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Heavy orchard boughs
Ripe with fragrant, fatted fruit
Shade to lovers’ bliss
-#73, In Blue Solitudes, S. Wilson-Osaki
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Seb had reached the fourth stage of discovery, exhilaration, by the time they broke off the path to stroll between rows of fruit trees. Late-summer peaches and blood oranges sagged their leafy branches for maximum shade, though a few overripe divers got squashed underfoot. Seb moved closer to Andrea to twine their fingers, unable to resist swinging their joined hands. Giddy with leisure, Seb snatched a fat peach from a passing bough and ripped into its juicy flesh.
“How can you eat?” Andrea asked when offered a bite. Once the little horse family had settled in for the night, Renia laid out a banquet fit for her royal ancestors. They bunked in one of the guest rooms, too glutted on food and excitement to do more than kiss good night, let alone strip, before collapsing into slumber. Fortified by a lavish breakfast and a bracing swim, Renia had invited them to explore the property before the long drive back.
“How can you not?” Seb gulped in another mouthful, juices running down his chin. “Although if you recall, I didn’t have a second slice of crostata.”
“You had two helpings of museli and four zeppole. Does some kind of Italian food ghost visit you at night, leading you from feast to feast but not letting you eat?”
“Three of them. Armed with bags of seashells and an endless supply of G&Ts.”
Andrea laughed, tugging him close and hooking his arm around Seb’s waist. He was a good half foot taller than his stealth veterinarian, so Seb slung his arm around Andrea’s shoulders, relaxed against him. Andrea’s wavy hair tickled the delicate patch on the underside of his elbow. Their hips locked into place like the final pieces of a puzzle. Seb wanted to howl, to sing, to cry out to all the ancient gods for giving him this day.
Instead he tore off another strip of peach, crushed out its tart ambrosia. Sparkles of sunlight between the leaves heightened the otherworldly atmosphere, as if they’d slipped through to another dimension. The scent of sweet citrus accented Andrea’s earthy musk, tinged with antiseptic soap. They stumbled over a tree root, fell into each another. With that sinuous body pressed against his, a new kind of appetite stirred.
Dropping the peach, Seb tipped Andrea’s bold Roman jaw upward, gazed into the face that inspired so much confusion and longing in him. Nectar-spiked blood coursed through his veins, rousing his too-long-dormant desire. Seb thumbed the length of Andrea’s bottom lip, his own parted, panting. Andrea stilled, not inviting but not rejecting. Giving Seb all the space in the world, though they were only inches apart.
Did he dare disturb the universe?
He did.
Andrea’s lips, soft and plump as Seb’s discarded peach, welcomed him. Stubble fuzz scratched the edges of Seb’s mouth as he gave over to the kiss, learning new steps in a familiar dance. A sharp sigh of relief escaped Andrea when he opened to him, hugged his arms up Seb’s back, dug his fingers into his shoulders. A lash of Andrea’s tongue lured Seb in deeper, heated breaths and heady musk mingling in his singular taste.
This was not Henry’s tyrannical command of Seb’s body and mind, which Seb had been more than eager to obey. Where Henry had demanded, Andrea urged. Where he claimed, Andrea conceded. Both lit Seb’s wick, but only Andrea’s total submission had him thick as a stick of dynamite, embarrassingly ready to blow.
Three years of suppressed need surged in him now. Seb cupped Andrea’s head and drank greedily, twisting his fingers in the black ivy strands of his hair. A moan reverberated down his spine, squeezed the first slickness from his cock. Andrea pulled them chest to chest, ground his denim-clad erection into Seb’s hip.
The mellow sun suddenly scorched, searing his scalp and roasting Seb in his sweat-slick sarong. He dragged Andrea into the shade of a lemon tree, peeling off his shirt before shoving him against the trunk. Andrea sought his mouth as if needing him to breathe, guiding Seb’s hands to his belt and gripping his wrists as he tore at the buckle. Red silk boxers bulged against the buttons of his fly. Seb stole a moment to admire the view—Andrea’s sculpted pecs and tantalizing treasure trail leading him like a bull to the matador’s flag-covered sword.
Seb groped Andrea’s cock, bit into his neck. He cursed in at least two languages, bucking into Seb’s hand. Seb spied a dark-rose nipple in a briar of darker hair, but Andrea was primed and panting. A stain bloomed at the head of his tented boxers. Seb’s heavy tongue wanted nothing but salt. He dropped to his knees, freed Andrea’s erection from its satin sheath. Pressed his face into his groin until his every sense was saturated in Andrea’s essence.
