All That Argentine Jazz

"No, certainly not," Neal whispered back. "I'm flattered."

"And, if I'm not mistaken, you are aroused. Does Carlos arouse you?"

"I am very impressed with him. He makes wonderful music."

"Carlos told me that you were arousing to him. Are you fine with that—in meeting him after the concert. Am I right in having assumed that you take cock?"

Neal paused only a few moments, looking up at the stage, seeing that, although Carlos was playing the piano and singing now too, in a soft tenor, that Carlos was looking out into the audience—in his direction.

"Will you let Carlos fuck you?" the man persisted. "I have to set him up with someone to lay with him after a concert like this. He needs it to unwind."

"Yes, I'm good with that," Neal whispered back. Not exactly a long-term lover that Clay had made him promise to acquire immediately—but a stopgap. And evidence that Neal could manage this himself. Of course, he was actually more aroused by Wentworth.

"As his host, that pleases me," Wentworth said. Well into the second song of the love song segment, Neal felt the tips of Wentworth's fingers on his knee. He moved his hand to cover Wentworth's hand but made clear in the movement that he wasn't trying to push the hand away.

Why was he being so easy, Neal wondered, as he felt the heat of the possessive touch on his knee. It probably was because of what he had promised Ambrose and how nervous he was about how to go about that. It wasn't that Neal was promiscuous. He wasn't—and he hadn't even been voracious for it until Professor Ambrose had come into his life. He'd sucked and been fucked occasionally since coming to Charleston and after Ambrose had shown him the ropes. It was all part of going out into the world, he'd reasoned. And the college was well known for its eclecticism and liberal mindedness. But he hadn't been as casual and open to it before as this. He thought it was from panicking at Clayton leaving so abruptly. Neal wanted to continue such a relationship as that, but he had no idea how to fall into what he'd had with Clayton. He had no experience in casual cruising—not something that fell into a more regular relationship.

This encounter, beyond causing a surge in his libido, was at least a temporary answer to his "where from here?" concern.

Wentworth went back on stage to introduce the guitar segment and when he returned and Ferrari started to play, Wentworth leaned over and whispered, "His music is divine, isn't it?" His hand went to Neal's knee and was rhythmically squeezing and releasing pressure with the beat of the guitar music.

"Yes, gorgeous," Neal responded.

"He says you are giving him inspiration—that he can feel the heat between you across the footlights. He asked if you would lay with him. I told him you will."

"Yes," Neal answered.

"And will you open your legs to me too? I know I've been speaking for Carlos, but you make my blood boil as well."

Rather than verbalizing an answer, Neal spread his legs in the seat and moved his hand to Wentworth's knee. Wentworth's hand was already climbing the inside of Neal's thigh, traced the line of Neal's hard cock, and grasped it through the material of his shorts, squeezing and releasing to the beat of the guitar.

"Just relax," Wentworth whispered, "and come for me in your shorts. Don't be embarrassed. No one can see us, and I want assurances that you are the young man I need tonight."

Giving a low moan, before that set was finished, Neal creamed his shorts. Wentworth could tell from the young man's jerk and the relaxing of his muscles, that he'd had an ejaculation.

Before rising to introduce the last set, Wentworth leaned over and whispered, "Thank you. I will make it worth your while."

After the concert; after Wentworth and Neal had held back for others to cover Ferrari in adulation, which clearly both embarrassed and delighted the Argentinian musician; after the three of them were alone in the small dressing room assigned to Ferrari and the door to the corridor was closed and locked, Wentworth pushed Neal's back up against the wall next to the door and, placing his hands possessively against the wall on either side of Neal's shoulders, came in for a kiss.

Neal surrendered to him, but his eyes went to Ferrari, sitting at a dressing table, his face to a mirror. Ferrari was all eyes, staring at the other two in the reflection of the glass.

Seeing where Neal was looking, Wentworth smiled and said in a low, growly voice, "Carlos likes to watch at first. He wants to watch me fuck you and then later, in the hotel, he wants you to fuck him. Am I right that you go both ways?"

"Yes," Neal murmured, embarrassed again that he was being so easy—but he also was so needy for it—and giving passing thought to how transparent he must be for the man to assume correctly that Neal would both give and take, something Neal only recently had learned from Clayton Ambrose.

