Raised By Wolves 1 - Brethren (68 page)

In addition to mounting desire, I experienced an echo of my own memories. Alonso had done this to me many times. He would bid me lie still while he caressed me with oil, until my mind finally surrendered to the sensation and my body relaxed. I had not wished to trust him, either; and he had been forced to get me quite drunk and have several goes at it, before I could allow him as much freedom as Gaston was allowing me now. Alonso had continued the exercise once or twice a week, until finally I had allowed him what he most wanted; yet never from behind where I could not see him, and never in the dark, and never sober.

“Roll over,” I whispered. Gaston did and regarded me with sleepy eyes. I worked on his thighs, and he did not tense as I massaged around his manhood and up across his belly. I was careful to only rub lightly over his damaged nipple when I reached his chest. He smiled faintly when I finished with his face.

I sat back, and his eyes flicked to my crotch yet again. His hand raised but I pushed it away gently. I stroked myself. He realized my intent and appeared uncomfortable. Then he became as wondrous as he had that first night, when I had shown him my manhood fully aroused in response to him. I well knew how hard it is to lie there and accept that another could look upon me and want me. I forced him to do it now as my eyes drank him in. He was a glistening sculpture of male perfection, made all the more intriguing by the textures and ridges of the scars, which the lamp light and oil highlighted and masked at the same time. He flushed under my scrutiny, and I gave him a lazy smile and came on his chest.

His face contorted in a comical grimace as if I had deposited something far more vile upon his person. I laughed in the afterglow of my pleasure, “Consider it an offering.”

His look told me what he considered it, and then he relented and smiled sheepishly. “I did not expect it to… land over here,” he sighed and held up his arms to beckon me join him. I lay beside him with my head on his shoulder, and looked upon my offering. I scooped it up, and on impulse, quickly smoothed it over his manhood and massaged it in.

He squirmed beneath me with a curse of surprise.

“What are you doing?” he gasped.

I pushed up on my elbow to regard him, and found myself close to laughter. “I do not know. I truly do not. Perhaps giving it an idea. It seemed a good one at the moment.”

His indignant and incredulous look gave way to laughter. “Will, you are such a fool.” He quickly sobered. “And I love you so very much.”

I threw myself atop him and pressed my lips to his. He kissed me back, and we pecked at one another for a minute; and then his teeth gently captured my lower lip and released it. I let the tip of my tongue find his upper lip, and he did not pull away. I explored a little, until he opened for me, and our tongues met tentatively. In the following minutes, I taught him how to kiss properly. There was no passion in it, but there was a delightful sensuality that he seemed to enjoy as much as I did.

I finally pulled back and regarded him with my chin upon his chest.

“You have twenty-seven teeth.”

He laughed and pulled my mouth to his, and I was very aware of his counting. “And you have twenty-six,” he said when he released me. He tousled my hair. “I do not wish to live without you.”

“Nor I you. Tonight, hearing of Siegfried’s demise, I grew concerned. I never truly consider death. My own I do not fear. Yours, I fear.”

“We will not allow that to happen to us. If we die, we die together.”

I nodded. The subject troubled me, and so I teased with a grin, “If you feel yourself mortally wounded, you will take me with you?”

He sensed my mood and smiled slowly. “Oui, with my dying breath I will kill you. Will you do the same?”

I let myself think of it, and immediately regretted it. “I do not know if I could.”

He nodded thoughtfully. “Neither do I, and if I knew I would die I would want you to live.”

I sighed and chuckled ruefully. “And I cannot imagine it without you. So we are back at the beginning.”

“Let us not die.”

“Even I, who do not like to trouble myself with the consequences of things, know that we should most probably change professions then.” At that thought, I felt the brush of melancholy. “What did you intend to do with your life before I so rudely interrupted it?”

He was playing with my earlobes. “Did you realize your head is not symmetrical?”

I laughed. “Oui, I know. Neither is yours. An artist once told me that no one he ever saw was truly symmetrical, and he thought that if any man were that perfect, they would appear ugly to others.”

