This is the second in a series of stories which will focus on Julian. It's my first shot at erotic fiction--and, actually, my first shot at any kind of fiction since high school. I welcome any comments or critiques. Oh--and thanks to Louis Malle movies for the subtitles to these pieces.
Clothes clotted into piles on Julian's floor, snaked around marked-up textbooks and empty cigarette packs, arced wide swaths of color over the wooden floorboards in the Parisian studio. The J. Crew polo his brother Christian had shipped him for his last birthday. A royal blue v-neck. The cream-colored button-down he'd bought on his shopping trip to Les Halles?
Christ. This is so stupid, he thought. So _f_u_c_k_ing stupid.
Julian paced through his room as though he were cutting through pedestrian traffic, alternately checking his watch and taking generous drags of his cigarette. The Foucault lecture began in just over an hour, at 2pm, and he'd been smoking and jamming his body into clothes for the past hour and a half. An hour and a half of standing in front of his mirror and straining so hard to tailor that reflection into someone nonchalant, smooth. Should he tuck the shirt in? Ruffle his hair a bit? What would snare Michel's gaze? Any thought of the lecture had evaporated and given way in Julian's mind to Michel. Michel, who had not shown up at all since last Saturday night, who had lingered in Julian's daydreams since that evening, who would be at Julian's door any minute to walk him to class--where, for the third week in a row, Julian would not say one _d_a_m_n_ word.
But what to wear? Julian wanted so sincerely, so desperately, to impress Michel--to impress him, of course, with an attitude of feigned carelessness, as though Julian's minimalist style had been a moment's decision of graceful unself-consciousness. Something he'd just thrown on, because his cool came instinctively and not out of exquisitely neurotic planning. Julian stubbed his cigarette into his ashtray and thrust his arms through the sleeves of his button-down, which he left untucked, the lines of the shirt cutting forward along his crotch and back, framing the outline of his ass. Julian glanced at his reflection, took a deep breath, and tried to smile.
Two minutes before Michel should arrive. No time. Julian hurried into the bathroom and brushed his teeth at lightning speed with one hand, throwing the discarded clothes from his floor into his closet with the other. There was something so....unromantic....about so desperately needing Michel to like him, this frenzied race to thrill Michel (and thrill himself) with a weak mimicry of a loverboy. Yes, that was it. After all, didn't Michel already like him? Why else would he have come over with the Orangina, and hadn't the spanking--and that gentle, brief kiss--proved his affection? Or was the relation paternal, more cautious guidance than erotic allure? He hadn't seen him since--since the spanking--and that had been five days earlier.
Julian spat into the sink and leaned down to rinse with tap water. He stood, staring at himself in the mirror, and splashed some of the water through his hair to straighten the soft, wayward strands. "One more," he said aloud to himself, reaching for the softpack of Marlboros he kept in his front jeans pocket. The knock, firm and brief, interrupted the gesture--again, like before, almost like an unconscious reprimand.
"Eh, salut," Michel grinned as Julian opened the door nervously. Julian smiled back tentatively. The pair shared a moment of hesitation, each trying to figure out how to say hello with awkward, broken movements. Finally Michel stuck his hand out definitively, and Julian shook it, half-relieved that Michel had broken the silence and half-disappointed that Michel had met him with a handshake rather than a kiss.
"Are you ready for class, my friend?"
"Umm, yeah. Let me just grab my stuff," Julian mumbled, tossing his spiral notebook and his pens into his backpack.
Michel folded his arms and leaned calmly against the doorframe. "Have you been careful with those cigarettes? Or do we have to have another discussion after class today?" Michel's lips pursed slightly in a half-grin. Julian's stomach knotted. Was this a serious warning? Or was Michel flirting with him? If he was, why hadn't he stopped by in the past five days? Did Julian desire another, um, "discussion" after class? He knew he did. But could he say it?
Julian looked away from the gorgeous, full figure in his doorway and glanced out of his window. "No, I'm okay. Really. Let's go."
Julian looked back to Michel, making direct, sustained eye contact for the first time that afternoon. They shared a brief smile as Michel stood aside for Julian to walk through the door.
