SECRET OF THE TURTLE MEN, CHAPTER 9
By Tommyhawk1@AOL.COM
"Pay to Ride"
The pink mist was inexorable. After Pavel had eaten the breakfast his hosts had provided, and as he was waiting for the transport mentioned by them, he felt again the stirring of the flesh. He mentioned this obliquely to Pelen, saying, "It seems to me the mist is stronger here than in my own valley. How do you stand it, if you can't sleep with the same person twice and only you and your father were in your house?"
"We had guests until quite late, and of course, I had the bachelor light." Pelen said. "It fretted me, yes, but this has happened a half dozen times and always there is someone who is called to the light. My father says that it actually seeks out a person in need of companionship, but I find that hard to believe."
"I don't." Pavel said, thinking of the qiblah plant's uncanny sense of direction. "This entire world was created by Stepwith, and he has therefore left us with puzzles capable of solution."
"You are wise." Pelen nodded.
"Not as wise as all that." Pavel said ruefully. "I was quoting my Uncle David. And he also pointed out at the same time that wisdom is not knowledge and I am still ignorant of the ways of your valley. Why was it that I could not stay with you in your bed and had to climb out the window, only to have you send your father out to fetch me right back inside again?"
Pelen looked astonished. "Why, if you had stayed until broad daylight, and the bachelor plant had gone out as it soon would have...." He seemed to be fishing for words.
"Yes, if the bachelor plant had gone out...." Pavel coaxed him.
"You and I would not be bachelors any longer." Pelen said, looking down at his feet scuffling the dirt, as if embarrassed.
"Huh? Oh!" Pavel said. "You mean staying overnight means...."
"Yes, we would have been married." Pelen said. "While you might make a good husband for me, I did not think you had plans to marry a man you didn't know. And even if you had, I am not so quick to choose. Usually bachelors exchange visits several times before staying as long as you did. A persistent but unwanted visitor can be avoided by being sent away as I sent you away, or I could have left the house myself before full daylight, and so you see I have my own choice. Or I could choose to visit the lights rather than be the one visited. I usually do, but with my family away I didn't want to leave my father alone last night. Still, I was glad you came along."
"Ah." Pavel said, reaching down and adjusting his ever-hardening cock. "Well, you have had one time away from me as required by your customs. When will this, uh, carriage come along? And do we have time to, shall I say, renew our companionship?"
Pelen smiled, then shook his head, and Pavel was downcast. "You misunderstand me." Pelen clarified. "The carriage approaches now." And he pointed.
Pavel looked; it was a larger version of the turtle bower which had borne him through the air, without rails and very elongated, some five feet across and maybe fifteen feet long. Cargo rode in the middle with the people seated all around the sides. A single Angel towed it along, looking unhappy but diligent in his duty. Perhaps for this reason, it floated mere inches free of the ground and also needed the rather broad, flat road which it traveled. Pavel saw it pause briefly a few houses away (there were several houses around, he was near the edge of a small village, not at an isolated house as he had thought the night before, no wonder the Ifriti had left him so far away), where a man stepped off the platform, adjusted his clothing and walked away and the sole Angel who pulled it brought it their way.
"I am glad you are coming with me." Pavel said. "I really know nothing of your customs."
"You need me along, yes." Pelen smiled, perhaps with a bit of air of superiority. "I know this much of your home valley. You have no money there."
"Money?" Pavel said. He had learned of this in school, of course, but it hadn't made a lot of sense to him. Instead of trading item-for-item, or of giving freely of your supplies with the assurance that it would thus be given to you at your need, as they did in his own valley, people back on Earth had made discs of decoratively-carved metal, or paper or plastic, which they used to buy what they needed, or took in trade as they sold their own things. When he had asked his teacher why they would possibly need such a thing, his teacher had responded with, "What if you were a man who made tables for a living. Say that you did it really well. Very good, but what would you do with fifteen or twenty tables? You'd have to trade them away." to which Pavel had responded, "Why would anyone build twenty tables? One is plenty." His teacher hadn't had a good answer for that, mumbling only about supply-and-demand, whatever that was. So money was still mostly a mystery to Pavel other than the basic facts of how it was intended to be used.
"Yes." Pelen reached into his front pants pocket and pulled out some small blue discs from there. "This is our money. I brought enough for both of us, at least for a while."
"Why, I've seen things like those before, in my school!" Pavel said delightedly.
"Yes, we get these from the Angels, who make them." Pelen said. "I will pay for both of us to ride."
"Oh. Well, maybe you don't have to." Pavel said, smiling. He reached into his sash and brought out his pouch. "I don't have money, but I do have this."
"What is that?" Pelen asked.
"When Arabs pay visits, they carry gifts to offer their hosts and are given gifts in return." Pavel explained, opening the pouch. "So when I left, they gave me some gifts to carry with me for people I met on the way and so on. I have some of these jewels I can use to pay with." He poured them briefly onto his hand, mostly unset stones, there were also rings and a couple of larger items inside. "Would the Angel take these in exchange for the ride?"
Pelen was dumbfounded. "Maybe, but let me pay just the same." He said as the carriage arrived. "A carriage ride is not worth as much as those jewels."