“He was probably correct.” Gaston smiled. “You look fine as you are.”

“I am glad to hear it.” I grinned. “What did you intend to do…?”

“Before I met a drunk Englishman on a street reading Plato?”

“Oui.”

He looked away somberly and regarded the lamp. I watched the flame flicker in his eyes.

“I lived because I could not die,” he breathed. “I gave no thought to the future. I was not careless with my life, but not careful either. Living here was no different than… before. I was happiest when I did not have to consider such things. When I was young, it was always a new school and a new battle, and here it has always been a new ship and new battles. I was mad before and I am mad now; it merely takes a different form. I was always alone.” He frowned. “Except for when I was very young, and then I had my sister. Here I have occasionally found those who cared, but not enough to…” His gaze returned to mine. “I think I hoped that eventually I would be unlucky and it would end.”

I held him and buried my face in his neck. I remembered the first bout of madness I had witnessed, wherein he was enraged with me over saying I had sometimes wished for death. I was once again overcome with emotion; but this time it was not guilt or shame. If forced to name it to another, I would have called it responsibility. I had never been this important to another being, ever. And no one had ever been this important to me.

He pulled my head up; and I kissed him deeply, which he allowed.

Then he pulled my head back again, and looked into my eyes.

“What do you want to do?”

I thought on it, discarding all manner of orthodox goals as they never held meaning for me.

“I want to be with you. I want to exorcise both our demons. I want to be happy.”

He smiled. “How?”

“Is not this moment enough?”

He increased the pressure on the sides of my head to hold me still, and his eyes bored into mine.

“You began this. I want the same things, but there are a number of decisions facing us, are there not? What will we do? We have money. We can catch a ship and go anywhere in the world. We are free to do as we please, if we choose to be. Do we wish to rove again? Do you care what happens on the plantation? Do you wish to inherit your father’s title?

Tell me what you wish, and I will do everything in my power to help you attain it.”

I could see myself in his eyes, and it was disconcerting. I did not know if he realized this; though it fit well with his intent, which was to prevent me from evading the issue – which I was doing by thinking about his intent and not the questions facing me. Why did I not want to think on it? Why did I pose the questions if I did not want answers?

I smiled. “I want someone to tell me what to do.”

He released me with a bemused sigh, but I stayed where I was and continued to gaze into his eyes and the little me watching me from within them. He started to speak, but I quickly placed fingers on his lips. He held still and waited. I was experiencing an epiphany of sorts.

That one admission had brought it about. I did not only want someone to tell me what to do, I expected it. Someone always had, and I had always defied them. Events in my past were revealed in new ways; and I shuffled through them, seeing a connection for the first time in this new light.

“I… have never known what I wanted,” I said. “I have always known I did not know what I wished for in life, but it… Damn, I do not know if I can explain adequately. My life has been defined by what I did not wish, or the avoidance of it. My whole life has been spent… running, with the wolves nipping at my heels in one form or another. I have been herded throughout by fortune and circumstance. Every which way I have turned, I have seen another obstacle I either did not wish to surmount or I found insurmountable. And instead of staying put or facing the things pursuing me, my wayward heart has always led me further afield looking for greener pastures. And so I run from one paddock to the next.

“Alonso angered me, when he said we needed to mature and accept our fates at the hands of our families and become responsible. I still do not wish to do that; but I do not know whether it is because I am so familiar with running that I can conceive of nothing else, or because I am afraid of being locked in some small paddock for the rest of my life, when I now have seen so many others. Though from what I have witnessed, in some ways all of the paddocks are very much the same.

“I feel I am truly thankful Shane drove me out. If it were not for him, I would be married now to some god-awful twit like my sister, with a number of children and a mistress in London. I would be drunk every night at one court party or another, because I would not be able to bear myself or my life. Instead, I have seen some of the world and I have ended up here, and I know much more of whom I am. Of course the fences and wolves here just drove me out to sea, but I found you, and now I am not alone.

