A Venetian Love Story

A Venetian Love Story

Francesco and Leonardo were twins. They were born in 1940, in Venice, in a small, decaying palazzo on one of those canals which seem to have wandered in from somewhere else and got stuck trying to find their way out. Their family was ancient and, indeed, on their mother's side, included at least one of the doges who sleep below the waters in the crypt of S Zaccaria. Sadly, the length of their lineage was not matched by the depth of their purse. By the standards of their peers they were on their uppers. They had a sister, Cecilia, who was fourteen years older than them; she married a fellow aristocrat when she was twenty and they had one son, Marco. Her husband invested at just the right time in the industrial complex which was growing rapidly in Marghera and the couple lived in one of the grand villas built by a follower of Palladio near the Brenta Canal.

When Francesco and Leonardo were fourteen years old their parents died in a car accident whilst they were driving to Cecilia's house for dinner. Leonardo, as the elder twin by twenty minutes, inherited the family palazzo; Cecilia gained the family jewels, the only really valuable, portable property the family owned; and Francesco was left a lonely fisherman's hut on a small island in the lagoon, built many centuries earlier as a watchtower, to give warning if enemies were to enter the lagoon at its southern entrance.

For four years the boys lived with their sister and her husband whilst they attended a local school. Then they returned to the family home, to be looked after by a housekeeper, whilst they attended the University of Venice. At the age of twenty -one they gained their majority and found themselves having to earn a living. Francesco had read Art History and Leonardo had read English Literature; neither subject lent itself to generating wealth, but the brothers established in their home a trade in art and antiques, which enabled them to survive without penury and with considerable pleasure.

The brothers had a secret. They were deeply and passionately in love with each other. As twins they were unusually close from the beginning. As their childhood became adolescence they experienced a growing attraction to each other, which, initially, they did not realise had anything to do with what little they knew about sex.

They looked very similar; both had blond hair and olive skin; they had the same Roman nose, full lips and large, blue eyes under clearly marked brows, which were darker than the hair on their heads. Both were six feet tall. But there the resemblance ended. Leonardo was powerfully built with broad shoulders, whereas Francesco was slimmer and more delicately constructed. Their personalities matched their appearance. Leonardo was outgoing and sure of himself; Francesco lacked self-assurance and was given to introspection. From the beginning Leonardo was the leader, Francesco the follower, and Leonardo automatically adopted the role of protector to his brother.

Early in the boys' first term at university, soon after their eighteenth birthday, they experienced an epiphany which would define the whole of the rest of their lives. They had finished dinner and the housekeeper had retired to her rooms. It had been one of those indeterminate autumn Venetian days, when the evening suddenly reminds you that winter is not far off. It is not cold yet, but you feel the need to light the stove. The boys used a sitting room which looked down from the first story onto the canal. It was a shabby, comfortable room, with reminders of former grandeur in the fragments of gold leaf still adhering to mirror frames and carved tables. Leonardo was sitting on a large, dilapidated sofa near the stove; Francesco was sitting at a desk reading but Leonardo noticed him shiver.

'You can't concentrate when you're cold. Come and warm yourself here for a minute or two,' he said.

Francesco came and sat beside him on the sofa and Leonardo put his arm around him and drew him in to his side. As Francesco put out his hands towards the stove Leonardo became aware of his brother's scent, a scent he had known all his life, but which suddenly meant something entirely new to him. He slid his arm down to encircle Francesco's waist. The two boys turned towards each other and, unexpectedly, they kissed, tentatively at first, but with growing ardour, until Leonardo said, in a choking voice, 'Will you do something for me Fran?'

'I expect so, Leo. I usually do what you ask.'

'Will you let me see you?'

'How do you mean?'

'Without your clothes.'

Francesco stood up. He took off his pullover, his shirt, his shoes, socks and trousers and stood facing his brother wearing only his underpants.

Leonardo stretched out his hands towards Francesco and said, 'May I?'.

Francesco nodded. Leo slowly slid his brother's pants down to reveal his cock and balls. Leo said, 'You are so beautiful, Fran.' And, oh so gently, Leo took his brother's flaccid, but stiffening, four- inch cock and his balls in his hand.

