Piper and Alph

© 2007 by Anel Viz. All rights reserved.

 

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5.  Conquest

       In his sleep Alph drew his hands close around his arms and snuggled into Piper as though cold.  Piper noticed that goose pumps had formed on his own skin.  He looked up and saw Alph’s tee-shirt flapping in the wind.  It had turned chilly and the sky had clouded over.  The rap music had stopped a good half-hour ago.  He gently shook his friend and said, “I think it’s going to rain.”

       Thunder clouds were moving quickly in from the northwest.  The rain started while they were getting their things together.  They ran naked down the beach, hoping to outrun the storm, but it broke over them before they reached the path, and they ran the rest of the way to the car naked and laughing, through the trees and then across the open field, thinking the parking lot would probably be empty.  It wasn’t.  There were a three or four cars still there, and they may have had people in them, but they didn’t worry about that.  They drove home in the buff, slipping into the bare minimum in the motel parking lot.  They started giggling as soon as they reached their room and went on laughing hysterically till the tears were rolling down their cheeks.  A deafening crack of thunder erupted just as they were closing the door behind them.  The bolt couldn’t have landed very far away.

       Alph switched on the TV and surfed until he found the weather channel.  “Let’s eat out tonight,” he said.  “Somewhere nice.  Seafood.”

       They drove up the coast looking for a restaurant, the road barely visible through the sheets of rain pouring down the windshield.  They wouldn’t have seen the restaurant if it hadn’t been so brightly lit on the outside.  Inside it was almost empty, because of the storm, they hoped, not because of the food.  They’d finally remembered to bring the camera with them, and were able to ask the waitress to take their picture together.  She took three, two of them standing side by side and one of them at table.  Alph ordered a bottle of wine, and they toasted a glorious end to their long weekend.

       “Tonight we make love,” Piper said.

       “We make love.  To us.”

       “To making love!”

       “To making love.”

       “To us!  How do we begin?”

       “By showering together.”

       “Do you think we’ll need the extra arousal?” Piper asked.

       “What do you mean, extra arousal?  Who needs arousal?  I’m aroused enough right now.  Put your hand in my lap if you don’t believe me.”

       “No thank you, not here... though it is tempting.”

       “Yes, better not here.  I don’t want to come in my pants.  The shower is to cool us off, you see, so I don’t pop as soon as we hit the bed.”

       “I don’t care when I come.  I don’t even care if I come.  But I don’t want you popping ahead of time.”

       “What about what I want?” Alph laughed.  “Doesn’t that matter?”  After a pause he went on: “But it’s time we got serious, isn’t it?  Did you bring condoms?”

       “No.  I thought about it, but I didn’t.”

       “We’ll we’re not going to find a pharmacy around here at this time of night.  Did you notice if there were any in the vending machines at the motel?”

       “I looked.  There weren’t.  Maybe there’s a machine in the men’s room here.”

       “Unlikely.  Too ritzy.  What’s your HIV status?  I know you’ll tell me the truth.”

       “Negative.”

       “You’re sure?”

       “I’m sure.”

       “Believe it or not, I’m not too concerned about myself.  I’m thinking about my lover.  How long ago did you get tested?”

       “Three years.”

       “And how long since you’ve had sex?”

       “More than twice that.”

       “OK, here’s how it is with me.  I tested negative a year ago.  My boyfriend was tested a couple of months ago and came up negative for everything, all the STD’s, hep B, hep C, and so on down the alphabet.  And believe me, if I had anything he would have caught it.  We’ve never used condoms with each other.”

       “So we’re safe?  I mean, how reliable is the test?  Do you know?”

       “That depends on the results.  Six months after infection there are no false negatives, only false positives.  And remember we’ve been monogamous for five years.”

       “And you’re sure of him?”

       “Surer than I am of myself.”

       “Meaning?”

       “Meaning us.”

       “So we are safe.  Gosh, this is exciting.  I can’t remember how long it’s been since I barebacked.”

       “As I said, I’m clean; but it’s up to you.  You’re the one who’s taking the greater risk.”

       “You’ll pull out, won’t you?”

