The Lord Won't Mind (The Peter & Charlie Trilogy) (44 page)

As Peter rounded the promontory and headed into the next bay, he caught a glimpse out of the corner of his eye of Jean-Claude climbing along the rocks after him. His heart accelerated so that it became difficult to swim. He let his legs drop and eased over onto his back and floated, waiting for the excitement to subside. He could still turn around and go back to the others. There was no point in a brief encounter with Jean-Claude out here; it would only add to the weight of guilt and frustration that had been accumulating in him for the last few days.

Frustration, really, more than guilt, frustration at being able to have only brief secret moments with Jean-Claude. He supposed he ought to feel more guilty but he knew he wasn’t really doing anything bad to Charlie, given the circumstances. He could even imagine making a case for himself in the inconceivable event that he had the opportunity to do so. It had nothing to do with their life together. He was as much in love with Charlie as ever. He hadn’t asked to be struck by a sudden uncontrollable infatuation with Jean-Claude. It had happened, and surely it was better to do something about it and get over it than to let it eat away at everything that was most precious to them both. It had been getting so that he couldn’t make love successfully with Charlie without thinking of Jean-Claude. If that trick had failed—it was too appalling to think about.

Of course, he couldn’t hope for Charlie to accept any of this, any more than he would, if the situation were reversed. If he caught Charlie doing what he’d been doing, he would kill him, or kill himself, or both probably. Then why was he doing it?

In the past, when he had been violently attracted to someome, the normal complications of life had always given him time to reason himself out of it. Meeting places had to be arranged. Stories had to be invented. By the time you did all that, you realized it wasn’t worth it. Here, living as they did, practically naked all day long, a look was almost as complete a commitment as an embrace, and the final step was such a small one that it seemed idiotic not to take it, like a swimmer up to his waist in water making a big fuss about getting wet all over. He had as good as been to bed with Jean-Claude before they had even touched each other. That was the only thing that had made it possible to take the vast and almost unimaginable step of being unfaithful after all these years. He had fought it and resisted it and had been terrified by what he had sensed it was doing to him. Life without loving Charlie was a contradiction in terms.

Life
was
Charlie and always had been since he had first set eyes on him, not even knowing that passion between two men was possible. Even after Charlie had banished him from his life and got married, even when he was more or less doing the streets of New York, changing bedmates every night and sometimes a couple of times during the day, too, it had never changed, even though he had longed and prayed for it to. Charlie had only to say the word to get him back. Always Charlie, so that he had been quite unprepared to cope with the predicament of Jean-Claude.

He had been tempted to extricate himself by advocating the Kingsleys’ Greek project, but he was afraid Charlie would suspect something after all the trouble he had taken to arrange the St. Tropez summer. Besides, he had looked into Jean-Claude’s eyes once too often; the commitment had been made.

The alternative had been his desperate plot to spend what he truly hoped and believed would be a therapeutic night with the boy. Do it and get it out of your system. If it hadn’t worked out like that, it was because Jeannot had revealed to him a side of himself he hadn’t known existed, a dominating male side with a lust for possession, rather than being possessed. Totally uncharacteristic. A sexual aberration. Thinking of that night and of the few hurried, anxious occasions since, he felt a turbulence all through him—heart, loins, a tingling even in his hands and legs—so that he had trouble keeping himself afloat. He knew the boy was near, probably watching him from the shore, hesitating to make a move for fear of contravening some intention of Peter’s. Peter had that sort of power over him. He wondered if he dared risk taking him up under the trees. If he did, he must make very sure that it was for no more than ten minutes, absolute maximum.

He heard the thrashing of water and his heart surged up suffocatingly. He let his body straighten into the buoyant sea and turned and saw Jeannot churning toward him. His eyes swept the shore. Anne was the only person in sight, alone at the end of the promontory. Jeannot flailed the sea with his arms in a final stroke and came gliding up to him. His brows arched up thrillingly into his temples. His dark eyes were soft with desire. Peter longed for the moment that was bound to come—tomorrow? the next day?—when he could look at him with indifference. He knew that if he could spend a whole uninhibited day with him, it would be over. The boy would bore him into his senses.