"How....ummm....how's Jacques?" Julian stalled, locking the door to his studio.
"Gone. My parents back from Nantes, Jacques back with my parents," Michel sighed. "Thank God."
"Thank God?" Julian asked as he followed Michel down the dark stairwell and out of the apartment building. His eyes rested on Michel's steady, broad shoulders.
"Thank God," Michel repeated. "I love him, I suppose--I must, yes? I just cannot spend time with him. I have to edit every comment, every action. I hate it--playing my performance for him. And for my parents. Michel Morel, in the role of the Older Brother. You know."
"I do?"
"Yes, I....I thought you....ohhhh," Michel stammered. Suddenly it was Michel who shifted uncomfortably, whose smooth sentences halted in abrupt stutters.
"I what, Michel?" The question was, of course, the only natural one. But where was all of this going? Julian thought. Was Michel trying to lead him--and if so, where?
"Euhhh, I mean....well, I simply mean I must be responsible. I can never....commit a mistake. You can understand, yes?"
"I'm sure your parents understand. I mean....you have to make....mistakes."
"Non, non, they....those are not their expectations."
Julian paused briefly as they left the building and looked into Michel's eyes. "I'm sorry." I'm sorry. But what had he meant? Sorry for what? And how had Michel understood those words?
Michel's face seemed instantly to soften. "No reason to apologize. I am sorry, in fact. I do not mean to burden you." He brushed the loose golden strands of blonde hair back and tugged at the little silver ring in his ear.
Julian didn't reply. He smiled briefly and instantly thrust his fist into his jeans pocket to rummage for another cigarette. One of the supreme advantages of being a smoker, Julian mused, must be the evasiveness of smoking socially: focus on packing the cigarettes properly, fishing for your lighter, exhaling away from your companion, and you can easily sidestep responding. The smoking forms the contours of the response itself.
"So, tell me, Julian. Why are you studying in Paris?" Michel asked with an expression somewhere between amusement and curiosity, as though he could read precisely what Julian had been thinking. The formality of the question snapped Julian back into the conversation.
"Well, it's my junior year. JYA--junior year abroad. I'm a French minor and I wanted to work on the language, but I'm also planning my thesis for next year, and since I want to write on post-structuralism, I thought this program would be, um, what I needed." Julian blushed a bit from the elaborate explanation.
"So you're here for post-structuralism?"
"No--or, um, yes. I don't know. I just....needed to leave my campus for awhile."
"Ah." Michel looked at him piercingly, but with a look at once sweet and sincere. "It's not so much that you came to Paris as that you left America, then. Is that right?"
Julian averted his eyes, looked up, and just melted into Michel's gaze. He nodded. Yes, that was right. Michel was right. Julian despised those smug insights from friends and professors, engineered to lay bare the patterns of precisely what he's doing in his life. They were insights imprinted onto him as though he were readable, a code easily deciphered and that existed only to be deciphered. Those comments seemed not so much well-intentioned to Julian as condescending, laced with a subtle form of mockery. But Michel's reply held none of those qualities--it was confident, certainly, but had ended as a question--a desire to know Julian instead of a knowledge of Julian's desire. Julian shuddered. In that one sentence Michel had erased those harsh critics, and in their place he had substituted himself. There was something so familiar about Michel, so faintly recognizable, as though he'd always lingered somewhere in Julian's mindscape. And yet how distant and different he was, his words leaving Julian with the slightly metallic feeling of newness.
Please, Michel, please say something, Julian thought. He didn't want to dive headlong into his well of vulnerabilities and anxieties before they'd even made it to the métro station. Michel seemed, amazingly, to understand.
"So, my friend. Do you know many of the clubs and the bars in Paris?"
"Honestly," Julian grinned, relieved and suddenly less tense, "I don't have a _f_u_c_k_ing clue."
Michel laughed. "That's okay. I can help you with that."
