The White Stag (2 page)

Ordinarily, the pressure of speech would have compelled me to say something, but I was lost in the liquid depths of his eyes, shaded as they were by the jagged forelock that moved against his forehead in the gentle breeze. I could feel the blood rising to my cheeks, unbidden.

A trickle of sweat slipped down across my cheek. The humidity was so high it felt like we were standing in a sauna. I could feel the hot damp weight of the air attaching itself to my skin, mixing with my own sweat, seeping through the soft cotton of my T-shirt and beginning to soak my chest and back.

“Come home with me, Joshua,” Jude said.

My heart lurched. I nodded dumbly and reached into my pocket for my keys.

Our eyes locked again, but neither of us said anything more.

I keyed into my car and started the engine. I followed his silver Mercedes out of the parking lot, onto the main road, and down the dark highway south of town to the nearly hidden turnoff that marked the long, private drive to the Prairie House.

The house was enormous, too large to really grasp in the darkness. Exterior lighting played games with perspective, but it looked to be at least three stories high in many places, a huge twisting pile of rooms and towers and rambling porches, like a sleeping dragon disguised as a Victorian mansion.

When we arrived, Jude stepped out of his car and walked around to meet me at the door of my own car. I cut the engine and stepped out, my heart beating like a caged bird against the inside of my chest. His eyes were on fire now, pupils wide and dark, his breathing heavy and agitated as he leaned forward to kiss me. Our lips came together hungrily, our bodies pushing against each other, our shoes crunching against the coarse white gravel.

Jude led me up the path to the giant wooden door and slid his key wordlessly into the lock. The bolt slid audibly into the door and the slab of wood swung inward.

Out of the air-conditioned semi-darkness of the foyer, a huge black shape bounded up and leapt at Jude. I jumped back and screamed like a nine-year-old girl.

“Baal,” Jude said, his voice wavering between a laugh and mock firmness. “Sit, little man.”

The black dog sank instantly to the ground at Jude’s feet, and I felt a click in my throat as my breathing resumed.

“
Jesus
, Jude, you could have said there’d be a hellhound guarding the front door.”

Jude laughed at this, and the dog’s tail thumped happily against the wooden floorboards.

“He’s just a happy old dog; you’ve nothing to fear from
him
.”

I glanced back at Jude and for a moment, I was nervous again, but he smiled broadly and I realized he was teasing me. I returned the smile and took a step toward the door. Baal stepped back and bowed. It was a strangely courtly gesture from a dog. Baal froze in place, his front paws flat against the floor, his head down, his hind quarters still standing. When Jude squatted and scratched him roughly between the ears, the dog stood upright again, tail wagging and tongue lolling.

“All right, Baal, go amuse yourself,” Jude said softly. The dog whimpered once but trotted off into the darkness beside the stairs.

I watched all of this in surprised silence.

Jude turned back to me, his eyes sliding up my body from Nike Airs to golden locks. He reached out and grabbed the front of my T-shirt playfully, pulling me through the darkness of the foyer and up the stairs without a word. It was not until we reached the second turn in the dimly lit hallway that I realized how large the house actually was. The corridors were so long that they were punctuated periodically by small side tables with lamps or pairs of straight-backed chairs, like the hallways of a fine hotel. Plush patterned carpets softened the sounds of our footsteps as we walked.

We finally arrived at an ornate wooden door and Jude stopped, turned to face me, and kissed me again, his mouth gentle this time, his tongue sliding across my lips, probing just inside my mouth and sending shivers across my shoulders and down my spine.

Jude opened the door and stepped backward into the darkness.

I followed him hesitantly, the darkness sparking an irrational fear in me. I reached out in front of me, hands feeling for a marker by which to map the blackness. His fingers touched mine, intertwining gently with my own and leading me silently into the room.

“There’s a lamp over here by the bed,” he said, pulling me gently toward him.

The lamp cast a soft yellow glow in a broad circle in which we now stood. The rattle of air conditioning sounded in the distance; cool air trickled down from an overhead vent, stirred lazily by a trio of circling ceiling fans.

I stepped toward Jude, emboldened by the lost look in his eyes.

