Chapter 1 – Chapter 1

Yorkshire, England, Late Summer, 1890

I felt the sting on my thigh and looked up to see that William had ridden up beside me and struck at me with his riding crop. I turned and twisted in the saddle and when he struck me again it was on the chest. Laughing, I gave my own horse the lash and its head and we were riding over the pastureland of Falconcroft, the castle hovering on the rise above the rolling terrain, me slightly in the lead and William behind me.

I made for a stand of trees down by where the river laced through the Harkwoods' Yorkshire country estate and pulled up there, well inside the cover of the foliage. William rode up beside me, embraced me with one arm, his hand gripping the back of my neck and pulling me up from the saddle. He was florid, in heat. His face loomed in front of me, and he took my mouth in his in a brutal kiss. He bit me on the lip, raising a trickle of blood at the corner of my mouth. "Enough of the teasing," he commanded. Three times more the crop struck at my ass, pulled up from the saddle, as he forced his tongue inside my mouth again in a breathtaking kiss.

Pulling away from him, I was off again, across the fields, headed toward one of the remote horse barns on the property hidden in a fold of a gully below and just out of sight of the castle. William was in pursuit, but my horse was faster and I was younger and lighter. I got to the barn before he did and had time to dismount, pull the saddle off the horse, and release the horse into the enclosed pasture by the barn before turning and entering the dimly lit building. William must have done the same with his horse when he reached the barn, as when he entered, he was carrying the saddle from his horse.

I had used the time to pick out a spot, a hay bale back in the shadows—I agreed that the time for teasing was past and I welcomed what was to come—but William obviously had a contrary idea. He lifted and set his saddle on top of a five-foot slatted wooden partition between two horse stalls and then turned and advanced on me. He was between me and the door to the barn, but that didn't mean much to me. I wasn't planning on going anywhere. It would have been useless to struggle against him even if I intended to do so, which I didn't. He was taller and bulkier than I was—he had me by a good sixty pounds and fifteen years.

I did, teasingly, try a feint around him to the open barn door, but he caught me with a lash of his riding crop on my chest, and when I staggered, he grabbed and pulled me to him, taking me into another possessing kiss. I opened to him immediately, returning the kiss hungrily as he grabbed at my balls through the thin material of my riding breeches. I gasped as he squeezed them—squeeze and release, squeeze and release. He slapped me hard across the mouth, threw me to the ground, and struck at me twice more with the riding crop. There wasn't enough force behind the blows of the crop to be damaging. They were more a declaration of domination—an intent to take; an intent to take hard.

It was clear that my role in this was to be the whimpering, helpless submissive—not a role I usually played, but I was in high heat for the man. I wanted something different as a bottom than I wanted as a top. Few men aroused the need in me to bottom for another man. This man did.

Moaning, I attempted to curl up into a ball but he was leaning down, pulling me up, throwing me over his shoulder, and marching to the wall where he had hung his saddle. He easily lifted my body and set my belly down on the saddle, my torso draped over one side and my legs hanging down on the other. I didn't fight it. My role was to submit.

Somewhere he had come up with leather straps. He came around to the front of me, grabbed my wrists, one after the other, and tied them down on the wooden slats of the wall below me.

"Please don't," I murmured, with a whisper, knowing he wanted me to beg that much and knowing that he'd just laugh, which he did.

On the other side of the stall, he jerked off my boots and then my riding breeches and underdrawers. He tied off my ankles on that side of the wall as he'd done with my wrists on the other side. I, of course, lay there, limp, trembling for him, murmuring empty objections, but letting him have his way.

He hit me repeatedly on the bare buttocks with the riding crop, and I groaned and cried out with each sting of the lash, writhing as best as I could. Embarrassingly, though, I was crying for the lash as much as against it and begging him to fuck me. I subsided into moans and gasps as his mouth and fingers went to opening up and preparing my ass. I relaxed my anus and passage, as I well knew how to do, and opened quickly to him. I hoped it was enough, and it proved to be. He was vigorous but not oversized. I had taken champion cocks from bruising men.

Climbing the slatted partition with hands and feet on either side of my draped body, he set his feet in the opening in the slats near the top of the wall, worked his cock inside me as I both cried out at the violation and begged him to go deeper. Riding my ass high, like we were in a race for the gold, and he the jockey and me the thoroughbred, he rose and fell on my ass, lashing away at my rump and thighs with his riding crop, picking up speed, depth, and intensity. He was experienced. Size didn't prove to be an issue. He both knew to give the prostate extra attention and how to kiss all sides of the channel walls as he stroked in long, hard, cruel thrusts.

