"You can't stay here," I said in my best imitation of someone determined not to give in.

He looked crestfallen. I didn't want to be responsible for the poor boy going back to whatever Flaming Creature was currently subsidizing him. Oh, for Heaven's sake, who was I kidding? I didn't want him to go. I wanted him to stay.

But I was afraid of the complications.

I'm not very good at complications. Especially when they were 18-year old virgins who had no bloody idea what they were getting into.

"I don't have anywhere to go," he whispered.

Dammit, the boy would try the patience of a saint. "I thought you were staying with Malcolm...or was it Ray?" At Arthur's continued blank look, I tossed another couple of names out. "Pearl? Billy?"

"They're going on tour to America."

"You're not going with them?" I asked, feeling the painful crease in my forehead grow bigger and bigger. This boy was playing havoc with my make-up. If he didn't stop soon, I was going to be forced to hurt him.

Arthur shook his head slowly. If he was acting, I couldn't tell. I didn't think he was that good. No one was that good.

"They're...just mates. Y'know?" Arthur met my eyes, and I felt the strangest compulsion to hold him. "Not like you." He dropped his gaze to his feet and cleared his throat noisily. "No one's like you," he muttered. But I heard him. I think I was meant to hear him.

He wasn't very good at playing games.

But I was the number one game player.

I wondered what he was thinking. Then I wondered what I was thinking.

There was simply no justice in the world that a boy like that would end up left on the proverbial doorstep of a man like me. "You can stay one night." I held up one finger like a schoolteacher teaching Math to a recalcitrant student.

I saw the look of triumph that crossed his handsome young face. He was too excited to keep what he was feeling tightly bound and deep inside. "One night's all I need," he said.

Famous last words.

*****

I kept a flat in one of the more fashionable districts. It wasn't a long ride. But it was silent. Arthur was clearly preoccupied with working out something.

Or was it someone?

By the time we were standing outside my door, I was ready to scream. "Look, Arthur, I don't want you to get the wrong idea."

"If I was to get the wrong idea, Jack, what idea would that be?" he asked me softly. His voice was unexpectedly tender, and yet it thrummed across my senses like metal striking stone. It had a rippling effect on the rest of my body.

That was disconcerting.

I wasn't even through the door, and I was held in thrall to something I couldn't see or hear...or touch. "I think you know," I whispered.

His eyes were asking for permission that I wasn't sure he needed. Suddenly he was too close...and I wanted so badly to kiss him.

But Mrs. Fink strolled down the hall, her scruffy little white dog yipping and yapping and totally destroying the mood. "Hello, Jack. Nice dress."

I pictured myself weeping and grief-stricken after she and her dog were crushed in a terrible elevator accident. Dead Finks don't talk.

Of course, at the funeral, I looked tasteful but fabulous.

Arthur's lips were moving. But not in the right direction. "What?"

"I said, shouldn't we go inside?"

"Certainly." What was I waiting for, an engraved invitation?

I stabbed the lock with my key and opened the door. I drifted slowly through the living room and waved a hand at the sofa. "You can sleep here."

"I don't think so," Arthur said quietly.

I don't think I'd ever seen such intensity in one so young. I felt my heart race. My life was conducted with a certain inevitability, and things had apparently grown far too predictable if I could be thrown so easily by a pair of chocolate brown eyes.

"I want to sleep with you."

I wanted that, too. Only I didn't make the mistake of thinking that sleep had anything to do with it.

I opened my mouth to speak, but he cut me off with twining fingers and trembling hands all over my face. What he lacked in experience, he more than made up for with enthusiasm. "Your skin is so soft."

"I use two different cleansers," I said absently, belatedly registering what I'd said.

He chuckled, laughter brightening his eyes and coloring his cheeks. He was so impossibly young...and he wanted me. I couldn't describe how that made me feel if my life depended on it.

When the laughter faded, he continued to gaze raptly into my eyes, and I realized that he was hypnotizing me. Making me want something I had no control over. "Where's the bedroom?"

Suppressing the urge to shiver, I pointed to the door of my bedroom. "There."

"It's useless begging," he whispered against my mouth, backing me into the door. "I'm going to kiss you, whether you want it or not..."

When had he taken the initiative? When had I surrendered control?

"I hope you're prepared to do a lot more than kissing, darling."

"You're not scaring me, Jack."

"I'm not trying to."

"That's new."

"I know."

"I've been bloody chasing you all this time and now, just when I think I've got you sussed, you turn into someone else."

"Not someone else," I said, trying desperately not to act desperate. "This is who I am. If you can't keep up...you can always go home."

I don't know what I expected, throwing down a challenge like that, but Arthur met it head-on with that impish smile I had already come to associate with him. "I can keep up. But can you?" he whispered.

