“Here, let me help you get that tree to your car.”

I flared up a bit. Anyone who looked at me knew I wouldn’t need help in getting a boxed fake Christmas tree out to my car. I hadn’t even thought of buying a tree when I’d come into the Martinsburg, West Virginia, Best Buy. I’d been looking for a new laptop. But there were all those tree ornaments my dad had sent me when he was moving out the house and they had trees on deep sale here as close as it was to Christmas. Then I looked at the boy standing, looking hopefully at the exit door, and I thought better of it. He looked really good to me. Young, the way I liked them, probably fourteen, the way I really liked them, and Italian sultry. It wasn’t the first time I’d noticed him while I was walking through the store. It almost was like he’d been following me and he certainly had been giving me looks. I’d seen him before. I just couldn’t remember where or when. And there he was, beside the cash register, when I punched out. He was the bagboy. He looked awfully young to be working in a store—and too delicious to be a bagboy.

“It’s started snowing,” he said. “We wouldn’t want anyone to slip on their way to their car.”

“Sure,” I said. “It’s the black Jeep Wrangler over—”

“I know which one it is,” he said. And then he continued. “Sorry, my dad takes his Jeep to your garage for work. I’ve seen you and your Jeep there. It’s a great car. A rugged vehicle for a rugged man.”

“Ah, I thought you looked familiar,” I said. “Well, you take one end of the box and I’ll take the other.” I really didn’t need his help. I was 220 pounds of sculpted muscle. I worked out several hours a day. I didn’t build this body just to look great. But he was really a cute kid. I wasn’t in a hurry to see the back of him. Well, I would be happy to see the back of him, of course, but not clothed, going back in the Best Buy. He had a narrow waist but a bubble butt—one of those buttocks with a good curve on it but deep hollows below his hips. Just the curves my hands liked to glide over.

“I’ve seen you in the gym too. Apollo’s Gym over on Winchester Avenue.”

“Ah, yes, I own a slice of that gym,” I said. “You seem a little young to be going to the gym.”

“I’m fourteen,” he said. Bingo, I thought. “I’ve been going to the gym with a bunch of other guys two Saturday mornings a month for a while,” he continued. “I saw you there once on another evening. We talk about you Saturday mornings—on whether we’ll see you there that day. You’re our model we’re working toward.”

I couldn’t help but be flattered “Fourteen. You’re a bit too young to be working here, aren’t you?” I asked. I wasn’t sure he really was fourteen—but he did look it: small, slender, narrow waisted, really nice, supple body from what I could see with him dressed. My urges were kicking in. It always was a risk. But I’d found it always was worth it—at least so far.

“My dad manages this Best Buy. It’s the Christmas rush season. He needs the help. He doesn’t pay me, buy, hey, he’s my dad. I get room and board.”

“Well, then,” I said, reaching for my wallet. “You helped me get the tree to the car. How much—?”

“I don’t want your money,” he said. The look he gave me told me he might want something else from me. I had a lot of experience with fourteen-year-old boys who were contemplating their sexuality and weren’t sure what they wanted. I sometimes helped them decide. This was a kid who looked like he knew what he wanted, and he was looking at me. What I didn’t usually get was a kid who was this decisive—and forward.

“Do you ever go to the gym on Saturday mornings?” he asked.

“Sometimes I do. I certainly can.”

“I’m going to go to the gym this Saturday morning. My parents are going over to Winchester to visit my aunt’s family, but I’m not going. I’m riding my bike to the gym.”

“Are you now?” I asked. “That’s good to know. Tell me...”

“Benny,” he said. “It’s short for Benito. My family’s Italian.”

“Is it? Tell me, Benny. Have you ever been with a man before?” He was being forward and pretty obvious, so no reason I shouldn’t take the shortcut.

“Yes. And Cary, Cary Wilson, he’s a friend of mine.”

I’d fucked Cary Wilson. He was a good lay. And he was fourteen. “You sayin’ you’d go with me?”

“Yes. Cary says you’re the best. He says you have toys.”

“You like toys, Benny?”

“Cary says he likes them when you use them.” He came in close to me at the back of my Jeep. I think he wanted a kiss, right there in the parking lot. But I wasn’t a romantic or one to express myself like in public. What I did was more demonstrable than that, though. I ran my hand under his waistband and went for his hole with my middle finger. Some guys use their middle finger to tell people off. I use it to get cuties like Benny was off. I reached for his hole, getting into his crack, but I didn’t get there. He yelped and then laughed and danced away from me. I watched his bubble butt shimmy as he walked back toward the lights of the Best Buy.

“Maybe some Saturday,” he called back over his shoulder as his body was enveloped by the falling snow.

I was looking forward to getting some of that for myself. But fourteen? My favorite age, but you’ve got to move really slowly on that—at least I always had done so before. It was a real risk. This kid wasn’t set on slow, though.

