Chapter 4 – Chapter 4

Justin was awakened, lying in his own bed, to the tune of an alarm clock that gave him only a half hour to be at breakfast. He met a pleased-looking Thomas and a frightened animal-aspected Leonard in the corridor, and they went down together to the country kitchen on the ground floor of their wing without daring to say anything to each other. All had been in a haze the previous evening and none could be positive that anything had happened other than a vivid dream, although Justin felt sure of what had transpired—because he welcomed it.

They ate breakfast quickly and quietly, barely finishing before a servant arrived to guide them back to the library through the labyrinth of oddly angled corridors and raised and lowered levels from wings added to the manor house haphazardly over the centuries.

The five seniors were sitting in the easy chairs in the inner circle as they had been the previous evening. They were just starting, Justin surmised, as they had just been served coffee and were once again debating where to take up the discussion.

Hardesty turned to Justin as the three students took their chairs in the outer circle.

"Joshua tells me that you may have some questions on the period Mahfouz writes about in the Arab world, and in Egypt in particular, young man."

"Yes, I do," Justin answered, emboldened by the experience of the previous night, even though no one present was speaking of it or giving even a hint that anything untoward had occurred. "I am studying the below-the-surface sexual mores and practices on the Arab street in this period. In particular, the underground of male on male relationships. I had seen references to coffee houses and—"

"Ah, yes, a worthy topic for today," Hardesty said.

"And in particular bondage and sadism between Arab males—and the antecedents of that," Justin interjected.

Hardesty speared Justin with a piercing gaze and then rewarded the young American a wink, which was the closest reference Justin was going to get of the activities of the previous night. "Perhaps then we should start with the Black Book of Hamat Reyyes, in the Blumingdon translation," Hardesty murmured, drawing all gathered in the room to lean forward in their chairs to hear him, as he turned back to the inner circle.

This time even Thomas and Leonard were enthralled with the ensuing discussion.

That night was a repeat of the previous one, except that Justin spent his time split between being flogged bound to the X frame and being bound on his belly on the horse and fucked from behind with his balls in a parachute ball stretcher—his balls tightly bound, separated, and extending to the floor—and Thomas and Leonard took their turns on various other equipment.

This time Justin had only pretended to drink the Turkish coffee and was totally awake and enjoying every stroke of the attention being paid to him.

He wasn't invited to weekend at Coleford Hall again during his term at Oxford, but thereafter Charles Peters wasn't shy in visiting him in his rooms—he'd explained that he had held off in the first encounter so as not to spoil the mutual pleasure to be had in the Coleford Hall dungeons—and made full use of the toys Justin kept in the lower drawer of his nightstand.

One night, several article manuscripts were forced, one by one, under his door, the contents of which put Justin into a pleasurable sweat and reaching for his engorging cock. They all were written in the unmistakable prose of Philip Hardesty.

And then there was Timothy Coleson. Justin was to learn, in private sessions at Oxford, that Timothy Coleson knew far more about medieval Arab bondage and sadism practices than anyone else could image that he could know—and that he had a very interesting soundproof basement in his Oxford home.