boy didn't think anything of it.

Horace asked his son if he'd had a good time.  Sammy said he had.  As they
walked in the front door, Horace told Sammy it was time for his bath.  The
boy didn't argue, just went to the bathroom to get it done.

Horace had thought a long time, sorting things out.  It was not hard for
him to get away - he spent most of his time in his high-rise office in the
city, alone, reviewing plans and financial statements.  What *was* hard for
Horace was to find someone to be close to.  Everyone seemed willing to tell
him anything to make him happy, but little of it was true.

Except that everything Sammy said was always true.  That was the closer.
Horace knew how he felt about Sammy.  The question was whether the boy felt
the same.  Sammy could be trusted to tell his dad if he didn't want what
the man wanted, at least if Horace made it clear that the choice was
Sammy's to be made.  Sammy never lied, not if he was asked a question point
blank.  And if his stepson didn't want the kind of relationship Horace
wanted, well, Horace would work with that.  Perhaps the best thing in that
case was to send Sammy off to a boarding school.  It might hurt the boy
some, but he would certainly get into Harvard.  Next year, Sammy would be
of an age to apply to the better boarding schools in New England, wearing
the traditional application uniform of gray slacks, blue blazer, white
shirt, and red tie.  With Horace's money, admission would not be a problem.
But no matter what Sammy decided, Horace Rath was not about to abandon him.
The boy would inherit all his wealth, and anything else the man had to
give.

So now was the time for the test, only Horace felt that he was the one
being tested.  And, in fact, he was.  It was a question of whether his
stepson considered him worthy of carnal love.  The man had some reason to
believe that Sammy would, but it was the boy's decision to make.  Horace
walked into the room where his wife slept, zonked out as usual, and
stripped to his boxer shorts.  Then he walked back down the hall to the
bathroom where Sammy was bathing.

Horace opened the unlocked door and walked in (Sammy, like other children,
was of course forbidden to lock the door to the room he was in, in case
there were an emergency).

"Dad?  Is that you?" the boy called out from behind the textured glass
door.

"Yeah, it's me.  Your mom's and my bathroom is clogged up.  Mind if I use
your toilet?"

"Go ahead, it's fine with me," Sammy replied.  He stopped washing and
started looking.  He had never seen his stepfather's naked dick before.
Unfortunately, the glass offered no more than a vague shape.

Horace heard the silence with satisfaction.  He pulled out his dick and
managed a respectable piss, being sure to hold it with his right hand so
that Sammy would be able to look, if he cared to, through the glass.
Horace was too nervous to get hard; it was like the first time he had asked
a girl for a date.  When he was done, he flushed the toilet and washed his
hands as usual.  Then he turned back and opened the glass door.

Sammy, who had been sitting there, completely silent, listening and
watching, was suddenly exposed.  Instinctively, he covered his little cock,
which was fully erect.

"How's it going?" Horace asked, his voice seeming strange, even to himself.
There was no bubble bath, and Sammy was laid out in all his glory.  The
man's cock began to respond.

"'S okay," Sammy said.

Then Horace saw the flaw in his plan.  He didn't know what to say!  Here he
was, one of the finest wheeler-dealers on the West Coast, but he was
speechless before this beautiful boy.  "Want me to wash your back?" the man
finally said.

"Sure," Sammy said, pulling his knees out of the water, leaning forward,
holding his feet.  This was much better than Arthur.  This was a man Sammy
loved.

Horace knelt down, found the Ivory soap floating in the tub :-), and soaped
his hands with it.  This was too good to be true - he was finally going to
touch his stepson's beautiful naked body.  If Horace had died at that
moment, he would have considered it worthwhile.

But he didn't die.  He actually reached out, feeling Sammy's thin little
shoulders, and massaged them.  His hands moved further down, eliciting a
giggle and a slight squirm from Sammy as he washed the boy's hairless
underarms.  Horace went all over the part of Sammy's back that was above
water, then went back, turning harmless washing into a very erotic massage. 
Reluctantly, he pulled away.  "All done," he said.

