Of course, it wasn't sleep that I wanted. On the long cab ride back to Soho, I fantasized about finding Thommy naked in my bed, about him waking to pull me into his arms and to beg me to take him, to make us one. When I got home, of course, the apartment was dark and empty. Nearly two in the morning. Where the hell was he? My innocent farm boy. I imagined him the central figure of an orgy in the back room at the Circle. I imagined him writhing blissfully in the arms of his fellow students from Tisch. I imagined him lost to me. I took a hit from my reserve of liquid comfort in the freezer, undressed to my shorts and went to the bathroom to piss and brush my teeth.

As I was rinsing my mouth out, I heard a door slam. The next thing I knew Thommy, shirtless, giggling, a little red-eyed, holding his shoes in one hand, was in the bathroom door. "Oh, Simon," he blocked my way out, "I feel so weird. It's great, Simon. Have you ever had marijuana, Simon? My friends had some, and they shared it with me, and," he burst into near-falsetto laughter, "they said it might make me horny, and they were right. See, Simon," he dropped the shoes, grabbed my hand and pressed it against his fly. He was hard, hard and huge, and, as usual when he touched me, I got an erection, too. He saw it.

"Have you been smoking, too?" he snickered. "Sure looks like it. Let's fuck, Simon. If you help me get these pants off, we can do it right here. And then we can go to your bed and do it again. I bet I can. I sure need to, Simon." He pulled my boxers down and started to push me down, too.

"No, Thommy. Cut it out. Take it easy. Not like this. Not like farm animals."

"But I am a farm animal, Simon," he laughed uproariously. "And so are you. Look at your prick, Simon, waving around like that. You want it bad, and you want me to give it to you, and I'm going to. Undress me. Now. Come on." He put his hands on my shoulders and pressed hard.

I pushed him away and backed off a little myself, pulling my shorts back up my legs. "Thommy, I don't like you like this. I'm not just someone you can fuck whenever you want to. I care about you. I care about us. You go ahead and take a quick shower, maybe a cold one. And then come to bed, and we'll make love. It'll be nice."

"We'll make love some other time." He was suddenly very cold. "Simon, I want a fuck. If you won't play ball, I'll go back to my friends. They wanted me to fuck them, but I said no. I said I have someone who likes me a lot and who knows how to make me happy. Now, tell me, Simon, are you going to make me happy or should I go make them happy?"

I know what I should have done. I should have pointed him to the door and out of my life. But I didn't. I couldn't. I stripped off my shorts, and I got down on my knees and pressed my mouth into his crotch. As I pulled down the zipper on his fly and undid his belt, I heard Thommy chuckle. He ran his fingers through my hair while I drew his jeans down his legs and licked at the clinging briefs he was wearing.

"You love me a lot, don't you, Simon?"

"Yes, Thommy. Too much."

"You're funny, Simon," he giggled. "Don't you know how lucky you are that you have me to love? It can't be too much, like you said. I'm special. You said I was your angel, your dream. Doesn't that mean that you love me all the time, all the way?"

I just nodded. I hooked my fingers into the waistband of his underwear and lifted the cloth free of his straining erection so that I could have him completely naked.

"No, Simon, say it. Say how much you are in love with me. Say you belong to me."

I looked up at him. He wasn't laughing or even smiling. Oblivious to my feelings, he just wanted me to lay my soul on his altar, a human sacrifice for him to consume whenever he felt like it.

I took his cock in my hands. "Thommy, I love you and every part of you so much that I have let you change me. Loving you has given me a new life, and so yes, I belong to you now, because you've made me a different person. I'm your lover."

"Well, good. Then I think you should show it. Go ahead, lover, suck my cock. Really suck it."

I did, and he mewed, a funny, high-pitched sound that I'd never heard him make before, when I moved my tongue around the flaring edge of his streaming cockhead. When I ducked underneath to massage his balls with my lips, he groaned and then stepped over me so that he held my head between his thighs in a gentle but possessive vise. "You're incredible, Simon," he stroked my shoulders lightly. "I bet those guys I was with don't know half the things you do. And they just want me because of the way I look. You really get off on making me happy, though, don't you, Simon? You'd do anything for me, I know it."

