Chapter 2 – Chapter 2

"It's a lot of money, Ron. I really think you should consider it."

"I'm not selling to a developer, Larry," I answered. "I think I've made myself clear about that. And it isn't because of the house. It's the marshland. Too much of the coastal marshland is being destroyed. Virginia Beach and Norfolk are inching too close to us from the north. My mom and dad were friends of your parents. Our families spent a lot of time together. You know how my mom and dad felt about preserving the environment. Wipe out the marshlands around here and we can kiss our local wild life and plant species good-bye. I won't be any part of that."

"God, that's one raspy voice you got this morning, Ron. Caught a cold or something."

"Something that just came on," I answered, in embarrassment, as I rubbed my raw throat, a souvenir from the fireman the night before. "Woke up with it this morning."

Larry Heger—my lawyer, and the son of my parents' lawyer—sighed from across the window booth at the café in Maple and took a swig of his coffee.

Larry and I had gone to high school together in this town and been on the same district-winning football team. He'd been into bulking up and went on to the University of North Carolina on a football scholarship. I'd been fast enough for high school football but not big enough for collegiate ball and had gone to Duke's art school, keeping up with sports, but going more to tennis and track. Larry had taken on the craze of some form of Japanese martial arts that I couldn't pronounce, so he had remained in superb shape.

We'd been good friends. Almost too good. Going to different colleges either saved us from something or was a personal "ships passing in the night" tragedy. He was a user. Even that early in life I'd have let him use me if he had shown the slightest hint of wanting to. He was into using the cheerleader squad, though.

There had been rumors about him and men at college; there hadn't been a hint of anything in high school, or I might have made a move while he was doing his date in the front seat and me mine in the backseat after the senior prom.

With me at Duke, it was a fact, not rumors. But neither of us had openly or privately discussed anything about those options when we were in high school. He'd married, settled down in his father's law practice, and had more kids now than I could name. I had remained single and unattached—which meant I hadn't gotten beyond one-night stands very often. Jesse had been an exception, but we just met for sex; we didn't hang out with each other socially.

"It's good to have you back in the area, Ron," Larry said, leaning in toward me over the booth table. "We should go out and toss the ball a bit when football season comes around again—just for old time's sake."

"I didn't think I'd ever come back," I answered. "But I guess the pull of the beach and marsh was too much."

He sat back in the booth. "You always seemed to meld well with this place. There's been more than once that I would have liked to be somewhere else—a bigger city, maybe." He laughed then. "I guess anywhere is bigger than Maple. But more adventure in life, I guess. And speaking of marshes, I do remember how deeply your parents thought about preserving the marshes. But it's not like your piece of land is going to stand a chance of fighting that battle. The developer has the parcels on either side of you. He's already built a house for himself right at the top of the beach on the parcel to the south of you. He's here to stay. Your land, with that big flat area at the top of the bluff is right in the center of his plans—and it's prime location for developing."

I blew on my coffee. They sure made it hot and strong at the café. I needed something to loosen me up this morning. The firefighter from last night had worked every bone in my body. Quite a bone he had on his body too.

"I'm thinking of putting Haphazard in the land trust, Larry. Maybe even make a park out of it. It may be a losing battle on protecting the environment of the marshlands at the edge of the bay, as you say. But at least there would be my chunk of land to show what once it was like."

"The land trust?" Larry hissed. "Keep your voice down when saying that word around here, Ron. In case you haven't noticed, this area is depressed as hell economically. The development down the bay is the best revenue stream we've seen in decades. You go saying you might put that land of yours in the trust and you'll need to start sleeping with a gun under your pillow at night. I won't press you further on selling the land—there will be plenty around here that will stand in line to do that—but I won't draw up a land trust application for you either. I'll recommend a good lawyer in Elizabeth City for you if you decide to go that route."

"Just said I was thinking about it, Larry. You say the developer has built a house for himself right on the beach line south of me? Didn't anyone around here tell him about hurricanes? And we're entering hurricane season. And how did he get it through the zoning process?"

"You know how he got approval through the system here, Ron. And you can't tell these guys from up Virginia Beach way about hurricanes and beach houses, Ron, but if it's not going to change their ways up at Virginia Beach, I don't think it will make much of a dent on their thinking down here."

"But it won't be just the environment that's ruined if they build down near the beach, Larry. Their houses won't last more than a couple of years anyway."

"You're preaching to the choir on that, Ron. But that's what he wants Haphazard for. He can fit a lot of house on that high land you have above the bluff."

"But that won't stop him from filling in the marsh and building down there too, will it?" I said, as I stood and tossed money for the coffee plus a tip on the table. "Sorry, I've got a tennis date to go to. You don't need to listen to any more offers on the land. I'm not selling. Nice having coffee with you, though. We should do this more often."

"Hope you win the match. Playing with Avery Jameson again?"

"Yeah. But it'll be doubles. Avery will get the tennis pro to partner him and he says he's invited a new guy who has joined the club to be my partner."

"So, he's loaded the deck by taking the pro for himself."

"Well, I did play on a nationally ranked collegiate team when I was at Duke, Larry. I didn't spend all my time there learning to draw pretty pictures to put in books. You could say that Avery just wants to even the odds. And I don't really care who wins the match. It will just be good to be swinging the racket again. It'll be my first time this spring."