Neal's T-shirt was being pulled over his head. "Carlos wants you to be naked," was the only explanation Wentworth gave. In high heat now, Neal didn't really need any explanations.

Wentworth went back to possessing Neal's lips as he maneuvered Neal's right hand down between them, giving a sound of amusement deep in his chest when Neal shuddered at what his hand encountered when Wentworth guided it to his groin. Neal ran his fingers down the length on Wentworth's cock through the material of his trousers, finding him long, thick, and hard. Wentworth unzipped his fly. Neal's hand entered on his own accord, found the slit in the briefs, and ran his fingers over the flesh of the still stiffening staff.

Ferrari continued to watch, bug-eyed, in the reflection of the mirror.

Neal heard the unbuckling of Wentworth's belt and the belt buckle ring on the concrete floor as the trousers puddled around his ankles. He came out of the kiss, his eyes capturing Neal's gaze, a slight, sneery smile on his lips; looking, no doubt for some sign of reluctance or doubt, but finding none. His hands went to Neal's shoulders and applied gentle pressure. Complying with the obvious request, Neal sank to his knees, his hands sliding Wentworth's briefs down his legs as Neal descended, his mouth immediately opening to take in Wentworth's cock.

After a few moments, Wentworth pulled Neal back up to his feet. As he did so, Neal felt the contours of the disk Wentworth had in his hand, and knew instantly that it was a condom.

"Carlos wants me to fuck you here, against the wall," Wentworth said.

Neal's eyes went to Ferrari, turned from them at the dressing table, but intently watching them through the mirror, his tongue licking his lips, lust overflowing in his eyes, his hand grasping a freed cock. Neal's first thought was, "and what do you want, Mr. Host?" but he already knew what he wanted. "Yes," he whispered.

Neal both felt and heard his own belt buckle being undone, his shorts sliding down his leg, Wentworth's hand on his cock, stroking it.

"God, you're built big for your height," Wentworth growled. "Carlos is going to love you."

Neal felt the slight tug under his knees on both sides, and, understanding, pulled his feet out of his puddled shorts, and climbed Wentworth's hips with his knees. Clayton had done him against a wall before; Neal knew how this worked.

Neal felt the bulb of the cock at his entrance and moaned. "Here it comes," Wentworth muttered in a raspy voice.

"Yes, yes, fuck me," Neal whispered. Then he gasped and gave a little cry as the sheathed cock entered him and started working its way up inside him. He threw his arms around Wentworth's neck, pressed his cheek into the older, taller man's hairy chest, his shirt already having been unbuttoned and flared, and whimpered and groaned as the cock started to mine and pump his passage, increasing in speed and intensity until he, first, came on Wentworth's bare belly, and then Wentworth came deep inside him, with a jerk, inside the condom.

It was only as they climaxed that Neal realized that Ferrari had been singing, his voice rising and its timbre becoming more frenzied as Wentworth's thrusts intensified.

"Now we go for drinks and then to my hotel," Wentworth muttered, while going flaccid inside Neal. Neal was still moaning and trembling in satisfaction.

Later in the night, Carlos Ferrari sat, naked, on a chair in Peter Wentworth's Mills House Hotel bedroom suite, strumming his guitar and watching as Wentworth fucked Neal from behind, bent over the end of the king-sized bed. Wentworth covered Neal's back closely. His fists grasped Neal's wrists, spreading Neal's arms wide on the bedspread on either side. Wentworth's teeth were closed over the nape of Neal's neck like that of a cat holding her kitten steady and still. His cock, as long as Ambrose's, but thicker, pumped Neal's channel deep. He started slow, governed by Ferrari's stroking of his guitar and built to a fast and furious pace as Ferrari added complexity, rhythmic beat, and fast finger picking to his playing. At a loud, discordant chord on the guitar, Wentworth arched his back, jerked, threw his head back, and exclaimed his ejaculation to the ceiling.

He released Neal's wrists then and stepped back from him. Whimpering, Neal drew his knees up into his belly in a fetal position and, still trembling from the ferocity of the fuck, panted and moaned softly.