'She must be the prettiest little cocklet in the world,' murmured Leo, as he cradled her, seeing the head peeping out from its foreskin. He eased the foreskin back and kissed away a drop of precum. Francesco made a whimpering noise which almost sent Leo over the edge but he restrained himself, fearing that if he unleashed his passion too soon he might frighten his brother.'

'Turn around,' said Leo.

Francesco did so. His brother gasped with pleasure, seeing for the first time since they were children his brother's buttocks bare of clothing; He stroked their roundness; he kissed their peach bloom, then took hold of Fran's hips and pushed his face into his brother's crack. He inhaled deeply. Then, slowly and carefully he eased his brother's buttocks apart and inserted his tongue into the rosy pucker he found between them.

Francesco's breaths became quick and shallow as his brother ate his rosebud.

Leonardo withdrew his tongue, turned his brother around again and cradled his cock and balls, before looking up into Francesco's eyes, which were wide with unconditional devotion. Leo said to him, 'Fran, I want all of you. Can I make love to you, please?'

Once the words had been spoken, the transition from brothers to lovers seemed preordained and natural to both of them. Francesco gathered up his clothes in one arm, took his brother's hand and said, 'I've always been yours. This is just taking it to another stage.'

'Do you realise what I'm asking?'

'You are going to fuck me. When you do, shall I become your wife and will you be my husband?'

'Would you like that, darling?'

Fran almost came with the joy of hearing his brother call him 'darling' for the first time.

'Oh, yes. I know it will hurt at first but I'm prepared for that. And then we shall be one; it is meant to be.'

They walked upstairs, not to the two rooms with single beds which they had occupied so far, but to the bedroom their parents, their grandparents and so on back and back, had used. The great, crimson brocade bed had darkened with age; its dyed, Ostrich plume finials had seen better days, but it had never been the scene of a more youthful, energetic, erotically charged coupling than took place in it six times before morning.

When they arrived in the room Fran lay down on the bed and said, 'Now can I see you, dearest?'

Leo stripped off his clothes, revealing the hairy glory of his chest, his arms and legs and the rigid ten inches of his pole, sticking straight out in front of him. Francesco slid his hand along his brother's cock. They were both uncut and he lovingly rolled back Leo's foreskin and took his head between his lips, whilst playing with his balls.

'My darling wife, I need your cunt now,' said Leo. He turned his brother on his front, lubed up his cunt with spit, licked his fingers and stroked his brother's rosebud to opening life, then pushed his cock-head through the palpitating sphincter.

'Wife,' he repeated over and over, with each thrust, until he cried out as though in pain as he deposited the first of many waves of his baby batter into his brother's cunt. Francesco was all but smothered by his face being driven into the pillows by the strength of his brother's invasion. He gasped for breath as the great thighs pounded him, until the two lovers climaxed together and Francesco became Francesca, his adored brother's wife.

As Leonardo slumped with straining chest and lungs on Francesca's back she whispered to him, 'Husband.'

Of course, in the morning they had to tell the housekeeper that they would now share the main bedroom. She took one look at their shining, rapt, faces and knew that she must either accept the situation or leave. She chose to stay. But she told the boys' sister at the first opportunity. Cecilia arrived on the doorstep the following evening. She told her brothers that she was not entirely surprised. The intensity of their love for each other had been apparent to her for years. Even her husband, who was not the most perceptive of men, had asked her a year earlier if she thought her brothers were queer. She had said they were not and pretended outrage at the suggestion, because she feared her husband would forbid her to see her brothers or to bring Marco to see them.

'You still trust us with him?'

'I am not so stupid as to confuse homosexuality and pederasty,' she replied. 'But I wouldn't lay bets on my husband knowing the difference.'

'Are you happy with him, Cessy?' asked Francesco.

'Oddly enough, yes. He's a very good lover, he provides well for us, and sometimes it's useful to have a stupid husband.'

'Isn't that a bit cynical?'

'I'm a realist. I don't love him but I am in love with his body and we work well socially. I don't ask for the moon as you two do. But be careful, be discreet. This is a very old-fashioned city. The visitors can do things that we, the people of this place, can't, if we are to live alongside our neighbours. I have told Maria (the housekeeper) to keep her mouth shut and I think she will, but so far as everyone else is concerned you must continue to be just brothers.'

