"Will you please excuse me?" he asked everyone and no one in particular, then pushed his chair away from the table. "I think I need to lie down for a bit."
A chorus of sures and of courses and we'll be heres ensued, so without making eye contact with Jeremy or Carlo, Arthur made his way back up to the house, through the kitchen and into his quarters, where he started the shower and found that, as his clothes dropped into a pile on the marble floor, he was on the verge of a colossal depression.
* * *
He was awakened by tapping on his door.
His eyelids pushed themselves open and he saw it was already past twilight; he'd been asleep, apparently, for hours.
"Come in," he said, not caring that he'd slipped into bed naked after his shower, as he was far beyond worrying about such trivia anymore. After all, it was probably just Jeremy, because when Katharine wanted anything from him she always used the intercom.
He had just pushed himself upright against his pillows and gathered the sheets around his waist when the door swung open, and there he stood, grinning at him like a fool. Jeremy squeezed the door shut behind him, then dashed over and threw his arms around him.
Arthur returned his hug vigorously, feeling Jeremy's mouth smooching along his jaw toward his mouth.
Their lips touched, and he heard himself whimper. He wrenched his body up on top of Jeremy, his naked skin now fully exposed to the evening breeze coursing in through the open windows, while Jeremy's tongue twisted and licked the inside of his mouth and his body slid up to mirror his position: knees to knees and chest to chest and lips to lips. He drew a full breath of him through his nostrils and became dizzy with desire; the smell of him, the taste of him, and the dense heat of his body, even through his clothes, made him swoon.
"I was so worried about you," Arthur managed to whisper at last. "I was so afraid, during everything, that we'd never get a chance to be here together--and that's what kept me going."
"Me, too. But I knew, somehow."
"So did I."
"Where's Katharine?"
"The fifth glass of wine knocked her off her pumps." Jeremy chuckled. "I just put her to bed upstairs; she was snoring like an old bear when I closed her door."
"She drank five glasses of wine?" Arthur asked. "How do you know it was five?"
"Growing up with my mom, I counted 'em as a reflex."
"Boy, she still must be freaked out about everything."
"That makes four of us."
Arthur reached up and ran his finger inside the cleft on Jeremy's chin. "Did...Carlo and you talk?"
Jeremy grinned at him. "We worked it out; we both knew it was coming. But it's OK. He understands."
"He's amazing, even besides the fact that he saved our lives."
"Yeah." Jeremy smiled sideways. "We're still gonna be each other's family, though.
Really good friends, you know?"
"I'm glad, 'cause I'd really miss him." Arthur grinned and kissed Jeremy again.
"God, I love holding you."
"And I love"--he nuzzled Arthur's neck--"you."
Jeremy peeled off his T-shirt, and Arthur took in his sculptureperfect torso. "How did you ever get so beautiful?" he asked, tracing a finger under his rigid pectorals, then sliding it down his buckling abs to the follow the crease of his adonis belt.
"The same way you got so fuckin' sexy," Jeremy growled, grinning. Then Arthur collapsed on top of him, so both could feel the other's rigid sex pressed up against his own.
But Arthur wanted to take this moment slowly; this was something he'd fantasized about for some time. "Wait," he said.
"I can't," Jeremy whispered as his hand massaged him.
Suddenly nearing the crest of his pleasure, Arthur clamped his hand down on Jeremy's. "Patience, my love," he told him, while guiding both arms around his neck.
They kissed and held each other and kissed some more; then Jeremy pulled Arthur's hands to the buttons of his jeans. And as each one lower was popped, the men's breathing quickened proportionately.
Finally, Arthur slipped his thumbs inside the waistband and slid Jeremy's pants down off him--while purposefully squeezing shut his eyelids, as if savoring the moments before lifting the lid from a box he knew contained a treasured gift.
Then he allowed his eyes to drift open.
Even in the diminished light, the naked, uncompromised male beauty that met his eyes called up his basest lust. But what seized him, as his mind and soul and psyche scrambled to make sense of the vision before him--beyond the bashful smile and flashing brown eyes and lyrical musculature and burgeoned, begging manhood--was the purity of emotion he felt.
Love. Without doubt. Without hesitation. Without confusion.
Love, clear as knowing green will always be green and will never be confused with red.
Love so absolute that he, Arthur, ceased to exist in his own mind.
Jeremy reached out and pulled him close, awakening him from his ecstatic void; and Arthur, now delirious with desire, felt the fullness of his own hot skin pressed gently against his lover's.
Their arms encircled each other and they clenched each other, and their mouths locked and twisted within the other's and their thrusting shafts dribbled with anticipation against their taut, concave bellies and moist, hairy thighs. "Ahhh,"
Arthur moaned, as he felt himself brim with tears that were not tears, but rather the inhaled gasping of his soul that sometimes erupted during pieces by Handel or Copeland, whose fiercely beautiful passages transposed into song moments like these.
Their hands smoothed each other, teased each other, grasped each other while they took turns biting each other's lips and nuzzling each other's necks.
Then Arthur's tongue began teasing a haphazard trail, as his mouth descended Jeremy's heaving torso.