Sammy dove back under the water in a great splash.  Horace's boxers were
completely soaked, showing his sizeable boner as if he were wearing
nothing.  The floor beneath the man's knees was coated as well.

Rinsed off to his satisfaction, Sammy sat back up.  He saw what he had done
to his dad.  "Oh, sorry," he said.

"No problem," Horace said cheerfully.  "Since I'm all wet anyway, why don't
I get in with you?"

The moment of truth, but it took Sammy only milliseconds to reply, "Sure,
come on."  The boy was somewhat ashamed of his eagerness, adding, "The
water is dirty from me."

Not one to refuse "yes" as an answer, Horace quickly peeled off his shorts
and walked in, stepping carefully to avoid Sammy's legs.  The boy pulled
them up to make a place for his dad.  Horace's hard cock seemed huge to
Sammy, who stared at it.  It didn't even fully submerge in the water, as
Sammy's own hardon did; instead, it poked out against the man's hairy
belly.  "You're not that dirty.  Anyway, I just have to wash off some sweat
from this afternoon."

Sammy watched from the other end of the tub while Horace washed out his
armpits, then his neck, then his face.  It was very hard to remain still.
Here was the man Sammy worshipped above every other person on earth, or in
heaven, and all the boy wanted to do was jump up and fall into his arms.
Decorum prevented it.  It was Horace's fault, had he known - he was the one
who had started insisting on good manners from Sammy.  The eleven-year-old
was not put off in the least by his stepfather's large and highly-visible
erection, after he got used to seeing it uncovered; by now, it only
signified the man's love for him.  Beneath the waterline, Horace could not
see that his infatuation was returned in full.

When Horace started to wash his arms, still strong from his days as an
oarsman in college (he was on a crew rowing team), Sammy jumped up.  "Let
me," he said.  Horace assented.

Sammy knelt between Horace's legs, washing his arms.  The man was amused at
Sammy's feeble effort to lift his large arms (though Horace did help some),
but the man was more infatuated with the movement of Sammy's little naked
body as the boy worked with utmost seriousness at making his stepdad clean.

All Horace wanted to do was grab that lovely boy, hold him tight, and kiss
him all over.  Again decorum intervened.  Horace did not want to impose
himself on Sammy.  Finally, Horace's arms were clean.

"You want me to wash your back?" Sammy volunteered, now sitting on one of
his stepfather's thighs in the narrow tub.

"That's okay, Sammy," Horace said, rubbing the boy's damp head.  "Did you
wash your hair?"

"Yeah, I did that first," Sammy replied proudly.

"Well, it's time for us to get out then," the man responded, standing up.
Sammy went to stand up too at the same time, but he was too fast about it
and slipped.  Horace caught him.  "Be careful in here, a lot of accidents
happen in the tub," the man said.

"Yes, sir," Sammy said, using the honorific he habitually reserved for when
he was in trouble.

"It's all right," Horace replied, hugging the boy's head against his chest.
The magnate was somewhat surprised when Sammy grabbed him tightly about the
middle.  The man didn't know what to say - he just smoothed Sammy's damp
head.  There was no doubt that Sammy loved him, Horace thought, but the
depth of it amazed him.  It was evidently far beyond anything that anyone
had felt for Horace before, including his own father and mother.  For that
matter, it was beyond anything Horace himself could remember having felt.
Sammy's love was total and complete, and it made the man somewhat ashamed
that he could not reciprocate such love, for though he loved Sammy, he
could never match this depth of feeling - Horace was too old and cynical
for that.  But he could give the outward signs, the money and preferments,
and he fully planned to do so.  "I'll get out first," the man said, his
voice breaking.

Horace got out of the tub and dried off, avoiding Sammy's adoring eyes,
knowing that he did not deserve that look.  The man wrapped his towel
around himself, then took another from below the sink and held it out.
"Okay, your turn," he said.

