STORY EXCERPT

“What do you say we go off together today and explore the island,” Nelson suggested. “Let’s both take our cameras and take shots of anything worthwhile. Do you think we need to map the island?”

“I don’t think it’s large enough to need mapping, but if I’m wrong, we can go back out later or tomorrow and explore it again and draw a map. Hey, chow’s ready. Let’s tuck into it.”

The word “tuck” sounded close enough to “fuck” to remind Nelson of his activities of last night, not to mention what he thought Troy had been up to. Suddenly he wondered if Troy had heard him, and if Troy knew he had been jerking off in the semiprivacy of his sleeping bag. He quickly attacked the food so he wouldn’t have to look at his partner on this expedition.

Since Troy had cooked, Nelson did the dishes, and then Troy suggested that they still had plenty of time to go to the lake and bathe. “Let’s use as little soap as necessary, so we don’t pollute the water,” he added.

“Are we going together?” Nelson asked, abashed.

Troy looked surprised at the question. “Did you think one of us needed to stay here as a sentry? Or are you suddenly feeling bashful?”

“Never mind. I’m just not used to, you know, bathing with another guy. Not since the locker room in college football, and even then I admit I was a little skittish.”

“Were some of the guys pecker checkers?” Troy laughed. “That can make even the straightest of the straights uncomfortable. Well, I won’t be comparing the size of your dick to mine. Don’t worry.”

But that reassurance, of course, only brought to mind Nelson’s curiosity the night before about the size and appearance of Troy’s dick. Maybe Nelson himself was a pecker checker?

Taking soap, towels, and clean underwear, the men headed toward the lake, a three-minute walk. When they arrived, Nelson hesitated at taking his clothes off. Troy was off behind some bushes, peeing, and Nelson felt awkward at disrobing. Finally, though, he girded himself into taking his clothes off, just as Troy stepped out from behind the bushes.

Nelson was sure Troy’s eyes had discreetly swept over his dick, but the glance was so fleeting, Nelson didn’t feel he was being compared. And when Troy took his clothes off, Nelson couldn’t help but sneak a peek himself. Troy’s cock was sized comparably to Nelson’s, neither very pale nor very dark, and at a quick glance it seemed to be circumcised, with a slightly rounded dome. Nelson immediately raised his eyes to Troy’s face, but Troy was looking at him and certainly had seen where his eyes had been. Nelson expected Troy to jibe, “Caught you looking!” but all Troy said was, “We have time to swim around a bit for fun, too.”

They both turned into kids in the water, splashing each other, playing tag and even Marco Polo, and having a grand time. By the time they’d decided it was enough, Nelson had lost his shyness over being naked in front of Troy, and he even regretted the prospect of putting his clothes back on to walk back to camp. Being naked felt so free. He didn’t know if nudity was prudent, though. What if he were stung in a tender place by an insect or scratched by some branch that was sticking out?

“I don’t think we need the soap,” Troy said. “I think we’ve rinsed ourselves quite clean enough with all this splashing around.”

“That’s fine with me,” Nelson agreed. They waded out of the lake, toweled dry, and pulled their clothes back on.

“Good timing,” Troy said. “It’s a quarter to eight. We need to make sure the shortwave is turned on and running. We have enough time, but not much to spare.”

The pair forbore to stop and explore their surroundings but went straight back to camp. They had the shortwave radio set up in the main tent, the sleeping tent, and they pulled their camp chairs up close to the radio. Soon enough they heard base calling their signal, and Troy responded.

“Everything okay on Honlera?” Rik’s voice crackled to them.

“A-OK,” Troy responded. “I trust all’s well with you guys?”

There was a pause before Rik answered. “Uh—there’s been a little trouble. Not here. Everything’s fine here. But, uh, Iran has nuked Israel.”

Both Nelson and Troy sat up straight on hearing that, and Troy automatically said, “No!” though Nelson was sure it was just a reaction and not an actual expression of disbelief.

“Things are a bit of a mess. We don’t know what America’s reaction will be or even what Israel’s response will be.”

“How bad was it?”

“They pretty well wiped out Tel Aviv.”

“Jerusalem?”

“They left the holy city alone—at least for now. But they got two others.”

“Does this impact on us in any way?”

“Not for the moment. The radioactive cloud doesn’t seem to be headed anywhere near you. There was a brief discussion of aborting your mission and coming to pick you up, but for the time being, everything is status quo. Carry on as you were. How are things going? What have you done so far?”

Nelson’s mind immediately flashed on what he had done in the privacy of his sleeping bag last night, but Troy answered with a routine if brief description of what they had done so far on their expedition and what they had planned for the day ahead.

“Well, take your time. Unless things go haywire, you’ll have three months to accomplish your explorations. Carry on for now as if nothing were amiss. I’ll talk to you tomorrow.”

“Roger, and thanks.”

“Are you there, too, Nelson?” Rik’s voice asked.

“Affirmative.”

“Everything okay with you, too?”

“Yes. Just shaken by your news.”

“We all are, man. We all are.”

Troy ended the conversation and shut the radio down to conserve the battery, but Nelson was left sitting there, stunned, wondering what was going to happen next.

