Doctor of the Heart

[DISCLAIMER: The following completely fictional story, the sole copyright for which belongs to the author, contains explicit depictions of sexual intercourse between men and should not, therefore, be read by anyone under the legal age of consent in whatever jurisdiction or by anyone offended by homoerotic and/or pornographic material. It is forbidden to post the text electronically or disseminate it in any manner without permission of the copyright holder. The author-- park517@aol.com -- welcomes comments]

Doctor of the Heart - Chapter Seven

As I was going back and forth, the front door opened and Mitya came in. He was beaming and, if possible, grimier than he'd been the day before. In his left hand he had a shopping bag that clinked as he walked somewhat uncertainly toward me. "A miracle," he declared boisterously as he set the bag down on the kitchen table and pulled a bottle out of it. "My new friends took me to a store that sells things which are from home, and look, Yves, look!"

I looked. The label was in an alphabet I couldn't decipher. I shrugged.

"It is shlivo, the liquid of the Balkans. It is made from a fruit." He looked around the kitchen. "Purple."

"Grapes?" I asked.

"No. Larger. They grow on trees. Very sweet when they are matured."

I groped for a name. "Plums?"

"Yes! Yes!" He kissed my forehead. "It is brandy from plums. I hope your mother and father will to like it. I could not to find another something to give them."

"I'm sure they will, Mitya," I said, not sure at all. "But you didn't have to..."

"It is not polite otherwise to be a guest. To bring something is necessary, and look I got a something for you and for Tommy. It is from the same store." He delved into the bag and produced a reddish miniature baseball bat. "Sausage!" he roared. "From Serbs."

"That is wonderful." It looked like a war club. I prayed that Tommy would not go into his vegetarian mode when he saw it. "Mitya, you are too kind. And too dirty. And maybe just a little drunk. Have you been sampling some of the brandy?"

He grinned, a huge, dopey, slightly pixillated grin. "Just a little. See?" A second bottle emerged from the bag. It was only about half full.

"Just a little?" I queried, eyebrows rising.

"My friends, they helped. We celebrated that we are friends. It was very good."

"I bet." I pointed to the stairs. "Shower. Hot, lots of soap. Then cold. And we have to hurry a little. Tommy will be waiting, and I'd like to beat the rush hour."

We did, but Mitya didn't enjoy the scenery. He crawled into the back seat of Rosinante after we picked up Tommy and went to sleep almost immediately. As we left Montreal behind, he began to snore lightly at first and then not so lightly.

Tommy leaned over and whispered in my ear. "Doomed," he gloated. "The love of your life, and he sounds like a threshing machine. It will never last. You're too light a sleeper."

"You've never been near a threshing machine," I rejoined. "And he only snores when he has been drinking. And, besides, Tommy, you'll always be the love of my life."

He gave me an odd, inquiring look. "You've slept with him when he was sober?"

I nodded.

"Tell all."

I did and I didn't. I told Tommy about the funny, weird coincidences between the first conversations both Rifat and I had had with Mitya in bed. I told him the sex had only been oral. And I told him that Mitya's gratitude wasn't overflowing into love.

"But it still could," Tommy said, consolingly. "You're truly lovable, after all."

My turn to give him an odd, inquiring look, but he didn't notice. Sorting through my CD collection to find some music for the rest of the trip, he settled on Mylene Farmer. We both loved her voice and her bittersweet songs. But we played them quietly so as not to wake Mitya. "Tout est chaos à côté/ Tous mes idéaux: des mots abimés/ Je cherche un âme qui pourra m'aider/Je suis d'une génération désenchantée."

Only as we were nearing Mont Tremblant, did we turn up the volume and, when that didn't work, Tommy gently shook Mitya awake and explained that it was time to admire the scenery. Which he did. Sort of. "I thought they would be taller," he said, looking at the hills, "but they are very much green, like in Slovenia except not so tall. In Montenegro, many hills are very tall, but they are mostly rock. It is dramatic, yes, but it is not so calm and beautiful as here."

I didn't reply. Slovenia? My knowledge of world geography got very fuzzy once past London, Paris and Rome. And unless film, poetry or art was a notable export, Tommy knew foreign countries in terms of their political irresponsibility but not their topography. We all lapsed into silence as we passed through the tarted-up streets of the resort town, but Mitya became vocally enthusiastic when a glistening sheet of water appeared below us.