I’d bought the tree on impulse, but now I had some sort of idea why I did. I went home humming—not thinking of any plan in particular or any path for getting there, but just working toward something as a goal. It was Thursday. I was working a full shift and a half the next day, Friday. Saturday was the day after that. If this place was going to be spruced up, it would be tonight.

It took a good three hours and four beers to get the tree put together in the corner of the living room, by the fireplace, and the lights and ornaments on it that my dad had sent. My dad had sent other boxes too, and I began humming again, for no particular reason, when I thought of what was in one of them. It took several minutes but I found the bearskin rug from the bear my dad shot in Colorado when he was younger than I now was. I laughed, again with whatever I was thinking I was doing at the back of my mind, a little afraid of coming forward, as I spread it out in front of the fireplace. It brought forth memories. My first time. I was fourteen then myself. Then I went outside and brought in several logs of wood and laid a fire in the fireplace for whatever future one might be needed that I quite purposely wasn’t thinking about.

At the master bedroom door, I stopped, turned, and went to the linen closet. I changed the sheets on the master bed and put an extra towel in the master bath. I opened the medicine chest and pulled out a couple of packets of condoms—Trojan Supras, extra thins. I liked it as raw as I could get it.

Returning to the bedroom, I put the condoms in the nightstand drawer, checking to make sure I had lubricant in there too—and a couple of bottles of poppers. I tucked the restraints attached at the four corners under the mattress so they wouldn’t be seen until I needed them—if I found I’d need them. The dildos, the flogger, and the string of tear-drop beads went under the bed. Then I stripped down, took a shower, dried myself off, and went into the guest room. I’d sleep in the bed there for the next two nights. The sheets on the master bed would be clean and fresh on Saturday.

For no particular reason, I was thinking. Except maybe that I thought of it as a ceremony—a sacrifice on an altar.

Then I went to bed in the guest room and then, and only then, I went through the trophy case in my mind, thinking of each and every fourteen-year-old boy I had seduced, played with, mounted, and fucked the shit out of. While I reviewed, I masturbated.

I wasn’t thinking of Benny, not really—certainly not yet. And talk was cheap. It would hardly be fair to include him, even afterward, when thinking in terms of a campaign ending in a ceremony of sacrifice. I’d had to work hard for most of those boys. Benny had just about thrown himself at me. But Benny could just be a tease. When I’d put my hand down his pants, he’d danced away. We’d just have to think about Benny—Benny with the bubble butt and sexy smile. And Saturday. I hadn’t even looked at the calendar to know what I had on for Saturday morning. And I’d bought the tree to put up anyway, because of the Christmas ornaments I now had. And the bearskin rug ... well, the bearskin rug. I laughed a low laugh, deep in my gut. Yeah, the bearskin rug.

When I came to the end of the “accomplished” list and my memories of the bearskin rug and being penetrated and taken for the first time and had shot my load, I closed my eyes and slept, visions of sugarplums not dancing in my head. I actually was dreaming of getting head.

A call to Tony at Apollo’s Gym the next morning verified that a group of boys, a scout troupe, came to the gym every other Saturday morning at 8:00 for a workout and that they were due in this Saturday. I hadn’t really meant to ask him that. I had just routinely called to check out how things were going at a business I had a stake in. Once I had asked, though, I realized that I did plan to go into the gym Saturday morning to see if Benny appeared. I had appointments to interview a couple of mechanics for the garage Saturday morning, and if you didn’t employ a good mechanic quickly, you were likely to lose him to the competition. I grumbled about it, but I called the two guys and rescheduled their interviews.

On the day, I was there at 7:45 so that I could get started into my routine before the boys arrived. I didn’t usually work out at the gym on Saturday mornings. I usually ran in Rosedale Cemetery those mornings when I wanted a hookup, but most Saturday mornings I was in the office at the garage tallying up the week’s receipts and paying bills. If I’d known there were boys to ogle at Apollo’s Gym on Saturday morning I might have made it a routine to come in.

I worked out in just athletic shorts, a jock, and sneakers. Guys liked to see me in the gym, all beefed up and a model of what they were working for. Tony and Garth, the other partners, who were a couple, liked it when I worked out there. They said it was good for business. I wanted to show off well to Benny, so I came in early and worked my muscles up.

A little after 8:00, the scout troupe came in, with two scout masters, but there was no Benny. It wasn’t until 8:30, when he showed up, that I realized why he’d been late. I overheard him talking to one of the scout masters.

“Sorry I’m late, Mr. Bennett. My dad got me here late. I’ll stay on after you and the guys are finished so I can get the whole workout done. My dad won’t pick me up until 10:00.”

