The Peter & Charlie Trilogy

by Gordon Merrick

  Charlie reached out for him and laughed as he tried to pull him back beside him. “Come here, damn it. Don’t be silly, baby. Will you listen to me? You’re not going anywhere.” He could feel Peter giving in to him. He hurried on. “We did it—like that. You know. Without taking any of the usual precautions. She may be pregnant. I want you to have her. If she has a baby, I want it to be as much yours as it is mine.”

  Peter gazed at him a long moment with unguarded, devoted eyes. “You really mean that, don’t you? You’re incredible. That’s the most wonderful thing ever.” He passed his hand across his forehead and shook his head slightly. “I couldn’t, darling. Don’t you understand? I just don’t feel like that about girls. I could never get it up.”

  Charlie pulled him down beside him. “Of course you can, baby. We’ll be together. You have this beautiful cock that’s made for fucking. I should know. I’ll do it, too. We’ll both be inside her. We’ll be together. You’ve always said you’d have a girl if I was with you.” He felt Peter’s sex swell in his hand. “There. You see? You can’t deny you think it’s sexy.”

  “I do when you say it. I know if she were here, nothing would happen. I can’t stand the way females are made there, all open and—nothing. I won’t be able to. How do you think that’ll make me feel with Martha?”

  “But think about what I’m saying. We can have a baby together. It’ll be ours.”

  Peter looked into his eyes wonderingly. “Is that the way it works? You mean it’ll be a sort of mixture of both of us?”

  “Not exactly. We did it day before yesterday. No, the day before that. Anyway, that’s only two nights between. Nobody can possibly tell who the father is when it happens so close together.”

  “I see.” He laughed briefly. “There wouldn’t be any doubt in my mind. What does Martha think?”

  “About you having her? All women find you attractive, baby, and then some. She thinks she’s in love with me. No, that’s not right. I guess she really is. She wants a baby. Jack can’t give her one and they’re all washed up anyway. She understands why I want you to do it with her. That’s what we were talking about this morning. She hasn’t had much of this kind of sex. She’s crazy for it. You’ll see. She’ll make it really good for you.”

  “This kind of sex?”

  “Old-fashioned fucking. She’s used to sucking cock and having Jack go down on her.”

  “I’ll be damned. Our Martha’s a cocksucker?” Peter’s body shook with laughter. “Welcome to the club. I don’t know, darling. I feel so damn self-conscious. She must think we’re nuts.”

  “I told her that I’m in love with you and that we’ll always be together. That’s not nuts.”

  “If you keep on saying things like that, I could fuck a mountain goat. I never thought we’d be going in for threesomes in our old age. I’m not sure how I feel about the idea. I admit that seeing you with her would be exciting, but I don’t think I’d like it more than once. This couldn’t happen with a boy, could it, darling?”

  “Certainly not. You’re the only boy I want. That gets truer every day.”

  “Then that’s all right. I guess I’m not much for kooky sex. OK. Let’s say she has our child. Then what?”

  “I don’t know. We’ll just have to wait and see.”

  “There’re no commitments you haven’t told me about?”

  “Absolutely not. She knows I’m in love with you, not with her. It’s all perfectly clear and straight. We haven’t had a chance to talk about it in a big way. I couldn’t have until you were part of it, anyway. Any talking, from now on, we’ll do together.”

  “You’re quite a sublime person.” He stretched all his body and wriggled in closer to Charlie. “I’d like you to kiss me rather a lot before our privacy is invaded.” He sat up suddenly. “No. No. No. I just can’t do it. I’ll go out if you want. I can’t be a part of something that risks coming between us.”

  “How can it come between us? I’ve done it. I want you to do it. It’ll be part of what we have together.” Charlie’s voice hardened. “I mean it, baby. Aside from anything else, I want you to have a girl. It’s something you’ve got to try.”

  Peter fell back with a sigh. “All right. I’ll make a fool of myself, if that’s what you want. You’ll see. Nothing will happen. Look at me. I feel as if I’d never get another erection as long as I live. When is she supposed to come?”

  “Soon. Half an hour, maybe.”

  “Let’s order some wine. Getting a little drunk might help.”

