“I have a cabin up near Jefferson City, on the Missouri River. I’m going up there the week after next. I thought you might like go with me. I’d give you the time off. Fishing and hiking in the hills and ... you know...”

Yes, Jamie knew what David Meechum, the owner and manager of Meechum’s Hotel in Pleasant Grove, Missouri, meant by the “you know.” He was touching the fourteen-year-old boy on his arm, rubbing the tight weave of the shirt material between a thumb and forefinger and giving the boy a cow-eyes look. Jamie should be flattered that the not-so-old, maybe in his early thirties, good-looking and prosperous hotel owner was showing interest in him. Meechum had bought Jamie the shirt he was wearing so that, Meechum said, Jamie would look presentable when he worked in the hotel. The hotel owner would have bought so much more for Jamie, if he boy had been willing to play him for it. Jamie hadn’t made up his mind about “things” yet, though, and he wasn’t going to let life get complicated until he did. Until then he wasn’t going to reject future possibilities with Meechum, though.

Meechum wasn’t the only one in town who gave Jamie clothes and such. He wasn’t even the only one who gave Jamie cow eyes. The priest at the Catholic church, where Jamie sometimes was an altar boy, gave Jamie those looks too—and he touched Jamie whenever he had a chance—not all that intimately yet, though. Jamie wouldn’t have let it go that far without making a decision what he was going to be in life. He didn’t want to cut off all possibility with the priest until then because he felt sorry for how the man had pined for him. If Jamie ultimately decided to go with men, he’d give the priest some satisfaction, but not much or more than a time or two.

David Meechum would be a good catch for anyone. Meechum’s Hotel and restaurant was the most prosperous business in town, living mostly on commercial salesman needing someplace to stop between Kansas City, in Kansas, and Springfield, in Missouri. And Meechum, as well as being the best-looking man in his age bracket in town, was also the richest one. He had the first car owned by a Pleasant Grove resident, a Chevrolet series 490, bought the previous year, in 1914 for the noted price of $490. And he’d also gone all the way to Baltimore that year to attend the National Star-Spangled Banner Centennial Celebration. He’d brought the trappings of the flag and celebration back to Pleasant Grove and that was the theme of the hotel’s decorations this year. He also wasn’t married, which meant all of the young women in the area had set their caps for him. But he didn’t seem to be interested in any of them in a matrimonial way.

Jamie suspected he knew why. And that was because, at fourteen and just now becoming attuned to his developing sexuality, Jamie was discovering that he, like Meechum, seemed more interested in men than in women.

“There’s a bell,” Jamie said, looking up at the board behind the reception desk. “Room 210. Should I go up and see what they want?”

“Yes, why don’t you do that,” Meechum said, sighing and going back behind the reception desk. Jamie was a sometime worker at the hotel doing whatever odd jobs needed to be done and that could be done by a smallish sort of early teen with a slim, if always in motion, body. He had a mop of blond hair, watery blue eyes, and an infectious smile that won hotel guests over even when they were irked about something. Jamie always was ready to help someone out.

Meechum had been conquered by Jamie’s ready smile and he sincerely wished the boy would help him out with something.

Jamie was known around the town as the “wild child.” Some men, like Meechum—and some women too, if truth were to be known—would like that to have meant that the boy took risks and was ready to do the unconventional or downright scandalous, but it had more to do with his nature. He was a child of nature. If he had parents or a nuclear family, they were long gone. He was a child of the forest surrounding the town. He was here and there—helping out here, attending a meal with a family there, sleeping who knew where? He had no grounding and yet he was a free spirit, personally grounded, not flighty in the least.

There were many who would like to take hold of him and possess everything he was, but, as yet, none had. Jamie was aware of this interest in mastering him, of course, and felt he was on the cusp of making choices. But he wasn’t sure that going to a cabin alone with David Meechum in two weeks’ time was a good choice ... yet. The boy did have urges and desires building, though. He knew it would only be a matter of time before he committed to momentous decisions.

At the hotel, when he wasn’t someplace else helping someone raise a roof or plant a garden, he was delivery boy, bus boy in the dining room, and sometimes, despite his young age, a waiter in the hotel’s bar.

It was in the hotel bar that he first encountered a particularly handsome—as handsome as David Meechum, nearly the same age as Meechum, and a much more glib talker than Meechum was—salesman traveling from some larger town to some other larger town by the name of Stanley. He had a last name and told Jamie what it was, but Jamie didn’t remember. Jamie was focused on how worldly the man seemed and what smooth talker he was. As Jamie was taking a beer to him in the bar one night, the salesman and the bartender were talking about a small caravan of gypsies that had been parked in a clearing in the woods outside of town, near the lake, for a week.