The guitar music stopped, and Neal felt hands on his knees and shoulders, coaxing him to turn on his back, spread his legs, and let the legs flop over the end of the bed. He complied and looked down to see the top of Ferrari's curly head as he knelt between Neal's knees, ran his sensuous fingers up Neal's thighs to rest at the top of the thighs and thrum Neal's lower belly softly and rhythmically, as Ferrari's mouth swallowed Neal's cock and rhythmically sucked the young music student to a throbbing hard. Thus prepared, Neal watched as Ferrari rose, climbed over his hips, lowered his channel on Neal's cock, and, facing him and looking intently into Neal's eyes with slitted eyes of his own, started to ride him.

Later still they moved into a threesome, with Neal covering and fucking Ferrari from behind, while he, in turn, was covered and fucked again by Wentworth.

They slept in a three-way tangle, which occasionally resulted in a random cock in a random hole, a brief flurry of pumping action, release, and sleep.

When Neal woke in the morning, both men were gone. There was an envelope on his neatly folded clothes on a chair that contained tickets to each of Ferrari's remaining three concerts at Spoleto and an invitation to join Ferrari after the concerts. There also was a check for $500, signed by Peter Wentworth on the Wentworth bank.

* * * *

Neal found that it was exhausting sitting at Carlos Ferrari's bedside in the Paraná hospital and listening for the next shallow breath, holding his own breath until Carlos' next one came—never certain there would be a next one and knowing that at some point there wouldn't be another one. The musician's breathing had become so shallow and the waiting so tedious in the dim sterility of the Argentinean hospital room through the night that Neal fancied he was able to relive a day of their life in each of the spaces between one uncertain breath and the next.

He knew that the time could become perpetual between breaths at any given moment. The doctors had said that it could be any time now. He had wanted to move Carlos down to Buenos Aires, to a more modern hospital and a more experienced set of doctors, but Carlos had forbidden it, saying he'd been born and raised in Paraná and wanted to die here. Such was the respect that the city had for his music that he was receiving the best care they could give him here—at no expense. Carlos had never been one to accumulate money and goods.

Of course he had accumulated Neal, and now, after twelve years, was fading away under the death sentence of pancreatic cancer, leaving Neal with nothing other than memories—or so Neal assumed. Neal didn't begrudge this, but he also knew that he wouldn't receive the regard and support from the people of Paraná that Carlos had. He'd be left, destitute, in this isolated country where he'd not yet, even after twelve years, been able to fully master the Argentine dialect of Spanish—well, the Paraná dialect, which was distinct from what they spoke in Buenos Aires and of little use to him if he wanted to make money from music in the capital city.

Long after that last breath had been whispered, Neal sat, holding Carlos' hand. Carlos had been everything to him this past twelve years. Neal had given everything up to follow him from Charleston to Argentina—and then to wherever else in the world Carlos' renown as a musician had taken him.

Neal didn't cry at the finish. He was all teared out—and a bit numb. He was just grateful that Carlos, who he had loved well and mutually satisfactorily for over a decade, was mercifully released from the pain he had endured to manage "just one more" composition. Carlos had dedicated the composition to Neal.

Neal felt the pressure of a hand on his shoulder, and some instinct told him that it was Peter Wentworth, even though the three of them rarely—but explosively when it occurred—had met over the years since Spoleto in Charleston.

"You are just a bit late," Neal said in a flat voice. "He's gone."

"I've been here from time to time over the last week," Wentworth said. "I flew down not long after I heard he was ill. Thank God it didn't take long once it was inevitable."

"Yes, thank God for that," Neal murmured. "You have been here for a week but didn't make contact with me? I didn't know you were here." Neal was hurt. Wentworth could have given him some support through this ordeal. Had Peter forgotten everything they'd gone through? Was he abandoning Neal as well?

"I couldn't bring myself to contact you—not until . . . well, you know, out of respect for your relationship with Carlos."

"Yes, I understand," Neal answered. And he did understand when it was put in that light. In all the time the three of them were together, sexually, it had been Wentworth who Neal melted to. Neal could concentrate on pleasing Carlos when it was just to the two of them, but he naturally gravitated to Peter when he was added to the equation. But both of them realized that Neal was there for Carlos, and both of them had restrained themselves in respect for the musician whose talent had brought them together. Wentworth had even declared that they should meet rarely, to avoid the temptation. It was OK that they fucked with Carlos there, but Wentworth really wanted to have Neal all to himself.

"There are no impediments any more. Can you come away now—to my hotel?" Wentworth asked.

