Gift from the Sea

[This is the first chapter of a complete six-chapter novella that will post by the third week in August 2021.]

The sailboat was standing in quite close to the shore—close enough that the two blond hunks on board should have been aware that they were under observation. Evidently they didn’t care. This wasn’t Scandinavia, though. Malta was more traditional, and they were taking a risk. It gave Sebastian an extra little thrill that they were taking the risk.

Sebastian lowered his elbows onto the top of the rock wall of the terrace of Clifford Gainsworth’s hillside villa by the north side of the Valetta fortress to steady his gaze through the binoculars down into the cove. Both men were naked, sunning themselves on their backs on the roof of the sailboat pilot house. Sebastian recognized the sailing yacht as a Little Harbor 75. It was a sleek, two-masted motor yacht that was worth nearly a million dollars. Sebastian knew his sailboats. Not only was he fascinated with them, but he also had bummed his way from the States across the Atlantic and down the French coast into the Mediterranean aboard sailboats before, seemingly just rising up from the sea, he landed up here at the old British film actor’s hidey hole on Malta.

Gainsworth had such a hidey hole outside Britain because he took in young men just like Sebastian and corrupted them in ways that society—and, specifically, their well-placed families—didn’t particularly approve of, if they hadn’t already come that way. Sebastian, in contrast to his look of youthful innocence, had come to him well used in that way.

The two young men—older than Sebastian’s twenty years, but not by a full decade—also looked like they were worth a million dollars . . . each. They were built. Both were Nordic, and he now could also attest that they were horse hung—something that Sebastian sorely missed in combination with youth. Not only were they horse hung, but they were both in erection. Both were masturbating, kissing each other as they lay on their backs shoulder to shoulder but each working his own cock. Sebastian had every reason to believe that the best of entertainment was soon to come.

“What do you see out there?” The Italian painter, Mateo, asked, looking up from his canvas. He was painting the curve in the line of the coastline north from the fortress walls, catching an abstract, but still faithful, view of the other villas hanging on the hillside as this older section of the city cascaded down to the Mediterranean. Mateo too was a hunk—or clearly had been in earlier life. He was something beyond fifty now, but it was evident he’d been quite something in his day. He still dressed—or, rather, undressed—for the part. Of course he knew he had been attention getting. He paraded around the villa, having taken up residence there without apparent permission or care, in his salt and pepper curly-haired hirsute almost-altogether. He said he was putting together an exhibit on Malta, and no doubt when he was done, carefree freeloader that he was, he would evaporate as quietly as he had materialized two weeks earlier. When Sebastian and Gainsworth discussed that possibility, the old actor assured Sebastian they would count the silverware after Mateo had departed.

He actor had laughed when Sebastian noted they’d be better to count it before the artist disappeared.

In the meantime there was no evidence that Clifford was thinking of booting him out of the free ride in the villa. The two were fast friends and partners in scheming.

Having gotten Sebastian to notice him and turn his head, Mateo repeated, “What do you see out there?”

“Oh, nothing much,” responded the ginger-haired twink of proportions Mateo had said were pleasing enough that he’d painted Sebastian in various positions—and mostly nude—stretched out on the top of the terrace wall. “Just looking out to the sea.” He saw no reason to admit to Mateo what had caught his attention. Sebastian doubted that Mateo would appreciate the competition the Nordic hunks would represent and there existed a “failure to completely satisfy” tension between the aging artist and the young man.

Having staved off an explanation for his interest, Sebastian was a bit surprised when Jonathan Tremble looked up from his writing and asked, “Do you find the young men on the boat down in the cove to your liking?” The writer had, by all appearances, been absorbed in what he called his “best writing so far,” so it was jarring to know that he had taken it all in and understood exactly what Sebastian had been watching—and probably even why. Nearly the same age as Sebastian, but on the colorless side, a bit too off-putting about the face, a bit too pudgy of body, his hair wildly unkempt, and prone to living in his own world and muttering his arrangement of words to himself, Tremble had a relationship to Gainsworth and to this household that Sebastian, here by happenstance himself, was unable to ascertain as yet.

