Adopted to Inherit

“Such brazenness.”

I turned to Collen, who was pursing his lips as he gazed across Charleston College’s Sottile Theatre. We were sitting, side by side, on the aisle of the third row center, in the “official” section. The orchestra was tuning up for the Thursday, 22 May, opening of the premier run of the Rhiannon Gidden-composed opera, Omar, at the 2021 Spoleto Music Festival.

We were a strange pair, I knew, and I, at least, was drawing a lot of attention. Some there would recognize me. Others, who didn’t, would be wondering what the hell I was doing at this event. Some didn’t know I was a twenty-eight-year-old opera singer in New York as well as a classical music critique for Ovation magazine, here to cover this opera opening. My “date” and seatmate, Collen, was a mainstay here. He quite certain was recognized by more in Charleston, South Carolina, and at the annual Spoleto Festival than I was. He headed the public relations effort for the festival and thus was on the festival staff.

Other than that, ours was a noticeable Mutt and Jeff pairing. Collen was pushing forty and was short and dapper—slender and somewhat effeminate. He was a handsome devil, arresting flame-red hair and striking blue eyes and a perpetual “What can I do for you that will get you to do something for me?” smile. Contrasting him, I was tall and hulking, at six-foot-four, a former basketball star at Louisiana State University, originally from Jamaica, and milk-chocolate black, with dreadlocks. If only those looking at us knew what lurked below the surface of my tuxedo. If only they knew what Collen and I would be doing later tonight. I was here, as a guest performer and media reporter, because Collen and I had already met and bedded in New York.

“Brazenness because we have come together?” I asked. “I know we’re in the South, but is a white man with a black man all that unacceptable here? Or is it a man with a man?”

“I think it’s the dreadlocks,” Collen said, with a saucy smile. But then he added, “No one knows we’re here, sitting together, other than in an official Spoleto capacity. No, Devan, the brazenness is those two over there. One the other side of the theater. On the second row. René is looking back at us now.”

“Ah, the young, dark, sensual young man? He’s looked over at us several times. I wondered what he was doing in the official section. Do you mean because he is with that big black guy sitting beside him—like you and me sitting here? He’s a handsome dude.”

“There’s that, of course.”

“You’re here with a big black bull, Collen. We’re going to fuck later. What’s more brazen about those two than us two? They may not even be together.”

“Oh, they’re together all right. The black stud is a male escort. His name’s Jomo Davis.”

“And you know this because?”

“You know why I would know that, Devan. And the two have come together. They are seen around a lot now. The brazen part is who René is and why he’s not here with someone else.”

“Someone else like who?” I asked.

“Gino Capilati.”

“The Italian composer? One of the big daddies of this festival?” Capilati was the conductor emeritus of the Orchestra del Maggio Musicale Florentino in Florence, Italy. He spent his summers here in Charleston working on the Spoleto Festival, which was originated by the composer Gian Carlo Menotti to parallel the annual music festival in Spoleto, Italy. His connection to Spoleto was to help preserve the Italian connection to the music festival.

“Yes, that’s the scandal here. Capilati, who hasn’t been seen yet in the leadup to this year’s festival, impulsively adopted René late last winter as his son. Before that, they were a couple.”

“This René looks very young—a sexy very young,” I said. “Capilati must be ancient now.”

“Yes, he’s nearly eighty. There can’t be anything sexual between the two anymore—but to adopt him? That’s a scandal, even here. And for René to then be seen at music venues with a male escort—a black one to boot? The young man is twenty-five, and he’s a gold digger despite his title and talent.”

“He has a title? And what’s his talent?”

“Yes, he’s some hereditary Italian count with a long, distinguished name. René Tencredi Fallett di Barolo, if I remember correctly.”

“If you remember correctly?” I laughed. “That’s a big mouthful to be able to flip out so casually. You keep tabs on him, don’t you?”

“Yes, I do. Capilati is a good friend of mine. I hate to see him taken advantage of like this—and so blatantly be cuckolded. To inherit what must be great riches from Gino, the young Italian has become just René Capilati and calls Gino ‘Daddy.’ When he’s not fucking around with the male escort, Jomo Davis, that is. He does have musical talent. I’ll grant him that. He played cello in Milan’s Orchestra I Pomeriggi Musicali before Capilati coaxed him here to join the selection staff for the festival.”

The lights were dimming and the orchestra was about to begin the overture. René was turning his face back again and looking across the theater at us—at me, I think. He smiled and nodded. I returned both. If he enjoyed the company of a black stud, maybe he’d enjoy mine. He was a beautiful young man and I was perpetually horny. I wondered if he knew who I was—what I liked—what I like doing to sweet pieces like him.