"You do that and I'm gonna come," he whispered.
"Uh-uh," Arthur replied, knowing he could very fully control his lover's pleasure.
But he paused momentarily with his ear to Jeremy's stomach anyway, so he might hear the faint creaking of Jeremy's bowels, and the urgent rush of air filling and leaving and filling his lungs.
His mouth watered.
With his own rigid member insistent against Jeremy's shin, he kissed the drooling plum. Then his lips parted and his tongue extended as he relaxed the back of his throat to receive his lover's eucharist.
"Ohhh...," Jeremy moaned as he felt the slick heat of Arthur's mouth sheathe his shaft. And with his own hand he encouraged the back of Arthur's nodding head as he suckled him gently, and his teasing fingers massaged his naked thighs.
Jeremy's hips began pistoning faster, and his back began to arch.
Arthur's mouth surrendered its prize, and he stretched himself fully alongside him and kissed him, with one arm under him and the other rubbing the sweating, rigid contours of his flesh.
"Do you?" Jeremy's voice managed, with the faint taste of himself on his lips.
Arthur shook his head, then nodded gently, while their eyes met in the dark without benefit of sight. "You."
They shifted positions.
Then they prepared themselves.
One raised his legs high, while the other climbed onto his knees and nudged himself at his opening, while running his hands up and down the backs of his thighs. "Tell me if it hurts," he said, "or if I'm going too fast." And the other put both hands on his shoulders and strained up off the bed to meet his mouth, while the splendid sword slid slowly inside, then stopped.
"My love," Arthur said, as they began undulating as one.
Slowly. Gently.
He pushed himself all the way in, then pulled himself nearly all the way out.
Gently. Slowly.
He halved himself, pulling his ankles toward his shoulders. Then he began teasing himself, as the other man held his calves and began to thrust madly.
Arthur lost himself in the pleasure, as the sensation and the realization of what was happening brought him to the edge. We're fucking, came the
thought like a Times Square ticker across what little remained of his conscious mind. Jeremy and I are fucking we're fucking Jeremy and I are fucking we're fucking...
They rocked together and their mouths found each other and they moaned through their kisses and gasped through their moans, and his thrusts became pounding became thrashing and he felt himself being carried toward that line which signifies there's no holding back--that what's coming has all of the unstoppable inertia of a boulder tumbling down a steep mountainside.
"I'm coming, Arthur, I'm coming!"
He emptied himself inside him while the other striped his torso.
He collapsed upon his chest while they were still conjoined.
They hugged each other and kissed, while glued together by their pent-up love.
It took them a moment for their breathing to slow.
"When did you know?" Jeremy murmured, finally.
"After you left for Hawaii. I ached. What about you?"
Jeremy giggled as he released him, then snuggled into the crook of Arthur's arm.
"It was right after you gave me the baseball glove and the cap. Remember?"
"You cried. Which hardly seems like someone in love."
"I cried because I felt so much for you and I was so confused," he whispered, with their noses almost touching. "I mean, here you were this ultimate nice guy, running around doing everything for me and teaching me how to drive and all, and then you give me this Christmas present like you're my dad and I'm feeling totally guilty because...I guess because I'd already started having feelings for you and wanted you to be more than my dad, but didn't know how to tell you. You know?"
"I think so."
"It's like you were giving me this perfect gift, but it was, uh, the wrong color."
"So is it the right color now?" Arthur asked.
Jeremy grinned and climbed on top of him, and Arthur saw that he was hard again.
"It's my favorite color now, old buddy."
Arthur threw his arm around him and held him, and then flipped him onto his side to spoon him, with his chest to his back, his spent cock against his taut, velvety buttocks, and his knees against the backs of his legs.
He kissed his shoulders; then his hands reached around his back to smooth his hairless chest and run his hand along the ridges of his abdomen. "I love you so much," he murmured, as his hand began to caress him. "You've got no idea what I went through when I thought I'd lost you."
Jeremy closed his eyes and drew Arthur's arms tighter around him. "I know," he said as his eyes drifted closed, and he pushed his ass up tight against him.
"When should we tell Katharine?" Arthur asked.
But no reply met his ears.
So he held the snoring boy in his arms, while smoothing the wrinkled bandage covering his wrist.
Chapter 48
His eyes scanned the list of agents' phone extensions as they scrolled up on his computer screen.
Rodriguez, M.
Roswell, B.
Samuels, H.
Shipston, K.
And then he spotted it: Singer, C.
He flipped open the brand-new cell phone Katharine had presented to him--as she had to Jeremy and Carlo as well--at the party yesterday, and pressed the numbers.
"You've reached the voice mail for Special Agent Carl Singer with the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Please leave your name, telephone number and the nature of your call, and I'll get back to you at my very next opportunity. Thank you."
He waited for the tone. "Hello, Agent Singer, this is Art Blauefee, formerly of the FBI. You helped us out with that mess down in Brazil with the Tyler family; I was down there with Jeremy Tyler when he was kidnapped, and just wanted to say thanks for whatever you did." He thought for a moment. "no need to call me back.
I just wanted to say that everything's good now, and we're all recovering, safe and sound at home. Thanks again--you did a great job."
