High Life (14 page)

“Well, I don’t know …”

“I’ll tell you what it means to me. I see it as a hunger. I see it as a big bloody roast on which to gorge myself. Thing is, you can never get enough, you can never get full. And it lasts such a short time. Especially Chinese love, eh?”

He chuckled at this.

“Chinese love?”

But he wasn’t listening. He’d put his hands out, one on my shoulder, one on Dean’s, like a favorite uncle.

“You know, Dean, I’d very much like us, all three of us, to talk this over some more. You and Jack are such a rare example, I’m sure I could learn from you.”

“Oh, I could talk about Jack for hours.”

So we left all the swinging Hollywood hipsters, all the millionaires and movie stars, and walked back in the direction of the toilets I’d been to earlier. From the gallery, on the way, I thought I saw the woman in the gun-metal two-piece again, standing in a corner on the ground floor. But I couldn’t be sure it was her.

The room Laratin took us to had no windows. There was a large bed in the center covered with a cream rubber sheet and the walls were hung, floor to ceiling with black-and-white enlargements of assholes. Not soft-focus
Playboy
-style rear-end shots, but close-ups of pitilessly exposed anuses—hair, abrasions, crusted shit, and all. There was a camera on a tripod in front of the bed.

“Now I do want to talk, Jack, but I wonder if you’d do me a little favor first?”

Laratin was fiddling with the camera and I could hear the high-pitched hiss of the flash charging.

“Just lower your trousers, will you, and bend over, there at the end of the bed? I like to keep a record of all my new friends.”

I dropped my pants and braced my hands against my knees.

“No, no, no, that isn’t right. It isn’t open enough.”

I reached behind and pulled the cheeks of my ass apart. I felt a soft puff of air—Laratin had his nose as close as he could get without touching and was inhaling my butt fumes. He straightened when he saw me watching him.

“Used to do it as a child. We called it sniffing bottoms. You had to see who could get closest. I always won. You smell like a stag.”

He moved the camera to within two feet and fired the flash a couple of times.

“All done. Buckle up.”

Then the three of us sat in smooth leather armchairs and drank brandy and soda.

“It’s somewhat unsettling exposing yourself like that, is it not? It feels like an invasion.”

“I don’t mind, if that’s what you want to do.”

Dean tapped my ankle with the toe of his shoe and looked disapproving. Laratin made a point of not noticing.

“No, I think you do mind. Anyone would. Something so intimate. Those are things you save for special people. People you love. For instance, what you do with Dean, and what he does with you—these aren’t things you’d share with just anyone, are they?”

“Well, yeah, you have to keep them for the right time and place.”

“Exactly.”

Dean chimed in: “Sex is an illustration of emotion.”

“Well put, Dean. You like someone, you let them have some sort of average sex with you. You love them … Well, there are any number of ways to differentiate, aren’t there? Different grades of love, so to speak. Jack, how do you know when someone loves you?”

“They do things for you.”

“Close, but I think we can do better. They abandon themselves to you. That’s what loving another person is—the willingness to give them every part of yourself.”

“Oh, we do that, don’t we, Jack?” Dean raised his eyebrows and I got the idea I was supposed to be suggestive.

“You bet, every part.”

Laratin made an
Mmm …
sound and pressed his thighs together.

“Sounds interesting, sounds positively delightful.”

Dean leaned forward in his chair and seemed suddenly to want to downplay our positively delightful scenes together.

“Of course, Peter, we keep it all pretty tame.”

“You haven’t plumbed the depths.”

“Jack only wants to give so much. He values me to a particular level. I have to be satisfied with that.”

It was obvious that some kind of game was being played here, but what it was I couldn’t tell. All I knew was that I wished the sex would start so I could get it over with and get out into the party again and get another look at that woman.

“If Dean wants to show you what he does with me, I don’t mind.”

“Really, Jack? It would be a privilege to watch two lovers. I have a bottle of oil somewhere, I think.”

So Dean and I got bare. He covered me with oil from the bottle Laratin produced, lifted me up like a bride, and carried me to the rubber covered bed. We lay together and he slid himself back and forth across me. There was a lot of kissing, which wasn’t too bad with him, and a lot of slow stroking. Laratin just sat in his chair and watched. When Dean flipped me over and went down on my ass, Laratin became a little more involved.

“Oh, Dean, he must love you if he lets you do that. Tell him you love him, Jack. Tell him you love him.”

I said it. It was just another step along the road that would eventually lead me out of there. It wasn’t hard to do.

“But you know, Dean,” and now Laratin had the fly of his pants open, “I think that Jack might have found someone he loves more.”

Dean lifted his head out of my ass and looked seriously at Laratin.

“I don’t think that’s possible, Peter.”

“Oh, I think it is. You’re not going to deny it, are you, Jack?”

I felt pressure on my thigh from Dean’s hand, urging me to reply. The play for the evening became clear.

“I love Dean, Peter.”

“Of course you do. But you love me too. I can see it in your eyes.”

“Yes, you’re right, I do.”

Dean’s grip relaxed. Laratin stood up and began taking his clothes off. His body was firm and tanned.

“Come and show me how much.”

Dean gave me a prod and I rolled off the bed, kneeled in front of Laratin, and sucked his cock for a while. He made noises of enjoyment, murmured endearments to me, but he got only half hard. He ran his hands through my hair.

“You see, Dean, he loves me. You’re not upset, are you? After all, one person can love two men.”

“I’m okay, I guess.”

“You’re okay? That’s good, Dean. That’s very good.”

He did some more of the head stroking, then pulled his dick out of my mouth.

“But what if he loved me more than you?”

“I think he loves us both the same.”

