Day 25

Having decided that the most appropriate response to Jeremy dumping him was to end his self-imposed celibacy, Danny's usual Saturday ride took him to the hotel across the lake, where he was determined to have sex with as many men as possible before returning home.

There weren't a lot of men there, as Lake Augusta was more of a summer concern: it seldom snowed in Vandervere and the lake never froze, the weather was usually wet and cold in winter; the cabins and most of the resort's amenities were closed for the off-season, and the hotel had shut off all but one wing; however, the stables were still fully staffed, since horses don't hibernate, the restaurant continued to run, drawing custom from the town, and the hotel's skeleton crew was, due to some rather inappropriate hiring practices, one hundred percent homophile.

Four hours later, Danny headed back to the stable, sore, sated, and happy, resolved to never go so long without sex again. He greeted David, the stablehand, with a brief hug and a peck on the cheek; he knew David had a serious crush on him, and had always been mystified that the young man didn't want to have sex with him. But he was beginning to understand about bodies and emotions, and how sometimes they had to be separated to keep one from getting hurt.

"Who in the world has Ashtaroth out in this weather?" Danny asked when he noticed the big black horse was not in his usual stall; horses were usually difficult to handle during rainy weather, and livery horses moreso than others.

"He died a couple of months ago," David told him, helping saddle Tenorino.

"Oh, that's too bad," Danny busied himself with buckles and straps, "But he was pretty old, wasn't he?"

"Sixteen, I think," David said, which wasn't all that old for a horse, "He didn't die of old age. Somehow he got out of the stable one night and ate most of an oleander bush, I still can't figure out why. Had a heart attack out in the woods and died before we could track him down."

"That's awful!" Danny was horrified.

"I know. I didn't even know there were oleanders in these woods. Or that a horse would be stupid enough to eat them. I mean, Ashtaroth wasn't very clever, he was so pliable he'd eat just about anything anyone put in his mouth. But to go out on his own and eat a shrub to the stems, that probably doesn't even taste good to horses, seems weird."

"I'll talk to some people I know at Animal Control and the Forestry Service about getting the oleanders out of the woods. We have to keep those, and foxgloves and rhododendrons, away from the horse trails," Danny frowned in concentration, as he usually did when making a complex mental note.

"That's the thing, he wasn't anywhere near the horse trails, he'd wandered all the way up to the hiking trail."

"That's odd," Danny agreed, but then saw the time and realized he was going to be late for tea at the Aunt Ems' if he didn't get a move on, "Have a Merry Christmas, David, if I don't see you again before then."

Heading home at a brisk canter and leaving Kevin to curry Tenorino, Danny dashed into the house for a shower and change, then drove to the Aunt Ems' as fast as his Explorer would carry him. He was late for tea, and got a gentle scolding from his great-aunts; he had to tell them about Jeremy breaking up with him, and though they were very fond of the boy they decided to vilify him for Danny's sake, pointing out all of his shortcomings (most of which they had to invent, as Jeremy didn't really have any shortcomings other than what is common to seventeen-year-old boys).

The Pine Street mansion was already lavishly decorated for Christmas, with three huge trees in different parts of the house (a spectacular twenty-footer in the bend of the stairs in the great hall, and twin twelve-footers in the bay window of the front drawing room and the round turret off the upstairs sitting-room), garlands on all the railings and wreaths on all the doors, and hundreds of seasonal figurines and ornaments scattered across every available surface. Most of this had been done by florists and decorators, as it would be too much for the octogenarian ladies of the house; but there was a smaller eight-foot sugar pine in the corner of the back drawing-room that was the sole province of the Aunt Ems themselves.

Afternoon tea had been moved to this drawing room so the Aunts could work slowly at their special tree, which had real wax candles and an eighteenth-century German carved wood angel at the top, popcorn-and-cranberry garlands, and dozens of fragile antique blown glass or silver ornaments, each one with a story of its own. Danny helped by placing handmade red and white peppermint candy-canes on the branches, stepping back frequently to make sure they were evenly spaced.

On Sunday he returned to the hotel for a late morning's debauchery, then out to The Aspens for the weekly family dinner. The principal Vandervere mansion is a 1920s version of a southern plantation house, a long buff brick neo-Colonial house with two-story fluted white Corinthian columns marching around all four sides and outbuildings attached to the main house by curving colonnades.

It is the largest and most modern of all the Vandervere homes and is actually the house in which the Aunt Ems grew up (though they seemed so much more in place at the Pine Street house that everyone thought they'd always lived there). It stood in the center of a huge meadow that had once been filled with a forest of aspens but was now mostly leveled and planted with rolling lawns, ruthlessly manicured rose gardens, and a spreading six-hole golf course.