"It is so beautiful, Yves. Is it your lake?"

"I wish. No, it is a park for everybody. Our place is on a smaller lake just the other side of this one. The glaciers left these big bowls, I guess, in the ground thousands and thousands of years ago, and they all have springs that feed them still. What's fun is to swim around going from the water on top that the sun has warmed to the really cold layers underneath that surprise you because they hit you without warning."

"Like the turtles," Tommy said. "You can see a watersnake coming and get out of the way, but the turtles are sneaky."

"It was just one turtle," I protested. "And it had no way of knowing that your toe was attached to you or the air mattress you were being lazy on."

"I'm not being bitter," Tommy said, sounding even so, as though a minor brush with nature's predatory side 12 years ago remained a formative memory. "I just think Mitya should know what can be hiding under the calm and the beauty."

"If you will to be my turtle watchman, Tommy, I'm sure all will rest safe," Mitya chuckled. "And I would like to see a real turtle not in a zoo or a picture book. I will keep guard, though, on my toes."

If he was prepared for the wildlife, he was clearly not prepared for Summerfields, the Sinclair vacation compound. I heard him draw in his breath as we drove through the stone gate – I've always thought it was pretentious – and up the driveway to the big house, a fieldstone pile that should have had a moat to go with the turrets. My father's grandfather had built it when the railroad line he owned opened the way into these then-virgin woods. Mitya let out his breath. "It is a palace, Yves. Not even our prince bishops lived so, never."

"The Sinclairs weren't princes, and certainly not bishops," Tommy said. "Just barons. Robber barons, of course. And the only things living on the second floor now are small mice and big spiders. You'll see. We sleep in a cabin that is simple and rustic except for the sound system."

"Rustic. It means?"

"Plain, like a farmer's house," I explained. "Made of wood, well, logs actually. It was the ice house a long time ago." I stopped the car and opened my door to get out. "Mitya," I turned to him in the back seat. "I hope you will like it here and will like my family. They are just like everybody else...

"Except richer," Tommy put in.

"... and it will make me very happy if staying here with us for a few days makes you happy, too."

"You are my doctor for the heart," Mitya said. "And I like your sanatorium already very much."

As we were getting our stuff out of Rosinante, my mother came around the house. She was in cutoff jeans, a smudged white polo shirt and a headscarf, and as usual, her clothes didn't matter. She is a great beauty, and even with beads of sweat on her forehead and damp tendrils of blond hair plastered beside her ears, she shone. Looking at her from an artist's, not a son's perspective, I saw the firm high breasts, the inquiring, laughing, forget-me-not blue eyes, the cushiony lips and pronounced cheekbones as a familiar but always fresh composition of femininity and charm. She is 45, but looks 20 years younger.

"Cheri," she threw herself at me, "I thought I heard a car. I've been gardening. I must look awful." She knew she always looked terrific.

"Tommy!" She released me, clasped him, kissed him tenderly and managed to keep talking through the whole embrace. "It has been so long, sweet TomTom. I'm so glad you could come. Did you bring some good movies from your collection?"

Then she became aware of Dmitri on the other side of the car. "And you," she hurried around, switching her trowel to her left hand, "must be Yves' wonderful, new friend. And I..."

Dmitri had taken her outstretched hand. Bowing over it, he kissed the air just above it but did not let it go. "You are Yves' sister. He said I would be able to meet with you. I am Dmitri Njegos and, yes, I am full of wonder. Everything here is so beautiful."

"Actually," my mother was blushing. I couldn't remember when I had seen her do that. "I am Yves' mother. He told me you like to be called Mitya. I like to be called Dini, for Claudine." She was flirting with him. I couldn't believe it.

"Maman," I interrupted with a joke, "where is my other sister? And your grandchildren?" That was mean.

"Ceci and Larry went to see a movie with some friends. I'm the babysitter, but the babies are asleep. It's just the four of us for supper, but maybe you'd like a swim first. While there's still light."

First, we took the food I'd brought to the kitchen and then ourselves to the Log Lodge, where Tommy – the soul of tact – saved me from an awkward moment. "Could I have the hideaway?" he asked, meaning the bedroom with just a single bed as opposed to the larger one he and I had always shared. "I brought my clay tablet," he hefted his computer bag, "and I feel some paragraphs coming on."

