Cressley used his harsh voice. “Pick up your loincloth. Go to your room and wait.”
Beau’s lips quivered. His throat worked, gathering for a yowl.
Quiggs clamped a palm over Beau’s mouth. “Shut up before the patrol hears us.”
Beau pulled Quiggs’s hand away with surprising strength. “Bad things happen in shower up here. My Quiggs neeeeeeds me.” He placed Quiggs’s hand back over his mouth. His throat worked closer to a yowl.
Cressley caved. “He can wait naked outside in the hall with me. It’s not like the actives care about his scrawny ass.”
Quiggs glared down at Beau. “You must promise to stay in the hall the whole time. You can’t watch.”
Beau pulled Quiggs’s hand away. “Why not?”
“Because I don’t want you watching me.”
Beau cocked his lopsided head. “Why not? I see you naked all the time. You see all of me.”
“Because… because other cadets will be in there… um… soaping up. And when they do, things… um… happen.”
Beau’s voice dropped to a knowing whisper. “Bad, bad things.” He tugged on his limp penis.
Cressley sucked in a breath. “Beau, is anyone at the barns bothering you?”
“Bad, bad, bad to bother me. Herders say men sick if touch Beau.”
Quiggs said, “He’d tell me if anyone touched him, Cressley.”
“Tell my friend Quiggs everything. Never, ever lie to my friend.”
Satisfied Beau wasn’t abused, Cressley opened the door and waved Beau through.
Beau trilled his triumph, then hissed when Quiggs thunked the back of his lopsided head. “My friend Quiggs mean tonight. No bad things happen to him. He hits.” Beau padded ahead in his splay-footed gait, the argument already forgotten.
“How do you live with it?” Cressley muttered.
Good question. “Beau happened at a time I needed someone to love me.”
Cressley stood guard in the hall as Quiggs drew a deep breath and stepped through the pair of swinging doors into the communal shower. After being shown there was a curtain for Quiggs’s privacy, Beau squatted outside by the entrance and rocked his displeasure with his arms around his knees and his chin tucked into his chest. Quiggs would have fallen on his ass after thirty seconds. Beau could rock for hours.
After Quiggs threatened to stuff a dirty towel in his mouth if one sound escaped, Beau clamped his jaws tight.
The bad shower looked like the downstairs shower. The blue-veined stone walls emitted a soft bluish light that turned blushes into an ugly mottled purple. The room accommodated up to eight cadets who’d march in keeping two steps apart. On the left wall were eight pairs of hooks: one to hang your wrap on, the other holding a scratchy white towel. Once the eight cadets had lined up at their respective hooks, they shed their wraps and slipped off their sandals. The academy demanded silence up to this point, but eyes roamed, and mouths curved in derision or envy.
Touching each other was forbidden until the junior year, but cadets were free to talk as they showered. They mostly farted and traded crude insults. As Academic Champion, Quiggs had showered alone since he was eleven and hadn’t missed the company.
A beige curtain stretched around the end shower as planned. Cressley had stolen a curtain panel and ropes from the janitor’s room and cut out strategic peepholes. Shielded behind the curtain, Quiggs could stare down the line of showers and watch everyone, while the only parts of him exposed were his long flat feet and skinny shanks.
He shed his sandals and hung his wrap on a hook. What a pathetic sight his naked form was. While medical assured Quiggs his flaccid penis was a normal size, the rest of him needed toning. Until he popped a boner, why waste time on exercise?
Cressley darted his head inside the room, gaze lowered. “You in place yet?”
“Almost.” Quiggs hastened behind the curtain.
The stone walls retained the heat of the earlier showers, and the steamy air condensed on his skin like dripping sweat. Soap pumps were mounted on the wall below each showerhead, a brown pump for heavy grime and a pink pump for soft crevices, tender parts, and hair. Cadets soaped up accordingly; then a short wet down activated the cleansing suds. When the wet down stopped, the cadets joked around while the suds did their work. A long hot rinse followed.
As Quiggs soaped up, he decided whatever was happening, whoever was watching—if a boner popped, he was sprinting bare-assed to the sex clinic and registering.
Who were the cadets who’d volunteered? What were they thinking of this? Quiggs bounced foot to foot on the pebbled floor, as fidgety as Beau about the bad things ahead.
