His Gift

by Clare London

  And so alone.

  “Eliot.” I reached for him, wanting to comfort him somehow. “I need to know how I fit into this. What the fuck I’m doing here.”

  His gaze flickered back up to meet mine, his expression a strange mixture of love and exasperation that I’d come to know well. “That’s enough, now. Why do you continue with this harshness, Steven? You know why you’re here. You know that I can bring you the pleasure and the relaxation you want.” He kissed my thigh, his tongue licking greedily under my balls, teasing the sensitive skin there. “This is the right place for you. You know it.”

  “I don’t.” My gasp was more like a sob as the pleasure washed over me, consuming, frustrating, and stealing my questions away again. “I don’t know anything!”

  He moved up the bed to lie beside me then, holding me, caressing me. I thought I felt his sigh in the breath at my neck, but I wasn’t sure of anything any more. “Eliot, tell me more. What I see. What you see.”

  He never answered. He didn’t need to, for his answer to me was to slide back down on the mattress and offer me the warmth of his wet, hot mouth over my cock. His comfort to my sobs was the movement of his tongue along the underside and over the top, flickering into the slit, tasting the droplets of come that eked out for him.

  I shuddered with the perfect joy of it. It was as if he’d known my body as long as I had. And I surrendered all thought to the deepest, most uncontrollable sensations.

  * * * *

  I think I actually wept, sometimes, though I didn’t think that was anything I’d been prone to before. Often it was because Eliot brought me a climax that was so sharp, so deep and so poignant that I thought I wouldn’t survive it. Or maybe it was when the pain from my old injury returned, more vicious than ever, though there was never any real wound that I could see. And as soon as I woke with the agony, Eliot would be beside me, soothing it away.

  And sometimes I cried from the pure, unremitting confusion.

  “I don’t understand, Eliot. I don’t understand anything about this.”

  “You won’t let yourself understand. You only have to enjoy.” Eliot was there with me again, deep in the dark hours that must have been night, if I’d only had sight of a clock. He never seemed to grow angry with me or frustrated with my rambling. Instead, he touched me and caressed me and murmured to me, though his replies were more soothing than satisfying. “Come here and let me take you, Steven. Get on your knees. Draw your hair to the side so I can kiss your neck. Spread your long, strong legs. I like to look at your ass as I move slowly in and out of you.”

  “You’ll give me answers then? When you’ve taken me again? Will you?”

  His voice was muffled as he leaned over my back, suckling at the thin skin of my shoulder. Marking me. “I’ll give you what you need, Steven. What we both need. Why ask anything else?”

  He penetrated me, fiercely. He knew that was how I liked it sometimes, and so did he.

  I grunted with the force, but my questions continued. “What’s the time, Eliot? What’s the date?”

  “It’s now, Steven. That’s what’s important for us. We’re together, now.”

  “How many days have passed?”

  His answer was breathless, because he was deep inside me, and holding his excitement to get the maximum pleasure from me. “Since you arrived? I haven’t been counting. Weeks, perhaps.”

  I should have known that. It shouldn’t have been such a shock to me, but I couldn’t evaluate what it really meant. Then his warm, skilful hand slid around to my stomach and grasped my aching cock, and he thrust in earnest. All I felt was his skin, slick against my back with sweat and passion, his breath rasping in my ear, and his hands tightly clenched in my hair. He dragged my head back so he could lick my neck and nip at the angry pulse there. My back arched until the skin of my throat was taut and stretched. I closed my eyes, sinking into the rising ecstasy of our superb coupling. He fit me by now—or I fit him. Preparation was rarely necessary.

  I was always ready for him.

  * * * *

  Sometimes, he’d lie beside me afterward, kissing me softly and stroking my chest, helping my pounding heart settle down to a more reasonable pace. Those were the times I felt closest to him. Despite the fierce, astonishing delirium of the sex, when he had time to relax beside me, we were two young men, alone together. We acted like we were in love. We laughed at our antics, stroked each other’s hair, admired each other, coveted each other.

