A Christmas Carnal

* * * * *

Tuesday Day

I woke up alone, again, and again to light streaming in. And to the most wonderful smell in the world... fresh baking! I pulled on sweatpants and a T-shirt, hit the head, then ambled downstairs in search of such goodness...

I found Miriam and Paul in the kitchen, celebrating their version of a White Christmas. There was flour and sugar everywhere and the two of them looked like snow-people. They were beaming and I could smell the delicious scent of the cookies wafting up from the cooling racks.

"Good morning!" I nodded. Miriam grabbed a ceramic mug and poured me some coffee.

"Good morning, back, sleepyhead!" she smiled, handing me the mug. "Sweeten to taste," she added with a nod in the direction of the sugar bowl.

"Merci, merci, tu es un érudit et une gentille femme," I smiled. "Where's Sharon?"

"Smartass," Miriam answered. "She took Ashley on the morning chores. Ashley wanted to know more about what's involved in taking care of the farm." I sipped on the coffee.

"Oh, God... heaven..." I murmured and Paul laughed.

"So what's happening?" I asked, looking around.

"Baking, of course," Miriam smiled. "Remember how Grandma used to bake up a storm around Christmas? Well, we've got the storm..." She gestured out the window. "So we're doing the baking. Half a dozen kinds of cookies, some apricot and cherry sweet loaves, one poppy seed one... I would have tried the bonket, but Sher didn't have the almond paste and we can't get to town, yet."

I looked out the window and saw that we still had snow falling. Quite a bit lighter, like the last vestiges of a good dusting, but still coming down. I left Miriam and Paul to their baking, refilled my coffee and headed to my laptop to check my email and try to get a weather update. I had hoped to make it to town before Christmas tomorrow, but my chances weren't looking good.

According to the National Weather Service, this was the last of the snow, tapering off through the day. Tomorrow, Christmas, would be bright and clear. Cold, but clear. Some of the commentators were referring to it as a "freak storm," unusual in intensity and duration. I was just happy to be seeing it go. But that meant that the highways weren't likely to be open until Friday or Saturday.

Well, given present company, that wasn't too bad. We had food, and drink, and fellowship. We were in pretty good shape. I had the mandatory gazillion emails wishing everybody at the office a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year. Emails that would get deleted en masse. Actually, they did again this year. There were only a couple I cared about, related to work, and I dealt with those. Ashley was the one who came and found me.

She stood behind me and draped herself over my shoulders, that massive rack pressing up against me and her hot breath in my ear. My toes were tingling.

"Hey, handsome..." she murmured. "Your sisters told me to come and find you. Or find you and cum. Not quite sure, now that I realize how good you smell." She teased me by taking a deep whiff off my neck.

I tried looking back up over my shoulder, readying some kind of witty retort, when her lips found mine. Oh, Sweet Jesus, was she delicious! She pulled out all the stops and I was seriously getting lost in her mouth and tongue and taste and, well... just about everything. She's the one that broke it.

"Mmm... nice," she commented, straightening up. "I'll have to try some more of that later. Right now, though, Miriam and Sharon would kill me if I carried you off to the Kasbah and had your way with me."

I groaned. What else was I going to do? Osculatio interruptus... I was going to be walking funny as soon as I stood up.

She just laughed a little and stood back so that I could get up from the desk and head for the kitchen.

I found Sharon, Miriam and Paul sitting at the kitchen table with coffee.

"I am declaring an official Christmas break," Sharon announced as soon as I arrived. "If anyone wants to do anything special, let me know, but for now and through tomorrow, work is suspended. Except for taking care of the animals in the morning."

"Baking isn't work, Sher," Miriam pointed out, with a slight tone of protest. "I like it."

"Then by all means, Mir, go ahead. I don't want anyone thinking they have to do something."

"I have a suggestion for Christmas Eve," Ashley put in, actually raising her hand. Which got a strange look from Sharon. With everyone's attention, she went on, "I suggest we make spiked eggnog to go with the cookies and stuff, and spend the evening in a round-robin massage, and see how much we've all learned from Paul's excellent demonstration."

The other four of us looked at each other for maybe two seconds before four voices chorused, "I'm in!"

"Do you know how to spell orgy?" Paul smirked to me.

"O-M-G," I told him and he laughed.

