Until he met Tim Parsons, Charles would never have believed it was possible for him to fall in love with another man. At nineteen he was almost a stereotype of the clean-cut, ail-American boy: captain of his high school baseball team, member of the football squad, ambitious but not overly intellectual, and as good-natured as he was good-looking. Once or twice, in the early years of puberty, he and a few of his buddies had experimented with mutual masturbation, but this kind of fooling around had embarrassed Charles and he'd stayed away from it after the first few times the group got together. Basically, his sexual orientation was around girls. Once, following the junior-senior prom, he'd even talked his date into letting him put his hand between her legs and showing him her breasts. Actual intercourse was still something he joked about in the locker room but had not yet experienced for himself.
The feelings he'd felt for Tim almost from the moment they met at a regional draft center where they were both being inducted, frightened Charles. At first he'd tried to tell himself that it was nothing more than an over-reaction to being away from home and his friends for the first time in his life, as well as a desperate need to share with someone the uncertainty and fear that came with Army induction. Then during the first weeks of basic training, he'd tried to believe it was the total absence of girls from his life that was drawing him closer and closer to Tim. But none of Charles's rationalizations did much to explain why he felt the way he did whenever he and Tim were alone together in the shower or when it was lights-out in the barracks and he knew Tim was lying in the next bunk, so close he could reach out in the dark and touch the warmth of his body.
There was something magnetic about Tim that made it impossible for Charles to resist him. It wasn't just Tim's looks, although he was just about the best-looking guy Charles had ever known. It had more to do with his manner, that indefinable something which certain people have inside them and are able to use to make others do whatever they want, even if they might not be aware of their own power. All Tim had to do was flash that radiant smile or get that certain look in his eyes and Charles could feel tremors run through his body. He could tell the most stale joke and break Charles up with it every time. Or seem depressed by news from home and make Charles feel twice as bad as he did himself without ever saying a word.
Nights were the worst times for Charles. When the lights had gone out and the barracks begun to settle down, he would lie on his back in the darkness and listen to the sounds of heavy breathing and the slight squeak of springs here and there among the bunks as some of the young soldiers relieved themselves with their fists, wondering what would happen if he were to slip out of bed and cross those few inches to Tim's bunk. There was no way of telling what Tim's reaction would be. Charles had driven himself almost crazy wondering if Tim felt the same way, if he would welcome him into his bed or if he would be so shocked and appalled by such an advance that the whole barracks would know Charles's secret and mark him with it for life.
Even if Tim didn't object, Charles wasn't really sure just what he would be expected to do. He'd never had any contact with queers. Once, in the men's room at the high school, two effeminate classmates had come up on either side of him as he stood at the urinal and stared at his cock, one of them making obscene smacking noises with his mouth; Charles had zipped up quickly and fled in terror. He wished now that he'd stuck around and let them do whatever it was queers did to guys, so he would know what Tim might expect him to do if he ever had the chance. A friend from the baseball team had once confided that another guy had given him a blow job, but Charles had been too embarrassed to ask him any questions about it. He assumed it involved putting a guy's cock into your mouth, but exactly what you did with it once you had it there was a complete mystery to him.
Eventually the other sounds in the barracks would taper off, but Charles would still be lying on his bunk, wide awake, thinking about Tim. He could conjure up an image of Tim's body that was perfect in every detail: from his sandy-blond hair to the sleek, muscled smoothness of his chest to the strong thighs and the heavy length of cock that swung so casually between his legs whenever they showered. Tim's cock was about the biggest Charles had ever seen, nearly twice the size of his own, he guessed. Even limp it was enormous. Long and thick around the base, swelling into a bright pink, mushroom-shaped head and haloed by a wreath of coarse brown hair that spread across Tim's lower belly. Charles knew every detail of that cock, every vein that ran down its length. He had stared at it so many times in the shower that he was surprised Tim hadn't caught him at it. Sometimes the sight of it swinging between Tim's legs was so exciting Charles had to flip a towel around his waist and make a fast exit from the shower room. He longed to feel the warmth and heaviness of it in his hand, to hold Tim tightly in his arms and feel it swelling into full erection against his belly as they clung nakedly to each other and kissed.
His mind running rampant with desire, Charles would draw his hand slowly down into the sheets until he had a firm grip on his own swollen penis, and then, his eyes straining in the darkness to see the shape of Tim's body in the next bunk, begin to masturbate, pretending it was Tim's cock and not his own that he was holding.
At the end of basic training, Charles almost wished that he and Tim would draw different duty orders. The separation would be painful at first, but Charles reasoned it would give him the chance to get his mind back in order and start thinking along normal channels again. As luck would have it, his entire platoon was ordered to Korea.
The war was pretty much over by the time they arrived, with only mopping-up exercises and a few skirmishes in the hills to be dealt with. In the boredom created by too much time on their hands, Charles and Tim were all but inseparable. The long hours of talk gave them the opportunity to learn everything there was to know about each other. Charles had never shared so many confidences nor told so much about himself to another person. For the first time in his life, he began to know what a friend really was. And then, one rainy night when they were alone in their tent, Tim became far more than a friend.
The light had been out for more than an hour and they'd stopped talking almost as soon as the tent went dark. Outside the rain was pelting against the canvas with such force it was impossible for Charles to tell by Tim's breathing if he'd fallen asleep, even though their sleeping bags were less than a foot apart. He rolled onto his side and slid his hand down to his crotch, began to work his cock into erection and then move it inside his fist. Suddenly he froze as he felt Tim's hand on his shoulder.
"I thought I'd catch you at it some night!" Tim laughed in a whisper.
Charles rolled onto his back and saw Tim's face grinning down at him. "Bastard!" he laughed back.
"You thought you were pretty slick, didn't you?"
In spite of his embarrassment at being caught, the fact that Tim knew what he'd been doing made Charles cock swell even harder. "You mean you've been laying over there listening to me every night?"
"Just about!"
Charles hesitated, then asked, "Why?"
"Hell, why do you think?" Tim laughed. "So I'd know when it was safe for me to start up without you hearing!"
"For Christ's-!" The two boys suddenly broke into hysterical laughter. "I don't believe it!" Charles howled. "I just don't believe it!"
"It's true! I swear to God!"
They laughed for several minutes more, then Charles began to sober as the implications of the situation began to dawn on him. "Well," he said, "what-uh-what are we going to do now that the game's up for both of us?"
"I don't know. Flip a coin to see who starts first, I guess."
Charles swallowed hard and felt his insides slowly twisting into knots as he gathered his courage. "I-uh-I got a better idea."
"What's that?"
"Well-uh-when I was a kid ... "
"Yeah?" Tim prodded.
"Well, you know how you fool around when you're just starting to wise up about things. I mean you're always curious about whether your buddy's starting to get hair on it too. Or if he can get stuff. You know."
"Yeah!" Tim laughed softly. "I'll never forget the first time I whacked off! Man! I thought that little dribble really made me a big man!"
"Exactly." Encouraged by Tim's response, Charles plunged straight ahead. "Well I don't know if you had the same experience as I did, but once when I was about fourteen a couple of my buddies and I got together in someone's cellar and had what I guess they call a circle jerk."
"Yeah, I know what you-" Tim stopped abruptly, with the steady hammer of the rain on the tent suddenly the only sound between them. "You mean-uh-I mean are you saying that we-uh-that we should--"
Charles jumped headfirst into the fire. "Why not?" he whispered. "It'll feel better for both of us that way."
"I-I don't know."
Charles inched closer, putting his hand out in the darkness and lightly touching Tim's chest. Even through the sleeping bag he could feel the hammering of Tim's heart. "Come on," he urged. "Who's going to know?"
"I didn't figure on anything like this, Charles."
Panic was beginning to set in at an alarming rate, but there was nothing to do except push it further. If he let it drop now, Charles knew there would probably never be another chance.
"I'm not a queer or anything, Tim, if that's what's bothering you," he argued. "Hell, I'm just saying as long as we both know what we need, why not help each other out if we can? It's not going to go any further than this tent."
His hand slid over Tim's chest to the side of the sleeping bag and the zipper. Rising up slightly, he pulled down the tab until it was open past Tim's thighs, then quickly unzipped his own and crouched over his friend's body. His mouth felt like a ball of dust as he brought his hand back to Tim's stomach and felt the warmth of it and the sudden dampness of sweat beading through his T-shirt.
Tim started to protest, but Charles dug his fingers down hard and murmured, "If you don't like it, I'll stop. I promise."
There was enough light coming through the tent flap that he could see the swell in Tim's underpants as he moved his hand slowly down to it. His fingers glided like feathers across the length of stiffening cock, feeling it throbbing up at him through the shorts. Charles rubbed back up in the opposite direction, then slipped his hand into Tim's underpants and circled the shaft of his cock. He thought he would faint with excitement as the heavy penis began to throb against his palm, hardening like steel inside the grip of his fingers. How long he had dreamed of doing this, and yet now that Tim's prick was actually inside his fist it seemed even bigger than Charles had imagined it in his wildest fantasy. It was impossible for him to get his hand all the way around its thickness.
She played with Tim's cock for several minutes, moving his fist up and down the full length of the shaft, running his fingers through the wiry bush of hair at its base and down to cup the heavy sac of balls below it, then up to the very tip where he felt drops of slippery and slightly sticky substance around the wide hole. His own cock was sticking bolt upright, his heart hammering almost to the bursting point with excitement.
Tim had said nothing since Charles began. He lay flat on his back, his legs spread slightly apart, his head rolling slowly from side to side as the gentle fluttering of Charles's fingers on his cock excited him. Suddenly he reached out and clamped his hand on Charles's leg. "Let me have yours, too," he murmured huskily. "Turn around."
Charles shifted his body in the opposite direction from Tim's, so that he could offer him his cock and yet still maintain his own grip. A sharp jolt of excitement shot through him as he felt Tim's fingers moving into his underpants and then wrapping around his swollen penis. He moaned low in his throat and began to move his fist up and down on Tim's cock. He could see the big head swelling each time he stroked the shaft. Tim's legs were beginning to jerk open and closed as Charles masturbated him and his grunts of pleasure were becoming more and more urgent.
For several minutes Tim just lay there, holding Charles's cock without moving it, enjoying the feelings flooding through his own body. Then, slowly, his hand began to move, too. They lay almost side-by-side, their hands pumping each other's cock, their bodies jerking fitfully as jolt after jolt of pleasure brought each of them closer to orgasm.
Tim's legs began to stiffen and Charles could tell that he was close to ejaculation. His own cock was ready, too. He pumped faster, wanting to make Tim come. He bent lower. His lips touched the swollen head of Tim's cock and a salty drop of fluid from its tip burned his tongue.
"Yes!" Tim moaned. "Do it! I want you to!" His hand reached down and cupped the back of Charles's neck, pushing his head further down. "Put it in your mouth," he begged. "Let me come in your mouth, Charles!"
Charles hesitated for just a moment and then his lips parted and his mouth was going down and down on that thick length of cock. He began to suck on it as his hand continued its pumping. He felt it swelling against his tongue, the thick head ramming deep into his throat. His nostrils were filled with the strong male scent of Tim. His eyes were brimming with tears of happiness. In the distance he could hear Tim's moans of pleasure as his lips moved faster and faster, his tongue dancing up and down the length of shaft he was able to fit inside his mouth.
His throat was gorged with Tim's cock, yet each time he drove his mouth down on it, he tried to take even more. He wanted to engulf Tim completely, to swallow him whole, take every bit of him into his throat and possess him forever. It was only a matter of moments before Tim would start to come. Charles could feel the steady pulsing and swelling between his lips, the tightening of Tim's legs around his neck, the frantic pumping on his own cock.
Suddenly Tim gasped and arched his body forward and Charles felt the first squirt of hot fluid shoot into his throat. At almost that very instant, Tim gasped again and drove his mouth down on Charles's cock as he, too, began to come. They clung tightly together, giving their semen to each other in heavy bursts that seemed to go on forever.
When it was over, Charles pulled his lips slowly off Tim's cock and rested his head on his thighs, panting hard. He felt Tim's hands on his shoulders, pulling him up. Their eyes met in the darkness, then Charles slumped on top of Tim and their lips met. They kissed long and hard, tasting the saltiness of themselves in each other's mouth. Tim broke the kiss and rolled Charles gently away, but cupped his head in the warmth of his shoulder. They fell asleep quickly.
In the morning, neither Tim nor Charles mentioned what had happened. In the cold light of day, they were both slightly embarrassed by what they had done and frightened by the new meaning it had put into their relationship. Both of them knew what it meant, what they had become to each other, but putting it into words was too difficult for either one to do.
Charles rationalized there was no need to tell Tim what that night had meant. They had given and taken of each other, fused as one, and nothing had to be said to make it any more real. Nor, they found, did it have to happen again. They had shared a moment of such mystery and beauty that it was not necessary for it to be repeated. Each of them knew that in that one giving, his life had become inextricably entwined with the other's, that they had found something few people ever find-if only for a moment-and it would be enough to last for the rest of their lives.
Charles often thought of that night in Korea in the years that followed. When they were shipped home, he and Tim went their separate ways again, neither daring to suggest that they remain together to find a future with each other. They kept in contact through regular letters and, for a while, twice-yearly reunions. They married at approximately the same time and, co-incidentally, both had sons born less than a month apart. As a token of their closeness, each named his son after the other and agreed to be his namesake's godfather. It had seemed un-likely at the time that either would ever be faced with the responsibility of caring for the other's child, but to Charles's horror, fate had worked in just that way. Tim's wife had died in a freakish boating accident a year ago and less than six months later, Tim had taken his own life.
"I'll never understand why you did it," Vera Davenport complained as she undressed for bed.
"Because the kid has no place else to go," Charles said wearily. He squashed out his cigarette and slumped down into the bed. "How many times do I have to tell you?"
"I just can't believe it," Vera insisted. "I'm sorry, Charles, I just find it very hard to believe that he had no place else to go for the summer. Surely-"
"Tim had no relatives."
"Well, surely Monica-"
"Only her sister and she's got her hands full with her own kids." Charles was weary of explaining over and over again to his wife why he had agreed to let Chuck Parsons spend the summer at the shore with them. There had never been any question in his mind about doing whatever he could for Tim's boy, and he was annoyed and disappointed that Vera didn't feel the same way.
"Well I wish you'd consulted me about it first," Vera snapped. "That's all I can say."
"That's all you've been saying for the last two weeks. You'd think I'd invited an entire orphanage. He's only one boy, for crissake."
"But we don't know anything about him."
"What's there to know?" I'm sure he's no different from Timmy or any other seventeen-year-old kid, for that matter."
"Except that he's spent the last year in a military school," Vera countered.
"So?" Charles's weariness was beginning to change to anger. "You make it sound like he's been in prison."
"Boys aren't sent to a military school for nothing, Charles. It usually means they're a discipline problem for the parents."
"For Christ's sake!" Charles shouted. "Monica was dead! Tim couldn't handle the boy by himself, feeling the way he did."
"How do you know that? How do you know he didn't-"
"Let's drop it. Right now, Vera, let's drop it. Chuck is going to be here tomorrow morning and it's too late to do anything about it, so let's drop the whole subject once and for all. Okay?"
Vera glared at him through the mirror on her dressing table. "All right," she said coldly, "I'll drop it. But if anything happens, just remember that it will be your fault." She stood up and took off her housecoat, switched off the light and got into bed with Charles.
"What, could possibly happen?"
"I don't know. I don't even want to think about it." She turned her back to Charles and for several minutes they lay side-by-side in accusing silence.
"Look, honey," Charles said, reaching out to squeeze his wife's arm. "Tim was my best friend. Chuck is my godson. I made a promise to look after him if anything ever-happened. I'm sure Tim and Monica would have done the same thing for Timmy if it had been us...." He tightened his grip on her arm and rolled closer to her in the bed, but her body was rigid and unyielding to his advance. "It's only for the summer. He'll be a pal for Timmy; you know how lonely he gets out here with nobody his own age around."
"Who are you trying to convince, Charles? Me? Or yourself?"
He let go of her arm and rolled back onto his own side of the bed, wanting in the blind heat of anger to slap her senseless. How could she be so stubborn about it? Couldn't she realize that he had to do this for Tim? He reached in the dark for another cigarette. For several minutes he smoked in silence, listening to the distant sound of waves breaking on the shore far below the crest of hill where their summer house was perched.
The trouble between him and Vera went far deeper than Chuck Parson, Charles realized. In the last few years they seemed to be disagreeing on almost everything, finding very little common ground left in their marriage. He could almost watch their relationship falling apart at the seams. At times he would lie next to her in bed and wonder if anything ever had been there in the first place, if such a thing as love had ever really existed between them or if they had simply fallen into marriage because it had seemed the appropriate thing to do.
Even their son, Timmy, had become a bone of contention for them to squabble over. Charles felt the boy was spoiled too much by his mother. He was sullen, moody, disinterested in everything Charles had expected of his son. At the root of it, he supposed, was the gnawing realization that Timmy was growing up effeminate. Not a sissy, but certainly not the strapping boy Charles had hoped he would be. Not the kind of son he'd wanted, that he could be proud of.
Maybe, Charles thought as he stubbed out the half-smoked cigarette and settled back down in bed, things would be different once Chuck arrived.
CHAPTER TWO
"Look at him," Timmy thought, as he stared sullenly from the back seat at the laughing face of his father. "Everyone's best friend. Except mine."
"So you like flying, huh, Chuck?" Charles said.
"Oh, yes, Mr. Davenport. Sometimes I think I'd like to be a pilot. I get a real bang out of airplanes."
"I'll bet you do," Timmy muttered to himself. He was a thin boy, with awkwardly angular features that emphasized the scowl on his face. It irked him to think that in the twenty-minute drive from the airport to the shore, Chuck and his father had found more to say to each other than he and Charles had in seventeen years.
Timmy had felt a resentment against Chuck right from the moment he stepped off the plane. He could tell in a glance that he and the boy would not get along. Chuck was just like all the handsome, athletic guys who had plagued Tim-my's life from grade school right to the present. If they hadn't been bullies, throwing their weight around and proving how masculine they were by making fun of Timmy's thinness and nervous twitches, they had been used by his father as models of what he expected his son to be. No amount of pleading or arguing had been able to convince Charles that his boy was different from the others, that he would never be able to emulate his own accomplishments. Charles's persistence had roused only bitterness in Timmy, as well as a steadfast resentment that his father could not accept him on his own terms, rather than attempting to make him into someone like Chuck.
"It really was great of you to invite me to spend the summer with you, Mr. Davenport," Chuck said. "I don't know how to thank you."
"No thanks necessary," Charles assured him. "We're all glad to have you with us."
Timmy caught a quick glance from his mother and wondered if the same thoughts were running through her head. Although she'd never said so to him, he suspected that she resented Chuck's presence as much as he did. In the last week he'd heard them arguing a lot when they went to bed, and he was fairly certain what the cause of the trouble was. Chuck was an intruder, an unwanted other person whose very presence would change their yearly ritual of summers at the beach. His father had no right to invite a stranger into their home without first consulting the rest of the family, Timmy believed, no matter how close he and Chuck's father might have been at one time.
"Did you just get out of school, Timmy?"
He turned his head from the window and saw Chuck grinning at him. "About a week ago," he muttered.
"I thought so. You're still so white I didn't think you'd been at the beach long."
Timmy's face stiffened and the corner of his left eye began to twitch nervously. "It's starting already," he thought. "Even before we get to the house."
"Timmy doesn't go out in the sun much," Vera said with an icy edge to her voice that implied she shared her son's opinion of Chuck. "He has delicate skin and burns easily."
"Well, he's going to get over it this summer," Charles said. "The reason he burns like that is because he stays in the house so much. If he'd go out every day he'd get used to it."
"You know what the doctor said," Vera retaliated. "He has a delicate skin condition."
"Too many delicate things about him if you ask me," Charles grunted. There was a long, ominous silence as the implications in that statement spread through the car like the stench of broken wind, with each of them too embarrassed to look at the others to trace its origin. "You'll take care of that, won't you, Chuck?" Charles said at last.
"What's that, Mr. Davenport?"
"Timmy. I'm assigning you one responsibility for the summer: to see that Timmy has a good suntan by the end of August. Think you can handle it?"
Timmy glared at the back of his father's head, then at Chuck, as though daring him to accept the challenge. To his surprise, Chuck smiled at him and shrugged helplessly.
"I don't know. I think it's up to Timmy more than me."
"Exactly," Vera said. "Timmy will do what's best for him."
"Can't we pick on somebody else for a change?" Timmy muttered.
Charles turned his head sharply. "I'm not picking on you. I'm trying to make you into a man. If that's-"
"Charles, please watch the road and keep quiet, will you?" Vera snapped. "You're embarrassing all of us in front of Chuck."
"I'm sorry. I was just saying that-"
"Charles."
For several minutes they drove in silence as the car rounded the sharp curves of the cliffside road leading up to their house, each of them locked in the privacy of his own thoughts. For Timmy, they were thoughts of such rage that he was close to tears. Make a man of you. "God!" he thought. "How many times do I have to hear that before you get sick of saying it? Don't you realize yet that I'm a hopeless case?"
He stared at his father's head, wishing he had the courage to bash it into pulp with his bare fists. Make a man of you. "How, Daddy?" he thought bitterly. "Tell me how. Show me the instructions. Tell me what you have to do to be a man. Play football like you did? Fuck somebody and get a child you never wanted in the first place and can't stand the sight of? Grow a beard? Curse a lot? Spit on the street? Drink beer right from the can? Huh, Daddy? Is that how to be a man?"
He felt tears brimming in the corners of his eyes and turned his head back to the window so Chuck wouldn't see him crying. How often he had wanted to be what his father expected. How many times he had looked at himself in the mirror and hated what he'd seen: the sallow complexion, the too-big eyes, the thin bones, the girlish softness that had made him the ready target of countless bullies. But there was more to himself than that and Timmy knew it. If he looked deeply enough, past all the glaring imperfections thrown back in the mirror's reflection, he could see a desperately lonely boy who want-ed nothing more from life than to love and be loved in return. A boy who possessed an uncommon warmth in his soul, but had been taught by the world to camouflage it with bitterness and cynicism, lest it be grabbed from him and trampled under the feet of life's bullies. He had cried himself to sleep so many nights, praying that just once his father would see this in him and realize how infinitely more precious it was than the things he lacked.