We both trumpeted our coming, he deep inside me and me against the saddle. I whimpered and sighed as he dismounted and kissed my blushing buttocks repeatedly and ran his fingers over the welts he had raised there. He then untied my wrists and ankles, said, "Cheerio. You're a jolly good lay. I enjoyed that. No more teasing now," and strode out of the barn.

I lay there, stretched over the saddle, for a few moments more, both moaning at and reveling in the forceful taking. I only rarely played the submissive, but this was well worth the ride. The American author and composer had seemed more diffident than this earlier, and I'd thought that my teasing would lead to me being dominant. But he proved to be a firecracker and to know just the right parameters of pain and pleasure that would excite me.

Groaning, I pulled myself down from the wall, gingerly pulling on my underdrawers, riding breeches, and boots after carefully running my hands over the welts that weren't too bad and probably would disappear before we all had to gather in the drawing room before supper. Still, there would be a memory of this afternoon in the sting I'd still feel in sitting at the dining table. When I got to the door of the barn, William Bowles was covering the distance between the barn and the main house of Falconcroft, a great pile of Gothic stone appended to a medieval castle keep, at the top of the rise. He was flicking his riding crop against his leg as he jauntily walked along. I moaned at the remembrance of the dominance and slight cruelty of the man I'd only known since the formal and tame luncheon on the lawn earlier in the day. I wondered how he knew I'd take and harden for the lash and lie under him.

* * * *

"I urge you to accept your uncle's invitation to be his secretary for the season in Tangier. I don't like what I hear coming from London these days." Lady Cybil, Lord Harkwood's sister and, not incidentally, my mother, had pulled me to the side of the drawing room during cocktails before dinner. She was looking very distraught, and I wanted nothing more than to assure her.

"He asked as soon as I arrived this morning," I answered. "And of course I said yes. It's very generous of him. The salary is more than satisfactory."

"Good. He's as steady as they come, is Sydney," she said. "He will be a good influence on you, and Tangier should be far enough from London."

For enough from London for what. But, ah, then the London gossip had reached out to Yorkshire, I thought. Who would have thought that such news would travel so far so fast. I'd only been with the group for a few months now. I could see why Mother was worried. I didn't want her to be. Life had been rough for her these last two years. Widowed—tragically—she now was living almost full time under her brother's wing here at Falconcroft. I had still been at Oxford when my father shot himself. It was publicized as a gun-cleaning accident, of course, but everyone knew better. He'd gone bankrupt, having put all of his money into trying to develop what they called a motor car, a somewhat noxious, in many regards, notion that had had no place in England at the close of the nineteenth century. Let the Americans drive down that rat hole, many here said, and I must say I agreed with them.

My relations with my father always had been strained. I worshipped him, of course. He was a handsome man, as all Wilsons were, and perfectly formed, and, I can openly think about it now, massively endowed—as all Wilsons undoubtedly were. But he was an angry man, fast to use the cane. Where many would remember moments of affection from their father, I remember moments of the cane. As I moved into puberty I, surprisingly, found that the cane made me go hard. But those were moments, at least when he paid attention to me. I confess that I sometimes committed sins just for the attention it got me from my father. When I got older and he was still using the cane, I realized that it made him hard too. In that regard, I felt I had a certain amount of control over his emotions.

When I was sent off to public school, I endured the cane rather less—in contrast to most of my fellow students—than I did at home. Perhaps the combination of the man I worshipped and his use of the cane was responsible for . . . but there was no need to dwell on that—especially there, in the drawing room, where I was grateful that men stood while women were permitted to sit. I had not completely recovered from a smarting ass, thanks to William Bowles, who was standing across the room and guffawing with my uncle.

"Perhaps when you're in Tangier you will catch your uncle's archaeology bug," my mother went on to say. "That's a noble pastime."