  Did I love him? I’d never loved anyone in my life before, or at least I had no memory of this strangely obsessive, all-consuming need. But that was the way I felt for Eliot. It was all I could think of. Most of the time, it was all that I needed.

  It wasn’t as much love, as my very life.

  “What’s happened to me?” I sighed. It was another day, another night. I had no idea and I’d almost ceased to worry. Eliot’s face moved against my shoulder, his lips twisted into that slow, possessive smile. The bedding was crumpled beneath our bodies and his smooth hip was against mine, his lean, strong arm thrown carelessly across my chest. His hair smelled of nothing I recognised, but it was a heady, musky scent, and the thick strands tickled my neck as he moved. He never ceased to excite and enthral me. He was a wet dream. Mine. My flesh immediately began to creep with a craving I could barely contain.

  “You came to me, Steven. I love you. You’re mine.”

  “That’s not what I meant.” I sighed again, but this time I smiled. And then the longing overwhelmed me, and the feeling of his bare skin against mine woke my need. I rolled onto my side, to press against him more closely. My hand slid greedily over his buttocks, my fingers tracing the dips of his muscles, running along the sweaty crease where his ass met the top of his thigh.

  “So good,” he sighed. “I waited so long.”

  My heart ached for him, painfully. “It must have been bad, Eliot. To be cut off from everything, to be left here alone, with no one of your own. No one to care for you.”

  He shook his head gently, as if he didn’t want to talk about it. Whenever I tried to get him to tell me more of his lost family, he would try to distract me first. I could see pain in his eyes. At those times, he looked much younger and more vulnerable. “All I ever wanted was someone of my own. Someone who didn’t look at me with revulsion. Who could be mine.”

  “Eliot…”

  He caught my hand as it reached for him. “Enough.” He slid my fingers in between his lips, sucking them gently. “When I take you, I forget that time. I’m at peace with you.”

  I watched his mouth, moist and hungry for me. “When can I take you, Eliot?” I thought I’d like that, very much. Maybe in a previous life I’d been the one to part a man’s thighs, to slide between his buttocks and penetrate him. “Am I always going to be the passive one?”

  “You are never passive,” he said, laughing softly. His tongue slipped out to lick at my wrist, my hand still caught in his grasp. “Listen how you talk to me! So bold. So different from me. And here in bed, you are as fierce as I am, in all the lovemaking. Your mouth sucks me, and your fingers slide inside me and stroke me until I plead to enter you.” He knew how much I wanted him, even without feeling my aching arousal pressing on his belly, making it uncomfortable for both of us to lie still. “But I don’t think you can take me, love. It’s not for you.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “There are things you don’t know.” His eyes were suddenly dark and his face pale. “Things I can’t explain, and even if I could, I would not want to. Don’t ask again, for I don’t want you distressed.”

  It seemed I’d hurt him, but I didn’t know why or how. I reached for him, wanting to comfort him

  But then he was gone again, and I hadn’t noticed his movement away from me.

  * * * *

  Then came the day that I asked him, “What are you?” Would I receive any clearer an answer? “I never see you eating, Eliot, or working. Cleaning the house. Calling friends. Whatever you do when
you’re not with me.”

  He raised a fine eyebrow and one of his slim fingers reached to my mouth, running across my lips. We were lying on his bed again. Our bed. “I do what’s usual. Of course I eat, and other things. You just don’t see it. I only call you when I want you.”

  I was restless. I tried to roll away from him. Always in the bed, always in his arms. “No one comes here, Eliot. Don’t you have visitors at all? Tradesmen? Friends?”

  Other lovers? I wanted to say, but restrained my jealousy. It was irrelevant, really.

  He shook his head, and I saw his expression twist with rare anger. “Sometimes I do. Visitors…they’re not for you to worry about, not for you to see. They go away again, eventually. And friends aren’t easy for me to come by, I’ve told you that. Don’t concern yourself with such things, Steven. I have you, now. We have each other. That’s all I need. All I want.”

  “What are you, Eliot?” I repeated myself in my frustration, I knew. “Why am I so bound to you? This isn’t reality, is it?”

