Chapter 70
“No need to thank me. I enjoyed it as much as you did.”
“Did you? I never knew if it was about pleasure or power.”
We lay with the lamp on low wick while he spoke of how he first came to lie with a man, his father’s Ganymede, a sixteen-year-old serving boy, when James was but twelve.
“He was Portuguese…Eduardo. He came into my bath once with hot water and stayed to watch me. His eyes, they were huge and brown. When he looked at me, I got excited. I could see he was too. After…well, you know, he got scared and ran out of the bath.” James shifted his weight and continued living in the past.
“The next day I went up in the hayloft, where he kissed me on the lips. I didn’t even know you did that. Damnation, I didn’t know any of it. But I did by the time I came down from that loft. I knew it all.”
“How long did this go on?”
“For two years, until we were caught. My father beat Eduardo and sent him away. He put me in a boarding school.”