They strolled down the boulevard towards the métro, letting the conversation drift from subject to subject, nothing propelling them in any one direction. No desire outside of just talking absently, lapsing into brief silences, and picking up conversations they'd started and stopped. The cadence of the talking relaxed into a loose, easy rhythm; its discussions wound between the house in the Loire Valley where Michel spent vacations, Julian's brief foray into varsity sports, the year Michel had spent at film school in Manhattan, the beginnings of spring in Paris. Julian and Michel chatted endlessly through the métro ride and the walk into the concrete building where they'd spend the next several hours in sharp focus on Foucault. Julian always dreaded having to begin a long lecture of note-taking and racing through the complicated readings, but as he flicked his cigarette butt away and followed Michel inside, a surge of energy and confidence pushed him forward, beside Michel, who looked down at him with a smile that looked like it would never vanish.
The waitress scowled as she thrust Julian's café au lait onto the table and shoved Michel's glass of beer into his hands. "Merci," Michel said dryly, and Julian exhaled the smoke from his cigarette in her direction. The temper of the woman would have normally upset Julian; today it just sketched the boundaries of a happiness which only he and Michel shared. They laughed as she spun around and stalked away.
"So tell me more about your take on the readings," Julian asked, slipping back into the lightning-speed conversation that carried them from the lecture hall and all the way over to the café Michel had chosen.
The question sent the pair back into their intent discussion on the lecture, which had sparked and provoked Julian enough even to speak up twice to offer responses to the professor's questions--which, once posed, would allow him to huddle with Michel over their shared copy of the book, their fingers brushing against one another as they danced across the pages searching for the answers. By the time their conversation had reached its ends, the sunset cast orange rays of light over their faces.
Julian drank the last of his now cold café au lait and leaned forward to stub a fourth cigarette into the ashtray. He paused as he stretched over the table, catching the slight, sweet smell of Michel's cologne. Quiet slipped over Julian.
"What are you thinking?" Michel asked after a moment.
"Oh, nothing. I don't know." Julian smiled shyly.
"Then just tell me something," Michel said, yawning and relaxing in his chair. "Just say whatever you'd like." Their eyes met and a sharp pang of anxiety struck Julian in his abdomen. Whatever he'd like? He wanted to tell Michel everything.
"I....Michel?"
Michel looked directly at Julian with a patience that steadied him.
"Michel. I'm gay."
Michel nodded, but the expression on his face didn't waver. There was neither surprise nor dismay nor pride in the expression--just that same clear calm in the warm eyes and ever-so-slightly furrowed eyebrows.
"I....I just thought I should tell you. I mean, I wanted to tell you. I've never told anyone. I, well, I guess I should tell you the whole story."
"Why?"
"I don't know," Julian said after a long pause. "I just feel like I'm supposed to tell some sort of story to justify that. Isn't that what happens?"
"Julian. You do not need to say a word." Michel put his hand on the table and grasped Julian's hand, which fumbled on the table for another cigarette. "Thank you."
"You, I mean, well, I thought I should....no, I wanted to tell you....I just thought....well, you're gay too, right?"
Julian cringed instantly at his tactlessness, about to hurl himself into a string of apologies, when Michel broke into laughter so wide that it drew annoyed glances and muffled whispers from the other patrons in the café. Julian kept waiting for Michel to end his laughing fit so that he could apologize genuinely, but Michel didn't quit until tears ran from his eyes. Finally he stopped, brushed his hair back, and looked at Julian--but now it was Michel who paused in shy silence. Julian opened his mouth to apologize, but Michel's hesitancy struck him still.
"Yes, I....I thought we understood each other on Saturday."
"Understood?" Julian bit his lip in confusion. What had they understood? What was there to understand that they could parcel into neat, clean sentences?
"You said you didn't have une amie, and I said 'me, too.' It was not bad grammar, my friend." Michel pulled at the silver ring in his ear, even reaching towards Julian's crumpled softpack of Marlboro Reds which lay on the table. But Michel stopped himself and looked up. "I did not realize until your confusion this morning--I suppose I....I....oh, this sounds stupid."
"No, really, please just say it."
"Well, I thought this was a....well, a date."
"You did?" Julian blushed and couldn't hide his beaming smile.
"From the moment you were standing in my doorway, when I was spanking Jacques. I have been thinking since then just how much I want to kiss you," Michel said, absently tracing his full, red lips with his index finger.