"I'll make a deal with you, Daddy," he thought with a raw ache in his throat from holding back his tears. "I'll learn how to be a man when you learn how to be a father."
"Is this your house?" Chuck asked, as the car rounded the last of the curves and turned into the private driveway. Timmy wiped his eyes and blew his nose in a handkerchief, then coughed loudly so it wouldn't seem as though he'd been crying.
"Yep, this is it," Charles said. "Like it?"
"Wow! "It's great! That view is fantastic! It must be some hike down to the beach, though."
"Not really," Charles said, turning off the motor when the car was parked. "We have steps built into the cliff. Just a couple of minutes hike."
"Going down," Vera laughed. "Coming up is another matter, believe me!"
"I'd like to go down there this afternoon, if it's okay. I really love the sun."
"Sure, Chuck. You and Timmy can go down just as soon as you're changed if you'd like." Charles got out of the car and went around to open the trunk to get Chuck's suitcase as the others got out.
"I'm going to fix some lunch before anyone goes anywhere," Vera said. "I'm sure Chuck must be starved."
The boy grinned and nodded his head enthusiastically. "I am kind of hungry. We can go later."
"Maybe you boys would like to throw a few baskets while you're waiting for lunch," Charles suggested. "There should be a ball in the garage."
"I'm going in the house," Timmy muttered.
"Hey!" Charles called. "What's so special in the house? Go look for the basketball so you and Chuck-"
"I said I'm going in the house!" He started to walk fast for the door. "Hey! Timmy!"
"Charles, let him go, will you?" Vera insisted. "Timmy!"
Ignoring the threat in his father's voice, he jerked open the screen door and let it slam hard behind him as he ran for his bedroom. His face was streaming with tears before he even hit the bed.
A while later, he heard the bedroom door open and close softly. His mother, he assumed, coming to console him with her overpowering protectiveness. "Go away," he muttered without looking up.
"They told me I'm bunking in with you while I'm here; I've got no place else to go."
Timmy lifted his head quickly and saw Chuck holding his suitcase, a broad grin on his face. He wiped his eyes with the back of his hand and cleared his throat several times. "That dresser over there is yours," he said, pointing across the room.
"Thanks." Chuck put his suitcase on the bed and opened it, began to put his clothes in the dresser while Timmy watched with the grim fascination of a proud city seeing its conquerors parade clown the main avenue. "I'm-uh-sorry about what happened out there."
"Yeah, so am I," Timmy muttered.
"Don't you feel good? Is that why you didn't want to play?"
"No, it isn't."
"Then-"
"It may surprise someone like you, but shooting basketballs is not an instinctive talent."
"You mean you can't?"
"Yeah, that's just what I mean. I told you it would come as a shock."
"Hell, so what?" Chuck grinned. "Why didn't you just say so?"
"Why don't you just mind your own business?" Timmy spat.
Chuck dropped some socks back into the suitcase and sat on the edge of the bed. "What did I do that you've had it in for me ever since we met?"
Timmy shifted his eyes, embarrassed that his hatred had been so obvious and that now it was out in the open. "You didn't have to do anything. Just being is enough."
"You mean being what your old man wants you to be."
Timmy looked up in surprise.
"Didn't you think I caught onto that scene?" Chuck laughed. "Hell, I could see what his game was right from the start. I kept trying to talk about something else so he wouldn't keep embarrassing you, but he'd just go right back to it."
"It's his favorite subject."
"I figured so." Chuck shook his head in disgust. "Most parents should have the shit kicked out of them for what they put their kids through."
Timmy laughed and nodded his head enthusiastically. Curiously, in the space of just a few minutes, he was finding himself warming to Chuck. His guard was slowly dropping and for the first time in his life he was talking to another boy as though they were friends.
"My folks were pretty much the same way," Chuck continued. "From the minute they opened their eyes in the morning until they shut them at night all they could do was nag. Christ, I used to get so sick of it I-" He shrugged and laughed. "Well, they're both dead now, so I don't have to worry about it anymore. But I understand what you're going through. I just hope you don't blame me for what your old man says and does." He leaned toward the suitcase and pulled a pack of cigarettes from under the clothes. "Want a smoke?" he said, offering the pack to Timmy.
He had never smoked in his life and was about to say no, but something in Chuck's eyes and his smile changed his mind. To have rejected the offer, he feared, might have put an abrupt end to the friendship he felt was developing between them. "Yeah, thanks," he said.
"This was one of the things they were always on my back about," Chuck said when he'd lit Timmy's cigarette and his own. "Christ! The scenes we used to have! I got so pissed that one night when they were asleep I took all of their cigarettes and flushed them down the toilet! You should have seen the nicotine fits the next morning!"
Timmy howled with laughter, feeling a slight dizziness from the exhilarating presence of tobacco in his lungs for the first time, as well as the joyful warmth of knowing a person like Chuck was really going to be his friend.
"Is that why they sent you to military school?"
Chuck's laughter died abruptly and the smile began to disappear from his eyes. "No. That was-uh-for something else."
Conscious that he had made a mistake in bringing up the subject, Timmy tried as skillfully as possible to correct it. "You didn't like it there, huh?"
Chuck's hands clenched into tight fists. "I hated it. I'm never going back there again."
"But!"
"Let's not talk about it, okay? That's my sore point." He got up and began sorting the rest of his clothes from the suitcase.
"I'm sorry I mentioned it."
"It's all right. We just won't talk about it again."
Timmy squashed out his cigarette on the rim of the wastepaper basket, finding the smoke suddenly sour and harsh in his throat. Something had changed between them so abruptly that he was beginning to panic. The last thing in the world he had wanted to do was alienate Chuck, and yet it seemed that was precisely what he had done. There was no smile in the boy's eyes now, only a harsh frown as he threw his clothes into the dresser drawers with a force approaching vengeance. Timmy was upset by this sudden change and, not understanding it, blamed himself.
"Chuck?"
"Huh?"
Timmy waited until the boy looked up and at him. "Do you-uh-want to go down to the beach?"
"Yeah, after lunch, I guess." He looked back at the suitcase, his expression unchanged.
"I'd-like to go with you."
Chuck looked up again and for a long moment their eyes held, then he began to smile. "Good! I'd hoped you would. It'll be a long, long summer if we're not friends."
Timmy nodded his head up and down. "I know. I'm-I'm sorry for the way I acted earlier. I'd like us to be friends."
Again they stared at each other in silence for several moments. "To tell with lunch!" Chuck laughed. "Let's go now!" He dug into one of the drawers he'd just filled and pulled out a skimpy white bathing suit, tossed it onto the bed and began to unbutton his shirt.
Timmy started to get up to change into his own suit, but as he watched Chuck peel off his shirt and begin to undo his pants, he found he could not move. He sat on the edge of his bed, fascinated by the unveiling of Chuck's body.
He was like so many boys Timmy had envied in gym classes at school: tall, lean but well-muscled, strong-boned and handsome in a way that took your breath away when he smiled. His chest was sleek and hairless, with well-defined pectoral muscles and ribs of muscle across his stomach like a washboard. He had incredibly broad shoulders and muscles that rippled all the way down his back as he bent to pull his legs free of the pants.
Timmy knew he should get up, that it was wrong for him to be watching Chuck undress, but something deeper inside him compelled him to stay. He had to see Chuck naked. Never before had he been interested in seeing another boy's cock, but the prospect of seeing Chuck's was somehow so exciting he could feel an erection swelling inside his own pants.
He scarcely breathed as Chuck gripped the elastic waist of his underpants and pushed them to his ankles in one quick, easy motion. Stepping out of them, he turned to pick up the bathing suit and caught Timmy's eye. His hand dropped the suit back onto the bed and he straightened slowly. His cock hung heavy and low between his legs, resting against the pouch of weighty balls dangling behind it. A glimmer came to his eye and then he began to smile. "Well," he murmured. "How about that." He began to walk toward Timmy's bed with the slow, assured grace of a young panther. His cock swung slowly from side to side as he moved. He stopped just in front of Timmy, with his leg touching the frightened boy's knee. Without saying a word, his hand began to rub back and forth over his cock, until it began to swell and jerk upwards in a steady arc to his belly.
Timmy's throat was burning dry, his heart hammering insanely. He wanted to move, to push Chuck away, to stop what was happening, but all he could do was stare at that hardening cock. His eyes were hypnotized by the bobbing of the fat pink head as it mushroomed into twice the size it had been when limp. He stared at the heavy veins running through the length of the shaft and could almost see them gorging with blood. Up and up it rose, until it was pointing straight up from the thick mat of brownish hair at its base.
Chuck's hand reached between his legs and cupped his balls, lifted them like an offering to Timmy. He juggled them slowly up and down for a moment, then let them drop again. He gripped his cock at the base and bent it down until it pointed straight out. His other hand slid behind Timmy's neck and squeezed gently to urge him forward.
"We can be more than just friends this summer," he said huskily.
His grip tightened on Timmy's neck as the boy resisted. The cock was so close to his mouth that he could have touched it with his tongue, but he was too petrified to move. It looked so big, so awesome in its length and thickness. Never in his life had Timmy dreamed of doing such a thing, yet his mouth was burning to know the taste of Chuck's cock. He wanted so much to put his mouth on it, to suck it, to taste the fluid inside it, but his fear of doing so was greater than his desire.
"Chuck," he said in a hoarse whisper.
"Go ahead," Chuck told him, pulling again on the back of his neck. He seemed to know the boy's timidity and was prodding him just enough to give him courage without frightening him off. He could easily have rammed his prick into Timmy's mouth and forced him to suck it, but he knew it would be better if he let the boy take it willingly. "Don't be scared. You can take it."
"I-I never did it before," Timmy whispered. "I don't know how."
Chuck laughed softly and stroked the hair on Timmy's neck. "You'll be surprised how easy it is once you get started!" His hand urged the boy's head forward again, and this time Timmy moved with it.
He reached for Chuck's hips and gripped them tightly with both hands. His lips touched the head of Chuck's cock and parted. His tongue licked out timidly and tasted the spongy hardness.
"Go ahead," Chuck murmured.
Timmy's mouth widened and with a little moan he fell off the bed onto his knees and gorged his mouth with hard cock. He gagged at first and pulled back, but Chuck's hands stroked his neck tenderly and urged him onto it again. This time he took just the head into his mouth and licked at it until he was used to the taste of it. His fingers tightened on Chuck's hips as he moved his head closer, taking more cock into his mouth. It was so thick and so stiff his lips were stretched all the way open around the shaft and inside his mouth he could barely move his tongue on it. He began to rock his head back and forth, working the swollen cock between his lips forcing himself to take more of it each time he pushed forward.
Chuck's cock was so big it was impossible for Timmy to get all of it into his mouth. He felt the cockhead pushing down his throat and gagged again, backed off an inch or two, and began to suck the length of it he could handle. His tongue fluttered up and down the shaft as his lips continued to bob it in and out of his mouth. His hands moved around Chuck's body until they clenched the hard cheeks of his ass. He felt the buttocks moving as Chuck slowly rocked his body back and forth, feeding his prick into Timmy's mouth in counterpoint to the bobbing of his head. His senses were reeling dizzily as he sucked faster and faster and Chuck continued pumping cock at his face.
Chuck's hand touched Timmy's arm and pulled it away, forcing it down to his own lap. "I'm gonna come soon," Chuck told him, his voice hoarse with excitement. "Jerk off. I want you to come with me."
Timmy quickly unzipped his pants and took out his own swollen cock. He began to masturbate as he sucked harder, wild with the thought of taking Chuck's semen into his mouth. He wondered what it would taste like, if he would be able to swallow it. But the questions were academic, for suddenly Chuck began to gasp and both his hands dug into Timmy's shoulders as he rammed his hips forward.
His cock burst in the boy's mouth with the force of a bullet. Wad after wad of his thick cream squirted into Timmy's throat. The force of it and the strange taste of it was all it took to trigger Timmy's ejaculation. He felt his sperm squirting high into the air, shooting onto Chuck's legs and the floor and dribbling onto his tightly clenched fist. And still he sucked as Chuck gave more and more, until it seemed he would never stop coming.
When at last it did, Timmy was reluctant to take his mouth off Chuck's cock. As it began to go limp, he took more of it between his lips, until they were pressed flush into the wiry wreath of pubic hair at its base. Only when Chuck's hands on his shoulders pushed him gently away did Timmy let go.
He looked up into Chuck's grinning, handsome face and felt tears of happiness brimming in his eyes.
"Come on," Chuck laughed. "We'd better wipe up and get out for lunch before your folks get suspicious."
"Let them. I don't care."
"Well I do," Chuck grinned. "I'd like to stick around for a while, you know."
"Yes!" Timmy moaned, hugging Chuck's legs and pressing his face into the warm, sweated belly. "Now that you're here I don't ever want you to go away."
"Good," Chuck murmured. He stroked the top of Timmy's head tenderly. "You'll never know how glad I am you said that."
CHAPTER THREE
Chuck lay on the beach, propped up on one elbow, his body still glistening with beaded drops of surf. His white nylon bathing suit was virtually see-through to the patch of dark hair and the heavy length of cock beneath it. Timmy was still splashing and kicking around in the water several dozen yards away, grinning and waving his arms frantically in mock-fear each time a wave broke over his back. Chuck watched him and returned the grins and waves, but there was a sneer on his face that could not be seen in the distance that separated them.
"Should I swim out?" Timmy called.
Chuck smiled and called, "Go ahead!"
"What? I can't hear you."
"I said drop dead!" Chuck shouted.
Timmy still couldn't hear over the roar of the breaking waves, but he nodded as though he'd understood and began to swim out from shore.
"Drop dead twice, as a matter-of-fact, you little cocksucker," Chuck muttered. Then, as though fearful his wish might be unexpectedly granted by the ocean, denied it. "No, don't. Not yet, at least. I need you too much."
He smiled to himself as he watched Timmy swimming. "Christ," he thought, "it was easier than I thought. Just like shooting fish in a barrel. I gave you more credit than you deserved, kid. Fremont, kiss my sweet ass goodbye! On both cheeks!" He began to chuckle and stretched out flat on his back. The sun felt good as it dried the salt water on his naked skin. He closed his eyes and let the warmth seep into him.
"Fremont!" he thought bitterly, and even with the heat of the sun on his body a little chill ran through him. It was the kind of place Chuck imagined hell would be like. He had hated the school almost from the day he arrived, and it had reciprocated the feeling in equal proportion. Of course, in the six months Chuck had been there he'd done little to endear himself to the place. Troublemaker, they called him. Misfit. Were it not for the reputation the school prided itself on, of turning the most troublesome boy into a mannered gentleman, the Fremont authorities would have washed their hands of Chuck after the first month. Instead, they assigned one of the upperclassmen to the task of breaking him.
Judd Lee. That was another name that could send a chill through Chuck. He was nineteen, a Southerner with generations of military men in his family and himself a second year member of the school's college program. He wore hair in a severe crewcut and was always impeccably dressed in the full uniform of school. Judd enjoyed the assignment he'd been given with a relish that stood Chuck's hair on end.
"Boy!" he would shout, and not only Chuck but half the guys around him would jump. "Come here, boy!" Chuck would come to him and stare with barely concealed hatred into those cold grey eyes, despising the cruel smirk on Judd's face as he inspected him from top to bottom. "Is that dust I see on those boots, boy?" he might snarl. No matter what Chuck's answer, Judd stood ready to challenge it. If yes, he would find himself obliged to polish not only his own boots but those of every boy on his floor as well. If no, Judd's foot would come down on top of Chuck's with a force to smash his toes, grind until the boot was black with dirt, then growl, "Look again, boy."
Once, Judd assembled every boy in the dormitory and while they stood at rigid attention he paced slowly back and forth in front of them, sniffing dramatically through his pointed nose.
"I smell something!" he suddenly shouted, whirling on them. "I smell something that smells like sheeeet!" He eyed the trembling cadets one by one until he came to Chuck. "Parsons!" he roared. "Come here." When Chuck was in front of him, Judd looked him up and down and began sniffing again, this time making terrible grimaces with his nose and mouth. "I do smell sheeeet!" He nudged Chuck in the chest with his finger. "Did you sheeeet in your pants, Parsons?"
"No," Chuck muttered. His fists were clenched so tightly with suppressed rage the knuckles were white.
"No what?"
"No, sir."
"You didn't sheeeeet in your pants?"
"No, sir."
"Smells like it." He sniffed around Chuck a second time, making even more gruesome faces. "Yes, sir! It surely smells like sheeeet around here."
Chuck couldn't help himself. He had to say it, knowing even before he did that he would regret it. "Every rat smells its own hole," he said, loudly enough for everyone in the room to hear. "Sir."
Judd's eyes widened like saucers and his face blackened. "You're gonna be mighty sorry you were ever born with a tongue in your mouth, boy," he said in his slow, menacing drawl. "You need a little reminder of your manners and you're gonna get one right here and right now." He began to unbuckle his belt, a three-inch strip of black leather that hissed as he whipped it free of the loops. "You take down those pants, boy," he ordered.
Chuck stared him hard in the eyes. To resist would be futile. There were enough other boys in the room who hated him as much as Judd that escape was out of the question. Just one word from Judd and they would be upon him instantly, holding him down for his beating like an animal. Chuck stared quickly at their faces, the smirks as they waited like vultures for the carcass. He wouldn't give them the pleasure they expected, he vowed. If they wanted blood, they could have it. But not his tears.
He opened his pants and dropped them quickly to his knees. As Judd doubled his belt and began to strap it into his palm, Chuck leaned against the wall, bracing himself with both hands, his bare buttocks projecting out behind him. He grit his teeth as he waited for the first blow.
He heard the belt whistle as Judd flung it back and then snapped it forward with all the force he could put into it. The leather hit into Chuck's ass with a savage bite. He inhaled sharply and waited for the second blow. Again the belt whistled through the air and struck him so hard he gasped involuntarily, the wind forced out of his lungs. His ass felt on fire, stuck with a thousand red-hot needles. He could feel the pain seeping down into his legs and halfway up his back.
"You learning manners yet, boy?" Judd hissed.
The belt strapped him a third time and it was all he could do to keep from screaming out. Then a fourth and and fifth and a sixth, until the straps were coming so quickly he lost count of them. A red haze swam before his eyes and he felt his arms trembling as he tried to keep his weight against the wall.
Another blow came and another after it. Chuck felt a warm trickle running down the in-sides of his thighs and hoped it was blood, not shit. He wouldn't give them that pleasure, either.
"Gawd damn you!" Judd screamed. He lashed another time and when still no cry came from Chuck he dropped the belt and grabbed him by the hair, pulling him away from the wall. His face was beaded with sweat, something Chuck had never seen on Judd. His eyes were glassy, wild as they searched Chuck's for a sign of tears. "You bastard!" he swore and spit straight into Chuck's face. He hit him, too, with both fists, but Chuck only felt the first. It struck him with such force that Judd's face began to spin in front of his eyes, faster and faster and faster, until it was completely blurred and by the time the second punch came he was already halfway to the floor.
When he woke again, he was in his own bed, naked, and one of the younger boys in the dormitory was bending over him.
"You're okay now, Chuck," the boy said softly.
"Who're you?" He tried to get up, but winced in pain and fell back again.
"My name's Kerry Rollins," the boy said. "I live at the other end of the hall." He was a slightly built boy with glasses and a babyish face. Chuck had seen him in the dormitory a couple of times, but never paid any attention to him.
"What're you doing here?"
"They told me to stay and look after you until you came to."
"Who's they?"
"The guys who brought you back to your room. They're really worried about you, but they were afraid to hang around in case Judd came back."
"Good Samaritans all," Chuck muttered. "How about you? How come you stayed? Because you're the littlest and got stuck holding the bag?"
"No," Kerry said, shaking his head and smiling a strange smile. "I stayed because I wanted to."
"Hah! That's a laugh!"
"No," the boy insisted. "I really did." Chuck looked intently at him. "Why?"
"Because-I like you."
Chuck snorted and turned his head away from the boy. "Yeah, I got fan clubs all over this school."
"A lot of the guys are really pissed about what Judd did to you. Some of them even wanted to go to the proctor about it."
"But didn't, of course."
"No, they-"
"Yeah, don't bother explaining. I already got the picture. Why get themselves in trouble over me."
For a while there was a long silence between them. So long, in fact, that Chuck thought the boy had left and was startled when he spoke. "That was really great the way you stood up to Judd."
"Yeah," Chuck laughed. "I'm a folk hero now, huh?"
"Kind of," Kerry said, then more earnestly, "to me, at least."
Chuck stared hard into the boy's eyes, trying to see something beyond them which he was almost certain he'd seen once or twice before. "You really like me, huh?"
"Yes!" the boy insisted, and suddenly there it was. In the light of his eyes as he made his vow was that something Chuck had been looking for. The something that told him the boy was in love with him and, subsequently, could be used by him.
"What time is it?" he asked. "Four-thirty."
Chuck made an attempt to sit up. "You'd better hand me my boots and polishing kit then. I got to get ready for evening chow."
"No," Kerry said, pushing him gently back. "I'll shine your boots for you. Just rest and I'll take care of it."
Even with the pain still shooting through his body, Chuck managed to smile as the boy went off to begin polishing his boots. For the first time since he'd been a Fremont, things were beginning to look up.
Kerry became a permanent fixture in Chuck's room after that. The brief popularity he enjoyed with the other boys quickly dissolved into hatred once more, but to Kerry he could do no wrong. The boy was like a puppy that can be kicked a dozen times and still comes running for a pat on the head when it's offered. Chuck exploited the situation for all it was worth. Every bit of work he could possible pass on to Kerry he did, and it was cheerfully and quickly done. He borrowed money constantly, with no intention of ever repaying it. And, of course, there was sex any time he wanted it.
Chuck had considered several possibilities as to how and under what terms he should go to bed with the boy, finally deciding that it would be best if, like everything else in their relationship, he made it seem as though he were doing Kerry a reluctant favor. The first time they had sex, he was waiting in bed when Kerry knocked on the door. They talked for a few minutes, Chuck lit a cigarette and in the middle of their conversation abruptly declared, "You want to blow me, don't you?"
Kerry's face went white and his lower lip began to tremble. "N-n-no."