I shot him a look of pure gratitude and pointed Mitya to the door at the back of the big living room, playroom. "We'll sleep here," I said, "so that Tommy can write. Or turn into a vampire. He is a creature of the night."

Mitya glanced around the big bedroom. "Those are a little little," he gestured at the corner where the bunk beds left from my childhood had been pushed against the wall. "But these are very large," he was appraising the two queen-size beds that made the room look a little like a motel.

"So are you. I think you'll fit right in." And, I thought, "with room left over for me." What I said was, "I'm going to have a swim. Would you like to? It's really refreshing after a long ride. You'll build up an appetite for Odette's cooking."

"I thought your mother's name was Claudine."

"It is. Odette is the housekeeper, and her husband, Henri, is our caretaker. They are both from around here, and they've worked for my family since before I was born. Odette thinks that we're all in danger of starving in Montreal, so she cooks enough food at each meal to feed a hockey team. And if you don't eat all of it, you will hurt her feelings."

"Then I should swim very much?"

"Even more than that," I grinned at him as I got out of my clothes and into my suit, a neat black Speedo that made me look, I knew, very appetizing. I found towels for both of us and told Mitya just to follow the path from the front door to the dock.

When I got there, Tommy was already standing next to the diving board looking dubiously down into the water at the stones and aquatic weeds on the lake floor. He was also looking unbelievably sexy in a light blue bikini that had only the thinnest side straps. Tommy always looks wonderful. The glossy hair that he wears a little bit long and the almond-shaped, dark brown eyes are from his mother. The coppery skin and taut, lean physique are from his father, and the high, round globes of his butt separated now by a thin strip of blue cloth are from heaven.

I nuzzled the back of his neck. "Race you to the raft?" I challenged.

"What if I win?'

"It's never happened."

"All right, what if I lose?"

"You have to hug me for a whole minute."

"And if I beat you?"

"I have to hug you."

He gave me that odd, inquiring look again and chuckled. "Okay," he said, curling his toes around the end of the planks. "On three. Ready..."

The water was amazing. The cool shock of it as you enter, diving, and then the silky comfort of the sun-warmed top layer. I didn't really want to race. I just wanted to revel in the sensations, in the floating and the moving and the changing from tepid to chilly and back. But Tommy was churning away, ahead of me. He had never won a race from me, and if he did this time, he'd accuse me of letting him do it, and he'd sulk. So I put my head down and my best butterfly kick into gear and went after him.

We both touched the raft at the same time. "Now what?" Tommy panted. "It was a tie."

"Well," I was a little winded, too. "We could race back to the dock. Or we could just hug each other. We both won and we both lost."

Tommy reached for me. "Let's see how long we can hug before we drown," he laughed.

I wrapped my legs around his waist, so that he'd have to tread water, and put my arms around his neck. And I squeezed. He squeezed back. One of his hands went into the back of my bathing suit and cupped my butt, the other held the back of my head, and suddenly his lips were on mine, very passionately. Tommy was kissing me, pushing his tongue into my mouth, deep and hot. It had been a long time since we'd kissed like that, and I was surprised not just to be doing it again but at Tommy's intensity. Something had changed him. I didn't know what, but I liked it.

He broke the kiss and the embrace. "Don't stop," I pleaded, "that was so wonderful."

"But I'm about to drown," he protested, grabbing the raft. "Go ahead, you try holding me up and making love while your legs are churning in turtle-infested waters."

Had we been making love? Tommy always chose his words very carefully. I was about to ask him when I saw Mitya making a racing dive off the board. He disappeared into the water and didn't come up and didn't come up and didn't come up. I felt a surge of panic. Then I felt a very sharp pinch on my foot. I started to scream but looked down instead and saw Mitya's huge form between Tommy's legs and mine, rising, rising and with a surge of water and a huge exhalation of breath breaking the surface.

"Did I scare you somewhat?" His delighted look told me how to answer, and I confessed that I had been terrified that Tommy's turtle had reappeared.

"What scared me just as much was having you disappear for so long," I added. "It's over 50 yards to the dock. I've never been able to hold my breath underwater that long."

"I am just closer than you in growth, in what Darwin discovered..."

"Evolution," Tommy interjected.

