Lions of the Desert-Part 4

Lee remembered holding his breath.  A deathly silence had swallowed not just the cramped little study room he was in, but the adjacent room on the other side of the thin, white wall.  His racing heartbeat thundered in his ears.  His frightened, brown eyes stayed fixed on a spot on the smooth plaster above the heavy desk.  He had not wanted to imagine that the two people on the other side of that same wall were staring at that same spot.  He didn’t want to imagine that the sudden silence had been because of him.  Lee desperately had not wanted to be the reason they had stopped what they were doing.

Maybe he hadn’t been.  Maybe he had been overreacting.

Lee had let himself glance down.  He spotted the trail of watery, white drops spread across the surface of the desk.  He followed them from the opposite edge against the wall, backward to where they led to a thin puddle under his penis.  The fleshy tube in his hand was still mostly hard in the sweaty grip of his left hand.  He remembered staring down at himself, at his teen phallus pulsing in his grip, in total disbelief.  What had come over him…before he came all over the desk?  I…I can’t believe I…

“I think we’ve had an audience,” came the voice of Mr. Brayer from the other side of the wall.  It was muted by the insulation and plaster between the twin study rooms.  And yet, the words he spoke seemed to reverberate around Lee as if they had been shouted in a cave.

The woman in the room with Mr. Brayer spoke next.  “Are you sure?”  Her voice was more mature than a student’s.  Lee was almost certain it was Ms. Jeffries, the anatomy and biology teacher.  He hadn’t been in one of her classes since his sophomore year.

“Yes,” said Mr. Brayer.

Lee didn’t breathe.  His eyes shifted from the cum on the desk to the books scattered on the floor.  He’d done that, but not on purpose.  He’d put the stack down too quickly and too close to the edge.  In an impulsive moment of stupidity, lost in the throws of a wild orgasm, innocent Lee Ogden had accidentally revealed a dirtier side of himself to the two adults.

“Who,” came Ms. Jefferies soft, uneasy voice.

There was a pause.  Lee’s heart was beating so fast he might as well have been running a track event.  Sweat was beading up on his brow and in the middle of his back.  He couldn’t know, Lee had thought to himself in a panic.  There’s no way!  How could they have seen him?  They were already…under way…when-

“Lee.”

It was Mr. Brayer’s voice again.  The twenty-five-year-old had been Lee’s history teacher for three years in a row.  He could be kind of understated in class, the pitch of his voice smooth and tenor.  It didn’t sound that way just then.  It was deeper on the other side of that wall.  Lee didn’t move.  He stared ahead and waited.  And then Mr. Brayer spoke again.

“Yeah, it’s you, isn’t it, Lee?”

Lee’s stomach lurched.

“Little Lee Ogden.  The innocent librarian’s assistant.  But…maybe not so innocent after all.  Right, Lee?”

Lee gulped.  The simple motion in his throat, that small noise, had seemed so loud in that moment.  His eyes were focused on the center of the wall in front of him.  He could almost see Mr. Brayer on the other side, the man’s naked body standing up from the sofa where Mrs. Jefferies was lying.  Lee could practically hear his teacher touch the smooth, white surface of the partition dividing the narrow rooms.

“This isn’t your first time.  We’re not the first ones you’ve gotten off listening to, are we?”

They weren’t.

“You should have joined us.”

Lee blinked, speechless.  He was still holding his penis in his hand.  It had been softening as he stood there listening.  It had been…right up to that point.

“It would have been our little secret.  We both know how much you love history and anatomy.”

Lee swallowed again.  His throat was like sandpaper.  He felt a bead of sweat run down the side of his face.  His heart raced fiercely in his chest.

“Cute, little Lee.  The little librarian who doesn’t always wear underwear to school.  There’s no need to be afraid.  Let’s get you ready for the world before you graduate next week.”

There was a ringing in Lee’s ears.  He thought it was his heart beating so fast it had become a single, high-pitched tone. Then, Lee remembered where he was.