“I trust the black stud is a high-priced escort,” I said.

Collen snorted. “He certainly charges me a lot.”

“Then that’s fine,” I said. “Not too brazen. Not as brazen as this.” My hand went to Collen’s knee and then as the lights went full down just before the curtains opened, I briefly moved the hand to his crotch and squeezed. As I suspected, he was half hard. He drew in his breath and let out a little moan. He didn’t draw away, though. He slouched forward in his seat and parted his legs more, giving me more of a handful of him at the crotch.

“I won’t charge you anything at all,” was the last thing I said as the opera began.

* * * *

His name was Mike Trent. He was nineteen and a tenor with the Westminister Choir of Rider University, in Lawrence, New Jersey, which had been singing at the Spoleto Festival for over twenty years. The choir students also gave voluntary service as ushers at events throughout the festival. Collen Prince had invited a couple of the students to pass veggies at his small after-opera party at his snug mews house on the short, two-block Trapman Street on the south side of the Charleston old city peninsula near Colonial Lake.

This had been the slave side of the city and there were a lot of small, out of the way houses here that escaped the worst of the 1989 hurricane damage and had been restored. The whole area had been under a gentrification renewal process since Hurricane Hugo nearly leveled this section of the city. Collen’s house, tastefully renovated at great expense, had essentially a one-room living-dining-study L downstairs with a kitchen and an enclosed porch off the back downstairs and two bedrooms and two baths upstairs.

About a dozen festival staffers and a few performers—all men and all gay—had been invited. They spent much of their time on the enclosed porch, which had a bar at one end attended by a cute mulatto guy, Dennis, who was giving me the eye whenever he had the chance.

Mike Trent had gone into mesmerized fan mode when he’d seen me at the party and had followed me around with his bacon-wrapped chestnuts tray. He’d seen me in Otello as Othello in New York a couple of seasons earlier. Being an imposing, manly black and having a deep baritone, I came easily to the role.

I had no trouble getting him upstairs and under me in the smaller of the two bedrooms. Two other guys were on the bed in the master bedroom. I didn’t trouble with a rubber. He was young and claimed to be inexperienced and it had been a bit rushed. As hard as it was to get my cock in him, I could believe he hadn’t done it much, but then I was massive, so no one took me easily. A lot of men wanted to take me, though, and I accommodated them. Once we got into it, Mike took me like a trouper, adjusting well to the rhythm and lying comfortably in my embrace and opening to me nicely. He was a sweet lay.

I bent him over the bed, not taking the time to strip myself. I just had my fly unzipped and my erection out. I’d stripped his trousers and briefs off. I held my hand over his mouth to stifle his initial inclination to scream at the size of what he had to take, and I palmed his belly with the other hand to hold him in place. It took god awfully long to stuff him at least half way and to be saddled enough to pump, but I managed. And he managed. And we fucked. When he was well in place and skewered, I took my hand off his belly, ran it into the long, dark hair on his head, and pulled, arching his head up into my chest while I pumped him. I released his mouth to hear him yodel, which he did, and found that he, indeed, was a tenor. I left him collapsed on his belly on the bed, humming softly to himself and blowing bubbles, my cum dribbling out of his ass.

Welcome to Charleston and Spoleto.

When I came downstairs, nearly all of the other guests had cleared out. Collen asked me to stay afterward. I wasn’t surprised. Although I was checked into the Mills House Hotel, five blocks away on Queen Street, I had assumed I’d be spending the night with and on top of Collen.

Everyone was gone except for the bartender, Dennis, still washing and polishing glasses out on the porch when I fucked Collen on the living room sofa. We were completely stripped down for this, and I used a condom, because I was very suspicious where Collen had been and with whom. He wanted me naked anyway. He loved the thuggishness of my body under the elegant clothes I wore as well as the hulking muscularity of me and my huge cock and plump balls. He particularly liked the tattoo—of a three-masted sailing ship, following the curve of my left breast, with the scene of a far shore flowing over my left bicep and down to my elbow in waves and snow caps, all done in blue. Cobalt blue on brown skin. And he liked the piercings—the rings in my nipples and the heavy Prince Albert ring in the bulb of my cock. In New York, he’d said he loved me fucking him with the PA ring in. He seemed to like it as much here on his sofa as well as liking the click of it on his teeth as he attempted to deep throat me before I fucked him.