With the evening's plans set -- sort of -- Ashley joined Miriam and Paul in continuing the baking, and Sharon dragged me off for some one-on-one time. Snuggled under the big old quilt in her bed.

"Hold me, Josh," she told me. "I'm not trying to seduce you. At the moment." I snuggled into her and we lay there just holding each other for quite awhile. We didn't say anything. We didn't have to.

We did, though, eventually. She started it.

"I don't know how to do this, Josh," she told me quietly as we snuggled and petted. "I want you to know how much of a Christmas miracle you've been to me, and you're just going to blow it off like it's no big deal. And to me, it's a big deal. To me, you saved my life."

She paused and I decided for once in my life to just shut the fuck up and let her talk. When I didn't respond, she went on.

"Last Thanksgiving, I lost one of my mares, to bloat of all the goddamned things! It was bad enough losing her. It was worse that it was on a holiday. And it started me on a spiral of self-pity and hopelessness, all aimed at one more Christmas alone, one more Christmas that wasn't about giving or receiving, but all about losing, and I got tired. Bone tired. I got disgusted with the way my life had ended up and disgusted with myself for letting it. And I started thinking like I didn't have a self anymore. Just a big empty void where the 'me' should have been."

"I started thinking about you off in Denver, the successful IT Guy. And Miriam out in San Francisco, the Public Relations Account Director. Two people who'd beaten the curse, gotten past the pain of Christmas, or so I thought. And I looked at me, the simple farm girl who never grew up, never got her Prince Charming or a family... just her animals. And they only like me because I feed and water them. I was really talking myself into just checking out. I meant nothing to anyone, I didn't have any me left, I wasn't worth the air I was breathing."

She paused again, and I really, really wanted to rail at her about how wrong she was! But I stayed with shutting up. I was hoping she was only painting a picture of her past.

"I had decided to check out the day after Christmas. I couldn't bear the idea of doing it Christmas Day, because of what it might do to you and Miriam. I could spend Christmas making my peace with my land and my animals, making sure everything was in order. I got my will up to date with my lawyer, and dug out the personal things I wanted to pass on. I was really getting ready to just do it, and then you showed up."

"Out of nowhere, with no warning, like Clarence jumping off that stupid bridge." I thought I started to feel tears on my chest again. "And having to go get you and bring you back here was like God grabbing me by the shoulders and shaking the Hell out of me. Literally. And then Miriam goes and gets her silly ass stuck in a cornfield in a blizzard, and I told God I'd got the message. Any plans for my untimely demise were irrevocably cancelled."

"For the first time since David was killed, I feel good, Josh. I feel alive, and I feel like I can have fun, and I don't feel like there's a black void where my soul should be. It's full of people named Joshua, and Miriam, and Paul, and Ashley... and maybe more, when I get my sorry self out of isolation. And I will never... never... be able to thank you for what you did for me."

She paused again for a couple of moments, then added, "you can talk, if you want to, you know..."

I didn't talk. Not right away. I rolled up on my side, over her, and kissed her. Long and slow and sensuous and all the good feelings I could put into it, and she responded in kind. When I finally broke the kiss, I stayed over her, looking down into those beautiful brown doe-eyes.

"I love you," I told her. "That's forever." Plain and simple. That's all I had to say. That's all that needed saying. She held me to her, half-laughing, half-crying, all loving. It took awhile, but she got it out of her system. And when she did, she had a request.

"I know we're going to do the massages tonight, and I know it's probably going to devolve into an orgy, and still... would you make love with me, Josh? Now? Slow and easy and meld-together?"

My answer started with a soft kiss and went from there.

* * * * *

Tuesday Evening

Christmas Eve was amazing. To start, Sharon didn't have a turkey because she hadn't planned on Christmas dinner. But she did have a couple of smoked ham butts and we decided that would be Christmas Day. So Christmas Eve became defrosted chicken breasts, grilled with some kind of marinara Sharon and Miriam put together, and some noodles and veggies on the side. We all got stuffed, then complained how that was going to mess up our massages, so we decided that drinking eggnog and nibbling on cookies was a good way to wait for dinner to settle, before the massages.