The blare of the school bell felt louder in Lee’s ears as he raced away from the study rooms.  In a blur he had picked up the spilled books, used his dust rag to wipe what he could of his cum off the desk, and somehow stuffed his dick back into his jeans.  He had barely managed to fasten the open fly back into place by the time he raced past the stacks to the front of the Moses Preparatory School Library.

“There ya’ are, Lee,” said one of the librarians, Mrs. Wilkshire.  “I thought maybe the ghost had gotten ya’ back in the stacks.”

“Sorry,” Lee said hurriedly as he pushed the disheveled book cart back against the wall beside the checkout desk.  “I have to go.”

“Lee,” Mrs. Wilkshire said in a somber tone as the boy snatched his bookbag off a nearby chair and hurried out of sight.  He should have looked back at her.  He should have stopped to hear what she had to say.

The long hallway outside the library was crowded with students. Some were finishing at their lockers, the narrow metal doors slamming shut.  Others were standing in tight groups talking excitedly while the rest pushed past each other on their way to nearby classrooms.  It was the final moments before the next period was set to begin.  Lee was going to be late.  There was no getting around it.  It would take him another twenty to thirty seconds just to get to the main stairway.  Then he’d have to hustle up to the third floor and run to the end of that hallway.

I’ll just get a pass, he thought to himself.  He should have gotten one from Mrs. Wilkshire.  He was going to have to lie a little bit.

Lee pushed and weaved through the crowd of teenagers toward the main office.  He was steps away from the glass and metal door when the next bell rang loudly throughout the school.  Lee was out of breath by the time he stepped up to the long, tall counter where the school secretary was finishing a conversation with the janitor.

Susan Hernandez looked up when Lee walked through the door.  “Lee, there you are!

“I…I need a pass…to next period, Mrs. Hernandez,” Lee had said, trying to catch his breath.  “I…I lost track of time…in the library.”

“Lee, Lee…” the school secretary said, trying to interrupt him.

“I…was in the stacks.  I lost track of time.”

“It’s fine.  Lee, we’ve been trying to find you.  We paged you.”

“I was cleaning the study rooms,” Lee said quickly.  He felt himself turning red at those words.  Then Mrs. Hernandez’s words finally caught up to him.  “You were looking for me.”

“Lee?!”

Lee jumped, startled by the sound of Cal Martin’s voice.  The twenty-five-year-old’s strong hand was on his shoulder, pivoting Lee around to face him even before the boom of his voice had faded in the office.

“Cal,” Lee said, confused.  “What are you-”  Lee stopped.  There was a look on Cal’s face that had made Lee’s skin feel cold.  “What’s going on?”

“It’s your grandmother, Lee.  Some…”  Cal’s jaw tightened.  “Something’s happened.”

Lee’s vision blurred.  He could still hear Cal talking somewhere in the distance.  But the memory was getting distorted.  The school office had faded into a strange, sunlit haze.  There was a new voice nearby.  Lee’s nostrils filled with the smell of stale potato chips and sweat.  It smelled like someone’s breath.  Most likely it was the breath of the person speaking. A person whose voice sounded like it was full gravel.  Like the bus driver.

The bus driver, Lee thought, warily.  And then, all at once, he remembered the night on the bus taking him to college.

“Hey!”

Lee’s eyes opened as the gravel voice ripped the air next to his ear.  Lee felt one of the older man’s greasy, calloused hands on his shoulder, trying to shake Lee awake.  “Come on, boy!  This is yo-”

Lee felt the soft fabric of his blanket shift on his body.  He became very aware of the sensation of the plush fibers gliding across his bare legs and genitals.  And then, in the very next moment, the absence of them on his naked skin.  That was also the very moment the bus driver had stopped talking.

Time stood still.  Lee risked glancing up to see the bus driver’s beady eyes staring down at him with nervous shock.  The older man’s brain seemed to be struggling to comprehend what he was actually looking at.  “What the hell is this,” the bus driver wheezed at the sight of the boy’s pale legs, bare feet, and soft penis resting on his full, pink ball sack.