“I’m lost too,” I whispered, and I kissed him before he could see the welling of emotion in my own eyes.

We kissed fiercely this time, our teeth knocking together, our laughter mingling with ragged breathing and the first groans of our mutual excitement. I reached down and gathered the damp cloth of Jude’s T-shirt in my hands, pulling the hem up over a trim, lightly furred stomach. He lifted his arms and I slid the T-shirt up farther, over a pair of compactly defined pecs and lean muscled arms, all covered in neatly trimmed shimmering hair. I flung the T-shirt onto the floor and slid my hands up Jude’s sides, pushing his arms aloft and licking his salty skin from his tiny navel across his stomach, up between his pecs, and across to his armpits. I immersed my face in his pits, savoring the musky scent of him mingled with the spicy scent and harsh astringent taste of his deodorant. I stepped close to him and let his arms drop to my shoulders. I could feel my erection throbbing against the cool cotton of my cargo shorts, sweat trickling down my chest. I leaned forward and kissed him again, my cheeks and forehead blazing.

He broke the kiss and reached down between us, unbuttoning his shorts and pushing them down to his ankles in a quick motion. He pulled my shirt off and pushed my shorts and underwear down; then he stood looking down between us at our bodies, standing so close that our throbbing cocks beat out the rhythms of our desire on our bellies.

Jude’s body was lean, long, and strong, the contours carpeted in short dark fur. My own body, shorter than his by about four inches, had tanned a golden brown in the summer sun, the curly hair in the center of my chest and clustered around my cock was bleached pale blond.

“You have no tan line,” he said sliding a finger from the center of my chest down through the thicket of curly blond hair to the thick base of my cock. He wrapped his hand around me and grinned.

“I sunbathe in the nude,” I said, smiling and reaching for his cock.

“You’ll have to spend every afternoon here this summer. There’s a beautiful, very private pool out back.”

“I’d like—”

He interrupted me with a kiss, pulling my body against his. We connected with a wet slap, and Jude pulled us both gently onto the bed. We rolled around, exploring each other’s bodies in the glow of the lamplight, until the pull of him became too great for me. I wrestled him onto his back and pinned him, straddling his hips and staring down into his eyes.

“Are you going to fuck me, Jude?” I asked, kissing him softly on the lips.

“Condoms in the drawer,” he said.

When I finally settled myself onto his sheathed erection, the feel of his thick cock sliding inside me was almost enough to send me right over the edge. I gasped and he froze beneath me, eyes seeking mine.

“It’s okay. I mean, it’s wonderful. That was a good sound, Jude.”

He smiled and relaxed.

I could feel him sliding deeper inside me. I continued to straddle his hips, flexing my legs and sliding up and down on his throbbing cock. My breathing became ragged, and I could feel Jude’s whole body tensing below me as he thrust up from beneath me. His face contorted with the efforts of his exertion, neck muscles straining as I rode him up and down, his body flexing and rising to meet my downward thrusts. A deep guttural sound rose from deep inside Jude’s chest, rising like a bubble up through his throat and ripping through the air around us. The animal rose inside him, and I felt blood rushing from my face, leaving me lightheaded, my cheeks suddenly cold. I pounded against him once more, driving his cock deeply into me. I felt the come start to rush up through the length of my cock and out, splashing up across Jude’s lips and splattering his chin, his neck, and his chest. One last growl slid up from his chest, forcing his mouth open in gasping surprise, and I could feel his cock convulsing inside me. The air around us seemed to crystallize, and for a long moment we were both still, our bodies frozen in arcs of anatomical impossibility. I felt the air around me stirring softly in the complete vacuum of silence, the moment between breaths seeming to stretch on and on, time itself frozen, lying dormant and prostrate beneath the power of our exertions.

Then the endless moment ended, and I collapsed onto his chest, breathing deeply and laughing in relief. I felt Jude slide out of me, and he reached down to pull the condom off and toss it onto his discarded T-shirt. He pulled me close to him, our bodies sliding together, slick with sweat and come. I could feel his heart thumping madly in time to my own as I drifted off to sleep in his arms.

*  *  *

 “I put
you in the room across the hall from me. Is that okay?”