       “What did you think I was going to do?  Stay in you forever?”

       “You know what I mean!”

       “Listen, Piper, this just may be the best-kept secret in the gay community, and it’s one that shouldn’t be kept, but there’s a higher concentration of the virus in precum than there is in ejaculate.”

       “Then why do they say the biggest risk is when somebody comes inside you?”

       “One, because it’s one more risk added on to the “greatest risk” of unprotected anal sex.  Two, because the more frenzied the lovemaking, the more likely the possibility of microscopic tears.  Three, because there’s a hell of a lot more ejaculate than there is precum.  Logical enough?  Look, I promise to try to pull out in time if that’s what you want.  Of course, that way you won’t get to feel me throbbing ecstatically inside you.”

       “You’re worse than a flirt; you’re a seducer!”

       “Am I good one?”

       “You’ve seduced me.”

       The thunder and lightning had passed over by the time they left the restaurant, and the wind had died down, but a soaking rain was still falling and the thick cloud cover made the night very dark.  They undressed as soon as they got back to their room.  Alph was right – they needing cooling off, not arousal.  The other times they had taken off their clothes with the other looking on – in their room, at the beach – they had done so placidly and flaccidly.  Now their cocks were pushing against their shorts, clamoring to get out, and sprang free as soon as the elastic pulled down over the head.

       First Alph.  “You!” he cried as his cock jumped out to point accusingly at Piper.

       Piper pushed his boxers to his knees, and his dick pointed straight back at Alph.  “Me!” he trumpeted, and they kicked off their underwear and got in the shower.

       They spent twenty minutes under the stream of warm water soaping and groping, cooing and shampooing.  They lapped at the water that ran down their bodies, traced circles of bubbles around nipples, fingered cracks and crevices, squeezed flesh by the handful, scratched pubic bushes into a rich lather.  They kissed over and over, each kiss deeper than the last, less tentative, more demanding, until they seemed to have turned into Siamese twins joined permanently just below the nose.  The water leaked through the seal of lips and filled their mouths.  They thought they would drown.  Have you ever tried to swallow with your mouth open and someone else’s tongue swirling around inside it?  Just breathing is hard enough.

       Each wondered if he would go down on the other right there in the shower, or if the other would go down on him, but neither did.

       They toweled each other off and tumbled kissing into bed.  They had kissed a number of times in the last three days, not just in the shower, and had kissed in any number of different ways – playfully, casually, lovingly, unexpectedly, suavely, rowdily – but now they kissed with urgency, clinging to each other, clawing at each other, rolling around on the bed together, thrashing wildly, legs wrapped around legs, hearts pounding, bodies pressed front to front and rubbing together, cocks dripping in anticipation, balls aching for the release so long delayed.  When their mouths came apart they would close their lips on the other’s neck, lick his cheeks, nip at his ears, then come together again and suck the trembling breath from their lungs.

       Then Piper began his slow descent, licking his way down Alph’s body, flicking his tongue over his nipples, mouthing the breast bone between them , taking his chest hair in his teeth and pulling it, kissing in a snaky coil across his belly, lower and lower until his face was buried in his bush, and all the while Alph’s cock flailed wildly next to his ear: “Take me!  Take me!”  Alph lay in ecstasy, rotating his hips, legs splayed, his back immobile and plastered to the mattress, his arms quivering by his sides as if palsied, his head thrown back, eyes wide open and staring at the ceiling, panting, his breath lurching like a rowboat in the wake of cruise ship, and he moaned over and over and over: “Ohgodohgodohgodohgodohgodohgod...”

       Piper raised his head and scrutinized the prize straining eagerly up at him from between the parted thighs.  For a few endless seconds all Alph could feel of him was his hot breath passing over his tingling groin as still as motionless wind.  He stopped moaning and in the surrounding silence listened to the heaving of his friend’s chest.  Another endless moment passed, and the warm, silky wetness closed tenderly around the head of his cock and inched slowly down his shaft, a searching tongue wrapping around it like a caress.

