Going Walkabout

When they moved back down the hill and disappeared on the path in a stand of trees, I remained for a few minutes at the top of the hill. I heard them, though, as I was coming down off the heights. They were in the bushes in the stand of trees I'd seen them enter. Their shorts and briefs were off. One was on his back, his hands encasing the waist of the other, as the young man on top rode the bottom's cock, rising and falling vigorously, and calling out the passion-pleasure of their coupling. The one on the bottom was hitting the other one in the chest with his fist and reached up and slapped the man on top sharply, first one way and then the other. This didn't seem to faze the young man on top. He laughed and rode the cock all that more vigorously.

I stood there, within their sight, if they wished to acknowledge my presence, but they were so into each other that they weren't bothering to look. I envied them their pleasure and didn't rush to walk away from observing them.

While I watched, I became aware that I wasn't the only one observing. Another man, higher on the path, who apparently had been somewhere near the top of Cleeve Hill when I'd been there, although I hadn't seen him before, was also watching from a short distance. He wasn't just looking at the fucking pair, though, he was looking at me too.

He was a fit-looking man of forty or so. He was too far away from me to see well, but he appeared to be handsome enough, robust, and to have a head of sandy-red hair. He looked vaguely familiar to me, but from this distance I could not see him well enough to consider where I might have seen him before. He was expensively dressed in tweeds and was carrying a walking stick and wore sturdy hiking boots. I surmised that he had been on the Cotswold northern section hike as well as the young men had been and, perhaps, had been following them with the hope of observing them doing what they were doing now.

His presence broke the spell of the moment, and I turned back to the path down toward Bishop Cleeve and Clyde's farm. As I walked, though, I had the sensation of someone following me, and when I turned my head, I saw that the man hadn't remained, watching the fucking pair, but was behind me. He followed me all of the way down from Cleeve Hill and along the narrow road bordered by hedgerows back to Clyde's farm. When I turned into the farm, I held up by a stone fence where I could observe the road without being seen. The man passed by without turning into the farm road. He had come a little closer to me than he had been on the hill and following me down, and I sustained the thought that I'd seen him somewhere before, but I still couldn't place him. He did register as handsome, though, with rugged good looks. I was aroused by older, fit men, and I had to admit that he aroused me.

Seeing the hikers on Cleeve Hill and how open and free they appeared to be in their sexuality put the bug in my mind to distance myself from the situation in Bishops Cleeve for a while to make some near-term plans. Clyde might throw me out, but I wasn't sure I wanted to stay. He wasn't a long-term solution for me. I didn't really want to live on a farm and work there. I didn't really want Clyde and his simplistic, simply animal relief approach to sex. If I was going to go with men, I wanted it to have passion and testing in it. The dominating hairy sailor, with his belt lashings, and even the gaunt man who followed him with his rowing of my legs to the beat of his vigorous thrusts were more satisfying than anything I got from Clyde.

The vet was still there, and the two were still in the cow shed when I arrived back at the farmhouse. The sounds of the cow's pained mooing from the shed indicated that they'd be there for some time still. I needed to break out, to get someplace where I could think.

I decided to take the Cotswolds Way northern section hike myself for a few days. There was no time of the year better to do it than this. I changed to hiking clothes, packed a rucksack, left a note for Clyde that I'd gone walkabout for a few days, and left the farm, cutting across country to pick up the northern section pathway, headed northeast toward Winchcombe, some five miles away, where I would stop for lunch.

Already, as I walked away from Bishops Cleeve, I was feeling more freedom and less stress.

* * * *

I had walked something more than a mile toward Winchcombe from Bishops Cleeve, enjoying the warm, sunny July morning and beginning to organize my thoughts on my current situation and opportunities when I became aware of him—the red-haired, robust man in his forties—following me at a distance. He was still in hiking tweeds, with a walking stick and sturdy boots, but now he had a rucksack on his back. He, like me, was out for a long walkabout and was on the same pathway as I was, but he continued to hang back at a distance.

