Chapter 2 – Chapter 2

Henri snapped out of his flashback in time to chat and greet at the close of the dull seminar. He looked around the room, but the young man who had caused his remembrance was not in sight.

However, the young man was in the next seminar where Henri was impaneled, and it took all of Henri's strength to stay in the discussions and not let his eyes drift to where the young man was sitting, smiling at him throughout.

"Hello, Herr Bragger, wonderful comments. I'm sure they will help us set a new path in our economic plans."

"Umm, thank you," Henri said rather perfunctorily, not the least because he suddenly felt unable to breathe. The young man had walked up to the panelists' rostrum as the seminar was breaking up and colleagues were making quick, brief comments to each other before they rushed off to their next session. Henri—reluctantly—moved to turn away and join the departing crowd, but the young man placed a hand on his forearm, and Henri felt the electricity of the touch race up his arm. With resolution mixed with an almost sensual forbidden and forbidding pleasure, he turned back to the young man.

"I'm sorry, if you are in a hurry, Herr Bragger, but I wanted to meet you. My name is Salim. Salim Maalouf, and I work at the U.S Department of the Treasury and saw your name on the list of attendees."

Henri hadn't really heard anything beyond the "Maalouf" part.

"Maalouf. Not—?"

"Yes, that Maalouf. The writer, Sa'eed Maalouf. He was my father. I know about you. That's why I wanted to meet you."

Knew about him? Henri's brain was bursting. What context was there in that? What did this young man know about what transpired between him and his father all those years ago. Was the young man going to denounce him on the basis of family honor? Or was it something else altogether that he knew—Henri's connection with the Palestinian organizations purpose perhaps? Henri was doing everything he was being asked to do; why would they be sending someone to Washington, D.C., to contact him directly? But, hadn't the young man said he worked for the U.S. government? Was Henri's complicity with Mideast terrorist groups—something that had now become quite an international crime—being exposed? Or was it both family honor and criminal activity? Or something else altogether?

"Listen, I don't have a seminar scheduled now," the young man said. "Do you? Perhaps we could go somewhere quiet for lunch?"

Did Henri really have a choice? The sudden shock of it left him almost speechless—and without choices.

They lunched in a dimly lit alcove at a discrete little restaurant in Georgetown, and Henri was both relieved and aroused that Salim seemed to only know of his relationship with Sa'eed as being lovers; nothing was mentioned of Henri's business with secret Palestinian bank accounts and Sa'eed's possible connection with that.

"I never could forget what my father said of his love for you and the consummation of that love," Salim said.

"He told you of that?" Henri asked. "Weren't you rather—?"

"My father was a very special man; and we were a very special family. He spoke of everything. And he lived life deeply, even with his own family. He wrote of you and let me read it."

"He wrote of me?" Henri asked, feeling a bit breathless.

"Yes, my father had much love to give," Salim answered. He reached over and took Henri's hand and traced the lifeline on Henri's palm with his forefinger. Henri began to tremble. The young man was beautiful and sultry. He had his father's voice, rich and with unexpected, exciting rhythms. Henri had cut himself off so completely from the past, that it was like a flood of memories when the dike was breached.

"His favorite story he read to me before . . . well it was of you. Did you read any of the writings about you that have been published?"

"Yes," Henri answered in a small voice. "Or at least I hoped they were about me—that our couplings meant as much to him as they did to me."

"And to me also." Salim reached up and cupped Henri's chin with his hand so that Henri had to stare him in the face. "I want the same things with you as you had with my father."

Both men had rooms at the Willard hotel, and Salim made the practical suggestion that they use his room rather than Henri's, as there were European colleagues of Henri's with rooms on the same floor as his.

* * * *

I was his from the moment we entered the room, he made that perfectly clear. The shades were drawn and one light was on, at the side of the bed.

We stood just inside the door, facing each other, close. He cupped my face in his hands and kept my eyes trapped with his as I—at his demand—unbuttoned my shirt, unbuckled my belt, and unzipped my trousers. Then his face and hands disappeared from view, traveling down my chest and belly, and, trembling, I was being held up by his palms cupping my buttocks and my cock in his mouth. His hands were spreading my buttocks and fingers were entering my channel.

Memories were crowding in, and I felt like my spirit was rising out of my body, being transported to another place, another time, another man. I was being taken by Sa'eed, and it was his name I murmured.

I was on my back on the bed, my knees bent and legs spread, my Arab lover was between my legs, his chest hovering over mine. I cried out in long-dormant passion as a hot cock slid into me, deep, and held there as I felt him throbbing and still filling out, deep inside me. He cupped my head in his hands again and held his beautiful, sultry face just above mine. His milk-chocolate eyes possessed mine.

"Recite your poetry to me, your love poetry," I sighed, seeing Sa'eed's face above mine. "In Arabic." I loved being fucked to Sa'eed's love poetry.

"I don't know any poetry," he answered. "My cock is my poetry. My cock will sing your praises."

"No matter," I answered with a sigh.

And then, just before he started to stroke inside me, once again a memory stole up from the depths of me, and I whispered, "Shall we turn off the light?"

"No," He answered. "I want to see the working of my cock reflected in your eyes. That is poetry to me." And he was smiling, enjoying every flicker and pop of my eyes as his cock explored every nook and cranny of my channel.

"Your moan," he whispered, "Your moan told me you liked that phrase."

"Yes, yes," I whispered, moving into a deep, long groan.

"And you liked that better. My poetry is reaching you, each stanza making you sing."

"Yes, yes, yes," I moaned. "Oh, gawwwd!"

And after that there was no more talk, as I moved my hips in motion with his and he took my lips in his—and I drifted off into a reverie of my nights on the divan in Sa'eed's university study.

* * * *

The next morning Henri fled Washington, leaving the conference early and rushing back to Geneva with the breathless tale that he could not stay away from his Karyn and his children for one more evening.

He was good then, a devoted husband and father, and diligent in his work, only permitting his eyes to glaze over for a moment or two in remembrance of his afternoon in the Willard Hotel, still having trouble keeping straight who it was—the father or the son—who had made love to him.

Life had almost gone back to normal for him; it had been nearly a week since he had locked himself in his bathroom and stood under the shower and masturbated to the memory of his fucking by the ghost of his long-lost lover.

Thus, it was a shock when he looked up from his desk one day and standing there in the door, smiling at him, was Salim Maalouf.

"I had a room available at the Kipling Hotel on the Rue de Navigator. They have a very private elevator and they ask no questions," was all Salim had to say.