“I’m happy they tend to stay in the countryside,” Stanley said. “They always seem to have the same wares in their caravan wagons that I’m selling and at a cheaper price.”

“That’s because they stole it off whoever you sold it to the last time,” the barkeep said, with a snort. “The longer those people stay someplace, the more that goes missing in the area. And not just things, either. You best nail down your young’uns, girls and boys alike, when there’s a gypsy caravan in town. They steal even those.”

“Still, they are carefree folk and free spirited,” Stanley said. “Sometimes I wish I could just hide in one of their wagons and roam the world with them.”

He then started talking about what he’d seen in the world, and Jamie was mesmerized. The salesman seemed to like that he was entertaining to Jamie and he focused what he said about what he seen and done in life on what seemed to make Jamie’s eyes light up.

At dinner that night in the hotel restaurant, Jamie was bussing the tables and Stanley was there. David Meechum stopped at the salesman’s table and they exchanged talk about the nation’s capital, Washington, D.C., which Meechum had visited the previous year when he went to Baltimore and Stanley claimed to have visited several times.

Jamie kept an ear tuned to their conversation while he worked and he sighed more than once at the thought of traveling all the way to the coast and seeing the nation’s capital. When Meechum moved on to greet and chat with other guests in the room, Stanley called Jamie over to him.

“Here, this is for you ... did you say your name was Jamie?” He held out two one-dollar bills, which was about as much money rubbing together as Jamie had ever seen before.

“What’s that for?” Jamie asked, wide eyed.

“I meant to leave you a tip in the bar and didn’t, and I’d like you to bring a pitcher of ice water up to my room tonight at about 8:00 if you’re still on duty then.”

“I go off at 8:00,” Jamie said, “But I’d be happy to bring you your water before I leave.”

“Perfect,” Stanley said, giving Jamie a dazzling smile.

Jamie had been tightly closing his eyes. He opened them and turned his gaze toward the sound of running water. It wasn’t water though. From where Jamie lay on his back in the bed in room 214 at Meechum’s Hotel, he had a straight line of sight into the adjoining bathroom. Meechum’s Hotel was about as fancy as you could get in a small Missouri town. Two rooms shared a bath. Room 212 wasn’t occupied tonight, so Stanley had a bath all to himself.

Stanley was standing in front of the toilet, pissing an arc into the toilet. He turned his face to Jamie and saw the boy watching him. He smiled and said, “That was really nice. You take it like a virgin. I’ll be just a few more minutes and we’ll do it again. You’re a clever boy. You know that men who like to fuck boys want to take it like they are virgins.”

Jamie groaned. “Yes,” he answered. But he’d taken it like a virgin because that was what he’d been. He’d dreamed about doing it—having a man do it to him. Lately he’d obsessed about it. Well, he didn’t have to obsess about it anymore—or worry about whether that was what he wanted and whether he could and would do it Yep, that salesman was one smooth talker. But Jamie had to admit that he had been ripe for this. This was what he wanted.

His legs felt numb. They were still spread and bent, held in position hooked on the man’s hips and shoulders forever, it seemed, as the man had filled, stretched, and moved inside him, obliterating his virginity. His feet were flat on the bed. He felt a bit sore, but the man had taken his time. He’d greased himself and Jamie’s hole real well after he’d slobbered all over and in the crease of Jamie’s buttocks, and he’d penetrated him slowly, waiting for Jamie to adjust to him and stop groaning and panting real hard before going deeper and then again before starting to pump him. He’d laid between Jamie’s legs, an arm encircling Jamie’s waist and holding Jamie close in and relatively still, taking most of his own weight on his knees and an elbow, as he fucked the boy. He’d pulled his cock out almost to the surface and creamed Jamie just inside his entrance when he’d come and then slid inside again through the cum and continued fucking Jamie until he’d gone flaccid.

Jamie had just lain there and taken it, belabored but yielding, cooperative, and easily manipulated into the positions the man wanted him in for greater, easier access by his shaft and to assuage the man’s lust. He had assumed it would happen some day, and he was glad it was by someone who was good-looking, experienced, relatively patient, and who didn’t live in this town. It was a good, uncomplicated way for a boy to check out whether he wanted to be a submissive and lie down and open his legs for men.

