Lions of the Desert-Part 8

Lee Ogden couldn’t help but smile.  He breathed in the scent of the mesquite trees beside the old road.  He savored the feeling of the warm breeze blowing steadily past him.  The sweat that had begun to form under his bangs felt cool on his skin.  He pushed the gently billowing strands of his hair off his brow, even though he knew they wouldn’t stay in place.  The golf cart suddenly bounced over a rough patch on the weathered road.  Lee’s body shifted on the padded bench.  He winced slightly as his side pressed into the hard plastic of the arm rest that kept him from tumbling out.  He tightened his hold on that small piece of the golf cart with his right hand while pulling on the hem of his tank top with his left.

Lee felt himself blushing with embarrassment again as he glanced down toward his lap.  The tip of his penis brushed against his knuckles while he tried to keep his cum-stained shirt in place.  It was a feeble attempt to conceal an erection that was sticking straight out and not going away.  The vibrations moving up through the golf cart weren’t helping.  But neither was the extremely close presence of the extremely handsome man seated beside him.  Lee turned his head slightly left, glimpsing the bright, wide smile of Eddy Martin.

Eddy was tall, toned, tanned, and doing nothing to cover up the raw sexiness radiating off his body.  Lee had been hard from the moment Eddy had first appeared by the grassy median now somewhere behind them.  If Lee had still been in possession of his shorts, his predicament might not be so humiliatingly obvious.

“It’s okay, ya’ know,” said Eddy as he steered the golf cart swiftly through a long, shallow curve of the old road.

Lee glanced at the thirty-four-year-old adonis shyly.  “What is?”

“Your…situation,” said Eddy, his eyes looking Lee up and down from behind his red-framed sunglasses.

Lee was genuinely confused.  “My what?”

Eddy chuckled.  Without any hesitation, he moved his right arm toward Lee.  His hand found Lee’s seven inches of hot, steely, teen flesh.  Not that it was a challenge.  Despite the eighteen-year-old’s efforts to cover it up, the head and almost half of the shaft of his excited penis was clearly visible.  Eddy patted the rigid phallus with his palm, chuckling again at the wide-eyed surprise on Lee’s face.

“This situation,” Eddy replied, letting the boy’s cock bounce against the tight skin of his palm a few times before he closed his fingers around the shaft.  “It happens to all guys.  Just maybe not always so…out in the open.”

Lee’s breath caught in his throat.  Goosebumps blossomed across his entire body while Eddy stroked the length of his cock once, then twice.  It was all Lee could do not to bellow out a moan as Eddy caressed the swollen glans at the top of his dick.  Lee’s balls twitched heavily in the shockwave of pleasure that simple motion and pressure had created.

“But maybe it’s time for a new trend.”

Lee looked at Eddy who nodded his head, gesturing down toward his lap.  It took him exactly two seconds to spot the bulging tube stretching the already tight fabric of Eddy’s burgundy shorts.  Lee’s eyes widened as he followed the pronounced ridge down the short length of cloth at the top of Eddy’s muscular thigh.  It was impossible to miss the beautiful, glistening head of the girthy cock resting against the inside of Eddy’s long, toned limb.

“Whoa,” exclaimed Lee, watching Eddy flex his leg muscles.  The simple, subtle movement pulled another few centimeters of the almost fully hard man-pipe free from the red hem of the silky shorts.

“Like I said, no need to be ashamed of it,” said Eddy, smiling.  “Be proud of it.”

With a quick, imperceptible flick of his fingers, Eddy pulled the tight shorts back toward his groin.  The summer air swept across nearly all of the 7.2 inches of thick, hard muscle now bouncing free.

“I know I am,” Eddy added, glimpsing Lee staring at the skin covered rod extending out from Eddy’s lap.

Without looking down at himself, Lee relaxed his grip on his tank top.  The cum-stained material retreated naturally toward his torso, leaving his own long, hard, teen cock out in the open.

“Yeah,” Eddy shouted, his eyebrows arched.  “Very nice!”  His strong hand stroked Lee’s shaft again before rubbing the top of his left thigh and then Lee’s heavy balls.  “Very nice.”