Seb glanced up at his sweet veterinarian maddened with lust. Eyes blown wide at the sight of Seb at his service, they begged him for mercy but would not dare a nudge of encouragement. So different from anyone he had been with before, but somehow just what Seb needed. He wondered just how long it had been for Andrea, considered teasing him into a right frenzy. Instead he smiled, then licked up the length of his cock.
And moaned. How had he gone without this for so long? The feel of a lover tensing and trembling at every swipe of his tongue. The texture of his shaft as Seb licked up that prominent vein. The thrill of taking Andrea’s cock all the way down his throat. Seb sucked in his cheeks as he pulled off to knead Andrea’s plum-fat balls, wanting more. Wanting everything: to spin him around and lave his puckered hole; to work one finger, then two, then three into him; to spread him wide and fuck him senseless; to bore so deep into his sun-kissed body that he bathed in the font of his spirit.
Andrea clutched at the nape of Seb’s neck, cried out. Seb swallowed every last drop of his seed, giddy with laughter as he gave him a last lingering lick, then staggered to his feet. Seb purred as Andrea tended to him, his orgasm almost an afterthought, the climactic firework on the Fourth of July. He still hummed as Andrea wrapped him in a full-body embrace, gentled his lips with a much more languid kiss.
“You okay?”
Seb hated the hesitation in his voice. “Tremendous. You?”
A soft chuckle ticked his collar. “As if you need to ask.”
Seb shook his head, unable to help feeling smug. And hungry for more. Now that his sensual appetite had returned, it seemed he wouldn’t be sated by anything short of devouring Andrea whole.
“Come back to my place?”
He felt more than saw the stretch of Andrea’s smile. “Just want to check on Federica one more time.”
“Sure. I can wait.”
“That makes one of us.”
The promise of his lips had Seb counting the seconds.
Seb felt Andrea’s eyes on him as he slipped off the bed and meandered over to the window, throwing the latch to open the shutters wide. Only a whisper of a breeze snuck into the bedroom, enough to cool Seb’s overheated skin. He leaned over the sill, inhaled deep of the evening air. Tourists from the hotels up the hillside road staggered down to dinner, their flip-flops and running shoes replaced with high heels and sandals, which didn’t fare so well on an incline.
Across the way, the same middle-aged Italian woman as always sat framed by her balcony door, still as a portrait, forever watching the world go by. Seb recognized in her a kindred spirit. Until a few days ago, he’d been stuck in a similar pantomime of life, going through the motions under a veil of perpetual grief. Now, navel sticky with their recent eruptions and muscles still drunk on afterglow, he shuffled off to the bathroom to fetch a washcloth, barely recognizing the grinning, bright-eyed fool in the mirror.
Andrea stole the damp cloth from him as soon as he crawled back up the bed, tending quickly to himself before taking his time cleaning Seb. Even after he’d settled in against Seb’s side, head hovering over his shoulder until Seb eased him down with a pet, Andrea continued to map the planes and hollows of his chest, his arms, his hips, his thighs, a sensual cartographer dedicated to his craft. Seb gave over to these ministrations, but didn’t have it in him to reciprocate. After two blazing, breathless bouts, it would be a while before his flame could be lit.
Instead Seb nested his nose in Andrea’s hair, stroked his thumb across late-afternoon neck stubble. Luxuriated in the moment.
They barely spoke on the way back from the agriturismo ranch, neither willing to crack the thickening skein of desire that covered them in the wake of their first encounter. Andrea rested his hand on Seb’s knee when not busy with the clutch, shifting his excitement into higher and higher gears as deftly as he maneuvered the SUV. They came together at those endless stoplights, necking like teens on their first visit to makeout point. Only the blare of a horn would break them apart—laughing, shame-faced but unrepentant. By the time they pulled up to the Villa Napolitana, Seb was practically in Andrea’s lap.
He never thought he’d scale those stairs so quick. They broke into the apartment in a tangle of limbs, stripping as they climbed to the loft. The hour-long drive back had made them desperate; they vaulted onto the bed midkiss, Seb’s ankles still shackled by his briefs. Andrea was just as deliciously pliant as in their first round, matching Seb grind for grind, thrust for thrust, but letting him set the rhythm. A bit of backdoor mischief had him speaking in tongues. Seb planned to explore Andrea’s operatic side further on the next go-around. The chance to play conductor had awakened something primal in him. Watching Andrea sing out his last prompted his climax, ecstasy and pride ringing through Seb as he collapsed.
“Wine, bello?”