What she meant was that she didn't like what I was up to London, which it was obvious now that she'd had reports of. It wasn't just Oscar and Alfred and Robert, or Bosie and Robbie, as I knew the latter two as. It was the whole arts thing. Oscar—Oscar Wilde—of course was the anchor of our little group. Robbie and Bosie, Robert Ross and Lord Alfred Douglas, nearly the same age as I was, were the major spokes from Oscar's hub, even closer in with Oscar than I and a few others were. It was all quite tidy. I fucked Robbie and Bosie, and Oscar fucked us all. And he didn't just physically fuck us; he fucked us with his witty prose as he rode our asses.

Assuaged, Mother drifted away and Uncle Sydney, with William Bowles and a very pregnant, small, mousey-looking woman in tow, moved in my direction.

"There you are, Gregory," Lord Harkwood said as he approached. He was a very hardy soul, was my mother's brother. A good bit older than mother and the issue of a different wife, he was florid, large boned—ever moving toward, but not quite at, obesity. Even at something past fifty, his hair was flaming red and his manner was what could be termed an amused gruffness. In other words, the classical country squire. He spoke in louder decibels than anyone else in the room, probably the result of a refusal to wear a device that would enhance his faltering hearing. He wasn't a soft man, by any means. Although heavy, he was more muscle and gristle than fat, a man who obviously spent most of his time in the outdoors engaged in one blood sport or the other.

In contrast, the man he was shepherding over to me was the perfect university don type. He was even dressed the part, his dinner tux looking awkward on his body to the point of hiding how well I now knew his body was fashioned. The horn-rimmed glasses he wore and the diffident nature he was exuding emphasized the isolated scholar impression he made.

"I wish you to meet William Bowles, the novelist and composer. He's from America, but he married locally. This is my nephew, Gregory Wilson," Lord Harkwood said as he pulled Bowles toward me with a beefy hand on his forearm.

"It's Billy, call me Billy," Bowles said, as he looked at me as if nothing had happened that afternoon.

"Oh, we've met already," I said and was gratified to see the trace of concern rush across Bowles' face. He no doubt wondered if I'd expose him here in civilized company. He had told me "no more teasing," but could keep him guessing. "At luncheon," I added, putting the man out of his misery. "You were off at your golf club, Uncle. Luncheon was laid out on the lawn. It was very nice." And later I was laid in the barn, I thought—which also was very nice. "We even rode together this afternoon." At least Billy rode me.

"You ride?" Lord Harkwood said, turning to Bowles and perhaps wondering that a man such as Bowles was presently presenting spent any time outside a library at all.

"Yes, I do," Bowles responded.

To which I couldn't resist adding, "And he rides really well. He's an excellent rider. And he is an expert with the crop."

Bowles gave me a little smile, sharing now in the double entendre, realizing no doubt that I had no intention of giving him away. I was having too much fun.

"Oh, and his wife, Patricia," Lord Harkwood said, pulling the bulbously pregnant little woman forward.

"I didn't know Billy was married," I said, trying to keep the acid in my voice for Bowles' recognition only and trying my best not to append "to a woman" to that sentence. I wasn't having quite as much fun now. "I didn't see her at lunch."

"She went to her parents' house first, in the village," Bowles quickly explained.

"And do you engage in riding as well?" I asked, turning to Bowles' wife and trying to keep a straight face. Considering the bulge of her stomach, unless Bowles was being cuckolded, she was fully engaged in riding with him.

"Yes, of course. But not just now, as you can see."

"So Billy has to do his riding with someone else for the present," I said.

"It would appear so," Patricia said, and we all politely laughed.

Before I could think of a way to torture Bowles further, the village vicar came over. "Patricia, I'd like you to meet Dr. Sturbridge. He'll be following your progress."

"I would like to meet him too. I'll come with you," Bowles said. Then, with a bow to Lord Harkwood and a shot of his own at me, "I enjoyed our ride this afternoon; I look forward to being able to do it again—perhaps on more vigorous terrain next time," he was gone.

The dinner gong rang, but before we went in, my uncle said to me, "You didn't bring your man John with you. Will you need one of my footman to dress you?"

"I managed for dinner, but, yes, that would be helpful," I answered. "Charles has served me before. Perhaps—"

"Then Charles it will be," Lord Harkwood said, as we paired up in traditional order to go in to dinner.