They looked at her and being Venetians born and bred they saw that she was correct. But a plan was forming in the mind of Francesco which would allow him to be Francesca, and entirely his brother's wife, at least for some of the time. In this, for once, he would take the lead and he knew without a doubt that his beloved Leo would follow.

Their brother-in-law kept a motor-boat at their mooring in the ground floor of the palazzo, where, in bygone days, visitors would arrive by water to be escorted up the ceremonial staircase to the piano nobile. He employed it whenever he needed to get about the old city but was happy for them to have use of it at any other time. Some weeks after Cecilia's visit Francesco suggested to Leonardo that they should go to inspect the tower in the lagoon which Francesco had been left by their parents.

It was a clear, bright but cold morning. Winter had arrived. As they entered the lagoon they saw, far away to the north, the peaks of the Dolomites, white with snow, glittering in the crystal-clear air. They turned their backs on them and headed south. They passed the long, low line of Pellestrina on their left, before turning north west, avoiding the sand banks, until they saw the squat form of the tower rising from what was little more than a patch of sand standing proud of the water. They moored and walked the few yards to the building. The entrance door was up a flight of ten steep steps and the ground floor was windowless. Originally it was intended to be garrisoned by no more than half a dozen men, who would retreat inside on sighting the enemy, and would set fire to their beacon on the roof. The building was expected to be defensible only for the time it took a galley to arrive from the mother city.

After the fall of the Republic, during the Napoleonic wars, the fort had been reoccupied briefly and the authorities had imported barges of soil to try to grow vegetables for their soldiers. The boys' great grandfather had turned the tower into a place to stay overnight occasionally on hunting trips.

There were two floors which could be made habitable. Francesco pointed out to Leo that the middle floor could be a sitting room, kitchen and dining room combined, whilst the upper floor, giving access to the roof, would be their bedroom. The bottom of the tower was only good for storage. It was reached by a ladder through a trapdoor in the living room floor. When the boys had looked around Francesco explained his plan. They could come here in the holidays and at weekends whilst they were at university, and afterwards, whenever they could take time off from their antiques trading. Leonardo would be a fisherman and Francesco would become Francesca, his wife.

'I should like to dress as a peasant woman and cook and clean and look after you. We can grow such vegetables as will survive here and you can fish. I should like to truly live as your wife.'

Leo took Fran's face between his hands. He kissed her cheeks, her eyelids, then her lips. He said, 'That is all I want, too. I love you, my darling wife.' He released her face and took her in his arms. 'I adore your clitie.' He knelt, slid her trousers down and kissed her mound through her lace panties. 'And I adore your cunt.' He inserted one finger and she grasped it with her cheeks as though wanting to prevent him ever withdrawing his digit from her.

They had brought a double sleeping bag and blankets with them, a portable stove, which they had lit as soon as they arrived, food and a hurricane lamp. They made a very basic meal then went up to what would become their bedroom. From the window they could see the baleful flares of the chemical plants of Marghera flickering far away to the north, but above them, when they went out onto the roof, the stars glittered.

Leo said, 'I should like to make a pledge to you, here under the everlasting stars.' He took both his brother's hands in his and said, 'You are my wife, my lovely cunty girl. I am your husband. I promise to love and cherish you as long as I live. Before the whole host of heaven shining above us I swear this to you.'

Francesca replied, 'I, Francesca swear to you, my beloved brother- husband that I shall be your faithful and loving wife as long as I shall live. I am your cunt and your cocksucker. I call all the heavens to witness my oath.'

They kissed passionately. Leo's hands sought his wife's buttocks and his finger slipped down the back of her trousers to circle the entrance to paradise. He led her back into their bedroom. They undressed each other. Francesca took her husband's cock between her hands, she stroked him then knelt to take his head between her lips. She took his balls into her hands and showered butterfly kisses on the helmet head of his cock before deep throating his column. He fucked her face, grasping her hair until he shot his load down through her open mouth. He cried aloud as he came and she licked what remained from his slit, kneading his balls to gain every drop. But there was more sperm deep in those magnificent balls, desperate to impregnate her cunt. She stood up, licking his abs and pecs all the way until she lost herself ecstatically in the forest of hair which covered his chest. He seized her buttocks in his hands, lifted her, placed her legs about his waist and plunged his resurgent cock into her pussy. She shouted out in ecstasy as he ploughed her and set his seed again.