The heavy slap of sandals marching in echoed off the stone walls. Quiggs peeped through a cutout, and his pulse picked up.
Those hard-muscled bodies filing in could only belong to cadets enrolled in the military program. Quiggs pressed against the curtain, watching the actives silently stretch and pose at their stations before stripping off their short white wraps. The performance was obviously scripted by Professor Hines.
The hell if Quiggs cared.
The cadets postured, offering a mouthwatering view of sculpted buttocks and strong thighs. Instead of sliding off their sandals, they bent at the waist to remove them, providing Quiggs a row of hairy cracks… not as mouthwatering.
The cadets turned around, and Quiggs’s jaw dropped as six cockstands saluted him. Some straight, some curved. All thick, all long, all veined, with heavy, hairy balls tight to the body.
The cadets paired off at the showerheads and leisurely soaped their partners with particular attention to genitals and cracks. Despite the heat, Quiggs shivered.
The warm gentle spray of the wet down started, and the soap foamed upon contact. Quiggs spat suds out of his gaping mouth. He realized he hadn’t looked above the necks to see if he could identify the cadets. He stuck two fingers in the peephole and ripped it wider.
Annnnnnd… thank you, Professor Hines.
Quiggs worked his limp cock while he loaded up on visual stimuli.
A cadet on his knees sucking cock, a cadet working fingers in another’s soapy hole, a cadet bending over while—Quiggs never saw this one coming—another licked out his hole. Quiggs tugged his cock faster. He heard an anxious whine and was surprised it came from himself.
The cadet closest to him turned his head at the whine, and his amused blue eyes stared straight at the peephole. “Like what you see, Quiggs?”
Oh, shit, oh, shit… he recognized Miller, the current Athletic Champion. Quiggs had suffered a shy devotion for him before Miller registered and moved in with the actives. His black hair was clipped close to his shapely skull. A scar bisected his left eyebrow, and he sported a slight bend in his once-perfect nose from fighting matches since he’d moved out. The defects enhanced his appeal. Quiggs watched as Cadet Colby sucked Miller to the root with noisy slurps.
Colby was a year older than Quiggs and had bunked beside him before joining the actives. Quiggs stared at the changes in Colby’s body over the years. Wider shoulders, hair sprinkled across padded pectorals… a mushroom crown, rosy and leaking as he fisted himself while sucking Miller. Quiggs stared at the veiny shaft. How odd. Where the foreskin had been attached was a scarred red ring. In fact, he saw no foreskins on any of the cocks.
Quiggs pulled back the foreskin of his flaccid cock. Did arousal cause it to peel off when stretched? Made sense if the strain split it… but ouch.
“Feels so good,” Miller groaned, and Quiggs forgot about foreskins and stuffed his mind with visual stimuli. “Oh… oh… oh… you got the magic mouth, Colby… oh, yeah. I’m close. Pull off or swallow.”
Colby hollowed his cheeks, bobbing faster. Miller arched his neck, his meaty hands holding the blond head in place.
Quiggs stopped tugging. Cadets swallowed semen?
“Need help getting off, Colby?” Cadet Blane, who’d bunked near Quiggs, strutted over, wiping a hand across his swollen mouth. He knelt and fingered Colby�
��s pucker. Colby lifted his ass without missing a fisting stroke.
Now that Quiggs would like to try. The thought of fingers worshiping his ass while he wanked sent a spark to places never before sparked in Quiggs. He’d suspected these acts existed. He’d just not visualized the how of them. The veil lifted from a world of delights much more fascinating than hot air balloons.
A raucous laugh belted out. “Hey, guys, look who’s joining us!”
More laughter echoed off the walls.
Miller whooped the loudest. “Beau, you ugly runt, are you lost?”
“Not lost. Know where I am. In bad shower.”
No, no, no, no. Quiggs sloshed his foot through a puddle of water around the drain. He was forbidden to speak, or he’d yell at Beau to get out.
Beau stopped by Miller and watched the threesome at work. “Colby sucks Miller like a hungry baby goat. Why, Colby?”
Colby released Miller’s cock with a pop, cum dripping down his chin. The other cadets gathered around.
“Because Colby likes my custard,” Miller panted. He swiped a thumb over the cum dribbling down Colby’s chin and offered Beau a taste.