"In evolution, yes," Mitya went on, "to the first creatures to come out of the sea. It is very much possible that Neptune was an ancestor. But on my mother's side." He was laughing, hard and happily, in a way I had not heard him do since we met. Rifat, or the memory of Rifat, seemed to be receding. His eyes shone, no longer clouded by that grief that had first drawn me to him.

We pulled ourselves up onto the raft and stretched out on its sun-warmed boards. Mitya's bathing suit was more modest than Tommy's or mine, abbreviated boxers that were tight over his hips but would have been loose over any ordinary groin. Over Mitya's, the wet nylon outlined a very obvious hummock of flesh, and I saw Tommy's eyes widen as he took in the mat of dark hair on Mitya's torso and then the mound in his crotch. Looking up from his inspection to catch my eye, he seemed to be giving me an admiring appraisal, presumably for the sexual agility I had had to display to handle Mitya's equipment.

I dipped my head modestly. If Tommy was taking an interest in me again as a lover, I decided I would let him do the pursuing. I think one of the reasons he had ruled that we should live and sleep apart was that I never even pretended to resist him. He knew he had me in the palm of his hand, and I guess that could be boring. I liked being at his beck and call, but maybe he wanted the thrill of the chase. Now I could play harder to get, and besides there was Mitya. I loved him, and I hadn't really made love to him in the ways I wanted to.

"I cannot believe I am in so much of fortune." Mitya sat up and hugged his knees. "This must to be one of the most lovely places in the world, and if I had not knocked you down on the street, Yves, I would never have come to it. I would not have had you and Tommy as friends. And all because I am not taking care of where I am going."

"Lots of things in life are accidents." Tommy lay in the fading sunlight with his eyes shut. "Maybe all the most important things. Being in the right place at the right time, Mitya, the way you were for Rifat. Being here now. Did Yves tell you that this is where he and I made love for the first time?"

"Here? On this woodeness?"

"No," Tommy gave a little laugh. "In the cabin. We were pretty shy in those days. Even now, I'm not sure I'd do anything like that out in the open here."

"But you did!" I protested. "Or we did. In the canoe. Don't you remember? We were proving that we were real Canadians."

"A canoe?" Mitya was curious. "Like the Final Mohicans?"

"Or the first Algonquins. Or intermediate Hurons," Tommy giggled. "I do remember. It was very cramped. But we did it. You have to understand, Mitya, that one definition of a Canadian is someone who can make love in a canoe."

"And it is so hard?"

"Well, it helps." Tommy started roaring with laughter. I couldn't remember when he had dropped his usual cool reserve so completely. And his laughter was contagious. I started, and Mitya – though I'm not sure he got the wordplay – joined in. Tommy rolled over, partly on top of me, gasping for breath. Again his hand caressed my buttock, and I could feel his arousal against the inside of my thigh. It turned me on. I pressed my own crotch back against his. I don't know what we would have done next if the siren hadn't gone off.

As the wailing sound rose, Mitya put his arms over his head and rolled over onto his stomach, pressing himself as flat against the surface of the float as he could. He tried to hold very still, but I could see that his legs were quivering and his toes were digging into the wood. He was terrified. I pushed Tommy off and reached for Mitya's shoulder. "It's all right," I said. "It's all right. That's just my mother telling us to get ready for dinner." I stroked his back. "I'm sorry, Mitya. I forgot. It's just the easiest way of getting everybody on the place to come eat."

He rolled over and sat up, his face ashen but trying to force a smile. "I think," he said, "even when you had given me a warning, Yves, I would have acted like a foolish person still. That noise is what we heard when the NATO planes were coming to bomb us, and we were teached to do what I did just this now. I will try to unremember the teaching."

"And I will ask my mother to find a different dinner bell." I stood up. "But we have to go and get dressed. The siren means we have 15 minutes before she starts to eat without us."

We made it under the deadline. Just. I had told Mitya he only needed to wear jeans or slacks and a sports shirt, but with his thick mop of hair still damp and the suggestion of a beard, he looked like a very dashing pirate or, as he had joked, a descendant of Neptune. My mother, who usually stuck to slacks and a sports shirt unless we had important guests, had gone to more than a bit of trouble with her outfit. Above a long skirt, she wore a clinging, silvery blouse unbuttoned farther than my father would have approved. Mitya kissed her hand again. Tommy gave me a knowing smile. I asked what we were having for dinner.