"Don't give me that shit. I see the way you look at me. You do." He took a long puff on the cigarette and blew the smoke at Kerry's face. "How many other guys have you blown in the dorm?"
"None! I swear it!"
Chuck looked hard into his eyes. "How many? You better tell me the truth, because if I find out you're lying I'll go straight to the proctor about you."
"J-just three," Kerry stammered. His cheeks were deep red with shame and his eyes had a sheen of tears in them.
"Just three!" Chuck threw back his head and roared with derisive laughter. "Why so bashful about it?"
Kerry suddenly got up from his chair and started for the door. Chuck halted him before he was halfway there.
"Come here," he said, and when the boy turned around he pushed the sheet down to his knees to reveal a throbbing erection. "Where you going?" His hand rubbed down to his cock and lifted it so the boy could see all of its incredible size.
Kerry swallowed hard, his eyes riveted to Chuck's swollen cock, and started back to the bed. "D-do you really want me to?"
Chuck shrugged. "Are you good at it?"
The boy nodded his head slowly, shamefully.
"Then I don't mind, I guess."
"That's not what I asked, Chuck. Do you want me to?" Tears were starting to slip down both sides of Kerry's cheeks as he waited for the answer he must have known would never come.
"I said if you want to suck me off I don't mine," Chuck snapped. "I'm not going to beg for a blow job from anybody, though." He started to flip the sheet back over himself, but Kerry lunged at the bed and stopped him.
"Don't please!" he whimpered. "I want to! Oh, God, Chuck! I've wanted to for so long!"
Slowly, Chuck let him pull the sheet back down to his feet. "Then go ahead," he said with a smile. He watched as Kerry scrambled up between his wide-spread legs and kneeled with his face hovering over Chuck's crotch. His fingers touched the long prick in little tentative flutters, as though he could not believe it was his at last. He lifted it and drew his mouth slowly toward it, began to lick it with the tip of his tongue.
Chuck lay back and closed his eyes, enjoying the cool feel of Kerry's tongue running up and down his cock. The boy's head dipped lower and he began to lick Chuck's balls. His little tongue made long, sweet strokes across the hairy pouch, then worked it into his mouth and gently tossed the two heavy balls from cheek to cheek as he washed them thoroughly with his warm spit.
Releasing them, he began to lick the inner surfaces of Chuck's thighs, urging him to lift his legs higher from the bed. Chuck bent his knees and arched up so that his ass was off the bed and suddenly he gasped in surprise as he felt Kerry's tongue licking the crack of his buttocks. No one had ever done that to him before and the feeling was maddeningly erotic.
He held his breath as he felt the tip of the boy's tongue searching, parting the hairs around his asshole until he'd found the hole itself. His hands squeezed Chuck's legs and his face drove forward. Half of Kerry's tongue slipped into Chuck's ass.
Kerry's tongue drilled in and out like a hummingbird's beak dipping for nectar. He rotated it around and around inside the hole and licked at the outside of it with frantic strokes. The feeling was so intense that Chuck felt he would have to come if it didn't stop. He pushed Kerry's mouth away and dropped his legs back to the bed.
"Suck my cock," he said, gripping it in one hand and the boy's head in the other. The moment he felt the warm circle of wet lips around his cockhead, he pushed down hard on the top of Kerry's head and drove his hips up from the bed in the opposite direction. His cock shoved deep into Kerry's mouth, but to Chuck's surprise he neither gagged nor tried to pull back from it. He took nearly all of that huge, swollen cock almost effortlessly, sucking it greedily into the depths of his throat and working on it with such skill that Chuck came within minutes after the boy had begun and with such force that when he'd finally stopped ejaculating he was too weak to lift his head from the pillow.
"Thank you!" Kerry whimpered. "Oh, Chuck, thank you!" He slipped up Chuck's body and tried to kiss him, but Chuck pushed his mouth away.
"Go on, get out of here now. Let me sleep."
The boy's eyes were brimming with happiness. "Yes, I'll go. Can I come back tomorrow night and do it again, Chuck?"
"We'll see," Chuck muttered, but knowing full well if Kerry didn't come he would drag him from his room!
For several months it seemed as though Chuck had finally latched onto a good thing. With Kerry to do most of his work, as well as provide all the sexual satisiaction he needed, even Judd Lee's continual taunts became bearable, for Chuck knew he was secretly spitting in the face of the whole Fremont system. While seeming to conform, he was actually breaking nearly all of the written and unwritten rules of the academy. His deception seemed so foolproof that when he was summoned late one night near the end of Spring term to Judd's room, he was totally unprepared for what he would find there.
Judd was sitting in a chair in the outer room of the suite he shared with three other boys from the college. He was bare-chested, the light sprinkling of hair beaded with sweat. His belt lay ominously on the floor by his side. He looked up and grinned at Chuck, then nodded to the boy who'd brought him to the room to lock the door.
"What's this all about?" Chuck asked, feeling a little tremor of fear run through him from the way Judd and the other boy were looking at him.
"I understand you been having a time for yourself, Parsons," Judd drawled, his cold grey eyes staring hard into Chuck's. "A queer old time, as I hear it."
Again Chuck felt that little shiver race along his spine, but he stared defiantly back at Judd. "I don't know what you're talking about."
"No?" Judd put the tips of his fingers together and began to spring them open and closed like the jaws of a trap. "Maybe I'd better put it another way then, so's you do understand, huh?
I'm talking about cocksucking, Parsons. That's what I'm talking about. Cocksucking!"
Chuck looked in mounting panic from Judd's face to the other boy's and saw the same evil leer on both. They were looking at him as though they suspected him of doing something unspeakably depraved and, while excited by what they'd seen, would not be thoroughly satisfied until they'd forced a confession of the act from him.
"I still don't know what you're talking about," he muttered.
"I don't know how I can make it any plainer," Judd said. "I have a report of some cocksucking going on in your room, and I want to hear you tell me if that's true or not."
"Of course it's not true!" Chuck swore.
Judd and the other boy exchanged quick looks and their leers broadened. "Ernie!" Judd called. The door to the other room opened and a third boy stuck his head out. "Bring him in now."
There was a scuffle beyond the door and suddenly Kerry came flying through it. He was naked except for his underpants. His right eye was swollen and turning dark purple; his back was covered with raw red welts. He fell to his knees beside Judd's chair and looked helplessly up at Chuck.
"You bastard!" Chuck hissed.
"I didn't want to tell them, Chuck!" Kerry cried. "Honest. They forced me to tell them. I didn't want to."
"You stinking little bastard!" He turned away, as though to leave the room, but Judd's friend blocked his path.
"Not so fast, buddy," he grinned. "We ain't through with you queers yet."
"I'm not a queer!" Chuck shouted. "It's him! He's the one who did it! It was all his idea!"
"Sure," the boy chuckled. "Sure it was. You just went along for the ride, huh?" He continued to grin as his arm suddenly swung out and hit Chuck so hard in the stomach he doubled over with blinding cramps. "Now you just stay right where you are, cocksucker!" the boy threatened. "You're not going anywhere until Judd says you can go."
A fourth boy had come out of the other room and stood with the one named Ernie behind Judd's chair. All of them were leering at him in a way that made his fear stronger than the pain of the punch in the stomach. "What do you want from me?" he pleaded. "I told you he's the one. He must have told you himself that I never did anything. He did it all."
"The proctor would be real upset if he was to find out about this, Parsons," Judd drawled. "Freemont isn't the kind of fairy school that takes lightly to having queers around. Now if I was to tell him what I know, he'd most likely kick your ass straight out of here and fix it so's you couldn't get it back in any other place. That kind of thing wouldn't look so good on your record for the future, you know?" A strange light began to dance in his eyes and the corners of his mouth turned up in a wicked smile. "Now me and the other boys here are real sympathetic to your problem and we don't want to see you get your life ruined because of it. So we came up with an idea of our own 'bout how to cure you." He looked quickly at the three other boys and they began to chuckle. "It's our theory, Parsons, that there's only one way to cure a guy who might be going queer, and that's to give him so much of what he wants he don't want it no more. And then give him even more!"
Judd rose slowly from his chair and began to open his pants. "Now Ernie and Joe are going to start curing your little buddy here while Harry and I cure you. Then we're gonna switch off to make sure the curing was done right."
Chuck started to back up toward the door. "Like hell!" he swore. "You're not putting a hand on me." He turned to run, but he'd forgotten Harry was standing behind him. The boy's fist caught him clean in the jaw, knocking him to the floor. He started to get up and Harry kicked him in the ribs with his heavy military boot. Chuck screamed and rolled onto his stomach in pain. An instant later, Harry was on top of him, pinning him flat to the floor.
"That's it!" Judd snarled. "That's just how I want the little cocksucker!"
Chuck twisted his head. Across the room he saw the boy named Ernie standing with his pants spread open, shoving his enormous cock in and out of Kerry's mouth while Joe watched and rubbed his own cock as he waited expectantly for his turn. Hands grabbed at his pants and started to pull them down. He tried to roll over and throw Harry off his back, but a fist slammed into the side of his jaw and then a sharp rabbit punch to the kidneys almost blinded him with pain. He felt his pants being pulled down to his ankles and then his underpants. He arched his head up and in the swirl of tears covering his eyes he saw Judd moving toward him, naked, his cock hard and menacing as it bobbed straight up from his belly.
He knew what they were going to do to him, even before he felt them pulling his legs open. He tried to fight them, but it was useless. Harry's knees dug into his shoulder blades and pinned him flat to the floor. A moment later Judd's knees came down on the backs of his own and he felt the older cadet's rough hands spreading open his ass cheeks.
"Don't!" Chuck screamed. "Please! Judd, don't!"
"That's it!" Judd laughed harshly. "That's how I want to hear you scream! I've waited so long for that sound! Five months it took me, but I'm finally gonna break you, boy!"
Chuck bit into his lip to keep from screaming again. He cursed himself for letting go, for surrendering so completely. He had endured the lashing and the beating without so much as a whimper, but now that victory had been lost and Judd had won. Or had he? Had he? Chuck swore to himself that no matter what they did to him, no matter how much it hurt, he would not beg again. Even if it killed him, he wouldn't scream. He would die before he let himself be beaten by this animal.
He heard Judd spit into his palm and then felt him spreading the warm drool over his asshole. Instinctively the inner muscles tightened as Judd worked his finger around the opening, trying to spread some of the lubricating spit into the hole. He grit his teeth and clenched his eyes tightly shut, oblivious to the loud groans across the room as Ernie shot off in Kerry's mouth and the much closer sound of Judd's heavy breathing as he bent his cock down into position between Chuck's legs.
He felt the thick tip of Judd's prick pushing against his buttocks. The muscles in his ass began to twitch as the cockhead found the opening and Judd shoved it inside. Chuck's ass felt like it was splitting apart. His eyes began to water and it took every bit of his strength to keep from screaming. Suddenly Judd shoved hard and the whole solid length of his prick rammed into Chuck's ass. The pain was blinding. He thought for a moment he was going to throw up. His stomach felt like a spear had been driven into it. But not a sound came from his throat.
"Want me to get up now?" Harry asked.
"Yeah, he's not going anywhere. I got this bastard nailed right to the floor!"
As Harry got off Chuck's shoulders, Judd shifted his weight and his cock drove another inch deeper. For a moment he just lay on top of him, breathing heavily behind his ear. Then he began to arch his hips up and his cock started to pull out. Judd reared so far back that just the head of his prick was still inside Chuck, then with a loud grunt he slammed it back in to the hilt.
"You feel that?" he snarled. "You feel my prick in you, boy? You're gonna remember how this feels for a long time, aren't you?"
Judd threw another savage lunge into Chuck, then another and another, until his cock was moving so fast that it was no more than a blur as it drove in and out of the younger boy's ass.
It was small consolation for the shame and hatred he felt, but Chuck soon found that the harder Judd fucked him, the less it hurt. Once his sphincter muscles relaxed and he accepted the cock inside him, he was able to take it with only a minimal amount of pain. In fact, as Judd continued to drive his prick in and out, Chuck found there was a curious kind of pleasure spreading through him and he was even beginning to get an erection from it. If it kept up, he was sure he would come. But Judd seemed dangerously close to ending it before that happened.
His sweat-soaked belly slapped against Chuck's back as he came down again and again on top of him, each lunge more violent than the last. His knees were trembling, his elbows barely able to support his weight any longer. He was starting to gasp, too, and Chuck knew unless he said or did something quickly it would be over in another minute.
"Is that the best you can do?" he taunted.
Judd was so startled that for a moment he stopped dead. Harry began to laugh. "That's some lesson you're giving him, Judd!"
"Shut up!" he snarled. "I'll show you if that's the best I can do! You're gonna wish you never opened your mouth, boy!"
Chuck bit his lip to keep from roaring with laughter as Judd began to fuck him with a violence that made their bodies crack like gunshot as they slapped together. "He doesn't have the slightest idea he's being used!" he thought, as once again his ass began to quiver with those strange new sensations he was finding so pleasurable. That was half the joy of it! As he had conquered and used Keny and so many others before him, he had now done the same thing to Judd! Captor had become captive and master had become slave!
He closed his eyes again and began to sigh under his breath as stab after stab of pleasure ripped through him. His ass was wide open for Judd's cock, taking every bit of it and quivering for more. Each time it drove into him a wave of erotic shocks hit his groin, building and building until his cock started to throb and he knew he was going to come.
"Stop! Please!" he screamed, knowing full well that it would only make Judd fuck him harder and make his own climax that much more violent. "I can't stand it! Oh, God! God! You're killing me!"
"Oh, I thought so!" Judd gasped. "I thought I'd break you, you little bastard! I thought I'd make you scream before I finished with you!"
"Oh, Christ!" Chuck yelled. "Oooohhhhhh!" He felt warm bursts of his own semen squirting against his belly. "Oh, God!" he moaned. "God!" Excited by Chuck's groan and not understanding the true cause of them, Judd drove his cock deep and began to come, too. Chuck could feel it emptying into him, the thick head swelling and pulsing as it shot time after time into the depths of his ass. Only when his cock had gone limp did Judd pull out and get shakily to his feet.
Across the room, Kerry was now being forced to blow Joe, his head bobbing wildly up and down as the husky cadet drove his cock hard into the boy's mouth. Ernie and Harry both had solid erections from watching Judd fuck Chuck, and as he looked up at them they seemed to be debating who got the next crack at him.
It didn't really matter to Chuck, because now he knew there was nothing they or anyone else could ever do to hurt him or stop him from getting what he wanted. Judd had tried to knock the spirit out of him. Instead, he had inadvertently shown Chuck that there were any number of ways for a person to get what he wanted out of life if he knew how to manipulate people in the right way. It was a lesson Chuck vowed he would never forget.
He felt a drop of water hit his face, then another, and jumped as a cold splash fell on his chest. He heard a high, rather girlish giggle and opened his eyes. Timmy was standing above him, laughing and dribbling water from a sea-shell. Chuck started to laugh too, then suddenly lunged at Timmy and caught him by the knees, toppling him to the sand. Squealing and kicking with glee, they wrestled for several minutes, but there was no contest in the match. Chuck had Timmy pinned quickly and squatted triumphantly on his stomach.
"Now," he glowered in mock anger. "What was that all about?"
Timmy quickly picked up on the game. "I was afraid you'd fall asleep and get a really bad burn."
"No excuse! You still get punished!"
"No! No!" Timmy pleaded. Then giggling with irrepressible delight, "What are you going to do to me?"
Chuck grinned and bit his lower lip. "You'll find out when we get in bed tonight." He slapped Timmy's thigh and started to get off him, but the boy's hand quickly went to Chuck's crotch and seized the length of cock so visible through the skimpy white bathing suit.
"The suspense will kill me! Punish me now!"
Chuck looked nervously around the deserted beach and tried to push Timmy's hand away. "Hey, come on! What if somebody sees?"
"So what?" Timmy said, deadly serious now. His hand worked inside Chuck's bathing suit and began to massage his cock. "Please," he urged. He tried to pull Chuck up so that he would hover right over his face. "Let me have it," he begged. "You looked so damn sexy laying there, I wanted to go down on you right then."
Chuck was beginning to get a hardon as Timmy played with him and for a moment he was tempted to let the boy blow him right there on the beach. Timmy had learned a lot about sucking cock in the last few nights and the memory of what he could do with his lips and tongue stirred Chuck's desire all the more. "Now now," he said reluctantly, pulling the boy's hand away. "I'll let you have it when we go in the house to change for dinner, okay?"
"No," Timmy pouted. "I want to suck you now."
Chuck rolled off him and onto his back in the sand. For several minutes they lay side-by-side in complete silence as Timmy brooded and Chuck planned what he was going to say. Finally, propping himself on his elbow, he touched Timmy's stomach and rolled closer to him. "Look," he said, "I want it as much as you do, but it's too dangerous. If your folks ever saw something like that going on they'd ship me out of here so fast it would make your head spin."
"They wouldn't dare!" Timmy vowed. "I wouldn't let them!"
"That's easy to say, but you'd see how far you got if they set their minds to getting rid of me." His hand tightened on Timmy's ribs. "I don't want anything to jeopardize my staying here this summer, Timmy. This last week has been the happiest one I think I've ever known."
Timmy turned toward him and looked intently into his eyes. "Do you really mean that, Chuck?"
"I wouldn't say it if I didn't."
Timmy laughed and shook his head in disbelief. "Oh, God! I'm so glad! I wanted you to be happy here with me. You-you're the first real friend I've ever had in my life. I-I think I'm even in love with you."
"Don't say that, Timmy."
"Why not?"
"Because if it's true you'll only be hurting yourself."
"Why? D-don't you feel the same way about me?"
"That's not the point. You know how I feel about you. It's just that-well-" Chuck shrugged and looked away from him, out at the ocean and the waves breaking on the shore. "You know I'm going to have to go away when the summer's over."
"You don't have to!"
"No?" Chuck said, fighting to keep back a smile. "Why not? I can't stay here with you. I've got to go back to Fremont."
"No! You don't!" Timmy clutched his arm tightly and forced him to look back. "You could come back to the city with us! You could live with us all the time!"
"Yeah. I'm sure your parents would go along with an idea like that."
"They would! Dad likes you and I know if I pressed Mom about it she'd say it was okay."
"It would never work."
"Sure it would! You could go to school with me and stay in my room at home and--God! Just think how great it would be, Chuck!"
Chuck nodded his head and at last allowed the smile to break loose. "It would. It really would be great, Timmy."
"I'll talk to Mom about it tonight!"
Chuck stood up and brushed sand from his legs and back. "Come on, let's have one more swim and then go in the house."
Timmy rose up onto his knees and stared with longing at the bulge in Chuck's bathing suit. "Can't we just go in the house?"
"Come on!" Chuck laughed and slapped him on the arm. "We'll have a race out to the end of the rocks."
"That far?"
"Sure! Why not?"
"I never went out that far before. Dad says the undertow is too strong."
"Come on!" Chuck insisted. "What're you afraid of?" He started to run across the sand to the water. "Last one in gets no sex tonight!" he shouted over his shoulder. A moment later he heard Timmy squealing and laughing as he ran to catch up. "Good boy," Chuck thought with a smile. "You just keep doing what I tell you and everything's going to work out fine!"
CHAPTER FOUR
"Where are the boys?" Charles asked as he came into the kitchen.
"How do I know?" Vera said without looking up from the work she was doing at the sink. "Down on the beach, I suppose. I never know where Timmy is anymore. He doesn't tell me where he's going, like he used to."
Charles went to the window and looked out at the clear blue of the sky and the water beyond the house. Here and there the flutter of gulls or the wisps of clouds dotted the unbroken horizon. "It's a nice day. I'm glad he's starting to take an interest in doing things outdoors."
"Are you?" Vera said, an icy edge to her voice.
"Sure! Timmy's changed a lot in the past two weeks."
"You can say that again."
"He's even looking better. With some color to him he doesn't seem so thin. I told you having Chuck here would be a good idea."
"Oh? Really?" Vera let the pot she'd been washing drop into the sink with a clatter that made Charles jump as she whirled to confront him. "Do you still insist that having that boy here was a good idea?"
"Oh course! Haven't you noticed how much Timmy's changed since Chuck's been with us?"
"Yes, I have. But apparently you haven't," Vera snapped.
"What do you mean?"
"If you'd take an interest in him once in a while you'd know what I mean. He's becoming a little monster! I'll say something to him and he acts as though he never even heard me, but just let Chuck cough and Timmy's right there. Or I'll ask him to help with the dishes like he always used to and he'll go running after Chuck, completely ignoring me."
Charles tired to laugh. "Vera, he's just acting like a real boy for a change, that's all!"
"A real boy? A brute is more like it! You should hear some of the language he's using now and I'm positive they're smoking in their room."
"So?" Charles was becoming annoyed by the argument. In one form or another it had been going on for two weeks and his patience was beginning to wear thin. "All boys do things like that. It's a natural part of growing up."
"Natural, is it?" Vera accused. "Well I don't think it's very natural the way he's letting Chuck influence him. The other day he told me they swam all the way out to the end of the rocks, and Timmy knows it's dangerous to go out that far. Chuck is always daring him to do things he knows better than to do, but it doesn't seem to matter. It's like he's had a spell cast over him by that boy."
"He's found a friend, Vera. I don't think he's ever had one before."
"No, it's not that simple. It's like an obsession. It's Chuck this and Chuck that until I get so sick of hearing his name I want to scream! Do you know he even suggested that at the end of the summer we take Chuck back to the city and let him live with us?"
Charles looked her coldly in the eyes. "That idea occurred to me, too."
For a moment she just stood with her mouth open, slowly shaking her head from side to side as though wavering between tears and laughter. "Oh, no! You can just get that idea out of your head right now! That boy is not staying with us! If I had anything to do with it he wouldn't even be here next week!"
"We'll see."
"We'll see nothing!" Vera shouted, and now her eyes were beginning to mist with tears. "That boy goes in September and that's all there is to it! I'm not having him around Timmy any longer than necessary. I don't like the influence he's having on him and I won't let it continue past this summer. For God's sake, Charles, if Timmy weren't my own son I'd think there might even be something unnatural going on between them!" She covered her face with her hands and began to cry, but Charles made no move to comfort her.
"What makes you think that?"
"I don't know," she sobbed. "It's just the way I see Timmy looking at him sometimes or strange sounds I hear in their room when they go in for the night. Timmy's always hanging on him and it's just not right for two boys to be that close all the time."
