Forth into Light

by Gordon Merrick

  “Jesus. If you go on like this, I’ll come, standing right here.”

  “Could you? That would be rather thrilling, but I want too much to feel you all over me.”

  Peter took a step toward her and they both cried out as their bodies and mouths met and their arms encircled each other. In another moment, they were on the bed, continuing to cry out at the initial exploration of each other’s bodies.

  The pleasure Peter found in women was rooted in the pleasure he could give them; giving pleasure excited him sexually. There was a smell, a taste, an ooze of mysterious essences that he knew were supposed to make him lustful but they never had. He had learned to isolate his senses from them and concentrate on the nerve patterns he could play on in erogenous areas. His passion was liberated when he found that her body sent out only very subtly those primeval signals. He made love to her with his hands and mouth. He wanted (he smiled to himself as he thought it) to prove to her that a man could rival a woman as a lover. She shuddered and beat her feet on the mattress and tangled her fingers in his hair as he took her with his tongue. He chuckled to himself and brought her to her first orgasm without bringing his own thrillingly aching sex into play. When he knew she wanted it, he entered her slowly as she directed him with her hands. They rocked together to her rhythm, her hands on his buttocks, working him into her. The duality of his nature was such that an awareness of his own body contributed to his excitement, just as he could share with her the thrill of being entered. A glimpse of his sinewy hand on her tender breast, his long-muscled arm extended to brace himself, his sex springing out from his groin to claim her—all gave him little jolts of pleasure at the splendor of being a man. Identifying with the male-female in her, he let her roll him onto his back and he lay passively and brought her almost immediately to a second climax as she assumed the dominant position and moved her hands down over his belly so that she could hold the base of his sex and use it as if it were her own. His loins tingled with the massive orgasm building up in him which he had so far managed to contain.

  He felt something surrender in her, melt under his pressure, and he was once more on top of her, driving harder into her as she urged him on. Her hips lifted to him. She slipped hands between his thrusting buttocks and found his testicles and fondled them. The tension was too great for him to postpone any longer; he felt her wanting him now with all of herself. He took a decisive grip on her and, as if she sensed that the moment had come, she flung her arms back above her head and uttered a great cry of triumph as her body was shaken by another orgasm. She yielded up her body totally to receive him. He felt as if he was being torn apart as everything in him burst and he drove his orgasm into the jubilant welcome of her body. They continued to cry out for some moments, their bodies leaping and thrashing together. They lay still finally for a few more minutes until Peter’s shrinking sex slipped from her and he rolled off her onto his back.

  “My goodness,” he sighed. “How glorious.”

  She moved in close against him. He lifted an arm to draw her closer. She lay her head in his armpit, her lips just brushing his chest. “Glorious,” she murmured. “Glorious. Glorious. I know at last. You have all the sweetness and tenderness I’ve known with women—and this.” She ran her hand down over his body and rested it on his moist sex. “It has such strength and yet it’s so gentle. It caressed and soothed everything in me until I wanted it to have all of me. I think it’s bigger than the others I’ve known, but it doesn’t bully. That’s what’s extraordinary. Do you know what I mean?”

  “Not really. I obviously wouldn’t know anything about heterosexual men, the ones who make a point of being he-men.”

  “Yes, well, those are the ones a girl like me is apt to attract. You can’t believe what some of them are like—as you say, proving that they’re he-men. Are we going to do it again?”

  “Preliminaries are under way. Any minute now.”

  “I feel it happening. Do you know how I’d like it this time? I want you to do it all with this—what shall I call it?”

  “What? Oh. Anything but penis. That’s the dirtiest word in the language. As far as I’m concerned, it’s my cock.”

  “All right, I want you to put your cock into me again and make me come as often as you can until you’re ready to have another great orgasm in me.” At this, it reared up and escaped her hand. They both laughed. “Take me the way most men do—just fuck me with your cock. When you do it, it’s so marvelous that I can’t imagine wanting anything else. No substitutes. I’ll have to find a man exactly like you and live happily ever after. I wonder if I could, even if I did find him.”

