Perfect Freedom (58 page)

A tremor shivered through Robbie's body and he grew very still as if he were balancing something on his head. “What do you mean? Threw you out of where?”

“Here. He gave me an hour to get out of the house.” He saw Robbie's face begin to disintegrate and he stepped in close to him and gripped his arms. “I lied to him. I told him I didn't want you to be a homosexual. I don't care what you are. If you have to be a homosexual to love me the way you do, all right. Nobody else ever has. I almost fell in love with you while I was talking about you. I don't know. Maybe I did. Maybe I fell in love with you when you had that girl, seeing that I hadn't prevented you from being a man. The way he spoke to me, he made me feel I'd been wrong to be so careful with you. He probably thinks we've done everything already, anyway. I can want you now because I feel as if the man in you belongs to me. I want to make it true with our bodies so that we're part of each other. I want to give you everything you want.”

“Oh yes. Oh God, yes, Toni. Please. Take me. I've longed for it so.” He was out of his clothes in seconds and Toni's towel was gone. They flung themselves on each other. Their cocks pressed up hard against each other. Toni's mouth was passionately urgent on his.

Their hands tried to grasp the essence of each other. Robbie's head swam with bliss and incredulity. Toni wanted him as much as he wanted Toni. He had never believed it could happen. He didn't trust his legs to hold him upright. They broke apart with their chests heaving. Robbie almost burst into tears at the glowing wonder in Toni's face as he looked at him with intense green eyes.

“Go get whatever you use,” he said in an odd hushed voice as he moved them toward the bedroom.

Robbie ran ahead to the bathroom and found the lubricant that Jeff had left and applied it hastily. He snatched up a towel and hurried back to the bedroom just as Toni was throwing back the bedclothes. He threw the towel out on the bed and crouched down in front of him and looked with awe at the taut lift of the erection he was preparing for himself. He scrambled up onto the towel and sprawled out across the bed on his stomach. His breath was choked in his chest by the pounding of his heart.

Toni dropped down over him and lifted his hips to him and entered him. Robbie shouted with triumph as Toni slid deep into him, bringing him instantly to climax. He felt as if his limbs were being shaken loose from his torso by the rapture of his orgasm.

Toni moved in him slowly, asserting his right to him and savoring his possession of him. Robbie moved to his rhythm, giving himself to the need and desire he felt in him. He could feel his glorious body all through him, taking him, making them one. It could never be like this with anybody else.

“Oh God, let it always be you,” he prayed through scarcely moving lips.

“Yes, I'm taking your beautiful bottom at last. I feel as if I belong here.”

“Oh yes. Please do. Only you.”

Toni's drive gradually accelerated and his body seemed to vibrate with mounting tension. Robbie's erection revived and pushed up against his belly with the excitement of approaching ecstasy. They both cried out and called to each other. Robbie's body was agitated by a frenzy of participation. He wanted to make it the most memorable sexual experience of Toni's life. He wanted to make him need him always.

Every move Toni made—his hands gripping him everywhere to hold his body to him, the hard lean pressure of his thighs as he straddled him, the indomitable thrust of his cock—was an additional act of conquest and Robbie dissolved into a delirium of surrender. The release was shattering; spasms flung Toni's body about on top of him, they moaned and laughed and bit each other and were finally still. Robbie felt as if he had had another orgasm but his persistent erection was lodged uncomfortably against his belly and told him that he hadn't.

Toni suddenly pulled away from him and leaped up. Robbie gasped at the emptiness he left in him. Some essential part of him had been torn from him. He pulled himself up and followed him to the shower. Toni made room for him but didn't look into his face. His eyes were on his erection. He ran a soapy hand over it and held it under the stream of water and dropped down and drew it into his mouth. Robbie's body was wrenched by a great convulsion that almost knocked him off his feet.

“Oh God,” he cried. “Toni. I'm coming.”