Charles waited a long moment, then softly said, "Tim and I were."
Vera looked at him with sudden fear in her eyes, but the longer she stared the more the look began to change into something else. Something born of bitterness and anger, a desire to hurt back, as well as a gnawing doubt that had festered inside her too long. "Don't think I haven't thought about that," she hissed.
Charles's jaw tightened and both fists clenched, but he made no move toward her. "What's that supposed to mean?"
"Just what you think it means."
"You're saying I'm not a man."
Her eyes were burning with raw hatred. "You haven't been for three weeks now. Is it any wonder I'd start to think things?"
Struck by her accusation, his instinct was to hurt back twice as hard. "Then think about this, why don't you: to be a man you need a woman who's worth the effort."
Their blows struck, their wounds inflicted, they stared into each other's eyes for a long moment before Vera turned from him and doubled over against the sink. Charles watched her quivering shoulders as she cried, knowing he should go to her and tell her he hadn't meant what he'd said, but he couldn't. Perhaps, he thought, because she would know he had and denying it would only make the hurt worse. He turned and walked out of the kitchen and quickly down the long flights of stairs to the beach.
It seemed impossible to him that two people could live together for so long and still be able to hurt each other so deeply. He kicked off his shoes and began to trudge barefoot in a blind path down the hot sand. What was it, he wondered, that was driving them apart so violently? Vera blamed it on Chuck, but that wasn't it. At least not all of it, Charles realized.
Long before Chuck had come into their lives, he and Vera had begun to drift apart. He would lie in bed at night looking at her and wondering what he had ever seen there to make him think he loved her. She would touch him, roll against him, murmur to him, and when it seemed unavoidable, he would have sex with her. But there was no love in it. They were like two rutting, gasping animals driving in opposite directions to find solitary pleasure that had nothing at all to do with the other. When it was finished, it made him feel cheaper than when he masturbated, for somehow there was the guilty realization that he had used not only himself but her as well in a vile and degrading act.
At the core of it, Charles realized, was Tim. For years he had tried to deny that what had happened that night in Korea still affected him, that it was anything more than a boyish experiment that meant nothing, or that everything else that had happened in his life since then had been a mistake. But the truth of it was too strong to be denied. He knew that in that tent, with the rain beating down over their heads, he and Tim had found something they should never have let go. It was foolish to think that something so precious could ever be duplicated with someone else and criminal to blame Vera bei cause he could not recapture it through her.
For a while, Charles had thought it might be possible to find that moment again with another man, but with only that one limited experience to guide him, the intricate workings of gay life confused and appalled him. He would walk down the streets where young boys and older men hustled each other, but with such fear someone might recognize him he never looked up from the sidewalk and strode so quickly it would have been impossible for anyone to approach him. Once, burning with shame, he asked a taxi driver to take him to a gay bar, but the mob of screaming queens and leering faces he found inside was so repellent he fled without finishing his first drink. Another time, in a public rest room, as he stood watching a line of men exhibiting their hardons to each other, a hand touched his cock and he went white with fear, pushing it away and all but running from the room without ever looking to see who had made the approach.
Charles hated himself whenever he did these things and vowed never to repeat them, but within a matter of days he was restless again, burning with the desire to make one more attempt. That chance came when his company sent him to Chicago for a weekend business conference.
There was an athletic club around the corner from the hotel where he was staying and each time he passed by, he saw a number of attractive men and younger boys going into it. After the first day's meetings and dinner, Charles had gone back to the hotel and undressed for bed. He'd watched television for a while to make himself drowsy, but when he turned it off and got into bed he found sleep was impossible. Each time he closed his eyes he saw Tim's face. It became unbearable. He put the light back on and got out of bed, dressed quickly, and went downstairs to the athletic club.
The attendant gave him a knowing smile when he asked for a private room, then led him along a maze of winding corridors lined with tiny cubicles.
"Right here," the man said, pushing open one of the doors and giving Charles a wink. "Just keep the door shut when you're carrying on, huh?"
Blushing with shame, Charles went inside and shut the metal door, began to undress. There was nothing in the room but a cot, a stool, and a little table with an ashtray beside the bed. A single bare bulb lit the room, with the switch conveniently placed just above the bed. Wire mesh covered the top of the cell, keeping it private from the ones on either side by sight, although not by sound.
As he took off his clothes, Charles heard the sound of squeaking springs coming from the cubicle to the right of his, then the low murmur of voices. He sat on the mattress and leaned his head closer to the wall to listen. At first the voices were muffled, but as he strained he began to pick up words.
Suck me ... I like it ... you, too and ... want to blow....
The voices drifted off and for a while there was no sound. Then Charles heard a low moaning, gasping noise and the springs began to creak louder and more frequently.
Harder! ... going to come ... keep on it ... aaaaahhhhhhh!
He pulled away from the wall, feeling a heat spread from the top of his head halfway to his chest. He quickly pulled off his underpants and was only half-surprised to see how hard his cock was getting. He worked it for a moment in his fist, then tried to busy himself with folding his clothes in a neat pile to get the erection down. A few minutes later, he wrapped the towel he'd been given around his waist, opened the door, and stepped out into the hall.
A man walking past stopped just as Charles came out of the room, smiled, nodded his head in the opposite direction and, getting no response from Charles, shrugged and continued down the hall. Charles closed the door and looked in both directions, cursing himself for not asking the attendant where things were. The room across the hall was lit, the door ajar. Charles went to it and looked inside. A Negro boy lay flat on his back, his fingers running lightly up and down an enormous erection.
"Excuse me," Charles muttered.
"Come on in, baby," the boy laughed. "Don't be scared! Black is beautiful, or ain't you heard!"
Charles fled down the hall, conscious now of the fact that most of the rooms were open, some with lights and some without, but all of them with men waiting on their cots. The hall was a continual parade ground as well. Men with their towels draped at various heights passed in both directions, all staring boldly, invitingly into Charles's eyes. He hurried faster and suddenly the end of the hall became a blank wall, with corridors leading off from it in both directions and each of these lined with more open rooms and men lounging against the walls.
Feeling as though he had somehow stumbled into a maze straight from Alice in Wonderland, Charles turned to the left and stopped beside the first man in the line, a man who in business clothes would have looked like anyone Charles worked with. "Excuse me," he said. "Do you know where the swimming pool is?"
"The swimming pool?" the man laughed and put his hand on Charles's shoulder. "Baby, what do you want to go there for? Come on in my room and I'll wet you down!" He ran his thick, wet tongue obscenely around his lips and started to pull Charles into the open door.
Charles pulled away from him and hurried down the corridor, almost crying with relief to find an attendant's desk around the corner. With the directions he wanted, he hurried down several more corridors and then a flight of stairs. The strong odor of chlorinated water exhilarated him as he pushed open the door at the bottom of the steps and walked into a room with a large tiled pool. Only two people were in the water and less than a handful of others lounging in chairs around the side. He walked to the end with the diving boards and dropped his towel, stepped onto the board and did a perfect jack-knife into the water.
He rose to the surface and swam blindly to the other end and then back again before pulling himself up at the edge of breathe. After the closeness of the corridors, the water felt pure and clean against his skin. He brushed his hair back from his eyes and pushed out from the edge, swam back to the deep end and climbed out. He sat with his legs dangling in the water, gasping to catch his breath.
"I'm getting old," he thought absently. "A lap like that never used to bother me." He looked down at his wet body, then brushed the drops of water from his stomach. There was a slight paunch developing, but nothing that he couldn't get rid of if he exercised more than he did, Charles told himself. Otherwise, he thought with pride, I still look pretty good.
He was about to get onto the board for another dive, when he heard it rock under the weight of a body and looked up to see a young, blond-haired boy walking slowly to the end. Charles swallowed hard as he stared at the kid. He couldn't have been more than eighteen, built like a professional swimmer with ribbed stomach muscles and long, lean thighs, although somewhat shorter than most in height. His hair was cut short, except for the front where it fell across his forehead like a spill of wheat. There was a clean-cut look to his face that Charles found instantly appealing.
His eyes traveled quickly down the length of the boy's body as he poised for his dive and for just an instant before he bounced on the board and sprang into the water, Charles had a glimpse of a strong, heavy cock crowned with a thick wreath of golden brown hair.
He felt his own cock beginning to stir as the boy bobbed up in the water, turned and swam back to the deep end for another dive. Charles's eyes watched the ripple of muscle as the boy climbed out of the pool, rubbed the beads of water from his stomach and legs, and got back onto the board. This time Charles focused his attention on the boy's crotch. He was uncircum-cised, so that the head was visible only as an impression through the covering of foreskin. Even limp, the boy's cock hung several inches down from his crotch and was unusually thick around the base. Charles wet his lips and looked up at the boy's face. To his embarrassed surprise, the boy was looking back at him. He smiled and winked quickly, then dived off the board. When he came up in the middle of the pool, he grinned again and swam slowly back to where Charles was sitting.
"Hi," he said, pushing the wet brush of hair back from his eyes.
"Hi," Charles nodded. "That was a nice dive."
"Thanks." The boy swam to the edge of the pool and started to climb out. Charles offered his hand and it was taken instantly, their fingers locking in a tight grip as he helped the boy out of the water. "Wow!" he laughed, dropping straight down beside Charles. "I must smoke too much or something! That took a lot out of me!"
"I had the same problem."
"I think I'd better go lay down in my room and rest for a couple of minutes."
Charles felt his heart sink as the boy stood up and took his towel from the diving board. His eyes lingered on the tantalizing length of cock before it was covered with the towel, then down at his own. It was almost fully erect and if he stood up in that condition, he'd never be able to get his own towel on without the boy and the others around the pool seeing how excited he was. Embarrassed by his erection, he pushed off the edge of the pool and fell into the water. He swam to the other end without taking a breath, then back again. When he climbed out of the water the erection was gone, but so was the boy. Cursing himself for acting like such a fool, he wrapped his towel around his hips and went quickly from the room.
Upstairs, the procession of towel-clad men and boys moving along the dimly lit corridors was as thick as it had been earlier. Charles hurried to his cubicle without looking at any of the faces he passed along the way and shut the door behind him the moment he was inside the room. He lit a cigarette from the pack in his jacket and lay down on the narrow little bed. For several minutes he watched the smoke he exhaled swirl upwards and break into diffuse patterns against the wire mesh. All around him, like the noises of strange animals in captivity, were the panting and groaning sounds of men in the heat of sex. Outside the door he heard the steady shuffle of bare feet, sometimes pausing to listen outside the closed doors and share for a moment the vicarious pleasures of the couples inside.
"What am I doing here?" Charles thought aloud. "What do I think I'm going to find in a place like this?" He stubbed the cigarette out half-smoked and sat up, reached for his pants. A light tap on the door stopped his hand in midair. "Who is it?" he asked.
"Don," a voice on the other side told him.
"Don? You must have the wrong room." Charles took his pants off the table and unfolded them, but before he could get his legs into them the knock came again. Shaking his head in disgust, he put the pants down and jerked open the door. "Look, I told you-" He stopped abruptly as his eyes focused on the face of the boy from the swimming pool.
"Hi," he grinned. "Busy?"
Charles shook his head dumbly, feeling a sudden coldness run through his stomach.
"Mind if I come in then?" Charles stood back from the door and the boy brushed past him, pushing the door shut with his heel. His hand touched Charles's stomach and ran straight down to his crotch, his warm ringers wrapping lightly around Charles's cock and squeezing it for a moment before he grinned again and let go.
"S-sit down," Charles stammered. He went to the bed and sat on the edge of it, nervously lighting another cigarette, but the boy remained standing.
"You don't mind that I barged my way in like this, do you?" Don asked. "If you do, I'll let you alone."
Charles shook his head quickly. "No! I don't mind at all!" He tried to return the boy's grin, but the muscles in his face had frozen and it came out as more of a nervous leer than a smile.
"When you didn't follow me out of the pool I waited upstairs for you," Don explained. "You walked right past me!"
"I-I didn't know."
"I wasn't sure if I should follow you or not, but I said to myself, 'What the hell! The most he can say is no!' So, here I am! What do you say?"
"To what?"
The boy threw back his head and laughed. "Man! You really are new to this, aren't you?"
"Yes," Charles said, feeling some sort of explanation was required for the foolish way he was acting. "I've never been to a place like this before. I'm not familiar with the procedures for meeting people, so you'll have to excuse me."
"You married or something?"
Charles averted his eyes as a quick image of Vera and Timmy flashed across his mind. "Would it matter?"
Don shrugged and laughed again. "Not to me! Some of the grooviest times I've had in this place have been with married men. I was just curious."
"Yes," Charles admitted, "I'm married."
The boy looked intently into his eyes. "You've fooled around with guys before, haven't you? I mean, this isn't the first time you're going to do anything, is it?"
"No, this isn't the first time."
"Good." Don began to loosen his towel. "You ready?"
Charles nodded his head yes, not trusting his voice. His throat felt too dry and constricted to get any words out. His eyes watched every movement of Don's hands as he opened the towel and let it drop with a soft rustle to the floor. The boy's cock was half-swollen with erection, the foreskin slowly pulling back to reveal the bulbous pink head.
"Do you like to suck?" he murmured.
Charles looked up into his eyes and reached blindly for his cock, giving a little moan as his fingers curled around it and he felt its heat and hardness. It had been so long since he'd touched another man's cock! His fingers explored it greedily from tip to base, then down to cup the boy's warm and hairy balls. "Come here," he whispered, tugging gently on Don's prick. The boy stepped closer to the bed and Charles bent his head down to the waiting cock.
Don gave a little moan of pleasure as Charles's lips touched the slightly moist tip of his cock and kissed the spongy softness of the head. Slithering his tongue from his mouth, Charles began to lick all around the head until the band of foreskin was drawn tightly back and the shaft was smooth and hard. He licked straight down from the head to the root and then lower, to lick the hairy pouch of testicles below.
Don moaned again as the wet tongue stroked back and forth over his balls. "Suck them," he whispered, pressing gently on Charles's cheeks to open his mouth.
Dipping his head lower, Charles nuzzled his face between the boy's widespread legs. The sweet scent of clean skin with just the faintest trace of maleness exhiliarated him as he pressed his lips up against Don's scrotum and took the two heavy balls into his mouth. For just a moment he was repelled by the strange taste of the wrinkled, hair-covered skin against his tongue. He started to pull back, but the boy's hands cupped his head and kept him in place. His tongue began to move timidly back and forth, tracing the oval shapes of Don's testicles through the pouch. As the boy's fingers dug into his hair and he began to rock slowly back and forth on his heels, Charles's excitement mounted and he-sucked faster. His senses were reeling as he tossed the two large balls from cheek to cheek and rolled them on the flat of his tongue. He felt the boy's cock bobbing against his nose and he reached up for it, found it rock hard.
"Suck my cock now," Don murmured.
Charles's mouth slipped off the boy's balls and slid quickly up the length of his cock. The head was throbbing as his lips kissed around it.
"Hurry!" Don urged, pushing down on Charles's head. "I think I'm going to come soon!"
A gasp of excitement broke from Charles's throat and his mouth quickly captured the head of the swollen prick. His tongue ran around it twice and he began to nibble his way slowly down the shaft, but Don was too impatient for Charles's pace. His hands pushed Charles's head down at the same time that he drove his hips up, ramming his cock deep into Charles's mouth. He gagged as he felt the thick head gorging his throat and tried to pull back, but the boy held him tightly in place and began pumping it at his face.
Charles's nose was buried deep in the wiry bush of Don's pubic hair, his lips stretched wide around the thick base of his penis. The boy's balls hit against his chin as he pumped his hips faster and faster, driving his cock harder into Charles's mouth with each stroke.
With his eyes tightly closed and the taste of cock strong in his mouth, Charles found his mind slipping easily into the fantasy he had wanted to create. He could almost hear the patter of rain on canvas. Tim! he thought joyfully. Oh, Tim, it is you!
A muffled groan broke from his throat as he lurched forward, seizing Don's buttocks in both hands and squeezing them tightly as he began to bob his head in counterpoint to the steady thrusting of the boy's hips. Above him he could hear Don's groans getting louder as he drove his tongue up and down the shaft of flesh hammering into his mouth. Tim! Tim! his mind cried. Why didn't we have the sense to see what we meant to each other?
Faster and faster his mouth worked, taking Don's penis effortlessly right to the hilt. His warm, slick saliva drooled over the pulsing cock-head as he pulled it forward to his lips, then rammed it far back into his throat and attacked the base with his tongue. His hands cupped the boy's balls, still wet and slippery, and began to juggle them while he sucked.
"Oh, man!" Don moaned. "I'm going to come! Keep sucking! I'm going to come!"
Yes, Tim, yes! Charles's mind cried. Give me you! Make us one again!
He felt the boy's legs tensing, his driving thrusts becoming more and more erratic. He heard the gasps mounting to a steady erotic groan. Inside his fingers he could feel the balls tensing. His lips felt the thick seminal cord near the root of the cock swelling.
Suddenly Don's fingers tore at Charles's hair as though to rip it from his scalp, and with a savage cry he thrust his body forward. His cock fired violently into Charles's mouth, squirting thick volleys of salty sperm down his throat. His belly ground against Charles's face as he came again and again and again, shooting so fast that Charles could not swallow it all.
He clung tightly to the boy's cock until it had stopped ejaculating and begun to go limp in his mouth. He pulled off it slowly and swallowed a mouthful of saliva and semen.
"Man!" Don laughed. "For somebody who says he doesn't do much blowing, you sure do a helluva job!"
Charles looked up quickly and blinked his eyes, shocked for a moment to see the grinning face looking back at him belonged to someone else than Tim.
"Don't get mad," Don chuckled, rubbing the back of Charles's head. "I meant that as a compliment."
Charles reached for his cigarettes and lit one with trembling hands. "What have I done?" he asked himself. "What in hell have I done?" The cigarette burned his lungs, the smoke harsh and slightly stale tasting as he swallowed it.
"Want me to suck you now?"
Charles shook his head no, not even looking at the boy.
"No, really. If you want me to, I don't mind. I kind of get a kick out of blowing married guys."
God! Charles's mind wailed. How could I ever think it would be the same?
He felt Don's hand touch his cock and when he looked up, the boy was kneeling in front of him. "Come on," he urged. "You still got a hard-on. Let me take care of it for you."
Charles pushed his hand away and shook his head wearily. "No ... please...."
"What's the matter?" Don said, his face beginning to knot with anger. "You only let your wife suck it? Close your eyes; you'll never know the difference."
He reached again and this time Charles pushed him away with such force he lost his balance and almost toppled over. "I'm sorry," he muttered. "Just go, please. This has all been a mistake. I was looking for something. I don't know why I thought I could find it here."
Don got up from the floor and flung his towel around his waist. "What you're looking for can be found in the nearest nuthouse, baby!" he spat. He went quickly to the door and jerked it open. "Boy, you meet all kinds of weirdos in this place!"
Charles slumped onto the bed and covered his face with his hands. For the first time in many many years he felt like crying. "What a fool I am," he mumbled. "What a stupid, idiotic fool!"
He felt a hand on his leg and jerked his head up. A leering middle-aged man with a heavy paunch winked at him and in the open doorway stood two others. "That's a nice cock," the man muttered. "I'll bet it tastes as good as it looks." His head bent quickly to Charles's lap.
"Get out of here!" Charles screamed, pushing the man brutally away. "All of you! Get out of here and leave me alone!" He forced them from the room and slammed the door with all his might, then went back to the bed and collapsed in a pitiful heap. His shoulders began to tremble and before he knew it, tears of shame and humiliation were running freely down his cheeks and he was sobbing Tim's name over and over again.
Charles had tried not to think about that night in Chicago and never attempted anything else like it, but Vera's accusation had brought it all back as he walked along the deserted beach. What did it mean, he wondered. That he was gay, but unwilling to admit it, even to himself? Or that what he and Tim had found with each other had nothing to do with the generalities of being gay or straight or anything else, but everything to do with the specifics of being in love? If the latter was true, as Charles suspected it was, then any attempt to recreate it with another person-male or female-was doomed to failure, for at best it could only duplicate the physical side of that love, with none of the deeper feelings behind it.
But at the same time, Charles realized with a despair boardering on panic, if he truly believed this he would be condemning himself to a life of meaningless relations of the flesh, for Tim was dead now and there was no one who could replace him in quite the same way. The only alternative would be to knock apart the past, forget Tim and everything associated with him, and try to build a new life from the pieces that were left. But this, too, was impossible.
The tide lapped at his bare feet as he walked along the shore. He stopped and looked out at the sea, at the endless miles of water and sky. How easy it would be, he thought, to just walk out into it, to surrender yourself to that infinity. A cold shudder ran through him and he stepped away from the incoming tide, walked quickly to the more solid security of the rock jetty which separated their part of the beach from the rest of the coastline. He sat on one of the immense pieces of granite and lit a cigarette. In the distance he heard a murmuring which at first he thought was the rush of the water, but soon realized was the sound of voices.
Curious, he stood up and listened more intently. The sound seemed to be coming from the hollow cut in the middle of the rocks. Stubbing his cigarette into the sand, he climbed silently to the top of the jetty and looked down. There was a boy lying naked on the rock. '"Tim!" he gasped, then ducked down as the sound of his voice carried to the boy and his head turned. From where he crouched, Charles saw Chuck lift his head curiously and search the rocks for a moment, then relax flat on his back once again.
His eyes scanned the boy's nakedness. He was so much like Tim it made Charles's heart ache. In all of those years he hadn't forgotten a single detail of Tim's body and in his son he could see them all miraculously recreated. The same strong thighs, the same sleek chest and muscular stomach, the same strength of his biceps. And, Charles could not help but note, the same powerful cock and low-hanging balls.
He felt shame seeping through him as he stared at Chuck's naked sex, but he could not take his eyes away. He felt his own cock beginning to harden as he watched the boy wriggle his ass on the rock and his cock shifted, falling against his thigh so Charles could see the full head and deep hole at its tip.
Suddenly he froze as he heard Chuck call out, "What's keeping you?" and the sound of his own son's voice answer, "Just a minute!" Something inside him warned him not to stay, to climb down from his hidden perch and go back to the house before he saw something he didn't want to see, but he was obsessed with staying. He knew as soon as he saw Timmy come out from behind an outcrop of rock what was going to happen. He knew it instinctively by the look on his son's face as he came toward Chuck's naked body, but he also knew that he would not be able to leave until he had watched it all.