We ate in the family dining room, but the room still seemed cavernous for our group of ten. The top of the table was adequately lit by candelabras on the table top and hanging from the ceiling, but the light was dimmer below that, which, in my case hid a certain amount of sin. The table could easily accommodate twenty. Lord and Lady Harkwood took up the opposing ends, as was fitting. They were a warring couple. Margery Lady Harkwood was tall, dark, thin, quiet, spare of speech, and hawkish to Lord Sydney Harkwood's florid robust blustering. Margery was American. Her family was floating in manufacturing money, which had made her the savior of Falconcroft from the land tax. The two did get along, but best at the nearly forty feet that separated them now at the table.

I was seated at Lord Harkwood's left, with Billy Bowles on the other side of me. My mother was sitting across from me, on her brother's right. The lord filled me in on the rest of the guests. Seated next to Bowles was his wife, Patricia, and then her father, the vicar. That explained a bit, I realized, which Billy confirmed to me in conversation. Patricia was from here and had returned here to give birth at her parents' home. Billy wouldn't be here for the birth, although he didn't tell me where he'd be.

I knew where he wanted to be, though. During the meal, he periodically—when the three footmen weren't serving us—placed his heel on top of my foot in the darkness under the table and ground it in, reminding me what he could be when he wasn't acting the role of shy professor. When the footmen were serving us, he pulled away. As counterpoint, when Charles was serving me, I gave him a special smile and brushed his sleeve with mine as he hovered over me. Charles had been raised and trained at Falconcroft. He was a year and a half younger than my twenty-one years, but we had been playmates when I visited Falconcroft and had made some discoveries of life together. In the last year, the play had become quite intimate. I, of course, always took the lead and played from on top.

Dr. Sturbridge, the village doctor, was seated on Margery's left, with the vicar's wife beside him, and then, between her and my uncle, sat my mother.

As with any semiformal meal in one of the big country houses, this meal was replete with landmines, most of which burst below the surface and were not openly acknowledged.

"Nephew Gregory here has agreed to serve as secretary for me this season in Tangier," Harkwood announced to the table.

"Has he?" Margery said, looking up sharply. "You hadn't told me you were taking the fall in Tangier again, Sydney."

"I always take the season in Tangier," the lord answered back. "I hate late fall in England. You know that, Margery."

"I think it's wonderful Gregory will be going with Sydney," my mother piped up. "He needs to get away from London, and Sydney will be such a good influence on him—and the chance to see exotic Tangier. He'll learn a lot there."

"Will he?" Margery said, this time looking pointedly at my mother. I wondered what Margery had heard about Tangier. I certainly had heard about Tangier. I was somewhat surprised my uncle went there, but then the archaeological dig that he had a firman—an authorizing document—for was there, west of Tangier, a temple to Apollo, so that would explain that.

"Yes, I think the study of archaeology will be so much better than what he's been engaging in in London," my mother said. Then she clamped her mouth shut as if she'd said what she was thinking too openly.

"In exotic Tangier?" Margery asked. I could hear a snort in her voice, but she too didn't press the subject further.

"Oh, you live in London?" the vicar asked, looking down the table at me. That was quite disconcerting at the moment—being addressed by a vicar, when, between course services, Bowles' hand was in my lap, covered by the darkness under the table, and he was crushing my nuts with his fist. He already had had me panting by tracing my engorging cock through the material of my crotch. "What is it you do there?" the vicar continued.

"I'm studying poetry and putting my hand to some playwriting," I answered, trying not to make my voice show the exquisite pain of the strain being put on my balls—or go up two octaves from Billy's attempt to castrate me. Mercifully, Billy took his hand away, as the footmen were appearing bearing the next course.

"Ah, you have a mentor there?" the doctor chimed in. "I hear the arts scene in London is quite lively at the moment."

I opened my mouth to speak, but my mother hijacked a conversation that was getting too close to what she wanted avoided. "I hear an art exhibit is being added to the village fall faire this year, Dorothy." She was addressing the vicar's wife, who had been given an opening to discuss the faire and the part that Lord and Lady Harkwood could take in that this year. "Well, Lady Harkwood will be there, I guess. I guess you will be off on your dig, Lord Harkwood."

Billy turned to me and said, in sotto voce, "Do you think anyone will notice we're gone if we slip out of our chairs and I fuck you under the table? Would you make too much noise when I was inside you? Would you make more noise if I fucked you with my fist?"

How could he look so harmlessly bookish and yet be so sensually bold?