He ended the call and slipped the phone inside his jacket; he had to run by the market and pick up some things for an impromptu trip Jeremy wanted to take up to the chalet at Lake Estrella--that is, after they had their discussion with Katharine.
Which he was dreading.
* * *
He was about to load the final bag of groceries into the back of Jeremy's Rover when he felt his phone vibrate in his pocket. He flipped it open and looked at where the number should have shown on the tiny screen, but it read only NO
INFO.
"Hello?"
"Is this Art Blauefee?"
"Speaking." He hefted the bag over the tailgate and slammed shut the hatch.
"This is Carl Singer, returning your call."
"Oh," he said, making his way to the driver's-side door. "Thanks for calling me back. But you didn't have to."
"Yeah, I know. But I was curious about how everything was resolved. I heard the official version, of course, but something didn't smell quite right. And since the State Department follows up on these foreign affairs, I wasn't privy to all the details."
"What did you hear?" Arthur asked as he hefted himself up into the big vehicle.
"That everything was textbook. Hostage returned. End of story."
Arthur laughed. "Nothing could be further from the truth." He twisted the key in the ignition, and the engine roared to life. "She couldn't come up with the money in time--Katharine Tyler, that is--so Fabiano and his crew were actually in the process of serving Jeremy up as a human sacrifice when we rescued him." He buckled himself in.
"Really." Singer paused. "Well, I guess everything turned out OK, and that's what matters. So what happened to Mr. Fabiano?"
"One of our party--and I wish it'd been me--killed him. Shot him in the head during the rescue scuffle."
"Christ. It sounds like you guys barely made it out of there."
"Pretty much."
"So can I ask you something, off the record?"
"Shoot. off the record." He began backing out of the parking space.
"What did Mrs. Tyler tell you about the negotiations? She's a piece of work, by the way."
He chuckled. "I know it." He double-checked his mirrors. "She said just what I said earlier, that it was too much money and she couldn't liquidate her assets in time."
"Did she tell you how much they were asking for?"
"One hundred million euro," Arthur said as he slipped the transmission into drive and began weaving his way through the crowded parking lot.
Singer laughed. "Try a fraction of that. Ten million."
" What? She could've paid that."
"That's what I thought. Then when I made the mistake of telling her that we usually start negotiations with an offer of ten to twenty percent, she wanted to give them even less."
Arthur felt suddenly as if he'd been punched in the stomach. He slammed on the brakes and a car in back of him honked. "Are you telling me that she only made an offer of one to two million euros, on her nephew's life? On all of our lives, in fact?"
"It's still a lot of money, man. But from what I understand, the lady's loaded. It was weird that she was trying to cheap out. especially since she had that K and R
policy."
"What's that?" His foot pressed the gas, and he began moving again.
"That's right, you've been out of the business. That's kidnap and ransom insurance, and it's the newest thing for corporations to take out on their executives who travel overseas--especially to South America."
"She never told me she had that. How do those work?"
"The insurance company does all the work. Negotiations, transfers, everything."
"So why didn't she use their services?"
"Says she tried, but the kidnappers would only deal with her directly. And I confirmed this before we handed the case over to State--they would only deal with her."
"That smells fishy."
"Bingo."
He paused. "Are you sure about all of this?"
"I've got the transcripts from our phone calls; I could e-mail
'em to you if you wanted. Off the record, of course."
"No," Arthur replied. "That's OK." He waited for an opening in the traffic and then eased out onto the boulevard. "But if I need anything else, can I call you?"
"Anything for a former bureau man," Singer said. "Just let me know."
"I appreciate the info, Carl."
"Anytime. Take care." They ended the call.
He drove back to the compound in an angry daze.
She lied to me.
She lied to us.
Chapter 49
"Absolutely not!" Katharine bellowed. "The thought of you two being together is disgusting, incestuous, reprehensible!"
"Yeah, I'd forgotten he's my dead dad," Jeremy agreed sarcastically.
"You know what I mean, young man. And as for you"--she stared down her nose at Arthur--"I should have known that as a lonely homosexual, you would have eyes for him, for this... child."
"Now, wait a minute," Arthur cut in. "He's no child, Katharine. He's legally a man, and he's old enough to make decisions about who he wants to be with."
"Oh, forgive me, you're correct as usual," she snipped. "What I should have said, Mr. Blauefee, is that compared to you, he is a child. He's young enough to be your child. You're a middle-aged man. Have you no shame?"
Her words stung him. "Jeremy, let's forget this. She's not gonna budge." He stood up to leave.
"No! I'm not gonna give up that easily, Arthur. And you shouldn't, either."
"But she's not my family; she's just my employer. She has no motivation whatsoever to see my point of view."
"No," Jeremy countered. "You are our family. She counted on you to save me from Bill, and then she sent you down to Brazil to risk your own life, which you did.
And you saved my life." He turned to her. "You owe him that much, that you should at least listen to us, Aunt Katharine. Wouldn't that be the proper thing to do?"
Arthur saw that she was fuming, and her skin was almost the same color as her henna-enhanced hair.
Nick Nolan Page 26