"I don't know about you," Chuck laughed, raising up on an elbow as Timmy approached. "I never knew anybody who was embarrassed about taking a piss!"
"My early toilet training, I guess," Timmy smiled. "Just one of many things I can thank my dear parents for."
Charles cringed at the bitter look on his son's face as he sat down beside Chuck and began to rub circles on his stomach, his hand slowly inching down to his crotch. "Get out of here!" his mind screamed. "Get out of here fast or stop it, but don't just sit here watching! That's your own son, for Christ's sake!"
"You didn't hear a noise a minute ago, did you?" Chuck asked.
"What kind of noise?"
"I don't know. Like somebody calling?"
"Nope. It was probably a gull."
"You don't think it could have been your folks looking for us?"
Timmy shook his head no. "I'm sure they're both up at the house."
"Knocking off a fast one while we're not around, huh?" Chuck leered.
"No. I don't think they do much of that anymore."
"No? How come?"
"I don't know," Timmy said with a shrug. "They used to-but now they just fight. I don't think they've had sex together all month."
"Huh! That's funny!" Chuck laughed. "I'd have thought your Dad would be giving it to her every night!"
"Let's not talk about it, okay," Timmy said. "We didn't come here to work out their sex problem."
"Oh?" Chuck grinned. "Whose did we?"
"Mine, you cockteaser!" Timmy laughed. His hand seized Chuck's prick and lifted it up. It was solidly erect.
From his perch above them, Charles held his breath as he stared at his godson's stiff penis. His mouth felt like cotton, and yet his glands were beginning to water and leave a slightly salty, somewhat sharp taste on his tongue. "God!" he thought. "What's the matter with me? Why don't I stop them? Why don't I do something?" But even as he watched Timmy wriggle into position on his knees between Chuck's widespread legs and begin to kiss his way up the boy's thighs to his crotch, Charles knew why he would do nothing. For it was not Chuck and Timmy that he was watching at all, but himself and Tim.
CHAPTER FIVE
"Timmy!" Vera shrieked from the kitchen door. "Stop that! Do you hear me? You're going to hurt yourself! Stop that!" She threw her hands down in disgust and whirled angrily to Charles. "Do you see what I mean? I tell him to stop and he goes right on doing it without paying a bit of attention to me!"
"What's he doing?" Charles sighed.
"Look! Just look at what they're doing out there! And I don't need more than one guess to tell you whose idea it was, either!"
Charles pushed away from the table and stuck his head out the kitchen door. "Timmy," he called, "did you hear your mother?"
Outside the two boys laughed and Timmy called back, "Yeah, I heard her."
"Then you two stop wrestling and find something else to do." A little tremor raced through Charles's stomach at the thought of just what else they might find to do-and what Vera would have to say about that! "They were just roughhousing," he said, coming back into the kitchen to finish his sandwich.
"Well I don't like it. It's dangerous. He could hurt himself playing like that. You know he's not a strong boy."
The reason he's not strong is because you kept him in the house with piano lessons while the other kids were out on the street wrestling each other," Charles snapped. "That's why the kid is a sissy today."
"A sissy?" Vera hissed. "That's a fine thing to say about your own son."
"I'm sorry, but it's the truth. And he's going to go right on being one unless you get off his back."
"If having manners and a little respect for your elders means a boy's a sissy," Vera retaliated, "then I'll be very happy if Timmy remains one."
"Well dammit! I won't!" Charles shouted, slamming his fist on the table. "I want to be proud of my son, not embarrassed to introduce him to my friends!"
"Ohhhh!" Vera said. "I'm beginning to see the picture more closely now. It's not Timmy you're concerned about at all; it's your own precious vanity."
"Maybe it is," Charles muttered. "Every father wants a son he can be proud of."
"And I suppose you'd be happier if Chuck were your son instead of Timmy."
"Maybe I would."
"Well I wouldn't! That boy is a little animal! He's a brute if I've ever seen one! The way he manipulates Timmy is disgraceful!"
"Yes, it is. If Timmy were stronger he wouldn't be able to be manipulated."
"Oh, God!" Vera shrieked. "Why are you always taking his part? You'd think Chuck had cast the same spell over you that he has on Timmy!"
Charles swallowed hard as the full implications of that accusation ran through him. Had he? That day he'd watched his son blowing Chuck on the rocks-hadn't he imagined himself doing it so many times in the days that followed? Found himself staring at Chuck with increasing desire and at Timmy with something so close to jealousy it sickened him? Hadn't he even picked on his son more than usual lately because-if he examined his conscience sharply enough-he envied him for having Chuck?
"That's ridiculous," he told his wife. "I'm just getting fed up with the way you're constantly on that poor kid's back. You haven't let up on him all month."
I'll
"Poor kid!" Vera cracked. "Don't make me laugh, Charles! He's a poor kid like a tarantula is a poor little bug! I'm amazed that you can't see what he's doing! That boy is willfully manipulating Timmy toward something and God only knows what it is. He knows exactly what he's doing and sometimes I swear he keeps it up for no other reason than to annoy me. He's continually daring Timmy to do things and then laughing when he sees how much it upsets me."
"All right." Charles pushed the plate away with his sandwich only half-eaten. "You've managed to ruin another meal for me. Are you happy now? Can we finally have a little peace?"
"Charles, I-"
"Just shut up!" he shouted. Her face recoiled as though he'd struck her. "I'm sorry," he said in a softer tone. "I just wish you wouldn't go on about Chuck day and night. Give it a rest for a while, won't you?" He got up from the table and took the car keys from the serving counter. "I'm going into town now for those things we need. If it will make you happier, I'll take the boys with me and get them out of your hair for a while."
Very didn't answer him or even say goodbye. She turned back to the sink and continued washing the dishes from lunch. Inside her stomach it felt as though someone were pulling a knot tighter and tighter, until she was almost choking from it. Her head was starting to throb, too, and she knew before the day was out she would have another of her blinding headaches. For almost a month she'd gone to bed suffering, sick at heart from all the bitterness that lay between her and Charles in the bed.
Since Chuck arrived, Charles hadn't touched her or even hinted that he might desire her. At first she had assumed it was because of their fighting, but lately she suspected it ran deeper than that. It had to, she reasoned, for even on the nights they had gone to bed hating each other for the things that had been said during the day, she had felt desire for him. It wasn't natural for a man and a woman to lie side-by-side for so many nights without having sex. The animal instinct alone should have been strong enough to overcome the petty wounds of pride. And yet, burning with the desire to be taken by a man, she had watched Charles fall asleep night after night without even a motion toward her. Even if it had meant nothing, if it had been little more than mutual masturbation with not a grain of love in it, Vera would have welcomed it for the relief of her body. Two days earlier she had taken a candle into the bathroom with her, but been so ashamed of what she was doing that she stopped before she climaxed. The incident had left her even more frustrated, more resentful of Charles's indifference. If the location of their summer house weren't so isolated, she might have suspected he was seeing another woman and even forgiven him for it because it would be something she could understand and cope with. But this-I This total shutting off of himself from her, this complete ignorance of her needs, she found intolerable.
Outside, she heard the station wagon roar to life and back out of the driveway. She scrubbed more furiously at the plate she was washing, rinsed it, then almost dropped it as she turned to put it on the counter.
"What are you doing here?" she asked.
Chuck stood just inside the kitchen door, grinning at her. "Timmy and Mr. Davenport went into town."
"Why didn't you go with them?"
Chuck shrugged and pulled out a chair, straddled it the wrong way and rested his arms over the back. "I didn't feel like it. I thought I'd stay here and get some rest."
Vera put down the plate and went back to the sink. For several minutes she washed the dishes in silence, feeling the glare of Chuck's eyes on her back as she moved, but not speaking to him.
"Why don't you like me, Mrs. Davenport?" Chuck suddenly asked, and the question was so abrupt Vera almost dropped another plate.
"Who told you that?" she countered, hedging the issue. It is always easier to complain about someone behind his back than to justify those complaints in a face-to-face confrontation with him.
"Nobody had to tell me," Chuck said. "I can tell you don't like me just by the way you look at me."
"Looks are often deceiving," Vera said, fussing more than usual with the plate she had already washed squeaking clean.
"Okay, maybe so. Then I'll have to confess I've overheard you talking to Mr. Davenport about me."
"Oh." In spite of the strength of her beliefs, Vera was embarrassed to explain them to Chuck.
"I heard you tell him you didn't want me to stay for the rest of the summer and that you'd be glad to get rid of me. Why do you hate me that much?"
Vera turned slowly to face him, but when their eyes met she found she could not look into them and busied herself with the dishes on the counter. "Let me put it this way, Chuck. I don't dislike you, personally. I dislike the effect you seem to have on my son. Timmy is a very impressionable boy and I'm afraid he's doing some things he knows better than doing because you tell him to. That's what I don't like, if you must know the truth."
"I don't make Timmy do anything he doesn't want to do, Mrs. Davenport."
"You might not know you do, but you do, just the same."
"What would you suggest I do about it? I like Timmy as a friend; I don't want to spend the summer without talking to him. It wouldn't be very easy for us to ignore each other when we're together all day long, would it?"
Vera put down her dishes and looked directly into the boy's eyes. "That's just why I suggested to Charles that it might be best if you cut your vacation with us short. It's the only solution I see to the problem and if you think about it yourself, I'm sure-"
"I have nowhere else to go, Mrs. Davenport," Chuck said softly, cutting her short and suddenly making it impossible for her to continue holding his stare. "I'm sorry if I'm making you unhappy by being here, but there's no place else for me. Nobody wants me. Even my own father shipped me off to Fremont and then died so he wouldn't have have to bother taking care of me when they didn't."
"Oh, Chuck-"
"You don't know what it's like at that place. You can't imagine what they do to you, how they make you feel. I'd be embarrassed to tell a lady some of the things the older guys forced me to do. If you send me away, the only place I've got to go is back there-and I'd rather do what my father did than face that again." He bent his head and covered his face with his hands. His shoulders began to tremble and he made little gasping sounds through the hidden smile on his mouth.
Vera went to him slowly and touched the top of his head. "Chuck, please don't cry. I'm sorry. I just don't understand. We'll have to work something out. Perhaps if I speak to Timmy-" Chuck's head lifted so abruptly that it bumped into Vera's breast. "You mean you'll let me stay?"
She was somewhat startled by the warmth of his head and pulled back, feeling a burning spot on her breast where he had bumped. "We-we'll see, Chuck." She moved away from him as he stood up and stared hard into her eyes.
"I hope you will," he said, following slowly after her as she moved back to the sink. "I like it here and I like all of you people. Especially you."
Vera looked up, startled by the strange look she thought she saw in his eyes.
"You're a very beautiful woman, Mrs. Davenport," Chuck murmured. "Your husband is very lucky to have someone like you."
"T-thank you, Chuck," Vera said, slightly flustered and feeling more than foolish for the blush she felt rising to her cheeks.
"When I get married I hope I find somebody like you, but I probably won't. Women like you are kind of special."
Vera felt herself passing from flattered embarrassment to a dangerous kind of excitement as she stared at Chuck. It had been a long time since a man complimented her with a look like that, particularly one as young and good-looking as Chuck. She could feel a tension rising in her breasts and a familiar quivering in the depths of her belly.
"You don't have to tell me things like that, Chuck," she murmured. "It won't affect my decision about letting you stay."
"I know," he said, his eyes burning into hers. "That's not why I said it."
"T-then why did you?"
"Because I meant it. You're a very beautiful, very sexy woman." He began to unbutton his shirt with deliberate slowness, knowing that Vera's eyes were watching every button part as he slowly revealed his tanned, muscled chest. "W-what are you doing?" she asked. Chuck grinned and rubbed his hand over his lower belly. "I'm tired. I thought I'd go in the bedroom and lay down for a while." He paused just long enough to make the emphasis deliberate, then added, "Before Mr. Davenport and Timmy get back from town."
Vera's hands were trembling as she turned away from him, unable to face that frank look in his eyes. Her knees felt weak as she walked back to the sink and began to wash a plate she had just finished drying.
"I really wish you'd give me a chance, Mrs. Davenport," Chuck said from the doorway. Their eyes met quickly. "You really might like me if you did."
She could have sworn he winked just before he turned and left the doorway. She heard him going down the hall, but once he was in the bedroom he didn't close the door. She let the plate slip into the water and nervously shook a cigarette from the pack Charles had left on the counter. She almost never smoked, but once her trembling hands had struck a match to the cigarette she took several deep pulls on it before resting it in the ashtray.
"Stop it," she thought anxiously. "Just stop thinking what you're thinking right now! It's ridiculous! Out of the question!" And yet, as she sat at the table and took another pull on the cigarette, Vera knew there was no mistaking the look she had seen in Chuck's eyes-or her own response to it.
"He wants me!" she thought. "He's back there waiting for me to come to him! Oh, God! What am I saying?" She covered her mouth with her hand and closed her eyes, but the thoughts stayed with her. In her mind she saw Chuck lying on the beach in that skimpy white bathing suit and realized with a degree of horror that the image was complete, right down to the obvious genital lump. Her mind whirled into fantasy, picturing him standing and peeling off the suit, exposing his raw male power to her, then coming to her and forcing her onto the sand with him.
A sharp ache burst through her groin and held her stomach as though the pain were that easy to stop. "God!" she whispered. "He's as young as my own son! How can I think such things?" But there was a difference between Chuck and Timmy, and Vera knew it. Deny it as she might, Timmy was still a child in body and actions. Chuck was very much a man.
She ground out the cigarette half-smoked, tapped her fingers on the table, then got up and went to the kitchen doorway. Down the hall she saw the door to Chuck's bedroom standing open. Her body strained toward it, her legs aching to be in motion.
"No!" she whispered harshly. "No! No! No!" She took another cigarette from the pack, but broke it to pieces without lighting it. Her stomach was ice-cold, but the rest of her was on fire. She could see the sweat on her palms, feel the moisture between her legs. "He wants me!" she whispered. "And I want him! God help me, I want him, too!"
She closed her eyes and tried to think of other things-anything-but Chuck's image was too strong to push back. She could almost feel her hands roving over his hard young muscles, raking his back as he settled his weight on her, her legs twitching as he drove into her and then clamping around his buttocks as they fucked.
"God, I want him to fuck me!" she whispered, wondering in that admission if she hadn't wanted it right from the moment she saw him. If her hatred of him had not been born out of suppressed desire to have him.
"Why shouldn't I?" she asked aloud. "It would serve Charles right. He doesn't deserve me torturing myself like this. What a joke it would be on him!"
She got up slowly from the table and went to the doorway a second time. The door to Chuck's bedroom was still open. She began to walk toward it, swallowing nervously until she stood in front of it and looked in at him. He was flat on his back on the bed. Naked.
He grinned when he saw her and lifted his head from the pillow. "What took you so long to make up your mind?"
Vera stepped into the room and smiled bashfully. "I should tell Charles about this and he'd have you out of the house tonight."
"You won't, though."
Vera stared at the hard muscularity of the young stud, at the power between his legs that would soon be ravishing her. "No," she said softly, "I won't."
"Come here," Chuck held his hand out for her and she took it shyly. "Take off your clothes," he ordered.
Her eyes not moving from his for an instant, Vera unbuttoned her dress and stepped out of it. She put her hands behind her back and un-snapped her bra, but Chuck rose to take it off. His hands fondled her breasts the moment they were uncovered, cupping them from the underside and squeezing them gently. His thumb and forefinger rolled each nipple until they were hard, then his head bent down and kissed each one.
"They're beautiful," he murmured.
Vera smiled, but it was painful to do so. She felt lust driving through every pore of her body. As he handled her breasts she felt as though his fingers were tipped with fire. Her nipples were so swollen they ached when he took them into his mouth and ran his tongue over them.
"Chuck!" she moaned. Her hands ran through his hair, stroking his head as he put his mouth from one throbbing nipple to the other. She felt his warm, strong fingers moving down her naked belly, gripping the elastic band of her panties and she tensed. The silk resisted for a moment, then slid easily to her ankles and she stepped free.
Chuck's hand rose slowly up the inside of her thighs, hesitated for just a second, then pressed full against the hairy warmth of her cunt.
"Oh, God!" Vera sobbed. "God! God! God!" She clung desperately to him, tightening her legs on his hand and rocking her body slowly back and forth. It had been so long since a man's hand had touched between her legs that she had almost forgotten how alive it made her feel. She kissed the side of Chuck's face, then his chin and lifted his mouth to hers. His kiss was ferocious when their lips met. His tongue shoved deep into her mouth and won a quick victory over the resistance of her own. Her hands tightened on his back, pulling him flush against her nakedness. She felt the solid throbbing of his cock against her belly and gasped as she ground from side to side on it.
She closed her eyes and then shrieked with surprised delight as his fingers began to play with her. She relaxed the grip of her legs, opened herself to him, and sobbed wildly as his fingers investigated the wet lips of her hole. She felt herself opening easily for the thrust of his thick middle finger and a shooting thrill raced deep into her belly as it went into her. He found her clitoris quickly and toyed with it until it was swollen with life and quivering with each brush of his fingertip.
"How did you know it would be so easy?" she moaned.
"Shhhh!" Chuck cautioned. "Don't talk about it; just enjoy what I'm going to do to you."
His hands gripped her waist and he began to sink to his knees, kissing his way down her belly as he dropped in front of her. She tried to stop him, but he pushed her hands away.
"Let me," he said, and it was more a command than a request.
Vera tensed as she felt his mouth moving closer and closer to her cunt. Charles never had kissed her down there. No one had, and so the first touch of Chuck's mouth on her was such a startling thrill she pushed his head away and pulled back from him.
"I said let me!" he growled. He pulled her back to where he knelt and this time his face ground ruthlessly into the hairy warmth between her legs.
Vera screamed with the wildest joy she had ever known. His tongue was licking her outer lips in long, wet strokes, burrowing closer and closer to the moistened hole. When he touched the core with the end of his tongue she thought she would faint. The pleasure was wilder than she had ever dreamed possible. She felt herself opening, the thick lips spreading wide for the invasion of Chuck's tongue. As it pushed slowly into her, she gripped his hair with both hands and tugged on it so hard he had to slap her ass to break the grip.
"Oh, Chuck!" she sobbed. "What are you doing to me!" She began to heave and buck her stomach wildly back and forth as his tongue drilled deeper and deeper inside her cunt. Each time he licked her swollen clitoris she screamed and trembled with ecstasy. When he pulled out, she thought she would faint.
He rose slowly, kissing his way back up her body, then seized her mouth and drove his tongue deep into her throat. "Now you," he said, pushing hard on her shoulders.
"I-I can't!" Vera sobbed, knowing what he wanted but fearful of doing it. Charles had never made this demand on her and she had never dreamed any other man would force her to. "Please, Chuck, don't make me!"
"I said it's your turn!" he snarled. "Get down on your knees!" He pushed harder on her shoulders and she sank in front of him.
She stared fearfully at the huge, stiff prick sticking up from the boy's belly. "No," she begged, "please-" Suddenly his hand yanked hard on her hair while his other hand seized his cock and pointed it at her mouth. "Chuck-!" she screamed, but he pulled her head forward and drove deep into her mouth before she could resist. She felt tears in her eyes as he began to rock back and forth on his heels, pumping his cock in and out of her mouth. But soon, to her surprise, she found her lips widening to take even more of it and her tongue licking at it eagerly. Her hands slid up to his hips and clamped hard, helping him as he drove at her face. She liked it! She had never dreamed that a boy so young could make her do such a thing-or that she would find so much pleasure in it!
When Chuck pulled out of her mouth, Vera cried with disappointment. She had wanted to taste him, to know what a man's seed was like in her mouth.
"Get on the bed," Chuck ordered, helping her to her feet.
Vera lay on her back and looked up at him through eyes burning with desire. His cock was shining with the spittle her mouth had left on it and slippery when she seized it in her hand and tugged him that way to the bed. "Please," she whimpered. "Now, Chuck! Now!"
He was breathing hard as he climbed onto the bed and positioned himself between her legs. He arched up and took his cock in his hand, bending it down until the head nestled in the warm, moist hair around her cunt. "Yes," he said huskily. "Now."
She felt the thick cockhead pushing to find the hole and quickly brought her hand down to guide it into position. Her teeth were clamped tightly together as she waited for him to thrust, but when he did she threw back her head and screamed with pain and raw pleasure. "Go slow! Go slow!" she begged. "God, you're so big!"
She felt as though she were being fucked for the first time all over again. It had been so long since Charles was in her that her cunt had grown tight. And Chuck was so big! There was no denying the pain she felt as the thickness of him forced her cunt further and further apart. She sobbed against his shoulder as he pushed down into her. She felt impaled on it when at last their bellies touched and he was all the way in.
"Wait, please!" she whimpered. "Let me get used to it!"
Chuck grinned down at her. "Like it?"
"Oh, God, I don't know yet! It feels so big in me!"
"It is big in you! Because you made it big! You turned me on, baby!"
"Did I, Chuck?" Vera whispered. "Did I really?"
His head was turned to the side and she couldn't see the smile on his face as he murmured, "What do you think?"
"Oh, I can't believe this is happening!" Vera sobbed. "It's too good to be true!"
"It's true," Chuck growled. "You just watch how true it is."
As he began to fuck her, Vera thought she would go out of her mind with pleasure. Her cunt quickly adjusted to the size of Chuck's cock and she began to arch her hips up from the bed to meet his thrusts, screaming with delight each time it rammed into her. She clung tightly to him, her nails raking up and down his back, her belly slapping against his as they met, her breasts squashing under the weight of his chest each time he came down on her.
Less than a minute after he began fucking her, Vera had her first orgasm, but Chuck built her quickly back to the peak of excitement as he continued thrusting with strong, sure strokes. She came again, screaming and biting into his shoulder, but still he stayed in her, strong and hard, exciting her all over again.
His body was dripping with sweat, his skin so slippery she could barely grip him as he thrust in and out, in and out, until Vera thought she was going to die from the orgasms he was setting off in her. Her legs were too weak to lift up to meet him any longer. She just lay flat on her back as he drove his cock with the same steady thrusts, tossing her head from side to side on the pillow and moaning incoherent cries of joy.