Sunday dinner at The Aspens was a weekly tradition that Danny dreaded more than evening meals with his parents, as there were anywhere from eight to twelve people either criticizing him or ignoring him instead of just two. He always parked himself among the Aunt Ems for protection, but since the rest of the family also criticized or ignored those august old ladies (though they had to be more creative about it, since Aunt Mathilda was terrifying when roused), it wasn't much help.

Monday morning found him at the Grand Hotel on Vandervere Town Square, where he spent a strenuous three hours with two very nice middle-aged gentlemen, a long-devoted couple who were staying there over the holidays; he'd met them at the buffet breakfast in the big plush dining room, where he'd gone expressly in hopes of meeting someone with whom to spend the morning. Afterward he did a little Christmas shopping, then drove over to Ash's house to begin work on the portrait.

Ash had cleaned and rearranged his bedroom so that there was a bare area in which Danny could pose while Ash worked at his easel in the corner by the closet. They spent some time trying out different poses, Ash working with his digital camera and laptop to help them decide on a pose that was both artistically interesting and comfortable enough to hold for hours at a time.

By the end of the afternoon, when Danny had to return home for dinner, they'd settled on a dignified, almost monumental standing pose, his feet well apart and his torso at three-quarter profile facing left, with his right hand resting on the back of a chair and his left hand hanging loose at his side, his face turned to the right as if about to glance over his shoulder, his eyes turned back to the viewer with a light smile playing across his lips.

They dithered somewhat as to whether or not Danny should pose nude: though Danny was perfectly happy to expose himself to Ash and the rest of the world, he wondered if the painting wouldn't be censored by the Art Show committee, which would doubtless contain his prudish Aunt Claudia; Ash couldn't decide what else Danny should wear, since he didn't want the picture to be a mere modern portrait.

When Danny came the next day, he brought several different things to wear, including his Tybalt costume, his riding clothes, and his best dress suit. But after spending several hours sketching and photographing him in different combinations of costume, Ash decided that Danny would pose nude, and he'd simply paint in a figleaf or some gravity-defying drapery to keep the picture Rated PG.

Unfortunately, what neither of them had considered was the difference, for Danny, between being naked in a locker-room or shower and being naked in front of a single person who was staring at him intently. It turned him on, being looked at so steadily, and he wasn't able to control his body's response; for the first two hours he posed, he had an erection, and his was not the kind of erection one can overlook. Though Ash didn't say anything about it, it got to be very uncomfortable, getting hornier and hornier without any prospect of release.

When they stopped for a break, Danny dashed into the bathroom to jack off, but his cock did not go down afterward. He he splashed it with cold water, filled his mind with unpleasant images, and and then tried masturbated again.

Returning to Ash's room, he looked like he'd just run a marathon, his cheeks rosy and his skin glimmering with sweat; Ash exclaimed that was exactly the look he wanted to capture in the painting. So Danny figured he'd just jack off in between posing sessions, and that would be that.

But that's not how it turned out: after the third day, when Ash completed the rough sketches and had started laying out the bones of the painting on the primed canvas, his own resolve to ignore Danny's massive hard-on started to crumble. He'd been turned on by Danny's nudity all along, but intended to channel the sexual longing he felt into the painting to make it more arresting; but by the third day, he was so horny that he couldn't concentrate on his work properly.

Throwing his brushes down in exasperation, he stalked over to Danny, pushed him onto the bed, and went down on him like a starving man falling on a smorgasbord. And Danny, not wanting to be left out, pulled Ash's body around so he could open the boy's pants and return the favor. But even after they both came, it wasn't enough; they spent an hour or more crawling all over each other, exploring with hands and mouths and cocks, rubbing against each-other until they both came twice more; they finally lay exhausted, loosely entwined and trying to catch their breath.

"Wow," Danny finally said when he could breathe normally again.

"Yeah," Ash agreed.

"Are you OK?" Danny wanted to know, turning his head so he could see Ash's face.

"Fine," the boy said simply, "Why?"

"I don't want to spoil our friendship," Danny explained what was worrying him.

"You won't," Ash turned his own head and met Danny's eye.

With that assurance, they went back to their original positions, though Ash didn't get completely dressed, only slipping on a pair of sweatpants, not as comfortable with nudity as Danny and also needing something near his hips to wipe his hands on.

Danny got as much joy out of looking at Ash working in the loose drawstring pants as Ash got out of looking at him nude; the boy had a beautifully proportioned body, small and wiry but elegantly balanced and tautly muscular, dusted with downy dark brown hair on his chest and belly and forearms. His cock was a lot bigger than Danny had expected on someone with such a small frame, though nowhere near as big as Danny's, and it thrust out against the sweatpants and shifted enticingly while he worked.

