Chapter 17

The weather turnedwarm with the sunrise the next morning, and Zo was out in the garden, sitting in his chair, before Hylas arrived. Hylas had put him to bed the night before, kissing him good night with that tenderness that made Zo's knees feel weak in a surprisingly good way.

Hylas came out with his tray of tea and buns as usual, but he stopped outside his door and stood looking at Zo with his wistful smile for a long moment.

"I wondered if you'd be out here," he said, "since it's so pleasant."

Zo stretched luxuriantly in his chair. "The winters are so short here. I just start to brace myself for the real cold, and then it never comes, and the whole thing is over."

Hylas came and took his usual spot by Zo's chair, setting the tea tray on the ground. After a moment's hesitation, he laid his hand on Zo's knee, a tentative, light touch. He looked up into Zo's face.

"It is good to see you in your garden again," he said. "You make it more beautiful."

Zo shifted the fabric of his robe, which was loosely belted and opened at the front. He tugged it out from under Hylas's hand so that his palm lay on bare skin. He waited for the reaction, wondering if it would be shock—"Not out here!"—or solicitude—"You're not wearing anything underneath? You will get cold!"

It was neither. Hylas looked up at him for a moment, frozen. Then he looked down, intent, as he ran his hand slowly up Zo's thigh. He bent his head to put his lips to Zo's skin, brushing them across in a kind of inchoate kiss. He touched the other side of Zo's robe, lifting the fabric slightly, and looked up at Zo for permission. In answer, Zo unfastened the tie that held his robe closed. He let Hylas fold back the other half of the robe himself.

Zo leaned back in his chair, bared to the gentle sunlight in his garden, and twined one leg around Hylas's shoulder to pull him closer.

"This is not uncomfortable for you, my love?" Hylas's voice was rough, his long, calloused hands warm on Zo's body but stilled as he waited for an answer.

"Not at all."

Hylas bent to stroking and kissing Zo's thighs and belly, his hands and mouth gentle and undemanding. Zo looked down the landscape of his own body, feeling like something precious under Hylas's reverent touch. Hylas was breathing hard, almost panting, as if he were the one being touched.

He probably thought of himself as fumbling, but to Zo just then he looked powerful, a man with the self-control to wait decades with this fire of yearning banked inside him and still, when he finally allowed himself this, to put his lover's needs before his own.

He nuzzled Zo's still-soft cock with his lips and then hesitantly slipped out his tongue to lick. Zo made an encouraging noise. He let Hylas explore raptly for a while, longer than he thought he could bear this kind of slow build-up, but that morning it was just what he needed. When he was fully hard, he reached down and wrapped Hylas's long fingers around the base of his cock.

"Just put the tip in your mouth and suck," he instructed.

Hylas looked up, cheeks flushed, lips red. "Just the tip?"

"Well. To start."

Hylas nodded obediently. Zo found himself lifted up, Hylas's hand under his ass—holy angels, he really liked that manoeuvre, didn't he—his legs draped over Hylas's shoulders, his whole cock in Hylas's mouth. He clutched the arms of the chair and moaned, levering his body up, pushing into the wet heat of Hylas's mouth.

"Ah! Keep going—you don't need any instructions, you beautiful man."

He really didn't. He'd only needed to be pointed in the right direction, and he sucked Zo with raw eagerness. In broad daylight, in Zo's garden. Zo looked up at the white clouds in the sky. The wind rustled the olive leaves. He writhed in Hylas's grasp, shouting aloud his need, totally abandoned to it, no longer even speaking Pseuchaian.

"God—angels—oh, Hylas, don't stop! No! Stop, slow down?—"

And of course Hylas couldn't understand any of that, and Zo came, arching his back and clinging to the arms of the chair and swallowing a cry that would have echoed off the mountainside if he had let it out.

He also came in Hylas's mouth, and Hylas gulped it down. He released Zo's wet cock and set him gently back down in the chair. Then he sat back on the grass and fumbled for the tea things, pouring himself a bowl and taking several quick sips.