The memory--the visceral, erotic pull of seeing Michel holding the paddle in that doorway--fused to the thought of Michel's tongue running along his lips and through them, into his mouth, stopping up any need for words. Julian found himself, too, tracing his own lips, which stood out against his pale white cheeks, soft and boyish, not like the chiseled lines of Michel's own cheekbones.
"I want to kiss you, Julian."
Julian blinked and played nervously with his lighter. "I want you to. Please."
Michel smiled, and, as his eyes danced with a twinkle, he leaned forward and grasped Julian by the shoulder. His whisper came in a calm and even voice. "But I want you to know that if you do not control those cigarettes, I will pull your pants down and spank you. Tu comprends?"
Julian couldn't tease out the emotional tug that pulled him towards Michel from the stirring sensation of Michel kissing him--or from Michel's open palm slamming down on his naked ass again and again. But he couldn't wait to touch Michel, or to be touched by Michel--just the space between them, just across the table, held the sharp sting of absence. Julian wanted to kiss Michel, desperately needed Michel to kiss him....and perhaps he needed the possibility of that spanking, too. The sense came over Julian in a flash that not only did he desire to lower himself over Michel's knees, he somehow needed to be there, held tightly. Michel was right. Again.
"Yes, Michel. I understand."
"What do you understand, Julian?"
"If....if I do not control my smoking, you'll give me a spanking." Julian gulped and Michel smiled, running his fingertips down Julian's face, from his temples down to the tops of his lips.
"It is because I care about you, Julian. You know that, yes?"
Julian paused. "Let's go, Michel. Let's go home," he said after a moment. Julian stuck his hands into his jeans to grab some spare cash, but Michel stopped him and slid a 50F bill onto the table.
They walked slowly out of the café and down the three blocks back to the apartment. Neither boy looked at the other as the pair ambled along in comfortable silence, Michel's arm resting on Julian's shoulder and his thumb lightly fingering the edges of Julian's collar. The gesture carried the intimacy of their just-ended conversation, but it was also playful enough to lighten Julian's mood and make him feel suddenly mischievous. Julian lifted his hand from between their bodies and, grinning, poked Michel in the side. Michel laughed and his fingers slipped under Julian's collar and ran across the base of his neck, and soon Julian found himself pulling at the edges of Michel's own shirt. An elderly woman carrying shopping bags glared at the boys and sneered in disgust as each tugged at the other's clothing. They both laughed. And suddenly, somehow, inexplicably, they broke into a run, the speed of their steps broken by the one pulling at the other or the pair both doubling over with laughter and exhilaration. Julian hadn't run since he'd traded up his place on the track team for a pack and a half of Marlboros a day, and the rush of the air cooled his body, flushed from Michel's warm glances and sentences hot with possibility. Michel shoved Julian aside as they pushed through the door of the apartment, and Julian rushed past the desk clerk and up the winding staircase to catch Michel. He'd reached Michel and grabbed his broad shoulder by the time the pair had reached the fourth floor and stood, panting and sweating, in the dimly lit hall outside of their rooms. Julian felt a moment of awkwardness, an unsure pause of what-to-do-now, but a wave of courage overtook him.
"Come inside?" Julian whispered, taking hold gently of Michel's wrist.
Michel didn't reply but hugged Julian to him and kissed his neck softly, the lips lingering on the flesh for a long moment. The sensation of the touch hadn't evaporated by the time Julian had fumbled his key into the lock and he and Michel were alone, inside the studio--alone together. Michel reached out and shut the door behind them, turned, in a single fluid movement, and pushed Julian up against the wall, held his head in his strong hands, slipped his tongue into Julian's mouth with a hard, almost desperate thrust forward. Michel held him like that for forever, kissing him, running his lips and his tongue from Julian's mouth to his cheeks, to his neck, to his ears. Julian breathed out, slowly, and closed his eyes. He let himself fall completely into Michel's chest and shoulders. Here, in this room of aloneness and empty days and weeks, Michel was holding him, was intertwined with him, so intimately and so forcefully that Julian couldn't quite tell where he ended and Michel began.
