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  He turned to go, but not before Peder managed to wrench one eye open. He lit up. “Oh yum,” he slurred. “Is he gonna fuck me, too?”

  “No,” I said, a declaration confirmed by Marcel when he pulled the door shut behind him with an emphatic thud.

  Peder turned his attention to me, and shortly to the fact that I was quite erect. “That’s okay,” he said, turning to present himself to me. “You fuck me good.”

  I begged him to leave, and he begged me to fuck him first, and my cock again led the charge. By the time Peder was in a taxi heading back to town, Marcel was nowhere to be found.

  * * * *

  When Marcel did come home, he was not trailing sunshine and lollipops. The charming, attentive, flirty Marcel had elected to stay in town, and had sent a rather grim and surly replacement. One who was wholly unfamiliar with the phrase café au lit; one who frequently used my name as a swear word on the shooting range, but who often forgot to praise or even watch for what skills I could muster; one who retired to his office the second practice was over without saying so much in Luxembourgish as “Fuck off.” I couldn’t stand it, but I didn’t know what to do. I certainly hadn’t brought Peder home to hurt Marcel in any way, but nor had I presented myself as anything less than the jock slut I was. Marcel even teased me about it. So why was he so put out?

  “I’m not,” he snarked one night when I couldn’t take it anymore. We hadn’t spoken to each other in two days, and if he broke one more dish in ill-concealed frustration, we’d be reduced to eating in shifts off of the same plate.

  “The hell you’re not,” I said. We were walking across the garden back to the house after a tense and unproductive practice. “Marcel, you won’t even look at me, much less talk to me, and I hate it.” I struggled to control my volume, essentially whispering, “I miss you.”

  “You don’t ‘miss’ me,” he growled. “You can’t. We’re together every day.”

  “Okay, well, I don’t miss this guy, you’re right,” I said. “But I miss the old Marcel. My Marcel.”

  “Your Marcel?” He stopped walking and turned on me. “That’s a laugh. Do you tell your fuck buddies that you have a Marcel at home?”

  I’d known it was about Peder, but now with it between us on the grass, I didn’t know what to say. Did I correct his use of the plural? It seemed beside the point. Did I defend myself? I’d done nothing wrong. His face was clouded with fury, but his eyes were welling up, and I didn’t want to trigger either range of emotions. But when he smeared a tear angrily away with the back of his hand and turned to march away from me, I stopped him with a hand on his arm. “Marcel,” I gently reminded him, “we’re cousins.”

  Still hoping to steer clear of rage and anguish, I was nevertheless caught off guard by what appeared to be mirth. Sharp laughter, anyway, followed by another swipe at a wayward tear. He looked at me the way he might have looked at a dull child who just couldn’t quite piece together into which hole to hammer the triangle peg and laughed again, this time more robustly. He muttered a few choice words in Luxembourgish, then said in English, “You know our moms aren’t really sisters, right?”

  The look on my face, no doubt similar to that of someone who has just taken a large, cold fish upside the head, clearly telegraphed that I had no such knowledge, and again he laughed, but this time without malice. “Beau,” he explained—the first time in weeks my name had sounded like “handsome” in his mouth—”we’re not actual cousins.”

  “But my mom has always called your mom my auntie Francine,” I insisted, flushing. “Always.”

  “They’re like sisters,” Marcel elaborated. “They grew up together, went to school together, got into all kinds of trouble together. They were never apart before your mom moved to California. We’re ‘family,’ but we’re not related.” More laughter. “Is that what’s been stopping you?”

  Now I laughed too, relief washing over me as if he’d upended a bucket full of it over my head. “Stopping me?” I teased. “Look who’s full of himself all of a sudden. ‘Stopping me’ from doing what?”

  His eyes were suddenly—finally—clear, and they sparkled as he wove my hair through his fingers and pulled me to him. “From doing this,” he said. His lips were warm, insistent against mine, as he kissed me. Once. Twice. And then a third time until I melted like chocolate into his arms.

