The Journey Read Online Free

head and glared at the boy.
    â€˜Don’t worry,’ said Argus, grinning to himself, ‘I won’t be bending over in front of you.’ The stallion pranced a little, then went back to his food. Argus began to dry himself, wondering if he had ever experienced anything so good as the feeling of the rough, worn towel on his damp body. He felt the blood sing under his skin once more. He completed the job by drying his hair, not knowing or caring that he was making it stick up like the hay under his feet. He put the towel back on its nail and stood looking down at himself, taking pleasure in the evidence of the long-awaited growth that his body was now indisputably experiencing. He had never been taught about sex in his life, but his years on the farm left him in no doubt or confusion about what was happening to him. He looked at the stallion again. ‘Not up to your standards, maybe,’ he said to the horse, who had now lost interest in him, ‘but good enough for me.’
    He began to finger himself curiously; the object of his interest, already stimulated by the attention he had been paying it, quickly rose to full arousal. Argus continued to touch it, lightly and smoothly, as irresistible feelings grew in him and his hand moved more urgently. There was no gainsaying the feelings: Argus realised that he would be compelled to go on until his body gave him permission to stop. The pleasure was becoming so great as to be almost frightening, and it was obvious to the boy that this time, unlike his earlier immature adventurings, there would be a definite climax, not just the inconclusive excitement he had enjoyed in the past. He continued to stroke himself, fascinated by the growing thickness and coarseness of his organ, by its darkening colour, until at last the inevitable happened, and he was grabbing at himself and at the unbearably stiff thing that had temporarily become the centre and focus of his life, and which was now convulsively shooting jets of thin liquid across the hay.
    For a few moments Argus stood in the stall, bent over, exhausted by the intensity of the experience. Yet he was pleased and proud too, and aware that it was an experience that he would repeat — and perhaps he could enhance it too, he thought, as he imagined a girl’s hand doing to him what he had just done to himself. That idea caused him so much turmoil that he had to place it aside; instead he watched with interest the steady detumescence of his penis. He realised that something else had changed: the desire that would plague him for hours in the past had suddenly become a finite thing and had disappeared with the ejaculation of the fluid from his body.
    He dressed slowly and walked back down the centre aisle to the store-room that housed the huge feed-bins for the horses. There he made himself a gruel of oats and barley, a meal that he was pleased to flavour with carrots and apples from trays that stood beside the bins. But his greatest delight came when he found a supply of sugar cubes. Starved of sugar since leaving home, he added handfuls of it to his gruel until it was a sweet and syrupy concoction.
    Up until then Argus had been acting with complete disregard for the possibility that someone might come into the stables, but after finishing his meal he decided that it was time to take a little care. He eventually settled in a row of unoccupied stalls at the back of the building, choosing the second last one as his bed for the night. He knew from his experience at home that hay was not comfortable unless a good covering was available, so he used his own blanket as well as a couple of horse rugs from the tack-room. Sometime quite late into the night he heard voices and could see a reflection of a moving light dancing along the ceiling: another horse was being brought in and stabled, after a journey perhaps, but the activity was well away from Argus’ corner and the boy soon went back to sleep.

Chapter Five
    F or