Toni held his cock in his mouth until it began to subside and then stood and looked at him. There were signs of strain in the set of his mouth and in the intent green eyes. “I don't know what's happening to me. If that's wrong, it's a wrong I can share with you. If we're supposed to feel guilty about it, we can share that too. I want to force myself to like everything you do. It doesn't even seem like sex. It's different. It's something that exists only between you and me.”

Robbie laid his hands on Toni's chest. “After this, you can't go. If you did, I'd have to go with you.”

“That seems to be the way we're headed. Listen. You've got to go talk to him. He's waiting for you. You don't have to admit anything. I didn't give him much to go on, just that we love each other. I said that we've never really made love together. That was true at the time. Just kid stuff. Tell him that living with a friend for the first time made you wonder about things you'd never thought about before. Tell him that you're getting it straightened out now and that there's no problem. Something like that. Tell him about the girl. For God's sake, don't give him the idea that you think you might be a homosexual.”

“No. He mustn't find out about me. I couldn't stand it.”

They left the shower and dried themselves. Robbie went back to the easel and retrieved his shorts. Toni followed him. Adequately dressed, he turned to Toni and held him and kissed him gently. “I love you with all my life,” he said. “What're you going to do?”

“Let's see what he says. I can't talk to him. I don't think he really believed anything I said. You've got to convince him that I was telling the truth. Don't break down, whatever he says. I feel as if we were getting married finally. Everything depends on you. You've got to convince him that you're in control of yourself and know what you're doing.”

“I do. I've given myself to you for always.”

They kissed lightly again. Tears gathered in Toni's eyes once more as he watched Robbie go. What were they getting into? He had betrayed himself and Stuart. He had committed the acts that were repugnant to both of them. He had betrayed Robbie, too, by letting him think it meant more than was possible. He went to the bedroom and pulled out his empty suitcase and began taking things out of drawers. He was so nearly in love with Robbie that it frightened him. It couldn't last. He couldn't, even if he wanted to, realign all his sexual urges. No boy, not even Robbie, could offer him the satisfaction he found with girls. He might fall all the way in love with him for a day or two but then he would begin to resent him for getting such an unnatural hold on him. Why prolong it? He didn't think Stuart would relent. He began to move more rapidly and with decision.

Talking about going away together was childish nonsense. What would he do with Robbie in Paris? He couldn't go around with a beautiful boy at his side. People would begin to laugh at him. It would be disastrous for his career. Aside from the small matter of money. He doubted if Stuart would subsidize Robbie for a life with a male lover.

Better go. Go quickly. With luck, he might get away before Robbie came back. He had at least given his little brother what he had wanted most; for a moment, their bodies had belonged to each other. Robbie knew that he loved him more than either of them had expected. The boy would have the memory to comfort him until he found somebody else.

He hurried into the bathroom and gathered up his toilet articles. He pulled out the bag full of city clothes that he'd never unpacked. He could manage the bags on foot; he didn't want to alert Robbie to his departure by asking for help. He dressed and went out to Robbie's worktable and picked up a pencil. It had been an extraordinary summer, full of promise and revelation. Later, perhaps, when there'd been time for adjustments, they'd all get together again. His tears spilled over as he scrawled a note on a sheet of drawing paper.…

Robbie found his father sitting under the roof of the beach house with a bundle of money and a drink on the table beside him. He came to a halt in front of him. Stuart looked up at him, detecting an aura of exaltation about him, incendiary and defiant. He warned himself to cool the boy down before he said anything to provoke him.

“Hello, youngster,” he said amiably. “It seems we have some things to talk about.”

“You can't send him away,” Robbie asserted, keeping his distance.

“Come sit down and let me try to explain why he
has
to go.”

“Before you say anything else, I want you to know that I love him more than anybody else in the world.”