  Warm as he’d made my heart and my lips, the rest of me was freezing. After standing waist deep in icy fog—first arguing, then doing the super-opposite of arguing—as chill winter afternoon lapsed into black frozen night, I was gonna need a warm-up before we proceeded to get reacquainted. Marcel filled two mugs while I fired up the shower, and shortly we were wrapped in nothing but steam, my belly ablaze with brandy. And with a frenzied need for Marcel over which I was quite content to have no control.

  And yet suddenly time’s great container had broken, filling the shower cubby like amber in a fossil mold, and our every movement was tantalizingly unhurried; every kiss, every touch, every laugh to be savored at our leisure, each moment another gift to open and share with wide-eyed wonder. Strolling through town in jeans and sweaters we cut similar figures: both tall, both fit, both in need of a haircut. But here against each other we delighted in unexpected contrasts. Where I was pale, he was golden; where I was solid and ridged, his muscles were supple and stealthy; where I had had to gym my body into submission, his was naturally responsive, swathed in an inviting softness. His belly was flat, but protected by a thin layer of give that begged to be nibbled at; the whisper of width in his hips was borne out in a ripe pear of an ass so juicy that a long, loamy taste was more than I could have resisted; his pert pecs came to two points, the caramel peak of each a succulent mouthful—it’s no wonder he’s a good cook, I mused, inhabiting a body that was itself such a bountiful feast.

  His mouth was full and delicious, his ass as plump and tasty, and with my lips on one and my delirious hands on the other, my cock soon demanded satisfaction. Gently, I turned Marcel against the wall so that he could offer himself up to me, and gently did he extract himself from beneath me and pin me to the wall. I whimpered, and he closed his eyes with a simple, non-negotiable tilt of his chin; not yet.

  His hands roved my body like a search and rescue team, leaving no ridge unconquered, no cavern unexplored. He prostrated himself, rapturous ass in the air, to relish the taste and texture of every one of my toes, and then worked his way with excruciating tenderness up my legs, the better to feast on my balls. First one in his mouth, then the other, then both together as he licked at my taint, each gluttonous moan from him sending another wave of desire bouncing through my impossibly swollen rod until the ache of it pushed another whimper out of me. I was opening my mouth to grovel, to implore him to take me inside him, at which precise moment he swallowed my throbbing cock whole. I almost fainted with delirium, and when he set about my shaft with his tongue, I hollered and moaned and sang praises of sexual need that would have shut down even the most fervent tent revival, but Marcel would not be distracted; he continued his work on my bone until the only thing left to do was suck the marrow from it. Flash after flash of ecstasy convulsed my body until I was sure my physical form would disintegrate from the strain of trying to contain it, and Marcel welcomed every drop I emptied into him and then rooted for more. Never had I known such euphoric release; never had I imagined such rapture.

  Never had I been fucked before, and when Marcel turned my face to the wall and began to entreat my hole, I clenched in resistance. He continued to seek entry as he leaned against me, his mouth against my ear. His cock wasn’t particularly monstrous, and I was drenched in desire for him, but I’d been a top for the whole of my sexual career. I’d never had more than maybe two fingers up there before, and I wasn’t sure I’d be able to take him. We were communing on a spiritual level to which previous sexual experiences had never even alluded; surely he would understand. We’d just have to work up to it. I had all these excuses and more at the ready, knowing he would
hear me and honor my wishes, and then he moved his mouth. The single word—Beau—rumbled up from a place deep inside him, and I felt rather than heard my name, so laden with need—with stark, base want—that I opened myself to him utterly. And he took me with tenderness. And with certainty. And with more force than I would have expected, shattering the blunt pain into glittering, greedy shards of pleasure. I howled for “more” as if it was the only word—of English, of French, of fucking Luxembourgish, which I didn’t even know I knew—I had ever learned, and when he slumped against me with a leonine roar and I felt my insides overflowing with Marcel, I laughed with release, reduced to a howling mess by the awesomeness of unfettered ecstasy.

  * * * *

  Spring arrived in Luxembourg. At least in my memory, we pulled back the curtains that very next morning and the entire country—indeed the whole world—was awash in sunshine and chirping birds. Charming, attentive, flirty Marcel had returned, and set about making up for lost time. Only now, when he brought me coffee in bed, it was in his bed. Our dinners were delicious and romantic. And though our wrestling matches over Luxembourgish still ended in a tangle, the prize was much sweeter than any pudding cup.