"Behave," I muttered, prying at his hand that was squeezing my balls again, but he had a death grip on them, and I wound up relaxing the tension in my legs, letting them spread more, giving him a stronger grip on my nuts and the root of my cock, and just covering his hand with mine in surrender to him.

"Yes, I'll be doing some digging," Lord Harkwood answered the vicar's wife, all smiles.

"I want to do some digging too," Billy whispered.

"Keep it up and you won't get the chance again," I hissed.

"I have no trouble keeping it up," he shot back.

Luckily the glazed eyes of everyone else were turned toward a prattling vicar's wife. The plans for the faire carried them through the rest of dinner and out of the minefield. As the dessert arrived, a pudding flambé, which added light to the scene, Bowles released my balls and had both hands above the table, all innocence, as Charles came by to serve us.

While the vicar's wife rattled away happily over the coffee, Billy Bowles' heel came down on my foot again and he murmured, sotto voce, "As I hear it Oscar Wilde is your mentor—in the arts and other matters."

"Yes," I answered. "But where did you? . . . we do try to be discreet."

"I do get to London fairly often. Oscar's activities are not nearly discreet enough—although not as flamboyant as Robert Ross and Alfred Douglas are being. This will come to a head sooner than later. You will be fortunate to be well away from it—not that Tangier is away from it in some respects."

"I believe I am discreet enough," I countered. "I have women too in London. I fuck women."

"Bully for you. Don't we all? Wilde is married as well and father of two, and he is headed for trouble anyway. It's the modern way with the privileged, you know. Did you know that your uncle has a mistress in London—an actress?"

"What if he does? Men have had mistresses as far back in time in England as can be recorded, and not just men of privilege. Take a look at Margery. You would have a mistress too, wouldn't you, if you were married to her? I'm not sure why that's relevant."

"Ah, well, I'll not be the one to enlighten you, then. But where you are concerned, I also, in case you wonder, know Harold Mackelvoy."

"And you care because?" I asked. So that's how he knew I'd be so easy to approach in the way that Bowles had approached me this afternoon, I thought. Not just Oscar, but more specifically Harold Mackelvoy. Mackelvoy was a thug, a prize fighter in the grimmest part of London, who knew Wilde in some unknown connection. The point here was that Mackelvoy was who I went to when I was in the mood to be bruised and taken hard. He was a master of the whip and cane. Obviously he had told Bowles what I liked as a submissive. Knowing that he'd approached me with the knowledge of what I'd let him do didn't lessen my concern that I had enjoyed it as I had—and that I wanted him again.

"I care because I want another crack at you myself. And another one after that," Bowles muttered. He put his hand on my thigh briefly and squeezed. I'm sure he could feel me tremble under his touch. I wanted the hand on my crotch again.

"Your wife . . ."

"Is perfect camouflage."

"The baby?"

"Yes, I fucked it into her. You didn't ask, but this is our third one—in as many years. She can't get enough of me in bed. Are you jealous? You can't get enough of me, either, can you?"

I didn't respond, so he continued. "She will be here for the next several months—with all of the children—and I won't. I can come to London."

"As you heard, I'm going to Tangier."

"That's not an obstacle. And there's tonight. My wife is going to her parents', to be with our other children. I'm not. I'm leaving for London from here tomorrow."

I was going to ask what he meant by that, but Lord Harkwood was standing up from the table. It was time for the men and women to part and for the men to withdraw to the smoking room, with Billy and me going to opposite corners of the room. I suddenly was afraid of him—and afraid of myself with him. I had bought into separating from my loose life in London, which I could see was getting riskier as well as anyone else could see, and going off under the watchful eye of my staid uncle.

That night, I stood by the bed, as Charles undressed me.

"You came without your valet," he said.

"Yes, I have," I answered. I hadn't been able to tell my uncle that John no longer was with me. At the first whiff of scandal floating through London society, he'd asked for references and deserted me. I couldn't blame him. I could "chin up" the innuendo; a valet couldn't risk it unless he wanted to be painted with the same brush as his master. The two had to be intimate. As the master went so went the valet, was the conventional wisdom. "I wanted you to do for me," I added.

He was trembling and had gotten down to where I was just wearing my underdrawers.

"You have continued being very active, sir, I can see." He was complimenting me, I knew, on how toned I'd kept my body.

"You have as well. The underdrawers too, if you please, Charles."

He went down on his knees to pull them to the floor. "Will there be anything else?" he asked, looking up into my eyes.

