One for the Gods (The Peter & Charlie Trilogy) (45 page)

He swam lazily and lay on his back in the limpid water. In a little while, he saw Peter come trotting down to the sea and dive in. He swam in to him and they glided up to each other and kissed.

“That’s my Slugger. You’re beginning to like it, aren’t you?”

Peter looked flustered.
“She
seems to like it so damn much. What’s a guy to do? But you, God, I almost fainted.”

“Sure. I wouldn’t mind showing her how you fuck me. That would really give her a jolt.”

“Are you going to do it with her?”

Charlie laughed. “We’re not all sex maniacs.” He splashed water at him and swam in to shore. He found Martha stretched out on the towels, apparently just as Peter had left her. “Aren’t you going to swim?” he asked, standing over her.

She lifted a hand to shield her eyes from the sun. They wavered over his body and came to rest where they always did. “I was waiting for you. Won’t you—”

“Not so soon after him. I want you when you’re all alive for it. You’re absolutely limp with satisfaction now. You should see yourself.”

“I only do it because you want me to.”

“Of course. But you don’t exactly hate it, do you?”

Her eyes lifted slowly to his. He sounded amused, but she thought she detected a faint hint of sharpness underlying it. “No,” she said. It was a risk, but it might have the desired effect.

He dropped down beside her and lay back propped on his elbows and watched Peter swim in and go wandering off down the beach. He rounded the point where Anne might have been sitting. Jeannot could have been waiting for him farther along. He wanted to follow Peter, but he felt Martha’s presence beside him and thought it would be unkind to leave her. When he realized that he was being governed by a sense of obligation to her, he sat up. This was the sort of intrusion in their lives that he couldn’t permit; he had promised Peter that nothing would change.

“I should be getting back soon,” Martha said to his back.

“We’ll take you back in a little while. I’ll go find Peter. Go ahead, if you don’t want to wait.” He rose and snatched up a towel in case of unexpected encounters and ran off after Peter. He climbed over rocks and teetered down into another smaller cove with a big outcropping of rock at the water’s edge. For a moment, he didn’t see Peter and then he emerged from beyond the rocks wandering on away from him. Charlie ran after him. Peter heard him and turned quickly, looking startled and dropping his hands to cover his sex, and then offered him a radiant smile of welcome.

“Hey, am I being pursued?”

“As a matter of fact, you are.”

“Then you must be Zeus. My name’s Ganymede. Seize me.”

Charlie laughed and grabbed his wrists and held his hands away from his body. “OK. You’re seized.” His eyes dropped to Peter’s sex. “I started something I want to finish. It felt good.” He dropped down and took his sex in his mouth again and began to nurse it erect.

“Oh, God. What bliss. Being out of doors where people could see us drives me crazy.” Peter ran his hands through his hair as his sex grew and lifted.

In a moment, Charlie let it leap free and stood and surveyed him. “God, baby. You’re unbelievable. Standing like that against the rocks and sky. It’s too beautiful for mortal eyes.”

Peter laughed, and took Charlie’s sex in his hand as it rose heavily between them. “When you get like this, I don’t want anybody to see. I want it all for myself. Come on down here where we can get at each other.” He pulled Charlie to the ground with him and they automatically fell into position so that each could take the other with his mouth. “Charlie darling.” Peter’s voice was thick with love. “This is what
I’m
all about, no matter what. Oh, God. You.”

Charlie felt as guilty as a schoolboy for doing it. It was a retrogression, a return to everything he had been moving them away from for the last weeks. Did he want to prove that he could do it as well as Martha? Lacking her zest for it, he doubted very much if he could. He felt Peter’s orgasm gathering and was grateful for its rapidity. When it was over, he lay back and surrendered to the rapture of Peter’s miraculous mouth.

Jack rowed them back to the boat in time for an early dinner at sunset and they set off once more. The sea was calm, the breeze light, a waxing moon was setting.

Martha stopped Charlie as he was passing through the galley to get a sweater for Peter. Her eyes glowed with contentment.