  Hitherto locked behind a door to which I hadn’t know there was a key, the Bottom in me blossomed, and I frequently got as good as I gave. Marcel was a generous and curious lover, and most days we weren’t able to turn loose the bed until we discovered, and then mastered, a new position. I pulled muscles I never even knew I had, which then throbbed as reminders of the lengths to which we had gone to pull them, the memories of which set other muscles to throbbing, and, well, is it any wonder that the shooting range fell by the wayside?

  Not that we never left the bedroom. We breakfasted on the patio; we strolled arm in arm through the hills, the meadows, and the streets of town; we spent two relaxed and romantic weeks perusing the museums, cafés, and shady lanes of Paris, a short—and quite X-rated—train ride away. We rode this neighbor’s horses into the mountains, we helped that neighbor make cheese—we did hundreds of things together, rapt in each other’s company, but work out on the range was not among them, and when Marcel started fretting about the European Cup drawing near, it took me a split second to fathom what he was talking about.

  “We’ve got to get you back on the range,” he said one morning, fairly leaping from the bed after a mere two orgasms.

  Less inclined to leap about, I muttered, “Don’t worry about it, baby,” pulling back the covers to signal that he should rejoin me. “There’s plenty of time for that.”

  “Not really, there’s not,” he said. “We leave for Munich in three weeks, and we’ve got a lot of work to do if you’re gonna be ready.”

  “You mean I’ve got a lot of work to do,” I pouted. I was unaccustomed to being in his bed alone, and I was not a fan.

  “You do have a lot of work to do,” he said. “And I am your coach, which means we will work together. Come on, Beau. We probably needed a break, and I sure am glad we took it.” He winked. “But it’s time to get serious. You’ve got a shot at a Quota Place if you do well in Munich. The Olympics, Beau—it can happen in three weeks, but not if you don’t get out of bed.”

  He was serious, but his tone was light; he was cajoling, not bossing. But he was naked, and I wanted his ass up against me, not across the room, and accordingly, I whined like a brat. “But I don’t want to get out of bed. I don’t want to practice. Can’t you just come back to bed and then you get us the Quota Place in Munich?”

  It had apparently been too long since I’d had any shooting practice, as this suggestion hit way wide of its target. “So that’s your plan, is it? Just fuck around like bunnies and then ride my coattails into a spot?”

  It was out of my mouth before I had a chance to edit it, or believe me, I would have. “Well, yeah,” I blurted like an idiot. “You knew that.”

  His eyebrows went way up, then came crashing down into a scowl. A priceless beauty at all other times, Marcel was not even vaguely handsome when he was scowling. “I’m not sure I did know that,” he said quietly. “In fact, I’m pretty sure I thought this was something we were working towards together.”

  “Well yeah, we’re going to go together,” I said.

  “Once I get us in.”

  Lolling in the bed was not turning out to be as fun as I’d hoped, so I got out of it. “You weren’t expecting me to get us in?”

  “I’m expecting you to try!”

  “Fine, geeze, we’ll go practice,” I said, wriggling into my jeans.

  “If you don’t want to, we don’t have to,” he said.

  “I don’t want to,” I confirmed.

  He padded, still naked, into the kitchen and set about making coffee. I followed him in my jeans and flopped into a chair at the small kitchen table.

  “You’re gonna have to shoot in competition sooner or later,” he said. “You won’t last two seconds in London if it’s your first competition, they’ll eat you alive.”

  “You know I don’t care about that,” I teased. “I’m not going to London to shoot.”

  His shoulders tensed; I was oh for two in the offhand remark event. “What are you going to London for?” he asked.

  “I already told you what I want in London,” I said.

  He turned to face me. “Still?” he asked.

  “I don’t know, Marcel. Geeze, I’m just trying to joke around here, lighten the mood a little bit. I’m not trying to start a fight. Probably there are gonna be a ton of hot guys there, and we both know I’m not gonna shoot my way to victory.”

  “So you’re gonna flirt with all the other guys? Sleep around?”

  “Hey, at least I’d have a shot at a medal in that event.” I winked.

