Cry Down the Mountain

We spread the blanket out under a tree, on the edge of the flat area that had once been the jousting field, below the ruins of Saint Hilarion Castle on the heights of the Kyrenia Range overlooking the northern coast of the Mediterranean in what was now Turkish Cyprus. I had picked up the young Turk as I was driving up the mountain in the UN sedan I was using to search for one of our lost soldiers. I was a military policeman in the Danish contingent of the UN peacekeeping force on Cyprus. Max had been gone and out of touch since the previous night. He had last been seen in the harbor down in Kyrenia, the ancient Byzantine castle town the Turks called Girne.

The young Turk—he told me his name was Errol—was a soldier from the base down the slope from Saint Hilarion’s, one of a chain of watch castles that had been built along the summits of the Kyrenia Range in the time of Richard the Lionhearted. Errol’s officers would skin him alive if they knew he was cavorting with a UN military policeman. They’d do no less just to learn that he was off the base for anything but carrying out explicit orders.

I could tell he was a soldier from his uniform. Otherwise, I wouldn’t have thought him old enough to be in the military. I guess they took them young in the Turkish army. He’d said he was from the Turkish mainland, not from here, in Turkish Cyprus. He was small and trim, olive-complexioned, cute as hell, with a shy smile and curly black hair, a lock of which dangled down from his forehead, seeking to hide his left eye. His eyes were dark and flashed an interest I understood only too well. I’ll bet he was the pet of his barracks.

Cyprus was the land of men who either fucked hard or opened their legs and begged for it. I had found that more than the normal percentage of them would go either way—that for them sex was sex was sex. I’d been told that young Greek men could cover and get sucked by Greek gay boys with no one considering they were being gay as well, going, I guess, back to ancient Greece, where it was accepted that pederasty was an honored teacher-student relationship. I wondered if it was the same with Turks. I thought about that, because I could go either way myself. A hole was a hole was a hole—although I did prefer a young guy’s hole.

The young Turkish soldier batted his eyelashes at me when I pulled up beside him, on his bike, coming up the mountain to the castle. I’d been told Max might be up here, at the castle. He’d been carousing in Kyrenia with a group of Turkish Cypriots, and I’d gotten a picnic meal down in the city to bring up here with me to take a break in looking for him.

Errol had asked me if I was a UN soldier, which I clearly was unless I’d stolen a UN-marked car and a UN contingent uniform, and he was impressed that I was Danish. Being Scandinavian in Cyprus got you to at least second base with your prey. He also said he was impressed that I was a bulked-up Dane. He said I was handsome. He also said he was lonely being away from Turkey.

He didn’t ask me how big my dick was, but I knew that’s the question he really wanted to ask.

“I shouldn’t be talking to a UN soldier,” he’d said, looking nervously around.

“Well, follow me, and we’ll go where no one will see us talking—or doing anything else,” I’d answered.

I’d figured he was fifty-fifty whether he’d follow me on his bike. He did.

He lay back on the blanket after we’d eaten and finished off the second bottle of Chankaya wine and, after I’d answered the size question for him, gave himself to me. There’d been no need for seduction. He’d made himself naked when he’d lain back on the blanket, and he put himself in position, on his back, legs spread and bent, feet pressed to the blanket, pelvis rolled up. There’d been an unspoken meeting of the minds where this would go when I stopped to talk to him. He looked the type I liked to cover and I’m sure he dreamed about bulked up, hung Danes. I was both. I had exposed what I was hanging to him while we were eating—just unzipped myself, hauled it out, an gave it a couple of strokes—and he hadn’t gotten on his bike and peddled away.

Taking my mouth away from between his buttocks cheeks and moving to swallowing his cock, I moved the wicker basket the food had been in over under the small of his back, elevating his pelvis. He was moaning shallowly and panting lightly. There was no resistance. It was all need and surrender.

I ran my hands up his inner thighs and spread them in position again, bending his legs, and setting the soles of his feet down on the blanket, putting him back into the missionary position he’d gone into himself, while we were drinking wine, to signal his willingness. He gave over completely to my maneuvering. This was remarkably easy and he was one sweet piece. I licked up his belly, stopped to worry his nipples and then on up to his waiting lips, as I put myself in position between his thighs.