He was looking past the scout master and at me while he was talking. A little smile on his face was trying to tell me he had it all figured out. I didn’t know he thought that, if his father was going to be picking him up—not that I needed much time to spike him, but I was hoping to be able to take my time at it—that this was going to work out. He’d told me his parents would be out of town today.

The scout masters kept a tight rein on the boys, a couple of whom were luscious, and they spotted them, with those other guys in the gym, like me, who liked their bait young, floating around and being circumspect in their ogling. At 9:00, the boys, other than Benny, and their leaders were off to the showers, as were a couple of the regular patrons who I knew liked them young and wanted to see more than they had on the gym floor. Benny circled around me as I worked out, making quite evident to other guys that he was interested in me and not them until the troupe had showered and dressed and left the gym. Then Benny pulled off his T-shirt and went to the bench press. He laid down under the barbells and called out to me.

“Sir, could you spot me for a few minutes?”

“Sure,” I said, sauntering over, straddling his legs as he lay back on the bench and reached for the barbell resting in the stand over his shoulders. He started lifting.

“No, you’re pressing up with your legs,” I said for anyone around us to hear. “Take all the weight in your arms and shoulders.” I gripped his thighs in my hand, pressing them down, and slowly gliding up. He was trembling to my touch, but, hovering over him, I made him lift the weight for a while. My fingers went under the hem of his athletic shorts and I touched him on the crease moving into the groin on either side. He was panting and, his grip on the barbell quavering, he set it back in the stand. I held there for a moment and then continued, centering, as Benny took gulps of air and grasped the set barbell set above his head, his knuckles going white.

I touched his cock, which made him lurch, and he moaned. The finger of my right hand went to the head of the cock. He was uncut, and he gasped as I pulled the foreskin back with that hand. The fingers of my other hand touched him on the glans and spread out, as he trembled, and looked at me, his eyes full of surprise and want. He arched his back as I worried his piss slit with my little finger. If others around us were looking, which they surely were, I didn’t give a shit. I was one of the owners of this place and I was marking Benny as my prey, not theirs. He engorged as I played with the cockhead. My right hand moved under his taint, two of my fingers finding his hole and penetrating him. He gasped again and his pelvis went into slow motion, rocking against the fingers of my hands that had possessed him.

Giving a low laugh, I pulled my hands out. “Yes?” I whispered.

“Yes,” he answered through belabored breathing. “It’s what I came for. Fuck me.”

I fucked him for the first time in the shower, following him off the floor a couple of minutes after he left and intercepting him as he, naked and with a towel around his waist, started to enter one of the showers toward the front. I gestured him to a more private area toward the back of the gym locker room area, where the staff shower cubicles were.

I was six-foot-two, 220 pounds, and all sculpted muscle. Benny couldn’t be more than 125 wet, five-foot-four, slender, and lightly muscled but slender of body. I could easily overpower him if that was necessary. It wasn’t necessary.

He was in awe of my musculature. He wanted to worship my body, and I let him as we both stood in the shower cubicle under the running water and soaped each other’s bodies up. I let him do me, gliding his hands all over me and stroking my cock as we stood in a facing embrace. He tried to come up on his toes for a lip lock, but I’m not that kind of guy. Getting that, if not liking it, he let his lips go to my nipples and to tracing the lines of the swirl of tattooing on my pecs as I crouched a bit and frotted our cocks together. When I put my hands on his shoulders and pressed down, he got the message and went down on his knees, taking my cock in his mouth.

Benny gave good head. I’m sure he’d done this before. When I was hard as a rock and panting, I pulled him up and reversed him, hovering over his back and pulling his bubble butt into my crotch to let him feel what I had for him. He started to whimper and moan as I reached down, grasped my rod, and slapped it around on his buttocks. He sensed I was fumbling around with a condom packet I’d brought in with me, but he pushed that away.

“No need, unless you’re worried about me,” he said. “I want you to breed me.” That was too tempting and I was too much into the moment. It would mean a trip to my good friend and fellow honey hunter, the discreet Dr. Curtis, the next week, but what the hell. It’s Christmas. This would be a Christmas present.

He was trembling in my embrace when I covered his mouth with one hand to keep the noise down, palmed his lower belly with the other, and pulled him up, bent over at the waist, into my groin and onto my unsheathed cock. His feet came off the floor and he was completely under my control, bent over and dangling in front of me under the cascading water of the shower.

I had to hold fast on his mouth to muffle his cries as I penetrated and started the stretch. He was really tight, and I was taking him raw with just soapy water as a lubricant, but that was much of the thrill of fucking a small fourteen-year-old, and his moans were telling me he was having a good enough time not to try to struggle away and bolt from the shower. This was really his idea anyway. When I was in and pumping with the combination of thrusting up into him and pulling him up into me rhythmically with my hand palming his belly, he began to relax and just dangle there, feet off the floor, as I pulled him on and off the cock. I was fucking him good and he was fully submissive to me.