Summary:  Lost and alone, a trip turns into an erotic adventure for Adam.

WARNING:  Sexually Explicit

Rating:  R  for Mature Readers only (3,200 words)

The Paradise Pool

It was another, scorching hot, high summer’s day. The sun, at noon, stood directly overhead. It blazed down relentlessly out of a cloudless, brazen sky. The sunlight that shimmered of sand and rock dazzled the eyes. The heat was merciless. Adam Cartwright could feel it beating down on his back in waves, even through the robust, twill cloth of his shirt. The air had grown steadily hotter throughout the morning until it had become painful to breathe. Open-mouthed, Adam was panting.

He drew rein at the top of a rise and stepped out of the saddle, a tall, solidly built man, broad shouldered and deep-chested with lean, horseman’s hips and long legs. He took the time to look around him at the surrounding desolation. He saw nothing but rock, and dirt, and scrub-brush. There was a frown of considerable concern on his unquestionably good-looking face. Six days ago, this apparently straightforward shortcut across an unmapped arm of the desert had seemed like a good idea. Now, experienced survivor that he was, he confessed to himself that he might have made a mistake. Either his navigation had failed him, or, somehow, he had got turned around, or this stretch of waterless wilderness was a lot wider than he had estimated.

Hands to the small of his back, he stretched himself and groaned aloud at the pain. He had been travelling for almost three weeks without any of the benefits of civilization, sleeping mostly on stony ground, spending all day, every day, in the saddle.  His back and groin ached from the strain of it, and he was still a long way from home.

What was causing him a lot more anxiety than his physical discomfort was an acute shortage of water.  It had been more than two whole days since either he, or the horse, had had a proper drink. Adam’s lips were starting to swell with thirst. Soon, they would split open and bleed.

He lifted the canteen down from the saddle-horn and pulled out the stopper. What was left of the water sloshed in the bottom.  Adam moistened his lips and tongue, and then took a single mouthful. He held it in his mouth for a moment, easing the parched membranes before letting it trickle slowly down his throat. He knew that to take less would be pointless, consuming the water without benefit to his body, to take more would certainly make him sick. The water from the canteen was warm and tasted sour.

The chestnut gelding swung his head round and snuffled at him. He could smell the water, and he was thirsty to. Adam didn’t have enough left to spare any for him. Regretfully, he put the stopper back and looped the long strap back over the saddle. He estimated that there was just enough water left to last him until sundown. Then, he would start to die.

He pulled the black neck-scarf from around his throat and mopped at his face. It was ironical that a man still sweated, even while his insides shrivelled with thirst. He undid two more buttons of his shirt and wiped the moisture from his chest. Unbathed for a long time, he could smell the foetid stink of his own body. He looked around again, squinting into the glare.

The surrounding landscape was one of unrelieved desert; low, rolling hills of naked, whitish earth that was more sand than soil, broken boulders and scattered stone. The only vegetation was scrub-brush, a dusty sage green in colour, and the yellow, tassel-headed desert grasses. Adam had been heading for home, steering a course slightly west of south, hoping to hit a tributary of the Truckee River somewhere north of Sparks. Now, as incipient disaster loomed, he knew that he would have to change his thinking.

He wiped a muscular, nut-brown forearm across a face darkly stubbled and gritty with dirt. Right then, a bath and a beer would have gone down very well, but not necessarily in that order. Adam turned back to the horse and climbed aboard. He winced and grunted with pain as his sore butt hit the leather. Gathering his reins, he settled himself as comfortably as he could and touched his heels to the horse. He judged his course from the angle of the sun’s passage and turned the animal’s head more to the west. Perhaps that way, he would find a solution to what was becoming a rather pressing problem.

An hour later and four miles further on, he was wondering if he had made the right decision. The rolling desert hills, little more than stabilized sand dunes, continued unbroken. He had seen no trace of a watercourse, nor even of a sinkhole where he could have dug in the hope of finding water soaked strata underground. Adam’s concern was becoming extreme.

He moistened his mouth again, not daring to drink this time, saving the last mouthful of water for the late afternoon when it would do him the most good. He stood up in the stirrups to make one final choice of direction. He could feel the horse starting to labour under him and knew that he would soon be afoot in the desert, at night, with snakes and scorpions to contend with, and nothing whatever to drink. It was not a pleasant prospect.

Selecting what might, or might not, have been a faint animal trail between the hills, he sat down again and kicked the reluctant horse into motion.

The path-that-wasn’t-a-path soon disappeared, but by then, Adam had run out of options. The gelding was starting to stumble over the stones and his head was hanging down. The golden hide was blotched with sweat stains. Adam himself was starting to sway in the saddle. There was no point in turning back; he knew the kind of death that waited behind him. The only way was forward, to whatever fate lay ahead.

The horse snorted and wickered softly. Adam jerked his head up. Made drowsy by the heat and lost in the misery of his discomfort, his mind had started to wander. And, to be honest, he had been dozing in the saddle. To his eyes, everything was just as before; sand, and rocks, and brush, but the horse, evidently, knew differently. He was moving forward now at a faster pace and with more eagerness in his step. Adam let the reins slide through his fingers and let the animal have his head.