“But are we truly free to do as we wish? We could catch a ship to anywhere, but where? As we discussed, we do not wish to return to the Old World. However, if we go many other places in the world, we will not fit in amongst the natives and we will be in greater danger than we are here; unless we remain with our own kind, at which point we may as well be in Christendom for how we will be expected to behave. So for now I wish to stay here with you.

“As for roving,” I sighed. “It suits me. Though it is dangerous and I do not wish to lose either of us. Yet if we do not rove, what will we do with our time? Plant? I find myself seeking to justify it, so therefore it must be something I want to do yet feel will be denied me, or should be denied me.

“As for the plantation,” I sighed again. “I truly do not know. That is some Gordian knot in my mind that I do not know how to untie as of yet. It is all wrapped about my father, and Shane, and the title, and who I am supposed to be and…” I trailed off with another sigh, as he was watching me patiently and I knew he understood. “So I believe, despite my new understanding of my life, that we are where we were before, as in tomorrow will be much as it was before.”

He shook his head. “That new understanding makes all the difference in the world, Will. Are you still running?”

“As with all things, it is a matter of perception, is it not?” I smiled and returned to lying partially atop him. “I am not running at the moment. I am standing here with you looking about in a somewhat calm manner at the paths available.”

“How do you perceive me?” he asked. “Am I an obstacle, or…?”

I stopped his words with my lips.

“Oui,” I whispered with a grin when I pulled away. “You are an immovable object in my life now, yet I do not perceive you as being confining, but rather offering protection. I see us as two centaurs standing in a field with fences we can jump; and we are surrounded by wolves and sheep. Yet we tower above them, and we are well-armed.”

He chuckled. “That may be a somewhat grandiose interpretation of the situation, but I will accept it for now.” He sobered and frowned. “I can see it, but I see one of us as being lame.”

I nodded. “I see both of us that way. We will overcome it.”

“What color are we?” he asked. I regarded him quizzically. “The horse part.”

I frowned. When I envisioned the metaphor I allowed myself to see, it but I had not regarded it in that degree of detail. I let my imagination flow freely about it and grasped upon the first thing I saw. “Like the hair on our heads. Your horse part is sorrel, and I am tan.”

He thought on this and played with my hair. “I saw us as black and white. I wanted to be a black horse because you like them.”

It was very sweet, and I kissed him for the image but I asked, “Why am I white? Do you like white horses?”

He shrugged. “I do not like horses, remember.”

I rolled my eyes and he laughed at my discomfiture.

“Non, truly,” he said, “I see us as the dark and the light. Two sides of the same thing. You are bright and shining and I am a thing of shadows.”

“I will be your white horse and you can be my black,” I murmured and held him closer. He smoothed my hair, and we lay together comfortably as the candle burned down.

I pictured him as a black centaur. I had never paid particular detail to what I thought the horse part of a centaur should look like. I had seen representations before, but they had not been my own. I thought of various black horses I had owned; Hercules, Goliath, Alexander, Gwidion and others pranced through my memory. In shape, Gaston would do best with Goliath’s body, as I saw him as compact and strong; yet that body would have to be a great deal smaller to fit his torso upon it as it was now.

My mind strayed as I pondered these images, and I tried to remember Goliath more clearly, until I saw him as I last had, bloody and broken in his stall. Unbidden and unwelcome, the centaur image of Gaston replaced the first in the same scenario and I shuddered. He had already been whipped bloody in his life, and it had broken him. In my vision, he pleaded with me to kill him, and he was reaching for me through the bars of one of the asylum cells I had seen in Florence.

I woke with a cry. Gaston was eyeing me sleepily, but he was already reaching for a weapon, which was not there as we had not placed it at the head of the hammock.

“What?”

I took in the room and lay back upon him, and willed my heart to calm.

“A dream.” I forced myself to look upon what I could remember of the images. “We must never return to Christendom.”

He rubbed my shoulders reassuringly. “What did you dream? And move. We drifted off unprepared.”