I started to answer, but he had already ducked into the room with my overnight bag still in his hand. I followed him, carrying my garment bag draped over one arm, and stopped in the doorway, watching Jude as he crossed the room to open the broad windows.

Even after nearly a year of friendship, I still thought Jude was the most beautiful man I had ever seen. The year had been dotted with sporadic sex, mostly when he was back in town from his frequent travels, but I had never let him get any closer, making excuses and sometimes fleeing his bedroom while he still slept. It was ungracious behavior on my part, but any criticism Jude felt was absorbed in the silence of his dancing eyes.

Sometimes, I was mystified at my own reluctance. I was afraid of something. I told myself lies about him to keep myself from falling too deeply in love with him, but the bottom line, lurking just beneath the slick veneer of excuses, was that I did love him and I could no more walk away than I could leap into the air and fly to the moon.

I watched him pulling the thick curtains aside; I set my bag on a low wooden chest. He looked up and caught me staring at him.

“What?” he asked.

I stepped fully into the room and closed the door behind me.

“Nothing,” I lied.

Jude stood for a moment watching me. He had a way of doing that, like he was standing there waiting for the next thing to happen, an audience of one watching one moment evolve into the next. You could feel the power of his scrutiny on you like a physical force.

 “You must be busy this afternoon,” I said.

“Nope,” he said, plopping down on the bed and leaning on his elbow. “Valor has the whole thing under control. I’m really just part of the decorations.”

“But it’s your house.”

“It’s my father’s family home, so I guess it’s partly hers as well.”

“What does Noah have to say about all of this?” I asked.

“I think my dad is just glad that my mother and I are not fighting and that we’re having another party back here at the Prairie House.” Jude looked at me intently, eyes shimmering in the light from the window. “We haven’t had a party here since the night before Brian died.”

“Right,” I said, unable to respond to this statement.

“My mother is very big on Christmas, though, and since the election, the party has really outgrown their house… so here we all are.”

“Right,” I said again, then, “So how is she dealing with the whole atheist thing? I mean, in light of the Christian-focus of the holiday, and all,” I asked, hurrying to fill the empty space between us and then immediately regretting my words.

“I told you I don’t like the word atheist, Joshua,” he said, shaking his head slowly. “It’s aimed and loaded.”

“But you don’t believe in God,” I said.
Why am I doing this?
I thought.
This is what derailed us the first time.

“Why are you doing this, Joshua? This is what derailed us the first time,” Jude said, an odd half-smile on his lips.

I sat down on the foot of the bed and reached out to touch his muscular calf, the denim of his jeans soft and warm.

“I’m sorry,” I said finally, not looking up at him. “Faith is important to me.”

“Your faith, you mean?”

“Not really, just
some
faith, believing in something.”

“I have faith in a lot of things,” he said softly, his voice so low it felt like a whisper.

“But you don’t believe in God,” I persisted.
Why had I said that? Why resurrect an old argument that never got us anywhere?

“Why resurrect an old argument that never got us anywhere?” he said.

I hated it when he did that. I looked away from him, touching the zipper of my bag absently.

“Don’t show off,” I said.

“I wasn’t,” he said.

“It’s important, Jude,” I said again.

“Your God is so literal,” he said.

“I don’t think you understand who my God is,” I replied.

“I really don’t want to argue with you, Joshua.”

But you will
, I thought, but I said, “Tell me about the party, Jude.”

“Valor and I agreed, with a little help from my peacekeeper father, that we would celebrate the Winter Solstice for me and Christmas for her. It’s a manageable, if separate, peace. Tomorrow night’s the Solstice; next week is Christmas. Pine trees and oak leaves, holly, candles, a towering white stag candelabra on the mantle over the fireplace, stars and suns, midnight blue and sparkling silver; my mother endorsed almost everything I proposed. The Christians in the room will barely notice the presence of all the pagan symbols.”

“Like me?” I said weakly.

“Don’t be angry, Reverend,” he said, his voice soft and sexy under the consonants of the nickname. He pushed the word into two lazy syllables that lolled on his tongue for a moment before he expelled them.
Rev-rend
. He reached out and brushed his fingers across my cheek. “Remind me again why we can’t be together,” he said in a whisper.