Forth into Light (The Peter & Charlie Trilogy) (28 page)

“You,” Jeff cried. “Oh, God. Now you.”

He didn’t know whether he was sobbing or laughing. He felt totally fragmented as if he would never be whole again. He was buffeted by a storm of sensations and emotions, conscious of nothing, not even that he had had an orgasm. It bore no relation to anything he had ever done for himself. As the storm subsided he found that all his tensions and cravings had been assuaged and he was lulled into deep contentment by the sliding movement within him.

He accompanied Mike’s movement with a slow rotating lift of his hips so that at the final limit of Mike’s penetration they were locked together for a moment in profound union. His erection was slowly restored. Little by little, Mike’s movement accelerated until he was thrusting into him hard and fast. Jeff laughed with joy and excitement. His body was a receptacle for Mike’s lust.

He worked his hips rapidly to Mike’s rhythm, giving him his body so that he would make them one. He laughed again as Mike’s breathing grew rapid and he began to make broken little moaning sounds. He cried out at the thought of Mike discharging his passion into him and continued to utter cries in time to the hard pounding of Mike’s body. They communicated with brief grunts and growls.

Jeff was stunned by the depth of their intimacy. The assured and worldly Mike Cochran had become this panting passionate lover. He hadn’t dreamed it was possible to feel so close to another being. Suddenly, Mike bit his shoulder hard, his sex was immobilized and swelled hugely so that Jeff felt another stab of pain and then Mike’s legs were flailing and his body lurching about on Jeff’s back while he clung to his shoulder with his teeth. Jeff lifted his hand to his head and stroked his hair. After a few moments, Mike had his body under control and Jeff felt the sex shrinking inside him. His first lover. He had been had by a man.

“I want it again,” he whispered. “Again and again and again. I’ll be better next time.”

Mike made no answer. In another moment, his sex slipped from Jeff despite his effort to keep it within him and Mike sprang up and was gone. Jeff felt a shock of emptiness in himself. Dimitri materialized from somewhere at his side. He pushed at Jeff’s hips to get his sex out from under him and held it.

“It looks like he gives you a good time. Why do you tell me you don’t do it that way?”

“I never have before.”

“Now you can give me a good time.” He laughed and snuggled in closer and kissed him and squeezed his sex. “I want it very much. Shall we now or must you wash?”

Jeff lifted himself over him and pushed him back on the pillow and kissed him deeply while his hands caressed the exquisite body, wondering if he could strike in it some spark of the male drive that he knew now his body was intended to serve. He was aflame with his new knowledge; he had discovered a rare and precious gift in himself; he knew how to satisfy the needs of the supreme and mysterious phallus. It was such an immense discovery that he was filled with a burning longing to use it to the utmost, but he was far from sure that Mike would come to him again. He had sensed something shutting off in his lover almost before Mike’s orgasm had spent itself.

He held Dimitri’s modest sex and thought how sweet it would be to feel it entering him. If Mike caught them at it, jealousy might shatter the mask he hid behind and take him one more step toward admitting his need for Jeff, the need he had enacted in him with such devastating power. Jeff felt nothing in Dimitri but a passive delight in being held. He disengaged himself from his friend and sprang out of bed and hurried to the bathroom. Moisture was beginning to seep down the inside of his thighs.

Mike was standing in front of the washbasin drying himself. He turned as Jeff entered and smiled at him easily, charmingly, with no acknowledgement that a bond had been created between them. His eyes dropped to Jeff’s still-rigid sex.

“Still raring to go? I can’t believe that was your initiation. You certainly took to it with enthusiasm.”

Jeff looked at him unashamedly. “I told you. I want you to do it again and again. You’ve taught me how. Can’t we go now? I want to spend the night with you.”

“You’re very flattering but mightn’t that be going a bit too far?”

“What are you afraid of?” Without waiting for an answer, Jeff crossed to a primitive-looking shower in the corner, passing close to Mike, hoping to provoke him with his eyes. Mike’s eyes didn’t waver, but Jeff could see that there was something going on in them that Mike didn’t want him to see. He was too good an actor for Jeff to be able to quite identify it, but he had felt the effort Mike had made not to reach out for him as he passed.