He arched his back and cried out, “Çok büyüksün!—You’re so big! Danimarkalılar canavar boyutundadır—Danes are monster sized.” as I entered him. I took that as a compliment. I also wondered how many Danes he’d given himself to.

Yes, I am. You came on to me because I was a muscled-up Danish soldier. And you’re going to love it, I thought, as I begin to pump him.

There was every sign that he loved it. He dug his fingernails into the tips of my shoulders and put his hips into motion, going with me. We were fucking. He dilated nicely, stretching to my specifications, confirming to me that he was the pet of his barracks. He wasn’t a virgin. He did this regularly. He knew exactly what to do. He lifted his legs to hugging my hips with his knees and rocked with me in the fuck. He was fully open to me, vulnerable—surrendered and soon conquered.

“Sik beni. Sik beni. Sik beni sert, seni büyük canavar!—Fuck me. Fuck me. Fuck me hard, you big brute!” he cried out.

I complied, taking, first, Errol, and then me to an ejaculation. My release was quite satisfying. I hadn’t had it for a couple days. Three loads. No rubber. This young Turk was a sweet peace.

Errol lay there, under me, as we both focused on me going flaccid inside him, both of us panting.

“Böyle bir kaba. Ne kadar kaba—Such a brute. Such a brute,” he kept whimpering, but we both knew it was a brute he had wanted. He had moved with me in synch with the fuck and had lain there, relaxed in my arms, sighing, as I’d shot my load, again and again, deep inside him. He’d reveled, I knew, in being topped by a big, bulked-up Dane. Something that must rarely have happened to him, if ever before.

“Çok büyüksün—You’re so big,” he was murmuring, a whimpering tone enveloped in the whisper. “Büyük kaslar. Büyük bir canavar—Big muscles. A big brute,” he added, his trembling hands gliding over my bulging pecs and going to my big guns. It required a great body and forcefulness to be a UN contingent MP. He wasn’t complaining. I could tell that he melted to a bulked up, cut body. He’d kept referring to my blondness too and the blue eyes. He’d said he’d never been done by a Dane before, and he’d said it like he couldn’t wait for it. I hadn’t waited long before putting him under me. There had been no hesitation, no resistance.

“And you wanted it,” I responded, nuzzling his throat with my lips. So young, so vulnerable. Such a sweet piece.

“Evet. Evet. Beni tekrar sik—Yes. Yes, Fuck me again,” he said, his hands clutching my buttocks to him.

I laughed, preparing to do just that.

It wasn’t until then that I heard it—the cry echoing down the mountain from somewhere within the stone walls of the Saint Hilarion Castle ruins. I think it must have started early while I was concentrating on fucking the young Turkish soldier.

What only now hit me as peculiar, though, was that the plaintive call wasn’t in Turkish, or Greek, or even English, which was widely spoken on Cyprus. It was in Danish.

“Hjælp! Hjælp mig! Min Gud, nogen hjælpe mig!—Help. Help me. My God, somebody help me!”

* * * *

It took Errol and me nearly twenty minutes after we’d gotten up to the castle ruins to find him. We finally located what must have been the deepest dungeon in the castle. It was still a torture chamber of sorts. In this case, judging from the equipment here, this was someone’s rough sexual games chamber.

He was hanging on a Saint Andrew’s cross, facing the damp and mossy stone wall of the dimly lit chamber, daylight filtering in from arrow slits in the downslope wall side of the castle. He was just hanging there, naked and slumping to the extent his bonds permitted. A gag he’d finally gotten loose and out of his mouth was hanging from an ear. There were angry, bleeding welts crisscrossing on his back and thighs.

I’d found Max, my missing Danish UN soldier.

