his own. He would watch with the softest smile as the Cardinal tore away that wealth of cream ruffles merely to lay his hands on the flatness beneath it, then pinching the nipples hard until Tonio couldn’t keep silent, only to kiss him then as though begging forgiveness and then push up those skirts to drive his horn between Tonio’s legs. Each time that awesome length brought its pain, but he would close his mouth over Tonio’s mouth as if to say, If you cry out, cry out into me.
There was soft delight in all that the Cardinal did, his hands running through Tonio’s hair, his kisses on the eyelids, this feverish adoration which moved at its own pace.
But it was not this soft kneading and kissing that made Tonio’s passion burn white hot. What excited Tonio was not what the Cardinal did to him, but the Cardinal himself. And it was when he had the man’s hips locked in his arms, when he could cover that root with his mouth, when he felt the Cardinal’s seed flood into him, buttermilk sour and sweet at the same time, that was when his body shuddered with an ecstasy that threatened to tear him apart.
That, and the inevitable rape the Cardinal always preferred, that iron driven hard between the legs.
And so Tonio bore the rest, enthralled that it was this man who did it to him, thinking, Yes, it is the Cardinal Calvino, it is this prince of the church, who attends the Holy Father, who sits in the Sacred College, it is this powerful one to whom I surrender, whom I take in my arms. His hands were all too eager to hold those heavy testicles, to breathe their warmth, to feel their loose hairy sheathing, to press them ever so lightly as if in menace only to feel the Cardinal’s body become one awesome and cruel shaft.
Yet he came to understand that for the Cardinal even the gentle play was its own form of rape. As surely as he wanted to pound Tonio into the sheets beneath him, he wanted to see Tonio groan with pleasure, he wanted to invade Tonio with pleasure, he wanted to enslave him with it, as surely as with any pain.
And so the hours passed between them. Tonio, his eyes glassy and unseeing, lay against the Cardinal afterwards, almost like a wrestler taking one moment to steal from his opponent a limp embrace.
But there was more to it all even than this. Because almost with the first night there had begun some other exchange.
They would dress together after lovemaking. Perhaps they would dine. The Cardinal had various wines to offer, all of them excellent. Then summoning old Nino with his torch, they would begin their regular promenade through the Cardinal’s halls.
By the flickering light they would pause at various statues which for years, the Cardinal confessed, he had not enjoyed at all. “I used to so love this little nymph,” he would say of a Roman work. “It was found in the garden of my villa when the men were digging out the earth for the fountains. And here, this tapestry was sent to me from Spain years ago.”
Nino’s torch gave off a dull roar, its heavy scent permeating the darkness around them, and Tonio, studying the Cardinal’s gray eyes, his delicate but worn hand on the bronze of an ancient figure, felt the most curious peace.
He followed the Cardinal into the open gardens, full of the gentle plash of the fountains, the green smell of freshly cut grass.
And then to the library they would go, entering together a sanctum whose leatherbound volumes reached beyond the uneven light.
“Read to me, Marc Antonio,” the Cardinal said, finding his favorite poets, Dante and Tasso. And he sat with his hands folded on the polished table, his lips moving silently as Tonio read the phrases softly, slowly, in a low voice.
A languor overcame Tonio. Years ago, in another lifetime, he had known hours such as these, when lulled by the sheer beauty of language, he had lost himself in a universe of exquisitely rendered images and ideas. He felt an unspoken closeness to the Cardinal suddenly; this was a realm that Tonio and Guido had never shared.
Yet Tonio was tentative in revealing himself. He was clever enough to know the Cardinal might have illusions that his lover was nothing but an urchin brought up by musicians and might want it to be so. There was anguish in the