Sammy happily stepped out onto the bathroom rug, putting his hands over his
head as if he were under arrest.  He wanted Horace to dry him off, and the
man readily complied.  It was, in a way, a long, brisk embrace as Horace
dried his son's arms, his fingers, his belly and back, his groin and
precious little bottom, and his legs.  The feet were somewhat awkward, but
they managed it, Sammy steadying himself on his dad's shoulder.

When Sammy was dried off, Horace handed him the towel, and the boy wound it
around his waist in imitation of his stepfather.  For a moment, they stood
there, man and boy, loving each other, but neither was hard.  They were
father and son, not because they were supposed to be, but because they
wanted to be.  Sammy looked up at Horace, trusting the man with his life,
and Horace undertook the responsibility of protecting that life.  It was a
very meaningful moment for Horace, though perhaps less so for Sammy, since
he had always felt that way.  Yet both of them felt more.

"Let's get our jammies on," the man said, breaking the silence.  "There's a
good monster movie on Cinemax tonight."  He looked at his watch.  "In about
ten minutes."

"You don't wear jammies," Sammy replied snidely.

"How do you know?  You've just never seen me in them," Horace said.

"Okay," the boy answered, smiling.  "What about Mom?"

Oh, yeah, Veronica, the man thought.  It was time to give her a bath and
change her sheets.  "I'll take care of that," Horace said, wanting to spare
Sammy the sight of his mother as she was now.  "You just go watch the start
of the movie and tell me what I missed."

"Let me help," Sammy replied.  "I used to take care of her all the time.  I
know she's sicker now, but I want to help."

"Sammy, you ..." don't want to see her now, Horace began, but did not
finish.  An extra pair of hands would certainly be helpful, and perhaps it
would be good for Sammy to get back with his mother again.  Against his
better judgement, Horace agreed.

It was indeed against the man's better judgement.  Veronica was lying,
completely zonked out, in her own piss and shit, on top of the vinyl sheet
that Horace had placed on the bed.  It was evident just from looking at her
that she was not long for this world.  Sammy struggled with tears, and
Horace had to tell the boy twice to get him to do something.  Sammy would
do it, but he kept muttering, "Mom? Mom?" in a low voice.

Horace knew what was happening, knew what a mistake he'd made, but it
seemed impossible to send Sammy away now.  The boy was not going anywhere,
determined to do anything to make his mother better.  Sammy ran the water,
and they bathed her in the tub.  Horace did most of the work, of course,
but Sammy held her head the whole time so that she would be okay if she
woke up.  For the man, it was routine, but for Sammy, it was traumatic.
The boy knew his mother was dying and began to cry, though he tried to hide
it and did whatever Horace told him.  What was worse, there didn't seem to
be any words of comfort for Horace to offer the boy who held the emaciated
body of his mother in his arms.

Horace left Veronica in the tub as he usually did while he remade the bed,
only this time, Sammy continued to hold her head.  The water was not deep
enough to drown the unconscious woman should she slip down, but Sammy held
her face to his chest, rocking her like a baby, crying and saying, "Momma,
please wake up."  Horace could hear the boy from the next room, and for the
first time he really felt how wrong it was for a kid to have a mother like
this, a mother who only lived for her next fix, who cared nothing for her
child, or for herself.  Horace Rath had always pitied himself because his
mother had always been away, flitting about the social circuit, leaving him
with a nanny, but this was far worse.  Sammy was watching his mother, a
woman who had loved him once, who perhaps in her own way still did, die.

Horace went back into the bathroom and picked his wife up.  Sammy dried her
off, no longer bothering to hide his tears.  The man carried the woman back
into the bedroom, which smelled badly in spite of the clean sheets.  He
told Sammy to open the windows.  Horace laid the woman on top of the clean
fitted sheet, then put a clean top sheet and blanket over her.  Sammy lay
on top of the blanket, hugging his mother about the neck, naked - somehow
his towel had been lost.

Reluctantly, Horace picked the boy up, detaching him from his mother's
neck, and held Sammy in his arms.  Sammy began to cry in earnest, dampening
his stepfather's shoulder and neck.  And Horace's eyes were none too clear
either.