"It's not that … I don't like the way you taste. I love it." He wiped his mouth, chest heaving, and swallowed another mouthful of tea. "It's just … different."

"Mm," said Zo intelligently. He lay back in his chair, his robe still spread open, climax humming in his blood.

"Are you all right?"

"Mm. Mmm."

Hylas chuckled. "Oh. I see." He sounded pleased with himself.

Hylas sat and ate buns and drank tea—or at least that was what Zo thought he was doing—while Zo stared at the sky a little longer.

"All right," said Zo finally, gathering himself up and pulling his robe around him. "It's your turn, my love." He reached out a hand invitingly.

Hylas started, swallowing a mouthful of pastry. "You don't have to call me that—and you don't have to—to—But you probably want to. You're very considerate. Don't get up, though. I'll?—"

He sprang to his feet and pulled his tunic off over his head. He was bare underneath.

"You!" Zo was laughing. "You came out here with no?—"

"So did you!" Hylas shot back, his cheeks flaming red.

"I'm a seductive and highly trained companion—you're a man who never had sex before yesterday!"

Hylas swallowed convulsively. "It won't always be like this," he said, and perhaps he was partly trying to reassure himself. He looked down at himself, naked and half aroused in the sunlight. "I'll be able to just sit with you the way we used to. But right now—I feel as if something has burst inside of me. I couldn't stop thinking about you all day yesterday. How it felt to touch you. I hope I am not making myself tedious."

"I never got to be part of anyone's initiation before." Zo got up from his chair and crossed the little space between them. He ran his hands down Hylas's spare, pale body as he spoke. "It's tremendous fun. But wouldn't you like to lie down on the grass?"

"I—I—would you like that? I would," he amended hastily, "if it's not uncomfortable for you."

Zo put his hands on Hylas's shoulders and gave him the slightest little push backward. Hylas's eyes went wide as he fell willingly back. He sank down awkwardly onto the grass, and Zo dropped down to join him.

"I've always wanted to do this," Zo admitted, touching Hylas's chest. "Outside, on the grass."

"You've only to say, my prince." Hylas covered Zo's hand with his own. "I am at your service."

His tone was light, his expression serious; he meant it, but not in the way another man might have meant it. Zo stored the moment away to muse on later.

He lay down, drawing Hylas to lie beside him. It was still slightly too cold for this, so they twined together, and Zo tugged his robe around them both. He explored Hylas's body lazily as he kissed him.

"Someday I will make you tell me what you've always wanted to do," Zo murmured. "And then I'll do it to you."

Hylas groaned, half-covering his face with one hand. Zo laughed and rolled them easily over in the grass so that he was on top of his lover, Hylas's lean thighs under his. He was getting hard again, as if making love to Hylas filled him up with vitality instead of draining him. He rubbed against Hylas, nuzzling with his lips at the fingers covering Hylas's face.

"Move your hand, I want to see your loveliness when you come."

Hylas made a noise between a sob and a laugh, but he did move his hand, reaching up to thread his fingers into Zo's hair. And he was lovely when he came, with Zo riding the swells of his pleasure. He squeezed his eyes shut and cried out, clutching at Zo's hip and bucking under him.

Zo moved his wet hand to his own cock, giving himself a few quick strokes to see if he had another climax in him. To his surprise, he did, a small but sweet one. He collapsed on top of Hylas, his head on Hylas's chest, delicious warmth spreading through his limbs. Birds sang up on the mountain, and the wind moved in the olive branches.

"I remember now," Zo mumbled after they had lain there for a while. "This is why I like sex. Because it can be like this."

"It's not always?" asked Hylas thickly.

"Mm. Not in my experience, no."

Hylas's hand was on Zo's back, stroking him through the fabric of his robe.

"You came twice," he remarked. "Does that happen often?"

"Almost never, for me. Making love in the morning after a good night's sleep seems a clever idea. Or maybe it's just making love to you."

