Steve couldn’t know the answers to those questions. Ronny wasn’t here to explain what he wanted. He’d been a great lay–Big Russell had said he would be. But how willing was he?
There was one way Steve thought he could find out. The cabin was hopelessly undersupplied even in easily prepared foods. Two days later Steve came back to the cabin with enough groceries to stock the cabin for a week. He was a cook. In his view, everything could be solved by having a good meal. As a peace offering he’d bring Ronny what he needed anyway. He’d fix him a meal and either they’d part with an understanding that this was the ending, or they’d fuck.
This wasn’t to be, though. When he came back to the cabin, it was empty. Nothing seemed to have been moved at all since he’d been there before. The bedding was in the same disarray they’d put it in in their fucking and that Steve had left it in when taking the gas to his car.
Steve put the food supplies away, but then he just left and drove back to Lewisburg. Perhaps he knew by Ronny abandoning his own cabin that the limits had been overstepped–that Ronny had chosen to abandon the prison way of living. Maybe Steve had miscalculated in thinking Ronny would be comfortable returning to the master-slave mode of prison and might have been more amenable to a more equal sharing of decisions and moves.
Well, it was done now.
On his way back out of the forest to return to Lewisburg, Steve saw a track cleared enough for the truck going down to the riverbank. He’d heard the fishing was good on this stretch of the Greenbrier River, and, not wanting to waste his trip, he drove down to the river. He’d brought his fishing gear, thinking that maybe he and Ronny could fish and drink and fuck and then fish and drink and fuck again. Without Ronny, all he managed was the fishing and drinking, but that was good and he returned to Lewisburg in better spirits for side trip and with some fresh catch.
Shit, that little fucker was premium catch, though, he thought. Ronny had been all as a lay that Big Russell said he’d be–yielding but giving, and such a beautiful little body. Too bad it didn’t work out.
* * * *
Two weeks went by before the two encountered each other again, and even then it appeared that one of them didn’t realize it. Ronny and Big Steve worked just across the street from each other in Lewisburg, though, so it was inevitable that they would come together again.
It happened one evening near dusk when Steve was on kitchen duty at Sloan’s Steakhouse and Ronny had finished his shift across the street at the fast-food joint. Steve had come out of the kitchen in the alleyway at the side of the steakhouse to empty the grease from a large cast-iron skillet into a receptacle near the garbage cans designated for that when Ronny was coming out of the fast-food restaurant and going to his truck. Steve heard raised voice from across the street and looked up to see that two drunks who had some sort of beef, they thought, with Ronny, were accosting him at his truck. They were both bigger than he was.
Steve recognized Ronny mostly, in the twilight, because he first recognized Ronny’s old pickup. When one of the men trapping Ronny against the fender of his truck raised his fist to deliver a blow, Steve bellowed at him, raised the iron skillet, and began advancing across the road. Steve was bigger than either of the assailants and much meaner looking than either. They evaporated into the night. Obviously shaken, rather than looking across the street to realize that it was Big Steve who had protected him, Ronny scrambled into his truck and roared off into the approaching night.
Steve didn’t know whether or not Ronny had seen him. If he had, he was avoiding him–still, in Steve’s mind. He decided that was the end in any hope with hooking up with the smaller, sexy, and delectable man. Ronny obviously didn’t want a relationship as it had been in prison.
Neither of their probation officers would be thrilled at the two socializing with each other–and certainly not fucking around–anyway, he thought. It was a pity, though. Ronny was someone Steve would really get attached to. He might even try to develop into a more equal relationship than the familiar master-slave one.
* * * *
“So, it’s really you who are here.”
Surprised at someone else finding him at what had become his favorite fishing spot on the river, but recognizing the voice, Steve turned to see that Ronny had approached down the track from the road to his cabin to the riverbank.
“Yeah, I’ve found the fishing good here,” Steve answered. He modulated his voice. He didn’t want to scare the young man away. He still had the hots for him.
“I saw your truck parked up on the road. At least I thought it was yours. I wondered if you were out of gas again.”
Steve gave a little laugh. “I don’t plan on making that mistake again. But the track here has really gotten choked up. I wasn’t sure whether I should try to drive down to here, so I left the truck up on the road. Sorry. I hope you can get by. I can move it if you need more clearance.”
“No problem getting by,” Ronny said. “If it was you, I wanted to thank you for stocking my kitchen. I assume that was you.”
“Yeah. It was the least I could do,” Steve said. “I had hoped I maybe would be seeing you there again.” He reached over and secured his fishing pole between two rocks. He wasn’t sure why he wanted his hands free and to have freedom of movement just now, but being stuck holding the pole was making him feel contained, pinned down. What he really wanted to do was to embrace Ronny and smother him with attention. He was going hard just having the young guy here and remembering what they’d done when they first met. And thinking about that made him apologize for that. “I’m sorry if I came on too strong before–that I didn’t even give you a chance to definitely agree. Well, you know.”
He couldn’t look at Ronny. He was looking out into the river, watching fish leap up out of the water. They hadn’t been doing that when he was able to fully concentrate on the fishing.
“You did just right. It’s what I’d come to need–in the pen, with Big Russell. I needed to have the decision, the responsibility, taken from me, like the big guys in the pen did, to be able to do it–to enjoy it and get off from it. And then I needed it, big, inside me. I needed to be taken. And then I came to rely on giving it that way to get full pleasure out of it myself. I hadn’t been able to get fully into it since then. The guys outside of prison don’t understand the power control that I came to need. You did me just great.”
“I wanted to consume you–and I wanted to protect you,” Steve said, still not looking at Ronny, who was still somewhere behind him. But he was still there; that was what was important. He hadn’t retreated.
Ronny laughed. “What you needed was to conquer–to fuck the shit out of me.”
“Yeah, that, I admit. It that’s what you want, though, it’s guys like me–who have had that in prison–who are going to do that for you. That’s the role in sex with a guy that I had become used to. I needed to use you fully. I need to conquer and I need the other guy to surrender. Master and slave–and both need to want the role assigned to them.”