Sebastian assumed Tremble hung around quietly on the periphery because he was gay. That was the connection between all of the artists in various media who Gainsworth gathered, fed, and nurtured—or at least tolerated—at his villa on the Malta hillside, Sebastian’s “art” being inspiration to the artists—that of freely giving his young, supple body within the artist colony, and principally to Gainsworth. Tremble hadn’t made a pass at Sebastian yet, so his status was unclear. Perhaps it was just that, to hang around on the periphery and to add fiction writing to the arts gathered here.

That Tremble hadn’t made a pass was arousing to Sebastian, who was accustomed to being wanted and pursued.

Tremble nonetheless always seemed able to go to the quick of any matter, belying the immediate impression that he wasn’t paying attention. Thus, he probably knew that Sebastian was getting antsy and bored out of his mind for attention by such as the young men stretched and taking sun in the altogether on the sailboat below. He likely knew that Sebastian had needs not being met. He probably even knew that Sebastian’s blood ran hot for roving the sea again in such a yacht as the Little Harbor 75. As their interests here paralleled and Tremble himself was smitten with the ginger twink, he watched and bided his time. It wasn’t that Tremble didn’t lust after Sebastian; it was that the writer was too prone to jealousy to be willing to share as freely as Sebastian did.

Also watching from the shadows, ever vigilant, was the heavyset Maltese lawyer, Guzi Penza, ever silent but ever watchful of the motley little group gathered at Gainsworth’s villa. The actor had brought a fortune to the island when sexual scandal of the same-sex and age difference variety had driven him here and Penza had immediately wheedled his way into the position of the old man’s solicitor. It never seemed quite clear whether he hovered nearby because his tastes were as those of the other men in this group or if he was remaining close to the money to take advantage of any opportunity for personal gain. All men are mortal, and Gainsworth was becoming more mortal than most. Who better than his lawyer would know how sloppy a man was with his estate planning and what personal opportunities that served?

The other man on the terrace—a middle-aged man of some Asian extraction known to Sebastian—and to the world in general—only as Li, who had been sitting on the stones in the center of the terrace, cross-legged in a yoga pose, presumably meditating his navel—suddenly spoke up in a sing song voice and said, “One of the young men is Swedish. The other is German. Jurgen and Max. They were at the house last night. Quite flush with cash, well endowed, and quite capable. My young men swooned. Both of them are power tops, if that is of interest to you.”

Li didn’t look at Sebastian when he said that, but all on the terrace, including Sebastian, knew who he was speaking to.

Sebastian felt himself flush and go hard. The information was teasing and it frustrated him, but it aroused him as well. Li owned a male brothel two streets further up the hillside. He was constantly propositioning Sebastian to earn a little extra cash there by returning to providing the servicing Sebastian had fallen into when first abandoned on Malta and before he was employed by Gainsworth. Li made no secret of Sebastian’s reputation as one of the sweetest submissives Li had pimped.

Sebastian was keeping the possibility of taking clients from Li on occasion on the back burner as a possibility. He craved a higher mix of young cock, as was indicated by his fixation on the two young hunks masturbating on their boat below the villa’s terrace. But he had no idea what Clifford would think about that. Sebastian couldn’t afford to burn bridges. Still, he was getting antsy, and it would take extra money for him to move on from here. At least what Li said of the Nordic hunks’ visit to the male brothel the previous night would give him fantasies of roving the Mediterranean with the two hunks on the sailing yacht down in the cove—and being sandwiched between them and worked hard. Sebastian had been doubly valuable to Li, because he had been willing and able to do doubles. Sunset was coming on, though, and chances were good the yacht would be gone in the morning.

“Sebastian, could you come in, please, and wheel Mr. Gainsworth out onto the terrace? He would like to see the sunset.” Sebastian turned to respond, seeing the Maltese physician, Doctor Coleiro, standing in the open French window that led into Clifford’s bedroom. Clifford’s chamber was on the main floor of the villa—indeed, every room he required was on this floor, as he was confined to a wheelchair. The doctor had been here for the actor’s weekly checkup. Clifford was somewhat of a hypochondriac. This didn’t mean, however, that, now in his mid-seventies, he wasn’t, in fact, ill and slowly—or not so slowly—dying. Ironically, though, the main reason for the doctor’s weekly visit was to keep Clifford supplied with erection pills—to help ensure that the man’s cock was the last part of his body to fail to perform. The community was small enough and the proclivities of the men hovering around Gainsworth’s villa on the hillside were known well enough, that there was little doubt the doctor knew where Sebastian fit in in the use of the pills.