       A shudder traversed Alph’s frame.  It shot upwards from his tail bone to his shoulders, which shook for a second and then froze in place, and he suddenly sucked in his breath, and between his knees and his sternum turned stiff as a board.  He lifted his arms, laid his hands on Piper’s shoulder blades, drew him gently up to lie beside him, and kissed him.  He hesitated a moment before he spoke, just a moment, while he listened to the soft, expectant whimper that hummed in Piper’s throat.  “I can’t,” he said.  I just can’t”

       “Of course you can.  You’re hard as a rock.”

       “I mean I mustn’t.  Lord knows I want to.  I wanted you from the moment you walked through the door, I’d been wanting for months before that, but wouldn’t admit it to myself, and I want you now, more than anything, but it feels wrong.  Nothing has ever felt so right and so wrong at the same time.”

       Piper felt his muscles tighten and his heart sink.  “You don’t have to tell me that.  Your body says it all, and more.”  They still lay tightly clasped, and Alph’s cock, drumming with the inrush of fresh blood, flicked hot against him and dribbled the tears of its sweet yearning on his hip.  What Piper had taken for the first spasm that must inevitably be followed by the spurt of orgasm had been the physical manifestation of revolt, brought on by the objections that had been simmering in Alph’s subconscious boiling over and demanding to be heard.  He had no choice but to listen too.  It would be unfair to his friend to hold him to a commitment he didn’t want to go through with.  “Unless it’s right for both of us, it’s wrong,” he said, trying to sound more like a man in control of his feelings than one resigned to the inevitable.

       “What’s stupid about it is that it is right for me, so very, very right, and that’s what makes it wrong.  If you meant less to me – and you couldn’t mean more, really you couldn’t – it wouldn’t be so wrong.  I don’t think I would feel this way about anonymous sex, sex that didn’t mean anything, but this would be making love.  And we are making love – real love – or at least we were starting to.  I’m sorry, Piper.  I’m so terribly sorry, for you and myself both.”

       “Please don’t say that.  There’s nothing to be sorry about.  You’ve been good to me.  In the last few days you’ve made me happier than I’ve been in years.”

       “I’m sorry I led you on.”

       “You didn’t lead me on.  We led each other on.  You followed my cues as much as I followed yours.  We led ourselves on.”

       “But somewhere inside I knew it was wrong all along.”

       “And you think I didn’t sense that?  I felt it too, and in spite of that I let it come this far because I wanted it even though I could tell you didn’t.  Both did and didn’t, I mean.  We’re both of us to blame.”

       “I’m sorry it had to end like this.”

       “It hasn’t ended.  If we made love, that might end it.  That’s one of the things that makes it wrong.  So you see it’s not just your lover that’s coming between us.  I don’t want to have you if it means losing you at the same time.”

       “It seems so unfair to you.”

       “It’s the story of my life.”

       Piper began extricating himself from their embrace.

       “You don’t have to move away.  There’s nothing wrong in our lying this close.  Most of the physical things we’ve done were OK until...”

       “Until I took your cock in my mouth.  I know that.  I also know that it’s OK to cuddle and kiss.  And I know we’ll probably wake up in each other’s arms again, and I’ll like that.  What happens when we’re asleep is harmless.  I’ll just move a little ways, a foot at most, and for a little while, so I won’t be tempted to try anything and ruin it all.”

       True, but he left other truths unsaid.  We was thinking that while it was Alph who made the first elliptical advances, it was also he who had put it off.  Not intentionally, but his body spoke for the reluctance he would not acknowledge.  Jet lag, a cold, fatigue, sunburn.  But his conscious and unconscious were not entirely at war.  Détente was possible.  Even this sudden interruption lacked some of the hallmarks of finality.

       Alph could tell that Piper hadn’t voiced the whole truth, though he didn’t know what he held back.  “We can still be naked together, can’t we?  What I mean is, that wouldn’t be rubbing it in, would it?  I don’t want to go on torturing you.”

       “Yes, we can still be naked together.  We can do just about anything except rub it in.”  He forced a little laugh.  “You see?  We can go on teasing each other too and still feel good about it.  We just can’t let ourselves this close to going all the way.”

