Tremble (58 page)

Five miles north Clive crawled into the Argentine tent they’d commandeered. He wanted to see if he could find new boots his size. There was nothing but a couple of sleeping bags and some rations. Inside a biscuit tin Clive found some chocolate. He stuffed the dark bitter pieces into his mouth. He’d never tasted anything so delicious. He sat on one of the sleeping bags. The Argies must have abandoned the
tent in a blind panic, there were still socks strewn across the bottom. He leaned back and, closing his eyes, slipped into a deep dream.

He is sitting in a crowded bar. There is a drink in his hand: whiskey, Jameson’s, he can smell it. The place is noisy—he recognizes it vaguely as a bar in Soho he used to go to, tucked behind the theater district. He liked it because it was like a Dickensian teahouse—there was even a portrait of Disraeli on the wall. He also liked it because, although the clientele was mainly heterosexual, it was a discreet pickup for men.

Clive looks around. The crowd is mixed: young couples meeting after work, suits, secretaries, advertising geeks in denim, women in tailored elegance spelling money. Tourists stand out among the English with their suntanned blondness and beige leather. From the clothes and the rosy faces Clive guesses that it is winter outside. As the voices pull into an articulated focus he steps into the throng and immediately forgets that he was dreaming.

There is a man sitting at the bar, his back to him. An empty stool stands to the right of him, almost as if people are afraid to sit next to him. On his other side two women chat loudly together. One, a vivacious blond in her early forties, attractive and confident, gestures dramatically with her hands, as if she hopes to catch the attention of the dark silent man.

Clive doesn’t need to see his face, he can read the signs: the way the youth sits, his broad back tapering to his waist, below which his hard, round arse juts out over the wooden seat, smugly waiting to be fucked, to be toppled from all its glory; the way the women keep glancing furtively; the body language of the men, either puffed up or leaning slightly in that direction, as if they too would like to be looked at, or at least acknowledged by the mysterious stranger. It is the aura of the famous or the extremely handsome—Clive knows it is the latter.

He pushes his way through the crowd. People keep turning to him, acknowledging him. They all look vaguely like people he knows, their features a composite of characteristics of friends, family, ex-girlfriends, even teachers from his primary school. As he passes among them, somewhere in his unconscious comes the dull revelation that these
chimeras are composed of people who have played a significant part in his life, who have loved him in one way or another.

He sits down on the vacant bar stool. The bartender, an uncanny mixture of his father and his maternal grandfather, immediately places another Jameson’s in front of him, as if he knows exactly what Clive drinks. The dark man continues to look directly ahead. Clive glances across—the stranger’s thighs are muscular and long under tight jeans, the legs of a working man or athlete. A fold of his white shirt exposes a glimpse of stomach, and the olive skin, taunting in its muscled, rippling perfection, fascinates him. It is an oasis of sex, a chink in the enigma into which he could slip his fingers and break the surface of aching desire. But he doesn’t. He plays the moment, eyes down—the stranger’s prick thickening under his stare, pushing the denim up into a solid curve below the belt.

He can feel the heat of the youth rising off him even from where he is sitting; his aroma is rich, a sweet musk. Without saying a word the boy turns. Clive stays still, eyes averted, relishing the feel of the gaze traveling across his skin. Finally he looks up and smiles to himself.

The boy is stunning, striking in the way of a roughly hewn sculpture, as if the artist, having carved such classical beauty, had been loathe to complete the task for fear the face would be too gorgeous, too perfect in its symmetry. Therefore his splendor lies in the infinitesimal imperfections: the nose, aquiline and noble, looks as if it might once have been broken; the strong chin—intensely masculine—is split by a deep dimple; the eyes, almond and almost lidless with golden irises flecked with green, are, at second glance, placed slightly at an angle, the right being fractionally higher than the left; but the mouth…the mouth is faultless.

Just staring at it gives Clive an instant erection. Placed in a narrow face with very high cheekbones that hint at some distant Indian heritage, the lips are almost an obscenity. Curved and impossibly full, they jut out from the boy’s face as if they had been painted on at the last minute. It is the mouth of a far older and far more experienced man; a wry knowing plays at its corners, suggesting that the boy is acutely aware of his own beauty and finds its existence in such a body ironic. It is not the mouth of a boy but rather the mouth of a libertine, the lips of someone who, despite his intelligence, can’t control his own inherent carnality.

The balance of his beauty is offset by a scar that runs from the top of one cheek toward the corner of his mouth. It only adds to the flawed edginess Clive finds so erotic; it is a mark of aggression, of experience, which sits like a paradox on one so young. The scar, Clive notes, is a deep mauve and looks as if it is still healing, the flesh beaded like the uneven lip of a vagina. He can almost taste it.

They lock eyes and the youth’s desire cuts like a blade. Shaken, he stands. The boy follows and Clive is surprised to discover that the youth is taller than himself, his shoulders not yet settled into their adult width, his hips and buttocks a too narrow basket for the heavy cock, now a stiff rod pushing against the blue denim. They say nothing. Clive, knowing that the boy will follow, allows his dreaming to take him back through the crowded room toward a door with a neon Exit sign.