I was too busy lapping at the taut, bumpy flesh of his sac to answer him. I tried to pretend, even, that I hadn't heard him, that he hadn't defined precisely the degree of his ownership of me. But he had. It was true. Nothing mattered more than keeping him and his fresh, straightforward, confident beauty close to me, close enough to touch as I was gripping his fantastic buttocks, close enough to smell, as I was inhaling the sweaty reek of his crotch.

I don't think he read my mind, but he showed clearly who was in charge. He stepped back, freeing my head, and then guided his cock between my lips. "Suck me some more, Simon," he commanded me. "You really are good at it. I bet I'll never find a girl who loves my dick the way you do."

I really went to work on him with my tongue and my lips and the pressure from my hollowed-in cheeks. He was right again. I did love his magnificent, thick, penis. I loved its weight and warm mass in my mouth. I loved the feel of his balls slapping against my chin. I loved the spunk I wanted him to feed me. But Thommy had other ideas.

"That's enough, Simon," he said. "I want to come in your ass, and I'm just about ready." He took my hands from his butt and lifted me up. "I've decided though that we won't do it here. Come on out to the hall. I want to see what it looks like in the mirrors this time. And you'll be able to watch, too. I think it'll be neat." He giggled and patted my behind as he pushed me ahead of him.

I didn't protest. The first time I had knelt to serve him had been in front of the reflecting glass. That had turned him on, and I was so excited by the act itself that I would have gladly done it on a bed of coals. If he wanted to repeat the thrill of performing for an audience, for himself, I had no objection. I just wanted him in me.

Out in the corridor, he looked around and disappeared into the kitchen to bring back a four-legged stool. "If you just bend over some and hold onto this," he said, "you won't have to put your hands on the floor. It'll be nicer, don't you think?"

"Whatever you want, Thommy. Whatever. But you need a condom. You want me to get one?"

"I'll get it." He went to my bedroom and returned with the packet for me to open.

"How about the lube?"

"Don't need it. I'm going to open you up with my fingers." He put two of them on my lips. "Get them wet, the way my girl friend used to do. Make them slick enough to get you ready for me."

I started to say something about how his big cock would hurt me, but his fingers pushed their way into my mouth and silenced my complaint. I washed them busily, noisily, even enthusiastically, not to dull the pain they would inflict but to connect myself to Thommy in a way he would like. His girl had thrilled him by playing with his fingers. Maybe, doing the same, I could earn some affection.

But that was not in the plan. The plan was for Simon to give Thommy a ride. It started out at a slow walk, once he'd moved his hand from my face to my ass and once he'd pushed his way into the opening that his fingers widened. I groaned in genuine pain as the widest part of his rod skewered me, but Thommy was too concentrated on the spectacle in the mirrors to notice anything but the composition of our two naked bodies.

"Look, Simon, look!" he urged me. "Shift your butt a little more over this way. Yes, like that! God, isn't that great?" He was relishing the symmetry of his flat belly joined to my rounded ass by the rigid cylinder of his prick, the potent thrust of his body into my supine one, the graceful columns of his legs between my two splayed limbs. He loved it. "Oh, Simon," he exulted, "this really is a trip. Don't we look great together like this, you making me happy, me giving you what you want? It's like a Greek statue, isn't it?"

The Greeks weren't prudes, but I think they drew the line at pornographic sculpture. I didn't care to debate the point just then, though. "Please, Thommy, don't stop," I whimpered. "Come all the way in. Please."

"Sure, Simon, sure. I know you like having me fuck you. And I like it. You've got a really hot ass. My first," he thrust deeper. "My only," he withdrew an inch. "So far, at least," he sank in as far as it was humanly possible to go, and I squealed as he wrapped his arms around my waist. He held me like that for a while, no doubt taking the time to appreciate our reflected coupling. My eyes were shut tight as I tried to adjust my mind and body to the surrender of both. After the pause, Thommy brought his hands up from my waist to curl them around my shoulders. His torso weighed on my back, his chin on the top of my spine.