“Hello, child,” he said into Jeannot’s eyes. Mesmerized, he allowed him to slide up against him and their mouths met above the water in a salty kiss. Peter’s sex stiffened and he gave his trunks a tug to allow it to ride up against his belly. He kicked the sea to back away. “That’s enough of that. People can see us.”

“Only Anne. My lover, I’ve wanted you so. I couldn’t stay away any longer. Didn’t you know I was waiting for you on the beach?”

“I knew. I was about to come in.”

“We have a chance to be together. Why do you waste it?”

“It’s not safe. I’m not safe around you.”

“You talk as if you are not your own master. You’re too young to be tied down. I want you. Why don’t you take me?”

“Listen, child, I’m almost thirty-one. That’s a hell of a lot older than you are. You’ll find out things. I’m not my own master because I don’t want to be. My life’s the way I want it. No matter how much I want you, there are more important things. I’ve told you. You said you understood.”

“I do understand, or did. But things change all the time. I’m more in love with you than I’ve been with anybody in my life. It’s more every day.”

Their arms and legs waved slowly to keep them afloat, touching constantly, sliding across each other caressingly. Only the necessity to keep moving restrained Peter from taking the boy in his arms. “Just remember,
I
haven’t said anything about love. I might’ve said almost anything else but not that. I’m nuts about you, but that’s sex, child. Don’t get it confused.”

“All right, but for sex we must be together. When can that be?”

“Whenever I can manage it, like yesterday. Maybe tomorrow. Shopping’s a good excuse. We’ve got to be damn careful.”

“I don’t know how long I can be careful with you.” He took a deep breath and sank beneath the sea. Peter felt his hands on him, lifting his sex out of his trunks so that it rose fully into erection, stroking it, peeling the trunks down over his feet. He didn’t resist, though his eyes kept watch on the shore; it felt glorious to be all naked in the sea. It was amazing what a difference the little scrap of cloth made. Jean-Claude surfaced with a great blowing of water and tossed his thick, dark hair back from his eyes. He laughed as he held up two pairs of trunks. “We are all ready for each other now. Underwater, you’re a beauty—do you say that? You’re so beautiful. It’s unbelievable.”

“If you lose those, we’ll have to stay out here all day. Come on. We better go in.”

They struck out for shore, not very purposefully, letting their bodies glide against each other. Jean-Claude dived and rolled under him like a porpoise, his hands and legs and chest constantly brushing Peter’s sex, keeping it erect. When they reached shallow water, Jeannot took him in his arms and pulled him down and they sank together, briefly locked in a submarine embrace. All of Peter’s body was suddenly sensitized and electrified by a gathering orgasm.

He struggled to the surface, gasping and shaking off water. “Hey, wait. Jesus. Let’s sit here and cool off. We’ve got to get our trunks on.”

Jeannot made another lunge at him and lifted him and grappled him toward shore. Peter laughed and struggled, slipping about in his arms, half-in and half-out of the water. Jean-Claude beached him with his legs still submerged and slid down over him and took his sex in his mouth. Peter’s body gave a great leap and he fell back under the sun, his eyes closed, and lifted his hips in surrender to Jeannot’s worship. In an instant, he remembered where he was, remembered Anne, remembered that the whole world could see them. He struggled up with a little cry and snatched his trunks where Jeannot had dropped them and plunged back into the water. His knees almost buckled as the orgasm threatened to overwhelm him, but the sea calmed him and the crisis receded. His heart was racing with panic.

Advancing into the sea, he forced himself to glance over his shoulder and survey. the beach, prepared to see the whole party lined up as witnesses. Anne was still there, but there was nobody else. When he was in up to his waist he stood and waited for the tumult in him to subside completely. Maybe this would be a lesson to him. Maybe now he could free himself from this ridiculous infatuation. He was trembling with the frustration of the interrupted climax.

