The Cove concludes

Hi all, 

Thanks for the excited comments last week; I'm glad people are having fun with this story. 

If you missed the first part of "The Cove," an erotic short story set in bohemian Paris in the 1930s: click here for The Cove, part 1.

This week, we'll pick up with Luc telling his partner Sofie about a heated encounter he had with a wealthy young gentleman on the Côte d’Azur, i.e., the land of fancy beaches...

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The Cove, part 2

“When we reached his family villa, his housekeeper looked at us very strangely, indeed. But Ferdinand put on quite the manner with her and said only that I was a new friend of his from the town, and that I had come to see the view. And we swept on past her.

“The view really was beautiful, seeing the whole sweep of the coast, all the dark woods and the pale villas and cottages, the turquoise water below and beyond. And it was curious to see the cove, my cove, from afar; I tried to picture what I would have looked like, there.

“But we only saw it for a few minutes together, because Ferdinand just about yanked me back to his room.” Sofie made a little murmuring noise of pleasure and pulled closer to Luc, beginning to kiss his neck again.

Luc closed his eyes, trying to concentrate, smiling at her kisses. “The room was enormous. He slanted all the blinds so no one would be able to peep in, and it felt like a wonderful cool cave, with white walls and a big dark bed with acres of linen. And he simply picked me up out of my wheelchair, in the same gallant way, and put me in that enormous bed, and we took off our shirts and kissed for a long time.

“I liked that he liked kissing so much; you could tell that it wasn’t that he was shy, he genuinely just liked kissing and kissing. Then we took a pause, and drank a little white wine together, and he began to ask me about myself. Where I was from, whether I was an artist or a musician or a poet, what kind of art I made, how long I would be in the Côte d’Azur. He listened to everything very seriously, with his big violet eyes.

“Finally he asked, a little shyly again, if I had been born this way, or if I had been injured—in a fall, perhaps, or after being struck by a wagon or a car.

“I told him that I had been born this way, that there was a little bubble of blood on my back when I was born, as if I had been wounded, and that my legs never grew. While I told him this, he started undressing me, with the same seriousness and lack of apology. That was very nice.

“He asked me more. He asked me what I could feel—he touched me up and down as he asked—and whether I could move my legs at all. And I explained that I could feel everything above my waist, but only a little below, and I couldn’t move my legs at all.”

Sofie knew all of this already, of course, but she understood the cue, and was recreating Ferdinand’s exploration of Luc’s body as he spoke, giving him a series of light strokes on his neck, his shoulder, his collarbone, his ribs… Luc shivered at the delicacy of her touch, until she paused with her hands around his waist.

Luc opened his eyes again then, miming Ferdinand’s reaction. “‘But wait!’ he exclaimed. If I couldn’t really feel below my waist… and he looked at me with the greatest confusion. ‘But I saw you… I saw you do everything,’ he said.”

“I laughed at him a little and said, ‘No, it’s true. For me, this—’” and here he indicated his pelvis, “‘—is only a pleasant afterthought. It answers sometimes, but for me, the real pleasure comes from here, or here, or here…’ As you are proving most admirably,” Luc gasped now to Sofie, who was renewing her kisses and caresses to his most sensitive spots: his neck, his shoulders, his nipples.

“Mm-hm,” Sofie said happily, listening to his breath grow faster and faster.

Luc struggled to continue his narrative, speaking in fits and starts. “Well, Ferdinand said… that explained… why he had thought that I was a real prodigy… as I lay there on the beach… for I had hardly touched myself, as he thought, in the ‘real’ way… And then and there…”

“You’re doing marvelously,” Sofie told him, as Luc struggled to speak, “with the story.”

“If only all stories came to life this way,” Luc said breathlessly. “Well—then and there… Ferdinand embarked on his apprenticeship… in the fine art of pleasuring a cripple… oh, god, Sofie!” She was bent over him now, licking and sucking his neck, caressing and occasionally flicking one of his nipples with her nail.

She listened to his breath, intensifying her motions, following his pleasure until she felt him begin to tense and shudder below her. He cried out sharply once, and then again, more softly.

She leaned close to him, pressing her face against his neck, feeling the shudders move through his body, feeling close and warm and proud, feeling the throb of her headache now as only another kind of strange tenderness.

When he was still and his breathing was slowing, his eyes closed and lips parted, she ran her hands down the sides of his body, enjoying the smoothness of his skin. She stroked her hands across his slim hips until she found, with satisfaction, that he was hard now. She circled her hands around him with relish.

Then she released him and reached to fling back the blankets, making him murmur at the rush of cool air, though he didn’t even open his eyes. Quickly, she knelt over him; she knew it wouldn’t last long. She bit her lip; she guided him into her, closing her eyes at the intensity of the pleasure. She was so wet that she hardly felt pressure, only the thrilling warmth as he slipped into her and she began to ride him with swift, eager strokes, leaning her hands on either side of his chest. He stirred and murmured beneath her, and she reached out one hand to grasp his curls, running her fingers through the silky hair.

