You have to move very cautiously in a canoe, and I did. Somehow, I got into the center, facing Mitya over a thwart, and awkwardly leaned in to kiss him while I undid his belt and zipper, drew his trousers and shorts down to his ankles and began to stroke his hot, heavy cock. It rose almost instantly, and I pushed him up and backwards so that with him kneeling and me crouching, I could get my lips around the inflamed head and use my tongue to advantage. The arrangement was uncomfortable, though, and as soon as Mitya was completely, fearsomely erect, I retrieved a condom from my pants pocket and unrolled it over the slick length of his organ. We made no conversation, no light, loving expressions of desire. It was as though both of us just wanted to get it over with, to penetrate and be penetrated. We were not making love. We were making a poor joke, and I was to be the punch line.
As soon as the condom was in place, I handed Mitya a tube of K-Y, carefully stood up, turned around and undid my trousers, pushing them and my briefs down below my knees. Then I knelt again, facing the stern, put my arms out along the gunwales of the canoe to steady it and myself against the coming assault, and presented my ass to Mitya. Once, at Christmas, my grandmother had served a suckling pig. The servants carried it around the table on a huge platter to be inspected, and as I felt Mitya's hands pushing my shirttails up my back, I imagined that I must look something like that pathetic animal. Only I didn't have an apple in my mouth, just a naked butt sticking up in the air ready to be greased and skewered.
"Your behind is too beautiful, Yves." Mitya was fondling my right buttock with one hand and bringing the other through my crotch to caress my nuts and my very scared, very soft prick. "It is the back part of a man, not a woman, but it is like a statue's in a dream, a statue of marble that is so warm it could be alive and so perfect that only a god could have made such shapes." His fingers splayed around my balls, and his thumb rested on my hole. No, not rested, pressed, pushed, insinuated, hurt.
"Please, Mitya," I moaned. "Put some lube on me, a lot of it, on me, in me, and on yourself. You are very big, and I haven't done this with anyone for a long time."
"Of course," he answered, lifting both hands off me, but lowering his upper body across my back. "I will not to do you hurt, Yves." His breath whispered along my neck, and his lips tugged gently at my ear. "It is only that you are so very fine and this is such a special thing you are doing for me with your body and with your love. I want every moment of our making of love to be as long as life itself. I do not want us to be hurrying."
"Well," I tried for a practical, no-nonsense tone, but the words came out with an eager, I-want-you-in-me kind of sensuality, "we haven't got much time, Mitya. I mean, I really want this to last, too, but dinner, you know... oh... oh." He had somehow squeezed gel onto his fingers, and now one of them was in me, and he was so expert and in charge that I found myself melting.
Not all of myself, exactly. One part of me was very definitely, very suddenly solid, and his other hand found that part and stroked it, and I began to forget about dinner and to forget how scared I had been. I did want him in me, and I humped back on his finger which suddenly had become two fingers, and all without any hurt. "Oh, Mitya, you are getting me all hot." Now I was whimpering with lust. "I want to feel you. I want to ride that huge cock of yours. I want you to take me, Mitya. I want to belong to you. Just fuck me, stud, fuck me!"
And he did. At least, technically. His fingers pulled out, and his shaft pressed in, and I opened to him. "All the way, Mitya," I begged for it. "All of you. In me. Yes. Oh, so goo..."
And then it was over. No. He didn't climax on a single stroke. He just shouted and yanked back, hard, slapping at something, yelling, in Montenegrin, I guess, and very loud. Not as loud, though, as the wail of the siren across the water. I had told my mother not to use it again, but either she forgot, or someone else did the supper-call duty that night.
Mitya must have forgotten, too, that the siren wasn't announcing a bombardment, just a meal. He panicked. He tried to dive for cover, but he only succeeded, quite literally and quite abruptly, in rocking the boat. Suddenly, we weren't in the canoe any more. We were in the water. Which was cold, but not very deep, it turned out, because we had drifted into the reeds while we were preoccupied with each other.
The canoe had turned completely over, but it was easy to get it upright again, or as easy as it could be with your soggy pants weighing you down and your bare feet in slime and dead fish floating all around you and into your face. What wasn't easy was to get Mitya back in. He held the canoe while I sort of rolled up and into it, but when he tried the same maneuver, we almost tipped over again. I couldn't position my weight as a counter to his, and after the third try, he muttered something angry in his language, stood up in chest-high water, grabbed the prow of the canoe, and started pulling me behind him toward the shore. As he went, he also scooped some of the floating fish out of the water and back into the canoe. He retrieved a paddle and a rod and reel, too, and once the water was only knee-high, he pushed himself over the bow and into the seat he had had before. I had managed to keep all my clothes, except for the silly hat, but below the waist, Mitya, had only his undershorts.
Without a word, he turned the canoe for home and began to paddle in furious, deep strokes. I just sat in the stern and watched and shivered a little bit, until we were almost at the dock. "Mitya," I said. "Slow down. We have two problems. The first one is what happened to your pants? The second is what do we tell everyone. Why did the canoe tip over?"
"We must to tell the truth, Yves," he answered. "It is always the best to tell the truth so that you do not have to hold memory of what is false."