She felt his pace begin to quicken and when she looked into his face she knew by the tension of his jaw and the glazed sheen of his eyes that he was getting ready to come in her at last. Using every bit of her energy, she forced her cunt muscles to clamp on him and massage his cock as he drove into her. He began to gasp through his mouth, the sweat from his forehead dripping onto her face like rain.
"Yes, Chuck! Yes!" she whimpered. "Come! Oh, darling, come in me!"
He drove harder and harder, his strokes becoming more frantic and less rhythmic until suddenly he lunged deep and she felt him flexing against her inner muscles. The violence of his ejaculation was so strong she could feel the heavy squirts shooting into her. A moment later, she came with him, clinging to him and clawing his back until she felt drops of his blood on her fingertips.
He rested on top of her for a long while before pulling out. When he did, he reached for cigarettes and lit one, drew heavily and put it in her mouth. Vera puffed weakly and smiled at him. She ran her hand up and down the smoothness of his chest and belly, wiping the sweat from him.
"Was it good?" he asked hoarsely.
"Do you have to ask?" she laughed with a sob.
"Better than your husband?"
"That's not a fair question, Chuck."
He laughed and pinched the soft flesh inside her thigh. "Sorry, I withdraw it. I was just curious."
Vera lifted herself up and swung her body over until her breasts pointed down at his chest. She kissed him lightly on the mouth and rubbed the end of her nose against his. "If your vanity insists on knowing, yes. It was better."
"Good." He clamped his arm around her and squeezed hard. "I'm going to be sorry to leave before the summer's over," he whispered.
Vera looked into his eyes and began to smile. "Don't talk so foolish," she murmured.
CHAPTER SIX
Chuck whistled under his breath as he turned off the shower nozzle and grabbed a towel from the rack. He rubbed furiously at his body, drying the golden-tanned flesh to a clean gloss that reflected the bathroom light. From so much nude sunbathing on the rocks with Timmy, his skin was almost uniformly tanned, with just the faintest outline of the bathing suit across his hips. He patted the towel more gently over his crotch, cupping his penis and stroking it lovingly for a moment.
"Got to take special care of you, don't I, fella?" he grinned. "You've been getting a pretty hard workout around this place, haven't you?" His smile broadened as his cock suddenly twitched in his hand, as though it were a thing with life of its own and had understood and given its answer. "That's right!" he laughed. "Just keep up the good work and you and I will be in solid, in more ways than one!"
He began to whistle again as he put his leg up on the rim of the tub and rubbed it dry. "She's not bad for an old broad, is she?" he said, continuing his fanciful conversation with his penis. "And she sure as hell likes you! Man! I thought her sissy kid sucked good, but tonight she sure put him out of the competition, didn't she?" His cock jumped again in memory of the way Vera had sucked him earlier that night, while Charles and Timmy were down on the beach cleaning up from a picnic they'd had. During the past week, in fact, Vera had become almost reckless in her desire to have sex with him, seizing every possible opportunity to get at his cock, even if it was no more than a few minutes when they were alone in the house.
Not that Chuck minded, of course. The more he gave her, he reasoned, the more she would want, until it became impossible for her to break the habit. Already she was beginning to come around to the idea of keeping him with the family when they went back to the city at the end of the summer. A few more weeks of good fucking and there would be no question about it.
"Poor Judd," Chuck thought. "He'll just have to find some other poor slob to beat on." A grin broke across his face and he began to laugh.
"Maybe Timmy! Wow! Wouldn't that be wild if I talked the old bitch into shipping him up to Fremont!"
The bathroom door opened abruptly and Chuck whirled in surprise, dropping his towel.
"Oh. I'm sorry," Charles muttered as he looked through the open doorway. "I thought it was Timmy in here."
"He's already in bed. I was just finishing up. Come on in; I'll be out of your way in a minute."
Charles hesitated for a moment, his eyes staring boldly at the heavy genitals displayed so openly between Chuck's upraised leg, then came into the bathroom and shut the door. "I just-uh-wanted to get something out of the medicine cabinet."
"Go ahead. Don't let me disturb you." Chuck put his leg down from the tub rim and bent to pick up his towel. When he lifted his head, he caught the reflection of Charles's eyes in the mirror. "Well, well, well!" he laughed to himself. "First your kid, then your wife and now you're looking at it wondering when it's your turn, huh?" Pretending he didn't see the way Charles was staring at him in the mirror, he began to rub at his arms and legs with the towel, carefully leaving his crotch exposed.
Charles stood motionless at the sink, staring at the nude boy's reflection. Chuck's cock was half-erect. They were standing so close that all he would have to do would be reach out his hand and touch it. His throat went dry as he thought of what it would feel like to hold that beautiful prick, to stroke it until it swelled to its full length and then kneel down to it and take it into his mouth. "I'll bet he wouldn't mind!" Charles thought wildly. "If he lets Timmy do it, he'd surely let me!"
His fingers were trembling as he opened the medicine cabinet and took out the bottle of aspirin, shook two into his palm and replaced the bottle. He stared back into the mirror as he swallowed the pills. Chuck was bent slightly over, drying his hair with the towel. The motion was making his cock swing slowly back and forth between his legs like a heavy pendulum. "God, it's beautiful!" Charles thought. "It's just like Tim's was! So big and beautiful!" His hands trembled as he turned and stared directly at the boy's crotch. That day when he'd watched Timmy and Chuck on the rocks he'd been too far away to see just how beautiful his godson's penis really was, but now he could see every vein running down the thick shaft, the deep ridge where the head flared up at the tip, the subtle shadings of the smooth flesh.
"To hell with it!" he thought. "I have to have him! I don't care what happens!"
He reached out and touched the boy's stomach. Chuck's head jerked up quickly, a wide grin on his face. "Yes, Mr. Davenport?"
"Chuck, I-"
"I'll be out of your way right now. I'm finished."
"No! That wasn't what-" Charles stopped, embarrassed by the boy's smile. "I mean-" His hands twitched nervously and he had to cough to clear the dry ball that was gathering in his throat. "Chuck, I-I wanted to tell you how glad I am that you're here with us this summer."
"Gee, that's great, Mr. Davenport. I'm glad you want me here, because I really like you people, too."
"You probably know," Charles said, looking away from the boy's searching eyes, "that your father and I were very good friends. When I look at you, I see so much of him that it's painful at times."
"Dad talked about you a lot. He always told me if I was in trouble and he wasn't around to help, I should go to you. He liked you a lot and he trusted you."
Charles swallowed hard. "What would Tim think if he could see me now?" he thought bitterly. "If he knew what I wanted to do with his son. Oh, God! What's wrong with me?"
"Was there anything more you wanted to say, Mr. Davenport?" Chuck asked.
"No." Charles shook his head quickly. "No, Chuck. Go on to bed now; you must be tired."
The boy wrapped the towel around his waist and went to the bathroom door. "Thanks again for having me here, Mr. Davenport. I know my dad would have appreciated it." He went out of the bathroom quickly and closed the door behind him. For a moment he leaned against it, breathing deeply and trying to fight down a smile before he went into the bedroom.
The lights were out, but he could see Timmy sitting up in his bed as he pulled down the covers of his own and took off the towel. He got into bed and rolled onto his side, with his back to Timmy.
"Aren't you forgetting something?"
"Goodnight," Chuck muttered. "I said aren't you forgetting something?" Chuck turned and lifted his head, glowering in the semi-darkness. "And I said goodnight."
"What about me?"
"What about you?"
"Why have you been ignoring me all week?"
"Have I? I didn't notice."
"Well I did. You've been acting like I'm not worth the time of day."
"Maybe you're not," Chuck grunted. "Now shut up and let me get some sleep, huh?" He put his head back down on the pillow and closed his eyes. Timmy's accusation was true, of course. Since the first afternoon with Vera, Chuck had had no use for the boy. He'd only started with him in the first place as a way of getting to the mother, but now that Chuck had found a more sure-fire way of allying himself with Vera he felt himself under no further obligation to Timmy.
He heard the springs in the other bed creaking and a moment later Timmy was kneeling beside him, grasping his arm. "Chuck, please don't do this to me. You're the only friend I've ever had in my life. If you shut me out it will be even more terrible than it was when I had nobody."
"Get back to bed and leave me alone, will you?" Chuck snarled, pushing Timmy's hand off his arm.
"Couldn't you just pretend you're still my friend, even if you don't really mean it?" Timmy pleaded. "Just so I'll have something?"
Chuck's mouth curled in a bitter sneer. "You mean just so you'll still have a cock to suck! Get away from me! You make me sick!" He pushed and Timmy staggered backwards. "You little faggot! I have a good mind to tell your father what you've been doing to me."
For a long, long moment there was dead silence in the room. "I don't think you'll do that, Chuck."
"No? How can you be so sure? You keep pestering me and you'll find out whether I'll tell him or not."
"I'll have something to tell him, too," Timmy said, his voice cold and strangely self-assured.
"Yeah? What?"
"About you and Mom."
An icy chill ran down Chuck's spine. He jerked his head up and stared hard into Timmy's eyes. "What're you talking about?"
"You know damn well what I'm talking about. You've been fucking her when you think Dad and I aren't around."
Chuck forced himself to laugh, but it was a dry sound that broke from his throat. "You're nuts!"
"No, I'm not nuts. But you are if you think I'm going to let you dump me for her."
"You're really serious, aren't you?"
"Yes," Timmy hissed. "I saw you and her this afternoon. You thought I went with Dad to get the corn, but I didn't. I had an idea something funny was going on between you two, so I stayed behind and hid until you thought it was safe. I saw you fucking her, Chuck! I watched the whole thing through her bedroom window!"
Chuck rubbed his hands nervously against his legs, feeling the sweat that was beginning to bead on his palms. "If you did, then you must have seen I didn't enjoy it very much."
"I only saw you doing it; that was enough."
Chuck thought for a moment, then held up his hand to Timmy. "Come here and sit on the bed for a minute." He squeezed Timmy's fingers when their hands met and pulled him down beside him. He looked intently into his eyes for a moment, then said, "You don't think I wanted to, do you?"
"Then why did you, Chuck?" Timmy's eyes were beginning to glisten with tears and his grip tightened on Chuck's hand as he waited for the answer.
"Because she made me."
"What?"
"She did, Timmy. She told me that unless I did it she was going to tell your father to send me back to Fremont even before the summer was over. Then she told me she didn't want me being friendly with you anymore and if she saw that I was, she'd still send me away."
"The bitch!" Timmy swore, his fist clenching in rage. "The dirty, whoring bitch!"
"Don't you think it's hurt me to have to ignore you all week? Especially the way I feel about you...."
"Chuck, do you? Do you really feel that way about me?"
Chuck put his arm around Timmy's neck and pulled his head down onto his chest. "What do you think?" he murmured.
"Oh, Chuck!" Timmy sobbed. "I was so scared that you were just using me, that you'd never wanted to be my friend! I feel like such a fool for not trusting you. I should have known that bitch was behind it! All my life she's done everything she could to make me miserable."
"Don't worry about it anymore," Chuck said, stroking the back of his neck.
"I won't let her get away with it!" Timmy swore. "I'll tell Dad what she's done! That'll fix her good!"
"Are you crazy?" Chuck gripped his head in both hands and lifted it so their eyes met. "Don't you know what would happen if you did that? She'd lie and say it was my fault, and he'd believe her."
"He wouldn't. I know Dad."
"He'd have to for his own vanity. No guy likes to find out his wife is going to bed with another guy, especially if it's her fault. He'd kick my ass right out of here if you told him that, no matter who was to blame for what happened."
"Maybe you're right."
"I know I'm right. So just forget about telling him anything, huh? I'll take care of your mother in my own way."
"And what about me?"
Chuck smiled and squeezed the back of Timmy's neck. "I'll take care of you, too." He kicked the sheets away from his leg and drew Timmy's hand down to his crotch. "As a matter-of-fact, you could take care of me, too. It's been a long time."
Timmy's hand squeezed Chuck's cock and he gave a little moan of excitement as it began to harden. "Oh, Chuck!" he sighed. "You're so wonderful!"
"You talk too much!" Chuck laughed and pushed gently on Timmy's shoulders. "Don't you know some better things to do with your mouth?"
"Yes!" Timmy sobbed. He hugged Chuck tightly for a moment, then began to kiss his way down the smooth, tanned flesh until his lips were brushing through the wiry hair at the root of Chuck's cock. He lifted himself onto his knees and forced Chuck's legs further apart, so that when he brought his head down a second time he was able to nuzzle his mouth against the low-hanging pouch of balls. For several minutes he licked the hairy flesh while his hand played with Chuck's cock until it was solidly erect. Then, bringing his mouth slowly up the length of the shaft, he parted his lips and took the full cockhead into his mouth.
Chuck's hands tightened on the boy's head as he felt the warm, slippery pressure of his lips moving down and down on his penis until Timmy had swallowed it right to the hilt. He groaned with delight as Timmy's tongue stroked the base of his cock and began to work his lips up and down on it. His ass began to move in rhythm with Timmy's bobbing head, feeding his prick into the hungry, smacking mouth.
In the darkness, the sounds of Timmy's tongue moving on his cock and the gurgling noises his throat made as he drove down on it excited Chuck and he moved his hips faster. His legs began to tense as Timmy drew him closer and closer to the point of ejaculation. Suddenly Timmy's mouth pulled off and Chuck groaned in surprise.
"Why'd you stop? I was getting ready to come!" He tried to push Timmy's mouth back down on his cock, but the boy resisted and scrambled back up beside him in the bed.
"I want to do something else tonight," Timmy said, his voice breathless with excitement.
"What?"
"I-I want you to fuck me, Chuck!"
"Are you serious?"
"Yes! God, you don't know how excited I was watching you fuck Mom and imagining that it was me you were doing it to! I want it in me; I really do!"
"Did anyone ever fuck your ass before?"
"No! I want you to be the first!"
"You'll be sorry, you really will."
"Why?"
"It'll hurt like hell the first time."
"No it won't!" Timmy swore. "Because it'll be you, Chuck, and I know you'll never hurt me."
"I don't know...."
"Please!" Timmy begged, gripping Chuck's wet cock and squeezing it hard. "Please fuck me! I want your cock in my ass! I want to feel you coming inside me!"
Chuck grinned and slapped him on the buttocks. "Okay! How can I say no?"
"Thank you!" Timmy sobbed. He rolled onto his back and bent his knees up so that his ass hovered off the mattress.
"Wait a minute," Chuck said. "You can't take it that way; not the first time, at least. You'll scream the house down the minute I push into you."
"On my belly?"
"Yes, it's easier that way. And-wait a minute!" He laughed and shook Timmy's leg. "You'd better get something to grease me up with first. Otherwise I'll never get in you."
"What should I get? Vaseline?"
"Yeah, that's good."
"I think there's a jar in the medicine cabinet. I'll go get it."
"You'd better get a towel, too," Chuck told him.
"What for?"
"Just get it! You'll be glad you did afterwards!"
As Timmy ran from the room to get the supplies, Chuck shook his head and looked up at the shadow patterns on the ceiling. He was upset and it showed in the frown on his face. Things were beginning to get complicated. It had been fun having the three Davenports chasing after his cock, but now that there was a very real possibility of them finding out about each other's involvement with him, the situation was becoming dangerous. He had little doubt of what Charles's reaction would be if Timmy were to spill his information, or what Vera's reaction would be if she were to learn of his involvement with Timmy. Either way, he would get the short end of the stick.
He mashed his fist into the mattress. "That damn little faggot!" he muttered. "I know I can't trust him. The minute I look at him the wrong way he's going to go running to his old man."
Chuck bit his lip as his rage mounted. The situation could only get worse, he realized. With both Vera and Timmy getting hornier by the day and Charles standing on the sidelines waiting to jump in at any moment, it was only a matter of time before the whole mess blew up in his face. "There has to be a way out," he muttered. "But how? How?"
The bedroom door opened and closed and Timmy hurried back to the bed. "I've got the stuff," he whispered excitedly. "Can I put it on you?"
Chuck forced himself to grin. "Sure, go ahead."
Timmy unscrewed the Vaseline jar and dug out a large gob of it. He reached for Chuck's cock and groaned with disappointment. "You went down!"
"Don't you know how to get it back up?"
Timmy giggled and bent his head to capture the limp prick with his lips. He began to suck it furiously and after a few minutes it stiffened inside his mouth. Without releasing his grip, he slid his lips halfway up the shaft and began to spread the greasy ointment around the base while he continued to suck in the head. His fingers spread the Vaseline further and further up the length of cock as his mouth retreated, until just the head was inside his mouth. He sucked hard for another minute, then released it and applied a generous coating of the lubricant to the tip.
"There!" he said happily. "All ready!"
"Lay down on your stomach," Chuck ordered. "And spread what's left in your hand around your asshole. You'll need all the grease you can get, believe me."
Timmy got into position and Chuck swung his weight up and over the boy, straddling him with his knees on the outside of Timmy's legs. He rubbed his hand up and down the crack between Timmy's small buttocks, then pinched each cheek. "Bite into the pillow if it hurts, but for God's sake don't scream! Do you understand?"
"I won't scream," Timmy promised. "Just do it quick, Chuck! I'm so excited I'm going to come just thinking about it!"
Chuck gripped his cock firmly at the base and bent it down so the head pointed at the center of Timmy's ass. He adjusted his knees to give himself better leverage, then pressed slowly forward, urging his cockhead into the tight crack.
"Ohhhhhhhhh!" Timmy gasped.
"Shut up!" Chuck growled. "I told you not to make any noise!" He pushed again and the greased head of his cock shoved into Timmy's tight asshole.
"Oh, Jesus! Jesus!" Timmy shrieked.
Chuck slapped him hard across the head. "Bite the pillow, dammit! Do you want your folks in here?"
"Chuck, I can't help it! It hurts too much!"
"Shut up!" He slapped him again and pushed down harder, ramming more than half his cock into the resisting passage.
"Oh, God! Chuck, stop it! It's killing me!"
Gritting his teeth, Chuck lunged again, this time burying himself right to the hilt in the depths of Timmy's behind.
Timmy started to scream, but Chuck pressed his face hard into the pillow, muffling the wrenching shriek. "Stop it!" he warned. "Just stop it, or I'm going to smother you!" He held Timmy's head down until the boy went limp and he was certain he would not scream again.
"Chuck," Timmy whimpered, "please take it out! Please! It hurts so much! It's so big!"
"Just stop fighting it," Chuck told him, remembering his own experience with Judd and the other three cadets at Fremont. "Just relax and you'll love it in you. You'll even wish it was bigger!"
Timmy lay his head on the pillow and began to cry, but Chuck could feel his asshole gradually loosening as he submitted at last. When he was certain that Timmy was ready for it without screaming again, he began to withdraw his cock, pulling out inch by slow inch until just the head was still stuck inside. He hesitated a moment, then lunged all the way back inside.
"Oh, God!" Timmy groaned.
"Hurt?"
"I'm not sure! I never felt anything like it!"
Chuck laughed and pinched the boy's side. "You're starting to enjoy being fucked, baby. That's how it feels!"
He pulled out again and this time his stroke back down was slower. When he was only halfway in, Timmy's ass rose up to meet the rest of it, clenching tightly as Chuck rammed it in. "Yes!" he sobbed. "I do like it! Oh, Chuck, I do like it!"
Chuck tightened his grip on the boy's ribs for support and drew his cock far back, lunged deep and hard. He grinned with pleasure at the moan that broke from Timmy's throat and lunged again, ramming into the open asshole with such force that his balls hurt as they slapped against Timmy's buttocks.
"Harder, Chuck! Harder!" Timmy groaned.
Again and again and again Chuck drove it into him, until his prick was moving in and out of the quivering asshole like a piledriver in mud. Half of Chuck's pleasure came from the shrieks and muffled cries Timmy made as the huge cock ripped into him, but the other half came from the tightness of the boy's ass around his prick and the shooting thrill that raced all the way up the shaft each time he lunged down.
His legs tensed and his breath grew ragged as he stroked time and again into the soft recesses of Timmy's ass. It felt so good! Every inch of his cock was alive with sensation as the warm muscles clenched around him and forced a suction on the head that made it seem he was driving even deeper.
He rolled onto his side, still locked inside Timmy's ass, and reached down for the boy's cock. It was throbbing hard as he made a fist around it and began to jerk him off in rhythm to the strokes of his own cock as he fucked him.
"Oh, Chuck!" Timmy gasped. "God! I'm going to come! Stop! I'm going to come!"
"Go ahead," Chuck panted. "I am too!"
His hand pounded on Timmy's penis as his own prick drove deeper and deeper. Suddenly Timmy gasped and Chuck felt squirts of warm semen splashing down onto his hand. He pumped faster and in a moment he, too, was coming. He bit hard into Timmy's neck to keep from shrieking as his cock shot off volley after volley of white-hot juice.
"I feel it!" Timmy sobbed. "Chuck, I feel you coming in me!"
For several minutes afterward, they lay on their sides without moving, Chuck's cock still firmly lodged in Timmy's ass and his hand still wrapped around the semen-soaked prick.
"Do you still have any doubts about me?" he murmured.
"No!" Timmy swore. "I'll never doubt you again!"
Chuck pulled slowly out of his ass and patted his arm. "Good boy. Now, where the hell is that towel?" he laughed.
Late the next afternoon, Chuck came up from the beach alone. He bounded into the kitchen and slumped against the serving counter, crossing his legs in a way that emphasized the considerable bulge in his bathing suit. "Man!" he panted, grinning at Charles and Vera and wiping his brow with his arm. "It really is hot out there today! I just couldn't take any more of it!"
"Is Timmy coming up, too?" Vera asked. "If it's that hot I don't want him overdoing it and getting sunstroke."
"We threw lots for who got the shower first and I won," Chuck explained with a grin. "He said he'd stay down there and cool off in the water until I'd finished."
"Oh," Vera said. Her eyes ran approvingly up and down Chuck's nearly naked body and a tingle of desire raced through her as she remembered how good his tanned flesh felt on top of her.
"Do you want something cold to drink?" Charles offered, staring at the boy in much the same way his wife was.
"I'll get it," Vera insisted. "What would you like, Chuck? A Coke? Lemonade?"
"Anything; it doesn't matter. My throat feels like I swallowed half the beach!"