Oddly enough, I didn't feel threatened by his hovering presence. He seemed to be an attractive, fit man. I assessed all men I encountered for their sexual possibility, having done so secretly for years, and this man was intriguing. He wasn't coming close enough to me to be threatening, and if attacking me was his intent, he'd had plenty of opportunity in the last mile of walk to have done so.

His presence there behind me cut into the feeling that I was alone. I lessened my pace, assuming he would catch up with me—and possibly just pass on beyond me, nodding his head, to show that he was just hiking the Cotswold Way northern sector, as I was. But when my pace lessened, so did his. He kept at nearly the same distance behind me no matter my pace, so I picked it up again, wanting to visit Sudley Castle, the resting place of Henry VIII's last queen, Catherine Parr, before lunching in Winchcombe.

One thing the man's hovering presence did for me was to change my thinking from my situation and what to do about it to the man, and it was while thinking about him and I fancied that my thought of having seen him before was that, now that I focused on it, I thought he'd been in the Dove and the Fox the previous day when the sailor had taking me to his room above. But even so—and the more I thought about it the more I convinced myself it was so—there seemed to something more than that in my memory about such a man.

If he had seen the sailor take me upstairs at the pub, maybe he knew what I'd do for a man and was following me for that reason. Maybe he wanted to cover me as well, which would be quite all right with me. It made me consider him all the more as a possible dominator. The thought added pleasuring thoughts as I walked—and he followed.

I did tour Sudley Castle and visit Catherine Parr's tomb when circling around east of Winchcombe. I looked for him as I walked through the castle gardens, but I didn't see him. It was almost a disappointment not to have done so. Nor was he in sight when I stopped at the Cock of the Walk pub in the town for lunch.

He was there again, though, a good distance behind me, walking at whatever pace I set, when I exited the town to the northeast and stopped to visit the Hailes Abbey ruins. He didn't come into the ruins—at least not anywhere within my sight. It was becoming quite a mystery for me, and that—the thought of a mysterious stranger—was what suddenly lit the bulb over my head. That was what a story I'd written was titled—"The Mysterious Stranger"—and it was about a similar situation. A man pops into a young man's thoughts, first as a possible threat and then a conundrum and, finally, a yearning, as the older man appears to the younger one, constantly hovering there but not coming forward. In the end, the young man is obsessing about the older one—who he was and what he wanted.

I didn't wish to obsess over this man, although he'd taken over my thoughts when I had intended for this walkabout to be a catalyst for planning my future. But the mystery of who he was Sedley solved in a flash even if why he was following me wasn't solved. Thinking of the story I'd written surfaced the reading at the Bishops Cleeve bookstore I'd gone to Sedley relieve the tedium of watching my father die. The reading had been done by a novelist, Forrest Adams, who was on a writing sabbatical in the village. He was a handsome, red-haired, robust man in his forties. It occurred to me that he was the man who was now following me on the northern sector trail. Our eyes had met at the reading and some form of mutual recognition had gone between us. At the time, I thought it was related to writing, and I had built u[ the courage to talk to him briefly afterward and ask him if he'd read something of mine and comment on it. He said he would. That something was the "The Mysterious Stranger" short story. I gave him a copy, but I hadn't heard from him subsequently.

And here he was, following me along the Cotswold Way hiking trail.

I thought back on the story, wondering if somehow in the writing of it I had revealed my preferences for men. I couldn't decide whether or not I had.

I looked for him when I left the abbey and set out on the final, six-mile hike of the day to the lodging I'd picked out for the night between Wood Stanway and Stanton. Sure enough, he'd picked up on me again outside the abbey and accompanied me all the way to the countryside inn and pub, the Dancing Boar. Seeing him again gave me a sense of both comfort and arousal. I was entering a submissive mode that I took on when I was with older men who covered me. I relaxed and gave over control and decision making to the man, leaving it to him to enfold, embrace, and possess and use me.

He was coming for me. Surely he was coming for me.

Now that I knew who he was and that our eyes had met in some sort of recognition, my heart was racing, I was feeling randy, and I couldn't think of anything beyond him—what he looked like in the nude, what he would do in lovemaking in bed. How big was he built? I thought of that without embarrassment. I wanted to be possessed—to be stretched. It was almost a feeling of loss that swept over me as I walked through Stanway and couldn't see him behind me. Was he only going this far for the night? When I had checked, there didn't seem to be any more inns in the area for the Cotswold Way hikers than the one I had picked out, the Dancing Boar, but maybe he'd known of one in Stanway.