Still looking at him, Jeff turned a tap. A feeble spray of water issued from a dented pipe but it was sufficient for him to wash himself and he did so thoroughly, facing Mike, flaunting his body, not because he was proud of it (he found himself depressingly flat and angular and callow) but because the tradition in mythology and literature placed such emphasis on the seductive effect of youth on older men that he assumed there must be some truth in it.

At least, Mike stayed where he was, trying to look as if he were waiting for him casually, but held by him, unable to leave. Jeff could see that much. He soaped his sex and kept giving it little caresses to keep it erect, looking challengingly at him. He was playing a game whose rules he didn’t know. He knew only that if somebody did this in front of him he wouldn’t be able to stop himself from participating.

Mike made an excuse of checking his nails to drop his eyes to Jeff’s caressing hand. A ghost of a smile hovered around Jeff’s lips as he turned off the water and began to toy with himself more purposefully. Mike made no pretense of not watching. Jeff saw his sex lengthen and curve out slightly from his body.

“Do you want me to go ahead and do it?” Jeff asked.

“Don’t you think you ought to save it for our host?” Mike looked up with his mask in place.

Jeff released his sex and left the shower and stood close to him. “Are you going to let me have Dimitri?”

“Let you? Aren’t you planning to fuck him? I thought it was all arranged.”

“It was.” Jeff reached out and ran his hand under Mike’s lengthening sex. He felt it grow heavier as he held it and its head began to rise. “I give you an erection. Why don’t you take me away so that you can have me all to yourself?”

“That wouldn’t be very considerate of our friend next door. I want to watch you fuck him. I can’t think of a more delightful sight than two handsome lads making sport with each other.”

“Do you want him?”

“I hadn’t quite decided, but you do seem to make me feel sexy. Why not?”

For answer, Jeff darted his head forward and took Mike’s mouth in his. He felt the sex lift into complete erection in his hand. Mike’s arms were around him pulling him close. Jeff raised his other hand to the back of Mike’s head and drew his mouth deeper into his. Mike’s hands were traveling over his wet body, drying him, declaring a passion that his eyes denied. Mike bit his lips again. He protested in his throat, but didn’t draw back. He let Mike devour his mouth until his breathing became so labored that he was almost suffocating. He pulled his head back and stared into Mike’s aroused eyes. He took a deep shaky breath.

“I think I’m going to be in love with you,” he said, smoothing the hair back from Mike’s forehead.

Mike pulled his head back and laughed harshly. “I should think you’d want to spare yourself that. Ask my wives what it’s like.”

“Why do you have wives? You like young boys. I like men. I think you might be in love with me. I don’t care if you don’t want to say it.” Mike smile was derisive and unforced. The mask was very effective, but Jeff couldn’t imagine why anybody would want to conceal everything interesting about himself.

“What nonsense. You’re a silly romantic child. I’m old enough to be your father. You’re a very good lay. I’ll grant you that. Most boys your age don’t admit enjoying it so much. I want to see you fuck your pretty boyfriend. When you’re finished, I’ll fuck him too. My sperm will mingle with yours. How does that strike your romantic fancy?”

“I don’t think you really want him, not the way you want me, but there’s nothing I can do about it. I want you to fuck me again.”

“I’ve rarely been in such demand. Maybe we can work it in tomorrow sometime.” Mike risked touching the boy on the cheek. It made his heart skip a beat, but he didn’t think his expression had altered. He hadn’t felt so near to losing control in years. Jeff stood all intense and dewy before him, asking to be hurt. Watching him take the Greek hustler, taking the Greek himself, should shatter the spell Jeff exerted on him.

Its components were so obvious and banal that Mike could laugh at himself for being ensnared by them. He was George’s son. He looked like George with lingering traces of Sarah’s feminine beauty. He offered his coltish body with an abandon that Mike had rarely encountered. Although they had hardly spoken, he communicated the activity of an original and questing mind that was more intriguing than physical beauty. He was young. He was an instrument Mike could play in any way he fancied. If he fancied anything, it was to push him to the edge of the hysteria he felt in him, reduce him to an ecstasy of abasement, break him. He was too solicitous of himself to undertake such an experiment in power at the risk of breaking something in himself.