  Ordering wine on the house phone and waiting and calling again and getting the wine without the glasses and sending back for them with some ice took the better part of a quarter of an hour. They had had time to drink only a glass when there was a knock on the door. Charlie rolled over and started to get up.

  “Put something on,” Peter muttered urgently. He pulled the sheet over himself.

  Charlie laughed. “You don’t have to get dressed to fuck, silly.” He rose and stood behind the door and opened it. Martha slipped in wearing a long dressing gown and he closed the door behind her.

  Peter’s heart leaped up in his chest. He saw them smile intimately at each other. He saw Charlie take the robe as Martha dropped it. They stood together stunningly naked, superbly matched, an idealization of male and female. He noted with satisfaction that being near her didn’t give Charlie an immediate erection. Peter found her breasts beautiful, full and tender-looking. He couldn’t look below them. The involuntary glimpse he had caught left him with an impression of something incomplete and deformed. She looked maimed. Charlie said something that Peter didn’t hear and then sprang for the bed and fell on him. His hands were on all his ticklish places.

  “Since when have you been shy about letting people see you?” Charlie demanded, laughing and grappling his body around sideways on the bed. Peter’s feet dropped to the floor as he laughed helplessly and tried to escape the tickling hands. He felt Charlie’s rigid sex beating against him as he lifted himself and darted about above him, kissing his neck and chest and shoulders. He, not Martha, had given Charlie an erection. Charlie was indulging in these glorious intimacies in front of her. He howled with laughter as his own sex reared up with pride and gratitude. Charlie tugged at the tangled sheet and tore it off him.

  “Look what he’s hiding from us,” he cried.

  Peter felt soft flesh brushing against his thighs and then practiced hands and tongue and lips took his sex. His body contracted in a great leap. “Oh, Christ!” he cried.

  Charlie was sprawled beside him, cradling his head on his arm. “You’re being raped, baby,” he said excitedly. “You’re beautiful. Let her do it until you’re almost ready to come. Don’t think about anything but coming inside her. When you know what it’s like, you can do it your way later.” He lowered his mouth to Peter’s and ran his tongue teasingly over his lips.

  Peter gasped and shook his head. “No. Oh, Christ! Now, quickly.”

  “Really?” Charlie laughed triumphantly and seized him and pulled him back all the way onto the bed. Somehow Martha was beside him and then blindly he was on top of her. He felt hands all over his body. He felt his sex engulfed in deep, sliding warmth and he uttered a hoarse shout as he was shaken by an immediate orgasm.

  Charlie slipped his hand down between Peter’s buttocks. He could feel the throb of his ejaculation. He lifted himself to his knees and stroked his buttocks and the small of his back and ran his hands up to his neck and down across his broad shoulders. This beautiful body had fulfilled its function at last. He felt a great, satisfied tenderness for it. His sex lifted rigidly as he thought of entering Peter now as he lay with Martha, having them both through him. Perhaps some other time. Peter was a man and inviolable now.

  After another moment, Peter stirred, “God. Some performance,” he said. “I felt like a prize bull with everybody standing around helping.” He lifted his head and looked into Martha’s eyes for the first time. “Fancy meeting you here,” he said jaunt
ily. They all laughed and as the contagion of it gripped them, Peter rolled away from her and lay on his back, convulsed. Still laughing, Charlie moved into position between her knees and Martha’s laughter died. He dropped forward over her and propped himself on his arms and moved his knees back until she could lower his sex and direct it into her. Peter’s laughter choked in his throat as he saw him make his first thrust. The way she held his sex with both hands, the way he moved his body in response to hers suggested a knowledgeable intimacy that made Peter feel they had performed this act many times. Charlie’s powerful body arched over her, his muscles tensed as he lowered himself slowly to brush her breasts with his chest and straightened his arms again. She was beginning to moan and cry out. Their movements became more agitated. In the way, her body lifted to it Peter could sense her devouring hunger for the shaft of flesh within her. He knew that hunger. He found himself trembling all over and his sex was once more erect, aching with complex desire. He wanted Charlie. He wanted to make Martha moan and cry out for him. Her fingers were clawing Charlie’s back, her cries were growing shriller. At some unseen signal Charlie seemed to take complete control. Her body was locked to his. She rocked to the hard rhythmic thrust of his hips. She began to keen. This was more than sex as Peter knew it and less than love. It was a ritual of power that perhaps could be performed only by a man and a woman. He wondered if she could generate the power in him that he felt in Charlie now. If so, perhaps he would discover something in women after all. Her keening rose in pitch and broke off with a sharp cry and then she was sobbing as all her body went limp. Charlie released her and propped himself on his arms again and thrust hard into her a half-a-dozen more times until his body was convulsed and he dropped down onto her again. A thrill ran through Peter as he realized that Charlie hadn’t uttered the cries of ecstasy with which he was always rewarded but only a few satisfied grunts. In a moment, Charlie’s hand reached out across the bed and fumbled for him and found his erect sex. He grunted again. After a few more seconds, he gathered himself together with an obvious effort and withdrew from Martha. His chest was still heaving and his sex still nearly erect. “Come on, baby,” he said, perching on the edge of the bed. “She really wants it.”