For the following three weeks, the two boys followed that pattern: Danny would pose for a couple of hours, they'd fall on each other at the first break and spend the next couple of hours in bed, and then another two or three hours of posing; pretty much all the time he would have spent at school was spent with Ash during the Winter Break.

Ash didn't allow Danny to see the painting in progress, always working in the corner so the canvas couldn't be seen from any other part of the room; he did let Danny have one of the preliminary sketches, though, which was without additional draperies, anatomically exact and rather flattering. He couldn't hang it in his room, where anyone else could see him in all his priapic grandeur, so he had it matted in a leather folder so he could look at it in private.

Christmas came, and Danny was coopted by his family, so he gave Ash a present on Christmas Eve day, a huge and expensive coffee-table book with gorgeous illustrations of the entire collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, which embarrassed the boy because he didn't have a gift for Danny; but Danny assured him that the two drawings were more-than-generous gifts, considerably better than a mere bought book.

Christmas morning he of course spent with his parents, and his brothers came over as well, the elder with his new wife. Though he didn't get along well with his family, he had put a great deal of thought into his gifts for them; a beautiful burgundy silk necktie for his father, a tiny but elaborately enameled antique blue and gold Russian egg studded with tiny rubies for his mother to hang on her charm bracelet, embossed leather desk sets for both of his brothers, blazoned with their different favored football teams' logos, and a fox-fur neckpiece for his sister-in-law; neither of his brothers nor his sister-in-law gave him a gift, and his parents presented him with an expensive but baffling futuristic wristwatch that told time with an arcane arrangement of colored dots.

He tried not to feel bad about it, knowing he could have expected no better and that the Aunt Ems would make up for it with lavish and thoughtful gifts, but he felt a little bit weepy as he sat down to Christmas breakfast with his family, listening to the men talk about the Mill and football while the women discussed television shows that Danny had never seen.

The dynastic celebration was held at the Pine Street house rather than The Aspens, since the Victorian mansion was so much more picturesque and imbued with over a century of family tradition. Gifts at this gatheirng tended more toward envelopes than wrapped packages, checks from Uncle Charles and the other adults making donations in each other's names; Aunts Myrtle and Maude, however, gave everyone framed needlepoint ovals bearing inspirational sayings, and Mathilda gave books (mostly chosen to offend the recipient in some way).

The Vandervere family gave their staff the day off for Boxing Day in the English manner, and Danny was thrilled to be included in the Espinosa family's celebration at Mrs. Espinosa's sister's house in Redding. The housekeeper had given Danny a scarf that she made herself, while Danny presented her with the newest and hottest cookbook on the lists; he also bestowed small but very pretty gold pendants on Rosa and Maria (who were Mrs. Espinosa's second cousins), and a very expensive bottle of very old Scotch to his host and hostess.

So it wasn't until the twenty-seventh that Danny was able to return to his posing with Ash. The artist had continued to work on the painting in Danny's absence, working up the background he said, having decided that Danny would be presented standing on a cloud against a star-studded night sky with a white drapery floating in front of his groin, as if in the midst of apotheosis.

The rest of vacation flew by in this manner, the only change to their routine being when Danny took Ash out for dinner at the Grand Hotel on New Year's Eve and then upstairs to the room he'd rented for the night so they could carouse in privacy and luxury. But before they knew it, the picture was finished and school was about to start.

"Can't I see it, yet?" Danny said, leaning over Ash and tracing a finger idly along the exquisite curve of the boy's pelvic girdle, indicating the painting with a tip of his head.

"Not until it gets accepted for the Art Show," Ash replied resolutely, "And not even then. You have to wait to see it like everyone else."

"What, I don't get special priveleges?" Danny inserted his finger into Ash's navel and kissed his nipple.

"This is your special privelege," Ash licked Danny's ear.

"School starts on Monday," Danny said after a few minutes.

"So?" Ash wondered why he brought up such an odd subject at that particular moment.

"So, are we boyfriends? When school starts, what do we tell people?"

"I don't think people need to know about us," Ash said after a long pause.

"You don't want to be my boyfriend?" Danny asked, not angry, just curious.

"What, kissing in the hallways and holding hands at lunch? Don't you think you and I are past that?"

"I guess," Danny lay his head down on Ash's chest, "Do you want to see other people?"

"Not particularly," Ash answered at once, "Do you?"

"Not specifically," Danny thought about it for a moment, "But you never know."

"Come on," Ash pulled away from Danny and grabbed his sweatpants, "let me get some more work done while I have light."
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