Vaughn Richardson’s pickup was his most prized possession. The truck was old and nothing to look at on the outside. The body had dents and the paint was discolored by exposure to the sunlight and peeled off in places. But the vehicle was mechanically sound. Vaughn worked on it himself and he kept it running with the precision of a watch.

Reliable personal transportation was a necessity in rural Montana. The roads were not always in the best shape, and there could be long distances between service stations.

Tonight was typical. Vaughn had driven on that back road for almost an hour without glimpsing another vehicle. It was a warm summer night and Vaughn had the truck’s windows rolled down. The narrow pavement ran through dense wooded country much of the time. Vaughn could hear the steady hum of nocturnal insects above the sound of his engine. He was careful not to drive too fast. There was always the possibility that some wild animal would emerge from the trees and dart across the road in front of a vehicle’s headlights.

It was beautiful country, but a rugged one. Living there encouraged men to stay physically fit.

Vaughn was a young man of twenty-three, good-looking, lean and hard-muscled. He spent so much of his time outdoors that his face, arms, and hands were deeply tanned. When he stripped, though, he was two-toned. The parts of his body which were protected from the sun by his clothes were still his paler natural skin color, dusted here and there with freckles.

As he got closer to his destination, the forest yielded to more open country. Vaughn drove through a couple of small towns, then he took a two-lane road which threaded its way past one working farm after another. He saw only a few windows which were lit up that late at night. Most of these farm families worked from sunup to sundown, and by then they were no doubt already in bed. Little did they suspect that men were traveling past them in the night in search of sex.

Vaughn was one of those men. He was going to a sex party. Ever since he’d received and accepted the invitation, he’d been able to think of little else. As he drove he was acutely aware of the way his cock kept swelling to semi-firmness within the confines of his jeans. If he wasn’t careful, it might spring into full erection and start rubbing against the bottom of the steering wheel.

Vaughn’s anticipation of what might happen at the sex party was undercut by a lingering sense of anxiety. He really didn’t know what to expect. He’d never done anything quite like this before.

Until recently, in fact, his sexual experience had been limited. As a strapping young lad, he’d had a strong sex drive. But he’d remained a virgin, confining himself to nightly masturbation.

He’d always been attracted to other men. Their bodies aroused him in a way that he found disturbing at first. But then he realized that there were other men who had the same urges.

His first sexual experience with a partner had quickly led to others. It was like a dam bursting. Once that first crack appeared in the wall, there was no holding the torrent back.

The Internet had transformed gay life everywhere, but especially in such places as Montana. A guy might have to drive for hours to find a city large enough to sustain a gay bar or bathhouse. Cruising via the Internet was by contrast easy and efficient. The Internet was a gold mine of information about which bars in smaller communities were mixed or gay-friendly, and about where men could cruise and pick up one another in public. Of course, chatting with other guys on the Internet often led to a rendezvous. In such instances, driving to hook up with the other man was usually well worth the expenditure of time, energy, and gasoline.

Vaughn had his laptop equipped with a webcam, so he could see what his potential tricks looked like—and they, of course, could see him.

He’d met Darren online and they’d been webcamming regularly for almost a month. Vaughn had been willing to meet Darren in person from the start. But Vaughn worked on a ranch called The Burning Spur and he had limited time off. He also found flirting with Darren online pleasurable. The delay in consummating their relationship had created some sexual suspense.

Darren was an amiable man who admitted to being thirty-six, although he didn’t look it. He was brown-haired, brown-eyed, bearded, and compactly built, with a hint of a bear about him.

Darren had inherited his family’s old farm, where he lived alone. He didn’t have a steady lover. “Just fuck buddies and assorted tricks,” as he blithely put it during one conversation with Vaughn.

He threw the sex parties at his place twice a month, usually on a Friday or Saturday night. “I’d do them more often,” he told Vaughn, “but it always takes me a few days to clean up and recuperate afterward. And by then it’s time to start planning the next one!”

At the risk of sounding hopelessly naïve, Vaughn felt compelled to ask Darren exactly what went on at one of his sex parties.

Darren explained that he had a core group of regulars who usually showed up. New faces and bodies were always welcome, though. Sometimes he tried to keep the group smaller and more intimate, but on other occasions as many as two dozen or more men might show up. “Wall-to-wall bodies,” Darren joked. “Wall-to-wall dick. I love it. Can’t get enough.”

He provided his guests with food and drink. He always set out a coffee can for contributions. If anyone wanted to toss in a few bucks to help pay for the refreshments, that was fine, but it was purely voluntary.