Errol was milling around at the entrance into the dungeon, looking nervous and like he wanted to be anywhere but here while I was taking Max off the X-frame and checking him for damage. I could understand the Turkish soldier’s consternation and I didn’t exactly need witnesses for what would, if publicized, be a sticky international incident involving the Danish contingent no matter what had transpired here, so I sent him away. I regretted that I’d probably never see him again or have the opportunity to enjoy him, but I’m sure he was in hot water with his superior officers just for having been gone for so long. The Turks kept a tight rein on their enlisted soldiers sent here from the mainland. He quite evidently had been sent on an errand of short duration, and short had become long some time ago.

“Thanks, Sergeant Andersen,” Max said when we were alone. The civilian clothes he had been wearing were nearby and he reached for his white T-shirt. I brushed his hands away, though, and handed him his shorts instead.

“No, I have a towel in the car you can put around you. You put on that T-shirt and you’ll bleed through in a matter of seconds. Then it will get everywhere. You know me?”

“Everyone knows you, Sergeant Andersen—and what they can come to you for.”

“You can call me Jorgen,” I said gruffly. I took another look at him. He was a handsome young soldier—Danish through and through, with his blondness and blue eyes and winning smile. But, although he had good muscle tone and was hard-bodied, he was very slender, with narrow waist and hips and quite pert buttocks mounds. His cock was long, but not unusually so, and not thick. His body was almost boyish. I gauged him to be no more than twenty-two. My cock saluted him. I wouldn’t throw him out of bed.

“How did you come to be here? And how long have you been here, hung on that contraption? Who did this to you?” I was full of questions and hit him with all of them at one time.

“I don’t know much,” he said, looking sheepish. “I’m afraid I got plastered last night and lost track. I don’t even know where I am now. Am I still in Kyrenia?”

“No, you’re in the mountains above Kyrenia, in the Saint Hilarion castle ruins. You have no idea how you got here?”

“No, the last I knew I was at the harbor, in Kyrenia, drinking with a guy from the Merit Park Casino. The owner of the casino, he told me. That’s where I went to gamble. He said he’d take good care of me.”

“And maybe he did. Which restaurant?”

“I think it was called the Trypiti Restaurant, right on the harbor, next to the water. I met the owner of that and I had drinks with him too.”

“And?”

“The last I remember I was with him. His apartment is above the restaurant. We were fucking. He was fucking me. He was rough. Had my wrists tied to the headboard. Worked me with a dildo before putting it in. He knew how to fuck. That’s the last I remember. I think the casino owner was sitting across the room, watching us. I’m not sure about that, though.”

“You agreed to the fuck?”

“Yes. You won’t . . . from what I’ve heard about you, you won’t tell, will you?”

“We’ll see. I’m on duty—and my assigned duty is to find you. I’ve got to take you in. You agreed to the bondage too?”

“Yes, that too. I’ve heard you—”

“And did the casino owner fuck you too?”

“Yes, at the casino, before he took me to the harbor for something to eat. Hey, does this really have to be reported? I’ve been in trouble before. I don’t want to have a big deal made out of this. I got into this myself.”

“I was sent looking for you, Max. Something has to be reported. And I’ll have to take you to the hospital. You’ve been brought here and left here, and your back is a mass of blood. You’ve been assaulted.”

“I did it willingly in Kyrenia,” he said. “I’ll do it with you if you let this blow over.”

“We have no idea how much you were assaulted here or if you were left to die here, Max. Whoever did this could come back or not—which means we should move on out of here.” I suddenly felt the loss of my pistol, which I’d put in the glove compartment of the car when I figured I’d be doing the Turkish soldier. I didn’t want a gun to be near that. I did have my knife strapped to my calf inside my boot, but I didn’t know if that would be enough if Max’s assailants come back.

“You don’t want to do me?” he asked. “I’m not good enough looking?”

“You look just fine—other than the damage, Max. Let’s get out of here. We can discuss this down in the car. It’s parked in the field below the castle.”

He’d gotten his shorts on. “No hospital, please. And a toned-down report. I got drunk on my tail and you found me. It doesn’t have to go beyond that, and it isn’t a lie. I’d do whatever you want. I’ve heard about you. I’ll give you a good time.”

“You’re in no condition to do anyone a good time, Max. You need those cuts on your back taken care of or they’ll get infected.”