They were not going to watch that monster movie, and they weren't going to
have sex either.  Horace carried Sammy back to his room and laid the boy in
his bed, then got in next to him.  The man held Sammy, face to face, until
the shuddering sobs ceased.

"It's all right, son," Horace said, lying through his teeth, but it was a
virtuous lie.  "It's going to be all right."

"She's gonna die, isn't she?" Sammy said, not looking up from his
stepfather's chest.

"It's in God's hands," the man said, though he had no particular faith.

Sammy started in on another crying fit, and Horace held him.  He had the
words to tell a competitor he was screwed, but Horace did not have the
words to give this boy comfort.

"She could get better," Sammy said.  "If you give her more medicine, she
can get better."

"Sammy, I give her all the medicine I can," Horace replied.  "Whether she
gets better is up to God, and up to her."  He would never tell the boy what
had really killed his mother.

"You could take her to better doctors, you could make her get well.  You
have lots of money."

"I did," Horace said.  He wondered whether Sammy was right, whether the
right residential program might break Veronica's addiction.  But Horace had
tried that already.  Sammy's mother had gone away on "vacations" twice
before, only to escape.  The second time, it had taken the aid of a private
investigator to find her again.  Now Horace knew that she would never quit,
and that she would die.  "I got the best doctors there are, they can't cure
your mom."

"You're lying!" Sammy shouted, crying harder.  "You're lying!" he repeated,
the words coming from the depth of his soul.  "She's going to get better!
She is!  You'll see!"

Horace, by now, was crying as hard as Sammy.  "I wish she could, Sammy, I
really wish."  And, at the moment, those words were true.

What was worst was that Sammy could see the truth in those words, could
read the truth in his dad's face.  Horace had really done everything he
could, and if Horace couldn't do it, it couldn't be done.  The man watched
as the bottom fell out of Sammy's world.  Sammy just fell back down on the
bed and curled up into a ball, crying so hard that his very life seemed to
fly away with each gasp.

Horace didn't know what to do.  He lay back down himself, wrapping Sammy in
his arms.  "I love her too, Sammy," he said, "you know I do.  Maybe God
wants her back as an angel."  The next part was the most determinedly
honest thing the man ever said.  "But you'll always have me.  I will always
take care of you, no matter what.  I love you, Sammy."

The boy didn't respond, but human beings being what they are, he couldn't
cry forever - he fell asleep.  This time, Horace did not get up and go back
to his wife.  He remained with Sammy the whole time, retaining his grasp as
the boy tossed and turned, staying awake the whole time.

He was still there when Sammy woke up, remembered, and started crying
again.  Horace was not going to leave, ever, as long as Sammy needed him.
Sammy fell asleep again.

The following day, they both took off.  Horace assured Sammy that his
mother would be all right, and they went to a park - just a regular park.
They walked for a long time and talked a lot.  Sammy understood, in the
light of day, that his mother was probably going to die of her "disease."
He was also made to understand that Horace would remain with him.

 ----

After that, Horace was more than willing to help Sammy get to sleep at
night.  Veronica would never miss the man in her bed anyway, and Horace
knew the approximate timings of her shots, so there was no problem in
giving them, then going back to Sammy.  As time went on, Horace began to
get aroused again, being next to the boy.  The size of the man's cock made
it unmistakeable, but Sammy never said anything about the hard penis lodged
between his cheeks as he lay in his stepdad's arms.

Children are resilient.  Sammy mourned for his mother for about a week, then
began to return to normal.  The bottom of his world had fallen out, true,
but Horace provided a new floor for the boy to stand on.  Perhaps, in a way,
it was good that Sammy found out in advance that his mother was going to
die, Horace thought.  The boy got his mourning largely over with,
transferring all his affection to his stepfather.

 ----

Arthur, of course, didn't know that Sammy's mother was dying and didn't let
up in the slightest.  He continued to sit next to Sammy in class, making
lewd comments, but drawing little response.  Sammy started to really detest
Arthur but was too wrapped up in his own trouble to tell the other boy to
get lost.