“No, Dean, he doesn’t. You’ve had a bit of oral, I’ve had a bit of oral. Even Stevens. But I haven’t finished. It’ll be best if we show him now, Jack. It’ll make things easier on him in the long run.”

He took a steel speculum and a tube of lubricant out of a drawer beneath the bed.

“All fours, Jack.”

I made like a dog. Laratin warmed up the spreader professionally, like a doctor, rolling the business end between his palms.

Then it was lube time.

Then it was time to open the back door.

The speculum felt enormous going in. Laratin started off trying not to hurt, twisting it slowly like a corkscrew. But I hadn’t fully mastered the art of anal relaxation and he got impatient. Once the first inch was inside he put his weight behind it and finished the job with a lunge. It hurt so much I shouted.

And it hurt more when he started turning the knob that ratcheted the two halves of the device apart. Feeling air on the inside of my colon for the first time was unusual, but the novelty was overshadowed somewhat by the sensation that my rectum was about to split.

I shouted again and turned my head, about to tell him to take it the fuck easy. But I didn’t say anything because, standing with her back against the door, was the dark-haired woman in the gray two-piece. Dean and Laratin knew she was there but were acting like she wasn’t. And she was watching us as though we were part of a show she’d just happened to stumble across—distanced and evaluating.

I would like to have stood up and turned it all around somehow, made it plain that this was all just bullshit to me and I was way above it. But Dean was paying, and I needed the money. So I gave up the dopey dream of connecting with her that I’d been keeping warm all night, dropped my head, and figured fuck it, bring it on.

“You see, Dean, what he does with you and what he will do for me are really worlds apart.”

Laratin jiggled his now flaccid cock between his fingers.

“Admit it, he loves me more than he loves you. And he only just met me.”

And at that point he showed Dean just how certain he was of my love by jetting a stream of piss into my stretched-open asshole. It didn’t sting, it just felt warm and heavy. Occasionally he played it across my ass cheeks, but most of it went inside. When he was empty and I was full he closed up the speculum and slid it out.

Dean lay on the rubber bed, faceup, pulling at his hard-on, blowing kisses at Laratin.

“I love you too, Peter. Watch this.”

At Dean’s direction I climbed up onto the bed and got into position over him. My balls brushed his chin and he flicked his tongue over them. I glanced toward the door, dreading eye contact but wanting to see how the woman was taking this scene. I felt an unexpectedly strong wash of relief when I found she was no longer there.

Dean blew his wad straight up into the air. It spacked across his belly and chest. And I let go with a torrent of someone else’s piss. From my ass straight to his face.

I heard him gurgle as some of it went up his nose.

And after that it was towels all around, back into clothes, and another drink.

“I bet you’re marveling at my self-control, aren’t you, Jack? Wondering how I could restrain myself.”

“If you don’t need to shoot it’s fine by me.”

“Oh, but I do. I’m just savoring the anticipation, leaving myself a treat for the end of the night.”

“Oh.”

“Why don’t you go back out there and enjoy yourself for an hour or two? I need to discuss business with Dean here. I’ve kept him waiting long enough. But remember, Jack, don’t get too friendly with my guests. I won’t have anyone go slutty on me.”

Dean walked me out the door. When Laratin couldn’t see us he handed me a wad of money.

“For services rendered.”

“I hope you get your part.”

“Thanks. He’s as mad as a hatter, but what can you do? You will hang around and let him fuck you later, won’t you? There’s enough there to cover it.”

“Sure, man.”

“I hope I can trust you. It’ll make everything else a complete waste of time if you don’t. You understand how important it is to me.”

He kissed me on the cheek and turned back to the asshole room.

I didn’t feel like doing much of anything. The idea of hanging around till Laratin worked up a head of steam wasn’t particularly appealing. I felt sore and tired and I wanted to head home. But I kind of liked Dean and I didn’t want to let him down. So I figured I’d find somewhere quiet to do a couple of lines and take a walk around the grounds.

But then a hand slid into mine and she was there, the woman, stepping in front of me, pulling me along a corridor, smiling quickly back at me over her shoulder. We didn’t speak, we couldn’t, the air around us moved too quickly. Our world, this space where the two of us were, was happening outside time, in some other dimension where explanation wasn’t needed, where all that was necessary was the headlong rush into desire.

We moved deeper into the house—indirect lighting, silk on the walls, objet d’art. Designed and decorated to inspire envy. She wore no perfume but the smell of her enfolded me—her hair, her skin, even a faint tang from between her legs. We moved faster, unable to wait another second, until we were almost running—dogs to food, sharks to blood—primal and unthinking.

Into a brightly lit room where a young Mexican maid was working her way through a pile of ironing. She looked up as we entered, but carried on with what she was doing, silenced by the woman’s aura of wealth.

In the back of my mind I thought somewhere else might be cooler, but the woman already had her lips to mine and the need to worry about being sensible was fast becoming less than paramount. The maid did her best to ignore us as we struggled at each other, concentrating on a white shirt she had laid out on the board. But when my dick came out of my pants locked solid, she yelped and ran from the room.

The woman had her skirt hiked up around her waist, her blouse hung from her shoulders, open, exposing hard white breasts with dark nipples. I put my hand between her legs, she was soaking, her cunt hair silky against my palm. We held each other like fighters and I couldn’t believe how much feeling she put into it, like we were lovers or something.

I lifted her onto a low cupboard that jutted from a wall. She sat with her body bent back, braced with her arms, legs open and drawn up so her heels hung on the edge. I moved in and she took hold of my cock and stabbed herself with it. It went in smoothly, no caught hair or snarled labia—easy entry to another body.