  He propped himself on an elbow so that he lay on his side up close against her and they smiled questioningly into each other’s eyes.

  “One plain old-fashioned fuck without any trimmings, coming up,” he announced with laughter. “It seems unworthy of your divine body and my exotic skills. Maybe it’ll make a he-man out of me. I may not hold out as long as before.”

  “That doesn’t matter. There’re all the other things I want to do later. We have all night, haven’t we?”

  They had all night and they spent most of it in various acts of passion. As the sun began to light the sky, they fell into a deep, exhausted, satiated sleep. Neither of them had let drop a word of love.

  Mike Cochran stood at the bar waiting to settle the details of his acquisition of Dimitri. The latter was behind the bar, pouring drinks into six glasses on a tray. While he did so he put on a little burlesque show for his famous customer. He flipped his hips when he turned to reach for a bottle; he added ice to a glass with a comically limp wrist; he turned his back and flexed the muscles of his shapely buttocks as he gathered up some paper napkins and looked over his shoulder at Mike and winked. When he had completed his preparations, he put the tray on the bar and swayed close to the older man’s face, finger pertly under his chin, his lips parted, his eyelids lowered.

  “So now, Mr. Cochran? What can I give you? Do you want another drink? It is a great honor for you to spend all evening here.”

  Mike looked at him without moving, a slight smile on his lips. He had spent the last couple of hours admiring the youth’s physical charms and now he wanted to take possession of them. The seductive body so tantalizingly revealed by the open shirt and tight trousers was as desirable as a boy’s could be. Mike hadn’t indulged his taste for young men until his success was established and the failure of two marriages had convinced him that his relationships with women were probably doomed to be fleeting. He made a point of restraining it except on his travels, when there was less risk of dangerous or embarrassing entanglements, and occasionally in New York or Hollywood when he was with people he could trust absolutely. He had first become aware of this element in his sexual makeup when he had recognized with incredulity the strong current of physical desire in his feelings for George Leighton. While he chased girls with him, making a show of equal enthusiasm, he was tortured by love for his friend.

  By the time he had quelled this unwanted passion, he had resolved to make no room in his life for the awkward and unprofitable comedy of love. Experience had quickly demonstrated that humanity could be neatly divided between those who were hurt and those who did the hurting. He was determined to range himself among the latter. Sex was too readily available to allow it to become a tiresome obsession with any one individual.

  Dimitri had been busy with his customers all evening, but he had found time to single out Mike for special attention. Mike was used to this; many young men hoped to use him to further their careers, but with Dimitri it obviously wasn’t ambition—he was bed-prone. He radiated desire for what Mike intended to give him. He had whispered at one point that he wasn’t free later, but with so little conviction in his pretty face that Mike had dismissed it as a bargaining point. “Aren’t you going to close up soon?” Mike asked.

  “Yes. Very soon. Fifteen minutes, maybe.”

  “Good. Will you come to the hotel or do you have a better idea?
”

  “But I tell you. Not tonight. It’s not possible.” He swayed a little closer and fluttered his eyelids. “Tomorrow all day. Any time you say.”

  “I haven’t been hanging around all this time for nothing.” Mike kept his eyes on Dimitri’s and reached into his light jacket for his wallet. He pulled it out and laid it out flat on the bar. He opened it slightly to reveal the bills within it.

  Dimitri’s eyes flickered down to it and he drew back with a little mime of indignation. “What are you thinking? Can you believe I take money? I only go with those I like. I like you very much. Why should I take money?”

  Mike wished he wouldn’t talk. There was an intrinsic falseness in every word he spoke that was very boring. “I’m sure you don’t take money, but why shouldn’t I give you a present if you have to change your plans for tonight?”

  Dimitri dropped his hand and laid it on the bar so that it just brushed against Mike’s and the wallet. He leaned closer and ran the tip of his tongue along his upper lip. “What can I do?” He looked at Mike with bewitching but vacuous eyes. “It is very hard to refuse you, but I have a friend for tonight. He is waiting.”