He huffed and puffed as he lay on his back along the sofa cushions, his ankles on my shoulders, as I crouched over him and took my time getting my cock inside him. Unlike the young Westminister Choir tenor, I gave the seasoned nearly-forty-year old the entire length, merging short hairs with short hairs before I pumped him. He clutched at my shoulder blades with his claws, screaming bloody murder as I fucked him deep, but everything he was screaming was encouraging me to give him the full treatment, which I did.

Dennis came to the porch door and watched us a for a while. He was polishing a glass. It must have been highly polished in the time he stood there.

He was still there, behind the bar, fussing around doing not much of anything—waiting for me, I was sure—when I left Collen, well fucked, stretched out on his back on the sofa, one arm and leg dangling off the side, and babbling.

I fucked Dennis on the floor behind the bar, putting him on all fours and fucking him like a dog. His eyes bugged out, and he nearly dropped a glass as I strutted onto the porch buck naked.

“Shit. You’re gigantic,” he said. “And fuckin’ gorgeous. I love black bulls.”

“Yes, I am, and I love being a black bull. You’re getting all of it if you stay around any longer.”

He stayed around. “You sure you can do it a second time in one evening?” He asked.

“The third time,” I said, as I put him on his hands and knees, mounted him high, filled him, and rode him like we were in a rodeo. He whined and whimpered and bucked under me, but he took it all and claimed afterward to have loved it.

After I’d done the bartender, I came back into the living room, scraped Collen off the sofa, threw him over my shoulder, and took him upstairs. I fucked him at least two more times in the night that I could remember. He rolled onto his back, opened his legs, and drew my cock inside him each time, each time exclaiming, “Shit, you’re huge. I don’t know if I can . . .”

But he could, each time. “Nope, I haven’t gotten any smaller in the last hour,” I answered each time. With each successive fuck, though, his passage had dilated more. The last time I contemplated fisting him too and knew I could have done it. But I was too tired at that point for new games. Also, I liked having my boy’s wrists tied to the headboard when I did that to him.

I had managed a full sweep that night. I’d been long overdue for a roundhouse night. I was satiated, buoyant, and walking on air as I walked back to the Mills House Hotel at the corner of Queen and Meeting Streets the next morning.

Dennis had still been there when I’d showered, dressed, and went downstairs, and I decided then that Dennis was there more-or-less permanently with Collen. I should have figured that out. Now that I thought about it, someone was living in the second bedroom where I’d spiked the choir tenor. Collen was downstairs at the kitchen bar too. They offered me coffee and croissants, which I accepted, but that didn’t do it for me. When I got to the hotel, I went into the dining room, still in my tuxedo from the previous night, now somewhat disheveled, and had a full breakfast.

As I was entering the hotel, the black stud escort I’d seen at the opera with René Capilati the previous evening was leaving the hotel. He nodded to me, as if he knew who I was and that we were brothers in the fight, which I suppose we were, although I didn’t do it for money. I nodded and smiled back. I was entering the dining room when the elevators opened and René Capilati, the adopted gold digger, strutted out. He too, like the black escort had been, was wearing a tuxedo, as he’d done at the opera. I half expected and hoped that he’d come into the dining room to eat breakfast, but he didn’t. He was gone when I came out of the dining room.

Regardless, I had a very good idea what the two of them had been doing here in the hotel the previous night. I wondered if either of them had gotten off as many loads as I had. That had me counting them. Five? Was it five? And the bartended had asked me if I could produce two. I laughed.

I went up to my room, stripped off my tuxedo, took a shower, laid out on the bed nude, and slept the sleep of the victorious and well fucked—a black man at the height of his virility.

* * * *

“Well, hello, who is that now?” The curtain was about to go up at the Spoleto Festival opera in the Sottile Theatre in Charleston and René Capilati, festival staff member, was looking around to see who was there. He’d spotted Devan Grey sitting with the festival public relations director, Collen Prince, across the theater.

“The big black stud with the dreadlocks?” the man sitting beside René asked.

“Yes, the big black, beautiful stud with the dreadlocks,” René answered. “Isn’t he gorgeous? I think I’m supposed to know who he is.” René flashed the man a smile when he realized that their eyes had met, and the man smiled back. It wasn’t just a friendly smile—not from either one of them—and they both instantly recognized that, both of them being active in the lifestyle.

“Why are you interested in him? He’s just another black giant and you have one sitting right here beside you,” Jomo Davis said. Jomo worked for a high-end escort service in Charleston. René had hired him for the evening—and the night, all night. Jomo wasn’t used to a client’s aroused interest being redirected away from him.

“Maybe it’s the dreadlocks,” René said. “I wonder if he’s hung.”

“I’m hung,” Jomo answered.