He heard splashing behind him and his trembling increased as Jean-Claude moved in beside him. His sex lifted achingly; it felt as if it would remain erect forever.

“Why didn’t you let me finish?” Jeannot reproached him.

“Are you out of your mind? Anne could see us.”

“She’s watched me before. She would have warned us if anybody was coming.”

“Jesus. I don’t go in for public performances.” It was unbearable to feel Jeannot so close and not be able to do anything about it. He was seething with thwarted desire. He was almost sorry he hadn’t let him go ahead since, as it turned out, nobody would have seen. Except Anne. He must be losing his mind if he was willing to let the girl watch. “Don’t you understand?” he burst out. “Anybody could turn up any minute. I told you we have to be careful.”

Jean-Claude sank down until the water was up to his chin and moved around in front of him. From the shore, they would look innocent enough, but the proximity of Jeannot’s mouth to his straining sex made his heart begin to pound again. He wished it was possible to do it underwater.

“Now you’re angry,” Jeannot said contritely. “Let me just look at you. I’ve never had a chance to really look at you.” His hand drifted toward Peter’s sex.

“Don’t touch me,” Peter warned him hastily. “I’m almost coming.”

Jeannot brightened. “Yes? Me too. I think I could come just looking at you. Are all Americans big there?”

“Lots of them are bigger.” Peter stood with his feet apart in the shifting sand, his hips thrust forward so that his sex rose tautly before him, magnified by the water, long and straight, an arrow of flesh.

“Amazing,” Jeannot murmured.

“I shouldn’t think you’ve had many complaints, as far as that’s concerned.”

Jeannot smiled. “No. We’re a good match. A good pair. Is that right? But that’s what’s so amazing. I’m much bigger than you everywhere else.”

Peter felt once more the preliminaries of orgasm in the tingling of his loins. Could they make a dash for the trees and find some satisfaction there? No. He obviously couldn’t trust himself to observe any reasonable precautions. He swung his hips forward so that the head of his sex surfaced. “Up periscope: Damn the torpedoes.” He burst into laughter and felt his tension pass. He doubled over with laughter. This was more like it. He would laugh himself back to sanity. He laughed still more when he caught a glimpse of Jeannot’s puzzled, tentative smile. “Have you really let Anne watch?” he asked when the laughter had subsided.

“Of course, if she happened to be there. She’s in love with me. We’ve always known everything about each other.”

“Knowing and seeing are two different matters,” Peter said. His mind skirted a memory he still couldn’t face without a shrinking of the spirit, a sense of impoverishment and lasting humiliation. He hurried on, “Just don’t try any tricks like that again. I don’t see how I can face her.”

“But that’s of a foolishness. She’s in love with you, too. She wants us to be happy. It will make her happy to see us together. She would love to see you now. I would love to show her my beautiful lover. I’ve told her about what you’ve taught me.”

Distaste and an unfamiliar excitement mingled with his hunger for the boy. It would take very little to make him despise him. Already, he felt safer, already the urgency of his desire had eased. He felt that the moment was near when he could look at him and feel nothing. With an effort of will, of which he would have been incapable only five minutes ago, he turned from him and dropped down into the water and pulled on his trunks so that his erection was trapped once more against his belly. “Put your pants on,” he called over his shoulder as he sprang forward onto the water with a splash and swam vigorously away, waiting for the exertion to reduce his sex to normal.

When he turned back, Jean-Claude was standing on the beach, properly covered, waiting for him. He splashed out of the water to him, alert to his own responses, hoping that the last few minutes had speeded up the process of alienation. Jeannot stood with a hestitant smile on his ripe lips, his eyes guileless and welcoming. He didn’t speak but put his arm around Peter’s shoulders and hugged him awkwardly, boyishly. It was such a simple expression of need that Peter was immediately disarmed; he would have to get through another day of torment.

They walked the fifty-odd yards back to the promontory where Anne had been sitting all along. Peter braced himself to speak to her naturally, to act as if nothing unusual had happened. Her staring eyes were on him when they joined her.