“Thank you, Gio,” I say, somewhat stiffly.
“Go lower.” He drops his head to expose the delicate curve of his nape. The trust he has in me is truly astonishing, especially considering my profession, but then, I’ve always been good to him, and his grandfather was cut from the same cloth. We are men of action and sometimes men of violence, but only when it’s warranted. My hands are already on his lower back, so I skip over his splendid ass to lather his thighs.
“Now higher.” He tilts his backside in a whorish way and widens his stance, practically spreading his cheeks for me.Christ.
“You can take it from here.” I steer him toward his shower head to rinse before turning back to my own. My painfully tight cock is fully unsheathed and expecting me to jerk it. I breathe deeply into the spray of hot water and wait for my arousal to pass.
Or you could…
No, we’re not going to entertainthatpossibility. Now finished with rinsing, I pivot to find Giovanni watching me with his glowing cat eyes, licking his lips in a similarly feline way. I don’t know what to do with his lust just yet and until I do, I will not act.
This too shall pass.
“Dinner time.” I say sharply and he startles to attention. If we were lovers, I would ask where his mind had drifted just then, but we are not.
Once seated at the table, fully clothed and with a few feet of distance between us, I ask, “What did you do today?”
“I practiced my cello,” he says with some timidity. “Thank you again for having it brought here.”
Much like the family business, I’ve kept all his grandfather’s possessions in safekeeping for when Giovanni is ready to assume ownership again. His cello was one item in particular his grandfather asked that I keep a close eye on, afraid Giovanni might sell it for drug money. I should have stepped in long ago.
“I’d love to hear you play sometime.” Not only does he play beautifully, but he needs these small encouragements.
“Maybe in a little while. I’m pretty rusty.”
“Whenever you’re ready. Did you do any reading?”
“Yes, I’m slowly working my way through Mary Renault’s works of fiction.”
“She writes the homoerotic stories set in ancient Greece?”
He nods at my crude reduction. “Yes, but there is also a lot of philosophy woven throughout. I read something today that made me feel hopeful. Would you like to hear it?”
“Dimmi.”Tell me everything.He has my full attention.
“‘Everything is change; and you cannot step twice into the same river.’” He pauses, giving me the chance to absorb it. “It’s originally a quote from the Greek philosopher Heraclitus but Renault uses it in one of her stories as well.”
“What about that expression gives you hope?”
“I like thinking of life as a river, the idea that both your sins and the sins committed against you are washed away downstream, never to return. I can come back to the same river over and over, but it will never be the same.”
If I have my way, he will never be hurt again, not like that.
“Like time,” I muse. “We must always travel forward.”
“It got me thinking of baptism. Do you know the origin of baptism by water?”
I reach back into my ecclesiastical learning,wayback. “Something about the River Jordan?”
This earns me a small smile. “That’s right. John ‘The Baptist’ was known for baptizing believers in the River Jordan, including Jesus Christ. Water is holy. It cleanses the soul and makes up most of our own bodies. Sometimes I think about each of my cells dying and being reborn, and that helps.”
“Helps with what?” I ask.
He glances up at me with a furtive expression. “To go on living.”
My eyes dart to the scars on his arm—some self-inflicted, some not. He follows my gaze.
“You should start swimming here in the pool,” I suggest. “You’ve always loved the water.”