Michel led him to the bed, where Julian fell into his duvet and Michel collapsed on top of him. The pair wrapped their legs around one another and tore off one another's shirts and ran their hands over the other's chest and up, to their necks and shoulders and armpits and backs, as though the very touch of the other sewed them up and made them whole, complete. Michel brought his head down, followed the lines of Julian's abdomen with his tongue, and closed his teeth around the edges of Julian's jeans. Julian gasped and giggled slightly as he felt Michel clamp down on the denim and grunt softly. In a moment Michel had slipped Julian's pants and his boxers down to his ankles and was brushing his hands and his cheek over Julian's middle--not just his groin and the erect penis that strained upward, but the skin between his legs, his testicles, the hair follicles on his thighs. Michel brought his hand up, up to Julian's mouth. Julian took in the firm fingers as Michel's tongue traced the lines of Julian's penis from its base up to the head, which pushed outward as the first drops of precome mixed into Michel's saliva. Michel moved up and down methodically, his tongue encircling the entire shaft, but with a sort of firmness that made the act not so much gentle as rough and hungry. Michel's lips, sliding along the full eight inches of Julian's penis drove with a kind of need to fuse their flesh together into one tight knot. Julian took Michel's fingers from his mouth and ran his hands over Michel's palm as he neared closer and closer to climax, rhythmically thrusting his pelvis forward as Michel's mouth plunged down his shaft. And then, as Julian reached down and ran his fingers through Michel's golden blonde hair, he came, again and again, the white sticky fluid spurting into Michel in warm bursts.
Michel swallowed and slid his lips slowly, now gently, from Julian's shaft. Julian pulled Michel up beside him and they embraced, locked into each other's arms and Michel's lips now closed in on Julian's mouth, following the contours of the lips as their fingers had done earlier at the café. In that embrace they both began to slip into a light slumber, their breath rising and falling together, Julian's pants still bunched at his ankles. As Julian shifted sleepily against the pillow, he thought he could hear Michel murmuring something softly in French.
"Ne sois pas solitaire," Michel whispered. "T'es pas seul, t'es plus seul." Julian blinked and allowed the words to wash over him as he drifted into sleep. You're not alone. You're not alone anymore.
"T'es pas seul," Julian murmured back as he fell into sleep.
Those words still cycled over and over in Julian's brain as he woke several hours later and saw the room gradually take shape in the darkness. He looked at the clock. 11:07. Julian shifted his weight and turned to watch Michel sleeping against the pillow next to him, his arm still slung across Julian's chest. How had that image formed? How could it have happened? Julian couldn't wrap his mind around how he could have glided so instantly from the aching pangs of loneliness to resting, quietly, with Michel's head touching his own. And it seemed all to transpire with fairy tale ease, as though Michel had simply turned up on the scene and rescued Julian from whatever horrible stuff starts fairy tales in the first place. Was it too easy? And who was this man lying next to him--the prince at the end of the story? Or maybe he needed to be rescued, too.
Julian looked up at the ceiling and reached absently for a cigarette from the pack he kept on his nighttable. The flame from his lighter brightened his vision for a moment and then died, receded back into the blackness of the studio. The cigarette suddenly carried a foreign, strange taste to it, a taste Julian couldn't quite recognize. Before the taste of the Marlboro Reds had been full, slightly rough. But now the cigarette tasted thin and insubstantial, with an acrid undertaste which made Julian grimace. He exhaled and ashed into the tray at his bedside and smoked, absent mindedly, for several moments before turning back to see Michel shivering slightly from the breeze that blew through the open window. Quietly, unthinkingly, Julian reached over Michel's body to pull the duvet around him. His arm stretched over Michel's side, fingers stretched out the grab the duvet, but as he took hold of the sheets he slipped slightly.
The lit cigarette grazed across Michel's forearm. And time froze as Julian stared in horror at what he had done, his arm holding the cigarette suspended in midair. For that single, quick, eternal moment, he had become a photograph of his own fear.
"_f_u_c_k_! _f_u_c_k_!" Julian screamed as Michel woke abruptly and grabbed his arm, seared with a pain he couldn't understand. Julian threw the cigarette into the ashtray and clung to Michel desperately, not knowing what to do.