It was fretting for naught. When I reached the Dancing Boar, he already was there, in the pub, sitting near the fireplace, with a mug of ale before him. Doing my best not to acknowledge or to go directly to him, I went to the bar and engaged a room for the night and ordered a mug of ale. What if I was wrong? What if his trailing behind me and being here at the same inn where I would be spending the night was all happenstance? How embarrassed would I be if I approached him only to find out he had no intentions toward me at all—that he wasn't even the novelist Forrest Adams?

But none of that was the case. "The man over there has already paid for your drink," the barkeep said. "He did that when he signed in for a room. He said you would be along shortly, and here you are."

I turned and nodded to Adams, my being sure now that he was Forrest Adams and we'd met and had knowing eye contact before, and he nodded back. I drank my ale, picked up my rucksack, and went out into the hallway and to the foot of the stairs. I had only mounted two stairs when I felt him there, close behind me and then beside me. He put a hand possessively on one of my butt cheeks as we mounted the stairs. I felt his hot breath on my throat, and he whispered in my ear, "I know you go under men. I want to fuck you. Will you give it to me?"

"Yes," I answered.

* * * *

The first time we fucked was immediately upon entering his room, with little preparation other than our day of buildup on the hiking. We went at each other gloriously like wild animals in rut. We'd done all the foreplay we needed to do on the hike through the Cotswolds. We didn't even fully undress, and the coupling was so insistent that we both came quickly. I was on my back on the foot of the bed, boots and shorts and briefs off, but with T-shirt still on, the front hem pulled over my head, with my chest exposed to his nipping teeth.

Forrest was standing on the floor between my spread legs, trousers unbelted and unbuckled, fly faired open, briefs waistband hook under his balls, hiking boots still on, and shirt on, but unbuttoned and flared. He had his arms embracing my chest tightly, and he was inside me, grunting and thrusting. My heels were pressed into his calves and my hands had run under the material of his trousers and briefs behind and were clutching, squeezing, and pulling his butt checks into me in the rhythm of the wild fuck.

He was licking and chewing on my nipples as I arched my back and head and cried out, "Yes, yes. Screw me! Fuck the hell out of me! You're a stud!"

He was a stud. And he did just that—fucked the hell out of me—to a quick ejaculation from his both.

He said nothing as we fucked and other than exclamations of being taken hard and gloriously. I said nothing either. Nothing had been said after his statement of intent and mine of acquiescence on the stairs. Nothing was said by Forrest in the second fuck either. We weren't going to do anything to explain any of this until we'd both been drained of animal lust.

After the first time, he pulled off and away from me and stood five feet from the foot of the bed, his eyes focused on me, as I moved my body fully up onto the bed on my back. I pulled the T-shirt over my head and lay flat, propping my head up on two pillows so I could see him clearly at the foot of the bed, a hand gripping his still half-hard, thick cock, the cock haloed in a bush of red, curly hair. Panting hard, giving him what I knew was a wild "fuck me again" look, I took another pillow and stuffed it under the small of my back, lifting and rolling up my pelvis. I spread and bent my legs, placing my feet flat on the mattress. With my thighs spread I was giving him a great shot of my hole and the effect he'd already had there. The hole was dilated and his cum was dribbling out of it. I lifted and fondled my balls with one hand while stroking my cock up again with the other and giving him another "fuck me again" look.

There was no question I was inviting him to have his way with me again.

We were eyeing each other, both still panting from the feverish coupling, cooling down and revving up again. He stood at the end of the bed, pulling off his boots, trousers, briefs, and shirt. He posed in a bit of a crouch, cupping his balls and the root of his reengorging cock. He was solid, compact, and muscular. His complexion was ruddy, and he was hirsute, his hair changing color as it descended his body. The curly mop on top being sandy-red, the swirls of curls around his pecs and on the line running down the split of his chest to his pubes a redder tone, and his bush flaming red.