"One of your favorite menus, darling," she said. "Nettle soup. Chicken and dumplings. Cherry cobbler. And Mitya's wine." The bottle he had brought, I saw, was open on the table.

"It's not really wine, maman. It's a kind of brandy."

"I'm sure it's delicious, cheri. And it will be a nice change."

Nice was not the word for it. It was firewater. Just the fumes it gave off were almost lethal. Still, we drank it. Mitya said not to sip it, but to knock it back like shots of vodka or whiskey. He demonstrated several times, and Tommy and I felt obliged to follow suit. After one gulp, though, my mother said she would stick to sipping. "Liquor goes right to my head," she protested, "and I want to keep it clear. I want to know all about you, Mitya. And Montallegro. And why you're in Montreal."

"Montenegro, Dini," Tommy corrected her.

"It means `black mountain' in Italian," Mitya explained, "and I think the Venetians gave it the name in the Medium Ages."

"Middle Ages," Tommy corrected him. But I noticed that Mitya and my mother were not paying attention to proper usage. Only to each other. I was appalled.

The only thing about the supper that seemed to take Mitya aback was the food itself. He said the soup was delicious, which it was, but when the ingredients were explained, he showed surprise that was on the edge of shock. He covered it by saying that nettles grew in the spring, not the summer in his country.

More strangely, as he helped himself to the chicken and dumplings on the platter that Odette held for him, he actually paled, and the hand that reached for his glass of brandy shook just a bit. He ate with appetite, though, and kept up a lively conversation with my mother all the time, telling her the story of his family, his army service in Kosovo and his decision to study at McGill. He never mentioned Rifat, and his English – under the influence of my mother or the brandy or both – got more fluent as the meal went on. Tommy and I just ate and listened, except when Mitya told my mother about knocking me down and meeting me again with Tommy in the coffee house.

"In the middle of the day, Tommy?" My mother's eyebrows rose. "I thought you and Yves were strictly night-owls."

"Yves wanted to show me someone... I mean, something that he was working on."

"Yes, I called him. I needed help." I was getting in trouble. My mother always said she could tell when I was fibbing. Change the subject. "Maman, do you remember my cleaning lady, Madame Dubois? Thanks to Mitya, her sons, who always treated me like some very nasty toad, asked me to do their portrait as a birthday present for their mother. So I've had my first commission."

"It is a very special picture, Madame Sinclair..."

"Dini."

"Dini, yes," Mitya corrected himself with a blush. "The boys are exactly like each other."

"They're identical twins," I explained.

"And Yves has found what in each one is different. He has seen their souls. He is a genius, you know."

"I've always thought so," my mother laughed lightly and stood up from the table. "But I love him just the same. Come on, we'll have coffee outside and watch the fireflies."

The lake is lovely by day. At night, under a moon just five or six days shy of full, it was a magical sheet of dark light. A low hump of wooded hillside rose beyond it and a blanket of star shine covered the darker corners of the sky that the moon did not wash with gold. We drank our coffee standing up in silent awe, and Tommy and I took the cups and tray back to the kitchen and caught up on the local gossip from Odette. When we came back to the terrace, Mitya was standing there alone.

"Dini has gone to see if the babies are well," he said. He turned to look at us, and his cheeks were wet. "Yves, she said I will have many loves and a long life, but I will not have my first love again. Not ever. How does she know these things that we talked of together? You did not tell her, did you? You would not to do that."

"She read your hand?" I found a handkerchief and dabbed away the tear tracks.

He nodded.

"What else did she say?"

"That I would go soon on a travel and that I would have many, many childs."

"All true, Mitya," Tommy said, "and all without meaning. Dini doesn't really see the future. It's just a game. She tells everybody how long their lifeline is and how their life will be full of love. You told her at supper you were thinking of being a children's doctor, and in a few days, we'll all travel back to Montreal."

"But what about my first love? Does she talk of Ivo or of Rifat?"

"Neither one. Everybody loses first loves." Tommy looked at me. "Almost nobody gets them back. Do you know Charles Dickens' story, Great Expectations?"

Mitya shook his head. "Then come and see the movie. I brought the tape. It's black and white from 1946, but David Lean directed it. It's about loving and losing, and it's very exciting in parts. I think you'll like it."

