Page 20 of Grumpy Bear

He turned around and backed into me, shoving his ass at my cock. He whispered it was okay, that he was on PrEP, and I could fuck him bare.

I wasn’t trying to slut-shame him—I was on PrEP too—but I told him I’d prefer to wait and use a condom. It was a lame excuse considering we kept full dispensers of condoms and lube packets on the walls of all the common spaces on the property.

He didn’t challenge me on it. He said something about dragging the foreplay out a little longer, got on his knees, and…

I let him blow me.

In my defense, it’s a known fact you don’t have to be turned on or interested to enjoy a warm wet mouth on your dick. Especially if you haven’t had your cock sucked in months or years. It’s kryptonite. You can defer all kinds of regret until the end of a blow job. It’s not that deep.

Trey looked up at me while he did it—in a practiced, posing way—like he knew what he wanted me to see when I looked down at him.

I figured he had probably done some porn. I could see it.

But that wasn’t appealing to me at all. I liked men who wanted me, not just anyone or anybody. At least I liked to be able to suspend some disbelief in the heat of the moment.

I’d closed my eyes and concentrated on getting off as quickly as possible.

Once I blew down his throat, I pretended I hadn’t meant to come so easily. I lied and said I couldn’t help it because his skills were so amazing.

I should’ve made sure he got back to the bunkhouse okay considering his drunken state, but I’d wanted to get the fuck out of there.

The sex had been all right if a little impersonal for my tastes. No matter how sleazy the circumstances, I liked a little affection. Body contact. I liked a man who looked me in the eye when we were inside each other and wasn’t afraid to show some passion. Even if we never saw each other again, it was still hotter that way.

Even a hookup could have some soul, some connection.

Lying in bed alone that night, exhausted but unable to drift off, I regretted that I’d used Trey for sex because I didn’t really like him at all. I didn’t like him as a person. I liked to like the men I played with.

Even back in my early twenties, when I’d been a major whore, I believed there was a code in hooking up. There was definitely a certain camaraderie in sport-sex. An orgy was a team event where everybody was on the same side of the game.

Trey wasn’t a team player. He didn’t work as hard as the others. He wasn’t the first guy to want a job here for the sex, but we couldn’t figure out what his angle was. Some of the guys joked that he was looking for a rich husband, and he’d probably have better luck in Fort Lauderdale or Fire Island.

Nobody thought he’d be back, and nobody was more unpleasantly surprised than I was when he’d shown up again.

I tried not to put my thumb on the scale too much when it came to the Human Resources end of things, so I hadn’t specifically told Jim not to rehire him. Jim had a lot of great qualities, but he was a total pushover for pretty boys with sob stories.

Surfer Cowboy, with his campsite ten feet from my fucking front porch, was another case in point.

Back at my cabin, I dug through the storage loft and came up with an old set of sheets and a couple of sad, flat pillows. I also grabbed an extra LED lantern and put some fresh batteries in it. I wanted Luke to have some kind of light.

I grabbed a few bottles of water before heading to the tent. These guys were all usually pretty adept at dehydrating the fuck out of themselves.

It was a nice spring evening, puffy clouds in a clear sky with a little bit of a chill in the air. The perfect kind of night to sit around a campfire.

I heard muffled voices in the distance. The lodge glowed like a giant lantern in the blue night woods.

I hesitated before unzipping the door flap on his tent, listening first to make sure he wasn’t in there. It felt a bit like breaking and entering. There was an unspoken code at our campground that a closed tent was a private space. He was expecting the supplies, though, so I quickly deposited everything in a neat pile on the yoga mats.

Seeing his guitar case, I felt a pang of worry about it being out here in the tent. Not that anybody would steal it, but if it were to rain again… I didn’t want to move it without asking, but if I saw Luke, I’d offer to store it in my cabin.

Before leaving I checked the tarp, giving the bungee cords a few tugs. I tried to adjust one corner to be a little lower, but I wasn’t too happy with the results. There wasn’t enough of a slant. On the off chance there was bad weather, rain might collect in the center of the tarp and weigh on the roof. I wished I could give it more of a pitch, but that was going to be hard to do without another pair of hands and possibly a ladder.

This would have to do for now. Luke was a grown man, and he’d signed up to work at a campground for the weekend. He’d survive sleeping in a tent just fine even if it rained.

It was that time of evening I usually liked to spend alone, recharging, reading, or maybe taking a little nap, depending on what festivities we had on the books. Or I’d tidy up my shack and listen to the radio. Along with the Grumpy Bear T-shirt I’d rejected, Jim had also given me a new satellite radio for Christmas, and I kept it tuned to the weather and news. I listened a little bit every morning and tried to at least check the forecast at night before turning in, especially when we had a lot of guests on the property.

They were calling for scattered thunderstorms. Not a high percentage, but I couldn’t get the surprise deluge from last night out of my mind. They hadn’t predicted that one at all.

I kept seeing flashes of that damned tarp collecting water.