  Peter felt Charlie’s hand on his buttocks as he moved into position on his knees as Charlie had done.

  “Look at him,” Charlie said proudly. “I wish I was going to have it.”

  Peter felt Martha’s eyes on him. He still couldn’t look at all of her, but kept his eyes fixed on her breasts. She held his sex and ran her expert hands along it. Charlie waited until he started to drop down on her and then he rose and went into the bathroom. This was the real initiation and he wanted him to find his way alone.

  Martha felt Charlie’s absence as she guided his lover into her. He was forcing her to give herself unrestrainedly to this second invasion. He had been right about their being the same person in the sense that she had felt no embarrassment at having Peter lying beside her while Charlie took her. Their identification with each other communicated itself so strongly that his being there had seemed perfectly normal.

  She found his body exquisite as her hands learned its contours. She drifted into a delectable lethargy as his sex reached into her almost as deep as Charlie’s. It didn’t fill her as his did, so that its movements were more clearly defined, a precision instrument of pleasure. She held his hips and worked him into her and found a movement that made her cry out with astonished delight. All of her body was coming alive to him; his sex was a conjuror’s wand. His open mouth was on her breast, drawing it in with electrifying lips and tongue. He nursed at her breast, but his mouth was soft and sensual and provocative, a mouth that kissed as it devoured. She cried out again as his mouth opened wider. He did extraordinary things with his tongue.

  Her heart beat wildly as she thought of his mouth moving down over her, knowing all of her. She felt in him a sweet, responsive playfulness as if he consciously sought to give pleasure, unlike Charlie’s masterful indifference to anything that didn’t please him. He offered her the key to how she could make Charlie hers.

  He mastered the movement of his hips and added variations of his own so that his sex whipped sleekly through her, applying pressure precisely where she wanted it. She could see it in her mind’s eye; it moved so freely in her that she knew exactly its shape and dimensions: long, slim, sword-straight and steel-hard, with a probing head that was teaching her to desire him for himself rather than as a surrogate for Charlie.

  She moaned ecstatically and continued to moan as she slipped her hands flat, palms up, against his abdomen, rising and falling over her, and moved them down until her fingertips encountered tight little curls of pubic hair and the hard flesh that sprang out from the base of his belly. “So beautiful,” she moaned. “You’re—oh, you’re doing it, my darling.”

  He surged proudly into her. He had heard that it took some skill to give a girl an orgasm. Maybe Charlie was right. Maybe he was good at it. He laughed out loud at himself. His nervousness was gone. He had found an unfamiliar comfort in the way their bodies fitted together so easily. There were none of the moments of strain that were an essential part of his experience. He was pleased that the techniques he had learned with Charlie satisfied her.

  He was driving into her for the sergeant. He was fucking her for his father. He was taking her for all the sneers and snubs and humiliations that had accumulated over the years. As he did it, a great weight of guilt he hadn’t even known was in him seemed to lift from him. He had lost his virginity at thirty. High time, but he felt none of the power of conquest he had sensed in Charlie. He was proud to be having a girl and giving her pleasure. He was proud that Charlie wanted him to share in fatherhood. He felt no completion in it; it led to nothing except, if that was part of Charlie’s program, to a few more times with Martha to confirm in him this exhilaration he supposed must come from feeling a part of the normal world.