Unsatisfied by Sammy's lack of enthusiasm, Arthur broadened his field of
topics.  Now it was not just which girls would like to suck, or be fucked
by, the two boys, but which boys had big dicks and which would suck Arthur
or Sammy if asked.  Arthur explained that all boys liked to jack off and get
sucked, and it was OK to do things with boys as long as you liked girls too. 
He started to talk about boys fucking each other, but Sammy glared at him
and made him shut up.

Arthur repeatedly asked Sammy to come back to his house and play in the
treehouse again, and Sammy repeatedly put him off.  After about a week,
though, he finally assented.  Arthur said they wouldn't fuck if Sammy didn't
want to, but they could suck each other's dicks again.  Sammy *did* want to
do that again, though he wasn't sure about fucking.  After all, it wouldn't
be fair, would it?  Sammy's dick was so small that Arthur could hardly feel
it, while Arthur's was medium-sized.  When he thought about it, Sammy
figured it would probably fit in his bottom since he had made turds bigger
than what Arthur had between his legs, but still, not being able to do the
same to Arthur made Sammy like the girl in the relationship, and Sammy
considered himself and Arthur to be equals.  So when Arthur talked about
fucking, Sammy disliked it, not because he considered it bad or anything,
but because he felt that Arthur was trying to take advantage of him.

They went back to Arthur's treehouse after school, almost bypassing the
house proper this time, just stopping to get some bologna slices out of the
refrigerator, and a couple cans of soda.

Being back in the treehouse finally brought Sammy out of his depression, as
the excitement he had experienced there came to the fore.  Arthur fished his
magazines out of the tree trunk again, only this time, he just kept one and
put the rest back.  Once more, they pulled together the beanbags and put the
blanket on top.  They both stripped naked, then Arthur lay down, then Sammy. 
Arthur was immediately hard, but Sammy was not.

It had been more or less tacitly decided from last time that the best way
for them to look at magazines was for Arthur to have his arm behind Sammy's
head and hold both sides.  Sammy laid his head on Arthur's shoulder.  They
were going to suck each other, but neither was in a hurry to get it done
and over with.

This magazine was different from the others.  There were no girls in it.
It was all men.  Moreover, unlike the other magazines that they had viewed
last time, Arthur turned every page and let Sammy look as long as he
wanted.  The things Sammy saw were amazing.  It seemed that two guys could
do everything a man and a woman could do, and more.  A boy could suck
another boy, just like a girl could, but two boys could also suck each
other at the same time.  A boy could lick another boy's behind, something
Sammy had not seen in the other magazines but imagined was possible for a
man and woman, but two boys could arrange themselves so that one boy could
suck the other's cock while that boy licked out his bottom.  One picture
was particularly amazing.  There was a teenage boy being taken three ways
by three older men.  One man has his cock in the boy's mouth; one in the
boy's butt; and one was sucking the boy's dick.

After that, sucking Arthur's cock seemed pretty harmless and tame.  Sammy
did it pretty much the same way as before, but this time he did more of the
work, moving his head up and down rather than Arthur shoving into him.  It
was better that way.  Arthur favored Sammy with his dry release.

Then it was Sammy's turn.  Arthur remained on his back, motioning Sammy to
come forward.  As before, Arthur took Sammy's balls and cock into his mouth
in one gulp.

After that, Arthur didn't have any further interest in sex, but Sammy wanted
to look at the magazine again, so they did.  He carefully examined the
pictures that showed an older man with a younger one (there were no models
Sammy's age in there, of course).  In some of them, the younger man was
doing things to the older man, or making him do things, like where the older
man was sucking the younger one's dick.  That just seemed silly to Sammy. 
It was like - like a kid telling his stepfather what to do.  The other way
around was more natural.  Some of the pictures were almost the same as the
ones with the men and women, like where the young man was on his back on the
bed with his feet up, and the older man was putting his dick in.  Sammy
wondered if boys could do that, have a man put his dick in them, or whether
it would hurt the boys so they would have to go to the hospital or
something.