We held pose for a few minutes, each of us working ourselves stiff again, the eyes of each of us on the erection of the other. Then, slowly, he moved toward the bed as I arched my back, moaned, and whispered, "Yes, yes. Fuck me again. Use me. Make me feel it."

He didn't do so right away. Reaching the foot of the bed, he leaned over, ran his arms under my knees, and pulled me toward him. His head dipped, and I gasped and groaned as he took my cock in his mouth and gave me head. Periodically, as I writhed under him, murmuring, "Fuck. Shit. Yes. Shit. Fuck," and held his head between my hands, his mouth went to my balls, sucking them in and driving me wild from the vibration of his humming and sucking. The mouth moved lower and he ate my ass out, as I rocked against him, took my cock in hand again, and stroked myself to another ejaculation.

My coming prompted him to move up onto the bed on his knees and to turn me over onto my stomach. I raised my arms and grasped the rungs of the brass headboard overhead as he ran an arm under my belly, raised me up on my knees, mounted me from above and behind, penetrated, and fucked me to his own second release.

We stretched out alongside each other on the bed then, exploring each other's bodies with our hands and our mouths, until we both slept. When I woke it was dark outside. Forrest was gone. The bedside light was on and under it, laying on the nightstand, were the manuscript of the "The Mysterious Stranger" I'd given him to read and a wad of pound notes.

The manuscript was annotated in red ink. It was heavily marked up, giving me the initial misgiving that he had found it to be crap. But that wasn't the case. There were a lot of technical notes, yes, but some of the comments were praise and all of them were helpful. On the cover, he'd written the words, "needing," "sensual," "seeking" and the phrases "strong writing" and "shows great promise."

And the greatest compliment of all was that he had sought me out and given me what he thought the short story indicated that I needed. I couldn't say he was wrong.

He wasn't in the pub for supper and he didn't appear to me that evening. I could have sought his room out, but I was afraid that maybe he hadn't stayed in the inn—that he had gotten what he wanted from me and that, perhaps, it wasn't as good as he had expected it to be.

Regardless, he had taken great care of me sexually and, almost as important, had left me notes on my manuscript that gave me valuable guidance and hope for a desired future I'd been unsure of. I was far less unsure now. I went to sleep with a bit of regret that Forrest Adams wasn't in bed beside me, but grateful for what he had given me—even if he had now walked out of my life again.

* * * *

I looked around for Adams both inside and outside of the inn when I came down the next morning for breakfast, but I didn't see him. When I checked with the barkeep, he opened the reservations book and said that Adams had already breakfasted and left. I felt deflated and sad. It was a new sensation for me. Never before had I felt the need to be with someone that I did now. I'd always been very independent. I realized now that I'd also always been lonely.

It had been a pleasant encounter and he'd returned my manuscript, giving me hope and direction on my writing. One comment explicitly explained it all to me.

"You need the experience you write about," it said. "You almost have it, but not quite. You need to be fucked by a man who will take you totally."

He had given me the fuck he said I needed. He'd taught me something in this way of delivering his critique. I'd just written words in the story, only half way being able to convey what I was trying to express and how. By putting experience to it in being my man of mystery, following me here, and silently taking me as he had, he had brought the emotions I'd had in writing the story vividly to life. I thanked him for that. I couldn't expect him to hang around for more.

But the sex had been really, really good.

After breakfast and having my coffee thermos refilled, I started off in the increasingly warm day for the next stop on the Cotswold Way northern section route, the village of Broadway, some six miles distant.

A mile and a half into the walk, Forrest Adams fell into step beside me and we were walking together. My emotions lifted. I'd been afraid that he was finished with me, having told me what he thought I needed to further develop my writing and then having provided it. I was afraid that had been the end to it. Whereas before I set the pace and he had been meeting my pace some distance behind me, we both recognized now that he was master and I was slave and I deferred to him on the pace.

"Are you all right?" he asked, initiating the conversation as we walked. We were on an old Roman road running between rolling hills of wheat fields and meadows dotted with sheep, near the village of Liverton. "Were you all right with that?"