“Yes, you’re a big black bull,” René answered, giving Jomo’s forearm a pat, as the lights were going down. He shot another look across the rows, smiled when he saw the look was returned, and nodded another “maybe we’ll hook up” nod to the black dude with the dreadlocks sitting next to Collin Prince. “Ah, now I think I know who he is,” René said. “I think that’s Devan Grey. A Jamaican, although American now. He’s an opera star himself, and he writes for Ovation. Collin brought him down for the festival. I’ll bet he’s doing Collin.”

“So, who hasn’t done Collin Prince?” Jomo said.

“You never,” René said, turning a smile on the handsome black man at his side.

“Several times,” the escort answered.

The orchestra was swinging into the overture, so the two men settled in their seats. In the dark, René snaked a hand over between Jomo’s thighs, and the black man widened his stance and covered his lap with his fanned-out program bulletin. René deftly unzipped him, pulled his monster of a cock out, and stroked him. The escort gave a little jerk when René pressed his thumb into the man’s piss slit, but he held. He was on the job. It was his job to hold and not to come until the client wanted him to. It also was his job to pretend like he gave a shit what was happening on stage in the opera and to let a client play with his cock in public like this if that’s what the client wanted. René was paying big bucks for this. Besides, Jomo would have his innings later. René was no different than any other client. When Jomo got his cock in him, René would go docile for him and take him as rough as Jomo wanted to do it.

René was a client who liked it rough and liked it to be a surprise.

In the interval, Collin Prince and the big black with the dreadlocks rose and headed up the aisle in single file, Collin guiding the black dude. There would be drinks carts in the lobby. René stood, preparing to walk back to the lobby himself.

“Where are you off to?” Jomo asked.

“I should check in on Gino,” René said, pulling his cellphone out.

“Your sugar daddy?” Jomo asked. “Does he know you’re out with me?”

“Yes, he knows. And he isn’t my sugar daddy. He’s my father now.”

“Didn’t you used to—?”

“Our relationship has changed. I’ll be in the lobby.”

“Maybe you should call him here. Most everyone has gone to the lobby. It will be noisier in the lobby than here.”

“You just don’t want me to go sniffing around Devan Grey and his dreadlocks,” René said, with a laugh.

“And you’re wondering if he has a bigger cock than I do,” Jomo answered, a bit stung, because he, indeed, thought that René wanted to sniff around the other black stud, and that wounded Jomo’s pride. “But I’m right about the cellphone reception, aren’t I?”

“Yes, you are,” René admitted. He took the phone and walked over to the middle of the theater in front of the first orchestra rows and made his call.

Twelve minutes later the lights were flashing, calling the audience back to their seats for the second act. Collin Prince and Devan Grey were coming back down the other aisle to their seats. Prince was guiding Grey with the palm of a hand on the black giant’s tailbone, and René had a momentary twinge that maybe he had it wrong and that Prince, not Grey, was dominant. But no, he thought, that couldn’t be the order. Grey was just too magnificent.

René was about to sit in his seat. But Jomo, standing, grabbed his wrist, strongly enough that René winched.

“Come with me,” Jomo growled, pulling René a step up the aisle.

“The opera is about to begin,” René said.

“Fuck the opera,” Jomo hissed. “You aren’t any more interested in this opera than I am. You want to take a piss.”

His grip was strong. So was his experience with René and his knowledge of what turned the client on. He wasn’t wrong. René was turned on by surprise and forceful domination. This was making René go hard. Surprise, ending in kinky sex, turned René on. This wasn’t the only performance of the new opera Omar that René had tickets for. As the lights in the theater went down, he allowed Jomo to herd him up the aisle, into the lobby, around to the side, looking for and finding one of the more remote men’s rooms. Jomo stripped René of his tux trousers and briefs in one of the cubicles, pushed him down on the toilet, put René’s ankles on his shoulders, and fucked the stuffing out of him with a monster black cock.

The young, refined Italian celloist loved the wild, impromptu nature of the assault. He loved big black cocks too. As Jomo was fucking him, René’s mind was going to Devan Grey, though, wondering how his compared in size and thrusting power to this black escort’s. He also wondered if Grey could be had for free. Jomo cost a pile of cash.

They didn’t go back into the theater. René had pulled a key to one of the rooms the festival engaged at the Mills House Hotel for the duration of the festival to use as needed. René needed it. Jomo fucked him again on the hotel room bed. He’d brought restraints and a small hand whip with him in a leather purse he’d brought to the assignment. He’d been engaged by René before. He knew the young, sultry Italian wanted to be manhandled and punished a bit.