“Do you realize what day it is tomorrow?” She stood close to him as she dried a plate. He shook his head. “My period. I’m so sure I’m going to miss that I’d forgotten all about it. Tomorrow it’s official.”

“Mightn’t you be late?”

“I never am. Besides, I’d be almost a week late. It always starts several days before in various ways. I’ll spare you the tiresome details, but none of them has happened. If it’s still the same tomorrow, we’ll know.”

“I’ll be damned. That’s pretty exciting.” Charlie realized that she had so convinced him of her pregnancy that he felt no surprise or additional thrill at the news.

“Do you want to go on with the cruise?”

“Of course. You don’t have to start taking care of yourself yet, do you?”

“Good heavens, no. I just wondered about telling Jack. I’m dying to. Of course, I won’t until you leave the boat. I want so to talk to you. Both of you. Have you told Peter about suggesting I live near you?”

“Sure. He thinks it could make sense. I even talked to him about your maybe moving in with us and possibly getting married if we want more children. All that remains to be seen, naturally.”

“Naturally.” She touched his arm. “You know, I’m beginning to think he’s no more queer than you are. He probably will find a girl.”

“Very possibly,” he said, not meaning to make it sound dismissive. Everything was fine. Everything was turning out as he had hoped. There was certainly no doubt about his potency. About Peter’s potency? What difference did it make? He gave her hand a pat and went on to get Peter’s sweater.

They picked up a breeze from time to time that carried them a few miles. They drifted. Sometime after midnight, Charlie told Peter to go below.

“Why don’t you?” Peter countered. “You never get enough sleep. Let me sit there for a while.”

“No, honestly, baby. I like it. You’d be bored out of your wits, but I actually enjoy it. God knows why. Get a decent night’s rest.”

“If you say so.” He kissed Charlie and went below.

Time drifted with the boat. An hour or two later, his eye was caught by movement in the companionway and he assumed that it was Peter returning. When he looked again he saw Martha stepping out on deck wearing her long dressing gown. She came aft and moved in beside him where Peter usually sat.

“What are you doing up here?” he asked in a muted voice, making room for her.

“I wanted to be with you.” Her hand went to his fly and began to unfasten it. His sex stirred and began to harden uncomfortably. He let her disentangle it from the confining folds of cloth. By the time she had done so, it was standing upright. She ran the tips of her fingers along it while it swelled and locked into immobility.

“All right,” he murmured. “You’ve seen what you can do to me. That’s enough.”

“No,” she whispered. “Not nearly enough. I want to kiss it till you come.”

“Are you crazy? Jack could come up at any minute.”

“He won’t. He sleeps like a log. Peter let me.”

“Sure, but he wasn’t in charge of the boat. Besides, I don’t want it that way. Nobody can do it right but Peter. I fuck you, remember?”

“Then fuck me.” She held his sex with both hands and bent toward it.

He put a hand under her chin and lifted her face. “How can I? You see how much I want to.”

“Yes. It’s too big and hard not to now.”

“Where can we, damn it? It’s not possible.”

“Below. Where we did before. Peter would if I went to him.”

“You stay away from Peter. I mean, we’ve all got to stop this while we’re on board.”

“How can we stop when you’re like this? Look at it. Your monumental phallus. You’re a taker. Take me with your monumental phallus.”

“All right, damm it. Go wake Peter and tell him to come up here. But I warn you. If we do it, we’ll do it with no holds barred. I’ll fuck you till you holler.”

“How marvelous.” She laughed softly. “I want you to make me holler. I feel like hollering just looking at it. Hurry!” She brushed his hand away and bent down to it and took the head in her mouth. Her teeth and tongue made him jerk up in the seat. She let him go and rose and hurried back to the companionway.

He got himself back into his trousers somehow and buttoned his fly with difficulty. His heart was beating rapidly. He felt in some obscure way that he was breaking the rules he had himself laid down. He was ashamed to face Peter, which made him angrily defensive. Peter appeared in a few moments, pulling on a sweater.