Lee didn’t look down.   He didn’t need to.  He knew he was naked from the waist down.  Instead, he shifted his eyes to his right.  The seat beside him was empty.  The boy who had encouraged him to misbehave, to be risky and open up a new side of himself, was long gone.  A question flickered in Lee’s mind that left him with a terrible feeling: Where are my shorts and flip-flops?

“…Nothin’ but a Goddamned pervert,” the bus driver’s gravelly voice dragged on.  The surprise on his dark, stubble-ridden face had quickly morphed into anger.

Lee looked up in horror at his words.  “No, wait!”

The bus driver raised his voice, even angrier now.  “Goddamned little pervert! Get the hell off my bus!”

“Wait! Yes,” Lee was trying to say all at once.  “I will!  I am!  Is this my stop?  Where are my clothes?”

“Yes, it’s your stop!  It would be even if it ain’t!  But it is! So get the fuck off my bus!”

“I need my clothes!  I think…”  Lee tried to lean forward, still in his seat.

“I said let’s go, pervert!  Goddamn!”

“Yeah, but-Aahh,” Lee yelped, the driver pulling him off the chair by the scruff his neck.  “Oww!  Seriously?!”

A woman screamed in fright from somewhere nearby.  Lee felt the blanket at his knees and the stale air of the bus on his bare ass.  Other passengers started speaking heatedly.  Lee’s eyes tried to find their faces.  All he could see was sunlight pouring in brightly through the windows of the bus.  Everything was becoming a panic-filled blur.  Lee blindly gripped the hem of the blanket, pulling the dark fabric upward to try to cover his lower extremities.  It was more challenging than it should have been as he tried to wrestle out of the painful grip of the fiery, old bus driver dragging him up the narrow, center aisle.

“No, wait!  I need my bag!  Please!  My bookbag!”

“I said let’s go!”

“Please!  I just need my-Oww!  My bookbag!  It’s right there!  The black one!”

“Fuck your bag you goddamn pervert!”

“No!  Please. I’m sorry!  Oww!!”

The blanket caught under Lee’s feet as the driver dragged him forward.  They were almost at the front-most row of seats when Lee put in renewed resistance.  The same woman from before suddenly screamed again, sunlight illuminating Lee’s pale ass cheeks.  Lee reached down, struggling to free the blanket from under himself while ignoring the mysterious woman’s frightened shrieks.  “Please,” Lee pleaded, practically to anyone who would listen to him.  “I need my bag!!  Please!!!”

The fury-maddened bus driver suddenly shoved Lee sideways.  There was no way Lee could keep his balance.  He stumbled rapidly, landing in the lap of a very startled old woman and a young, square-jawed Marine.  The eighteen-year-old tried as quickly as he could to move off the imposed upon pair of passengers.  He mumbled frightened, embarrassed apologies throughout the entire ordeal.  Lee managed to glimpse the young Marine smirking at him.  He gave Lee a wink a heartbeat before Lee realized his hand was on the buff soldier’s crotch.

“Off the bus!”

Lee was upright before he could think.  He grunted loudly, almost ricocheting off the next row of seats.  He felt the wind knocked out of him as he caught his bookbag painfully against his chest.  The swift, unexpected impact sent Lee stumbling and slipping backward.  The blanket was descending quickly down his body again.

“Pervert!  Get the fuck off the damned bus!

“I’m-”

“I said get off!  Damned little pervert making everyone uncomfortable!”

“I-”

“LET’S GO,” the driver screamed, yanking Lee to his feet and shoving him toward the very front of the idling bus.

“My bag,” Lee exclaimed with a yelp.

“Ya’ got yer fuckin’ bag!”

“My other bag!  My suit-”

“You ain’t got no more bags!  Get off my goddamned bus!  I’m about to kick your scrawny pervert ass down these fuckin’ steps!  GO!!”

But-Owww! I-”

“NO! Get out!  GET OUT!!

Lee lost sight of the interior of the bus.  He felt his body drag against the door as he practically slipped down the tall steps.  Loose pebbles scratched at his feet.  His toes scraped across warm tarmac.  He was being forced to move too fast to feel any pain.  There was no way for Lee to stop his involuntary momentum.  One hand had a stranglehold on his blanket.  The other hand was trying not to lose its grasp on the heavy backpack holding the last of his belongings.