Pavel shrugged. "If you say so. These things are heavy, I was looking forward to getting rid of some of them." He admitted these rocks were pretty, the way they shimmered in the light the way they were cut, but the Arabs put special stock in them and that was their only value to him. Apparently the Turtle Men did, too, Pelen was giving him a look of almost envy. His teacher had explained about jewels to his class as well with equal lack of success; to him, they were just pretty rocks, and awfully small rocks at that. "Look, let me give you one to give to your father when you return, for your hospitality. I forgot all about these, what with, uh, all that happened."
"Uh...that's all right, really." Pelen said uncomfortably. "Put those away before someone sees them. Come on, let's get on, or the carriage will leave us."
Pelen handed two of the coins to the Angel and Pavel obligingly climbed onto the platform. Pelen and Pavel mimicked the others by sitting on the edge with their legs over the side. He found that the raised area which formed an open-topped box to hold the cargo, and the flat rim around it where the people sat, was actually contoured to let him sit back against it quite comfortably, and his feet dangled still some inches above the leveled road below. He found the ride was totally comfortable and smooth, without a single jolt or bump, even of the mild sort he had experienced in the turtle bower.
"So how long will this take?" he asked Pelen, who was on his left.
"Not too long." Pelen said. "Once he leaves the foothills, another Angel will join him and they will pull us along quite rapidly and directly into the City of the Angels.
"Where was your uncle? I thought he was arriving on the carriage."
"So did I. There are several of them each day; he will be along on another of the carriages." Pelen assured him.
"Oh." Pavel said. "So, what shall we talk about on the ride?"
"I'm sure we'll think of something." Pelen's hand reached over and fondled its way below the sash and into the junction of his white leggings. Pavel grinned and put his left arm around Pelen and with his right hand returned the favor, fumbling with the zipper of Pelen's pants. It wasn't like any he had seen before, like the ones the Marines had worn, and he had fished into those olive-green khakis and freed that turgid gyrene dick...God, he was horny! This one was almost a loop-and-button work, but the principle was the same, you took the pull tab and worked it down. It seemed like this zipper required you wiggle the tab back and forth as you went, but no matter, the zipper came down.
Pelen's lips reached for him and Pavel was quick to let them kiss his own. Once their hands were busy on each other's puds, however, he found settled for pressing his forehead to Pelen's as he fought for breath. He was so damned hot! Rutting like he hadn't since his youngest days as an adult, and his cock had been yelling for attention non-stop since arriving in this valley. How did the Turtle Men do it?
"Your body loves my hand, does it not?" Pelen said warmly, his breaths a moist explosion at Pavel's cheek. "See how your manhood weeps in joy as I work it?"
"Yeah, I know." Pavel panted. "I'm having a lot of trouble with the mist here; we'd better not take too long on this trip, or I'll have to ask one of the other passengers for help."
"They would be glad to assist." Pelen said. "You are a most handsome man. Your skin is such a beautiful color, so smooth and even."
"I thought the same, as I saw you." Pavel crooned. "You're such a beautiful man."
Pelen's hand pumped Pavel's precome-greased prick, and the slick jism smoothed the feel of Pelen's palm, making his hand more like a moist mouth, the way it slid effortlessly over his shaft and skinned him slickly. Pavel's mouth watered as he looked at Pelen's cock as he jerked it, thinking mostly of the way it had tasted as he took it in his mouth the night before, he craved it yet again.
When the carriage stopped, he shifted and leaned over Pelen, perching somewhat precariously across the vacant seat to his right, but at least now he could lean over and taste that wonderful prong, take it into his mouth.
"Be careful." Pelen warned, gasped as Pavel's mouth enveloped his pud. "The rule is...is that if you leave the carriage...even if you fall off...you must wait and pay for the next one."
Pavel looked up. "And if I fell, would you not come off and join me?" And he took Pelen's cock in to the very base as he returned to his task.
"Yes, but...oh!" Pelen groaned. "We would...we would be delayed in our journey. Oh! Oh! I only wish I could reach you from here!" he moaned in frustration.
Pavel felt a hand at his crotch, the passenger down the way, another man with hair as red as Pelen's, though he was older and his face and body thinner, had noticed his new posture and preoccupation, and had chosen to join in.
Pavel grunted around Pelen's cock as his own was slowly covered by a hot, wet tongue slathering him, and he gasped out, "Take your pleasure now, and you can return it later. Ah, ah!" His cock seethed under the man's adept embrace of lips and suction of his throat as he plied his will over Pavel's cock, nourishing and enhancing his moisture with every touch of that talented, agile tongue. God, it felt as if that tongue had wrapped around him totally! He had never felt its like before, save with the Ifriti's cocks, and this was not nearly so wide, and so much, much wetter and warmer!
Pelen's hands interlaced into his hair and Pelen forcibly pumped Pavel's head upon his prick, holding Pavel in place at the same time, for his purchase in this reclining position upon the contoured seating was most precarious and almost uncomfortable.