  “Young and attractive?”

  “Oh, very. Very young. Only a boy, but a real man where it matters.”

  “Then what’s the problem? Three can be fun.”

  “Very much. But this is a special.” A finger twitched against Mike’s hand and Dimitri dropped his eyes.

  Mike dug his finger into the wallet and separated three bills from the others.

  “Very special.” Dimitri inserted a finger beside Mike’s and added three more bills to the ones Mike had selected.

  “As special as all that?” It was nearly two hundred dollars. They lifted their eyes simultaneously and looked at each other.

  Dimitri’s smile had become complacent. “You know my friend,” he said. “He may be very angry with me for this. He is in love with me. It is Jeff, Mr. Leighton’s son.”

  “Jeff!” Mike almost knocked over the remains of his drink with astonishment, accompanied by a tremor of lustful anticipation as his mind was filled with thoughts of the two youths together, of his taking Dimitri with Jeff as audience, of debauching George’s son. The boy was young enough to be led; he and Dimitri could do anything they liked with him. He smiled with acquiescence and removed the six bills from his wallet.

  There was a flick of Dimitri’s wrist and the money disappeared. Dimitri winked naughtily. “I am very wicked. But so are you, I think. I don’t know what Jeff will think of us.” He turned efficient as he ducked out from behind the bar. “I will tell the customers they must finish their drinks. Already, the police give us an extra hour because of the big event.”

  “Where do you meet Jeff?”

  Dimitri gave him a sly, sidelong smile. “We will go to him together. I think you must teach him what you want. He says he likes only the other way. You can teach him while he has me. He will be lucky.”

  Mike followed Dimitri out and went to the table where he had been sitting. He had sent the little Swiss on his way an hour ago. A number of people had approached and introduced themselves. He had managed to dismiss them all gracefully. He was glad for a moment alone to prepare himself for the evening’s next phase. So George’s son was a fairy; the extraordinary appeal of the look he had given him just before disappearing earlier in the evening had been as good as a declaration. His being already an adept lessened somewhat Mike’s triumph, but if Dimitri was right about the boy, Mike would teach him some new tricks and leave his mark on him. Everything in him tightened and he unconsciously clenched his jaws at the thought of mounting Jeff, of fucking George’s son.

  He watched one table after another being vacated. Soon the place was empty and he rose and returned to the bar where Dimitri was emptying the cash drawer. He glanced at Mike with a smile and a little leer.

  “Business has been very good this evening.” He left the bar and crossed the room to a panel of switches and turned out all the lights. He approached Mike in the dark and assessed his sex with his hands.

  “There seems to be quite enough. You and Jeff. This is my lucky night.” He darted from him and his splendid body was briefly silhouetted against the night as he closed the doors. He was again in front of Mike, taking his hand and leading him back into the high room.

  “What about Jeff? Where does he come in?”

  “He’s here. He waits upstairs.”

  “You bastard. I could’ve been with him all this time!”

  “And use up all your energy so there is none for me?” Dimitri laughed and started up the stairs still guiding him by the hand. He opened the door at the head of the stairs and light flooded from it.

  Over Dimitri’s shoulder, Mike saw Jeff start up, dressed, from the bed where he was stretched out. The boy’s eyes widened as he saw that Dimitri was not alone and filled with an odd mixture of delight and consternation as he sprang to his feet. Dimitri was immediately on him, babbling nonsense while Jeff pulled back from him and whispered frantically. Mike passed a bathroom door and entered the room.

  It was quite large, furnished in a nondescript fashion, both office and bedroom, with a window giving onto the port. Mike watched as Dimitri subdued Jeff with a kiss. He could see the suspension of resistance become active participation and the two began to pull at each other’s clothes.

  Dimitri had Jeff’s shirt unbuttoned and was progressing with the trousers. Jeff wrenched his head away, his mouth open, his flat chest heaving under the open shirt and once more, over Dimitri’s shoulder, shot Mike a look of stricken but intense appeal. There was shrewdness and innocence in it, a young and contradictory look, calculating and open, dependent, fierce. The great eyes burned with untapped, undirected passion.