Down in the car, I gave him a thick towel to wrap around his torso and soak up the blood and ooze, put him in the passenger seat, and came around and climbed behind the wheel. He turned to me and cupped my head with one of his hands, putting our faces together. As he went into a kiss, he unzipped me with the other hand, and freed my cock. Despite my better judgment, I let him kiss me and stroke me. And then, leaning back in the seat, I let him move his face to my lap and give me an expert blow job.

He was right. He could give me a good time.

“That isn’t just because I want you to help me,” he said, after I’d come and he’d cleaned my cock with his tongue.

“And I didn’t sit here for it as any part of doing a deal with you,” I answered.

“So, maybe we could—”

“We’ll see. We have a problem to work on now, though. Let’s concentrate on that.”

“So, you find me—”

“Yes, you’re sexy as hell, Max. We need to work you out of this situation now, though.”

“That sounds good to me. Thanks.”

Afterward, I drove to where I’d checked in for the night, not knowing how long this “look for the wayward Danish soldier, Max” assignment would last. I had a favorite holiday village west of Kyrenia near the sea, the Fairmont Holiday Village on Cevre Yolu Road, and that’s where we went, after I’d stopped at a drugstore and bought two bottles of disinfectant salve and a mile of rolled bandages. I had EMT training, so I could do what needed to be done with Max’s wounds. They looked worse than they were. No flesh had been stripped away.

At the holiday villa, more like a motel room, with a mezzanine sleeping room, facing the sea through a two-story wall of window, I dressed Max’s wounds and then, at his insistence and overcoming my resistance, he showed me that he was still in condition to give a man a good time in more ways than one, that he didn’t have to be on his back to ride a cock. I lay on my back on the bed, and he mounted my loins, descended on my cock, and fucked himself, rocking on me languidly.

Afterward, he just stretched down on top of me, his back facing the ceiling, and we slept. When I woke, with golden highlights of a sundown kissing the surface of the Mediterranean outside the villa, Max was gone. So was the knife I usually had strapped to my calf. My gun holster had been moved. But the pistol, thank goodness, was still in the glove compartment of the car. Out of habit, I’d hidden the car key in the compartment in the well of the UN sedan’s wheel, so the car—and the pistol—were still here.

I showered, dressed, and went back on the hunt to haul Private Max Hansen back to the Danish UN contingent barracks. Having to find him again wasn’t making me prone to help him avoid charges, but I guess he figured that he’d involved me to the point of us having sex, so I had to go light on him for my own good. On that, he might have been right.

* * * *

I was in the same position that Max had been earlier in the day. I was on a bed in the penthouse suite of the Merit Park Casino and Hotel perched on the rocks at the Mediterranean Sea waters’ edge to the west of Kyrenia. The casino’s owner, Mehmet Ergon, was crouched between my thighs, hovering over me, pressing the heels of his hands into the hollows of my shoulders to hold me down on the bed, and gazing down into my eyes, as he fucked me. I was versatile and sometimes took cock, usually in a flip-flop like this was. Often I took a thicker cock, though, so this wasn’t too onerous.

When I awakened in my vacation villa a couple of hours previous to find that Max Hensen was gone, I doubled my work assignment. I not only had to find him again and take him back to the UN base, but I also needed to find out who had bound him to the X-frame in the dungeon at Saint Hilarion and abused his body. I guess there was a third, pressing problem too. Max took my knife and probably would have taken my service pistol if he could have. I had to consider that he hadn’t been straight with me on not knowing who had put him on the Saint Andrews cross and whipped him—and who knows what else? Maybe he was out for revenge. If so, this could get very ugly in terms of an international incident.

So, I showered and dressed—in tight jeans, my black service boots, and a tight mesh athletic shirt, showing off what I knew was an attention-getting torso. Then I drove to the casino and wandered around the floor, playing the slots for a while and finally settling at the roulette table. This is where the casino’s owner, Mehmet Ergon, found me and settled up on the stool beside me. I had figured this was the quickest way to smoke him out, and I’d been right. I knew that Max had been used as a bottom. That meant whoever I was looking for in tracking Max down again would be a seeking top. I was versatile. It was clear that, if I was going to find and retrieve Max and who he probably was coming after, I was going to have to play bottom. And I didn’t know specifically who I was going for. Max knew who had fucked him before he was drugged and hung in the dungeon at Saint Hilarion. He didn’t know—or wouldn’t tell me—who had done him there.