Vera gave him a tall glass of lemonade and he drank it down in two quick gulps. "Mind if I have some more?" he asked.
"Here, give me your glass," Charles said, seizing it before his wife could intervene.
"For heaven's sake, Charles!" Vera laughed. "Chuck knows where the refrigerator is!"
Ignoring her, Charles filled the glass to the brim and handed it back to Chuck. "Here you go," he said. Their fingers touched and lingered in contact just an instant longer than necessary as the glass changed hands. "Actually, Chuck, I'm glad we've got you alone for a minute. There's something Vera and I would like to talk over with you."
Chuck looked up quickly, meeting Charles's eyes. He knows! he thought fearfully. They must have heard us last night! He forced himself to smile. "Oh? That sounds mysterious."
"Not really," Charles said, returning the smile. "I think you already have a pretty good idea what I'm going to say."
Chuck looked from Charles to Vera and saw the same smile on both their faces. "What's that?" he asked.
"Well, I'm sure you know how much we've all enjoyed having you with us this summer," Charles continued. "You've had a remarkable effect on Timmy, for one thing, and that's made me very happy. I'd hate to see him go back to the way he was when the summer is over."
"Yes...?" Chuck's heart was hammering wildly in his chest and it was all he could do to keep from shouting with joy. "Say it! Say it, for crissake!" his mind screamed.
"I understand from my wife and Timmy that you're not looking forward to going back to Fremont in September, Chuck. Vera and I have talked at length about the possibility-"
"Oh, for heaven's sake, Charles!" Vera laughed. "Don't torture the boy! Tell him!"
"You're right." Charles put his hand on the boy's shoulder and squeezed firmly. "We'd like you to come back to the city with us in September, Chuck, and live with us. That is, if you want to."
"If I want to!" Chuck laughed. "Oh, God!" He threw his arms around Charles and hugged him tightly, laughing almost hysterically. "Thank you, Mr. Davenport! Oh, God! Thank you!" Vera touched his arm and he broke from Charles to throw his arms around her waist and hug her, too. "You, too, Mrs. Davenport! Thank you so much! I can't tell you how happy I am!"
"Let's tell Timmy," Charles said. "I know he'll be glad to know it's all settled."
"Yes," Vera said. "Call him, Charles. It's almost time for supper anyway."
"I'll be back in a minute."
The screen door slammed and Chuck and Vera were alone in the kitchen. He looked at her with a sly grin and put his arms back around her waist. "Come here," he said huskily, "and let me really thank you!"
"Wait!" Vera laughed. "Charles-"
"Don't worry about him," Chuck told her. "Just come here and let me kiss you."
Vera resisted for a moment, then allowed Chuck to pull her into his arms. Her mouth raised up to meet his and her lips parted instantly for the invasion of his tongue. Her hands squeezed his naked shoulders and, as they kissed, ran slowly down his broad, muscled back to slip inside the brief bathing suit. Her fingernails raked across his buttocks, pushing his groin tightly against hers. She felt his cock hardening against her belly and she wriggled her hands around to the front of Chuck's suit.
"What's this?" she murmured, playfully squeezing his cock.
"That's what you get for leading young boys astray," Chuck grinned.
"Oh, really? I'll have to do it more often!"
Vera giggled. Holding his penis firmly in one hand, she used the other to pull down his bathing suit and expose the turgid flesh. She stepped back and looked down at his aroused cock, then up into his eyes. "Chuck!" she moaned. "We're going to have such wonderful times together, aren't we?"
"You bet we are!" he grinned. He seized her breasts and began to massage the nipples through her blouse and bra.
Vera's hand started a slow, rhythmic motion on Chuck's cock as their lips met a second time. "I want you!" she gasped.
"There's no time."
"Yes! This way there is!" She pecked a quick kiss on his mouth and dropped to her knees on the kitchen floor. Her hand bent the stiff cock down to her mouth and her lips seized it greedily. Chuck groaned and drove his hips forward, thrusting more than half the swollen shaft into Vera's mouth.
His hands curled in her hair and began to rock her head back and forth as he pumped his thighs at her face. Her tongue was like dancing fire as it caressed his penis. He looked down at her as she sucked him and felt an additional surge of excitement from the look of her puffed-out cheeks and widespread lips. Her hands stroked his hairy legs, then gripped his buttocks and pushed him even deeper into her mouth.
Chuck closed his eyes and surrendered himself completely to the steady, rhythmic sucking of her mouth. He felt his cock start to quiver as her tongue danced faster and faster. Her mouth gurgled as she sucked harder, pulling him closer to climax with each stroke.
Suddenly his hips shot forward and he pushed her head all the way into his crotch. He was so deep in her throat that she gagged on the first hot jet of his come. He let her back off just enough to take his seed easily, swallowing it as fast as he shot it into her mouth.
Her eyes were dancing with wild excitement when she pulled off him and rose to put her lips on his. He kissed her hard, tasting the saltiness of his own semen in her mouth.
"You'd better go take that shower now!" she whispered, giving his cock a loving squeeze. "Charles and Timmy will be back any second."
"Okay." Chuck grinned and squeezed her belly. "I'll take care of you later!"
"Promise?"
"You bet!"
Vera busied herself at the sink, trying her best to work down the flush of excitement before her family came in. Several minutes passed with no sign of them. Then the screen door opened and she turned with a smile.
Charles stood in the doorway, his clothes soaking wet, his face ghostly white, his mouth trembling.
"Charles!" Vera ran to him, but he walked past her and slumped into a chair. "What's the matter? Charles!"
His mouth opened, quivered, but no sound came from it.
"Charles, what's happened!" Vera screamed. "What's the matter!" Suddenly her body froze and a shiver that made the hairs on her neck stand on end raced through her. "Timmy!" she shrieked. "Something's happened to Timmy!" She seized Charles's arm and shook him violently. "Tell me what's happened! What's happened to Timmy?"
His head turned slowly and he looked at her through the eyes of a zombie. "He-he's drowned."
CHAPTER SEVEN
The funeral was almost unbearable for Charles. They had taken Timmy's body back to the small town where Charles had been born and where, for generations, members of his family had been buried, slowly filling the Davenport plot in the local cemetery to near capacity.
For two days prior to the burial, following the family custom, Timmy's body had lain in its casket in his grandmother's parlor while a steady procession of relatives, family friends, and the curious filed past. Charles watched each of the faces as they peered into the grotesque satin-lined box and confronted the dead boy's face, so serene and peaceful, as it had never been in life. What did they feel, he wondered, as they stared at those waxen features?
Sorrow? For whom? Timmy? Charles and Vera? Or themselves as the coffin brought back memories of their own dead?
Relief, perhaps? A shameful kind of joy that it had not happened to them or their loved ones.
Envy? An awareness that Timmy was now beyond any of the cares that would continue to plague them until their turn came and they, too, were at rest in the comfort of whatever it is death holds in store for us.
How does one confront the fact of death, Charles wondered. Vera had avoided it completely, retreating into a near-catatonic state broken only by periods of wild screaming and hysteria. Charles's mother, who had lived through so much of it herself, accepted it stoically, as though it were a ritual, the pattern of which she had mastered long ago so that it no longer affected her. Charles's two sisters ignored it, concentrating not on the loathsome box in their mother's Darlor but on the work that had to be done in her kitchen, preparing the food required to feed the pack of gawking vultures who poured through the house day and night.
Charles wished that in just one of those faces he could see the answer, for it would tell him so much of what he could not comprehend for himself.
On the night before the funeral, when he was alone in the parlor with the visitors gone and the family long in bed, he sat beside the coffin and stared for hours at the face of what he knew was his son, but felt no true recognition of it. He felt only a dull ache inside when he looked at those pathetically thin hands and the sleeping face. He wished that he could cry or scream or give vent to some emotion. Rage, anger, sorrow, hurt-even joy. Just so he could feel something.
"This is my son," he whispered in the dark room with the heavy, overpowering scent of flowers. He touched Timmy's hand and pulled away instantly, shocked by how cold and unyielding it was. "This is my flesh-a body that I gave life to."
He stared at the boy's face as though it were a stranger's that he had never seen before, suddenly struck by the realization that it was. He could easily recall the face of the baby he had rocked so lovingly in his arms, or the little boy whose hand had gripped his so tightly in fear as he took him to school for the first time. But this boy, the one in that dreadful box they would bury in the morning, when had he ever seen his face?
Charles closed his eyes and tried to imagine what Timmy had looked like just the week before. For a moment he saw nothing, then Chuck's face grinned from the depths of his memory.
"No!" Charles cried, rubbing furiously at his eyes. "What did Timmy look like?" He tried again, but still nothing came. He had no idea what his son's smile was like, or even if Timmy ever had smiled. He tried desperately to remember the sound of his laughter, but heard nothing.
That, Charles knew, was the true horror of it. He had no memories of his son, no recollection of what the boy had been like outside of death. It seemed, in fact, that the first time he had ever really looked into Timmy's eyes was that dreadful afternoon when he had found his body washed up on the rocks-and by then there was no life in those eyes. The stare he had seen in them was dead, and yet somehow he had felt a bitter, scornful hate in them which had terrified him even more than the fact of Timmy's death.
"Timmy?" he whispered. He put his hand into the coffin and forced himself to touch those cold, lifeless cheeks. "Timmy? Why did you look at me like that? What did I do to you?" For an instant it seemed as though the boy's eyes opened and Charles saw that same look in them. He recoiled from the box in horror and fled from the room.
In the morning, he and Vera and his mother rode in the back of the first car behind the hearse as the slow procession moved to the cemetery. Vera was like a corpse herself, sitting with her back rigidly against the seat, a heavy black veil completely covering her face. His mother's hands twisted a white lace handkerchief until she had unconsciously pulled it to shreds.
At the family plot, with the brief ceremony finished and the coffin on its way into the ground, Vera suddenly broke from him and ran screaming hysterically to the open grave. Had he not grabbed her in time, she would have thrown herself into it. He had to slap her twice to calm her and led her back to the car before the first handful of dirt had been thrown into the grave.
They went back to their home in the city the next day and Vera's doctor put her under sedation. Charles tried to comfort her, but whenever he touched her she would pull away from him and begin crying. After the second day, his own nerves were near the breaking point and he knew he had to get away. It was not as easy as he had anticipated.
"Vera," he said that morning, "we're not making it any easier on each other by both of us staying here right now. I'm going to drive out to the shore for a couple of days and give you a chance to-"
"The shore?" She sat up in bed, her eyes wild. "Why are you going out there? How could you stand to?"
"We have to face it sometime and maybe it'll be easier if it's right away. Besides, there's Chuck to consider."
Vera's eyes darted from side to side and her body seemed to stiffen at the mention of the boy's name. "What about him?"
"He's been out there by himself all week."
"So what?"
"Vera, it's not fair to him." He patted her arm reassuringly. "I'll close up the house and bring Chuck back with me at the end of the week."
"Don't you dare!" she shrieked.
Charles was stunned by the violence of her outburst, "What?"
"Don't you dare bring that murderer into my house!"
"Vera-"
"I'm warning you! Don't you dare bring him here! I'll kill him with my bare hands if you do! Just like he killed my Timmy!"
"Stop it!" Charles shouted, forcing her back into the bed. "You don't know what you're saying!"
"Don't I? Don't you think I know he murdered Timmy? Are you trying to keep it from me?"
"Timmy drowned!"
"He did not!" Vera cried hysterically. "Chuck murdered him, Charles! I know he did!"
"How do you know it?"
"Didn't you see the way he looked when they brought Timmy up from the beach? Like he was glad! Glad, Charles!"
"You're imagining things."
"I'm not! I looked right into those cold, cruel eyes of his and I saw! He was almost laughing!"
"Lie back and try to get some rest," Charles said wearily. "You're upset right now and with good reason. But in a couple of days-"
"Charles, please listen to me!" Vera grabbed his hand and forced him to sit down on the bed, then leaned toward him and said in a harsh whisper, "He said Timmy must have been caught in the undertow. Isn't that what he said? That he swam out too far and was caught in the undertow?"
"Yes," Charles sighed, "that's what he said."
"You know Timmy would never swim out that far unless Chuck made him do it," Vera insisted. "Charles, you know he wouldn't. He was always afraid to swim out past where you told him it was safe."
"Vera, I don't know why Timmy did it, but he did and Chuck had nothing to do with it."
"He had everything to do with it! God, why didn't I see what he was doing? Why can't you see it now?"
"See what?"
"He was always goading Timmy to do things he knew he couldn't do. Dangerous things, like he wanted him to have an accident and die."
"For what reason, Vera? Why would he possibly-"
"So he could take Timmy's place!" she cried.
"Can't you see that? He wanted Timmy out of the way so he could take his place!"
Charles shook his head and pushed her hand away. "I'm sorry. That just doesn't make any sense. Chuck knew we were going to keep him, even before I told him we were. Why would he want to get rid of Timmy if he knew we were going to let him stay?"
Vera pulled back, her eyes suddenly darting wildly again. "Maybe there was some other reason."
"Like what?"
"I don't know, but maybe there was."
"Listen," Charles said as gently as he could. "I'm going out to the shore now. You try and get some rest. I'll call you tomorrow to see how you're feeling."
"Charles!" she screamed, as he got up from the bed and started out of the room. "Please don't! Send him away or leave him there forever, but don't go back there with him! He's evil! Charles! He's evil!"
Charles shook his head wearily as he closed the door on his wife's shrieking. He picked up his suitcase in the hall and went out to the car.
The beach house was deserted when he arrived. The kitchen was littered with dirty dishes and garbage, but there was no sign of Chuck. He took his suitcase into his bedroom and quickly checked the other rooms, then changed his clothes and went down to the beach.
There was no sign of Chuck there, either, but Charles knew instinctively where he would be. Hurrying across the stretch of sand, he climbed to the top of the rock jetty and looked down. Chuck was lying naked on the flat rock, just as he'd been that other afternoon....
Charles climbed slowly down the other side and was almost to the boy before he opened his eyes and looked up. He was startled for a moment, then grinned and sat up, making no attempt to conceal his nakedness. "Hi, Mr. Davenport. When did you get back?"
Charles was a little stunned by the casualness of Chuck's question, as though he'd just been in town shopping rather than burying his son. "I got here a couple of minutes ago."
"How'd you know where to find me?"
Their eyes met and Charles looked guiltily away, positive that in that glance he had told Chuck precisely how he knew. "I-uh-followed your footprints in the sand."
"Oh." Chuck looked at him with that same sly grin for an instant longer, then abruptly changed expression. "Did Mrs. Davenport come, too?"
"No. She's in town. She hasn't been very well lately. Not since-" He stopped, shrugging helplessly. "You know."
"Gee, I'm sorry to hear that," Chuck said. "Won't she be coming back out this summer?"
"No, I don't think she will, Chuck."
Again the boy's eyes met his with that same suggestive sparkle. "Then it'll be just you and me until September, huh?"
"I-I might not stay here either. I came out to see how I felt about the place."
"You mean we might be going back to the city early? Well, I guess I can understand how you might not want to stay here and be reminded of things. When do you think we'll be leaving?"
"Chuck-" Charles hesitated, unable to meet the boy's look. "I don't quite know how to put this, but-well, you see, ever since Timmy died, Mrs. Davenport hasn't been quite herself. I don't know if taking you back there in her present condition would be a very good idea."
"What would you do with me then? Leave me here alone until she's better?"
"Chuck, I know we promised that you could live with us, but that was before-" He shrugged again, somehow finding it difficult to put the fact of his son's death into words. "Before things changed."
"Oh," Chuck muttered. "In other words, you're going to ship me back to Fremont anyway. Is that it?"
Charles couldn't bare to meet those accusing eyes. "I don't want to, but it might be necessary."
"Why?"
"Chuck, don't make it more difficult for me. I just told you that Mrs. Davenport-"
"I mean why can't I stay with you and take Timmy's place?"
A shiver of fear ran straight through Charles's guts and his head jerked up sharply. "What did you say?"
Chuck leaned toward him, putting his hand on Charles's. "Why can't I be like a second son to you? It would be better for both you and her if you had somebody to take his place. I mean in time it wouldn't seem quite as bad as if there was no one...."
"Don't talk like that!" Charles said sharply. "People can't be replaced that easily."
"You replaced my dad for me," Chuck said simply, sending another shiver through Charles, as the memory of Tim flared suddenly on the face of this boy.
"I mean," Chuck continued, "maybe things were supposed to work out this way. My dad died and you were there to take care of me. Maybe now that Timmy's dead, I can take care of you." He smiled hopefully and his hand tightened on Charles's. "You and my father were pretty close, weren't you?"
Charles shook his head solemnly. "Yes. We were very close."
"You were in love with each other, weren't you?"
Charles's head jerked up and he started to deny it, but the words froze in his throat, He couldn't deny it; not to Tim's son. "Yes, we were."
"I thought so."
"Why?"
"Because you have that same kind of sad look on your face when you talk about him that Dad used to get when he talked about you."
"Did he, Chuck?"
"Yes. I think he was always in love with you and sorry that it didn't work out," Charles tried to smile and nodded his head, knowing the feeling Chuck had described all too well. "Why didn't it?"
"I don't know, Chuck. We were both too frightened by it, I guess. We didn't know how to handle it until it was too late to do anything about it,"
For a long moment they just looked at each other in silence, then Chuck leaned forward and put his lips gently on Charles's. "You aren't frightened of me, are you?"
"Yes, Chuck. Very much so."
"Why? You don't have to be." The boy's hand dropped to Charles's leg and began to softly caress the inner surfaces of his thighs through the thin summer trousers. "Do I remind you of my father?"
"Yes. In so many ways."
"Then why should you be frightened? I feel the same way about you that he did."
Charles turned his head away, feeling as though he wanted to shout and cry at the same time. "Don't say that, Chuck. Please."
"Why not? It's true. And you feel the same way about me; I know you do."
"You're just a boy. You couldn't understand."
"Give me a chance. I'll show you." Chuck's hand rose higher and he seized the tab of the zipper on Charles's pants. He started to pull it down, but Charles pushed his hand away.
"Don't! Please, Chuck! This is all wrong!"
"You didn't think it was wrong before. You wanted to before Timmy died. Why should everything change because of that?"
"I don't know, but it has."
"No, it hasn't." Chuck took Charles's hand and placed it between his naked legs, pressing the man's palm against his hardening cock. "Tell me you don't still want it," he murmured.
Charles resisted for just a moment, but the pressure of the boy's penis against his hand, the musky warmth of his nude body so close beside him, the fevered look in his eyes was too strong to deny. With a gasp, his hand closed around Chuck's cock and he pulled the boy's mouth down to his. They kissed furiously, biting at each other's lips and driving their tongues deeply from mouth to mouth.
Chuck's fingers opened Charles's fly and reached inside for his cock. It was already pulsing with excitement when he brought it out and grew solid in moments as the boy played with it.
"Oh, Chuck!" Charles gasped. He pushed against the boy's chest to urge him onto his back, but Chuck resisted.
"No, not yet. I want you first. I want you to know I'm telling the truth."
He sat up and forced Charles to lie flat on his back, then scrambled between his legs and opened his pants, pulled them down to his knees.
Charles felt his cock quivering, jerking fitfully up and down from his belly as the boy's hands stroked his legs and then his mouth began to kiss its way up the inside of his thighs. His stomach jumped involuntarily when Chuck's tongue touched his balls and began to lick around them with long, wet strokes. His breath grew more ragged as the boy's mouth worked steadily higher, until he was licking the base of his turgid penis. He reached down and gripped Chuck's shoulders tightly. "You don't have to," he moaned.
"I want to!" Chuck insisted.
The rock was hot beneath him; the sun blinding his eyes. He felt sweat trickling down his belly and his face. His hands tightened their grip as Chuck's mouth moved higher and higher up the length of his cock, his tongue stroking like a metronome from side to side. His mouth reached the tip and he began to tease Charles's cock with the end of his tongue, making it jump higher and higher from his belly until it stood far enough for Chuck to capture it with his lips.
"Ohhhhhhhhl" Charles groaned, as the boy's wet mouth went down on his cock. "Oh, Godl" It had been so long since he'd been blown! His memory of that night with Tim had faded the sharpness of the pleasure, reduced it to only a fraction of the joy he now felt. Those warm, moist lips were moving slowly up and down on him, taking his cock right to the base. Each stroke made his prick swell harder, until it felt like a bar of iron moving inside the boy's mouth.
His hips began to move in unison with the steady downward thrusts of Chuck's mouth, driving his cock far into the depths of his hot throat. He had never dreamed it would happen like this again, that it would ever be possible to match the feeling Tim had given him.
"Tim!" Charles's mind cried. He arched his head from the rock and looked down at the bobbing head working on his cock. The same wild shock of blond hair, the same handsome face, the same well-muscled body. "Oh, God!" he gasped aloud, squeezing harder on Chuck's shoulders.
He felt the pressure building inside him and his hips drove up harder. Chuck must have felt it, too, for suddenly his strokes became frantic, his tongue wildly licking Charles's cock to make it come.
"Oh! Ohhhh! Ohhhhhhhh! Ohhhhhhhhhhhh!" Charles's head ripped back and he screamed at the sky as his cock went off in the boy's mouth. The violence of it made Chuck pull back, but he continued to suck, greedily gathering every drop of the hot fluid Charles was squirting into his mouth.
When Charles's cock had stopped ejaculating, Chuck pulled his mouth off it and spit out the wad of sperm and spittle, then lay down beside Charles and gathered him into his arms.
"I'm sorry," he murmured. "I couldn't swallow it. I never blew a guy before. You'll have to give me time to get used to it."
Charles looked at him in surprise. "You never did it before?"
"Never!" Chuck grinned. "You were the first!"
"But why-?"
"I told you: because I wanted to. Isn't that reason enough?"
Charles hugged the boy's head down to his and kissed him hard on the mouth. His hands rubbed up and down the strong, naked shoulders, feeling the muscles in them ripple as their bodies ground together. When the kiss was broken, he rolled Chuck onto his back and this time the boy didn't resist.
Charles kissed him again on the mouth, then kissed his eyes and the tip of his nose and drilled his tongue into the depths of both ears. His mouth trailed down Chuck's face and he licked the sweat-salt from the hollow of his shoulder and neck. Wriggling his knees into position between Chuck's widespread legs, he moved his mouth lower. His lips fastened in turn on both the brown pectoral nipples, sucking them until they pushed out as firm and hard as a young girl's.