Lee sighed contentedly as Eddy massaged his love muscles.  His grip was heavier than Anthony’s, firmer.  Yet, at the same time, more caring.  He heard himself moan when Eddy’s fingers cupped his testicles. A soft, slightly callused thumb stroked the front side of his ball sack, making Lee’s toes curl on the floorboard of the golf cart.

“Here,” Eddy said, suddenly pulling his hand off of Lee’s scrotum.  Lee watched, almost numb, as Eddy picked up Lee’s left hand and placed it on top of his smooth shaft. “Fair is fair.”

For Eddy, the sensation of the eighteen-year-old’s fingers wrapping around the top of his cock was an extremely pleasurable and mellowing experience.  He glanced down to watch Lee hesitantly ease his fist down the stiff shaft to the place where Eddy’s erection met the bunched-up fabric of his shorts leg.

Lee turned his head, smiling bashfully at Eddy.  “It’s awesome.”

Eddy smiled brightly.  “Agreed. Ya know, I think this is the start of a very interesting friendship.”

“I’d like that,” said Lee, looking back down at the cock he was stroking.  He noticed that it wasn’t pale like his own. It was tanned, from the flared mushroom head down to the sweat-slickened base.  This made Lee curious and even more excited.

“At some point, my new friend, you’re goin’ to have to tell me the story about what happened on that bus.”

“Oh, yeah…” Lee said, feeling embarrassed again.  His hold on Eddy’s cock relaxed, his smooth strokes slowing to a stop.

“Hey, no worries.  Ya’ don’t have to tell me now.  I can be patient.  At least…on occasion.  Besides, we have now officially arrived.”

Lee turned sharply away from Eddy to face forward on the padded bench with excited curiosity.  He watched as the wall of trees hugging either side of the wide, old road suddenly ended.  The view in front of the golf cart opened on sunlit buildings and fresh cut, green grass.  Eddy steered the cart swiftly around another triangular median, this one smaller in the middle of three intersecting roads.  Lee gawked at an ornately carved sculpture in the center of the triangle.  Two muscular, stone figures were standing amongst a pack of animals.  Cougars, Lee thought, pivoting on the bench seat.  Those animals looked like cougars.

“That statue looks amazing,” Lee exclaimed, leaning over the plastic arm rest and looking back at the intersection already more than a dozen yards behind them.

“Made by students,” Eddy said, nonchalantly, “about…five years ago, I think.  It replaced a sculpture that had been there for…forever.”

Lee leaned back into the golf cart and faced forward again, the sculpture in the median out of view as Eddy turned left onto a different road.  “Forever,” Lee asked, confused.

Eddy smiled.  “Just an expression.  But the original sculpture was old.  It was already in need of attention by the time it was severely damaged in one hellacious hailstorm.  A storm for the record books.”

“Made by students,” Lee repeated in awe.

Eddy slowed the cart down.  “Oh, yeah.  There’s no failing at Desert Hill University.  Only degrees of excelling.”  He gestured to the view past Lee.  The eighteen-year-old turned his head to his right and marvelled at what he saw.

The space was big.  A rectangle of beautiful, lush green grass at least a hundred meters wide and much, much longer stretched away in front of his eyes.  Wide paths of crushed gravel spread out in a sunburst pattern from a central point in the grassy field.  Large, beautiful buildings flanked each side of the oversized quadrangle.  Each one was larger than any building back home in Harper, except for maybe the main school.  Lee tried to take in as much detail of each as he could.  He counted six of the large structures, two to his left and three on his right.  The largest of the buildings was at the top of the recently mowed rectangle.  And, Lee noticed, it was literally at the top.  The landscape wasn’t flat.  There was a subtle, but noticeable, slant in the terrain so the far end of the quad was slightly higher than the bottom.

“It’s almost half a mile from the club house to the chancellor’s residence,” explained Eddy.  “These four buildings are for the main programs.  Then you have the library.  And, at the head of the whole stretch, the Student Services Center.  Cafeteria, post office, campus housing, clubs, career services, and…well…more are all in there.”

Lee barely blinked as he took it all in.  From his seat in the golf cart the building’s façade was at least as wide as the quad in front of it.  A curved portico extended outward under a large, graphite-colored dome.  From where he sat, the large building appeared to only be a story or two.  Lee wondered if it was terraced like Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello-giving the appearance of low simplicity from the outside while being a multi-leveled marvel on the inside.  Given what Eddy had just said about there being no failing at this school, Lee was going to lean hard on there being more than meets the eye across every part of the campus he could see so far.

