The Quirk (6 page)

There were more buttons underneath, and he unfastened them and lay back the flaps of cloth and found a neat patch of hair that left the base of the sex visible. He paused to take in the whole breathtaking spectacle–from the shaggy hair to broad shoulders and chest down to narrow hips and the small furred triangle that pointed to the only secret that remained. He got a grip on the cloth and tugged gently while a cylinder of flesh was slowly revealed. To his inflamed imagination it seemed to go on forever. Perhaps the friction of the cloth was stretching it. At last the deep, elongated curve of the head was uncovered. He gave Rod’s trousers a final pull, and they slipped down to his knees.

He stared. A big American. Bigger than he had dared hope. A friend of his said that all Americans were big there because that was where their brains were. It lay long and inert, its breadth almost concealing the testicles on which it was cradled. Patrice’s hands clenched and unclenched on his thighs with the longing to touch it. He forced himself to rise and went to the foot of the bed and removed socks and pulled trousers down over long legs. The underpants came with them. He took another long look at the glory he had uncovered. A beautiful young athlete at rest.

He hitched up his dressing down to make sure he was properly covered. He had nothing particularly striking to hide, but it did stick out and was apt to find its way through the folds of his robe. He picked up the sheet and blankets from the bottom of the bed and drew them up but balked at covering his prize. He was proud of his self-control so far. He dropped the covers across Rod’s hips and pretended to smooth and straighten them. When he picked them up again, his hands were carefully placed to make contact seem accidental. One hand brushed against pubic hair and the other came to rest on warm velvet skin. He ran them down along it to the convolutions of the head while he watched the peaceful young face. There was no change in the breathing, no flicker of eyelids or twitch of lips. He left his hands where they were, his fingers moving slightly to learn the feel of it. It was soft but thrillingly bulky and seemed to stir and throb with life. He drew his fingers back along its length and wished that he dared continue the caresses to see if he could arouse it.

He lifted the covers and looked. It had lengthened and filled out perceptibly. He could guess what it looked like erect. Magnificent. Some of Gérard’s boys may have been bigger, but their immature bodies made them look grotesque. The muscular vigor of Rod’s body demanded the complement of well-developed masculinity. Patrice had permitted himself the liberties he dared, and he resignedly pulled the covers up to Rod’s chin.

Here he indulged in discreet caresses under the guise of tucking him in. He ran the back of his fingers along Rod’s face. He touched his cheek when he straightened the pillow. He stroked the long hair on the back of his neck. He stood and stepped back from the bed and was filled with an almost suffocating contentment. The last few days of practically shadowing this stunning stranger, days of feverish fantasies, had culminated in this incredible reality. He was going to lie in bed naked with this beautiful naked boy. It was enough. He must be growing up. Nothing like it had ever happened to him because he had never known a boy whose presence made him happy without sex. He was in love even though Gérard had taught him that love was a fancy word for self-deception.

He moved silently around the bed gathering up Rod’s expensive-looking clothes and took them to the armoire and arranged them lovingly among his own. He turned and looked back at the dark romantic head and the long body adorably snuggled down into his own covers. There was nothing more to keep him from getting in beside him. His heart was beating rapidly again but not unpleasantly. He wanted to laugh out loud with joy. He went around to his side of the bed and snapped off the light. Safe in the dark, he slipped off his robe and eased himself under the covers and lay with his back turned to his bedmate, a knee pulled up to conceal his sex. Rod immediately heaved about and flung an arm across him and muttered in his sleep. Patrice though he heard a name again. Janny? Could it be a boy’s name? In the morning when Rod was awake and could tell him not to if he didn’t want it, he would make his intentions clear. He tried to breathe evenly to quiet the pounding of his heart. The arm was heavy on him, but he wouldn’t have dreamed of moving it. He could smell him–a fresh, clean, masculine smell, strongly flavored with his grandmother’s liquor. He doubted if he would get any sleep.