The door leads into a stairwell, the kind that might exist in any building, the concrete spiral that always leads to a roof. Clive begins to climb, vaguely aware of the incongruity of walking out of a bar with the atmosphere of a Victorian pub and into a stairwell that belongs to a sixties’ office block. He doesn’t care; everything feels right, feels as if it has fallen into place, destiny running its course. The boy behind him shadows his steps, echoing his gestures, his breath, his heat, on the back of his neck.

He begins to climb faster until he is running full pelt as the stairs wind up flight after flight. Finally, at the top, the stairwell finishes with a door marked Authorized Persons Only. Without hesitation, and without turning around, Clive pushes it open.

He is on a roof high over a city he doesn’t recognize. Instead of the freezing English winter the temperature is balmy, the view below a bustling hornets’ nest of lights, cars, sirens blasting, waves of music, exotic, thudding, floating up like translucent bubbles. Behind him he hears the sound of the door closing and the panting of the boy as he catches his breath.

He closes his eyes. Waiting. That dangerous, accelerating eternity before the first caress. Heart pounding like a frenzied drummer. Cock bursting. Skin a thousand sensors bursting with expectant desire. He could come right now, without a single touch. The boy’s breath is warm on the skin of his cheek as one hand pushes over his flat stomach, reaching down for his cock, which is like hard steel, and begging for freedom.

The kid bites the back of his neck—pleasure bordering on pain as, in the same instant, his fingers unzip Clive’s fly and pull out his prick. Hands grip him firmly, encircling the tip, stroking him, pressing himself into Clive’s back, his own penis pushing against Clive’s buttocks. Clive—always the Top—struggles for a second, aware of the power of those muscled arms that are thicker than his own yet holding back their full strength. He twists in the youth’s embrace and, opening his eyes, takes that mouth into his own, hungrily kissing the fruit of his lips, his tongue probing, wanting all of him, now and forever. Hungrily the boy responds, hands everywhere, frantic under his shirt, around his arse, squeezing him, probing him. Clive, sucking at his tongue, wonders at the impossible sweetness of him. Am I dreaming? I am dreaming…so I am dreaming…let this be real, he thinks. Curling his fingers through the thick black hair, he jerks the youth’s head back suddenly, enjoying the surge of power, the fight. He pushes the boy down to his knees. The youth plays along, taking Clive’s cock with both hands, paying homage, running the tip across his cheeks, slowly over his mouth, over those lips (pleasure pounding dimly at the back of Clive’s sleeping mind), teasing, tonguing the eye, his hands encircling Clive’s arse, playing him as if he’s fucking him.

Unable to bear any more Clive grabs the back of his head, pushing him hard toward his groin—the boy takes all of Clive’s prick deep into his throat without gagging. His tongue circling around and around, his rhythm increasing faster and faster, stopping only to suck Clive’s balls, then run his tongue down the length of his shaft before those lips eat their aching way over him again.

Clive watches the beauty of the boy, his swollen mouth riding him. His orgasm sharpens and mounts suddenly, shooting from somewhere deep inside his body, and he comes with a profundity that shakes deep within him, the boy swallowing all.

They stay there for a moment, the city noise swelling in the silence. The boy, after wiping his mouth, grins and stands, towering over Clive. He kisses him briefly on the mouth, then, taking hold of his hips, turns him around roughly, pushing one knee between his legs, forcing him to widen his stance. For a moment Clive wrestles with him, trying to twist away, but the youth overpowers him. Twisting one arm up behind his back, he forces Clive to bend over. It is strangely exciting, this moment before surrender—the boy’s cock a thickness blindly pushing against his
buttocks. Clive shivers. He’s never been taken by a man and yet this time he wants it. He wants the feel of him inside, to be split like a peach. To be filled, rammed, to feel his shuddering violence. The youth spits into his hand, moistens Clive, then enters with a sharp thrust. Clive freezes, trembling with the novel sensation of being possessed, yet still in control. In control of his own pleasure and that of this youth’s. Feeling him tighten the boy pauses, then reaching around starts to caress him again. Clive hardens and slowly the boy begins again, this time pushing gently then becoming faster; he presses Clive’s buttocks wide apart, squeezing his flesh, now thrusting deeply. Clive gasps as the pain and pleasure fuse into one ecstatic understanding of being taken. This is abandonment, he thinks, this is how it is to be taken and to be the taker. The youth’s panting mixes with the cries of the city below, the screech of a night bird and Clive’s own cry of ecstasy as the thundering of the boy’s orgasm releases his own—more intense than ever before.

“What is your name?” The young stranger’s voice is more mature than Clive had imagined. He waits for a moment before answering.

“Clive,” he says softly. “Clive.”

He woke.

“Scarsgard, look sharp!” his commanding officer barked in his ear. For a second he lay there trying to remember where he was and who he was. The dream came flooding back, and, terrified that he might have a telltale semen stain down his trousers, he sat up. The CO pressed his rifle into his hand. “Get the fuck up. We attack in ten.”

The moving shadows of the other men fell across the canvas as Clive checked his clothes. He had come. He cleaned himself up with a tissue, thanking God that the standard-issue parka was a dark wool, then stepped out into the chilly dawn.