“No failing, huh,” Lee said, finally looking away from the immaculate grounds.

Eddy had brought the golf cart almost to a complete stop, giving his young new friend a chance to take in and remember his first views of the place he’d be calling home for most of the next four years.  “Certainly not since I’ve been around,” Eddy said, replying to Lee’s comment.

“That sounds…intimidating.”

Eddy shrugged his shoulders.  “It’s all in how you learn.  You’re gonna find there’s not much of the assembly line classwork and lecturing here.  Learning is a hands-on process.  And what better way to become good at a process than by becoming part of the process.”

Lee furrowed his brow.

Eddy only smiled.  “Think of yourself as more of an apprentice than just a student.  The classrooms are just one element in the process of shaping your future.  Take this place over here,” Eddy said, shifting slightly on the padded bench of the golf cart.

He pointed to a trio of rectangular buildings on his side of the street.  All three were virtually identical to each other, at least from the front.  They were four stories tall with pale, sandy colored facades.  The architecture styles were simple, especially in comparison to the behemoth structures around the quad.  Dark red tiles accented the ground floor corners of each building.  Matching tiles outlined the tall, arched windows on either side of their centralized entrances.  Short, cobbled bridges connected the three, recessed, glass doorways to the sidewalk separated from the trio by a dry, stone-lined moat.

“This is the Athletics Sciences Center,” Eddy explained.

“You mean the gym?”

Eddy chuckled.  “No.  The gym is behind us.  It’s part of the swim center.”

“Oh.”

“These are purely for research and development.  Between them there’s a pair of wind tunnels, more than a handful of labs, an augmented reality studio, and more than I can name off hand.  Students lead and take part in projects from designing new lightweight-but stronger-football helmets, to tear-resistant, breathable racing fabrics, and even temperature-modulating turf for indoor baseball stadiums.”

“Student led?”

“Yessir.  Professors administrate and guide.  But it’s the students that steer the ship.”

“Degrees of excelling, huh?”

“You got it,” Eddy smiled, shifting forward on the bench seat again.  He pressed his foot against the accelerator pedal, giving the car more speed as they passed the southernmost corner of the Athletics Sciences Center.

“So…no pressure then, right,” Lee asked sarcastically.

“Nothing wrong with a little bit of pressure.  Applied correctly over time, pressure can transform one material into another.”

Lee smirked.  He looked at Eddy.  “Like a diamond.”

Eddy nodded with a smile, glancing at Lee as he accelerated the golf cart through a quiet intersection.  “Yeah!  Like a diamond.”

The golf cart’s motor whined louder as Eddy accelerated a little more.  They were on a darkly paved, two-lane road that sloped gradually upward toward a shallow, right-hand curve.  Buildings that looked brand-new created a canyon of steel, stucco, wood, and glass on either side of the broad asphalt path.

“Dorms,” Eddy said over the steady whir and whine of the golf cart.

The campus nomenclature labeled the area as “Dorm Corner”.  There were a total of nine residential buildings all located within the southwest corner of campus.  Eight of the dormitories covered the ground and lower slope of a single, moderately steep hill while the ninth residence hall sat at the summit.  If it weren’t for the impressive height of the library, the ninth dorm would have an unobstructed view of the entire Desert Hill campus.

The eight lower dorms were clustered into two groups of four.  The buildings in each cluster were obvious variations of each other, especially the four Eddy explained were only available to sophomores and up.  Lee recognized the Spanish Colonial style of the large residence halls.  He actually liked architecture.  It was probably his second or third most favorite subject behind history and, possibly, geology.

Lee was hardly an architecture expert.  However, he’d seen the building style of the dorms in many books, not to mention various places in Texas-especially San Antonio.  He noticed the four buildings with their white stucco and numerous, oversized windows were likely not pure examples of the Spanish revival motif.  There was a blatant modernism to them.  It was…interesting to the eighteen-year-old, to say the least.