“You’re a big one, aren’t you?” Ergon said. We both spoke English, the only language we found in common. “You’re a beautiful man, which is good for business. Let me stand you a drink and some complementary chips.”

I accepted chips and the drink, and the next drink too, while I played the wheel and Ergon played me. He was a handsome man, of a fascinating mix—he was hirsute and swarthy, dark and handsome in a foxy way. What was fascinating, though, was that he exhibited strains of being rough and crude while dressing elegantly and moving smoothly. I could tell he was a mobster with money and standing in this region. Max had spoken of having given in to him easily in having sex, under very similar circumstances as we were relating now, and I could see how that could be.

There was a third drink, after which he figured it was safe to tell me that he had a fetish for hunky blond Scandinavians and that I more than fulfilled that dream. He’d been touching me, and by the time of the third drink, he’d copped a feel below the roulette table and I’d smiled at him, rather than punching his lights out, which he obviously took as interest and availability. That’s how I wanted him to take giving him liberties.

“May I hope you’re a player?” he asked, “beyond the roulette table?” and when I answered that, yes, he could, he offered me the fourth drink. I could hold my liquor, though—apparently a lot better than Max had.

“I like to go both ways, but I’m mainly a top,” he revealed while I was drinking my fourth beer. “If you don’t like the view from the bottom—”

“I like that view just fine,” I said and he gave me a broad smile. He named a price he’d pay me. I wondered if he’d paid Max too. I bet he did. I bet that was part of the story Max had left out because he didn’t want to share it. I wondered then whether Max had agreed to be beaten and fucked in the Saint Hilarion dungeon for pay.

“I could do that for the exchange of information.”

“Like what?” he asked.

“I have a friend, Max Hensen, a Danish soldier. I’m looking for him. Haven’t seen him since the day before yesterday. He said he’d be coming here. Any idea where he is?”

I watched him carefully for signs of guilt on anything bad he’d done to Max. Nada. He either didn’t know how and where Max had wound up or he was a consummate actor.

“Max? Yes, he was in here yesterday. A handsome fellow. A beautiful Dane, like you. Not nearly as body beautiful as you are, though—and he would only bottom. I would hope you’d be more versatile than that. He came here, yes. We fucked. I took him for dinner in Kyrenia harbor, where a friend of mine, a restaurant owner, took a fancy to Max. The young man was randy and, I must say, a bit in his cups. He was very willing. We took him upstairs to Sami’s flat above the restaurant, and I watched Sami fuck him until I needed to return to the casino.” It was almost like he knew someone would come looking for Max—that Max would be missing—and that he’d worked out an elaborate story in advance that held he wasn’t the last one who had had Max.

“You just watched?”

Ergon smiled. “Let’s just say that your friend had room for two.”

That was straightforward enough. The story jived with what Max had said and he wasn’t revealing any “and I hung him up, whipped him, and left him to die” edges.

“He was a good lay. I think, though, that you will be very much better.”

“Shall we find out?” I asked. “Where?”

So, I fucked him, standing, against the wall, in his penthouse apartment at the casino hotel, holding his wrists above his head against the wall and his knees hugging my hips while I spiked him, and then he did me in a missionary on his bed. Afterward, as I was counting out the money he gave me—including a generous tip—I said, “I’d like to meet this restaurant owner in Kyrenia harbor. What’s the name of the restaurant?”

“Trypiti,” he said. “The food’s good there. The owner’s name is Sami Akkaya. He’s a big-dicked man. Likes to bind his men and fuck them or ride them, depending on his mood. Some say he’s a sadist when he’s highly aroused.”

My antenna went up at the mention of binding and sadism. It sounded like this Akkaya was the man—or, at least, it sounded like Ergon was offering Akkaya up.

“I’ll take you there, if you wish. I can’t stay, though. I have business to attend to this evening.”

“Yes, I’d very much like to meet this man,” I said.

