[If you are a new reader, you must read Part 02 first, otherwise you will never understand about Luke's two families.]
Chapter 51
Consequences of Luke's indiscretion
I realized as soon as Nic Aspergini had turned up dating one of Tom's fellow chemists, that the gay world of Camford was potentially dangerous to our relationship and much better avoided. In particular, I needed to be careful at the Fitness Centre to do nothing more than chat to any men I met who looked as if they wanted a date. Lots of gays lead very open lives and have many sexual contacts. My Christian belief prevented me from going down such a route, which is in any case incompatible with a quiet life or academic study.
Moreover the incident with Nic had shown me Tom's emotional vulnerability, and served to warn me that I had inherited some undesirable genes from my philandering biological father. My parents and grandparents had always warned me against contracting casual relationships, and of the damage that breakup can cause. I felt guilty about the minor deception I had practised with Tom, and resolved that I would never get myself into such a situation again. Tom's home life had left him so hungry for my love that even if his dog-like fidelity and fierce jealousy were sometimes a bit irksome, his essential sweetness and total reliability were too precious to harm by me playing away. Besides, he made love so beautifully that life with him could never be routine or boring! However, I wouldn't want anyone to think that the bond between us was purely sexual. Although slightly younger than me, he was wise beyond his years, and had a natural caution and common sense that were very valuable to our relationship.
On the night of the encounter with Aspergini, we went back to college and undressed rapidly. "Have your way with me stud-boy!" I told him, "I'm yours to use exactly as you wish." Tom took me in his arms. He was so much broader than I was, that I always felt enwrapped when he did that. I just let myself melt into his embrace and relax as I gave myself to his desires. Perhaps it is unmanly to enjoy being passive in a coupling, but Tom stirred up in me such a sense of loving dependency that I was always ready to do whatever he wanted. He laid me on my bed on my belly and began to kiss my arse. People who use the phrase 'kiss my arse' outside the sphere of lovemaking, do not understand what a delightful experience arse-kissing really is, whether you are the one kissing or the one being kissed.
"I love your arse," he said, "it's just the right shape and size to really turn me on," and he began pull the cheeks apart and push his face into my crack. I pushed myself up on to my knees, to open up the crack to him and he was soon nibbling, licking and tonguing the whole area. Fortunately traces of Storing pour Homme were still detectable. During this time his hands were caressing my belly and my balls. It was delicious and although I had given myself up to him, I could feel my dick steadily hardening.
Small grunts of contentment came from Tom as he ran his lips over the cheeks of my arse, sounds that told me more about love than spoken words. He reached for the condom that was ready beside the bed, and withdrew his mouth for a couple of minutes to roll it onto his cock. I could feel the tip of his rubber-encased manhood touch my arse and the momentary contact of his lips with my lower back before he started to apply lube to my crack and hole. When that was done, he turned me over on to my back. I put my legs round his waist and clamped them on his hips. Soon he was gently but firmly pushing his long and slender man-stick into my anus, gazing at me with possessive, but loving eyes. Once inside, instead of rushing into fucking me, he bent forward and started to kiss my face and hair. I reached up and ran my hands over his shoulders and chest and gently tweaked the hair round his nipples. He smiled at me in such a forgiving way that my guilt feelings were banished by the love that he radiated. "Fuck me, please, Tom," I said, and he started work with his tool. As his thrusting speeded up, the sweat began to drip from his armpits. It smelt deliciously of Storing pour Homme. "Harder!" I said to him and he pushed further and further into my gut, bending from time to time to kiss my face. When he had fucked me for some time, he suddenly speeded up and with a quiet shout he shot his load into the sheath deep within me.
I pulled Tom down on top of me and we lay there together for a few minutes before his shrinking dick caused him to pull out. He rolled off me, got off the narrow bed, pulled the condom off his cock and knotted it, dropping it on the floor before he pushed me against the wall, climbed into the space where I had been lying and pulled me back on top of him. Once again we lay there for a few minutes, before I raised myself on to my knees, put my leg over him and turned myself round to face his feet and shuffled backwards until my rock-hard dick was within reach of his mouth. I knelt on all fours over him as he took my man-stick into his mouth and he began to lick, suck and chew it. It felt wonderful. No-one could give head like my stud-boy. Every so often he would remove my dick from his mouth and lick and suck my balls, while at the same time caressing each of my buttocks with his hands. This was a new position for me, and it was bliss. My scientific boyfriend seemed to know every trick to give me maximum pleasure. He had been blessed by God with an expert instinct for understanding what a man wants from sex. Eventually of course I came and filled his greedy mouth with my seed. While he was swallowing it, I climbed off him and squeezed into bed beside him. We lay side by side, close up against each other, and instead of our usual conversation, we both fell asleep. I later awoke to find myself on the very edge of the bed and reluctantly kissed my sleepy boy and went to my own bedroom. Not for the first time, I missed our queen-sized bed at Rockwell's Barn with its silken sheets.