“Here,” the furious, old bus driver shouted by Lee’s ear before he pushed the boy hard toward a broad triangle of green grass.  “Congratulations, goddamned pervert!  You’ve arrived!”

“Oww,” Lee yelled, stumbling awkwardly forward into the manicured grass.  The bookbag slipped from his straining fingers.  It ricocheted off his knee, plopping onto ground directly in his path and immediately in his way. He lost his grip on his blanket at the same time he lost his battle with gravity.  Sunlight and warm, desert air replaced the feeling of the plush fabric on Lee’s legs and ass while he fell forward, face planting into the soft turf.

“Don’t ever let me catch you on my bus again!  Goddamned pervert,” the driver yelled, stomping away.

The sound of the bus’s door slamming shut reverberated faintly in the late morning air.  For a second, it seemed louder to Lee’s ears than the grumbling idle and hiss of the big bus.  Lee didn’t move from that spot, his body slumped dejectedly over his bookbag, even as the driver put the lumbering vehicle into gear.  The heavy tires rolled noisily over the sunbaked highway while the grumbling engine began to rev louder and louder with anxious acceleration.  Lee could have reached behind him to cover his exposed rear end pointed up at the gawking passengers.  He could have rolled over and at sat up.  What’s the point, he thought sadly.  There’s nothing else to hide.

The noise of the bus faded away into the distance.  The late morning air grew still and peaceful around that grassy spot.  A handful of birds chirped and sang to each other from their hidden perches in the nearby mesquite and juniper trees.  Lee lay still for a long time, just listening to them.  In that moment, Lee envied them.  Their lives were simple, straight forward.  The only complexities were those created by predators.

Is that what happened, Lee wondered, watching the branches of a short, scrubby tree sway lightly in a passing breeze.  Had that other boy been a predator?  The nineteen-year-old stranger named Anthony had certainly added a level or two of complexity Lee had not been expecting.

My shorts, Lee thought suddenly.  A heavy sense of dread sunk through his chest and into his stomach.  My wallet is in my shorts.  And my keys!

Lee finally moved, rolling over on his bookbag to groan loudly at the endless blue sky above him.

“Okay, then,” Lee said angrily.  A dark spot of tingling hatred flicked to life inside him.  Lee felt it in his soul…and immediately wished he hadn’t.  I hope I never see him again, Lee thought, sensing a bitterness inside himself he didn’t like.  But who am I really mad at?  Him?  Or me?

Lee breathed in deeply then exhaled slowly.  “Okay,” he said again, calmer.  He sat up at last, letting his fingers brush the stray blades of grass off the base of his scrotum and the inside of his thighs.  There was nothing else Lee could do about what happened during the night.  It was over.  Anthony was gone.  The bus was gone.  Lee had arrived at a new day, a new chapter in his life, with practically nothing but a bizarre and erotic new experience.

And he wasn’t even totally sure where he was.  Lee looked to his right at the weathered asphalt of the highway leading off into the distance beyond the dense, green shrubs and rocky hills.  Lee looked to his left.  The breeze he felt moved over the ground from that direction.  The warm air was dry but smelled sweetly of a recent rain and the scraggly plants dotting the terrain.  He let his eyes follow a narrow, well-paved road that led away form that grass-covered spot like a dark, motionless river.

Lee started to turn his head and body, to see what was behind him.  There was a noise somewhere in the distance directly ahead of him.  Lee stopped moving, trying to listen past the birdsongs.  He swallowed.  He was trying not to imagine the worst.  Here he was, practically naked in the middle of nowhere being stalked by some hungry, ferocious creature of the desert.

Lee placed his hands flat on the grass.  He started to push himself up.  There were more noises now, closer.  This was it!  He had to move.

Lee pushed up with his palms.  But his feet were tangled in the throw blanket.  His legs were splayed awkwardly over his backpack.  Just then, something emerged from the stout trees across the narrow road in front of him.  And it was headed directly at Lee.

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