The idea, though, was intriguing.  If Horace did that with Sammy, then that
would show that Sammy was just as important to the man as his mother, since
that was what Horace did with Veronica.  Or almost.  It looked almost the
same, only boys didn't have vaginas so the man had to put his dick in the
boy's bottom.  Sammy remembered back to the feeling of Horace's hard cock
resting between his pajama-clad cheeks, moving slowly, softly, up and down,
as if the man were afraid to let the boy know it was there.  Sammy got hard
again, and Arthur sucked him off again, but Sammy didn't reciprocate, and
Arthur didn't seem to mind.

 ----

That evening, there was a scary movie on TV.  Every time there was a scary
movie on, Sammy would want to see it, and Horace would say it was too scary,
and Sammy would say it was not, and they would go back and forth until Sammy
won (well, there were a couple times he lost, but almost always he got to
see the movie).  Scary movies were the best, since whenever Sammy got scared
(sitting in Horace's lap as he usually did), the man would hug him really
tight.  Sammy really thought it was silly to think that he would get
nightmares from any movie, when he would be sleeping with his stepfather
behind him.  OK, maybe Sammy was acting like a baby, but if he didn't mind,
and Horace didn't mind, so what?

After the movie, Sammy was sent up to bed while Horace cleaned up after
Veronica.  As familiar as the two had become, Sammy was very nervous.  He
took extra long in the bathroom, washing his face as well as his privates
and his behind - this after a very thorough bath earlier in the evening. 
What if Horace didn't want to do it?  No, he *did* want to, *would* want to,
that was for sure.  It had to be.  Only he, Sammy, had to start it because
his dad never would.  But once it got started, Horace would take over
because he was the man and Sammy was the boy.  That was the way it was
supposed to be, and Horace was a smart man so he would know that.  And after
they did it, Sammy would be really equal with his mother; he would know that
his stepdad loved him just as much.  Only Horace was shy so Sammy had to
start it.

Sammy waited in his bed, shivering with excitement.  Several long minutes
later, Horace, his work as a nurse complete, walked into Sammy's room,
wearing his boxers as usual, and got in bed behind his stepson.  Sammy
grabbed the man's arm and pulled his across his chest, then kissed the
thumb.  As always, he was both thrilled and contented to be embraced so. 
This time, though, he was going to return the favor.

Carefully, Sammy reached behind, between their two bodies, and found
Horace's cock.  He did no more than squeeze it, letting the man know he knew
it was there, then withdrew his hand.  Horace gasped; he couldn't believe
this was happening, but he certainly didn't want to stop it!

Sammy waited for Horace to take the initiative, and Horace waited for Sammy. 
A Mexican standoff.  Finally, Sammy grew impatient.  He reached down and
lowered his pajama bottoms, then pushed his bottom back against his
stepfather's rock-hard cock, squeezing it lightly with his gluteus muscles.

Horace took the hint.  He started to move his cock up and down between
Sammy's soft, warm buttcheeks, steadily gaining in speed and force.  Horace
turned them so that Sammy was underneath, then reached down and gripped the
boy's hips, pressing those precious cheeks together around his cock, and
humped for all he was worth, grunting loudly.  Sammy panted in time to the
thrusts, his own little cock driven roughly but pleasantly into the
mattress.

And then, it came.  The greatest wave of pure pleasure Horace had ever
experienced washed over him with a shiver as his cock deposited the proof of
his love all over his stepson's back.  "OH ... oh ... oh ... I love you,
Sammy," he said, unnecessarily, since Sammy knew that, now.

Then Horace moved off his son, and Sammy turned over and received a kiss, a
real lovers' kiss, for the first time.  After that, Sammy curled up into a
ball, and Horace curled up behind him, nearly surrounding the boy, and Sammy
slept in true contentment.