"Oh God. Oh God. I....Christ. Michel?"
"Aïe," Michel managed through clenched teeth. "My....arm. What did you do to it?"
"My cigarette....I....oh, _f_u_c_k_. I'm so sorry, Michel."
Michel's brow, furrowed in pain, smoothed as he turned his eyes away from Julian. Without saying a word, Michel walked steadily into the bathroom. Julian could hear the sounds of Michel breathing and turning the faucet to run cold water over the burn. Julian got up, out of bed, quickly pulled his pants up, and rummaged through his freezer for the icepack he kept there. He brought it into the bathroom, where he found Michel calmly holding his hand under the faucet.
"I brought you an icepack."
Michel looked up, not unkindly, not impatiently, but rather with a look of authority that both reassured and frightened Julian. But what terrified him was not the thought of any punishment but just the possibility of wounding Michel, of having Michel angry with him or hurt by him or at all apart from him in any way. Please, Michel, say something, Julian thought yet again. He held the icepack out in front of him.
"Thank you," Michel said eventually. He accepted the icepack and turned the faucet off. "Come. Let's go sit down."
They went into the room and Julian turned the lights on in the room as Michel slumped into a chair. Julian instantly welled up with tears as he sat next to Michel.
"It was an accident. Oh God. I'm so sorry. Are you okay? Please be okay. What can I do? What can I do, Michel?"
"Shhhhh," Michel said calmly, alternately looking compassionately at Julian and holding the icepack to his forearm. "You did not burn me badly. It's a little burn. I'm fine."
"Oh God. Does it hurt? I'm sorry. I'm sorry, Michel."
"It hurts....a little. Not badly."
Julian wiped away the tears that had formed in his eyes and sniffed. "I just....don't want you to hate me. I hate myself right now," Julian admitted. He looked up at Michel seriously. "And I don't want to _f_u_c_k_ this up."
"Shhhh, Julian, stop now. I don't hate you, and I don't want you to hate yourself. Ecoute-moi."
"I....I'm listening, Michel."
"You made a mistake. An accident. That is not who you are. Do you understand?" Michel looked at Julian without blinking, severe and serious.
Julian nodded and tried to clear his throat to speak. "Y-yes, yes, Michel."
"You need to forgive yourself as I forgive you. OK, Julian?" Michel reached for Julian and hugged him tightly, Julian burying his head in Michel's shoulder. He could feel Michel's warm breath tickle the little hairs at the base of his neck. The pair stood like that, unmoving, not speaking for several minutes before Michel spoke again, softly but firmly. "Sit down, Julian."
Julian sat, quietly, with the growing unease of guessing at what Michel was about to say. Michel stood, put the icepack on the table there, and moved his chair away from the table and towards the center of the room, so that he sat now close to Julian, not next to him but facing him head on.
"Julian. What did I warn you at the café?"
"To be careful with my cigarettes." Julian's voice had become small and he looked down, away from Michel's piercing gaze. The moment had been evacuated of erotic thrill and replaced with nauseous dread.
"And? If you were not careful?"
"I'd....I'd be punished."
"How, Julian?"
"I'd get a spanking," Julian said in a low voice. "You warned me....that you would spank me."
There. He'd said it. This was the moment--the moment at which he deserved justly and completely to be spanked, and the moment at which Michel would fulfill his desire for a spanking. But why didn't he feel aroused? Why did he feel suddenly afraid and unsure and scared? Julian felt caught between wanting only to be held by Michel and soothed and knowing that he had deserved this spanking. That he needed this, and Michel had warned him fairly. Michel's voice broke Julian's line of thought.
"And how would I spank you?"
"You said that you would, um, pull my pants down."
Michel nodded and looked gravely at Julian. After a long pause, Michel spoke. "Come here."