Clifford was the reason Sebastian no longer was part of Li’s stable. Life was easier with one old, sick client than it was with a different man walking into the bedroom door every hour and expecting to find you on your back on the bed with your legs open, especially when that man was old, crude, rough, and smelled of the fish market. Clifford was old, but he was none of the other things Sebastian had tired of at Li’s house. Besides, Sebastian didn’t have to lie on his back and take whatever come his way with Clifford. He could straddle the man’s lap and control the bounce.

Sebastian put on a smile. Whether or not he was growing tired of being the old man’s nurse, this was Sebastian’s life for the moment and he’d take what was handed him. It was just a good thing that he liked taking cock. And the old man wasn’t so bad when he wasn’t in pain. He had been a brilliant, and very successful, actor in British movies. His talent was legendary, as were the scandals that had brought him to this Mediterranean exile, where he was living out his life—most likely long after most in Britain assumed he had been dead for a decade. But he was ruggedly handsome still, was capable of being the life of one of his famous parties as long as he was pickled, and was still brilliant when he recited from a Shakespearian play.

As Sebastian started to brush by the Maltese doctor, an exceedingly handsome, tall, and cultured man of an origin that seemed to include both Spain and the Levant and a somewhat renowned cellist on Malta, which gave him entry in Gainsworth’s circle beyond his medical expertise, Coleiro reached out with an elegant hand and arrested Sebastian’s movement by touching the young man’s forearm. He whispered, “Don’t let him stay out on the terrace too long. It will be too cool quickly. He will want to be put to bed early anyway. I’ve given him his usual medication. Pity that you probably aren’t free later this evening. There’s a new saxophone player at the Java Café who I know you would enjoy. I’ll certainly be there.”

Sebastian smiled at the doctor. Coleiro caressed Sebastian’s forearm with his fingers. The young man hesitated for long enough before pulling away for the doctor to smile for him and for Sebastian to respond with another smile. Don’t burn any bridges; take advantage of every opportunity, Sebastian advised himself. Coleiro hadn’t fucked him yet, but Sebastian wasn’t avoiding the possibility. The opportunity and need—the need on Sebastian’s part—for it just hadn’t arisen yet.

Then Sebastian continued on into the dimly lit bedroom. Clifford was hunched over in his wheelchair beside his large four-poster bed, looking forlorn until he saw Sebastian enter. His face lit up. “There you are, dear boy. I was just thinking of you.”

He was holding the refilled bottle of his erection pills in his hand.

The ginger twink could easily guess what Clifford Gainsworth was thinking following the weekly visit by Doctor Coleiro—and he wasn’t wrong. Just an hour later, the still handsome, but heavyset old actor was lying on his back on his bed like a beached whale. The sun had gone down and the men gathered on the terrace outside had put their separate works away. The lawyer had slunk off in the shadows without fanfare. Li had gone to oversee the evening at his brothel, and Mateo, the painter, and Jonathan, the writer, were sitting on the terrace, drinking wine, and speaking in low tones.

Sebastian was in Clifford’s room, on the bed, straddling the actor’s pelvis, and riding a cock that would still be hard for give or take an hour more. The actor was grunting and snorting like a warthog at the effort, although Sebastian was doing most of the work. The two men on the terrace no doubt overheard the sounds of labored sex, but they were long past taking any notice of it in this life they shared at the villa on the Valletta hillside.

As part of his nursing duties, Sebastian was charged with giving the old man this pleasure whenever he was in the mood and took his pills. As Gainsworth had taken Sebastian from the House of Li, there was no embarrassment in discussing what his duties would be. The old man wasn’t supposed to indulge more than twice a week, but Clifford was a man who had always lived large and to excess. Sebastian jacked, sucked, and/or rode the cock three or four times a week, always, in anal sex, rising and falling or revolving slowly on the staff as Clifford lay on his back on the bed—causing as little stress as possible, but always ensuring deep penetration and an ejaculation. Although many aspects of Clifford’s body didn’t work all that well, he still managed a sizable ejaculation whenever he achieved a pill-assisted erection. And he much preferred coming inside the lithe body of his nurse to being given a hand or blow job.