 ----

Horace continued to hump Sammy every night, between the cheeks, or between
the thighs, but he refused to penetrate the boy's bottom no matter how
eagerly it was offered.  For Sammy, this became the new mountain to climb,
getting his stepfather to finally put his cock inside.  Always Horace would
say that it would hurt the boy too much and refuse, and while Sammy clearly
knew now that he was loved, never knew it more keenly than when he was
forcefully taken between the cheeks like the first time, it was, in a way,
an insult that his stepfather did not think he was strong enough to endure a
good, manly butt-fuck.

Even so, their relationship deepened.  They swam together in the pool
(Horace had hitherto considered a pool merely something he had to have as a
rich man, rather than something to use).  They went to a virtual reality
place in a nearby shopping mall and killed each other with lasers over and
over again, laughing each time.

And Sammy found something else he could do for his stepfather.  Sucking cock
was different with Horace than with a boy like Arthur, Sammy discovered, as
his mouth was suddenly filled with a rather thick but mostly tasteless
substance.  He should have expected it, of course, but somehow he didn't put
what happened on his back or between his legs together with what would
happen in his mouth.  Anyway, that first time he got a little sick, but
after that he got used to the white paste, even looking forward to its
emergence.  Sammy never asked Horace to reciprocate, but he did, and while
Sammy thought it strange, he enjoyed it immensely.

Sucking, he found, gave Sammy a certain influence over his stepfather. 
Horace enjoyed having Sammy suck him more than anything, more even than
humping the 11-year-old's pretty behind.  Hence, Sammy was able to exact a
price.  One time when the boy was asking for the 33rd time whether Horace
would put his penis in his bottom, Horace said (of course) that he wouldn't,
but that if he put his finger in Sammy's behind that would loosen it up over
time so that the man's cock would fit.  So Sammy insisted that if he was
going to suck Horace, then Horace would have to put his finger in Sammy to
make him looser.

That brought Sammy to new heights.  Still years away from the penile orgasm
of a mature man, the boy discovered that his bottom could bring him nearer
to perfect bliss than he had previously thought possible.  As the man's fat
finger sawed in and out of his behind, Sammy found it difficult to
concentrate on moving his tongue over the cock in his mouth.  Each time the
finger shoved into him, it brought a wave of giddy, girlish delight to the
boy.  He became more determined than ever to get himself fucked, not by just
anybody of course, but by his stepfather, the man he loved.

 ----

Sammy took to listening to Arthur with benign amusement, confident that he,
Sammy, knew more about sex than Arthur could even imagine, with all his
magazines.  Once, when he knew his stepfather would be working late, Sammy
agreed to go to Arthur's house for a mutual suck session.  But it was only
charity; Sammy now felt sorry for Arthur, that he didn't have a man to love
him like Horace did Sammy.

When Sammy finally succeeded in getting his stepfather to fuck him, it was a
surprise.  Martina's trip had caused Horace to decide that Sammy should
learn to cook, so the boy had to prepare dinner two days a week, Tuesday and
Thursday.  Fridays they went out to eat, generally to some fast-food place,
though occasionally to a better restaurant at Horace's insistence.  The rest
of the time, Horace cooked or brought home take-out.

At any rate, one Tuesday Sammy was making a stew.  It was oppressively hot
in the house, the air conditioning on the blink, all the windows open. 
Sammy was dressed in a pair of undershorts, it being too hot to wear
anything else.  He didn't hear his stepfather getting home.

Sammy opened the refrigerator, luxuriating in the cool air for a minute,
then bent over to retrieve some near-gone celery from the vegetable bin.  We
have to get rid of this, he was thinking, when suddenly he was grabbed from
behind.  Hot, sweaty hands were feeling his upraised bottom through the
cotton of his briefs.  Startled, Sammy tried to stand, but a strong hand
pushed him back down again.

"Okay, you little boy-slut, you want to be fucked, you get fucked," a hoarse
voice said behind him.  Sammy recognized the voice as Horace's and relaxed;
Horace frequently talked that way in bed when he was aroused.  Sammy
belatedly realized that this was his chance and reached back to pull his
briefs down, but Horace had already ripped them down, now lubricating the
boy's hole with precum from the end of his dick.  Almost unconsciously,
Sammy pushed back against it, trying to make it enter his behind.