Chapter 52
The choir
Soon after Christmas, the members of the Chapel Choir noticed that Tom and I were an item. This was mainly based on the fact that we always sat next to one another at dinner after evensong. They were on the whole very nice about it, no-one muttered words like 'faggot' or 'fairy' or 'poof.' Moreover our example led to another couple of choir members coming out. Steve and Alex were, like Tom and me, a tenor and a baritone, although no assumptions about our sex roles should be made from the pitch of our voices! Unlike us, they were first-year students, and must have found one another very early on in their residence in college. We started doing things together, like going to concerts and recitals and drinking in the beer-cellar. Out of a choir complement of twenty, four gays might seem a high percentage, but then you must remember that Buckingham College attracted gays. We started sitting together at one end of the table that the choir habitually occupied in Hall on Sunday nights, and that end became known (to our amusement) as 'poof's corner!'
Much homophobia comes from ignorance. Obviously there was some homophobia in the college, but the boarding-school background of most of the hearties meant that the phenomenon of gayness was quite familiar to them, as it is in all communities where adolescent males are cooped up together, and we generally experienced no hassle. As a result, none of the gay men in college was prickly about derogatory words for gays. We were amused and quite happy not just to hear words like 'poof' but even to use them ourselves.
After dinner on Sunday nights, we would not always go to the pub with the rest of the choir; we would sometimes go and have coffee either in our room or in Steve and Alex's room. In that way we got to know more about one another. Steve was reading English and Alex was reading Agriculture and Rural Economics, two subjects as different as those of Tom and myself. Although they had been to different schools, they had become friends before they came up to Camford, and had specially requested to share a duplex room, which the college authorities were, surprisingly, willing to oblige. They were not particularly attractive, neither Tom nor I would have looked twice at them if we had met them in the street, which was good, because it meant that we could become friends without involving any emotions, temptations or jealousies. It also helped to remind us that gay men are just ordinary people, and do not necessarily differ from any other man in the street. In spite of my categorization of Buckingham men into two groups, hearties and aesthetes, gays are not necessarily possessed of different qualities from other men, and our behaviour and way of life may well be just the same. Some like beer, some like football, some like both! Fortunately for us, Alex and Steve were not football obsessives. However, they did like their beer, and sometimes I would regale them with special Belgian beers, which can be a dangerous form of refreshment if you imbibe too much, as most are 7 or 8% abv., but then students never worry about the dangers of alcohol!
Unlike us, Steve and Alex made regular visits to the gay pub near the theatre where Tom had rescued me from a predator. Maybe once or twice a term we went with them, and certainly felt more comfortable as a foursome. One of the attractions was to see if there was anyone we knew among the clientèle. I was worried that we might meet Nic Aspergini there, but maybe as an Italian, he did not like English pubs.
Chapter 53
The visit to Nice
I told Tom to forget about his home town, and to move with me to Rockwell's Barn for the whole of the Easter vac. Unlike Tom, I had exams the following term: four written papers to finish off my study of French at Camford. So I had to spend the last couple of weeks of the vac revising. I told Tom that he needed a holiday, and that in addition to coming with all the family to Nice, the two of us should go on from there to Italy and visit my mother and her family. We didn't need to impose on her hospitality: the little town had a comfortable hotel with a pleasant garden and outdoor swimming pool. I had considered us staying at the house in Montecatini-Terme, but according to Pop, who visited it briefly every six weeks to check on building progress, it was still not ready for habitation. My idea was to spend as much time as possible in the open air, to get Tom a suntan. There was little chance of getting his skin the same colour as my own, but his handsome body looked unhealthily white with his lack of fresh air and sun the previous summer. The two weeks we had spent at MT in September had helped a little, but the feeble brownness he had acquired had rapidly faded over the winter. We had both, according to our tutors, met the standards of performance expected as college scholars in our Progress Tests at the end of the Candlemas term.
My parents, always keen enthusiasts for rail travel, had decided that we should travel to Nice by train from London. Since the opening of the full Eurostar service, the journey could be accomplished swiftly with a single change to the 'train à grande vitesse' in Lille. OK, it meant a journey of ten hours, but would at least give me the chance to practise my spoken French on the way. My sister Cathy had decided that she needed to stay at home and revise for her A level exams. She would take one meal a day with the Rockwells, so that they could keep an eye on her, and the rest of the time she would fend for herself or eat at the Jellycotes Arms. She had received a conditional offer from her chosen college in Oxbridge.