  Charlie dawdled in the bathroom, he showered lengthily, he laughed quietly when he heard the cries from the other room. He dawdled a few more minutes after they were over. When he came out, Peter was approaching the bathroom door. Golden hair fell over his eyes; he looked adorably spent and disheveled. They moved automatically to each other and Charlie put his arms around him and kissed his mouth briefly. Peter found in the embrace more promise and excitement than anything else that had happened to him during the evening. He had done what Charlie had expected of him and now he was back where he belonged. He didn’t quite understand what it had been about, but he was ready to forget about it. The fact that Charlie was holding him again in front of Martha was reassuring. It emboldened him to move his hands over his shoulders and down to his waist and pull him in close and exchange another kiss.

  Charlie laughed. “You look as if you’d had a real workout, baby,” he said as he smoothed the hair back from his forehead.

  “I got pretty frisky as I went along. Ask Martha.” He threw his head back and echoed Charlie’s laughter.

  They broke apart and turned to her, keeping their arms around each other. She rose from the bed and stepped quickly to where Charlie had left her robe and put it on. She approached them with a loving smile for both of them. “You’re making me behave disgracefully,” she said, surveying them frankly. “Two such perfect lovers. Two such beautiful bodies. Two—well, you know what I’m thinking. I’ve told Charlie I’m in love with him, but perhaps I meant you both. I never dreamed anything like this could happen to me, but it’s thrilling. I can’t even pretend to be ashamed of myself.”

  Charlie dropped his arm from Peter and took her hands. “Little mother. If anything can make you pregnant, you’re. certainly pregnant now.”

  “Oh, I am. There’s no doubt about that.” She looked into his eyes, telling him there was no doubt who was responsible. She broke the eye contact with evident reluctance and turned to Peter and kissed his lips lightly. “I’m going to leave you. I really do want a real rest in a real bed. I’m green with env
y that you two have been living in such luxury all this time.”

  Charlie put his arm around her and led her to the door and gave her a hug as he let her out. He turned back to Peter with a happy grin and went to him and mussed the hair he had just smoothed. “She’s marvelous, isn’t she? Tell me about it.”

  “About what?”

  “For God’s sakes, you’ve just had a girl for the first time. Wasn’t it good?”

  “It was all right, I guess, if you happen to like girls. Everything we do together is a lot more exciting and satisfying and—well, you name it.” He went and poured wine for them and handed a glass to Charlie.

  “Well, sure, baby. But still. Didn’t you feel there was something sort of special about it—I don’t know—natural, and the idea that you’re doing it to have children?”

  “I thought that was the only point—your wanting me to be a father with you because you’d already done it. That part’s nice. I didn’t know it was supposed to make me want to rape every girl in sight.” He dropped down on the end of the bed. “I’m all fucked out. I don’t like that, not when it could have been with you.”

  “But we have each other always, baby. This has to do with life and the future. Don’t you want to have children?”

  “I’ve always loved the idea of little Charlies. I don’t seem to feel any great procreative urge in myself. I don’t know. Maybe the idea of little Charlies is a bit silly, we being what we are. I mean, if two people who love each other can’t have children together, they should probably learn to get along without them.”

  “Now you’re being silly. What about adoption, for God’s sake?”

  Peter stretched out on the bed and laughed. “Can you see us, Mum and Dad, being allowed to adopt children?”

  “No, but there are other ways. Like tonight.”

  “Yeah. Like tonight.” Peter sipped his wine. The more he thought about it, the less he liked it. It had been forced, extreme, basically uncharacteristic of all of them. Martha was too sensible and nice to get involved with a couple of queers who didn’t pretend to care about her particularly. Charlie was too good to allow it. As for himself, he had simply gone through motions that were totally alien to his nature. The only excuse he could find for himself was that he had had to try it to make sure. “What it boils down to is that I don’t see much sense in having children unless you’re going to bring them up yourself.”