I did like it, but nowhere near as much as Lean's "Lawrence of Arabia." What I liked most was lying on cushions on the floor next to Tommy and grabbing his hand right at the scary start when the convict seems to jump at Pip out of the mist. The nice thing was that Tommy let me hold his hand for most of the rest of the movie. It was like going back to the way we had been as kids, when he was my first love and I was his.

My mother, sitting by herself on a couch after Mitya took a single chair, did not stay long. Well before Pip and Estella finally reconciled, she excused herself to check on the babies again. I wanted to wait until my sister and her husband got back from their party, but Tommy and Mitya both said they were tired and I didn't want to be alone or, I realized, to leave them alone. At the cabin, Tommy gave me a peck on the cheek and a squeeze on the butt and disappeared into his room. In ours, Mitya and I undressed in silence, down to our underwear, and I let him use the bathroom first. When he came out, and as I started to go in, he stopped me.

"Yves, please, did you carry with us the picture of Rifat?" he asked.

I said that I had and pointed to the portfolio leaning against a wall. "I'm too tired, though, Mitya, to work on it tonight. Do you mind?"

"No, no, of course not. But could I to look at it again all the same?"

"Certainly. Maybe you will see what's wrong and help me to do better tomorrow."

When I came back into the room, he was sitting cross-legged on his bed with the drawing lying in front of him, his head in his hands and more tears running down his face. So much for my hopes that his grief had faded. I got my handkerchief again and dried his face, put the sketch on the floor and my arm over his bare shoulders.

"Please, Mitya," I coaxed him to stretch his legs out and make room for me to lie next to him, "I'm sorry about what my mother said, and I should have made you wait till tomorrow to look at the drawing. You are tired and emotional. But you must not let everything that happens make you think of Rifat. We have to find a way to get you to look ahead, not behind."

"I know, Yves. I know," he moaned, "but all things, just little things, are remembering me. Like the good food your mother gave us. It was what Rifat cooked for us, too, the soup of the stinging plants and the chicken with the knoedl. That is what Germans call them. I cannot eat them now without I taste the ones he made. What am I to be doing?"

The tears began again, and this time I kissed them away. I also pressed my body against his and stroked his hair. "My mother is probably right about one thing," I murmured to him. "Your life will be full of love. You are a very loving person, Mitya, and you draw people to you. Even, I think, my mother. You will make me jealous."

"Because you have love for your mother?"

"No. I mean, yes, I do love her. But because I love you, and I'm selfish. I want you for myself."

"Do you want that we should make love?"

"You know I do."

"Then I think it would be good. I would want to please you. I am very much thankful to you, Yves, because of your lovingness, and it is hard not to have love to you as you do toward me." He took my hand from his head and put his own on the back of my skull, drawing my face to his, his lips to mine. It was a gentle kiss, at first, but as it went on, he turned it into something else, lip nibbling and then tongue thrashing as our bodies pushed against each other and both of us became aroused.

When he took his mouth away from mine, he put his arms on my shoulders and chest to make me lie flat. Then, bending over me, he kissed and licked my torso and belly, even tonguing the length of my erection trapped in my briefs. Spreading my legs, he toured my upper thighs, making me moan with the pleasure of his touch. Gently he pulled my underwear down and over my ankles and, with just the tip of his tongue, he lightly massaged my testicles. When he began to bathe my penis, I couldn't believe the sensual delicacy of his caresses. I writhed under him and, afraid that I would explode, I pulled his head up, out of my crotch.

"Not yet, Mitya," I pleaded. "I want to make love to you, too." I reached toward his cock, imposing even when it was still not fully erect.

He stopped my motion, holding my wrist. "No, Yves, please. I want to make you to be ready so that you can enter me. I want...," he hesitated, hunting for words, "I want to be giving of myself to you. You have given to me so very much, and I am knowing, I think, that you would like to do this, for us to make love in this way."

Astonished that he would let me act out my dream, at first I could only nod and hug him tightly. "I would like it very much," I finally got the words out. "And I want you to make love the same way to me. But I have to get some things..." I swung my feet to the floor. "So that what we do is safe and also not painful." He just smiled and let me go to the bathroom to retrieve a packet of condoms and a tube of jelly from my toilet kit.

When I came back, he was still smiling. He had taken a pillow from the head of the bed and put it under his hips to raise them and he had bent his legs and spread them wide so that his genitals would have been completely exposed if he had not cupped them coyly in one hand. The pose was wanton, a little bit ridiculous but also very inviting. I had begun to lose my erection on my errand to the bathroom, but I hardened again as I looked at him and realized he was really going to let me possess him.