  It sent a shock through Mike’s system. He would have to tame this boy quickly, break him like a colt before he threatened his guards and became a potential danger. He stepped to a chair and began to slip rapidly out of his clothes.

  The tumult that was raging in Jeff was too great for him to direct or identify. From thinking that he must greet Mike politely and act as if this were a perfectly normal social occasion, he had been plunged into intimacies with Dimitri that made social conventions irrelevant. It apparently was permissable for two lovers to kiss and exhibit an uninhibited interest in each other’s bodies in front of a third person. He remembered Peter’s admonition to enjoy sex and forced himself to follow Dimitri’s example.

  Hands reaching for his sex, intent on bringing it out into full view, shocked him into resistance but the look in Mike’s eyes when their glances caught was so amused, so approving, and, after a second to two, so intent with secret meaning that again Jeff tried to adapt to the situation and participate in an assured, grown-up way.

  Except for the open shirt, he was naked now and Dimitri was holding his sex and praising it. Jeff’s hands hesitated on the top of Dimitri’s trousers, wishing for privacy, jealously reluctant to let Mike see the young man who had somehow become his rival. His determination to conceal his inexperience forced him on and in a moment he had stripped Dimitri and flung off his own shirt.

  The beauty he uncovered seized his attention. His ideal men, Charlie and Peter, had athlete’s bodies, Renaissance bodies with sculptural definition of muscular structure. Dimitri was a classic drawing, all graceful line, unbroken by muscle or sinew, a body not made for physical exertion but for play. As in a drawing, his sex was discreet but satisfyingly in scale, shadowed with only a light blur of pubic hair. Otherwise, his smooth tanned skin was hairless.

  He was so perfect in his way that he momentarily aroused in Jeff a desire to take him in the male way he had thought of as inconceivable. Jeff reached for him, but Dimitri dropped down and began to fondle his sex with his mouth. Jeff stood, his cheeks flaming, exposed and self-conscious, excruciatingly aware of being witnessed, although he had lost track of where Mike was, and prayed that he wouldn’t lose his erection.

  It was only a momentary fe
ar. His body gave a leap and he cried out as Mike took him in his arms from behind. His heart raced and his eyesight seemed to dim as his senses were concentrated in the feel of strong arms encircling his chest. He managed to lift his hands to them and press them closer. He became aware of working the muscles of his buttocks, as Dimitri had done with him, to take firmer possession of the flesh that was pressed between them. It felt very bulky. He ran his hands down Mike’s flanks and gripped his hips and pulled them to him. He choked with the heaving of his chest and dropped his head back onto Mike’s shoulder. Mike laughed against his ear.

  “You like it, do you? I sort of hoped we’d get together. Have you had it like this before?”

  Jeff shook his head and blurted, “Never.” He didn’t have to pretend experience any more. He wanted Mike to know he was taking a virgin. He was aware of wishing Dimitri would leave him alone. He wanted suddenly everything to come from Mike.

  Dimitri rose with a laugh. “It’s very hard, very stiff for me. Come. We are all ready now.”

  “Later,” Mike said with sharp authority as if he had read Jeff’s mind. “Jeff and I have something to settle between ourselves. You can watch but don’t interfere. Understood?”

  “Oh, no. You can’t take——”

  “Have you forgotten our arrangement downstairs? Do you want me to——?”

  “No, no,” Dimitri agreed hastily. “But if that’s the way it will be you must promise that I’ll be next.”

  “Don’t worry. You’re going to get fucked. After all, you’re the pretty one.” It was true. There was no question which of the two Mike would ordinarily find the more attractive. There was more to it than physical appeal with Jeff. There was something about him—a purity that demanded to be defiled?—that nagged at him and taunted him. To make his possession of him more exclusive, he turned him around to face him, concealing his genitals from Dimitri.