"Oh, I think Avery will let you win—this time."

"Why's that?" I had started to back off from the table, but that brought me back. Larry stood then.

"Here, I'll walk you out," Larry said. He continued on. "Avery's one of the backers of the development. I'll bet he asked you to play today just to pitch you to sell. You can expect to have a lot of that coming to you from different directions."

"Thanks for the tip," I said, as we moved toward the café entrance.

"And watch your back, Ron. The longer you hold out the dirtier they're going to play."

"So, you're saying that developers can be as bad as lawyers?" I asked, as we got to the door.

We both laughed at that. Larry's laugh rang a little hollow, though.

Larry opened the driver's door of a fancy little sports car parked in a handicapped spot right in front of the café entrance. I said nothing about where he'd parked—Larry had been like that in high school too. But I'd just written it off then—but I couldn't overlook the car, which looked out of place in a town ruled by pickup trucks. Even I was driving a pickup truck.

"Nice wheels, but what is it?" I asked.

"It's a Crossfire. Made by Chrysler. But they don't make them anymore. I'll bet I have the only one in Northeast North Carolina. Sort of out of place in this town, isn't it? But I'm a toy guy, as you probably know." He paused here and looked at me, but then smiled and went on. "This is about the only excitement I get in my life."

"What, with three kids under seven?"

"I've got four kids. And especially with four kids under seven." We both laughed.

I waved him away. Larry sure had his quirks, but high school buddies are high school buddies. And he was a damn fine lawyer, I thought.

Sure enough, as Larry predicted, Avery and the tennis pro let me and my partner win the tennis match. The two of them combined were better than the two of us combined. The fourth guy, a well-muscled, impressively in-shape, distinguished, well-heeled businessman type who was introduced to me as Jack Dorsey, was good—especially for his age, which seemed to be mid forties—but he vied with Avery as the least capable of the four. His shortfall had to be training, not athletic talent.

I was rusty, but I still competed well with the tennis pro. It didn't take a whole lot of tennis winning for a pro at a rural country club like we had in Maple to qualify for the job. He mainly had to look real good for the ladies of the club, which Tony did.

Larry also was right that Avery pitched me at every change of side about the development. At these times, Dorsey and the tennis pro would talk to each other about the amenities of the club that Dorsey had just joined. But Dorsey also was eyeing me.

I couldn't help to take looks at him too. He was built big and solid and obviously worked out regularly. He had a mean, strong backhand on the court too.

The furtive looks continued in the shower and locker room too. I couldn't help noticing that he was hung like a horse and looked even better built in the nude than in tennis togs. The smooth businessman look he'd exhibited on the court earlier turned slightly, but purposely, I thought, to something a bit wilder and more thuggish in the nude—when we were both in the nude and in the communal shower. Maybe it was the mean-looking tattoo of really thorny brambles encircling his right bicep, I thought. The chunky chain-link necklace and black mesh bikini briefs he put on before dressing into a tailored suit that returned him to the businessman look enhanced the "something else altogether" aura of him.

The looks he was flashing at me were ones of interest—I'd been cruising enough not to mistake that. He put an arm around my shoulders as we were exiting the shower and reaching for towels and brought both his body and his face close into mine. I was somewhat embarrassed, because I was half hard by the time. So was he.

"Enjoyed getting to partner with you today, Ron," he said to me, with a smile. "I had to wheedle at Avery to get us introduced. Wouldn't mind partnering and playing with you again soon. Would like to get to know you and discover what you like—and maybe share with you what I like. Maybe we could catch a drink somewhere sometime. I've heard that Andy's over near Elizabeth City is a good place. A black guy named Jesse told me it was a good place."

The shock at how directly he was declaring himself—and categorizing me too—and especially with us both in the nude, half hard, sent me stumbling into the locker room. I felt the sting of his hard slap on my rump and a hearty laugh from behind me as I moved.

Nothing more was said—everything was in looks at each other—and at how both of us had gotten harder as we went to our individual lockers in the same row. If there hadn't been other men wandering around the locker room, I'll bet he would have tried to fuck me right there on the wooden bench between the rows of lockers.

And I would have let him. I would have spread my legs, opened up, pulled the big cock inside me, and moved my ass for him. The disturbing aspect, since I'd take dominating sex anywhere I could get it, was how much he assumed—that he assumed I'd be easy. But I guess that was a key aspect of the kink. The dominator knew what he could have, and the sub was easy for it.

He'd made no bones about doing a full frontal to me as he folded his package into the mesh briefs. Although the tennis pro, Tony, cut an arousing figure in the shower too, there was a world of difference in how he and Avery—who was nothing to write home about in the body department—related to me in the locker room shower and how Jack Dorsey did.

The possibility didn't escape me that Avery might have found out about my proclivities and brought Dorsey in to soften me up sexually to a deal on my land, but, as Dorsey made no move to go with me anywhere right after tennis, I told myself that I was still running on a high from the rough fucking the fireman, Chet, had just given me and that Dorsey wasn't going to be as pushy.

"Later," he said gruffly, as, dressing quickly, I was able to leave the locker room before he was fully dressed.

I didn't think about that again until later in the day.