"Fucking really is beautiful, isn't it, Simon?" Thommy was admiring our images again. "I don't see how people can think that sex is dirty. This is just so awesome. I wish you had set up your camera. That's what I wish."

"I'm sorry," I grunted. "I didn't know we'd be having a Kodak moment. Please, Thommy, just do it. Get it over with. I'm not getting any younger."

He snorted, amused. "I like it when you're funny, Simon. I don't think I could make jokes if someone was doing this," he pumped in and out a couple of times, "to me. But I guess I'll never know. Because I'm a Bert." Another thrust and partial retreat. "And Berts aren't gay. One of Moore's laws, right?"

"Yeah." I was getting past the pain, into the pleasure of prostate massage. "Yeah. Thommy, right there. Please. Again."

"It's good for you too, Simon? That's great. Maybe I should let you do it to me someday. But, being a Bert, I can't go for that. Only gays get fucked. Isn't that a law, too?" By now he had established a rhythmic escalation to his penetration, and his sentences came in shorter and shorter bursts as his strokes speeded up.

"Well, there are exceptions," I really didn't want to talk. I wanted to concentrate on what Thommy was doing to me, on the feel and sound of his flesh driving against mine, into mine. "Straight men who are just curious. Who want to try it once."

"So there could be exceptions for Berts, too." I couldn't see his face but I could hear a gloating note in Thommy's voice. I nodded, but I didn't answer. And he didn't push the point. What he pushed was his cock, deep and deeper, harder and hotter until I felt his body stiffen against me and his dick swell inside. "Oh, Lord," Thommy yelled, "sweet Lord, so good, so good!"

Then it was over, and he lay limp and panting on top of me, not withdrawing, only shrinking a little, barely conscious in that state of suspended bliss that can come after orgasm. I tried to wriggle away, but Thommy stopped me by grabbing my penis. "Wait a minute, Simon, wait," he said. "That weed was good stuff. I think I can come again. Let's try anyway."

Thank God, he didn't want to repeat the same position. Instead, he moved us very slowly, very cautiously, still joined, to the kitchen stool. He perched there, raising me into his lap, hauling my legs over his thighs and drawing my back tight against his chest. For a while he just toyed with my balls and my cock, bringing me erect in his fist, absolutely helpless to do anything but his will. Then he began to jiggle, thickening again, steering upwards into me. And watching every move in the mirror, even though most of what was visible was my body, jouncing up and down on his. He spit into his palm a couple of times and folded his hand around my dick, first in a caress, then in a warm, tightening sheath that rose and fell as my butt lifted and sank.

"Open your eyes, Simon," he breathed into my ear. "Look at us. Isn't it good? Don't you see how incredibly sexy you are, we are? Look at how your nuts have tightened up and how big you've gotten. Do you love me, Simon?"

His face in the mirror was red, sweaty, but still he was beautiful. I took in the tableau vivant he had created. It was ugly, lewd, riveting. "Yes, Thommy," I gasped as he pumped me, "oh, yes, I love you. You are wonderful, amazing. I adore you." And as I shrieked those last words, I erupted in his grip, geysering my ejaculation onto my chest and then his fingers and, in the spasms of release, bringing him off as well.

"Wow!" he exclaimed. "Oh, Simon, wow!" He put his lips on my neck and then nibbled my ear, making me writhe as his cock slipped out of me at last. "That second time was fantastic. Messy, maybe," he wiped his sticky fingers on my thigh, "but still fantastic. I'm going to have to get more of that weed."