He tied René’s wrists together, forcing the young man’s arms above his head, as he pushed the young Italian down, belly to bed, and feet on floor at the foot of the bed. René yelped as Jomo struck his bare buttocks, thighs, and back again and again with the whip, not putting enough effort into it to raise welts that would last for a day or more, but enough to make René writhe under him in pain-passion, much of the pain only imagined, as the big black stood between the young man’s legs. When René was thoroughly cowed and whimpering, Jomo cruelly grasped his ankles and hooked them on his shoulders, arching René’s torso back and raising his buttocks. Jomo worked his extraordinarily thick and long black cock into René’s passage and fucked him to each man’s ejaculation.

Jomo fucked René twice more in the night. He was very expensive, but René got more than his money’s work. He’d left the money on the hotel room dresser. He lay there early in the morning, watching the big black bull pad around, taking a piss, shaving, showering—all with the door to the bathroom open and Jomo knowing that this exhibition of the goods was part of the service—and dressing. He did most of it in silence. His pride was wounded and he’d been a bit more cruel than he had intended to be with René out of irritation. While they’d fucked the second time on the hotel room bed—the third time, as they’d done it in the theater men’s room first—René had mentioned Devan Grey again and mused about his size and how well he was equipped. Jomo didn’t like a john talking about another black stud when he was fucking him.

As Jomo picked the money up from the dresser, René sat up in the bed and said, “I’ll wait for a while before I dress and leave. We won’t want people to know we were here together.”

“Whatever,” Jomo muttered and left. As he was leaving the hotel, he passed Devan Grey coming in. He wondered then whether René had called the black stud to come to the hotel as soon as Jomo had left the room and Grey had hopped on over. That thought soured the rest of Jomo’s day.

When René left the hotel, he went directly to the old Charleston-style mansion he shared with his now-father, Gino Capilati, on East Battery Street. He let himself in and went upstairs, to the living room level and into the kitchen. The coffee already was made. Then he went up to the next level and to Gino’s bedroom.

“You may go now, Gerti,” he said. “I’m home until Maddie arrives.”

Gerti, an elderly black woman in a nurse’s uniform, smiled and said, “Your father has had a quiet night, Mr. Capilati. He didn’t need all of the painkillers he was allotted for the night.”

“That’s good to hear, Gerti,” René said. “Very good indeed.”

He sat where Gerti had been sitting, in an upholstered chair beside the bed where Gino Capilati, breathing on a respirator through a mask, was lying on his back on one side of the bed, eyes closed. He was asleep. He got so little sleep now that René didn’t wake him. Gino had wanted to know how the premier of the opera had gone as soon as René got home, as he was trying to keep up right to the end with what was going on at the Spoleto Festival he’d helped foster for so many years. It was merciful that he was asleep, though. René had left the opera at the interval. He’d be there again this afternoon and would have to gather what he could tell Gino from that performance.

When he heard the front door close and the night nurse was gone, he went out into the hallway and made a cellphone call—to Collin Prince. Then he stripped and showered and came back into the bedroom and lay down on the bed beside Gino. They would both sleep for a while. There was a time when they’d done far more in bed together than sleep. That had been some time ago, though, and there’d been none of that since Gino had adopted him as his son and heir.

As he drifted off to sleep, René thought of the timing of Gino’s passing. It wouldn’t be long now. They’d kept even the illness a secret; it had come on quickly. Gino didn’t want any hint of it to intrude on the atmosphere of this year’s Spoleto Festival. Everything in his life in recent years had been devoted to the festival. He’d even given short shrift to his duties to the Florence orchestra. Only René had been accorded higher priority attention.

It wouldn’t be long now. René had Gino in mind as he started to drift off, but as he sank deeper into sleep, it was big black bulls and their cocks he was thinking of—and the image of dreadlocks came up more arrestingly than Jomo’s handsome face.

* * * *

His name was Greg Fields, yet another tenor from the Westminister Choir from New Jersey, serving the Spoleto Festival in various ways. We were all in Speedos or less, leaving little to the imagination. I was standing off to the side, Greg beside me, my hand on his hip, holding him, trembling, close to me while we watched Mike Trent, the Westminister Choir tenor I’d fucked at Collen Prince’s house the previous night being gang banged on the back porch of René Capilati’s beach house on the Isle of Palms.

Although Trent seemed a bit stressed at being manhandled and taken from all sides, he’d expressed willingness and was being paid for it. He settled down, though. I would have stepped in if I’d thought it was too much for him.

Greg knew I was going to fuck him and that if that didn’t put him out of it, he might be gang banged like Mike Trent now was getting. The idea had Greg trembling, whether from anticipation or fear, or both, I didn’t know, but it increased my lust to know I’d be pulling the emotion out of him when I got my dick in him.