Then she moved swiftly again: she lifted herself halfway off of him and rotated—the twisting sensation inside her made her moan—until she was facing his legs. Now she lifted one hand to press against herself, and like this—watching his slender, bent legs knock together gently as she sank and rose upon his length again and again—she found her climax.

She lowered herself, panting. She was trying to keep him inside of her, but she could already feel him softening.

Reluctantly, she slid away from him.

She turned and crawled up slowly until she could wrap him in her arms.

“Luc,” she whispered. “Are you awake?”

He opened one eye, and then the other. He smiled sleepily in answer. “You’re too good at this,” he said.

Sofie almost laughed, but she pressed on. “Do you remember the last time we did this, and you also… answered?”

“Hmm. Yes? Maybe?” he said questioningly.

“But I mean the time you really answered,” she said, a little urgency entering her voice.

He looked at her blankly, but a hint of suspicion was beginning to enter his gaze. “Maybe,” he said again. “About two months ago?”

“Yes!” Sofie said. “Well… you know how I keep feeling ill lately? And really ill today? And last week I had to keep telling you to open the windows anytime we cooked onions?”

Luc’s eyes were widening. “Are you telling me… No. No!”

Sofie laughed a little hysterically, her temples throbbing in time with her laughter. “No, I think it’s true.”

Luc sat bolt upright, pulling Sofie with him, so that she laughed again, clinging to his shoulders. “I didn’t think that I could do that,” he said in bewilderment. He clutched at his hair.

“Well, I think you did. Oh, Luc, I think we did it. But… are you happy? Tell me you’re happy.”

“Sofie—I think my brain might need a minute to catch up. Or an hour. I thought I was telling you a dirty story to cheer you up, not summoning—” he gestured in bewilderment.

 “Summoning what?”

He was searching for words. “The most baffling news—the most joyful news,” he finally managed. “Truly.” And he kissed her, hard. “I had no idea…” And she saw that his eyes were filling with tears.

She held him tighter. They kissed again.

She brushed a tear away from her own eye, and then tugged at him until he lay back down on the pillows with her. She reached down and pulled the covers up over them, relishing the comforting weight as the blankets settled. She twined her legs with his, feeling the warm, light, stiff shapes.

“You still have to finish the story,” she said imperiously, “and comfort me in my bed of suffering.”

“Indeed, I see that you suffer,” he said, eyeing her contented smile and half-lidded eyes.

“Yes, until you finish the story. But it really would be nice if you rubbed my temples.” (Luc did so.) “So, what happened with you and Ferdinand?”

Luc sighed. “Oh, he was sweet, and sad. We started to see each other so much that he all but had me move in with him for a week. That was the beginning of the end. It was impossible to keep things from his sister, of course; even if she didn’t see something, the housekeeper would. Eventually his sister demanded that Ferdinand either give me up, or else return to their family in Bourgogne.

“I think she was a little afraid of me—she was definitely confused by me—but despite everything, I never had the sense that she actually disliked me. I think she liked Ferdinand very much, and if it had been up to her, she would rather he stayed happy. But she was very afraid of word getting back to their parents.”

Sofie gave a disappointed sigh.

Luc said, “I think Ferdinand was ready to do something rash. I didn’t want to be the cause of something irreversible. I was very fond of him, but, you know… I didn’t think either of us needed to fall on a sword for the other. The summer had progressed far enough that it was reasonable for me to make my own exit. I went to him and told him that it was no longer possible for me to keep paying into the lease on the cottage, and that I needed to go back to Paris because there was work that I could only do in my studio. He said that if I was going to Paris, then he would follow me.

“Finally I had to tell him straight out that I thought it was not wise for us to try to tie ourselves together, that we were too different, and that I could not be responsible for what would happen to him if he tried to follow me. He sat and listened to me. He didn’t cry, but I could see he was trying not to. He looked wretched—so pale.” Luc pushed his thumb into his lower lip, rubbing it pensively.

“Both that time and the last time we said good-bye, he said very little. I think he was taking it as a point of pride not to say anything like, I was breaking his heart, or that he had been willing to give up everything for me. I think he was trying to learn from the experience, and I respected that very much. I think he knew that his childishness was his weak point, and that I had been aware of it all along.”

Sofie pressed her chin into his shoulder, and stroked a hand down one of his thin thighs, pressing it into hers. “Did you ever see him again? When did all of this happen, anyway?”

Luc squinted. “That summer was four years ago. To be honest, I was relieved when he didn’t start trying to track me down in Montparnasse at once. I imagined he had gone back to the family business in Bourgogne, melancholy and chastened but full of sweet memories.” Sofie snorted gently. “But he did come and find me one year later, in Montparnasse, in the fall. I was out when he first tried to find me, but he left a message with one of my studio-mates. We met for dinner the next day. He looked at me so hungrily when he saw me again, it gave me a pang. He said that his sister had just gotten married, but that he was still evading his mother’s traps. He spoke very simply and with not very much emotion; I could tell again that he was trying not to be childish or extravagant. He asked me how my work was going; he didn’t ask me if I was seeing anyone, or try to invite himself back to my studio.