Rod woke up with a naked girl in his arms. His erection was thrust up against some part of her, and he increased the pressure with a little contraction of his hips. He couldn’t remember who she was, but he felt too awful to open his eyes and look. It couldn’t be Jeannine; Jeannine was much more substantial. He began to suspect that there was something peculiar about the situation. For some reason this didn’t feel like his own bed. Where was he? Hadn’t there been a girl called Nicole? His erection made an additional lunge of excitement. He moved a hand over slight shoulders, and his curiosity was sufficiently aroused to open one eye.

He found a merry, unmistakably male face smiling into his. He uttered an exclamation and hastily drew back. He heard laughter. The boy wriggled down in the bed beside him, and Rod felt a mouth on his erection. He started to protest, but delicious sensations immediately stirred in his groin. He lay back to enjoy them. Fragmentary memories of the night before were beginning to fall into place. He had let himself get picked up by a cocksucker.

He thought of the other time this had happened to him under very similar circumstances. It had been almost ten years ago when he had been a freshman at Yale. There had been a big night of drinking, and he had awakened to find a senior performing this service for him. He had screamed the place down and threatened to report the aggressor to the dean. Now he couldn’t see that it would do anybody any great harm. The mouth was marvelously knowledgeable. Hands were doing things that brought little grunts of pleasure from him. In a moment he knew it was going to happen quickly. He let out a little warning cry. The delicious ministrations of the mouth intensified, and he uttered another cry as he was shaken by his climax.

The mouth lingered on him briefly, and then he felt the boy scramble out of bed. He opened his eyes a slit to catch a glimpse of slim hips and a behind as prettily rounded as a girl’s before a robe was dropped around it and the boy left the room. He closed his eyes, and his mind drifted around the small incident. He probably shouldn’t have let it happen, but he was in no condition to put on a big injured-innocence act. He hoped it wouldn’t cause difficulties between them. He remembered liking the kid. Patrice. His name was Patrice. He had always been wary of queers because he knew he attracted them, and he had never been tempted to go that way. He tried to remember if anything had happened that should have warned him. If so, he’d been too drunk to notice it. He must have passed out.

He stretched luxuriously in the big bed and became aware that his erection had only partially subsided. He felt as if very little would get it going again. His mind slipped back toward sleep. It was jogged into consciousness again by sounds of movement in the room. He opened his eyes and saw the short slight figure wrapped in the voluminous dressing gown approaching the bed holding a steaming cup. He remembered the fetching mop of hair on Patrice’s forehead.

“There,” Patrice said, standing over him. “That should make you feel better.”

Rod lifted his arms out from under the covers and took the cup and grinned up at him. “You sure know how to take care of a guy.”

Patrice’s eyes twinkled. “Last night, you thought I was a girl. Jeannine? Lucky Jeannine.”

“Lucky me. Thanks.”

“You mean–you didn’t mind?”

“Not if you liked it. I just think you ought to know I don’t usually go in for that sort of thing.”

“Oh. I wasn’t sure. I shouldn’t have done it. I’m sorry.”

The boy looked crushed. Rod took a swallow of hot bitter coffee and tried to think of something to say to put the incident behind them. It wasn’t his fault that he wasn’t a cocksucker. “Oh, for God’s sake,” he burst out. “I don’t want to make a big thing of it. If you like it, you like it. I mean, I’m sorry I couldn’t do something nice for you.”

“I wanted nothing more. It was wonderful for me but, of course, if you didn’t want it–”

“I didn’t say that. Oh, hell.” He gulped more coffee. “Listen. This is ridiculous. We’re getting all embarrassed over nothing. I don’t have anything against queers. I just don’t happen to be one, that’s all. You wouldn’t want me to pretend it didn’t happen would you?”

“No.” The sparkle returned to Patrice’s eyes. “I think that wouldn’t be very polite.”

They both laughed. Rod finished the coffee and put the cup on the bedside table. “There. Don’t let’s worry about it anymore. What time is it?”

“A little after 9 o’clock. I will have to go to work soon.”