"Yes," Neal said, letting go of Carlos' lifeless hand for the last time. There was nothing left here for Neal anyway—at least for this time. There was no reason not to go with Wentworth.

Wentworth fucked him on the foot of the bed in an old, exclusive hotel with large rooms and a shaded balcony. Open French doors led out onto the balcony and the unexpectedly comforting sound of the busy street noises below and let in a breeze to caress the steaming bodies of the fucking men. Neal was on his back, his legs being held raised and spread by Wentworth as, his forehead plastered to Neal's and his eyes capturing Neal's to catch every nuance of Neal's response to the working of the cock inside Neal's channel, Wentworth adjusted his stroking technique to cause Neal's eyes to slit the most and his moans to deepen the farthest.

Wentworth had put a CD of Carlos Ferrari's music on while they fucked, which both men found comforting and arousing. Always in tune with Carlos' music, Wentworth harmonized the working of his cock with the texture of the tune playing on Carlos' CD. This is the first time they'd done this to a recording, though. In times past, Carlos had controlled the fuck with his own singing live.

Afterward, the two lying in each other arms stretched out on the bed, turned slightly toward the French doors and the cooling breeze on their lightly sweating bodies, Wentworth murmured, "Did Carlos ever tell you how we picked you out—picked you up—in the first place?"

"No," Neal answered, surprised. "I didn't realize there was a story to that. I just thought you gauged me as easy—rightly. I still can't believe you were assured enough to just ask me straight out if I took cock. And I can't believe that I answered 'yes' straight out and that you jacked me off right there, in the crowded auditorium during the concert. It wasn't so much that I was easy as that I was vulnerable at that moment."

"Yes, I was told you'd be easy. But I also was told that you weren't really promiscuous, wasn't a rent-boy type—that you'd be sweet and with a sense of innocence, albeit willing and pliable."

"You were told? Told by whom?" But just then, the image of a long ago lover—not his face, but the slenderness and grace of his body, the long cock, slightly upturned—entered his mind. "Professor Ambrose? Clayton Ambrose?"

"Yes, Clayton. I knew Ambrose—through Spoleto, of course. I was looking for someone to service Carlos while he was at Spoleto in Charleston. He played with so much more inspiration when he had a young man to fuck him—and the coupling of men to watch. The videos on the Internet were not working. I told Ambrose of my need—I didn't realize at the time that it was my own need as well, but of course it was—and he said he was leaving Charleston and had a relationship with a young music student—you—that he regretted just walking away from. He offered you because he thought it was what you needed, not just because I needed someone to service Carlos during the concerts. I gave him the ticket to the concert to give to you. I hope you're not—"

"No, it's fine," Neal whispered, putting the finger of one hand to Wentworth's lips as the fingers of the other hand went to the older man's rejuvenating cock. "I did have my own need at the time. But I felt like such a slut just to give it that easily."

"Neither of us thought of you as a slut. We both could see your need. You were sweet. Carlos was especially taken with you—although I shouldn't say that. I was taken with you too. But I had host responsibilities. Carlos wouldn't have seen you as a slut to have asked you to return to Argentina with him."

"I can be a slut, though," Neal said, with a little laugh, as he moved his lips down Wentworth's body and swallowed his cock.

Wentworth fucked him this time doggie style on the bed, covering him close from above, as Neal, cheek to bed and arms outstretched in total surrender, gazed out to the blazing light beyond the edge of the shadowed balcony and thought, with appreciation, on his life with Carlos—but also on the restraint he and Wentworth had had to observe, except for the explosive occasional meeting as Carlos watched them fuck. His thoughts also went to his present, uncertain existence.

"You seem sad. Carlos wouldn't want you to be sad at his passing," Wentworth murmured when they once again were stretched out in a close embrace.

"I'm not sad for Carlos. I'm said for me. I gave him everything. I am empty and alone now. I have no idea what to do now. Everything went to Carlos. I don't regret that, but I should have kept something for myself, done some planning, especially in these weeks when we knew the end was coming for Carlos."

"You weren't left with nothing," Wentworth answered. "Carlos has been schooling you in the music since Charleston. He has taught you more, brought out more of your talent, given you more useful experience, than you could ever have learned in that college. You can go on tour yourself now. I can mentor you, just as I discovered Carlos down here, brought him to America, and lifted him up into the international ranks."