Beau frowned and made a pfffftttt sound. “Not custard. Semen. Miller thinks Beau is stupid.”
Colby snickered. He turned around and spread his cheeks, giving Quiggs a view of his pink hole, dilated from fingering. “Want to watch how to make babies, runt?”
“Aw, Colby, that not how you make babies.”
“How do you make babies, then?” Miller asked.
Beau sat cross-legged on the wet floor. “Need a doe in heat first. Bucks don’t mount bucks to make babies. Bucks who mount bucks get their tes-ti-cles chopped off.” Before Miller could swat him, Beau dived under the curtain and chortled up at Quiggs. “I stay back here where safe from bad bucks.”
Quiggs glared down at him.
Miller whispered against the cutout. “It’ll happen, Quiggs. When it does, I’m gonna be the first to sign your slate and teach you how it feels to get fucked.” Miller slapped the curtain for emphasis. “Hear that, runt? This bad buck’s gonna pound your good friend Quiggs in the ass.” Miller chuckled at Beau’s growl before adding softly, “But only after I’ve sucked him dry and got him loosened him up and begging for it.”
Miller stuck two fingers through the cutout and worked them in and out.
“Don’t bite his fingers,” Quiggs hissed when Beau showed his teeth.
Beau slid out from under the curtain and bit Miller on the calf. Before Miller could grab him, he bit the other calf and slid back under the curtain, trilling his delight at Miller’s pained yelps.
Furious at the interruption just as his prick experienced an interested tingle, Quiggs hooked an arm around Beau’s scrawny neck. “You want a bad shower? Do you? Huh? Do you! Here’s your bad shower!” He held fast as he slapped the harsher soap all over Beau’s squirming body.
“Ow-ow-ow-ow-ow! I no bite fingers—I bite Miller’s hairy legs!”
“Shut up, Beau. You don’t braid my hair tonight.”
“Noooooooo! Always braid my friend’s hair. Love his pretty hair.”
“I hate my hair! I want to cut off my fucking hair!”
The rinse cycle started. Quiggs held Beau under the harder, hotter spray, ignoring his caterwauling. When the spray stopped, both were breathless, with Quiggs’s flushed skin a mottled purple in the bluish light and Beau’s tawny skin a burnt orange.
“How do you live with it?” Miller gave the curtain a hard slap, then left.
Because of Beau, Quiggs’s visual stimuli swirled down the drain along with the dirty suds.
Beau patted Quiggs’s thigh. “I’m telling Cressley Miller wants sex with you.”
“You will promise me you won’t tell anyone anything.” Especially about Miller promising to suck him dry first.
A whine.
“Dammit, Beau, I mean it. Promise me this stays our special secret.”
“Don’t like to promise. Get in trouble when I forget.”
Quiggs thunked him upside his dripping head.
Beau hissed. His white-blond hair hung over his sullen eyes. “Okay. I promise.”
Cressley called from the door, his voice worried. “Come out now. Everyone’s gone.”
Quiggs knotted his wrap around his waist and slipped on his sandals. He fell into step with Cressley outside the shower.
Cressley waited until they were in the stairwell before waving his leather disciplinary strap at Beau. “You disobeyed me. Ten stripes on your ass or no breakfast in the dining hall for a week. Choose which.”
“No breakfast!” Beau cried.
Cressley snapped the strap. “Disobey tomorrow night, and it’s both!”
Beau was off and trailing water down the stairwell before Quiggs could remind Cressley the herders always welcomed Beau to the Guild’s dining hall, where the food served was superior to the academy’s bland fare.
Cressley fixed his right eye on Quiggs. “You okay? Do you need to smuggle anything to the clinic? Got any questions for Professor Hines?”
Yes, one. “What happened to their foreskins?”
The question stunned Cressley. “I’ll be damned. We never considered what you’d think of that.” He scraped a hand over his face.
Quiggs didn’t need Beau to recognize a lie coming up. “A foreskin peels off when an erection happens, right?”
Cressley dropped his hand, sheepish at being caught. He hemmed and hawed before admitting, “We don’t want to scare the baby cadets. It does hurt a bit when the skin sheds.”
“I reasoned so.” With a pleased sniff at having his conclusion verified, Quiggs followed Cressley back to his room.