  Marcel was not in a joking mood, and I hurried after him when he fled the kitchen, catching the brunt of the slamming bedroom door with my shoulder.

  “Marcel, honey, I was just teasing.”

  He was turned away from me, trying to snuffle back his tears. “It’s funny to you? You’ve been using me this whole time just to get, what? A swimmer? A fucking gymnast?”

  That’s what I wanted at first, but things are different now. I love you. Forget those guys. All fine choices of things to say. Certainly all superior to what I did say, which was, “Marcel, I told you that up front,” after which things deteriorated significantly, and with some alacrity.

  Eventually he spat at me, “What a waste of my time.”

  That set me off. “Oh, I’m sorry,” I groaned. “I’m sorry I’ve wasted your precious time, although I have no idea what the hell else you have to do all day. I’m sorry I’ve been such a pain in your ass. Maybe I’ll just go back to L.A. and leave you in peace. You know what? I’m sorry I ever came into your life.” Take that!

  I’d been landing wide all morning, but that one hit the target. Dead center. Marcel half sat, half fell back onto the bed, as if he’d been knocked on his ass by a wrecking ball. I knew I’d gone too far, but dammit, I was mad, too.

  Eventually he rallied. “If you even halfway mean that,” he whispered, “then yeah, maybe you should go.”

  I dropped to my knees beside him. “Marcel…”

  He turned away from me, saying only, “Go.”

  Fine. Whatever. We were both mad, so I stormed out of his room and into mine, slamming the door so he wouldn’t think he was the only one with a right to be pissed off. That we were both pissed off at me was beyond my grasp at the moment, and in a fog of I’ll Show Him, I actually started shoving my shit into my suitcase. I made something of a production of it, obviously, slamming drawers and rattling hangers, so Marcel would know to come and stop me, but he didn’t.

  Fine. Whatever. I called a taxi, knowing that when it pulled up in front of the house, Marcel would come out of his room. Don’t go, he would say, and I’d think about it, like Maybe I should, and he’d beg me to stay, send the driver away, and take me to bed. My butthole began to tingle at the mere prospect. I let the taxi honk a few times,
just to drive home the point that I was, in fact, departing, but Marcel’s door stayed stubbornly closed.

  Fine. Whatever. What did a taxi to the airport cost, anyway? Twenty bucks? He’d follow me and run dramatically through the terminal, catching me at the ticket counter just before the agent handed me my boarding pass for Amsterdam. He’d declare his love, she’d smile knowingly, and we’d saunter off into the sunset. That was worth twenty bucks, I supposed. The farther away he let me get, after all, the grander the gesture would be when he came to stop me.

  I had an open-ended return ticket to LAX on KLM; who knew they were so easy to cash in? I had my boarding pass for the next flight to Amsterdam in my hot little hands before Marcel so much as screeched to a dramatic halt in front of the terminal, as well as a window seat for a five p.m. connection to L.A. Time was a-wasting; hadn’t he ever seen a romantic movie? Where the hell was he?

  Customs was a breeze, and it was a turbo-prop commuter airplane, so boarding didn’t take long. Certainly not long enough. I loitered in the gate room until the KLM employee threatened to drag me across the tarmac and onto the plane himself. I knew Marcel might not be able to get through security, but my ears were straining, listening for the last-minute page that I knew would come, directing me to beg forgiveness via a white courtesy phone or airport information booth. Apparently I had really crossed a line, and would have some major reparations to undertake. For which I was fully ready, but precisely when was he going to give me the chance to make them? I willed the canned voice to call my name, even in Luxembourgish if necessary. It steadfastly refused.

  Departure time eventually came. One propeller started up, the little blue airplane pushed back from the terminal, and the second propeller fired to life. It’s a small airport, it was a short taxi, and, after a brief pause at the end of the runway to wait for clearance, the puddle jumper started rolling. Slowly at first, then picking up speed, lifting its nose into the air, the rear gear shortly pushing it off the ground, it climbed into the sky and away towards Amsterdam. From the rooftop observation deck I watched it go until even the tiny speck it eventually became disappeared, and only then did I hang my head and allow myself to wonder, Now what?