He lingered another moment with his hands on the young body, aware of their sexes lifting against each other, and then pulled away with an effort that caused him a little stab of pain and took his arm and led him toward the door. “Come on.”

Jeff was acutely sensitive of the way he was being handled. Mike obviously didn’t know he was giving himself away. His hands were possessive, authoritative, and established a relationship that words could deny but not alter. Mike had made him his because he wanted him to be his. Dimitri was a diversion. When they had disposed of him, Mike would have to acknowledge the special bond that had sprung up between them. Mike had said it himself: “Jeff and I have something to settle between ourselves.” It said everything.

“At last,” Dimitri welcomed them as they entered the room. “You have been making each other hard again. I thought so. At least you bring them to me.” He was lying on his stomach, his elbows propping his upper torso, his legs spread. His eyes were on the erect sexes as they approached. “A fine pair. I don’t know which I want most. Don’t put anything on them. I have had much time to get ready.” He spread his arms out on each side of himself and dropped his head onto the pillow and smiled up at them voluptuously. “For him who waits, I will gladly give fun with my mouth.”

Mike pushed Jeff forward. Jeff straddled Dimitri and the latter lifted his hips and reached for Jeff’s sex and pulled it to him.

“Oh, my Jeff,” he murmured as he directed it into himself.

Jeff felt a greater reluctance than he had imagined at having to perform the act. It was a violation of the masculinity he worshipped. Reluctance was tempered by the immediate thrill of entering another body, of fitting himself into snug containment. Dimitri purred with delight as he continued the penetration. Thinking of the pain he had suffered, he was careful to restrain himself but Dimitri made a movement with his hips and all his sex was within him in one lunge. Jeff cried out and his body collapsed as his orgasm brought the attempt to an abrupt end. When the spasms ended, he heard Mike say, “He must be fantastic if he makes you come that quickly. Come on. Move over and let a man take charge.”

“I couldn’t help it,” Jeff muttered into Dimitri’s ear. The orgasm left him relatively intact, more like his solitary play than the mind-numbing fragmentation he had experienced with Mike. He slipped out of Dimitri and leaped up on the opposite side of the bed from Mike and ran to the bathroom, determined not to see Mike take his place.

He washed himself in the basin without looking at himself until he was sure he must be clean, while he tried not to hear the sounds from the other room. Dimitri, with all his experience, would know how to please Mike much better than a novice. There was no competition as far as looks went; Dimitri was a beauty. Jeff looked at himself in the mirror and saw that his lips were swollen. His shoulder hurt; he touched it cautiously and found a welt where Mike had bitten him.

He had expected to hurt elsewhere, but he felt only a slight smarting and an empty longing for Mike to be there again. The sounds he was trying not to hear told him Mike never would be. Nevertheless, the weight of solitude in him had lifted. He had learned a great deal. He had a gift around which all his lifetime of dreams and yearnings was taking the shape of reality. The world of men was opening to him at last. He need never be alone again. It was unbelievable that only this afternoon he had been plaguing Peter with childish questions.

He had come close to breaking through to Mike. He was sure of it. When he found another Mike, he would be sure enough of himself to play his part more skillfully. Above all, he would avoid threesomes. The bursts of laughter and cries of passion were continuing. He wanted to leave, but his clothes were in the other room.

He was suddenly conscious of silence. It seemed to go on a long time while he remained propped against the basin, his head bowed waiting. Mike had probably forgotten he existed.

There were sounds of movement finally and, in another moment, Mike entered the bathroom. Jeff expected him to be altered, shaken in some way by what had sounded like a tumultuous and ecstatic encounter, but he looked just the same, the same detached, slightly amused expression on his face. It was the final blow to Jeff’s hopes of holding his interest. Nobody could touch Mike.

“That’s quite a——” he began, but Jeff ducked past him and hurried out, closing his ears to whatever he was saying.

He made for his clothes, irrationally determined to go with Mike or, if Mike stayed, to go alone and wait for him outside. Dimitri was standing by the bed, doing something with a towel. He dropped it onto the floor and glided toward Jeff, swaying his narrow hips, smiling with complicity. They had been had by the same man. He was a note of grace in the squalor they had created in the room, the soiled and rumpled sheets, the discarded towels, the lubricant open on the bedside table. So much for dreams; at least this was really happening.