My mouth went dry. What was the question again?

"And not for nothing, but...I'm already home."

That did it. The cheeky little monster was reveling in reducing me to a puddle of harmless, and completely undignified, goo. "That's not fair."

"I don't have to be fair. I'm in love with you."

I was ashamed at how much I liked hearing that. I wasn't sure I could trust my instincts anymore, and I think that's when my distress started to show.

"Give it up, Jack. You've already lost."

"I should warn you, I don't care very much for losing," I managed to whisper back.

He smiled again. "Sometimes that's the only way to win."

I made an unseemly noise deep in my throat. That couldn't have been me. That couldn't ever have been me. "You're tying me in knots with your words," I muttered.

"Then let me...untie you. Please?"

"I thought you said there would be no useless begging."

"That was you. Not me."

"Then keep going. Please?" I never begged. I didn't even realize I knew how.

"How much more do you need before you submit?"

God, he couldn't possibly mean what that sounded like. I was always on top. And in a situation like this, where he knew practically nothing about sex with a man, it would be madness to do anything else. But I was not only giving up. I was giving in.

There was a coup d'etat when I wasn't looking. My body revolted against my ridiculous rules and laughed even more heartily at what passed for my code of ethics. Switzerland was no longer officially neutral. The cold had been banished forever, replaced by a brutal heat that made thinking impossible.

I pushed open the door behind me and slowly started to take off my clothes. Arthur followed, his hands pressing eagerly into hitherto unrevealed flesh. "Not so fast," I said breathlessly. I wanted this to last.

He kissed me, his lips soft and slightly moist against mine. "Why do you want to punish yourself? And me? We're going to be together. Stop fighting the inevitable."

"I don't know if I can," I confessed reluctantly.

"You could...if you really wanted to."

"I really...really...want to..." I said, stunned by my own admission. Who was in charge here? Certainly not me. I was the pathetic fool drowning in sensation and definitely going down for the third time.

"Trust me," he said with a kiss.

That was the final irony. I did. I disrobed. I showed parts of myself to him that I had never shown to anyone else. Parts that I wasn't sure I would ever get back.

Or want to.

I lay down on my stomach, my gut clenching at the thought of being taken, and by a mere boy at that. But he was the boy I feared I loved. And he wouldn't always be a boy. He would be a man, and I very much wanted to know him.

"I won't hurt you, Jack," he whispered against my nape. His body was every bit as hard as mine, but I felt my erection fade when I contemplated what he said. Of course he would hurt me. They always did.

I closed my eyes and thought fondly of my neutrality, cast off in a moment of stinging passion. What would I be like afterward? What would he be like? I fisted the sheets beneath me and prayed for these thoughts and these sensations to stop.

Then I felt him. His fingers slick and smooth, probing me gently. Lovingly. God, who taught him that? Not me.

"Love," he whispered, his breath hot and sweet on my skin.

Love. I wanted that. It frightened me how much I wanted that. I had a great many things, and I was an ardent collector of feelings, though I rarely allowed myself to feel them. But this creature, this fantastical boy wrought of desire and, the most amazing sentiment of all, love, claimed me.

I could feel him hard and throbbing against my entrance. "I only want to love you," he murmured. "That's all."

That's all? That's everything, I wanted to cry out.

He entered me carefully, and we fit together, like missing pieces of the same puzzle. With a sigh of relief, I let out the breath I hadn't even been aware I was holding. My body welcomed him, and he slid deeper inside without trying.

"Am I hurting you?" he asked anxiously.

"No," I whispered, unwanted tears welling up in my eyes. "It's perfect. You're perfect."

"Oh, Jack. It doesn't have to be. It just has to be you and me and all the love I want to give you."

He sounded like he was near tears himself. I didn't want that. I didn't ever want to hurt him that way, not the way that others had hurt me.

It was like a trap door springing open. All that emotion flooding through me for the first time in years. "I love you," I wept, holding him inside me.

His arms slipped around me. "I know."

He made love to me. I'd had sex so many times with so many meaningless people in my life, but I had never let anyone close enough to make love to me.

Till him. Till Arthur.

And when it was over, I couldn't help but wonder if he would leave me. After all, he'd gotten what he wanted. He had no real reason to stay anymore.

But I'd forgotten about all the poignant words he'd whispered in my ear before we'd even made love.

"Can I stay?" he entreated, our bodies still joined together.

I didn't want to misunderstand him. I didn't dare. But hope surged in my breast, even as I struggled to keep it down.

"Please?"

At that one word, I melted, my heart embracing what my body already knew as the truth.

"That sounds like useless begging to me," I answered.

He rubbed his cheek against my shoulder, and I could feel him smile. "Yeah. Totally useless. To beg for something you've already got."

End