When they stopped yet again, Pavel shifted and so did his partner working his prick, now Pavel was upon his knees on the seat and the man was lying between his legs, and Pavel sent his left arm around Pelen's back and clutched him tightly and now he dared to move more boldly and so he did, he shoved that warm prong deeper into his mouth, taking it down his throat and holding it there as he moved with small, careful strokes so that the foreskin could work itself upon his throat rather than by his lips. Pelen's moans were extraordinarily loud, Pavel knew that he was bringing the young Turtle Man great pleasure, and this increased his own pleasure, that and the way this other man's tongue seemed to be everywhere at once, no, that was not a coil about his prong, that was a withdrawal and lick back and forth in some manner that he was certain he could not match himself, he hunched into the man's mouth as the man suckled his schlong, and now Pavel felt a finger impudently probing at his anus, finding the small tuckerhole and inserting itself, and he groaned, the finger wriggled inside of him deeply and he groaned again, and now his climax rose in his body and his ass clutched hard on the finger, where it was forced to wriggle helplessly in his clutch like a worm in a bird's beak, and Pavel moaned his lust around Pelen's pud and climbed the heights of joy and perched upon its crest for an astonishingly long time until he fell into the abyss beyond, wailing his cry of abandoned wanton need as a long keen of smothered burbles around Pelen's cock and he jetted his wads into his partner's suckling mouth.
And Pelen's cock heated within his mouth and Pavel, still lost in his rapture, somehow found control enough to bob upon it frenetically, though he had to suck air all around the cock with the corners of his mouth at the same time for his nostrils could not take in enough air just now, this made the air wet and somehow icy cold, and Pelen shuddered as heat met cold, he clutched Pavel's head as if it were a precious prize melon being ferried home from market, and his cock exploded like a hundred rapturous flowers inside Pavel's mouth, as if decorating his tongue and throat and roof of mouth with a dozen pearl-white roses of jism, and Pavel forgot his own need for air in Pelen's pleasure, and he clutched tightly and sucked at the source of life, drinking deeply.
Done, he languished for a moment in this posture, the man's hand still in his ass, still probing about inside. Then the man rose up and Pavel wondered if this passenger intended to try to fuck him now. Well, after a talented blow-job like this, if this man wanted repayment by shoving his prong up Pavel's butt, Pavel wouldn't resist. So Pavel held still and the man shifted out from under, rose up, and was somehow gone with a yelp.
Pavel looked around and saw the hapless lover falling into the roadway. Pelen chuckled at this minor misfortune, as did the other passengers, it must have been a commonplace occurrence, for even the man being left behind looked more annoyed than anything else.
"Sorry!" Pavel called back at the unwitting victim of chance. He looked up at Pelen. "Maybe I'd better not move until we stop again."
"No, move now and carefully. The second Angel is waiting for us. You must make yourself secure or you may be injured if you fall off with the higher speed." Pelen demonstrated by clutching the backs of the seats tightly.
Pavel scrambled hastily as well as he could, ending up with a vacant seat between himself and Pelen as the second Angel took up post behind them, and they suddenly more than tripled their hitherto comfortable pace. Now the wind blew upon their faces, not uncomfortably fast, but this was not wind, this was the speed of their journey.
Pavel reached over and took Pelen's hand across his former seat, letting his elbow hold him in place. "I'm glad you're coming with me." he said to Pelen, having to repeat himself and shout slightly to be heard.
"I am happy to see the City of the Angels again; it has been some time for me. I hope the Angels will release your friend to you." Pelen said. "Tell me of him."
"Jethro?" Pavel said. "Yes, he's a Connobaran soldier, a big, tall, strong, blond-haired man."
"Is he handsome?" Pelen asked.
"Yes, but not as good-looking as you." Pavel said gallantly and quite truthfully.
"How are Connobarans as lovers?" Pelen asked as his thumb brushed Pavel's hand. "I'm told they are different than we are in that."
"Yes, they have such wonderful control over all their muscles. He's very good." Pavel admitted. "I...I have to admit that I have been missing him a lot lately."
"You love him?" Pelen asked a little too carelessly.
Pavel caught the tension in that question, but decided upon the truth. "He spent a lot of time with us and he's like a member of my family now. We've been so busy ever since it was possible to talk to him again and...well, I just don't know. He's a good friend, at least. I miss him."
"What do you mean by 'talk to him again'?" Pelen asked.
Pavel explained about the pods which had robbed Jethro of his intellect for so long and Pelen nodded. "So he spent many nights with you?" Pelen asked.
"Yeah, especially when Fortin took off on his own." Pavel said.
"Oh." Pelen's hand released him abruptly.
Pavel was puzzled and then he remembered. In Pelen's eyes, he was married to Jethro!
"No, no, he and I aren't married or anything. The customs are different. There's a ceremony we go through to be married. He's just a good friend."
"Oh." Pelen said. And his hand came back to Pavel's. "You're right. I thought you were married for a moment. Our customs are different."
"Yes, without the ceremony, we aren't married." Ceremony, yikes! Pavel thought about the forced marriage ceremony with Mahmoud and decided that this was not a good time for him to mention that to Pelen. Maybe later. For now, the City of the Angels was approaching rapidly.