René had invited Collen to a beach party on the Saturday of the Spoleto Festival to include select gay men performers and staffers of the festival. His beach house—really that of his adoptive father, Gino Capilati—was on a barrier island to the north of Charleston. Collen had been asked to bring me, which he did, and the attire for the day was bathing trunks. I’d caused quite a stir in mine, the men surprised to see that under the tuxedo they’d seen me in earlier, I was a beefy black bull, with a breast and arm tattoo of a sailing ship, rings in my nipples, and a long curve and Prince Albert cock ring that couldn’t be disguised easily in a skimpy red Speedo. Needless to say, I had guys rubbing up against me and volunteering to bottom—or to share other guys with me.

René, exhibiting mighty fine in his neon blue Speedo, stood off to the side, looking amused. I had no trouble, though, understanding that Collen had been invited to the party only because he’d bring me.

The heat of attention went off me, though, as the idea surfaced to gang bang Mike Trent. He played along until it got under way and then I saw that he was getting a little apprehensive of all the men involved, some six or seven of them, with René, Collen, Greg Fields, me, and a few others more as onlookers. His reluctance, though, was only fuel for the fire, and it wasn’t long before he was on his back on a table on the porch with two guys holding his arms immobile, two holding his legs raised and spread, and a guy between his thighs, feeding his cock into Trent’s hole. The young man was bobbing his head off the end of the table and mouthing off until yet another guy turned Trent’s face to him, plugged Trent’s mouth with his cock, and held the young tenor’s head in position to take the face fuck.

I had no real interest in joining the fucking of Mike Trent. I’d already had him the previous evening. I’d developed an interest in another Westminister chorister, an athletic-looking blond named Greg Fields, when I’d gotten into the swing of the party, and he’d returned the interest. I was just as pleased that the focus of attention had gone from me to the gang banging of Mike Trent on the back-porch table.

“Let’s go for a walk on the beach,” I said to Fields.

“Sure,” the young man said, and we went out of the back of the beach cottage, across the sand dunes on the wooden walkway down to the beach, and then, without either of us voicing a direction, we naturally turned toward a complex of attached villas called the Sea Cabins, where a pier went out from the sand dunes into the ocean, the only long pier in sight.

By unspoken agreement, we walked under the pier and up to the base of it, snuggled in to where the pier jutted out from sea oats-covered dune. It was here, out of sight from anyone who wasn’t walking under the pier, high up, where it started, that I fucked the young tenor the first time. He lay there nestled along my side, the two of us kissing and fondling each other, pushing our hands down the front of the Speedo of the other and stroking each other, until he wanted to trace the sails of my ship tattoo with his tongue and to suck on my ringed nipples. We were reversed on each other, he on top of me, lying there in the sand, the bottom of the pier just above us, when we went into a sixty-nine, him declaring how huge I was and that he’d never had a PA ringed-cock in his throat before, and me working to get one of his balls in each of my cheeks and vibrating them by humming, when I rolled onto my side, reversed him, and pulled him into my side.

He struggled a bit as I put him in position, his buttocks snuggled into my groin as I lifted and folded his right leg up into his chest.

“No, wait. Slow. Maybe we shouldn’t—”

But we did. He panted and grunted loudly, almost audible over the sound of the surf rolling up onto the beach below us, as I worked my cock—raw—inside him. But he settled down to groaning and panting hard as I fucked him and fucked him, jerking with me and crying out as I unloaded deep inside him.

He pulled away from me, grabbing up his black Speedo and, struggling into it as he raced down under the pier toward the water, veered off half way down and ran into the surf, diving into a wave. I followed him at a more leisurely pace, walking into the surf, diving in, and swimming out to where he was standing, beyond where the surf broke, water up to his nipples, and looking back at me as I approached him.

I moved on him slowly, but relentlessly, my eyes boring into him, telling him I was going to fuck him again and there wasn’t anything he could do about. He whimpered as I reached him and gathered his body into mine. But he didn’t give me any trouble that time. I pulled him into my chest and into an embrace. We kissed on the lips, tentatively and then hungrily, as I reached down and pulled, first his Speedo and then mine, off our legs. He stepped out his, ready and open to me this time, having been reamed to my specifications more painfully under the pier. There, facing the beach, standing in water coming nearly up to my nipples, I put the blond tenor on my cock, also facing the beach. His hooked his knees on my hips and leaned forward, his arms dangling down. I cupped one of his pecs with the palm of one hand and palmed his belly with the other, and pulled him on and off my cock to another ejaculation. He just lay there in my arms, taking it all.