       Lying side by side, but apart, was easier on Alph too.  The desire to make love with Piper would not leave him, and his erection did not subside.  He sensed that his friend was crying softly in the darkness.  It would be as wrong to ignore his sorrow as to give in to their longing and have sex.  He rolled over so we was right next to him, on his stomach so the stirring of his penis wouldn’t touch him, gently laid his arm over Piper’s shoulder, and kissed him.  “This isn’t sex,” he whispered.  “It’s comforting you.”

       “I know, and comfort is better than sex, but it’s no replacement for it.”

       So they fell asleep in each other’s arms after all, and it was right and it was good, an expression of their special friendship and an acknowledgement of their love that would never be consummated unless Fate changed her mind.  And Fate is fickle.

       They woke up in their usual tangle.  Alph was rock hard, of course.  Piper had left a sticky puddle on the sheet below him and on his tummy.

       “Pleasant dreams, I see.”

       “Very pleasant.”

       “And you feel OK about what happened last night?”

       “I’m OK with what didn’t happen, if that’s what you mean.”

       “We have to check out this morning.  You know what you want to do after that?”

       “I want to go to the beach.”

       “You’re sure?”

       “I’m sure.”

       “Let’s not forget the camera this time.”

       “Let’s take a picnic too.”

       The path down to the beach was muddy from last night’s rain, and a low-lying area in front of the dunes had turned into a lagoon, but the sand was dry, just crusted over from having been wet.  The wind had knocked down parts of some of the love nests, but theirs was intact, and they moved back in.

       Except for them, the beach was empty, so it didn’t look as if they get nude pictures of them together after all, but a couple of people did eventually show up.  A skinny kid flaunting an enormous piece of meat attached himself to them, but they were wary because he didn’t look anywhere near eighteen.  He eagerly agreed to take pictures of them, though.  They took a few in the dunes – holding hands, smooching, acting silly, that sort of thing.  They particularly liked the one of them sitting face to face in the sand, knees up, legs bracketing each other, their arms forward with their hands resting on each other’s shoulders.

       The kids wanted them to take some of him too, and they obliged.  He tried to look lascivious, but was much too young to pull it off.  They thought he looked kind of dumb, but of course they didn’t tell him.  Then he whacked at himself a bit to bring his member up to maximum size, and asked for more pictures.

       “We’ll need a panoramic lens,” Alph said sarcastically.  He liked that.

       Then they went back to their nest for a few more pictures.  The kid offered to take a batch of what he called “action shots”.

       “We don’t do that,” Piper told him.

       “Won’t pose for porn?”

       “Don’t do it, period.  Sucking, fucking, none of it.”

       “You’re kidding!”

       “He means we don’t do it with each other,” Alph explained.  “We’re just good friends.  And I have a boyfriend at home.  I’m visiting from out of town.”

       The kid didn’t look convinced, and he hung around a while longer, then he got the message that they weren’t going to anything and left them to themselves.  It was a relief to be alone again.

       “Will you tell your boyfriend what we did?” Piper asked.

       “I’ll show him the pictures.”

       “That’s nothing compared to what happened between us.”

       “Almost happened.  But yes, I’ll tell him – unless he says ‘Don’t tell me anything’, and I don’t think he will.”

       “Will he believe that ‘almost’?”

       “Who knows?  It is a stretch, isn’t it?  I hope so.”

       “Will he get mad?”

       “No, but he may be hurt.  He’ll blame himself for neglecting me for so long while he took care of his mom.  It may mean less time apart for us.”

       “Is that why you did it?  Not to trick him into giving you more of time – you know I don’t mean that – because you were horny from not getting enough of him.”

       “No, it was because of you.”

       “Just couldn’t resist my gorgeous body.  Hah!”

       “You’re always making fun of how you look, as if that mattered.  Why should it?  You’re surrounded by an electrical charge.  When you joke about sex it’s always about you and the people you’re with.  The air crackles.  It was bound to ignite something.  We both like playing with fire.”

       “I only get to play with matches.”

