I stare up at the painting, feeling both self-righteous and shocked.
“Yes, I am,” I admit.
Why, Silvio?
“Because you lied to me. You… manipulated me. And your gift came with conditions.”
Conditions?
“You should have better prepared me. Prepared us.”
This is about Giovanni?
I wrack my brain for the source of my frustration. Why am I so angry—sofurious—at him still?
“You made him rely on you for everything, and then you abandoned him. And you left me to pick up the pieces. You made a mess of us both, and then you… you left.”
I am sorry that I had to leave you,fratellino.
Little brother.
It is sometime later, minutes or hours, when Giovanni finds me, huddled there on the carpet, eyes burning, chest heaving, cheeks stained by my tears. “He left us,” I tell Giovanni, indignant in my anger.
Giovanni pets my head and says quietly, “Yes, he did.”
We sailto the island of Capri for a long weekend because I need the distraction, to get away from my brother’s riddles and his villa where everything belongs to him, even some parts of the young man I love most dearly. This is not me running away. I’m simply taking time to clear my head.
Thankfully, my sexual vigor returns, and in between trimming the sails and steering the boat, Giovanni and I make love on every surface available. We are frenzied, starved, and drunk on each other’s lust. I make him wear my pearls of cum like jewelry. There are bruises and bite marks all over his body from my fingers and my ravenous mouth. He walks gingerly up the cabin steps to bring me a drink—he’s not permitted to wear clothing—and from my captain’s chair, I make him sit with both knees raised and show me his swollen, gaping cherry.
“Does it hurt?” I ask while he fingers himself at my command. I want him debauched, whorish, covered in my cum. But I must temper my appetite.
“I like it. I want you to exorcize your demons with my body and bury your frustrations in my skin.”
“This is not the talk of a Stoic,” I remark.
“These are not my desires, Sir, but yours. I am a reflection of your passions. My pleasure is in pleasing you, kneeling for you, hurting for you, being a warm, eager receptacle, for you.”
The power he entrusts in me is intoxicating. Despite his irresistible allure, I vow to be gentle with him later—he’ll need his strength for exploring the island tomorrow—but that afternoon an unexpected storm rolls in while we’re anchored off the island, and between keeping the boat anchored and afloat and the nausea-inducing waves, our survival takes precedence over any sensual pursuits.
“What more could you possibly want from me?” I yell at the lashing sky because the source of this bad weather can only be my brother. He’s followed me here to torment me still. “Haven’t I done everything you’ve asked?”
My voice is eclipsed by the echoing thunder. I am soaked to the bone, choking on raindrops and sea spray when Giovanni, lit only by flashes of lightning and wearing the raincoat and life-preserver I wrapped him in, grabs me by the hand and drags me inside the cabin. He strips me bare and hands me a bottle ofgrappa, then gently dries me with a towel, including my sopping wet hair, before bundling me in a dry blanket.
All the while the storm rages outside, and inside of me too.
“What is happening to me?” I ask as I cling to him, certain I am going insane.
“Sir, you are grieving.”
17
Icome down with a fever that sends me straight to my sick bed. Giovanni says it’s because I attempted to best the gods during that storm, and they are punishing me for my hubris.
I believe my brother is at fault.
Gio cares for me while I wrestle with the bedsheets, twisting and turning, freezing cold and then burning hot, weak and achy all over. Visions of Valentin swirl in my mind with no clear beginning or end, until I can no longer tell if they are memories or dreams.
We are on the beach with a storm brewing in the distance, gray and ominous, when he first tells me of his illness, that there is no cure, and his death is imminent.