He now realized he did. Stanley was also showing him that men would pay to cover him. There was a ten-dollar bill on the bureau in he hotel room that was all for Jaime as long as he gave the man anything he wanted tonight.

Stanley leaned over the toilet, one hand palming the wall behind the commode and the other stroking his cock, working to regain his erection.

Jamie watched him, trying to determine if the man would be considered to be hung or not. It made a difference on how big a man Jamie could consider he’d taken—whether taking the next man would be harder than having taken Stanley. And Stanley had told him it would be easier to take with each successive time Stanley fucked him. He did say he’d fuck Jamie as often as he could get it up tonight; he didn’t often get a lay as malleable as Jamie. There was no question that Jamie would want to do it again. There had been pleasure and he had gotten focused attention. It almost was like Stanley was worshiping his body while he fucked him. He hadn’t been close to anyone before now—certainly not as intimate as having someone holding him close and being inside him—being lost in desire for him.

Stanley returned to the bed, still stroking his cock, and sat down beside Jamie’s waist. He leaned down and took Jamie’s lips with his and, at the insistence of Stanley’s tongue, Jamie parted his lips and let the man take possession of his mouth. Stanley moved his free hand between Jamie’s thighs and penetrated him with a finger. Jamie arched his back and moaned, moving a hand to his own cock, which was aching for attention.

Coming out of the kiss, Stanley kept his face hovering close over Jamie’s and said, “Fuck yourself on the finger. Rock your hips on it. Suck it in deeper. I’d like you more open for the next one.”

Groaning, Jamie rocked his pelvis on the finger, which went lower and found something inside Jamie’s passage to rub that nearly sent him over the moon.

“Have you done this before?” Stanley asked.

“No. I think I’m gonna come,” Jamie whispered. “I can’t help it.”

“Fine. Come whenever you want or have to.” Stanley kept rubbing Jamie’s prostate with the tip of his finger and Jamie kept rocking his pelvis on the finger and stroking his cock. Stanley took possession of the boy’s mouth again, swabbing his inner cheeks with his tongue until Jamie instinctively captured and started sucking on the tongue inside his mouth. He tensed, jerked, ejaculated, and collapsed back on the bed.

“Good. Now me again.” Stanley turned Jamie onto his belly and climbed up on the bed and over the boy. He wrapped an arm around Jamie’s belly and lifted his hindquarters up to where Jamie was on his knees, but his chest was pressed into the mattress. The salesman went up on his feet, crouched over Jamie’s tail, mounted the boy’s ass, slid his cock inside, and began to pump. One of Stanley’s hands went around Jamie’s torso to palm one of his pecs, and the man thrumbed and rolled Jamie’s nipple between thumb and forefinger. The thumb of the other hand entered Jamie’s mouth and the boy sucked on it while he was being fucked. Later he would be presented Stanley’s post-coital cock to be sucked and cleaned with his mouth.

Jamie groaned and whimpered but he was climbing the levels of arousal, lust, release, experience, and satisfaction.

As yet, Jamie had only been fucked twice in his life, both times this evening, the first time stripped him of his anal virginity. The second time was the start of him learning techniques of exploring sexual pleasure. The smooth-talking salesman had made a sale.

Jamie lay there on the hotel room bed early the next morning and watched the salesman brush his teeth and shave, then dress, and then take his suitcase and leave the room. Occasionally he’d turn his head toward the boy and smile. He didn’t say anything, though. He’d fucked Jamie a third time, in the middle of the night after putting them into a sixty-nine position and guiding Jamie to suck him while he was giving Jamie head. Then he’d lain back on the bed, lifted Jamie up by the waist and set him down on the cock, and Jamie, under his guidance, had ridden the shaft.

Jamie hadn’t resisted. He hadn’t initiated anything, but he hadn’t known how to do anything. He’d had it in his imagination, but he didn’t have the details down of how to do it in real life. The salesman taught him how to take it, at least. Jamie had anticipated the pain part, if only in Stanley. He hadn’t anticipated the pleasure of being fused with another and of the passion of the act—of the acts. He hadn’t had any idea of the variety of positions in which he could be filled with a cock, and Stanley had told him they hadn’t even begun to exploit all of the possibilities. Stanley was athletic in the fuck and had demanded the same from Jamie; would most other men be as well? While they were fucking, there was nothing else in the world for Jamie. He concentrated on a man wanting him, wanting him enough to be inside him, wanting him enough to release his seed inside him.