When we walked back to the beach cottage, we found the party in full swing. The music was loud, the dancing was frenzied, and René was passing around pills of different colors. I took several. I hadn’t met René when I arrived at the party. I did so now, both of us pretty high and free with our hands and our insinuations when we talked. I danced with him and with Collen and with so many others I couldn’t name. I touched and fondled and was touched and fondled. I fucked some South American guy up against a wall in a corridor, with other guys watching us. He was some sort of guitar player in one of the performing groups at the festival—Spanish guitarists, I was told later. I put him against the wall, his knees hooked on my hips and his arms around my neck and pushed his back up and down on the wall with the strength of the upward thrusts of my cock.

We were being watched by several of the other guests.

After that, half of the men were buzzing around me—all of them wanting a piece of me—all of them offering a piece of themselves to me.

I found myself in a bedroom at the back of the house, where I had the notion of a group of guys gang banging Mike Trent again on a bed and of me saddling up between his thighs to a lustful chorus of “A helping of big, black cock”; his panicked look; his high-register yodel of pain-pleasure as I thrust inside him, held his hips in my hand, and started to pump. I registered surprise to discover that my cock wasn’t the only one inside him—that there was a guy under him. Mike writhed between us as we took him together. And then I remember nothing but music washing over me and a kaleidoscope of waving colors in my vision.

The pills were kicking in.

* * * *

When I had become fully conscious, I found myself on a bed in a bedroom I didn’t remember from before. I remembered the guy riding my cock from before, though. I was flat on my back. René Capilati was straddling my hips, facing my feet, his hands on my knees, and he was bouncing up and down on my cock, taking me deep, open well enough to take the full thickness of me. We were both naked. I had a momentary flash of anger and disappointment that he was dominating me—that I hadn’t had the pleasure of hunting him down and putting him under me. But then, he was doing it so well, that I went into a “what the hell?” mode, grasped his waist between my hands, and went with the ride.

The early morning sun was filtering in through two windows obviously facing the ocean, as the gauzy curtains were fluttering in a breeze and I could both hear the surf and smell the slight fishy tang of the sea. I reasoned that since I last was in Capilati’s beach house and he was bouncing up and down on my cock that this must still be his beach house and the bedroom must be above the porch Mike Trent had been gang banged on.

Capilati arched his back, held on the rise for a second or two longer than the cadence he’d been holding, grunted and gave a little yelp, and came on my thighs. He plunged down on me and I blew as well. With a laugh, he rolled off me and bounded off the bed. He wrapped himself in a blue silk robe and left the room, saying “There’ll be coffee first, then breakfast.”

When I went downstairs, it was obvious the party was over. No one else was there, although the evidence of it having been quite a party was still there. The downstairs was one big room, with the kitchen area set toward the road and separated from the living area by a breakfast bar. René, robe hanging open to show a beautiful, willowy body, was holding two cups of coffee in his hands. He held one out to me.

“You are quite the black bull of a stud, aren’t you? And you lasted all night.”

“Did I?” I asked. “I came with Collen Prince. Do you have him hiding somewhere? I probably shouldn’t be here.”

“You came with me—several times,” he said, with a low laugh. “Why shouldn’t you be here? I think we were magnificent together. Collen went back to Charleston last night. Spoleto is still going on and he has duties.”

“Don’t take our riding well together too seriously. I’m into casual encounters . . .”

“I’ve noticed,” René interrupted.

“It’s coming back to me. If I remember right, after we did it the first time last night, you asked me if I wanted to leave New York and move in with you in Charleston.”

“You remember right. You were that good in the fuck and I think I need a black bull in my life.”

“I don’t do relationships, especially with someone who has attached himself to a rich man—someone who’s been adopted by a much older man but had been his lover before.”

“Ah, you gotten filled in by the social set and you don’t like gold diggers.”

“You got it in two. Where is Daddy, incidentally? He wasn’t upstairs behind a peephole watching us perform, was he? That isn’t his kink, is it? I know of Gino Capilati’s work. I have too much respect for him to be plugging his boy toy behind his back.”

“My, the rumors do get nasty, don’t they?” René said, taking my empty coffee cup from me and turning away from me to refill it. “This is not a forgiving town. Gino’s not here. He’s back in Charleston, in bed, attached to a respirator. I very much doubt he’ll be in bed long now, but he won’t leave it alive, I don’t think. He’s dying. We haven’t told anyone because he didn’t want that to intrude on Spoleto this year. The festival means everything to him.”