"You know there is," I said. I was in half erection, which in my case, was something to behold. I reached down and pressed my cock against his cheek. Charles turned his head and opened his mouth over the shaft and began to suck it.

Fifteen minutes later he was under me on the bed, on his back, with a pillow under the small of his back and me lying between his spread legs, my cock a good five inches up inside him.

"You're tight. You're not giving it all to me. Open to me," I commanded.

"You are so big. I don't know if I can . . . oh, god. Oh, Fuck!"

I gave all of it to him, hard and deep, in three thrusts, and then pulled back as he was so tight it pained us both. He collapsed under me, with a moan. "Relax, open to me! Not so tight," I repeated, more soothingly this time.

Like a series of gates to the city opening in quick succession to accommodate a battering ram and avoid being shattered, the tension flowed out of him and his walls gave way. He groaned and moaned as I slid thick and deep inside him, and when I began to pump, he gripped my hips and moved with me—remembering as I did how we'd learned to do this together and had once perfected the rhythm of the fuck.

I fucked him slowly, tenderly, humming to him as he grimaced but told me with his eyes and murmured, "Yes, yes, yes, fuck me," to continue. He arched his back and alternated between clutching my shoulder blades and my buttocks, holding me close to him with his fingernails buried in my butt cheeks when I was pressing deep inside him, opening up new inches of his channel, and moving his hands back to my shoulder blades and moaning the want of the taking when I withdrew to rubbing his prostate with my bulb. He suffered at the beginning, from the size of me, so I frequently held for him to open more, but slowly his groans and grimaces melted into moans and sighs of passion, allowing me to stroke faster and deeper.

We kissed deeply and I moved my lips down his throat to latch onto his nipples, one after the other, and give them suck. I waited for him to beg for intensity and then I went hard, deep, fast, rocking the bed while he urged me to take him completely, fully, to heaven.

We moved in concert like the long-term lovers that we had been before I had moved more permanently to London, the groaning of the bed springs music to our ears. What I wanted, what I gave, as a top was far different from what I wanted as a bottom. Charles was the more tender lover of my awakening years; he wasn't the cruel father figure I longed to submit to.

As I creamed him deep with a muted victory exclamation, my peripheral vision focused on movement over by the door into my bed chamber. I caught a glimpse of Billy Bowles, in a dressing gown, at the open door. He took in what was happening on the bed, clicked the door shut, and was gone. I shuddered at the realization that he had had a cane in his hand along with leather straps that could be used as restraints.

"Sir, oh, sir," Charles murmured. His hand was encasing his cock, and his cum was gobbed on my belly.

"Shh, shh," I said. "Feel it? I'm hardening again. I've missed you, Charles."

"Oh, sir. Oh, OH!"

I had started to pump him again—slow, steady, deep.

Charles obviously couldn't stay the night. His day would start in a matter of just a few hours. I watched him redress in the light of a candle on my nightstand and walked him to the door to the corridor when he was dressed. We kissed and I stood in the doorway, holding the candle, as he slipped up the backstairs to the servants' rooms in the attic. When I turned to go back into my chamber, I saw that there was a light further down the hall. Billy Bowles. He was just in a dressing gown, as was I. I expected him to come down the hall toward me, and I would have received him in my room if he had. Instead, he gave me an expectant look, turned, and walked toward the main staircase.

I followed him. He descended the stairs, holding his candle, and moved into the family dining room. I descended the staircase as well and entered the dining room. His candle was sitting on the dining room table, but I didn't see him. I placed my candle next to his and turned, to find him standing close behind me, his dressing gown open, his cock in full erection. He had brought the cane and the leather straps.

He bent me over Lord Harkwood's chair at the table—sideways, so that I straddled one arm with my chest and the closer one with my belly. He tied my wrists to the chair legs on the other side from where my feet were on the carpet. I remained silent throughout the binding other than whimpering low with my eyes on the cane laying on top of the table. My dressing gown was gone, the sash was cruelly tightened around my head, gagging my mouth.

I moaned as he commenced caning my bare buttocks, thighs, and back. For some minutes the only sounds in the room were the swishing and crack of the cane, my gasps and moans as my body jerked within its confining bindings, and Billy's heavy breathing. I went immediately hard as steel and throbbing. When he had tired of beating me with the cane, he slapped his hard cock on my buttocks for several strokes and rubbed the underside of it up and down in my butt crease and repeatedly across my anus, which was open and begging for him.