ADULT EXCERPT

“Now come here. And don’t be bashful. We’re buddies. We’re friends. We’re partners in this adventure.”

Nelson could feel himself blush, but he awkwardly got out of his sleeping bag and rushed over to Troy’s, not so much because he was in a hurry to join Troy as because he was in a hurry to get under the camouflage of the sleeping bag, where his hard-on wouldn’t be so evident.

But as soon as he got into the sleeping bag, he realized he had another problem. If he faced Troy, his hard-on would poke into him. Yet he didn’t want to turn his back on him. Of course, he could lie on his stomach, but that proved darned uncomfortable with his erection so stiff and throbbing, so he rolled over onto his back, but now his hard-on was tenting Troy’s sleeping bag insistently.

As he rolled over and rolled over again, Troy chuckled. “Is that hard thing getting in your way? Forget about it! Just come here.” He held out an arm to enfold Nelson, and Nelson, giving up and giving in to the embarrassment his wayward dick was causing him, rolled over, facing Troy and sighed with resignation. He soon discovered that Troy’s dick was in the same condition his was—stiff, large, and pulsating. It prodded Nelson’s belly and oozed droplets of crystalline pre-cum syrup. The feel of that hard dick and its wetness against Nelson seemed only to incite his own dick to further hardness and more insistent throbbing.

“Just relax,” Troy said in a soothing voice. “Just relax and go with whatever you feel.”

“But–but I’m still not sure what I’m doing here with you. You’re a man. I’m a man. And I’m straight.”

“I believe all of us are partly gay and partly straight. There is some of each in every one of us. It’s just that in some of us, the attraction to the opposite sex is stronger, and in some of us the attraction to the same sex is stronger. Given the right circumstances, though, we can access the side we don’t usually recognize. This is just another side of you, a side you hadn’t acknowledged up till now. It’s part of who you are. You’re just exploring a dimension of yourself that you hadn’t explored or even recognized before this.”

“What happens when we get back home?”

“You can go back to your previous lifestyle or continue to explore this new one. Your choice. Nobody’s asking you for a forever commitment to having sex with other men. You might even find that you’re a true bisexual and that you enjoy the pleasures of both sexes. All I want is for you to be true to yourself and go with whatever you honestly feel and want, now and in the future.

“Right now, you seem to be enjoying lying here with me. This tells me so.” As he said “this,” he reached down and squeezed Nelson’s hard-on. A shiver of pleasure ran right up Nelson’s spine at the feel of Troy’s hand on his dick. When Troy let go, an involuntary moan escaped Nelson. Troy returned his hand to Nelson’s dick, then, and slowly began to jack it.

“Ahhhh,” Nelson purred at the feel of Troy’s hand moving the skin of his dick back and forth. He still felt awkward, even guilty, at enjoying this pleasure with his buddy, but there was no denying the fact that he was enjoying it. Prickles of excitement raced through him, and his balls buzzed.

Now Troy was nibbling at his neck, grazing it with cautious teeth. Small thrills raced through Nelson, every single thrill ending up in his pounding dick. “Let me show you something better than just hand action,” Troy murmured. “I’m sure you’ve had plenty of women suck you off, so this won’t be a totally novel experience, but I bet I do it better than most of your past girlfriends.”

Burrowing down into the sleeping bag, Troy licked his way down to Nelson’s dick, his tongue blazing a path from Nelson’s chin down to the hollow of his neck, and from there to his chest. At the midpoint of Nelson’s breastbone, Troy’s tongue took a detour and slithered purposefully to Nelson’s nipples, first the left and then the right. At each nipple, he swirled his tongue around the flat expanse of the areola, then twiddled the nipple itself, working it rapidly back and forth, flicking at it, flipping it up and down.

Nelson felt his nipples stiffening and wondered whether his nips had always been so sexually sensitive. No woman had ever paid attention to them before, nor had he ever teased them himself while jacking off, and he wondered if they had always been this receptive to stimulation without his realizing it. How long had he been missing out on this pleasure? And were there other parts of his body that were also pleasure centers he was ignorant of?

From licking, Troy now turned to nibbling, grazing his teeth over the doorbell-like protrusions of Nelson’s nips and even lightly chewing on them. Nelson emitted little “Uh–uh–uh–uhs” that indicated how inflamed his sex nerves were and how hot he felt. His body was on fire. He felt as if his entire being was one huge sex organ. There wasn’t a part of his body that wasn’t consumed by the flames that roared through him.

At last, Troy licked away from Nelson’s nips and resumed his downward course. Nelson felt a mixture of emotions at that, a pang of regret at losing out on the wonderful tit stimulation, and, at the same time, huge excitement about what he felt was about to happen next.

The farther down Troy’s tongue slithered, the more the blood pounded in Nelson’s head. His head was positively buzzing now, as if a swarm of bees had invaded his cranium. Troy’s tongue was almost to his pubic bush, and then suddenly Troy switched tactics again and was nibbling at Nelson’s pubes, tugging at the hairs with his teeth, creating yet another new and delightful sensation that Nelson had never experienced before. With each tug, his blood pressure shot up, and his already-bloated dick seemed to become impossibly further inflated.