Jack Edwards
jnuanced@gmail.com

Waisen 8

We went looking for Heinrich again that day, Sunday, and again, we didn’t find him. By then, the men of the house knew about Heinrich being missing, and several of them helped with the search.

Nigel and I talked to the police, to the military police, and to the hospitals. Because of our work, Nigel and I knew many people at those places, and they promised to let us know right away if they found Heinrich for us. Peter stayed at my side, and each time we got a negative answer, he looked even more discouraged. My heart went out to him; I could imagine how I’d feel if something happened to Günter or Alby. I kept an arm over his shoulder and encouraged him as much as I could.

At dinner that evening, Peter sat to my left between Nigel and me. Willie climbed into Nigel’s lap; Siggy had climbed into Peter’s. Both boys ate off their host’s plate. They enjoyed doing that, and everyone let them.

The happy four-year-old in Peter’s lap seemed to be good therapy for him. I was grateful. From time to time, I gave the back of Peter’s neck a rub, just letting him know we loved him.

As we were finishing our food, Bruno and Günter came to our end of the table.

“Peter not have ceremonial bath,” Bruno said. He glanced at Günter. “Günter and me say… you give him bath.” He looked right at me.

I glanced at Günter in surprise. Günter came around behind my chair on the right and hugged my neck from behind. “Bruno tell me… I angel Hagan, you angel Peter,” he whispered. “I… still… love you. You love me. O-K?”

It seemed a simple formula, at least for twelve and fourteen-year-olds. I glanced left, at Peter. The scholarly-looking fourteen-year-old had his head down, looking at little Siggy, but he had heard.

“Peter may not be in the mood for a ceremonial bath,” I speculated.

Peter sat there, looking down at the top of Siggy’s head. Without saying a word, he reached for my hand and took it while pressing his lips to Siggy’s fine hair.

I knew Peter was truly grieving. I was grieving with him. And yet, my cock stirred. I couldn’t help it. I think, all along, as much as Peter wanted me, I perhaps wanted him, and now, perhaps, he wanting intimacy with me for comfort. Peter needed me. And these days, Günter was sleeping nights with Zeppelin and Hagan.

Günter hugged my neck hard. He and Bruno may have talked it over, but I wondered how much Günter really agreed with me having sex with Peter. But he’d opened the door now, at least in my imagination, and any willpower I had began to crumble.

Honestly Peter did need me; I had no doubt of that. However, it wasn’t strictly noble intentions that led me to squeeze Peter’s hand, even while I patted Günter’s arms around my neck. Peter, in his scholarly way, was a very attractive fourteen-year-old, at least to me, and by that point, my erection had begun to extend down my leg.

Comfort sex, grief sex… I’ve heard it called different things. But sometimes in grief, you need intimacy.

Peter and I barely looked at each other as we climbed the stairs after dinner. There were times when twenty-two doesn’t feel all that much older than fourteen. This was going to be a whole lot different than with Günter or Alby, or even my brief ride with Bruno.

I got us towels and took him to the top floor bathroom, which we could lock; the new bathroom attic was too public. Neither of us said a word as I started warm water running into the tub. I stood up, coming behind him. I pulled off his sweater, and then unbuttoned his shirt from behind. There was a mirror over the sink; a bigger one than many bathrooms had back then. We were both facing it.

The top of Peter’s head came roughly to my lips. Shirtless, he was marvelously slender. Our eyes met in the mirror and he leaned back into my arms. He closed his eyes as I held him, and he leaned his head back on my shoulder. I kissed the side of his face and neck, and with my hands on his belly, I pulled his bottom back against my hardness. He wrapped his hands over mine. My eyes dropped to the reflection of his pants in the mirror; they were thickly tented.

I slid my hands lower down his belly, unfastening his trousers and lowering his zipper. Then I pushed his trousers down off his hips, watching in the mirror; he wore no underwear. His cock sprang up heavy. It was a good, thick cock; long for a boy his size and age. His small pubic patch excited me; obviously, neither Günter nor Alby had one. I ran my fingers into it. Peter, head back on my shoulder, moaned and his cock twitched. I grabbed it.

It was hot, actually hot, and so incredibly large after Günter’s and Alby’s; much larger than even Bruno’s. In the few months I’d known him, it had grown, and I had gotten used to only boy’s cocks. I had the brief thought that it was no wonder Peter could earn money on the street.

He wasn’t an athlete, but he was lean. Just under the skin of his belly, I could see the seams of his abdominal muscles as he breathed and as he arched back against me because I was stroking his cock. The muscles of his abdominal plate formed a flat ‘V’ as they dove to his cock, and I ran the fingers of my other hand in the creases between them and the inside of his legs.