Andrea made a poor show of hiding his smile at the term of endearment. “Mmm.” He took his time easing away from Seb, plucking a kiss from behind his ear before retreating to the kitchen.
Fifteen minutes later Seb wondered if he’d somehow gotten lost in a two-room apartment. He resisted the temptation to yank on a pair of boxers as he went to look for him, wished he had when he found Andrea frozen in front of the picture of Henry Seb had stupidly tacked to the fridge door.
Seb took a deep, centering breath, went to the counter, poured the wine. Only exhaled when Andrea accepted his glass, hooked an arm around his waist.
“How are you feeling?”
“Good.” Seb didn’t have to force his smile. “Great. Best day in... Well, in three years. Although if you’d told me then the key to getting over Henry would be watching a horse give birth...” A twinge of worry tugged between his shoulder blades when Andrea didn’t laugh.
“Why do you keep him down here? I would have thought...”
“He wouldn’t mind, if that’s what you’re getting at.” Seb tucked him under his arm, steered them toward the stairs. “He would have wanted me to move on. Probably a lot sooner. This is going to sound funny, but... I just didn’t want him to see it. It’s one thing to wish it—”
“And another to witness.”
“Exactly.” That twinge became a pinch when Andrea halted them before the bottom step. “Do you mind?”
“What? No, no. I...” He drew away to look Seb in the eye. “I knew him.”
Seb felt all the air rush out of his lungs. “What do you mean? You... knew him, knew him?”
“No, no, not like that. I drove him. From the airport and other places. But his name was not Henry...”
“Walter Bishop,” Seb confirmed. “He used a fake name when researching a travel guide so that hotel and restaurant owners didn’t recognize him.”
“Ah!” After a full-body sigh, Andrea sagged against him. “Of course.”
Seb chuckled, welcomed him back in. “This was when, ten years ago? You couldn’t have been more than—”
“Nineteen. And very confused. But seeing someone like Wally, who was...” He waved his free hand, sloshed wine on the floor.
“Gay as a French trombone?”
Andrea snorted. “He didn’t hide.”
“Couldn’t. But that’s what drew me in. He was a beacon.”
Andrea glanced back at the picture. “He made me realize things were possible. That I could be as I am and still survive in the world. We talked one night at my aunt’s trattoria. It’s because of him that I came out to my family. I’ll never forget that night.”
Seb nodded, started back up the stairs. “He loved people. That’s what made him so good at his job. As a writer he was... well, a bit of a mess. But he could make the contacts, strike up a conversation, do the kinds of things people want to when they go on vacation. And he had the good sense to marry an editor.”
“He must have been gone a lot.”
“Made up for it when he was home.” Seb sat against the backboard so Andrea could scoot in between his legs and recline against his chest. He found these confessions easier if they weren’t face-to-face. “It was different back then, when we were dating. Once we got married, he took shorter assignments. The irony is he was a few weeks away from starting a new job when he...” Seb shut his eyes, sat with his sadness until the words came. “We wanted kids. He needed to be around more for that to happen. He was almost done. Just one short trip to this new hotel in Banff. He was leaving the next day. But then...”
Andrea turned around, hugged him.
“But that’s in the past.” Seb found solace in that solemn gaze. But he wanted something more. “Here’s to the present.”
They clinked glasses, but Andrea still looked too pensive for Seb’s liking.
“And the future?”
“Will take care of itself. The plan right now is no plans, no expectations, except for... Oh! Tomorrow’s Saturday, right? We already have a date.”
“Ah, yes! Calcio!” Finally Seb caught a glint off Andrea’s pearly whites. “What do you play? Forward? Defense? Goal?”
“Head cheerleader.” He demurred when Andrea groaned. “I don’t have any pom-poms, but I will bring my squad. You may come to regret inviting us. We are loud.”
“And proud?”
Remembering the fight in the parking lot the other day, Seb thought better of his quip. “Very. But I don’t want to make things harder for you.”
Andrea chuckled. “That is very kind of you. But this is, uh... a rainbow team. We’ve all been kicked out of our local clubs.”
“For being queer?”
“Not officially, but you know how it is.”
“Now I wish I did have pom-poms.”
Andrea planted a kiss in the center of his chest. “Just wear that... What is it, a kilt?”
“My sarong?”
“Yes. Wear that.”
Even beneath such a deep tan, Seb traced the blush that spread across his cheeks. “Like it, do you?”
Andrea cleared his throat, dodged his inquisitive look. “It suits you.”
“Ah. Good to know. Any part of me in particular?”
“Si. Your ass.”
At Seb’s howl of laughter, Andrea threw a decorative pillow at his head.