  He laughed, although it sounded unusually brittle. “What you think is real, is real. Steven, I know this to be true. I’ve lived with it all my life. When life has been cruel to me, I’ve created my own reality. You are here, in my house, my bed, my heart. You’re as real as…” He looked around the room but his gaze returned to me. “Tell me what you see on the table.”

  I frowned, but I glanced over. “The water jug. My glass.”

  He nodded, but his eyes were wary. “I don’t see anything there. That is your reality.”

  “What?” I remembered that first time, when I nearly dropped my glass. He’d reached out with me to catch it, then stopped. Had there been nothing there for him to see? I stretched my hand out and touched him. I ran my fingers along his hip, the flesh warm under my fingertips.

  “I can feel you,” he whispered, his lids lowering, his breath quickening. “But what you see and feel otherwise…I don’t see that.”

  “This room?” I looked around, wildly. The decorations, the luxurious bed, the many, deep pillows. “It’s always warm in here. The light is always right, so I can see you properly.”

  He gazed at me, his eyes sad again. “I don’t see it that way. Those things are for you, not me. You’re my reality, Steven.”

  “But what if I don’t want that?” Panic rose in me. “Why have we come together like this?”

  “I don’t know, Steven. Please be calm.”

  “How long have you been on your own, Eliot? How long has your family been gone? Where are you from?”

  I wanted to ask, when are you from? The room wasn’t just odd with its ambience, with its facilities. It was old-fashioned, reminiscent of historical houses, the furnishings only seen nowadays in museums. Yet all the items here were new. I was suddenly afraid.

  Eliot sighed again and started to stroke me with long, soothing movements, his palms running over my chest, catching my nipples and making them pebble with arousal. “You’re talking nonsense again, Steven. I’ll show you what I am.” He rolled me back over onto my face, running his hands under my hips to lift me up for his use. “I’m just a man, you know that. One who needs you. One whom you want.”

  Yes, yes, my body moaned. “No,” I ground out, for I still clung to some independent thought. “You’re more–or less–than that. I don’t know. Look at us!” We’re a strange, mixed up, desperate couple. “I don’t think we’re of the same time, even the same century. I can’t explain it, and it’s driving me mad.”

  The talk of his lost family, his social banishment…his abandonment here, on his own. His long time waiting for me, for someone. “Dear God, are you a ghost?”

  He gave a light laugh. Panting a little, he spread my cheeks with cool fingers, fingers probing at my entrance. We never seemed to need lube. I didn’t remember ever cleaning up after sex, though we were often messy with sweat and come. My muscles never carried the stretch and ache of the fierce exercise into another day.

  Eliot stroked the sensitive skin behind my balls. My cock was painfully rigid and jutting out from between my spread legs. It dripped a little onto the clean white sheets. But then, they were always clean, always white.

  “I’m not a ghost, Steven. Could a ghost do this?” And he thrust hard into me. “You see?”

  I panted along with him, one hand gripping the sheets beneath me until they threatened to rip, as in fact they sometimes did. My other hand clenched my cock, stroking it furiously as it begged for the chance to release itself underneath him. He liked me to touch myself, to bring myself off. He liked to see my hips shake and feel my muscles clutch around him. Then he would relax his own control and burst up into me, prolonging my own climax, keening along with me. “Do you see, Steven?”

  “Yes. Yes, I do!”

  My voice was nothing more than a groan, jerked from me along with my come, spurting with pure relief across my hand and the sheets, hot and thick. I felt Eliot’s breath catch with pleasure as I came, and his cock stilled inside me, stretching me with the same thrill as always. A couple more shallow thrusts, and I felt the familiar change of pulse, his growing heat. He shuddered above me, and his climax followed, his come filling me. As he withdrew, trails of it escaped from me, sliding slowly and insidiously down my inner thighs. Leaving me irretrievably his. As always.

  “You are my gift, Steven. I’ve never had something that’s given me so much happiness. You are mine.”