“Yeah. I better get out of here.” He pushed the covers aside and began the unwelcome labor of getting out of bed. As he did he felt his cock swing against his thigh. He didn’t want to flaunt himself, but he didn’t want to act self-conscious in front of the kid either. He managed to struggle to his feet and wondered if he would be able to stay on them. He put his hands over his eyes and groaned and stood swaying helplessly. In an instant Patrice’s hand were on both sides of his ribs steadying him. Rod stood motionless for a moment and waited for his head to stop reeling. He felt a tremor in the hands, and then they began to steal, deft and light-fingered, over his chest. Rod intended to say a word of mild rebuke, but he felt the odd tingling sensation of a burgeoning erection, and he was too astonished to protest. Could a boy give him an erection? There was danger in permitting it. Somewhere in his mind a line was drawn, he wasn’t sure quite where, beyond which Patrice would provoke his anger and disgust. The fact that he kept himself covered suggested that the boy instinctively knew this. He also instinctively knew where to put his hands to thrill and excite him. They moved slowly down over him, lingering, teasing, exquisitely caressing. They seemed to be achieving their purpose. He had never been handled like this without participating in any way, and it gave his cock an extraordinary independent importance. Without looking he couldn’t be sure if it was fully operational, but in this case it hardly mattered. All the sensations were there. He opened his hands at the sides of his eyes like blinkers.

“Are you trying to corrupt me?” he asked of the averted face.

Patrice looked up and their eyes met and questioned each other. “Could I?”

“I always feel sexy when I have a hangover,” Rod said. “You shouldn’t pay any attention.”

“Not pay attention when this happens?”

“What do you expect when you–” His breath was cut off by a new exploratory pressure, and he felt the independent appendage surge up and away from the support of hands.

“So big and hard,” Patrice murmured, recapturing it. “
C’est magnifique.
”

“There’s nothing magnificent about it. It’s just a cock like everybody else’s.”

“It may be like everybody in the States, but here–
c’est extraordinaire
.”

“All right Elizabeth Taylor couldn’t make it any bigger or harder. Now what?

“You know what I want. May I do it again?”

“You didn’t ask my permission before.”

“No. That was wrong. Now I must know that you want it.”

The kid hadn’t crossed the line yet, but he was getting close. “It’s obvious I want something,” Rod said impatiently. He didn’t want to talk about it. “You haven’t got much competition around here. Go ahead. Suck my cock if you like it so much. You’re not apt to get another chance.”

He saw Patrice drop down to the edge of the bed. He was pulled close, and the mouth was on him once more. With unexpected strength arms grappled with his knees, and he was toppled over and flung out on his back. He felt as if he had been struck by a tornado of passion. Nothing like this could happen with a girl. The hands and mouth were on him everywhere, from his neck (no higher) to the soles of his feet. He pitched and thrashed about on the bed. His arms and legs flailed. He cried out with stunned delight. He was carried to the edge of orgasm and held there in an agonized ecstasy of suspense.

“Oh, Christ. Do it,” he shouted. “I want it, dammit. Do it. Please do it.”

He heard exultant laughter, and he shouted with the approach of release and continued to shout as his whole body was lifted and flung about in the annihilation of his orgasm. He lay out with his legs spread and his arms thrown up over his head, his eyes closed, his chest heaving. The hands stroked his shoulders and chest soothingly while his breathing slowly returned to normal. He opened his eyes and found Patrice gazing at him with rapturous incredulity, still bundled up in his robe.

“You’re really something,” Rod muttered. “Where did you learn to do all that?”

“I went to a school for queers,” Patrice replied, touching very nearly on the truth.

“I see. You must’ve graduated with top honors.”

“You have the most beautiful body I’ve ever known. I wanted to make it good for you if it’s the last time.”

“It better be or you’ll turn me queer for life. Come on. Show me where I can pull myself together.”

Patrice rose and took his arm and helped him to his feet. They went along a corridor that Rod didn’t remember to a living room that he did. Patrice conducted him to the end of it, past the toilet he also remembered to a kitchen with a tub in it. All the fixtures looked old but clean. Patrice want to a cupboard and brought him fresh towels. “There. It’s not the Ritz, but the water is usually quite hot. I’m sorry I don’t have a spare dressing gown for you.”