Sweat and Cedar on the Blue Ridge

The French Broad ran the color of sweet tea, and the August air sat on me like a soaked shirt. I was twenty-nine, soft through the middle, dark-haired from collar to the waistband of my cutoffs, and I had driven down from Columbus to watch my brother's dog while he took his kids to the coast. By the second night the ridge cabin felt too quiet. I walked the put-in path just to hear something besides the fan. A guy about my age was cinching a canoe to a truck rack, shirtless, thick in the gut and the thighs, a line of fur disappearing into canvas shorts. He caught me looking and held the look.

He dragged a forearm across his mouth and tipped his chin at a cooler.
- You lost, or just overdressed for the river?
- Both. I'm Eli. Dog-sitting up the hill and bored of the dog.
- Reed. Beer's cold if you want one. I'm done fighting this boat.

I took the bottle. Condensation ran over my wrist and into the hair on my forearm. We sat on the tailgate while the light went copper in the oaks, his knee finding mine and staying there like it had a right to. Reed was thirty-one and built tables out of storm-fallen walnut in a shop behind his place. I did roofing estimates in Columbus and hated every clipboard I carried. The hair on his thigh shone where the sun caught it. When I set the empty bottle in the truck bed, his hand covered my knee, heavy and warm and sure of itself.

- You got anywhere you need to be tonight?
- Dog's fed. I've got nowhere.
- Then come up with me. Fan barely works. Porch faces nothing but trees. I want you where I can get my hands on you.
- Yeah. I want that too. Been wanting it since you looked at me and didn't quit.

His place was silvered cedar on a gravel spur off Town Mountain Road, the porch light moth-busy, the trees close enough to touch. Crickets took the dark the second he cut the engine. Inside it smelled like sawdust, coffee, and the sun still held in his skin. He shut the door with his heel. I stepped into him before either of us could get clever. His mouth was warm and beer-bitter. His beard scraped my lip, then my throat, then the soft place under my jaw, and the scrape went straight to my cock. I pushed both hands under the roll of his stomach and he leaned into the hold, heavy, trusting me with the give of himself.

We lost our shirts between the door and the bed. His chest was furred and damp, nipples dark in the hair, and mine was the same, the cotton peeled off sticky. When our bellies met the heat doubled, hair dragging on hair, my cock thickening against the crease of his hip. He walked me backward until my calves hit the mattress. Canvas and cutoffs came down together. His cock was thick and flushed, already wet at the tip, resting heavy against the curve of his gut, and the sight of it made my mouth water. I went to my knees on the rag rug. The floor was cool under my shins. His thighs were hot. I took him in slow, lips stretched around the head, tongue working the salt along the underside, one hand braced on the soft shelf of his stomach while the other cupped his balls and felt them draw tight. He tasted like clean sweat and river air. I worked him deeper, nose buried in the fur at his base, until his fingers knotted in my hair and his breath went ragged over my head.

He hauled me up by the arms and put me on my back across the unmade bed. The fan ticked and moved almost nothing. Sweat gathered in the fold under my chest and ran toward my navel. He kissed down through the hair, closed his mouth over a nipple and sucked until I arched, then kept going, open-mouthed over my stomach, tongue pressing into the crease where belly met thigh. When he took my cock I made a sound I didn't know I had in me. He was unhurried and filthy, wet and deep, a broad hand spreading me, thumb stroking the skin behind my balls until I was leaking onto his tongue. He reached into the nightstand without looking away. Lube came out cool, then warmed as his fingers worked it into me, one and then two, patient, twisting, opening me while his mouth stayed on my cock. I spread my knees and took the stretch, bright and good, my hole clutching at his fingers every time he curled them and found the place that made my thighs jump.

He slicked himself and knelt between my thighs, cock heavy in his fist, shining. He pushed in slow. The head breached and I bore down and took him, inch by thick inch, until his belly rested on mine and we were stuck together with sweat and hair and the obscene fullness of him. He held still. I could feel his pulse inside me, a thick throb that matched the one in my throat. Then he moved, short strokes that dragged over that deep spot until my vision went white at the edges, then longer ones, the wet sound of it loud in the small room, the bed frame ticking the cedar wall. I hooked my heels behind his calves and pulled him deeper. His gut slapped softly against mine. His chest hair rubbed my nipples raw in the way I wanted. I reached between us and stroked myself in the mess of sweat and lube, matching him, watching his face go intent and wrecked above me.

We stayed locked while the crickets came back, his hand heavy on my belly. When he slipped out I felt the heat he'd left. Town Mountain was dark trees and the night we had taken.