After the exciting events of the barge, the swim in the canal, and the bad shower, Beau was already asleep in his top bunk. He lay facing the wall, curled up with his chin touching his knees.
Quiggs dressed for bed in a white sleep shirt, no underwear. He tied a thin string around his penis. If an erection occurred, it would break the string and prove there was no organic malfunction. He had tied strings since his fourteenth birthday. They never broke. They wore out, and he replaced them.
As he settled under the thin blanket, he thought of those minutes in the shower. Male plumbing definitely attracted him.
Quiggs drifted to sleep with visions of Miller on his knees, sucking him to the root.
Chapter Three
The morning whistle woke Quiggs, sprawled on his back with his sleep shirt hiked above his waist. He closed his eyes for an extra ten minutes of sleep, waiting for the second whistle when the line at the toilets slackened. Then he remembered last night.
Pleasssse, pleasssse, pleasssse.
He propped himself up on his elbows and stared down at his bared belly. No batter spatter anywhere. The thread around his penis remained intact. The only fullness was his bladder. He flopped back on the bunk, disappointed. The professor had warned Quiggs mental conditioning required time to produce a nocturnal emission.
No dent in the bunk above him meant Beau had risen early and was enjoying a hearty breakfast with the herders. Cadets studied hard to compete for better wages to increase their prospects for a wife—or a husband—but Beau’s skills earned more than the average civilian.
Quiggs put on his white tee and drawstring pants and visited the bathroom where the cadets grumbled about yesterday’s extra field exercises. As Quiggs shaved, young eyes followed his moves with the straight razor as if hopeful his hand would slip and sever an artery to entertain them.
In the dining hall Quiggs ate an extra serving of stewed fruit with cream over crumbled skillet bread. Flat belly be damned. He was disappointed. He deserved food. Maybe Beau would stop at a bakery after his shift and buy a pudding studded with raisins to make amends.
After breakfast, Quiggs summoned a chaperone to take him to the arena to keep his promise of exercise. The chaperone told him the arena was closed to inactives this morning because Commander Bronn was visiting. Che
ered he had an excuse to skip, Quiggs visited the library.
The library was deserted this morning. Alone at his corner table, Quiggs opened the tome to the hot air balloon and sketched components for a furnace. Fuel was the issue. Among the agricultural seeds in the bunker, his mother had found a cache of nuts and planted a few on their farm. The trees yielded nuts with a rancid yellow oil which flared briefly before hissing out when exposed to air. Quiggs, then four, was fascinated by the gasping flame and gave the nut its nickname, sputternut. His mother believed the ancestors engineered the nut to provide a fuel with a higher heat intensity than the fuel processed from the vines—a process abandoned when the vines evolved inflammable properties.
He leaned back in his chair with his eyes closed and focused on a curing process to yield intense heat from sputternuts. Schematics swirled in his mind. The fiery images reconfigured from sputternuts to Miller’s nuts.
He visualized the steamy shower with Miller groaning, his head thrown back, balls slapping flesh as he face-fucked Colby. The image swirled, reconfigured with Miller on his knees swallowing Quiggs down. Quiggs’s hips snapping, his thighs jelly as his cock thrust and thrust and…
Quiggs didn’t realize he’d dozed off until awakened by a wave of tingling, indescribable pleasure washing over him. He groaned, his hips thrusting blindly as delightful pulses rolled through his cock. Fuzzy curls of steam traveled up his spine, a warm wonderful glow in their wake.
When the white flashes behind his eyeballs stopped, he found his pants sticky. Huh?
His happy cock translated for his dazed mind: wet dream, dumb ass.
Quiggs sat on the edge of the exam table on the medical floor reserved for cadets. He wore a stupid grin on his face at the towel tenting over his cock. More wood so soon? He’d jerked off in a cup for Doctor Keith twenty minutes ago.
Naked except for the towel covering his lap, he kicked his heels, waiting for an attendant to bring a black uniform, cap, and clunky lace-up boots. Instead, Professor Hines walked in. The professor’s eyes crinkled, his broad face beaming. He carried the standard gray preference slate for Quiggs to answer. It would hang with the rest of the actives’ slates on the wall of the sex clinic’s waiting room.
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