Over the next few years they assembled furniture, a real wood-burning stove and oil lamps, to turn the tower into a comfortable home. They set up water butts to collect rainwater for washing. They established a life as a fisherman and his wife, who kept themselves to themselves, except when the man came to Pellestrina or Chioggia to buy bottled water, meat, pasta or eggs. The woman could sometimes be seen tending the patch in which she grew such herbs and vegetables as would brave the sea air. Sometimes a few rugs would be seen on the washing line which stretched from the tower to a metal post. No one approached the tower sufficiently often to wonder why the lady never washed clothes or bedding. Those went back to the palazzo with them since there was no boiler in the tower. There was also no electricity for light, radio, television or phone. Until mobile phones appeared, and their nephew insisted on giving them one, they were entirely cut off. A situation which suited them.

Leo liked to see his wife in pretty clothes. In the day time, if she was working on the patch of ground outside the tower, she wore clothes appropriate to a poor fisherman's wife, but she made a collection of exquisite lingerie and couture dresses and nighties to wear inside the tower. After their day's exertions she would wash in rain water heated on the stove and shave her clitie. Sometimes, in the early days, she perfumed it, but Leo preferred to have his wife's scent unadulterated. He would strip and his wife washed him, paying particular attention to his thighs, his cock, his balls and his buttocks. She would complete his toilette by licking his cock and balls and, often, he would come into her longing mouth. Then he would roll her stockings up her legs and draw up her panties to make a holding cover for her clitie, which he kissed and sucked before wrapping it up gently in silk and lace. He would kiss her breasts, taking each nipple into his mouth, before fastening her bra for her. He would drop her dress over her head and zip up the back before finally slipping her shoes on her feet, whilst stroking her legs to straighten imaginary seams in her seamless stockings.

So the years went by. Husband and wife were cocooned in love for each other, entranced by each other's body and idyllically attuned in mind.

Cecilia's husband died. Her son took over his father's industrial interests, but he was a very different man from his father. He had grown up accepting the love of his uncles for each other, and knowing that he was loved by them. They became father substitutes and, when his first girlfriend ditched him, it was to them he went for comfort, as it was when his mother died. When he married and had children his uncles were godfathers. They made wills leaving all they had to each other, and for the survivor's estate then to go to Marco. They retired from their antiques business in their fifties, handed the palazzo over to Marco, who preferred it to the villa he had inherited from his parents, and moved to the tower, though they kept a bedroom and sitting room in their old home.

From this time on the fisherman and his wife were to be seen much more often tending their rudimentary garden. It began to thrive under their ministrations. They seemed to be particularly skilled in getting herbs to grow in this unpromising soil and soon the few tourist excursions which went to the southern lagoon would point out the banks of rosemary and lad's love, the springing branches of sweet briar, the spiky tufts of sea-holly and the creeping luxuriance of thyme and sea-pink which surrounded the old tower.

Although Leo and Fran, like everyone else, felt some effects of age, to Fran Leo appeared as magnificently potent as he had been when they set out on their adventure together and to Leo Fran was still the most seductive, desirable woman the world had ever produced. When they sat down to their evening meal she would be dressed, not as the peasant she presented during their working hours, but as a sophisticated lady, wearing sheer stockings, delicate lace panty and bra, and a dress which clung to her still lithe figure. Leo would dress her hair for her after she had put on her make-up, and then he would put on formal trousers and a jacket.

They ate by candlelight and then Leo would take her hand to lead her to their bedroom. They would kiss and then would begin the unveiling of each by the other. Leo looked forward to the moment when he unzipped her dress and she let it fall, revealing her panties and thigh highs. He would push the straps of her bra down over her shoulders and take her nipples between his finger and thumb before suckling on them. Then he would go behind her and push his hands down the front of her panties, enjoying the feel of skin and silk, as he held her clitie.