Page 26 of Return to Telegraph Creek

“My, my, my.Don’t you look fetchin’.”I stroked his cheek with my finger, and Oscar closed his eyes and leaned into my touch.He opened them after a moment and his gaze scanned me where I lay beneath the soft sheets.

“Did, uh, Sally treat you well?”he asked.

I narrowed my eyes.“Well, she gave me a good seein’ to with the sponge.”

“A seein’ to?”

“She cleaned me up, if that’s what you’re askin’.Didn’t do anythin’ else,” I assured him.

“Hmm.Did she offer?”

I couldn’t keep the smile off my face at his proprietary interest in my activities.“She may have.”

Oscar’s head snapped up, and his eyes shot invisible bullets at me.

“I declined, of course.”

“Oh.”He gave a curt nod.“Well, good.”

“What the hell difference would it have made?I’m still in love with you.”For some reason I felt like riling him up.He was so cute when he got mad.

“I reckon it wouldn’t have meant anythin’, and maybe you’re right.But…I feel like I got some ownership rights…or somethin’—after all the trouble you put me to.”

I raised my eyebrows, my dick standing up again like Oscar was its rightful owner and only had to beckon.“Ownership rights!”

We gazed at each other, both of us feeling possessive, I reckoned, now that we were in a house filled with others who had relaxed attitudes about physical affection.

“I don’t want you bein’ so friendly with anyone else, Jimmy.”

“I know it.I don’t mind that, as long as it goes both ways.”

“A’course, it does.I ain’t even interested in girls.”He turned up his nose at the thought of them.“But…”

“But, what?”

He shrugged again, and slipped his hand under the covers to find my cock.I gasped as his fingertips made contact.

“I know you were, at one time.”

Uh-huh.That was the crux of the matter, I suppose.

“That’s true, I suppose, back when I didn’t have any inkling of the kind of pleasure a man could give me.Sure.”

He gazed at the ticking on the bedcover, pretending to be casual as he played his fingers along my erection.

“Would you ever…?Do you think you could ever bed a woman again?”

I chose my words carefully.“I suppose I could do it…maybe.”

Oscar frowned.

“If my life depended upon it,” I said.

Oscar’s touch disappeared, and his gaze flashed to mine.“If yourlifedepended upon it?”

I tried not to smile, but ’twas so much fun to get him worked up.

“Well, I don’t know.What if I got captured by some wild, sex-addled woman, and she said she’d kill me if I didn’t fuck her?”