I don't think any of us were thinking too clearly. But it didn't matter. We had us and that was all that counted. We spent dinner in a round of "what funny kind of shit happens at your work?" I think it was a tie, but Paul may have had us beaten, just from the weirdness factor. We tried to figure out how to do the trade-off of the massages and somehow, somebody always seemed to get shorted. What we ended up with worked, sort of. We were just doing general back massages and not trying to do the intense all-body massage Paul had shown us before.

Paul started it by working on me for awhile. Then he moved to Sharon, Miriam and Ashley. I waited until he was done with Sharon, then moved to her, followed by Miriam, Ashley and then Paul. Sharon waited until I was done with Miriam and started with her, followed by Ashley, Paul and me. Miriam started with Ashley and did Paul, me and Sharon, and Ashley started with Paul and did me, Sharon and Miriam. Paul and I were relaxing with our eggnogs while Ashley finished Sharon and Miriam, when Paul started the weirdness I knew was going to happen sometime.

"Josh, I've got a question for you," he asked me, then corrected himself. "Actually, I have a disclaimer and then a question."

"Yes?" I asked, admittedly curious.

"The disclaimer is, this is a partial seduction. You are free to stop anywhere you want. 'No' will not bruise my ego."

"Okay..." I drawled, not sure where he was going.

"The question is, have you ever been curious about what it feels like to handle a guy?"

"I know what a guy feels like," I told him. "I am one." And yes, the eggnog was working.

"I mean someone other than yourself," he clarified. "Someone like me, say. What it would feel like to fondle me? Maybe blow me or make me get off? Or maybe have me do the same for you? Just wondering if you've ever been curious."

My slightly foggy brain was chewing on that one.

"Um... no?" I answered. "Not since I was a high school Freshman and had a run-in with a Junior in the showers."

"Oh..." Paul nodded. "Not a good experience."

"No," I agreed, "not a good experience. Although..." And here my ability to second-guess myself was raising its ugly self. "I have to admit, watching you naked, working on the girls, and feeling your muscles when I was massaging you, has been kind of different... and interesting."

"Interesting... I like that word," Paul told me. "So... do you want to find out what the girls already know? How I feel to be handled?" I looked over at Sharon. She appeared bemused. I looked at Miriam. She was smirking. I looked at Ashley... well, she seemed to be lusting after everyone in the room.

Now, one of my character flaws, one of my failings, is not backing down from a challenge. And I took the girls' expressions as a challenge. They knew something I didn't. And they seemed to like it. I was already two-and-a-half eggnogs to the wind, so in typical Josh fashion, I decided why not?

"Sure," I decided and I am positive that the sharp intake of breath I heard was Sharon and Miriam. I don't think either one of them would have ever believed I'd be bi-curious adventurous. But Paul had pushed the right button. "What do I do?" Paul smiled slightly as he settled back into the beanbag.

"You just come on over here and use your hand to explore my genitals," he told me. "Think of it like an endocrinologist palpating the testes to determine their size."

"I have no idea what you're talking about," I told him, moving over next to him.

"Just handle me, Josh, the way you'd handle yourself," he explained. "Explore. You know how you feel to yourself... compare that to me. Let your curiosity drive it. I'm not going to object to anything you do unless it's particularly painful."

Now, this was virgin territory for me. I'd never handled another guy. The kid in high school had wanted a blowjob. So I was very hesitant as I tentatively reached over and cupped my hand under his balls and sort of gently lifted, feeling the soft skin of the scrotum slide around in my hand as the firmer lumps of his balls shifted around. One of the first things I noticed was that his sack was a lot bigger and a lot looser than mine. Mine tended to stay tight and up against my body. And his balls were bigger than mine... maybe, what? A quarter larger?

I had tried to avoid his penis, but even flaccid, it was long enough that I kept bumping into it. I wasn't too surprised when the root began to swell under my fingers, and then he started getting semi-hard. That's about the point where I decided fuck it, and went ahead to fondle his cock, checking out if there were any differences between him and me. And surprisingly, there were.

Other than the obvious one -- size, he was bigger than me -- he also felt like he had thicker skin, and it slid around more on the ever-increasing erection. He was circumcised, like me, but he had a more bullet shaped glans, whereas mine was more flared, like a helmet. It didn't occur to me as I handled him that I was, in fact, giving him a handjob. At least, not at first.