The gelding followed a path Adam would not have selected, angling even more to the west. Adam allowed him to have his way, and the animal proved to be wiser than the man. The path he followed lipped over a rim and dipped into a shallow vale.

It was more of a basin than a valley; a dish shaped depression in the land where, by some fluke of nature, the desert had bloomed into a garden. The bushes around the rim were still the standard desert types; sagebrush, and scrub pine, and gorse, but grown large, almost lush. Further on there were stunted, broadleaf trees, and true grasses. At the bottom, where the basin flattened out, was a real meadow with scented wildflowers among long, ungrazed grassland. There was a single, big, old cottonwood tree, and, in the exact centre of the meadow, surrounded by droop-headed willows, a pool.

The horse could smell the water, and he set off down the slope with a will. Thirsty as the animal was, Adam could not have stopped him even if he had wanted to. He had no doubt that he was trespassing upon private property. This little piece of Paradise had to belong to somebody. In order to stay alive, he had to rely upon the unwritten law of western hospitality – to deny no man water.

The grass grew hock deep to the horse, thick and a lush, dark green.  It was peppered with white daisy-faces, and yellow colt’s foot, and a little purple flower that Adam didn’t immediately recognize. He pulled the horse up short of the poolside and stepped down, leaving the reins trailing. He looked around a little uneasily. He had the uncomfortable feeling that he was being observed by unseen eyes. Other than himself and the horse, there was no creature in sight larger than a butterfly that flittered among the grass-heads. The meadow drowsed beneath the afternoon sun. It was very quiet and very peaceful. Never the less, the little, short-cropped hairs at the back of Adam’s neck were all standing erect. It gave him an odd prickling sensation all along the length of his spine.

He shrugged the feeling off. Watched or not, he had to have the water. Unconsciously loosening his Colt in its holster as he went, he walked to the pool.

The water was deep, and dark, and crystal clear. He could see the pebbles on the bottom quite clearly through six feet of liquid. Thirsty he might have been, but Adam was no fool. He studied the pool carefully. There were no small fry in the shallows, and no circles of spreading ripples further out to indicate the presence of larger fish in the depths. There were no damselflies and no water boatmen skimming the surface. The water appeared to be quite lifeless.

Adam dropped to one knee on the bank. By leaning a long way down, he could just reach the surface. Using the edge of his hand, he brushed aside the thin, floating scum and dipped in his fingers. He raised his hand to his mouth and tasted, cautiously. The water was cold and had a vague flavour of decaying vegetation, but it was sweet and untainted. Adam went down on both knees and scooped up a double handful. He made himself drink slowly, careful not to overfill his belly. Almost at once, he started to feel better.

The horse nudged him hard in the side and pushed past him, anxious to get at the water. Adam laughed and made room for him. The gelding spread his forelegs wide and lowered his muzzle into the pool. He gulped the water down in great, noisy draughts. Adam drank again himself, sparingly. He soaked his neck-scarf in the pool and, taking off his hat, squeezed it out around his neck, first one side and then the other. The cold water ran down inside his shirt in deliciously cooling rivulets. Then he wiped his face with the cloth and sat back on his haunches.

The little meadow was a total enigma. There were butterflies among the wildflowers and the odd, lazy bumblebee, but there no birds, and no small animals, and no fish in the pool. And yet the feeling of being watched persisted.

Finished drinking at last, the horse backed away from the pool and started to crop at the grass. Adam wiped his neck one last time. Now, he needed to fill up his canteen before he could be on his way.  With luck, he could make ten more miles towards home before nightfall. A pang of pain from his groin reminded him of the abuse he had already suffered on the back of the horse. There were many more uncomfortable miles still ahead. He lowered a hand and eased himself. Swinging back into that saddle was not a prospect that he relished. With a sigh, he started to straighten.

A soft sound from behind him alerted him, but a moment too late. Soft white hands covered his eyes.  Adam made an abortive grab for the Colt, and then realized that he didn’t need it. The hands were the hands of a woman; they weren’t hurting him, merely preventing him from seeing and from turning round. He could smell a woman’s light perfume. His handsome face broke into a smile.

“Hey, Ma’am, I think you have the advantage of me!”

Whoever she might have been, the woman made no answer. The hands slid from his eyes and settled onto the knotted muscles of his neck, kneading, easing the tension. His head was held quite firmly; he was prevented from turning and looking. Very gently, little teeth nibbled at the lobe of his ear.

Adam jumped as nerve pathways tingled with awakening awareness. He caught his breath sharply,

“You didn’t ought ta do that, Ma’am!”

He tried to twist away but the hands that held him were insistent and quite strong.  He leaned forward, trying to catch a glimpse of his gentle assailant in the mirror of the pool. The firm hands prevented him, holding him back. In another moment a soft, pale, pleasantly perfumed wisp of cloth slipped across his face. It was wound twice, three times around his head, binding his eyes, gently blinding him. The ends were knotted behind his head.

“Ma’am?” Instinctively, Adam put out his hands. The smile was still on his face.

The hands pulled him down into the grass, pushing him onto his back. He felt the warmth of the woman’s body settle beside him.  Sightless, he turned his face towards where she was. He felt his mouth brushed fleetingly by a woman’s pliant lips.

