The Line of Beauty - Alan Hollinghurst [97]
"Oh fuck," said Wani distantly. In about three seconds he was hard, and Nick too, pressing against him. Everything they did was clandestine, and therefore daring and therefore childlike, since it wasn't really daring at all. Nick didn't know how long it could go on—he didn't dream of it stopping, but it was silly and degrading at twenty-three to be sneaking sex like this, like a pickpocket as Wani said. But then again, on a hungover morning, moronic with lust, he saw a beauty in the slyness of it. There were several pound coins in the flannel depths of the pocket, and they tumbled round Nick's hand as he stroked Wani's dick.
Wani drew the powder into two long lines. "You'd better close the door," he said.
Nick lingeringly disengaged himself: "Yeah, we've only got a minute." He pushed the door to and came forward to take the rolled £20 note.
"Turn the key," said Wani. "That little boy follows me everywhere."
"Ah, who can blame him," said Nick graciously.
Wani gave him a narrow took—he was often dissatisfied by praise. They stooped in turn and zipped up the powder, and then stood for a minute, sniffing and nodding, reading each other's faces for comparison and confirmation of the effect. Wani's features seemed to soften, there was a subtle but involuntary smile that Nick loved to see at the moment of achievement and surrender. He grinned back at him, and reached out to stroke his neck, and with his other hand rubbed playfully at Wani's oblique erection. They were on to such a good thing. He said, "This is fucking good stuff."
"God yes," said Wani. "Ronnie always comes through."
"I hope you haven't given me too much," Nick said; though over the next thirty seconds, holding Wani to him and kissing him lusciously, he knew that everything had become possible, and that the long demanding lunch would be a waltz and that he would play with Bertrand the tycoon and charm them all. He sighed and pulled Wani's left arm up to look at his famous watch. "We'd better go down," he said.
"OK." Wani stepped back, and quickly undid his trousers.
"Darling, they're waiting for us. . ." But Wani's look was so fathomlessly interesting to him, command and surrender on another deeper level, the raw needs of so aloof a man, the silly sense of privilege in their romantic secret—Nick knelt anyway, and turned him round in his hands, and pulled his pants, the loose old-fashioned drawers that Wani wore, down between his thighs.
On the way downstairs they met little Antoine, who had been dying to look for them and was going into every room in a mime of happy exasperation. It had taken a couple of flushes to dispose of the rubber, and they had got out with thirty seconds to spare. The boy claimed them and then wanted to know what they were laughing about.
"I was showing Uncle Nick my old photographs," Wani said.
"They were rather funny," said Nick, pierced by the generous twist to his lie, and also, absurdly, by the missed opportunity of seeing the photos.
"Oh," said little Antoine, perhaps with a similar regret.
"You'd better have a quick look in here," Wani said, and pushed open the door of the room above the drawing room, which was his parents' bedroom. He swept a hand over the switches and all the lights came on, the curtains began to close automatically and "Spring" from The Four Seasons was heard as if coming from a great distance. Little Antoine clearly loved this part, and asked to be allowed to do it all again whilst Nick glanced humorously around. Everything was luxurious and he feigned dismay at his own deep footprints in the carpet. The richness of the room was its mixture of shiny pomp, glazed swagged curtains, huge mirrors, onyx and glaring gilt, with older, rougher and better things, things perhaps they'd brought from Beirut, Persian rugs and fragments of Roman statuary. On top of a small chest of drawers there was a white marble head of Wani, presumably, done at about the same age as little Antoine was now,