  * * * *

  I still struggled against it, and yet I couldn’t remember the reason why any more. I’d never been so physically satisfied and content in all my life. I needed for nothing. I craved Eliot, and he was there for me, as often as I needed. His care was total and complete, and his lovemaking took me beyond contentment. It took me to acute ecstasy.

  Yet, still I questioned. In the moments between waking and Eliot coming to me, I struggled to capture memories that floated past me like cotton threads in the wind. I’d lived elsewhere; I’d been another man. “I must know, Eliot. I must know what happened to me.”

  “You don’t need to know.” He hushed me. “You’re where you belong now. It doesn’t matter where you were before.”

  Didn’t I have family and friends of my own? Why couldn’t I remember? Did his attention do more than excite me? It seemed to seep into my veins, to sedate me, to relax my already feeble resistance, making me perpetually welcoming of him…making me desperate for him.

  “I must go, Eliot.”

  His body stiffened above me. We were naked in bed again and I was at his groin, arm thrown across his hips. I’d curled up at his knees, had tasted his cock until he cried out and pumped his pleasure deep into my throat. He loved that very much.

  “To leave me? You can’t do that.”

  “No.” I had to agree. I felt his body under my hands, more familiar than my own, and I felt the throb in my heart that bound me to his every word. No, I didn’t see how it could happen.

  Then he sighed. “But you can go, if you choose to, just for a while. Whenever you like. I asked for you to come, Steven. I never asked to control your going. But I will call you back.”

  What? I was stunned. Suddenly I was aware only of myself. Just my own needs. He was offering me an escape where I’d thought there was none!

  “My clothes?”

  “In the closet, if you had looked. The shirt was torn beyond repair, but there’s another one that can replace it. The rest of your things are there.”

  “Eliot…” Everything had suddenly tilted to one side—my assumptions and desires. What was he telling me?

  “If it’s what you want, Steven, you must go and seek your answers.”

  His voice came from somewhere else, and I realised he was no longer in the room. When did the door open? But I heard him as clearly as if he were still in my arms.

  “If it’s what you want. But I told you—I will call you back.”

  * * * *

  I left the house to find it was somewhere around dawn. There’d been no sign
of Eliot as I dressed, or as I found my way back down to the first floor, or as I pushed open the heavy front door. I kept waiting to be called back, but there was no hindrance. Outside, the pale sun made my eyes hurt and the fresh air was startling. I didn’t know whether to laugh or shout or weep. I didn’t know how I felt. But I took a deep breath and stepped out onto the driveway as before, this time in the opposite direction. As I walked back across the lush parkland—rather tentatively, pathetically unused to the outdoors—my fear returned, like the first day I’d gone to the house. My sneakers felt alien on my feet. The silk shirt I’d found in the wardrobe was softer than anything I’d ever worn before. I felt like I’d grown out of everything since I arrived.

  There were no more signs of life than before, and no hint of the foul weather that had forced me here. The sky was pale and cloudless and the air dry. The trees were rich with leaves, but they were turning russet, as if my arrival in the stormy summer had passed long ago, the months now slipping into cool, crisp autumn. I had no clearer idea, nor realisation of how long I’d been in the house. It was almost unnaturally quiet, with nothing but a whisper from the breeze moving the leaves, and the soft tap of my feet on the cobbles.

  By the time I turned out of the copse I felt nauseous. I thought it was pathetic for me to look back, to see if I could still see the house, but I did.

  And I couldn’t.

  I’d turned away from the sight of it, leaving it hidden back beyond the trees. All I could see was the scrubland ahead of me, the rough path I’d originally followed.

  My head hurt, agonisingly. I heard voices, yet there was no one around; they were inside my head. I heard the echo of my own voice, laughing and shouting. Arguing. Who with? Why? Someone was telling what not to do—to be careful. Not to be stupid.

  I felt a stab of anger. The listless, sensuous man who lay with Eliot every day and night and whispered into his ear…that particular Steven seemed far away. Now I felt the adrenaline course through my body, energy and disturbance flowing in equal measures. It was like a resurrection inside me. I struggled on. My head ached badly, from the stress, I assumed. The pain in my side returned, though I’d had no trouble with it for a long time now.