He gripped my hips and put his bulb in me, but just that, and I heard him give a low, hoarse laugh as I pushed up on my toes, raising my buttocks to take in three or so more inches of him. I was aching for the cock and fully open for what he could provide. He grabbed the hair on the back of my head and bowed me painfully back to him, arching my torso and stretching my arms to the limit the bindings would permit. As he did that he slammed his cock deep up inside me. He withdrew and trust up into me again to the hilt—then a third time. He suspended the anal assault there, untied me, pulled me under the dining table onto my back and, coming down on his knees between my spread legs, grabbed my buttocks in both hands, elevated them to his desired angle of thrust, fed all of the cock into me again, and fucked me as he had said earlier he wanted to do—under the dining table.

Groaning, but thoroughly aroused, at the churning of his cock inside me and from the sting of the caning of my tender flesh, I leveraged off my feet and met his thrusts with counterthrusts of my own. Clutching his undulating buttocks with my hands, I helped intensify the velocity of his up thrusts, taking him as deep as he was able to get. He jerked, gave a little cry, and came inside me, after which he released the sash gag and possessed my mouth brutally with his. I had already ejaculated while he was caning me bent over the chair, but when he rolled off of me to the side, latched onto one of my nipples with his teeth, and entered my ass with two fingers to rub my prostate, I quickly masturbated myself to a second, arcing coming. I could have come again and again under his cruel attentions. He hadn't so much satiated me, as he had set me afire.

He abandoned me there, on the floor under the table, to recover, and the door to his bed chamber was shut tight when I had struggled, wincing from the caning, back to my own chamber. I had thought to spend the night under him either in his bed or mine, but I tried his door and it was locked.

When I came down for breakfast in the morning, a couple of suitcases were in the front hall. Before I reached the dining room, I heard Sydney and Billy talking and laughing. Bypassing breakfast, not wanting to face both of the men while eating breakfast on the table I'd so recently been assaulted under, I walked out of the house and down through the gardens.

Not wanting to face Billy in Lord Harkwood's presence didn't mean that I wasn't keyed up still. I had remained hard for the rest of the night and tossing in my bed. Masturbation hadn't satisfied me. I wanted more.

As I had done whenever I visited Falconcroft in the last few years, I sought out the gardener, Thomas. An ugly, gnarled, but muscular, man in his mid fifties—always sweaty, always with dirt under his fingernails, never cowed by rank, always randy. He was ever crude and illiterate other than knowing and using more dirty curse words than anyone else I'd ever met. He also had a longer and thicker cock than I did and had, over the past three years, laid me wherever he found me alone—in his cottage, under trees or bushes, in his wheelbarrow, on the bank of the ornamental pond.

From the moment he saw the interest and ache for it in my eyes he had fucked me without leave and as if by right. I didn't have to make the decision to lie with men. He made it for me and nearly ruined me that first time, showing me no quarter. I had Charles first, but Thomas had already had me first. He reamed me in repeated fuckings of that thick cock of his and toughened me to be able to take any man in London. He always reminded me of my natural place in a pecking order established by a more realistic standard than title heredity. There were few men who knew what I wanted when I bottomed. He was one of them. He had trained me to want it that way.

And he was cruel. When I was in need as I now was, I knew I could come to him for relief.

We were on his bed by a window in his cottage near the front gates of Falconcroft when the carriage taking Billy to the train station to catch the morning train to London rolled by. As I watched the carriage wheel its way past the window, my wrists were tied together behind my back by a leather strap, my cheeks still smarted from Thomas slapping me into submission, he was gripping my waist, he was ramming my channel up and down on his impossibly thick cock, and he was telling me in the most graphic terms how he was going to "bring Mr. Lauty Dah Lord of the Manor" down a notch and fuck the stuffing out of me doggy style on the floor when he'd gotten me warmed up in this position.

And then he did just that. And he caned me, with me on all fours, before he fucked me like a dog. It was Thomas who introduced me to the arousal of the cane. I have no doubt I had a father fixation on the man. I never came so prodigiously as I did under Thomas' assault. Whenever he was caning me, images of my father raced through my mind.

Well, perhaps Billy Bowles had done that for me, as well. But Thomas had been there before him.

* * * *