Michael was dozing. He felt satiated, content, soft. The sweat had evaporated, it was cooler now towards dawn, and he had wrapped himself up in his sheets. Nicole, Diane and Gabrielle, seeing him with his eyes closed, smiling, had left whispering and laughing.
To a background of the cheeping of the birds that were gradually waking up, Michael was daydreaming, running through memories of his youth. He enjoyed doing this after making love, reliving the sensations of old loves.
For example, James, his first real affair, at university in England, to whom he owed his true sexual awakening. He sighed with pleasure as he recalled that strong, athletic body, that firm but soft mouth that smelled vaguely of blackcurrant, the dark bush surrounding the beloved penis, which he so relished taking in his mouth, and the slightly salty semen that gushed down his throat and trickled down his chest. He touched his own sex, finding it, as expected, wet. He brought his hand to his mouth to savour the very special, very male liquor.
He felt truly blessed. He loved sex and all that it represented. For him sexuality was a continuum that ran from the heterosexual to the homosexual -- and all stops between - and his desires varied almost according to his mood.
Excessively masculine bodies didn't grab him: he responded more to the feminine, but the physical form the feminine took might be a body that was male, one that was female or one that was in-between or even both.
He loved the game of sex: not the game of seduction, which did not interest him, but the playfulness of the act itself. In his view, sex was just what adults do when they play. He loved what it involved, the laughter, the complicity, the tenderness of an intimate gesture, but sometimes also harshness or the chance to play an unaccustomed role, to hit or be hit, to dominate or be dominated, to submit or be submitted to.
His desires were principally oral. He was always eager to taste with his mouth, to lick, to drink, to suck: nipples, a cock, secretions of all kinds. He could make languid love to a moist pussy, exploring, caressing and stimulating for a long time with his tongue that mysterious and powerful organ that is the clitoris.
But what he enjoyed most was kissing. Gently exploring the mouth of a lover, this secret cave, wet, tasty, soft and hard all at the same time, then he was in ecstasy. He had even sometimes come just by making love to a dear mouth, long, tenderly, becoming firmer and more passionate, then urgent, until....
And all of these sensations should be accompanied by the corresponding smells. He thought it was a pity that the modern obsession with hygiene and cleanliness had led everyone to shower every day, to spray themselves with scented products, to hide their own animal odours.
He remembered one of his past lovers, Hazel. A redhead, she had had a very particular smell, and even now the mere sight of a redhead evoked the memory of it without fail. It was a slightly bitter smell, a mixture of perspiration, of very white skin with freckles, of breath tinged with whisky and champagne, and of the musk of her sex and armpits. Often Hazel came to visit by Tube directly from the office, and jumped straight into bed with him without neutralising her natural smells in the shower. Sublime and erotic!
Michael had a hard-on again just thinking about all this. He touched himself, squeezing the middle of his penis, where he was most responsive.
Meanwhile, another man, David, also one of Michael's writing course participants with Gaby, Diane and Nicole, was also lying in bed listening to the whispering leaves rustling in the Aegean breeze, a breath that brushed against his sex like the soft hand of an admiring girl.
David was thinking about his reaction to the statue of Hermes that Michael had shown them in the museum at Olympia the other day. The lad had never questioned his sexuality, but there, confronted by the beautiful Greek youth, he was confused, feeling desire rise in him as he looked. On the way back to the hotel he found himself wet under his underwear, which normally only happened when he looked at women.
At 19 he was tall, athletic - indeed he was a footballer and swimmer - but lean, with well-defined but not exaggerated muscles. His pecs were firm, with small nipples that he could now feel hardening. His chest was not hairy, but under his briefs he cultivated a lush secret garden.
He admired Michael, the tutor, who had something sexy underneath his not directly striking appearance. A slightly cynical look, a slightly mischievous detachment, a certain savoir-vivre. An almost feminine mouth, slim hands and, emerging from his shorts, a pair of well-turned legs.
David got up and put on his bathrobe. He wanted to talk with Michael about Hermes and the sculptor Praxiteles. It was the early hours of the morning, but he had a hunch that Michael would receive him.