He felt Chuck's cock bobbing up hard against his belly as he drew himself down, moving his tongue in a straight line from the boy's chest to his navel. He pressed his mouth squarely over the deep hole and rotated his tongue into it, wetting the few strands of brownish hair that grew around it, then following the hair growth down Chuck's lower belly until it flared into the thick patch above his cock.
Charles ran his tongue through the boy's pubic hair, licking deep into it until he tasted the flesh underneath. When he lifted his head, he grinned and picked several loose strands of the kinky brown hair from his mouth. His head dropped again and he smothered his face between Chuck's legs, pressing his nose right into the heavy sac of testicles and licking his tongue in under them, almost to the boy's ass.
Chuck's hands tightened on his arms and he lifted his buttocks up from the hot rock, pulling gently on Charles' shoulders to tell him he liked his tongue where it was. Charles responded instantly. Seizing the boy's strong young legs, he flung them over his shoulders and lifted him until Chuck's ass was high in the air. He ground his mouth down on the warm, sweated cheeks, his tongue licking back and forth over the hairy crack until the tip of it was centering on the dark little hole at its center.
The taste in his mouth was tart and bitter and he had never done anything like this before, but suddenly, with this handsome young boy who was Tim's son, he wanted to do everything-all the things he should have done with Tim and never could.
Pulling apart the cheeks with his hands, Charles began to work his tongue into the tight, hairy hole. He closed his eyes and pictured Tim's face as Chuck started to groan with erotic delight. He shoved his tongue harder and suddenly it was inside Chuck's ass!
"Oh, yessssss!" Chuck hissed. "Lick it, baby! Lick it!" He pressed hard on the back of Charles's head, keeping the tongue locked tightly inside his ass.
Charles licked furiously, feeling the spongy warm muscles squeezing on his tongue, sucking it even deeper. He ground his mouth from side to side, plunging and drilling his tongue as deeply as it would go.
Suddenly Chuck pulled his head away and dropped his legs back to the rock. He gripped his cock at the base and pushed Charles's mouth down to it. A long gasp of pleasure ripped from his throat as Charles's lips seized it hungrily and swallowed more than half of it in the first stroke down.
His heart was hammering wildly and his cock was once again fully erect as he drew his mouth slowly down on Chuck's throbbing penis. He took it straight to the bottom, grinding his mouth in the brush of pubic hair. It was so thick and stiff he felt an ache in the back of his throat from the head pushing against it, but he would not retreat an inch. He had wanted this boy's cock in his mouth for so long he scarcely dared believe it was really there at last. He held his lips firmly around the base, rocking his tongue slowly across the weight of the thick shaft pressing it down.
Chuck's hips began to move back and forth, his hands gripping Charles's head and urging him to begin sucking. He waited a moment longer, enjoying the feeling of just holding the hard penis inside his mouth, then backed his lips off until he held just the head. His mouth started slowly down again, but Chuck drove up hard and buried his cock to the hilt.
"Hurry!" the boy groaned. "I can't hold back very long!"
Charles started to bob his head in faster strokes, gathering saliva in his mouth and washing it over the smooth-skinned penis each time it rammed deep between his lips. He loved the slick feeling of it moving on his tongue, the way Chuck's legs were tensing around his neck, the swelling of the thick cords running through the shaft. There were tears in his eyes as he sucked. Tears of a joy that had been too long denied, but were now being given him in abundant quantity.
Gone were any feelings of guilt about the Tightness or wrongness of what he was doing. All that concerned him was the pleasure he was giving to this handsome young boy and the incomparable happiness it gave him in return.
"Suck me!" Chuck moaned. "Oh, suck me harder! I'm going to come!"
His hips were driving up at Charles's face, his cock hammering in and out of his tightly clenched lips. Charles drove his head faster and faster, his mouth gurgling and smacking loudly. Suddenly Chuck's thighs tightened with an iron grip around his head and the boy screamed as he began to ejaculate.
The first hot squirt of Chuck's sperm surprised Charles and he almost choked trying to swallow it. Chuck pushed his mouth all the way down on his erupting cock and held it firmly in place as he shot again and again, filling Charles's mouth with the sticky fluid.
When at last he had stopped and his prick was going limp in Charles's mouth, he relaxed the tension of his legs and urged Charles to lift up. "Come here," he whispered.
Charles pulled his lips from the boy's penis and swallowed the wad of sperm he had gathered from it. He had to cough as the thickness of it caught in his throat, but he grinned happily at Chuck and pulled the boy into his arms, squeezing him tightly.
"That was wonderful, baby!" he gasped.
Chuck's arms tightened around him and they kissed hard. "You aren't going to send me back now, are you?" Chuck asked softly, stroking his hands up and down Charles's sweated back. "Not after that."
Charles looked away from the boy's searching stare. "I don't know, Chuck. God, I just don't know what to do."
"Yes you do. You know exactly what you want to do."
"Yes, but-"
"There's no but about it," Chuck insisted. "You made a mistake years ago in not realizing what you felt for my father and doing something about it. Are you going to do the same thing all over again?"
For the longest time Charles said nothing. He just sat on the rock with the boy in his arms, listening to the far-off pounding of the surf against the shore and feeling the glare of the hot sun on his naked flesh. Then, shaking his head slowly from side to side, he whispered, "No." He pulled Chuck tightly into his arms and kissed him hard on the mouth. "No, Chuck, I'm not," he swore.
CHAPTER EIGHT
The next two weeks were like a dream for Charles: a dream which had been seventeen years coming, but which had been worth every minute of the wait. It seemed to him that he had never known happiness before. He would hold Chuck in his arms at night, staring at the boy's sleeping face, and fear that if he, too, fell asleep he might wake to find that it was all gone, had never been anything more than a prolonged fantasy of his mind. But in the morning, Chuck would still be there beside him, grinning at him, holding him, touching him, and proving in every way that it was real after all.
They made love constantly, and the amazing thing for Charles was the discovery that it could happen so naturally, with none of the shame or guilt he had feared he might feel. Taking the boy's cock into his mouth, or putting his own into Chuck's, seemed so right when it happened that there could be no question in his mind of it being wrong. There was none of the revulsion he had felt after sex with that boy in Chicago, nor the gnawing feeling of an unfulfilled need he had known so many times after sex with Vera. With Chuck, it was complete and wholly satisfying, a thing of such beauty that it frightened him at times, for it seemed impossible that something so wonderful could continue getting better.
And yet it did. Each time they had sex, he felt himself falling more deeply into the spell Chuck was weaving around him. His desire for the boy became ravenous, so that often they would have sex four or five times in a single day. He found his desire triggered by the most routine things Chuck did: seeing him in the shower, watching him sunbathe, even a certain look in his eye would be enough to rouse Charles's sexuality. He felt powerless to resist these impulses, as though he no longer had control over his responses, but had surrendered them completely and cheerfully to Chuck.
Somewhere in the back of Charles's mind, of course, was the realization that, idyllic as it was, their affair was based on tenuous ground. Sooner or later, he knew, a decision would have to be made about the future. They could not stay at the beach house forever, and with summer rapidly coming to an end it would soon be time to decide what the future course of their lives would be.
Charles knew any thought of taking Chuck back to the house in town was out of the question. There was no possibility of living under the same roof with Vera as his wife and Chuck his lover, pretending love for the one and forced to hide his love for the other. And yet, giving up either one would involve such drastic changes in his life that Charles was sickened by the thought of having to make a choice between them.
He was startled one afternoon while he and Chuck were having lunch to hear the sound of a car turning into the driveway and then stopping outside the house. He got up from the table and looked out the door. Vera was getting out of her car, her face grim as she caught sight of him at the door.
"Hi," he said, reaching for her hand as she came up the steps. "This is a surprise. Why didn't you call and let me know you were coming."
"Hello, Charles," she said coolly, not letting him take her hand. "I didn't call because I didn't know I was coming out here myself until I made up my mind an hour ago. Anyway," she said, giving him an accusing look, "as I recall, you were supposed to call me two weeks ago."
She stepped into the kitchen and saw Chuck sitting at the table, wearing only his skimpy bathing suit.
"Hello, Mrs. Davenport," he said with a grin. "I hope you're feeling better."
"I was," she said, giving him a harsh look, "until now."
"We-uh-were just having some lunch, Vera," Charles said, fearful of the look he saw in his wife's eyes as she glared at Chuck. "Would you like a sandwich or some coffee?"
"No, thank you. I'm just staying long enough to pick up some of my things. And Timmy's." There was a quick movement in her throat before she tamed away and went down the hall to the bedrooms.
"She looked like she was mad at me for something," Chuck said.
Charles motioned with his hand for the boy to be quiet. "We'll talk about it when she's gone," he said softly.
Chuck leaned toward him and squeezed his hand firmly. "She isn't going to change anything between us, is she?"
"Chuck, please-"
"Is she? Have you just been playing with me, but now that she's back everything's going to change?"
Charles returned the pressure of the boy's hand. "You should know better than to say something like that."
"Don't let her come between us," Chuck said.
"No matter what she says, just remember what's happened between us in the last two weeks."
"I will," Charles promised. "Don't worry about it."
Chuck started to finish his lunch, but Charles's stomach was too tense to hold any food. He knew this was going to be the showdown he'd feared. He got up from the table and smoked nervously for several minutes until Vera came back into the kitchen. She had a small suitcase in one hand and a shopping bag with personal articles from her own room and Timmy's in the other. Her eyes were red-rimmed, as though she'd been crying.
"Charles, I'd like to talk to you for a minute if you have the time," she said coldly.
"Of course."
She looked icily at Chuck. "If you don't mind," she said, "I'd like to talk to my husband in private."
Chuck looked up at her, then at Charles. "Go ahead, Chuck," Charles told him. "Wait outside for a couple of minutes, okay?"
The boy shrugged and got up from the table, but before he left the kitchen his eyes caught Vera's and returned in double measure the look of hatred he saw in them.
"How well you've trained him, Charles," Vera cracked. "Just like a pet rattlesnake. Cute-but watch out for his bite."
"Vera, let's not start that again. Please," Charles said wearily.
"I'm afraid we'll have to start that again, because it's precisely what I want to talk to you about."
"Chuck?"
"Yes. I want to know what you're planning to do about him."
"I-I don't know," Charles admitted. "I haven't been able to decide."
"You're not bringing him back to the house. You know that, don't you?"
"Yes, I know it."
"Then what will you do with him? I'm hoping you'll have the sense to tell me you're sending him right back where he came from."
"I don't know if I can do that, Vera."
"Why, for God's sake! What do you owe him? Of all the people in the world you should least worry about, it's him!"
"You don't understand him. He's a-"
"I don't understand him?" Vera threw back her head and laughed a harsh, brittle laugh. "Oh, Charles! How naive you are! I understand him far, far better than you can dream! I can see right through him!"
"What do you mean?"
Vera stared at him coldly for a long moment. "Maybe you'd better sit down before I tell you this, Charles."
"Tell me what?"
"Would it surprise you to learn that Mr. Innocent out there seduced me right before Timmy's death? That he was sleeping with me for almost a week?"
Charles's eyes widened in horror and he sank slowly into one of the kitchen chairs. "I-I don't believe it!"
"Well, you'd better believe it, because it's true. And it makes me sick to even think such a thing, but I'm almost positive now that he seduced Timmy, too! I'm sure of it! And that's why he-"
"Vera, shut up! I don't want to hear any more!" Charles shouted. His stomach felt as though it would heave at any moment, Of course it was true about Chuck and Timmy; he'd seen it with his own eyes. So why shouldn't what Vera was saying also be true? How else to explain the abrupt change in attitude she'd had toward him right before Timmy died, or the loathing she now had when she looked at him.
"Don't you see, Charles?" Vera said, taking him by the arm and sinking down to look into his face. "He's used every one of us. First Timmy, then me-now he's trying to play on your sympathies. And if you let him, he'll destroy us all."
Of course it was true. Charles knew it even before the words were out of her mouth. He'd seen it all in one blinding, terrifying flash of recognition. Perhaps he'd known it all along, but been so desperate to recapture the love he should have had with Tim through Chuck that his eyes were closed to it.
"Send him away, Charles," Vera begged. "Please! While there's still time for us to find the way back to where we were before he came into our lives."
"Where we were?" Charles said, suddenly lifting his head and meeting her eyes with a cold, hard stare. "Where was that, Vera?"
She was startled by his question and it showed on her face. "Why-why-"
"Tell me. Where were we? Just what did we have with each other that was so good?"
"We had each other!" she cried.
"Oh, God! That's a laugh if I ever heard one! Each other! And what does that mean? Do you truly suppose that the mere fact of living with a person for seventeen years makes it a meaningful relationship? Christ! In the last two weeks, I've-" He stopped abruptly, seeing the look in his wife's eyes.
"You've what?"
The screen door closed and they both looked up to see Chuck standing in the doorway. There was a strange smile of triumph in his eyes as he stared at Vera. "Finished with your talk?"
"Get out of here!" she shouted.
Chuck ambled slowly into the kitchen and put his arm around Charles's shoulder. "It's not me who's getting out of here. It's you."
"Charles!" Vera shrieked, realizing with horror what he had been unable to tell her. "Not you, too! He hasn't got to you, too!"
"I think you'd better pick up your things and go," Chuck said.
"No!" Vera swore. "I won't let him! Charles, I won't let him get away with this! Tell him you know what he did with me and Timmy! Tell him he won't get away with it again!"
Charles shook his head, his mind spinning dizzily. Even knowing the worst about Chuck, how could he let him go? How could he think it was possible to pick up the shattered pieces of a life that had never really been whole in the first place and feel it was an adequate substitute for what he'd found with Chuck?
"Charles," Vera swore, rising to her feet, "I'm going to leave and I won't come back. I swear I won't come back if you let me walk out that door. You have to decide now: it's either him or me.
She waited, but Charles said nothing.
Chuck's arm tightened around Charles's shoulder and he bent to kiss him quickly on the mouth, then looked defiantly at Vera. "It's me, baby," he laughed.
"Oh, God!" Vera covered her mouth and started to cry. She picked up the suitcase and shopping bag and ran from the kitchen. A moment later her car squealed out of the driveway and Chuck and Charles were alone again.
"You did the best thing," Chuck said. "You know she doesn't mean anything to you."
"Do I mean anything to you?" Charles asked in a choked voice.
"Of course you do!" Chuck laughed.
"What? Just what do I mean to you that Vera or Timmy didn't? You've slept with all of us; what makes me different from them? Or isn't there a difference? Are we all the same to you? Is everybody the same to you-things to be used to get whatever you want?"
"Hey!" Chuck said, gripping Charles more tightly. "What kind of talk is that?"
"Frightened talk. I told you that day on the rocks that I was frightened of you and now I think I'm beginning to understand why."
"Come on!" Chuck insisted. "You know I care about you."
"No, I don't know that. You say you do, but I don't know it."
"Let's go to bed and I'll show you." Chuck took his hand and tried to make him get up from the chair, but Charles pushed his hand away.
"For Christ's sake, Chuck! Do you think everything can be solved by going to bed?"
The boy shrugged and tried to smile, but the corner of his mouth was starting to twitch nervously and there was a strange look coming into his eyes.
"There has to be more to it than just sex! The reason two people should make love isn't just because it's a way to find release. That's what Vera and I had all these years and it's no good! There has to be more to it. There has to be love to make it mean anything."
"And now you're saying you don't love me?" Chuck said flatly.
"I thought I did. God, I really thought I did. But I wonder now if it ever really was you and not somebody else I was trying to make you into."
"My father."
Charles nodded his head sadly. "Yes. It probably was."
"So now what happens?"
"I don't know, Chuck. I don't see how I can keep you with me now."
"You're going to send me back to the school."
"I don't know what else to do!" Charles cried.
"You could stop kidding yourself, for one thing," the boy said bitterly. "My father is dead! Dead! He shot his brains out all over the living room. You're never going to have what you should have had with him, so why keep telling yourself you can? Accept what you've got, baby. Make the best of it."
He put his arms around Charles's neck and bent down to kiss him. "You've got me. Take me for what I am. Let that be enough."
Charles tried to turn away, but the boy was too strong. His mouth worked against Chuck's and after a moment he began to return his kiss.
Maybe he was right. What good was a life spent chasing a shadow, a ghost of what probably never was what he remembered it being? At some point in his existence he had to begin grasping reality, making contact with someone. For seventeen years he'd lived with a woman he was able to let walk away without so much as a word to stop her. He'd buried his son, his own flesh and blood, without even a tear. When would it stop?
"Chuck," he whispered. He held the boy's cheeks in his hands and kissed him again, then ran his hands slowly up and down the smooth, muscled chest and stomach.
"Come in the bedroom," Chuck murmured. He took Charles's hand and urged him from the chair. This time he came willingly and they walked hand-in-hand down the hall to the bedroom.
Chuck pushed down his bathing suit and went naked to the bed, stretching out flat on his belly. Charles undressed quickly and got into bed beside him. They kissed again and Chuck squirmed against Charles's body. "I want you in me," he whispered.
"Are you sure?"
"Yes!" Chuck moaned. His hand reached down for Charles's cock and worked it back and forth until it was hard. "Put it in me!" he begged. "Don't even grease it! Just ram it into me!"
Charles scrambled onto the boy's back and aimed his cockhead down at the solid buttocks. He rubbed it slowly over the crack until he felt Chuck thrusting up at him and knew he was outside the hole.
"Go ahead!" the boy groaned. "Ram it in!" Charles gasped and pushed his weight down hard. His cock met tight resistance outside Chuck's asshole and he had to push again. He felt the constricted muscles parting slowly as he pushed, holding his cock firmly by the base to guide it in.
"God!" Chuck cried. "Push it in!" Charles shoved again and his penis slowly began to move into Chuck's ass. He felt the inner muscles fighting him every inch, but he pressed down steadily until finally he was buried in the tight par-age to the hilt. "Chuck!" he sobbed. "Oh, Chuck!"
"Fuck me!" the boy groaned. "Give it to me good now!"
Charles started to drive his prick in and out of the boy's ass, finding it difficult to break through the tight friction at first, but as he continued to fuck him he felt Chuck's ass loosening, accepting his cock more easily so that it slipped in and out with just enough pressure to make the feeling wildly erotic.
"Yes!" Chuck sobbed, "give it to me! Oh, baby, give it to me hard!"
Charles's body slapped against Chuck's back as he moved with harder and harder strokes, driving himself deeper into the boy's ass each time he came down on him. His chest was beaded with sweat, his legs quivering as he fucked faster and faster.
Suddenly he began to gasp and his hands clenched Chuck's sides. He drove his cock right to the hilt and screamed into the boy's shoulder as it exploded in him, showering volley upon volley of hot fluid up his ass. He clung to Chuck's back for several minutes after he'd stopped coming, panting to get his breath back. Finally, he slipped his cock from the hole and gathered Chuck into his arms, kissing him hard on the mouth.
"Why did you want me to do it that way?" he whispered.
"Because I wanted to show you what I feel about you," Chuck said with a smile. "You're the first one who ever did that to me and it hurt like hell, but it was worth it if you know now."
"I do, Chuck!" Charles swore, showering the boy's face with kisses. "I was a fool not to!"
They lay tiredly in each other's arms, drifting into sleep. Charles had no idea how long it was before he was aware of the phone ringing. Reluctantly, he separated himself from Chuck and went to answer it. His face was ashen when he came back to the bedroom.
Chuck lifted up on his elbows and grinned at him. "Who was that?"
"What did you do?" Charles said, his voice barely above a whisper.
"What do you mean?"
"What did you do to her car!"
"Whose car?" Chuck said, still grinning.
"Vera's! What did you do when you went outside?"
"Nothing!" Chuck swore. "What are you talking about?"
"That was the police," Charles said. "Vera's car ran off the road and down over the cliff. They can't even get the body out yet."
Chuck's face went blank and he shrugged his shoulders. "Don't look at me. I didn't do anything."
"No?" Charles said bitterly. "And I suppose you didn't have anything to do with Timmy drowning, either?"
"Oh for crissake! I was up in the house with you and her when it happened! You know that!"
"How do I know what happened before you came up from the beach?" Charles insisted. "How do I know Timmy wasn't already dead by then?"
Chuck looked him hard in the eye. "You don't."
Charles covered his mouth with both hands and shook his head violently from side to side. "Oh, God!" he moaned. "She was right! She knew just what you were doing and I didn't listen!"
"What was I doing?" Chuck shouted, so loudly that Charles jumped in fright. "You're blaming me for his death and her death and I didn't have anything to do with either one. I was up in the house when Timmy drowned and I didn't touch the damn brakes on her car! I don't even know anything about cars!"
Charles's face suddenly went whiter. "Who said it was the brakes?"
"You did."
"I didn't. The policeman didn't even say it was the brakes. They don't know why the car went through the guardrails."
"Well it was obvious!" Chuck swore. "That's a steep drive with a lot of sharp turns. The brakes must have given out."
"You did it!" Charles whispered accusingly.
"Is that what you want to think?" Chuck's eyes met his defiantly.
"Who else could have?"
"You."
"Me? That's ridiculous!"
"Is it? She ran out of here crying; maybe she couldn't see where she was going. Maybe she didn't care where she was going any longer. There's more than one way to kill a person, you know. If you look at it, you're just as guilty as you say I am."
"No," Charles denied, shaking his head frantically.
"Yes!" Chuck insisted. "Timmy, too. And my father. And my mother, too, because that accident was no accident. She tipped the boat over herself because she didn't want to live anymore. She thought Dad was seeing another woman, but it was you that was always between them. So don't go pointing any fingers at me, because you're likely to find a couple pointing right back at yourself."
"No," Charles muttered.
"Yes! You and me are cut from the same cloth. We're exactly alike and that's just why we're going to get along so well from now on."
Charles looked at the boy's hard face, trying to deny it but knowing deep inside himself that he could not.
"You'd better get dressed and go down there," Chuck said. "They'll want you to answer some questions. I know you're going to give them the right answers. Aren't you?"
Charles nodded his head slowly, too sick at heart to answer in words.
"Yes, of course you will," Chuck said, his grin returning. "And when you come back, I'll be waiting for you."