He moaned and shifted. His stomach clinched.

I wrapped both arms around him, one high and one low, and I hugged him back to me. I ground my erection against his bottom through my pants. Then keeping one arm around his chest, I stepped back a foot so I could take a look at his bottom. It was smooth as a baby’s butt… no… smoother, but lean and lightly muscled like the rest of him. I ran my hand over one globe, cupping it. His skin was so soft, and yet, he had muscles in his butt.

I came around to Peter’s front and dropped to my knees. His cock rose past my face as I untied his shoes and removed them, then his socks, then his pants. I ran my hands over his thin legs. I buried my face between them and under his cock, and I took a deep breath.

Peter’s hands closed behind my head, and gently held me as I nuzzled his soft, moist balls and his under shaft. The skin of his belly and inside his thighs was incredibly smooth as well, and yet, again, Peter’s belly was taut and his slender thighs, firm. I roamed over everything with my hands. Now that Peter and I were finally doing this, I wasn’t going to hold back.

The three years of age that Peter had on Günter showed everywhere, in every limb and muscle. His smell was rich, too. I took another deep breath between his legs.

Peter dropped to his knees, facing me, hands on my shoulders. He pressed his crotch to mine so that his erection pointed out to the side between us, and pressed my own hardness through my pants. “You like me, Michael?” he asked.

“You know I do.”

“I mean… “ He took my hand and placed it on his butt. “… do you like my body?”

“Yes,” I told him, pulling on his butt with both hands, pulling our hardnesses together. “Yes.”

Peter looked into my eyes and unfastened my shirt, then pulled it from the waistband of my pants. He slipped it back off my shoulders, kissing my shoulder as I let the shirt fall to the floor behind me. We slipped our arms around each other, pulling the bare skin of our bellies and chests together. I kissed him. It was a tender kiss; a friend’s kiss… I really had always liked him.

Peter laid his head on my shoulder and pressed his forehead into the side of my neck. I held him in my arms, rocking him slightly. And in that moment, amidst all the heat and desire, I felt a fresh surge of compassion and affection for my young friend, and I let myself feel it. I let it rise in me, and flow through me, and into my arms. I let him feel my compassion.

He melted into me.

And then I remembered the water. “The tub is getting full,” I murmured.

Peter reached between us, unfastening my trousers. He reached into them, into my briefs, and closed his hand around my erection, and he held it while he kissed inside my neck. I bent my face down toward his. Our lips met, and he opened his mouth under mine.

Peter managed to push my pants down, even while we kissed, and we pressed our upright erections between our bellies.

“Michael,” he whispered. “I’ve always liked your body, too.”

I got up from the floor, and stepping from my pants. I crossed to the tub and turned off the water. Then I returned to Peter, and this time, I laid him back on the wooden floor, and I lay down facing him, sliding an arm under his head as our legs interlaced. I held him to me, his face nuzzled into my neck.

Our hips pressed forward; we ground our cocks against each other. Peter’s hands clutched at my back. “Fuck me, Micheal,” he whispered. “Do it with me on my back, the way you do to Günter.” He rolled to his back; tugging me onto him.

I moved over him, finding that there is a world of difference between the feel of a boy and that of a youth. I loved Günter, and that love made our lovemaking perfect. But Peter’s body, his longer legs and arms, his thicker cock and heavier balls, his eyes that looked back at me with the intelligence of a street-wise fourteen-year-old boy, and with desire… the desire of an aroused youth. His body was even hot like mine, and I thought of the phrase, ‘hot with desire’, realizing for the first time that such heat truly is physical.

We wrapped each other up, belly to belly, tightly with me on top. He wrapped his legs around my waist, and I found him with my cock, using only the lubrication of my precum to ease myself in. I was hard as steel, and his practiced butt accepted me. I went flat on him, and we tightened into a writhing, mouth-on-mouth knot of muscle and sinew and flesh. I let myself go to passion the way I never had with Günter or Alby, and under me, Peter’s passion was as abandoned as mine.

It was athletic sex, and powerful. We plunged into it with the need to forget everything else. Peter may have looked the scholar, but the boy was a lover, and he moved with me, intoxicatingly. His insides felt as though they caressed my cock.

We groaned. We gasped. We clutched at each other. Peter’s heels dug into my butt, and I thrust deeply as I could. He wanted me deeper. He drove me on. It was wild. I’d never had sex like that.

We ended breathlessly, sweating, oozing cum inside and out. We rubbed our cheeks together, and I understood how men could desire sex with youths like Peter. I collapsed onto him. “Oh, damn!” I murmured.