“But we talked for a long time, and finally he said, with a trace of his old stammering, that he had to tell me that he felt he had learned so much from me. I laughed and said that I didn’t think I would ever advise anyone to take me as an example of sensible conduct. But he said, no. He said, ‘I have always thought that there was something wrong with me, something lacking or twisted, because I have only ever liked men. I have always been trying to make up for that. Often, before I met you, I smoked and drank too much, and sulked, and refused to see anyone. But then I met you, and I saw how you lived your life in a way that embraced the fullest possibility of who you are, both in body and in love, despite whatever might be thought of how you look and act.

“When you turned me away last year, you were right that I cannot live without the support of my family. I don’t have the skills or temperament to be an artist or a wanderer, to start over from nothing. So I am still trying to find a way of living, a shape of living, that looks anything like yours—within the outlines of my life. And I still think so often of what I first thought when I saw you moving yourself down the cliff to the cove, and then how I felt when I saw that you were—only swimming. I am trying, now, to choose to swim.’

“I embraced him, of course,” Luc said. “And I thought about how wonderful his kisses were, and how lovely it would be to spend an afternoon half-undressed and only kissing him again. But both of us knew that it would only open up his wounds again. So we had dinner, and he came back to see my studio just long enough to buy a little sculpture from me. And then we said good-bye, and I haven’t heard from him since.”

Sofie was quiet for a while, only stroking Luc’s legs, until she said, “Do you think he would be disappointed now to know that you are with a woman? And…”

“And expecting a child, at that? A miraculous child, I should say,” Luc said, smiling. Then he shrugged. “Very likely, yes. But then, I would hope, he would chide himself for having expectations about how I ought to live my life. Life shouldn’t be dictated by forms.”

“I hope you aren’t expending all of your wisdom in this one conversation,” Sofie said. “You need to save some for when the child arrives.”

“A child!” Luc exclaimed. He stared at the ceiling, his lips slightly parted, as if in wonder. Then he turned his head to Sofie. “You don’t think he’ll be sickly, do you?” he asked anxiously. “Or she.”

“You’re not sickly,” Sofie pointed out.

Luc looked as if he wanted to disagree, but could find nothing to say.

Sofie went on, “And anyway, children can be sickly for many reasons, and you can make yourself go mad trying to figure out the reason every time.” She had been the eldest girl in a family of five children, and responsible for the younger children for many years. While her parents had been inclined to superstition and curative charms, the ribbons and murky bottles had lost their awe for Sofie as she became older. She had learned to rely mainly on her patience and a deep-felt sense of intuition as to what might comfort a child.

“Yes,” Luc said, “but… you know what I mean.”

Sofie rested her hands around Luc’s waist, at the border where his body went from sleek and muscular to thin and still. When she had first gotten to know him, she had childishly thought that the skin below his waist would be cold, but of course, he was warm and velvety all over. She stroked him. “I do, but don’t you think that if our child is like you, then we’ll know better than anyone how to be of help?”

Luc made an unconvinced hmm. “Are you really not concerned at all?”

“No, I’m lucky because you’re a sculptor,” Sofie replied teasingly. “You already have all the skills you need to be a father. You know what it’s like to apply all of your skills and desires, only to learn that the shape inside has other ideas.”

At this, Luc had to grin.

“But I think the conclusion that would be the saddest for both of us,” Sofie said musingly, “would be if our child is absolutely conventional. Imagine she wants to be a secretary or a banker. What would we do? We would have to write a letter to Ferdinand and beg him to teach us how to raise a bourgeois. Imagine, Uncle Ferdinand!” She said this with real excitement, her pale green eyes wide.

Luc laughed, but there was still worry in his eyes. He nudged her shoulder with a fist. “And—aren’t you concerned about your career?” he pursued. Because women liked to confide in him, and because he had never imagined that he would be a father, he had learned to be sympathetic to women in a way that most men in their circle hadn’t. No matter how unconventional they thought themselves, the men of Montparnasse who slept with women, assumed a woman would care for the house, the cooking, and the children as soon as there were any.

Sofie pursed her lips, which meant that she was concerned. But all she said was, “We had our two years of fun, and now we’ll learn to manage.”

Luc said, more lightly now, “Does this mean that we have to get married?”

“Oh, heavens! I suppose we must. Or ought to. Oh, it all sounds like a lot of fuss.” She slapped one hand down on the pillow. “There, that’s enough talk of responsibility. We must celebrate!”

“And what shall we do to celebrate?” His smile was lazy.

In an instant, Sofie rolled on top of him, pinning his shoulders with her hands, and fixing his eyes with her own. “I think you already know!”

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And that's all from Luc and Sofie for now! Let me know what you think; reactions are always helpful and appreciated.

If you enjoy my dev fiction, please check out my other stories on the blog, or my M/M novel Shadowboxing, which is available as an ebook or paperback. And stay posted for updates about my upcoming book releases! Thank you all for your support - I have so much fun writing for the PD community.