“I thought maybe you meant everything to him—so much that he adopted you.” I wasn’t in the mood to be generous. It might seem that I fucked everyone in sight—well, it was true that I fucked every sexy guy in sight who I could—but I had standards. I didn’t cut in on anyone else’s guy when I knew they were a couple—not as long as they were a couple. That I wasn’t given a chance to do the right thing here put a sour taste in my mouth. And, as I said, I knew of Gino Capilati’s work, and although I thought he was a bit pathetic to be adopting his far younger lover to keep the guy in attendance while he died, I could see why he would do it. I could also see why the younger guy would stick around if he was assured to inherit. Adoption was apparently what Gino had to do to keep René around. I didn’t have to respect René for forcing that deal, though.

“But yet you are shopping before Gino has passed,” I said, not in the mode to give him slack.

“Yes, I suppose that’s what people here are saying,” René said, turning to me and handing me the refilled cup of coffee. He wasn’t rising to the bait; he wasn’t choosing to get mad and throw me out of the house on my tail—although he wasn’t of the size to do that to me if I didn’t go willingly. “They’re saying I’m a gold digger, just after his money. That I’m catting around behind his back. If they knew he was dying they’d really be down on my case even harder, wouldn’t they? Well, I guess it’s ‘won’t they?’ isn’t it?”

“It goes with the territory, I suppose.”

“Yes, I suppose it will, regardless, even though that’s not the whole story of it.”

“Well, if you don’t mind, I’ll get a shower and then, if you will, you could drive me back to Charleston. You don’t have to feed me breakfast. Thanks for the coffee, though.”

“You’ve been honest with me, Devan, so I’ll be honest with you. I’ll tell you, but I’m not asking you to pass it on. I live and work in Milan. I’m only here because I couldn’t leave Gino to die alone. His ailment made him cantankerous for the last year. There aren’t too many of his old friends left here in Charleston who would give him the attention he needs in these last few weeks.”

“I do understand he needed to have you to rely on and adopted you to keep you here—adopted you with the promise of inheriting.”

René laughed.

“Is that funny?” I asked.

“In a way it is,” he said. “You have no idea what I’ll inherit or why I let him adopt me. He wanted to do it. He was obsessive about it, but his reasons weren’t the one’s that convinced me to go through with it.”

Now I was curious. “I don’t understand.”

“No, you don’t. And the tight social community in Charleston doesn’t understand, and I don’t want them to.”

“Why don’t you want them to understand? What won’t they understand?”

“Adoption won’t have me inheriting what Charleston’s society thinks it will. I won’t be inheriting riches. Gino’s broke. He refuses to believe he is, though. He’s been living a fantasy for a long time. His medical expenses and insistence to live like he has money has wiped him out. What he hasn’t spent on himself, he’s pumped into the Spoleto Festival. This cottage is mortgaged to the hilt. It won’t cover funeral costs. The big fancy house on the Battery in Charleston was sold to a northern bank a long time ago and rented back. Back rent is due on it. Gino has nothing else left. I’m the one with the money. I’ve already inherited a fortune along with a title back in Italy. I’ve been floating Gino for two years now. And when he dies, what I’ll be inheriting are his debts. But I’ll pay them off. What people don’t understand is that I love Gino as much as he loves me but, yes, I’m heavily sexed and Gino knows that. He’s made me promise to continue with other men. There’s nothing Gino and I can do together anymore other than hand jobs.”

I took a few minutes to absorb that, losing myself in my coffee cup. I saw the issue. I thought others would too. “Perhaps when they understand that in Charleston—”

“I don’t want them to understand that Dino died broke. He would hate them knowing that. He’s refused to believe that himself. I’ll pay his debts and go back to Milan and let them think whatever they want to think. The adoption was Gino’s lawyer’s scheme when I insisted that no one know about Gino’s financials when he dies. All of the debts go to me and no one else need know about them.”

“Why are you telling me about this and no one else?”

“Maybe I sense you’re someone special. Maybe I want you to think more charitably toward me than any of the others. So, knowing that, do you want me to drive you back to Charleston now or go back upstairs with me?”

“For now, I think I’d prefer that you drive me back to Charleston. Later, when you’re going back to Milan, maybe you could do it by the way of New York.”

He gave me a long look and then laughed. “OK, Mr. Grey, I can respect you for that. In fact, you arouse me even more now. You can bet I’ll go to Milan through New York.”

We left it like that, but months later, after he’d stopped in New York, I found that Milan had an opera that wanted to stage Otello, and I moved to Italy. As I got older, the idea of settling down slowly superseded my desires to sow my wild oats.