The Right Hand Of The Father

chapter 34

He stalked the streets of New Orleans and tried to get his bearings. He'd gone to the Palais Hotel first and before he'd reached the door his stomach had lurched. It was where he'd taken Alexander to spoil him. The hotel suite he'd stayed in the night before he'd gone to retrieve the boy from the docks. The place he'd brought Alexander to celebrate the boy giving himself to him.

A honeymoon of a sorts he'd called it when he'd told Alexander they were going to New Orleans that morning. A big, soft bed and every luxury at their fingertips. A place where they could be alone and revel in their love.

His chest hurt thinking about those few brief days when he was certain that their lives would be better. That his own life would be better.

He had a boy to love him and he would wake up each morning to warm brown eyes and a willing body next to him. A boy to kiss him and love him and that he could spoil. A boy who would be with him until the last time he closed his eyes and went to his maker.

Then he had found that it wasn't just an illusion of happiness, he had somehow opened a door to his own hell. His boy was not a boy but his son and the love he had for Alexander? Not only was that love a sin but it would destroy them both.

He had become a monster that the George Washington of Virginia would refuse to associate with. A man he would cross the street to avoid. Who he would give the cut direct to.

He'd spent all those years in Virginia afraid that someone would find out what he was. His sins. The way he craved male flesh the same as he did female. The way his eyes lingered. Even though he never touched it was like a brand on his skin. Pull his clothes away and everyone would be able to see it, there on his chest, Sodomite. He'd gone to Williamsburg for business or to sit in the House of Burgess and he'd see those pretty boys and he'd know what they were about. Know that they weren't just in taverns to play cards and drink. That their jests held something deeper. And his eyes would linger. His eyes would linger and his mind would race with fantasies of what those boys would be like under his hands. How they would taste against his tongue. The sounds they would make as he pushed inside them and stroked his hands along their body. And he would escape. Go back to the small home he kept in Williamsburg and take himself in hand and think about what those boys would be like. Would stroke himself until completion and then he would do as the doctor he'd once consulted with in secret had suggested and continue until the feel of his own hand brought him nothing but pain. Yet the pleasure from such thoughts never left him.

Then they'd come here and in New Orleans such things were illegal but not considered immoral. Men did not judge and he had gone to his first house and found himself with a boy and for the first time in his life he had not felt guilty. Had not felt dirty or wrong or shameful. Just because he preferred variety in his bed partners did not make him a deviant. He was not that sort.

He was respectable. A planter. A man of property who was shown respect wherever he went. A good man. An honest man who was good at business. A man that other men wanted to associate themselves with. He was a man like any other man, he just enjoyed a bit more variety in his sexual conquests than others.

Except he wasn't. He had fooled even himself. For he wasn't a respectable man. He was not a man who deserved respect. Was not like other men. He was a deviant. A monster. A predator.

He had fornicated with his own son. And while he might be forgiven for it if the other men of the Territory were to find out, they would only forgive so much. He would be forgiven for everything he'd done before he knew Alexander's parentage. After all, what man would expect that the son he'd paid good money to have fostered would then be sold back to him as a slave? A slave that Thom Stevens— a man he'd thought was his friend— had told him directly to sell to a molly house for he was no better than a whore? No man would blame him for taking such a boy as Alexander to his bed.