The buildings in the second cluster were more identical copies of each other versus simple variations of a style.  They looked like low rent apartments compared to the luxury-embellished facades of the first group.  Each of these four had plain, cream-colored stucco walls and gabled, red shingled roofs at the tops of their three storied heights.  The only interesting part of the four structures was their matching archways that wrapped around three sides of the long, plain rectangles.  From the sky, Lee imagined they might look like reddish-colored bars on the jacket of some military officer.  He stared back at them as the golf cart swept through the shallow curve and continued upward on the back slope of the hill.  Lee wondered what life was going to be like in one of those dorms for the next year.  He was a freshman and those were the freshmen dorms.  It made sense for Lee to assume that’s where he’d be assigned to live.

As Eddy steered the golf cart along the road, the small electric motor whining even more loudly with the steepening gradient of the hill’s slope, Lee could look down at the closest of the more ornate dormitories.  There were balconies extending off the backside of the second and third floors.  On the ground level was a wide, flat patio of irregular stone extending away from the north and south wings of the structure.  Lee counted no less than six clean, ready to use firepits, each ringed by cushioned benches and a pair of Adirondack chairs.  Dense, green hedges walled in the large social area, separating it from a similar setup behind the neighboring dorm.

“Those are nice,” Lee said.

Eddy shrugged his shoulders.  “They have their perks,” he said pleasantly.  “But there’s no place like home.”

Lee turned his attention forward as the golf cart rounded another curve along the hill’s edge.  He felt the little vehicle slow and then come to a stop in front of a large…house.  “Whoa,” he said, staring at the impressive old structure looming above them. 

The house was at least three stories tall with walls made of brick.  It looked Victorian in design to Lee’s eyes as he leaned out of the golf cart, especially with the wide, gabled roof crowning the ornate front of the old manor.  A pair of heavy columns held the weathered pediment above the porches on the first and second floors, creating a bold sense of symmetry.

“You live here,” Lee asked, still staring at the old house as Eddy slid swiftly out of the golf cart.

“Yessir.  It’s not much.  But I couldn’t imagine bein’ more comfortable any place else.”

Lee slowly stood up out of the cart.  “You live here by yourself?”

Eddy looked at Lee with an expression of amused confusion.  “Well, mostly during the summer.  Students are only residents during the regular term.  It’s pretty standard.”

Lee blinked, looking at Eddy.  “Oh!  It’s a dorm!”

“Of course,” Eddy laughed.  “Come on inside.  Welcome to Crockett Hall!”

Lee grabbed his backpack and followed a few steps behind Eddy.  He could feel the heat of the concrete on the soles of his feet, but only just a little.  Either it hadn’t gotten that hot yet or Lee was too excited to notice.

“Interesting fact,” said Eddy when Lee caught up to him.  He was standing at the bottom of a wide, brick stairway that curved as it led up the broad, first floor porch.  “This is the oldest building on campus.”

“Really,” Lee asked, glancing up and down between the brick steps and the firm, defined muscles of Eddy’s ass under his tight, silky short shorts.

“It was part of the old fort that had originally been here.  When the founders of the school purchased the land from the state, they moved into this building-mostly because it was the most intact structure still standing.”

Lee looked around them as Eddy spoke.  He was honestly surprised the old manor was still standing.  Many of its beams were exposed with several showing signs of damage.  The paint on the columns was cracked and faded-where it wasn’t missing altogether.  The iron balustrade enclosing the open atrium was rusted and even looked warped in places.  Lee spotted water stains and plaster peeling away from the brickwork around the doorway where Eddy was standing.

“Pretty sure they taught the first classes in this building, too,” Eddy continued.  He leaned back to look at the entrance of the old mansion.  “Yeah,” he said proudly, tapping the thick molding on one side of the old French doors, “she’s old.  But she’s got it where it counts and has stories to tell like no other building on campus.”

He was about to open one of the twin doors when both of the scratched, nearly colorless partitions suddenly swept inward.  Eddie flinched a half step back in surprise as a voice inside the doorway roared, “What the fuck, Eddy?!”

I hope you are liking this story so far. There's so much more still to come. Please leave a comment to help support this story. And if you'd like to help make sure I stay caffeinated and keep the lights on to keep writing more, please check out the link below to leave a tip. Thank you! -T.F.