"Once was enough, Thommy," I said, freeing myself. I was suddenly, irrationally furious at him and at myself for submitting to him. "I love you, but I can't take any more of this… this…of being nothing but a plaything." I stood in front of him, fists clenched, getting angrier with every word I spoke. "It's all so one-sided, the sex and the feelings. I'm just someplace warm and wet for you to put your cock. And you don't care if you hurt me. Hell, you don't care for me at all. All you care about is yourself and the sight of yourself in the mirror."

My anger surprised me, but it stunned him. He tried to speak, but no words came. His hands fluttered at his sides and then rose to try to hold me while he gathered his wits. But I broke his grip, turned away and headed back to the bathroom where it had all begun less than an hour before. I ran hot water onto a cloth and scrubbed my face and then my chest and legs. I tried not to think about my explosion of temper, about what it would mean. I just wanted to sleep.

But he was in my bedroom. A huddled mass of misery on the floor making gruesome choking noises that I quickly identified as sobs. I crouched down next to him. "Don't Thommy, sweetheart, don't," I murmured, pulling his crossed arms apart so that I could lift his head from the floor. "I shouldn't have said those things. I don't want to hurt you."

"But, but, Simon," he blubbered, "you let me hurt you. You didn't stop me. I didn't know. I didn't think… I thought you liked it when I made love to you."

"I do. When it's love. But what you did just now wasn't about love. You were showing off, mostly for yourself. You handled me like some blow-up doll, not like a lover, not like a friend, even. I think I've taught you all I can about sex. Or all I want to."

He pushed himself into a kneeling position and, eyes streaming, to his feet. He hadn't even taken off the condom. It dangled, obscenely heavy, from his penis. I stood, too. "Then I guess I should leave, Simon, shouldn't I? You don't want me around anymore, not now, now that you've got a Bert who's gay."

"What are you talking about?"

"About Rob. His name is Robert, isn't it? And that makes him a Bert. And you and he … Well, your friends have it all figured out. It's pretty obvious you don't need me. I'll move out tomorrow, Simon. If that's okay." He started toward the spare room. And suddenly the light dawned. He was jealous. He had been punishing me for being unfaithful to him. Which meant that he did care for me. I grabbed him around the waist.

"Don't leave me, Thommy. I don't have anybody else, not Rob or Robert or anyone." I was choking up. Fear? Self-pity? Genuine love? Probably all of the above. I only knew that I had to have Thommy in my life. I hugged him hard to me and began to cry in earnest. That set him off again, and suddenly we had fallen together onto the bed, our arms around each other, weeping a mixture of anger and regret and unarticulated emotion onto each other's shoulders.

Soon the fit passed. I reached for some tissues on the bedside table and gave a couple to him. I dried my own eyes and ran a caressing hand down his front. "May I?" I asked, fondling him and gently stripping off the condom. I got up, took it to the bathroom and flushed it away.

He was right behind me, again blocking my way to the bedroom. "Will you forgive me, Simon, please?" He was trying not to cry, but his hands were clenched until, tentatively, he put them on my shoulders. "You have been so great for me, and I don't mean the sex. I mean the teaching and the loving and just that you act as if you care what happens me. I've been awful to you tonight, but I didn't mean to be that way. Please, be my friend. Please," he tipped his head up to mine, "please don't stop loving me." His lips caressed mine, then locked on and his tongue darted into my mouth. He dropped his arms to my waist and drew my body tight to his. The kiss ended.

"Say that you'll forget the way I acted tonight and what I did to you, please, Simon." He was hugging me, almost desperately. "Simon, you're the most important person in my life. I never want to hurt you. I never will again."

I managed to loosen his hold and took one of his hands. "Come on, baby," I said, "let's go to bed. We need to get some sleep before I fix you the big breakfast you said you wanted."

He lit up. "You mean it, Simon? A really big breakfast?"

I smiled. He kissed me again, and when we got into the bed, he nestled in my arms, pressing his butt into my crotch. I began to stiffen. "It's all right, Simon," Thommy murmured as he felt my arousal. "That means you still like me. You can hold me like this all you want. It's all right. I owe you. I owe you so much." His voice drifted into silence and both of us into sleep.