Julian stood and walked the two or three steps to stand directly in front of Michel, but every step felt heavy and leaden, a force to move an inch when just this afternoon he had flown down the boulevard with the man who now sat in front of him. Julian reached the space on his floor just between Michel's knees and stopped, shifting nervously, wanting only to reach out and hug Michel as hard as he could. Michel's hands slowly, inevitably went to unfasten Julian's Levis, and Julian shuddered slightly as he heard the sound of his zipper opening. Michel hooked his thumbs into Julian's jeans and slid them down slowly, steadily to his ankles.
"Take them off, Julian."
Julian stepped out of his jeans and dropped them on the floor near where he and Michel had discarded their shirts hours earlier. He turned back to Michel and stood, wearing only his boxers and his white tube socks, unsure of what to do as he waited for Michel to spank him. How should he hold his hands? Should he look at Michel or gaze downward in shame? Julian stood there a long time as Michel waited, with his calm and steely manner, making not a single movement.
"Turn around, Julian, with your bottom towards me."
Julian turned obediently and bent forward ever so slightly to offer his bottom to Michel, whose palm lightly patted his cheeks. Julian had guessed Michel would put him over his knees, but perhaps he intended to have him bend over? Should he move into position for a spanking? He felt Michel pulling his boxers down, down below his ass and down his thighs and shins to his ankles, and as Julian silently bent down to step out of his boxers, the cool breeze in the room glided over the smooth skin of his round, firm cheeks and tickled the light hairs that lined his exposed crack. He stayed in that position.
"Do you want me to bend over, Michel?"
"Non, not today," Michel replied, his hands clamping on Julian's sides and turning him back around so that they were again facing. "I want you over my knees."
He guided Julian to his right side and pushed him slowly over his lap, his right knee rising to lift Julian's bottom upwards. Julian's legs and hands rested on the cold wooden floor.
"Spread your legs, Julian," Michel commanded, and as Julian complied, he again felt the rush of air into his crack. Michel's left arm closed firmly over Julian's torso to hold him in place, and Michel's palm rested right at the base of Julian's bottom, pushing slightly towards his anus.
"What is happening now, Julian?" Michel asked, his palm now softly rubbing the pale, soft skin on Julian's bum and making the nerve endings spark with readiness.
"You're going to spank me, Michel."
"Why am I spanking you?"
"Because I was careless with my cigarettes. I shouldn't have been smoking anyway, and I....well. I'm so sorry, Michel. I'm sorry I hurt you."
"I want you to think about those cigarettes while I am spanking you. I want you to think about what happiness they bring to your life. Do you understand?" Michel's fingers tapped steadily on Julian's bottom.
"Yes, Michel."
"Good. I will spank you with my hand, Julian, but you have a duty, too. I want you to keep your bottom up and your legs spread for me. If you cannot, I will go find my paddle and make you bend over. C'est compris?"
Julian replied by pushing his bottom further up and back for Michel, making sure he had kept legs spread enough for Michel to spank inside his crack. "Yes, Michel," he said, finally.
Michel raised his hand high and held it there as his eyes ran over the delicate figure of this boy he cared for so deeply, so immediately. Michel's plans had scattered over the past several years, as he drifted from career to career and between fields of study, always able to shape and reshape his plans effortlessly but unable to discern which shape he wanted for the rest of his life. But now, with this boy he'd met only twice, Michel felt an instinctive desire to hold Julian, to grasp him to his chest with the firm knowledge that Julian was precisely what, or whom, he wanted. There was something irresistible about this shy youthful American, Michel thought, a beautiful boy closed in behind that awkward self-consciousness, shut off from happiness by an iron will to be anyone but himself. He needed this spanking--not because he had burned Michel, no, but because he had been foolish and careless with his cigarettes and with his life. Yes, he needed Michel to spank him. Julian needed this care, and Michel needed to offer it to him.
WHACK! The first slap landed squarely along the crack, between Julian's cheeks. Julian bucked slightly and exhaled, but he tried to remain calm and obedient during the spanking, his mind fixed rationally on the cigarettes.
WHACK! WHACK! The second and the third came in rapid succession and fell over Julian's right cheek, and the next two covered the area on Julian's left cheek. Julian cried out quietly and bit his lip to receive his spanking quietly. Michel methodically shifted his blows from cheek to cheek and between cheeks, moving steadily down Julian's bottom. Julian felt Michel's arm tighten even more firmly around his torso just before the next three blows landed right inside and along his crack.