       They set out for home after lunch so that Piper would have the afternoon to rest up before returning to work the next day.  They would have two more days together before Alph’s visit came to an end.  “Let me have your pack,” Piper said when they walked into the living room, and he took both packs and tossed them on the couch.  Alph understood that meant they would go on sleeping together until he left.

       “You’re sure you can handle it?  You’re sure sharing a bed won’t drive you wild?”

       “Of course it’ll drive me wild.  Just having you here drives me wild.  And your leaving, that will drive me wild too.”

       “I never pegged you for a wild man.  Or are you just a masochist at heart?”

       “Will it be any easier on you?  Would it be better knowing I was lying naked in the next room?  I thought not.  Look, until the other night I hadn’t had sex in years, and I’m glad I had what I had even if it was cut short.  I loved every minute of it.  And I’ve been sleeping alone for years too.  I’m not going to forego the opportunity of having a man in my bed, especially a man like you, for the stupid reason that it drives me wild.”

       They slept together in naked innocence that night, and when Piper got home from work the next day he found Alph still naked.  “Thank you,” he said, and took his clothes off too.

       Alph had not hung around the house naked all day.  He’d been out to shop for dinner and had put a lot of effort into preparing something that showed off his culinary skills, of which he was very proud.  That night they had candles on the table and a fine wine to toast with.  They drank multiple toasts and got just buzzed enough to pretend they felt silly.

       “To us!”

       “To not making love just yet!”

       “To letting what happens happen!”

       “To seeing what tomorrow may bring!”

       “To many more tomorrows together, whatever they’re like!”

       “To what isn’t going to happen!”

       “To what almost did happen!”

       “To its almost happening again!”

       “To its almost not happening again!”

       They spent the rest of the evening downloading the pictures they had taken, looking at them in big format, choosing those they liked best, and finishing off another bottle.

       “So here we are back where we started,” Alph quipped, “playing pick your favorite photo.”

       “You know, I really did have a favorite photo all along.  I just liked it too much for you not to like it.”

       “Which one is it?”

       Piper got the book and opened to the photo of the man lying on the bed with one knee to the side and a pillow under his stomach, the one that had turned Alph on the next day and that he had forgotten to show Piper.

       “What do you like about it?”

       “Don’t you like it?”

       “I love it, but I still want to know why you like it.”

       “I identify with it, with him... except for his looks, that is.  But it’s where I wish I was.”

       “I like your reason.”

       “Why’s that?”

       “Because I can identify with the photographer.”

       The more the became accustomed to the knowledge that they would not have sex, the more they relaxed, and the next evening they found they were able to cuddle on the sofa and only get half hard.  They felt natural with each other again, as they had before they met in person, and there was no threat in teasing each other.  And kissing was allowed now too.

       Alph had reserved a morning flight.  Piper told his boss he would be an hour late so he could take his friend to the airport.  He drove up in front of the departure terminal and helped him get his luggage out of the trunk.

       “Thanks for everything,” Alph said.  He hesitated a moment and added, “What do we do now?  Shake hands?  Hug?”

       “We kiss.”

       “Here?  In front of everyone?  Or do we get back in the car?”

       “I’m not in the closet, and your closet isn’t here.  You’re flying back to it.”

       “Maybe not.”

       For a split second Piper thought, “He’s going to stay,” then he realized how ridiculous that was.  “You’re coming out.”

       “Maybe.  I’ve thought about it.  The boyfriend and I have a lot to discuss.  If we decide it’s time to make a commitment, we’ll come out.”

       “You think he’ll agree to come out?”

       “The question is if he’ll agree to a commitment.”

       “May I be the first to congratulate you?”  And they kissed.

       “You’ll come back and visit again, won’t you?” Piper asked.  “It was painful, but I loved having you here.”

       “It was painful for me too.  I hope you know that.”

       “I know.  I’m not blaming you.  You will be back, though?  It will be easier next time, knowing what the limits are in advance.”

       “Of course I will.  But it’s your turn next.”

       “I’d love to, but I don’t think I could stand being in the next room when your boyfriend sleeps over.”

       “You wouldn’t have to.  A threesome doesn’t count as cheating, does it?  We’ve never had one, you know.”

The End ...
 

Posted: 03/21/08