We bathed each other, and had sex again in the tub. When we came from the bath, I saw that Günter had bedded that night with Hagan and Zeppelin. They lay together, talking. Alby was once more with his brother Franz, and with Reinhart. The three boys were looking at a comic book together.

Most of the boys in the attic were still awake. Two were playing chess while other boys watched. We threaded our way through the boys to my bed. Peter crawled into bed with me, and I held him. Ignoring the others, we made love again. And again later that night, more than once.

I gave ourselves to each other, completely. We were an island, alone, and the night was endless.

Between bouts of lovemaking, and Peter’s slender body rested against my own. I ran my hand up and down his firm back and over his silky bottom, and felt deeply satisfied – that deep in the gut satisfaction when you’ve made love and your lover clings languidly to you – and it took a force of will to remember Günter, and the feel of his younger body on mine. Peter was intoxicating; Peter could be an addiction. I remember lying there, and reminding myself that someday Günter would be fourteen; someday he would have such a body, and be capable of such passions.

And yet, things would be different with Peter now. We had made love. I would love Peter more now, no longer holding myself back when he needed me. Peter belonged home with us. It was Günter who belonged in my bed, and Alby for now. But Peter and I would do this again.

I was only semi-conscious at work the next day, Monday. It was difficult to concentrate; I was so sleepy.

When I arrived home, it took a moment for the good news to register – Heinrich had showed up. He came in the morning.

But Heinrich, normally such a happy boy, was quiet, and wouldn’t talk about where he’d been. We didn’t press him to find out; not that night. We simply let him know how glad we all were that he was home. No one was happier than Peter, who hugged me with all his strength as soon as I came in, as grateful as if I had been the one who found Heinrich.

Nigel had been home earlier, heard the good news, and left. He returned, shortly after I got home, with a nice-size cake he’d managed to buy somewhere. We made a celebration for Heinrich that evening.

The boys took Heinrich to the upstairs bathroom him his ceremonial washing as well. Those first bathings ministered to lost boys’ spirits. The boys knew that, and that fact, as much as sex, was reason the boys were so adamant to provide them. Those welcoming baths bonded the new boy to the group and healed as well as welcomed. Heinrich needed healing that night. Bruno organized the bath, as usual. He included Günter, and Oscar, and of course, Peter, who would be Heinrich’s angel.

After only a moment, Bruno came out, calling for Nigel and me. “Come!” he called. “Heinrich need you.”

The boy had welts on his butt, the back of his legs, his lower back. We cleaned them carefully and applied salve. Then Nigel and I left the boys to their ministering.

While they bathed, Alby and I made up my bed with clean sheets, and made a bed for ourselves on the floor. We would give Peter and Heinrich my bed that night.

“We must find out who did it,” Nigel said.

I agreed. “And tell the police.”

But Heinrich wouldn’t tell us. Nigel and I reminded each other that these boys grew up under the Nazis. They didn’t trust authorities. Later, when we found out who it was that had done that to Heinrich, we understood even better.

The allies left many German police in place, and this man was among them. There were rumors, though, that he was actually former SS. A few months later, when the man disappeared, creating a local newspaper story or two, Heinrich finally told us it was him. The man had picked him up off the street, and kept him captive, almost not letting Heinrich go. After that, neither Heinrich nor Peter had any desire to work the street.

I was glad they were home. We needed them, especially since at the end of March, Nigel found out he was about to head home to England for discharge.

I loved Günter. My night with Peter hadn’t changed that; not after I could think clearly again. Nor had my love for little Alby changed. He was becoming slightly less of a lap puppy and even more of an active boy, playing with the other boys. But he was with me every night, and our sex play had become really enjoyable. We had our own positions which worked great between an eight and a twenty-two year old, like belly to belly, only reversed so that he rubbed his little dick on my chest while sucking and playing with my cock, and while I played with his little butt and legs.

I knew how to drive Alby crazy sucking his dick, and if he fell asleep while I still needed to come, I held him, rubbing my cock in his crack until I came between my belly and his back, and then I held him as I fell asleep. He was a morning boy, and because he loved to rub his stiffies on me, I often woke to him wiggling on my butt or leg. Each time, I made him pay for waking me, with tickles and laughs. We wrestled in the morning and smuggled at night. I’ll always look back on that time as the time Alby and I became… us.

Though Günter continued to spend his nights with nine-year-old Zeppelin and ten-year-old Hagan, he returned to spending many days with me at work, and to his self-appointed chores, taking care of me.