Dextrous fingers undid the rest of his shirt buttons, all the way down to his waist, and eased the shirttails out of his pants. The damp, dirty material of his shirt was pushed aside. Adam felt the fresh air, cool against his fevered skin.

Adam’s breathing quickened. His young, healthy, supremely fit, male body was responding with natural vehemence to the sensuous stimulation. He lifted his hands to take off the blindfold. The firm fingers caught them and pulled them away, forbidding him sight

.

The fingers tracked through the rough mat of his chest hair, entwining and pulling at individual little curls. The small pains intensified the tense pleasure that was building in his lower body. His nipples were pinched and the sharp nips made him gasp and squirm.

The fingers tracked downwards, sliding slowly over his body. They lingered here and there to tease him, to torment him. His breath was coming to him in short anxious grunts. He moved his rump restlessly against the grass, crushing daisies. The buckles of his belt and gunbelt loosened at a touch. Adam felt a momentary concern as the weight of the Colt fell away from his thigh. That concern faded and was forgotten as the buttons of his pants were opened, one by one. Groaning aloud, he arched his back and lifted his hips, assisting in the removal of his clothing, freeing his yearning lower body and his legs. Stripped naked, he was exposed to the watching eyes of the universe, furiously rampant, unable to help himself.

The hands moved over the flat, hard muscled plain of his belly. They paused at the hideous, puckered scar that marred its smoothness and traced its contours, loitering there a long time, as if curious. Then they moved lower, investigating his proudly erect manliness.

Adam rolled his head in the meadow grass. He didn’t believe what was happening to him. He didn’t want not to believe it. A part of him, the strictly raised, Christian, Victorian gentleman, knew that he should put a stop to it. The rest of him, the young, human, male animal demanded that it should never stop. It was his humanity that won.

Unable to resist, he put out his hands, seeking to draw his tormentor down to him, into his arms, onto his body. His wrists were captured, and his hands returned to his sides and pressed forcefully into the grass. Then he was punished for his audacity – and punished severely. For a long time, nothing touched him at all.

Naked, he writhed against the grass. His body strained upwards, piercing and penetrating the sky.

Only after an eternity of tortured loneliness did the touch return. Feather-light at first, fingertips traced circles on his inner thigh. They drifted upwards, seeking, cupping, gently holding. The thrusting shaft of his manhood was explored, probed, caressed. Independently of conscious will, his body pushed itself up into the willing hands.

Exquisite pleasure turned into pure ecstasy as pliant lips closed over the peak of his passion. Adam moaned as the small teeth nibbled at his engorgement, and then bit harder at his most sensitive place. He thrust, and was accepted. He felt the strength of the mouth, drawing on him. The first of his sweet, leaking fluids were swallowed down. Adam lifted his body again, feeling the tension building towards imminent release. Gasping, he pulled back for the final drive.

A hand closed tightly about the base of the shaft, close against his body. The fingers squeezed hard, hurting him, holding him back.  Denied completion, the breath sobbed in his throat. He tried to twist free but the hands refused to release him. They held him until he subsided. Only when his breathing had steadied did they resume their self-imposed task; inflicting the sweet torment that could have only one, inevitable conclusion. They touched, caressed, smoothed, raising him to new heights of ever increasing intensity. Adam was a willing victim, helpless, vulnerable and compliant.

Blinded, he felt the warmth of the female form reach across him, knee to hipbone. The soft hands guided him. The hardness of his masculinity pulsed as he felt himself engulfed. Tortured beyond endurance, Adam cried out. He felt himself absorbed, drawn inwards and upwards. The weight on him shifted, leaning backwards, balancing against his thighs. He moved himself, driving with his hips, swiftly finding the primordial rhythm. There was an immediate response. The female body took its pleasure from his fierce maleness, even as he took his. The knowledge of it drove his sensation to mountainous heights.

Not seeing, not holding, not touching except for the place where it mattered the most, made it worse – made it infinitely better. The watching universe imploded in his mind. His body yielded up its vital, procreative fluids in a series of explosive bursts. He cried out to the sky twice, three times, as his body shuddered in final release.

The warm, human presence stayed beside him, stroking and soothing until his trembling ceased and his breathing quietened. Eventually, in the warmth of the afternoon sunlight, he turned onto his side and, sated, he slept.

When he woke up, he sensed, at once, that he was alone. He was still blindfolded and naked. He pulled the cloth from his eyes and raised himself up on his elbow. Apart from his horse, quietly cropping the daisies, nothing but butterflies moved in the meadow.

His clothes lay in a pile of rumpled black cloth in the grass. Adam dressed himself slowly and strapped on his gun. Bending, he picked up the strip of white cloth that had bound his eyes. It still smelled faintly of perfume. Folding it carefully, he tucked it into his saddlebag – a sweet reminder of a pleasant interlude. He filled his canteen from the pool and stepped into the saddle, gathering his reins. His crotch reminded him that it was still a long way home. Taking a last, long look round, he shook his head, perplexed. The smile remained on his face as he rode away.

Tags: Adam Cartwright