By the time he was fully erect, I'd figured it out. I'd also figured out that he was a lot more veiny than I was. Honestly, he was kind of fun to play with. Like the first time you explore a pussy, with the different sorts of labia and clits and the rest of it. The same strange part of me that had decided to kiss him, decided to stroke him, specifically to see if I could make him cum. I know... weird. But this was a Christmas for weirdness.

So I set out to steadily stroke his shaft, coming up over the glans and then back down again to the base. Out of the corner of my eye, I caught the three women staring at me. Sharon and Miriam looked shocked. Some part of me was pleased. Paul relaxed back some more and went with the flow. And flow he did. It wasn't long before copious amounts of precum began oozing out. Which of course, gave me something more to play with.

I kept drawing the precum up over the glans, using it to provide more and more lubrication and apparently, more and more stimulation. Paul let out a soft moan and closed his eyes. I kept to the "task at hand" and it wasn't long before I heard him mutter, "Oh, Christ!..." And it wasn't long after that, that I felt his balls pull up and his cock get really rigid, followed by a lot of cum spurting out, all over my hand and his belly.

I know when I jerk off, I like to draw it out, even though I'm really sensitive. So I just kept going, not changing pace or pressure, just continuing as I had been. That's when I discovered another difference between us. He could cum again. He didn't lose the erection and his moans began building up even more as I continued until a couple of minutes later, he pulsed again and another load of cum splattered us.

That's when I heard Sharon say, "I don't fucking believe it!"

Followed by Miriam saying, "what? Lots of guys can cum more than once in five minutes."

"No," Sharon told her. "I can't believe Josh is actually jerking him off."

"And he's pretty fucking good at it," Paul moaned from the beanbag. It was probably the ego stroke that pleased me, but the fact is, it felt good to hear him say that. I slowed down and eased up, eventually stopping, taking my cum-dripping hand off his cock. Ashley was there immediately with a washcloth and a baby wipe.

"Thought you might want to clean up," she offered as she handed them to me. I did, in fact, and her thoughtfulness was appreciated. I wiped up the cum off of me, then started to clean it up off of Paul.

He muttered "thanks..." but then took the washcloth from me and got another wipe from Ashley. I turned to Sharon.

"Hey, you don't need to be surprised. Paul informed me that hands and mouths don't have sexes and I just figured I'd test it," I told her. "You don't seem to have a problem with the other women going down on you..." She nodded her acknowledgement.

"Want me to finish proving it?" Paul asked as he sat back up. When I looked at him, he indicated the beanbag chair. "Let me return the favor."

In the spirit of weirdness that was going around, I thought okay, why not? It's not like I haven't handled myself. And the girls certainly had. This will just be like a different hand. So I moved to the beanbag and settled back.

Paul did basically the same thing to me that I'd done to him, exploring how I felt as I got slowly more aroused. He got me pretty hard, and had less precum to play with, true, but he was still good at getting the sensitive parts. I was breathing pretty hard and close to cumming when he did two things I hadn't done... he put his mouth over my cock and he stuck his finger in my ass.

Both of which were very unexpected. Both of which made me cum my brains out. And he just kept stroking and sucking and fingering me while I kept spasming. Eventually, I waved my hand as if to say "enough!" and made some kind of whimpering sound. He'd kept going after the main orgasm, and he had me doing those aftershock things that aren't really orgasms, but still flood through you with exquisite agony.

"You okay in there?" he asked as he licked his lips as he stopped doing me. He was smirking. He knew the answer.

"Smartass," I told him. "Yeah, I'm fine for my first gay blowjob."

"See?" he grinned. "I told you hands and mouths don't have sexes."

"As long as I keep my eyes shut, you're right," I admitted. "Actually, even with my eyes open. I'm presuming this information is going to stay among the five of us."

Everybody pretty much told me, "well, duh!"

"Okay, girls," Miriam the Instigator decided. "We can top that."

She had Sharon lie down and spread her legs, and had Ashley move between them to start going down on Sharon. From my point of view, that was hot all by itself. But then Miriam moved Ashley to an angle where Miriam could go down on Ashley while Ashley ate Sharon. That left one more connection to the chain, and in the category of "I Never Thought I'd See It," Sharon drew Miriam to her so that she could start eating Miriam's pussy. The moans and groans and mewls and sighs were driving me nuts, not to mention getting me friggin' hard again. I looked over at Paul and he was just as hard as I was.