“I see.” Stuart nodded encouragingly. “That's a pretty sweeping statement but I respect your feelings. The only trouble is, you haven't had much time to find out what people are like. You must agree that somebody who's lived a good deal more than twice as long as you have has had more chance to test his judgment. Would you accept that?”

“I guess so.” Robbie was thrown off balance by his father's conciliating manner. Toni had prepared him for an attack. He was carried back to his childhood when he had talked to a figure of final authority about everything. He wished it could be like that again. He approached slowly and sat in a chair near Stuart, facing him. “What do you have against Toni?”

Stuart congratulated himself for having won the first point. He felt more relaxed. “I don't deny that your perceptions may be much sharper than mine but there's still the question of experience to test them. You know how much I've tried to like Toni,
have
liked him. I've pretended that he was my son. Unfortunately, there seems to be a serious flaw, a failure to recognize the clear line between right and wrong. Nobody can be allowed to molest minors of either sex. It's against the law.”

“Molest? Who's molested anybody?”

“I saw you together yesterday. We mustn't forget that. I don't see why people can't talk about sex. It's a pretty basic fact of life. Everybody knows about it. Of course, there're certain things one wants to keep private, but in a general way I think it's a reasonable subject of conversation. Do you feel like telling me what's been going on with Toni?”

“If you saw us yesterday, you know just about everything that's happened so far. I like him to kiss me and he doesn't mind every now and then. Usually just on the forehead. He's been with girls all summer. You know that. When we're in bed he lets me hold him. Things like that. He laughs at me. He says he used to do things like that with his brothers. He says I'll get it out of my system and forget about it.”

“Do you think you will?”

“I don't know.” He lowered his head and looked at his feet. He longed to tell all of it. Denying the glory of what had just happened risked diminishing it. If he told the truth, was there any hope that his father wouldn't condemn him? He was being very gentle and reasonable. Studying the articulation of his feet, he wondered if he could explain it all away as part of being an artist. He looked up and added with conviction, “I'll never forget anything that's happened with him. I love him.”

“Nobody wants you to forget a friend. Let's find out more about this. He's made a point with me about the things all boys do. I've been trying to remember what I was like at your age. I never did any of those things. I don't remember anybody wanting to do them with me. Maybe I wasn't attractive enough to inspire a romantic passion in my classmates. You're a beauty so maybe you'll have a problem. Have many boys been after you? At school, for instance?”

“No. Nothing ever happened at school. I've never seen anything going on around me.”

“Good. I thought Toni's attitude might be a bit special. So as I understand it, you've lived up till now without being troubled by abnormal desires.”

“Almost.” He couldn't let him think that Toni had introduced him to sex.

“Almost not abnormal?”

“Almost till now.”

“You mean, something's happened since school that's made you uncertain about yourself?”

“Rico. You wanted me to make friends with him. I did. He wanted me to have sex with him. I was horrified. I didn't know such things were possible. He made me do things that I never dreamed anybody would want to do but he was my friend and I wanted to please him. I found out how ignorant I was. He'd had lots of girls and didn't think there was anything strange about what we were doing. After a while, it began to seem all right.”

“But, Robbie, don't you see the danger you're facing? You said I know everything that's happened
so far
. Maybe it was a slip of the tongue but I think it might be significant. One thing leads to another. You've seen the queer men here. Do you want to be like them?”

“No.”

“Thank heavens for that. I wouldn't let you be even if we had to move somewhere else.”

“They're not always like that. Do you remember those three brothers who took me out that night in Poros? Two of them were married but they all wanted me. The Greeks don't think it's abnormal. They make it seem perfectly natural. There were others everywhere we stopped. It began to make a connection with things I'd dreamed about when I was little.”

“Such as?”

“I can't say exactly. It's very vague. Mum always made me feel that sex was beneath me, so I thought it was. I never let myself think about it consciously.”

“I'm sure she couldn't have meant that. She'd undoubtedly like to think of you as being sort of refined and fastidious about sex but she certainly doesn't think it's beneath you.”