The young nurse didn’t mind too much, as, always arising from the sea and eventually returning to the sea, he’d fucked his way across the Atlantic and down the French coast to rise from the sea here—and, once here, had served a few months on his back in the House of Li. Still, he rode Clifford’s quite acceptable shaft, when under the influence of pills, in anticipation of younger and stronger cock. As Clifford came in a full, but weak flow, Sebastian heard the painter and novelist parting for the night on the terrace. Tremble lived in a loft studio flat nearby. There was room for him in the villa and Clifford’s life was so loose that he no doubt would have been welcome to bunk here, but he did most of his writing alone, so he maintained his flat but ate most of his meals and did most of his quiet and unobtrusive carousing and occasional whoring—being a mainstay of Clifford’s frequent parties—here at the villa.

Tonight, though, he left the villa and Mateo came into the bedroom, stripped off his clothes as he walked to the bed, and climbed onto the mattress behind Sebastian. His arms went around Sebastian’s chest in a close embrace from behind. Sebastian was still astride Clifford’s pelvis, with the actor’s cock, flaccid but still buried, inside him. Mateo, well muscled for his age and the most forward and cocky of the friends revolving around the life of the villa, was hard and thick. Sebastian leaned his torso back into the Italian painter’s hairy chest and turned his head for a deep kiss. He jerked and emitted a groan, as the Italian slowly forced his cock inside him on top of Clifford’s flaccid cock, which hardened a bit more now in response to the pleasure of having company inside Sebastian.

“Yes, yes,” Gainsworth murmured. “New life.” He didn’t mind sharing the young ginger twink’s channel with the painter—certainly not if he gave him a second hardening and flow.

Sebastian gasped as Mateo held him tight and began to vigorously pump his channel. Clifford was groaning and moaning too at the pleasure of the friction and the gift of a second, albeit much weaker, ejaculation. When Clifford had come, in short order, the second time, Mateo rolled Sebastian off to the side and onto his belly, coaxed the young man to raise his pelvis slightly by bending his knees, and established a harder, steadier beat with his buried cock. Although the Italian was vigorously fucking the ginger twink, he couldn’t sustain the beat for long and had come before Sebastian started building to his own climax. Clifford was closely touching Sebastian at the side and was caressing the Italian’s covering body with his hand. Mateo lowered his face to Clifford’s and the two men went into a deep kiss.

Sebastian, having become of secondary interest to the two older men, grasped his own cock and stroked it, eventually coming with a moan and a sigh while the two men were giving their attention to each other. Running through his mind were the naked bodies of the two Nordic sailors on the sailing yacht in the cove, the erections both of them had been working, and the image of them finding him in Li’s brothel and sharing him in a wild ride.

* * * *

He woke in the dark. At least the bed chamber was dark—Clifford’s room. Sebastian didn’t usually go to sleep in this room during sex. Sex usually was with the old man only and was quickly over and Sebastian then went to his own room. Mateo’s visit had heated the ginger twink, but it had whetted rather than completed his arousal. The sex with the two men had also been too quickly over for Sebastian. The double penetration sex hadn’t been that taxing. Despite his relatively small and willowy size, he was seasoned to it. He was trained to open fully, as demanded. If the men had been younger and the cocks more vigorous, it might have scratched his itch. But it didn’t.

The room wasn’t really pitch dark. Moonlight streamed in through the French window and had sought Sebastian’s trim, almost boyish body, out to highlight. In the shadows to his right as he lay on his back rested Clifford, his face nearly in the hollow of Sebastian’s neck and an arm over Sebastian’s chest. To his left was Mateo, his face a mirror of Clifford’s. His arm descended Sebastian’s belly, and the sensitive, elegantly long fingers of his painter’s hand were laced through Sebastian’s balls.

Even in sleep, Mateo was having sex with Sebastian. His hand was caressing the young man’s ball sac, stroking the rippled skin of the sac and picking out and rolling the testicles inside. He must have been making love to Sebastian in his sleep. Very much awake himself, Sebastian was running his fingers through the curly hair of the painter’s pubes, contemplating whether he should—whether he wanted to—move the hand to the man’s cock, which was more than half in erection. If he did, he knew Mateo would waken enough to roll over on top of him, enter him, and once more move inside him. Mateo recovered quickly and was full of cum. How many times had he fucked Sebastian already tonight? Had Sebastian lost count? Sometimes these encounters just rolled on and on and Sebastian lost track.