After three weeks or so, he returned to bed with me and Alby; first only a night or two at a time, and then more and more regularly. He still had sex with other boys, and not just at ceremonial washings, and not just with Hagan and Zeppelin. One Saturday afternoon in early April. I hadn’t seen Günter in a while and went looking for him. I’d searched the entire house when, glancing down the hall, I saw him and a dark-haired boy who was Bruno’s age come out of the bathroom together. Their furtive looks as they came out, said it all, as did Günter’s deep blush when he saw me.

He was twelve, I reminded myself. It was to be expected. It was play for them. Hell, perhaps it was to be expected of older guys as well; males in general. I didn’t let it bother me… much.

Günter avoided me the rest of the day and said little when we were together. That night, he waited until Alby was asleep before coming to bed. Then he stood by the bed until I pulled him into it. He clung to me, face buried in my chest. “We find our own house, Michael, you and me. We go where it is only you and me.”

I held him to me. “I’ve thought of that, angel” I told him. “I thought of us moving away. But what about the boys? Nigel has to go back to England soon. What about the boys?”

Günter nodded, and rubbed the side of his face against mine. We kissed hard, and we made love hard and passionately for us, because it was us.

I borrowed a car for the weekend. The first signs of spring had begun to arrive. The weather was fair, and I took Günter for a drive, just the two of us, into the countryside. I felt guilty for not taking Alby, but Nigel promised to keep him busy. Saturday night, I found an inn, and we slept alone together for the first time in months. Even better were the two days, simply me and Günter, laughing, being out, and being together.

Günter wasn’t the only one who’s eye strayed. I don’t mean to imply that. It was difficult for me, too. I was twenty-two, going on twenty-three, and pretty well addicted to multiple, daily sex. The memory of my night with Peter was impossible to shake. When we were together, we touched each other often, and I learned quickly that all I had to do was let the touch linger to start a fire.

Heinrich had been back only a week, when, one Sunday afternoon, everyone was out playing soccer, and I was alone at the kitchen table, writing letters home. Peter came into the kitchen and sat beside me.

“A letter to your mother?” he asked, laying a hand on my thigh.

“Yeah,” I said, laying the side of my thigh against his.

We sat there for a moment, my pen not moving, and then I dropped it, turning to him. We kissed, passionately, and headed for the nearest bathroom.

That happened three times before I told Günter. He took it in stride… almost too easily, and that’s when I figured he was doing something similar with another boy or two.

All the sex in the attic, didn’t make it easy to keep our eyes and thoughts where they belonged. Every night, I saw boys having sex whether I wanted to or not. Nigel’s bed was like center stage. I’d had sex with Bruno that one time, and I liked watching him. There were times when Bruno and I teased each other sexually. It made me think we would have sex again.

And then there was Nigel. We’d been friends from the day we met, and now we were in a partnership; parents of sort for these boys. It was a partnership that kept us constantly in each other’s company. From his touches and his looks, I knew that Nigel still wanted to make love with me. He had a compact body, and most nights I could glance over at his bed and see Nigel between Bruno’s slender legs, or Oscar’s, pumping away. I knew I would enjoy sex with Nigel, especially since we were such dear friends.

When Nigel and I were working side-by-side on something and our shoulders bumped, or when we passed in the hallway and brushed, there was a little charge, a little like with Peter. I’d catch Nigel looking at my crotch, or find my eyes dropping to his butt. But we did nothing to follow up on it, and the longer we didn’t, the more unlikely it seemed that we ever would.

Then word came in late April that Nigel was to be returned to England for discharge. He told me when we were sitting beside the street watching the boys play soccer. Willie was in his lap, but Willie didn’t speak English. Before we knew what to tell the boys, I though we should know Nigel’s schedule. I asked what he was going to do after his discharge, meaning, in England before his return to us.

“I’m not sure, old chap,” he said, not looking at me. “Maybe I should look for a good job before they’re all taken.”

I laughed, mirthlessly. “As if you’d leave Bruno and Oscar.”

“I’ve applied for visas for them. The adoption papers can follow us over.”

I studied him. He kept his eyes on the boys, expressionless.

“You are joking, aren’t you?” I asked. “You are coming back? There’s going to be jobs over here for a long, long time… and the boys need you.”

Nigel said nothing, simply watching the boys play. I knew his thoughts. I’d had some of the same; that the whole world was moving on without us while we babysat war orphans. I’d made my decision, though, and I thought Nigel had made his. His discharge would be taking him home, though, and that could change everything, especially if he could take Bruno and Oscar with him.

I looked away. There was a catch in my throat. I was tired, and I honestly had no idea how we would make it without Nigel… how I would make it without him.

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I've finished the rough draft; ending in eleven chapters. :) Let me know if you enjoyed this chapter. :) My email address is jnuanced@gmail.com, and thanks for all the encouragement!