"Oh, you want it, don't you, you little slut?" the man demanded, in the same
hoarse voice.  He stroked the boy's hips as he continued to work the head of
his cock around the upraised hole.

"Yes, put it in me," Sammy said from below, his voice high-pitched, small,
and weak.

"Put what where?" the man demanded.

"Put your cock in my bottom," Sammy said, his voice shaking with excitement.

Without further ado, Horace pushed forward, letting the well-lubricated head
of his cock pop past the boy's sphincter.  He held his position.

Sammy swayed on his feet, nearly ready to drop.  It was in.  It was really
in.  Not all the way yet, only a little, but it was there.  His bottom
clenched around it, twitching impatiently, then spasming painfully.  He was
finally getting fucked.

They stood for a long time, waiting for the spasms to stop, waiting for
Sammy's bottom to accept what his mind had embraced long before.  Then
Horace began to move inward.  Each millimeter brought new sensations to them
both, new levels of pleasure.  It was slow, very slow, very deliberate, very
planned; Horace restrained himself well.  Sammy's underwear fell from his
shaking knees to gather around his ankles.  He stepped out of them and
kicked them away.  He wanted to be naked.

At long last, it was all inside.  Sammy was fully impaled on his dad's cock. 
My dad, the boy thought, he's my real dad now.

The boy did not get long to enjoy the sensation.  Horace picked him up by
the thighs, carrying Sammy, the man's cock embedded in the boy's behind. 
Pulling Sammy's legs to his chest, the man carried him doubled-up, resting
on man-cock.

"You want a horsey-ride, Sammy?" Horace asked.  He then began to skip about
the room, then out of it, up the stairs, galloping like a horse, his cock
thrusting in and out of the boy with each step.  "This is the kind of
horsey-ride horny little boy-sluts like you like, isn't it?"

Sammy was far past responding.  He felt so giddy, feeling the man's cock
moving in an out of him, that he was near to laughing.  At the same time,
however, he felt the shivers of an approaching anal orgasm.  Sammy felt
helpless and complete, happy to be helpless before the man who now owned
him.

Horace took them to Sammy's bedroom and fucked him proper, on his back, bent
in two.  It was fast, forceful, and over with far too soon.

The stew, of course, was ruined.  Fortunately, they had some leftover
lasagna in the freezer.

 ----

Now, with Veronica nearly gone, it was a nightly habit, as addictive
perhaps as the woman's heroin, though hopefully less destructive.  The only
thing Horace feared was that his true relationship with his son would be
discovered - not for his own sake, but for Sammy's.

The man did not fear prison.  He considered that he had already been given
enough joy in his life to last him for the rest of it; he would be able to
subsist on reflections of the past.  But for Sammy it would be different.
People would tell the boy that what he had willingly done and enjoyed was a
hideous evil, an unforgiveable wrong perpetrated against him.  He would be
scarred for life, not from the act, but from the public knowledge of it.
They would induce his candor with false sympathy, then twist him against
himself, making him deny his own happiness.  It had to be prevented, but
only Sammy could do that - though Horace did his best to make him strong.

The man left his wife, no, this stranger lying happily at death's door, and
walked quietly out of the room and down the hall.  He opened the door to
Sammy's room.  The boy turned to him, his eyes sparkling in the moonlight.
Sammy moved over on his bed, making room for his dad. Horace dropped his
boxer shorts on the floor and got in beside the boy.

They kissed deeply, exchanging tongues.  Horace placed his hand on Sammy's
shoulder and ran it down the boy's side.  Sammy did not have his pajama
bottoms on.  He reached under his bed to get the jar of Vaseline, his
little behind already twitching in the man's hand in anticipation of being
filled.  Horace took the jar and set it on the nightstand.  There was time
for that later; perhaps many times.  Right now the man just wanted to be
close.  They had all night.  Tomorrow was not a school day.