"You can't be serious, Mitya." I tried to imagine my parents imagining the scene. I imagined Tommy laughing at me. "You don't really want us to say we were having sex and got carried away and upset the canoe. Do you?" Maybe he did.
"That is one truth. Yes. But it is also of some truth that I hit at a mosquito and the big noise came and I slipped on dead fishes and I fell over in fear, and you were not on your balance because you were standing up fishing, and so the canoe upsetted itself."
"I love you, Mitya." I said. Now I was full of admiration. "You are now a true Canadian." I chuckled and then stopped. "But where did your pants go?"
"I took them off because in the water dead fishes got up my leg, and then in the dark, I could not to find them. Yes?"
"Find the dead fish or the pants?"
"The pants. We have some of the fish." He resumed paddling and brought us alongside the dock. Tommy was standing there. "You're late," he said. "We were worried."
"We had an accident," I said as I stepped onto the dock and turned to help Mitya up. "But we're all right now, and we saved some of the fish. Mitya is an incredible fisherman. We just need to get dry clothes. Please, tell everybody to start. We'll be there in a few minutes."
"I guess incredible is the right word." Tommy was smirking, but his voice was flat. "That's quite a catch."
I looked where he was looking, and I saw what he was seeing, and I knew he now thought he knew what had really happened. He would never let me forget.
Tying up the canoe and scooping the fish out of it, Mitya paid no attention to modesty. His sodden undershorts still clung to him. Except for the fly. It gaped, and as he stood up again, his cock -- still encased in the condom -- dangled through the opening, shining like some monstrous, silvery eel, its latex wrapping glistening in the moonlight.
I was mortified. There was nothing I could say, and I was sure that even in the dark, Tommy could see me blush. I pivoted away from him and began to run toward the cabin, toward a warm shower, clean clothes and a chance to pull myself together and face Tommy again with some degree of nonchalance.
I never made it. I don't know what I tripped over or what my head hit. I don't even know how I got into my bed or why, when I woke up, the room was bright with sunlight, and I was wearing hideous striped pajamas that didn't belong to me.
"They're Larry's." The voice belonged to my sister. "We knew you'd disapprove. That's why I've been waiting for you to wake up. How do you feel?"
"Fine," I said, sitting up. "Oooh!" I lay back down again. "Except for my head. It weighs a ton, all of a sudden. And, maybe you could turn down the drum music. It's kind of loud."
"That's from the concussion, Yves," Ceci patted my hand. "The paramedics said that if you still throb after 72 hours, we need to bring you in. But they didn't think you were really badly hurt. Mitya didn't either. And your ankle is barely swollen anymore."
"How long have I been not really badly hurt?" I didn't know which ankle was barely swollen, and I didn't dare lift my head to look.
"Just about 38 hours, I guess. It's after ten o'clock."
"Sunday?"
"Monday."
I tried to understand. Mitya and I had gone out in the canoe on Saturday evening. That meant I'd been dead to the world for a day and a half. I was badly hurt, really. I could have died. And I had to pee.
"I have to piss, Ceci. Something fierce. Can you sort of help me get to the bathroom?"
"Nope. You're not supposed to stand up for another 12 hours at least. We bought you some of those diapers for old people. I'll just help you put them on, and then you can do what you have to do." She started to reach for the drawstring on the pajama pants. I slapped at her hand, feebly. And she started to laugh.
"Don't tease me, Ceci," I moaned. "I really have to go."
"Which is why I have this for you." She held up a jug, a kind of thermos with a wide mouth. "Do you want me to hold it for you?"
"God, no! I'll manage. Just go away and tell the priests and the undertakers that I'll live. I think."
"They'll be really disappointed, but okay. And while I'm at the house, I'll get you some breakfast. Tapioca okay? I think that's what the doctors said you should have first. Then cream of wheat, or maybe it's the other way round."
"You are hateful." She knew I couldn't stand those bland, gooey breakfast foods. "I don't think I can eat anything, anyway. Just leave. I'll go back to sleep for a while."
"No," she was suddenly quite serious. "Going back to sleep is a bad sign. I mean, Yves, sweetie, you're not supposed to need more sleep for a while. Rest, yes, but stay awake. I mean it, Yves. Promise?"
I promised. She left. Moving cautiously and keeping my head pretty nearly still, I managed the business with the jug pretty well, and that made me feel better. When my mother came in with a big tray of real breakfast, even if it was herb tea, not coffee, I smiled at her. Which made her cry. Which told me I'd really been in some danger, but I pretended not to notice the tears, and she pretended she just had hay fever.
It went on like that all day Monday, with Ceci, Odette and my mother taking turns at keeping me awake, feeding me - liquids mostly - and aspirin, and all of us acting as if I had never been in danger and wasn't anymore anyway. Finally, around 11 at night, they let me get up and go to the bathroom. I was a little dizzy, but holding on to Odette's arm, I made it. I would have rather fallen on my face than try to use the bedpan she threatened me with. I also made it back to bed and was allowed at last to sleep. Tuesday morning I got to the bathroom on my own and even took a shower before my keepers showed up. By afternoon, I was out of bed, out of doors and out of danger.
(to be continued after Christmas)