Hylas kissed the top of Zo's head and shifted under him. "I can pour you some tea, if you move a little."

They moved, laughing, rolling onto one side so that Hylas could reach for the tea tray and fill Zo's bowl without breaking their sticky embrace. Zo propped himself on one elbow.

"Is it common to feel … a little silly afterwards?" Hylas asked.

Zo sipped his tea, which was still just warm. He'd never heard it put that way before, but now that he thought about it, feeling silly afterward would explain a lot of the bedroom behaviour he'd observed in some past lovers. The hasty retreats, the weird insults that came out of nowhere; it was how a certain type of man acted when he felt you'd made him look foolish.

"Mm. I think so, probably. But you don't have to. You're with a friend."

"I know." Hylas's smile was wide and sunny. He wasn't acting as if he felt anything but straightforwardly happy.

"I haven't had a friend become a lover before," Zo remarked lightly. "I didn't know what I was missing." He looked over his shoulder toward the tea tray, which was too far for him to reach. "Pass me the buns?"

Hylas untwined himself from Zo and sat up to grab the basket of buns and offer it. Zo selected one of Elpis's new flourless creations.

"What makes someone your lover?" Hylas asked.

Separated now, they didn't re-entwine themselves, though Zo wanted to. Hylas sat with his legs drawn up and his arms wrapped around his shins. Zo decided looking at him like this was a good consolation for not feeling his warmth. There were freckles on his elbows as well as his knees; Zo wasn't sure whether he'd noticed that before.

"I suppose … if both of us want to keep sleeping together, then we're lovers."

Hylas nodded. "That makes sense." He looked at the grass for a moment, thoughtful. "I had no idea that it would feel so … so much. So overwhelming. I thought … you'll laugh, but I really thought I was doing this mostly for you, because it was something you wanted."

Zo didn't laugh. "It was. It is. I'm glad you could tell. That's more than I could do—I didn't think you even thought of me that way."

"I didn't, at first. Ridiculous, isn't it? You're so lovely. It's not that I didn't notice. You must remember how I was when I first saw you—I could barely form words. But I'd buried my desires for so long, I didn't even recognize what I felt."

"My poor Hylas," Zo murmured, reaching out to stroke his cheek.

They took turns going to the men's bath, for the sake of discretion—no one saw either of them, so they needn't have bothered—and then sat on the divan in Zo's room until mid-morning, talking and laughing, touching and not touching, able to admit now how little they wanted to be apart. When Hylas finally got up to go, it was only because he felt guilty for taking up too much of Zo's time. He did not plan on even trying to do any work that day.

"Thanks for sitting with me for so long," Zo said, smiling up at him. "I'm a bit on edge, when I think about how many people might know who I am now."

"Oh, my prince!" Hylas dropped back down onto the divan and gathered Zo up in an awkward hug which Zo managed to smooth out, with a wriggle, into a comfortable embrace. "Do you want me to stay longer with you? I can stay if you want."

"No, I'm being irrational. You should go do things. I'll be here when you get back."

So he left, wandered around the market for a bit, bought some of the spiced nuts that Zo liked and a new writing tablet for himself, then went to the government office and spent a couple of hours staring out the window and rearranging things on his desk.

He felt like a man carrying around some secret knowledge, the location of buried treasure or the answer to an unsolved mystery of the universe. He'd lain with the most beautiful man on the island twice in two days. He knew what a man's seed tasted like—or at least what Zo's tasted like, because Zo had told him that different men tasted subtly different, and the thought that he, Hylas, had a lover who knew such things was unspeakably exhilarating. He knew what he wanted Zo to do to him, and soon he would work up the courage to ask, though he would make it clear that it could wait until Zo felt up to it, because he had an inkling that Zo's part might be strenuous. (He wanted to feel like a fortress taken by the enemy, like a scabbard with a sword very firmly rammed into it. He would come up with a less ridiculous way of expressing it.)

He was happy. He knew that his happiness couldn't last, but happiness never did, any more than pain. The only thing to do was the cherish it while you could.