"Ow! Michel! Ahh!" Julian snapped his head back and cried out, kicking his legs behind him.
"Julian. Raise your bottom," Michel commanded.
Slowly, nervously, Julian pushed his bum further up again and gritted his teeth as he tried to hold it in place for Michel's hand. Julian already fought to blink back the tears that welled up in his eyes.
WHACK! WHACK! Michel's palm connected with the skin on the underside of Julian's bottom, delivering two stinging swats to the base of each cheek. The pain, which had been mounting steadily, exploded as Michel focused his swats at the base of Julian's bum. Again Julian tried to raise his bottom to meet Michel's hard hand, to offer himself up to Michel willingly for the spanking he deserved so completely. An image of Michel leaning over the bathroom sink, the tapwater flowing over his burnt skin, shocked Julian with shame and guilt. Planting his hands firmly on the floorboards, he pushed himself up and thrust his bottom into the air, propelled now not by erotic desire but contrite obedience.
Michel kept his swats aimed now only at the lower part of Julian's bottom and inside the crack. Julian felt a long pause before Michel's palm came down again, this time a terrific blow right on his anus.
"Ahhh!" Julian screamed, the tears now flowing from his eyes and streaming down his cheeks to collect in pools on the floor. "Michel! Please! No! Michel!"
Michel slammed his hand down firmly on Julian's backside, again and again. The light bouncing from the floorboards diffused into a haze of yellow as tears spilled from Julian's eyes and blurred his vision. "Why are you being spanked, Julian?"
Julian tried to answer through his tears but the syllables seemed to knot together behind his sobs. Michel waited patiently for Julian to reply.
"Because I....I'm....I was careless," Julian sobbed. "I should have taken care for you."
Michel spanked Julian again twice, hard, with a force Julian hadn't thought capable. Julian cried again and tried to stifle his scream as Michel spoke evenly above him. "And for who else?"
"I, I should have taken care for me. I have to....I have to learn self-control."
"And who will take control of you if you cannot?" Michel demanded as two more swats sent waves of pain through Julian's body.
"You....you will, Michel," Julian managed tearfully, and as he said it he could feel his penis beginning to tingle and stir for the first time during the spanking.
Michel rubbed Julian's torso with his left arm. "Good, Julian. I'm proud of you. We are almost done with your spanking. Fifteen more. Are you ready?"
"Yes, Michel," Julian answered through his sobs, and with all the strength he could summon again he pushed his bottom, now glowing an even shade of deep red, back and up for Michel's hand.
Julian felt a fire blaze across his bum as Michel spanked him twice more at the top of his bum and moved down, carefully and evenly, towards the base of the crack and the tender skin where bottom meets thigh. Ten. Eleven. Twelve. Julian counted in his head as he struggled to keep composure between his now near-hysterical sobs. The final three fell right in the middle of his bottom along the crack, again enflaming the now-raw flesh.
Julian collapsed, his body splayed across Michel's knees, legs akimbo, chest heaving up and down. Even his penis, half-erect from rubbing against Michel, wavered up and down with his breathing. His face was nearly as red as his bottom from the agony of the spanking and the fight to keep in position for Michel's hand, which now slowly kneaded his burning flesh.
"Shhhh, it's over, it's over," Michel whispered. "C'est fini. Shhhhh."
The sharp sting of the swats dissipated as Michel's palm worked over Julian's skin and instead Julian could feel only the deep, throbbing pain underneath the sting. He lay there for what must have been five, ten minutes before Michel lifted his hand from Julian's bum and tousled the boy's hair.
"Up, Julian. Come."
Julian stood, gingerly and slowly, again standing between Michel's legs, this time an arm on each of Michel's shoulders.
"Thank you, Michel. Thank you." Julian burst into tears again as he and Michel both fell into the other's arms and held tight, their bodies glued together, bound with a silent promise that they both made as the breeze coasted over their skin and lingered in the warm yellow light of the room.
On deck: Part Three: "Au Revoir, Les Enfants"