I bent down and kissed him. "You are very beautiful, Mitya. You are incredible," I rested a hand on his chest and felt a nipple grow firm at my touch. He was excited, not just docile and polite, but eager. "I will try to be good for you," I said. "But you must tell me if I do anything to hurt you."

He nodded and took the condoms from me, opened one packet and, as I stood beside the bed, slowly unrolled the clear sheath the length of my penis. It's a very clinical action, but he made it seem part of foreplay, lightly caressing the underside of my shaft as he covered it. I spread lubricant first on myself and then, climbing onto the bed and between his legs, on his opening. Very cautiously, I pushed one and then two fingers past his sphincter, watching for signs of pain.

"It is not of importance, Yves," he understood my concern. "Please, do not to be anxious. The hurt is only at the starting." He raised his arms to grasp and then support my shoulders as I leaned over him and guided myself up and against him.

"I'm going to push in now," I warned him. "If you push out..."

"Yes, I know. I will. Oh, yes, like that. Oh," he moaned a little, "oh, you are into me, Yves. It feels excellent. I had almost forgotten. Please, come in more. Do not stop. I like it so much."

He didn't just like it. He was fierce about wanting our bodies linked, and at one point as I stroked my way cautiously through the heat of his narrow, yielding passage, he locked his ankles under my buttocks to capture me all the way inside him. He let me pull back and then literally squeezed me with his calf muscles to force a quick, solid, pistoning thrust deep into him again. "Hard, Yves, please," he breathed. "It is so good to have you like this on me and inside me. I give you myself. Make us to be together."

I took him at his word and steadily speeded up my plunges into the constricting fire, pressing closer and closer into him with each stroke till I felt his own erection trapped between my belly and his. At that, I lifted myself off him enough to capture his cock in one of my hands. My touch made him gasp. He said something I didn't understand, a few plaintive syllables of delight, as I caressed him and resumed the rhythm of my penetration.

I have learned from Tommy how to draw out the pleasure, how to bring myself and my partner to the precipice of release and how to slide back from it, not teasingly but purposefully to make the next approach and withdrawal more intense. But technique finally matters less than instinct and desire, and I desired Mitya as my conquest just as much, it seemed, as he desired to be conquered. So it was not that long before I went over the edge and took him with me, that heavy column spasming in my grip. Our shouts mingled as we stiffened, exploded in multiple bursts and collapsed into one another.

When I had recovered my breath and my senses, I tried gently to separate us. But Mitya did not want me to leave him. His legs had relaxed their hold when we both climaxed, but now they pinned me to him again. "Yves, please," he said, "could you not stay within me and fuck me once more? You are wonderful. Never with Ivo or with Rifat have I felt so much sensation from a man."

I was flattered, and to my surprise, I was also able to perform. I had not gone completely soft in any case, but as Mitya ground his body suggestively against mine, I came erect again. "Yes," he whimpered happily, "yes. Like that. You are even bigger than before, Yves. You are like a god. I desire you so much. I cannot believe how you make me to feel."

I put a finger on his lips to hush him before he said something so ridiculous that it would undo the erotic spell around us. He was the godlike one, yet he was submitting to me. Maybe I could cement a connection, sexual but not just sexual, between us that would not be just for one night or one coupling. Briefly I debated putting on a new condom, but I decided to take a chance rather than break the mood. Slowly, very slowly, I began again to press into him. If he wanted to be fucked, I would oblige, but I would do it lovingly, with passion but with caring. And I would make it last.

I did. Mitya actually came before me, a screaming, moaning, thrashing eruption that left him so limp I don't think he was aware of my orgasm ten or fifteen seconds later. When I pulled away from him and left the bed to deal with the almost overflowing condom, he was sprawled on his back, his eyes shut, his mouth gaping a bit, small gobbets of semen glistening in the thick hair of his chest, and a little bead of it shining on the tip of his cock as it lay shriveled but still awesome along his inner thigh. I cleaned myself up and brought a damp washcloth back to the bed to do the same for Mitya, but I found him snoring gently and decided not to risk waking him. Instead, I crawled in next to him, hugging my body to his, savoring the smell of sex and sweat on him and on the sheets. Almost immediately I was as sound asleep as he.

(To be continued.)