“You want me?” he asked, joining Charlie at the wheel.

“Yes. Take over here,” he said curtly. “We’re headed for those lights. I won’t be long.” He could feel Peter recoil from him as he took the wheel.

“What about Jack?” he asked after an instant’s silence.

“You didn’t let him stop you,” Charlie said accusingly. Peter said nothing. Charlie hated himself for having said it. Again, he felt a wrench deep within him as he sprang up and moved quickly away so that Peter wouldn’t see his erection.

Martha whispered his name as he entered the dark saloon. She stripped him below the waist while he was pulling his jersey over his head. She tangled her fingers in his pubic hair and cradled his testicles in her hand. She held his sex and lay back and he climbed in on top of her. She was already making her little moaning sounds. She cried out as he entered her and cried out again as he completed the long thrust of his penetration. Their bellies ground together.

“Does Peter make you scream for it?” he demanded. He kept his voice low but he didn’t bother to whisper.

“No. Oh, no. Only you, my precious.” She had made him jealous. The moment was coming when he would want her all for himself. After that, perhaps he would want only her. “You do it all this time. Everything. I won’t stir the soup. Make me come by just being there. You can, my lover. Only you. Your magnificent great cock. It’s so huge after Peter. Use it. Fuck me hard, precious.”

He did as he was told. They drove each other to a moaning, gasping, shouting paroxysm of desire, but the fierceness of the engagement didn’t dislodge from his mind the image of Peter sitting alone at the wheel. He had never left him before. He shared his hurt and loneliness. His pride was engaged in achieving Martha’s orgasm, but he longed to be sitting with Peter.

The sun was up when they sailed into the great circle of the bay formed by Santorin and its outlying islands. It was like sailing across the crater of a volcano, which was more or less what it was. One of the islands that formed the circle was smoking like a dump heap. They motored in toward a sheer cliff at the foot of which they could see cäiques tied up. High above, a town seemed to balance on its edge. Jack and Peter went forward to prepare for mooring.

“Today’s the day,” Martha said, standing beside Charlie at the wheel. She was gazing forward, prepared to help him with the motor. “I think Jack heard us last night. He’s acting a bit odd. It doesn’t matter. I’ve missed my period.”

He eased up on the helm in response to a wave from Jack. “You wanted to, didn’t you?” he asked.

“Heavens, yes. We’re going to have a baby. We can start to plan now.”

“Cut the motor down a bit. That’s good,” Charlie said.

“I’ve been thinking. You said you didn’t want the baby to have Jack’s name. I’m sure a good lawyer could manage it. I can get doctors’ certificates to prove he can’t be the father. There’s no reason why he should fight it. That is, if you want to marry me.”

“We’ll have plenty of time to talk about that. OK. Neutral.” He swung the wheel and sprang to the rail to fend-off.

They were all busy for the next fifteen minutes getting the boat tied up and in order. When it was done, there was no further opportunity for private conversation. They discussed their plans for the day and agreed to meet back at the boat at sunset. Martha looked at Peter and Charlie longingly as they prepared to leave.

They had a dizzying ride on donkeys up the face of the cliff. Peter was quickly aware that Charlie was in a difficult mood. He was silent and unresponsive. He had been even more remorseful about the night’s incident than Peter felt he had any reason to be. It was the sort of thing that demonstrated the impossibility of their all living together, but he could put up with it for a few more weeks. When Charlie had returned from Martha, he had been angrily solicitous, obliquely apologetic. Peter hadn’t felt reproachful. He had made the most of Martha’s advances as a calculated challenge to Charlie. He had known the day before on the beach when Charlie had followed him that he had won.

The island had been a cult center in antiquity, celebrated for the beauty of its naked dancing boys; dedications to them from their male suitors remained, carved in stone. When they reached the town at the top of the cliff, Peter tried to make him laugh with joking references to “their” shrine and naked dancing boys in general but he failed.