“Does that mean you like the rougher play—being on the receiving end of it?”

“Let’s just say I’d like to meet this Akkaya guy.”

* * * *

Mehmet let me off at the street above the harbor and told me which of the restaurants was Trypiti. He didn’t accompany me down to the water. As I walked down the steep hill into the harbor that was surrounded by castle walls on the west and a ring of protecting connected buildings curving around the old harbor as defensive protection, with only three access streets, I wondered how I would get to meet this restaurant owner. I didn’t have to worry about that. He zeroed in on me. It transpired that he, like many other Turks, had a fetish for northern European men.

The buildings surrounding the harbor actually fronted on the upslope opposite the water. This is where you would enter the residences. The first or second story, facing the harbor had been storage and shop areas, located where the goods could be directly taken from docked ships into the buildings. Now these were shops and, mostly, restaurants, with interior spaces but mostly utilizing the outdoor stone-laid apron between their doors and the water of the small harbor. There was no balustrade at the edge of the stone terracing, where smaller craft were tied up and directly accessed from the inner harbor road. Here the restaurants had put their tables out so that patrons could eat and drink directly at the harborside. Experienced diners here didn’t put their more drunken comrades at the water side of the table.

I had barely sat at a table outside the Trypiti doors and immediately beside the harbor waters when the restaurant owner, Sami Akkaya, started giving me attention. It was easy to recognize him because he was clearly in command of his waiters and he was a beautiful, mature man who moved about his business like a dancer, no movement extraneous to the task at hand.

It was early afternoon on a weekday. There was little demand going for food, but there were some drinkers. I had a table for six to myself, though. I ordered an Efes beer and a mixed grill from a young Turkish waiter. The food was served by an older man, who I identified from Mehmet Ergon’s description to be the restaurant owner I was looking for. I’d already been given the beer, which I had tossed off. He brought me another one with the food.

He was in his early fifties, I surmised. He was still very well put together—heavy, but the weight being evenly distributed, and he was muscular. He was a handsome man, with a wavy head of black hair, shot with gray. He was clean-shaven except for a handlebar mustache. He was thick about the waist, but solid, not paunchy, and he wore low-rise tan trousers and an open-neck white shirt, the sleeves turned up to his elbows. The shirt was open almost to his navel. Salt and pepper hair spilled out of the opening. The shirt was of a gauzy material that left nothing of the hirsute, muscular torso behind it to the imagination. I had no doubt that this was purposeful on his part. His chest, his pecs solid and bulgy, was tattooed, as were his arms down to his wrist. Effusive hand gestures went along with his talk.

A gold medallion on a thick chain was nestled in the cleavage between his pecs. Thick hair swirled around his nubs. The shirt wasn’t flared to show his nipples, but I could clearly see through the gauzy material that they both had bars pierced in them. He had open-toed sandals on his feet, the toes long and plump and hairy on the top. He had a gold disk earing in his right ear. If that was a signal of what he wanted or what he did, I didn’t know what it meant here on Cyprus. He had a jovial “welcome to my restaurant” smile and manner. He was a man in charge.

I had no doubt from the way he’d latched onto my arrival and the looks he gave me that he wanted my body. I didn’t know if he wanted to use me or be used, but if he was the man I was looking for, knowing what he had done to Max, it was clear that he was a cruel user. Max was a bottom and a submissive to rough treatment. I knew that; I’d had him myself.

“You will want another beer, I see. You are Scandinavian? You are a solider?” he asked, as he placed my food before me.

“Yes to all of that,” I said. “I’m Danish.”

“I am Sami. This is my restaurant. You are new to the harbor, I believe, yes?”

“Yes,” I lied. I just hadn’t been to his restaurant yet. There were many of them here to try.

“In that case the next beer will be a welcome to you. A soldier with the UN, are you?”

“Yes.”

“I like that. I very much like Danish men. You are, what can I say, all one would want—a real handful.”

Was that a pass already, I wondered. “Do you have many of the Danish UN soldiers stop at your restaurant?” I asked.

“Yes, very, very many,” Akkaya answered with a grin. “I give them a good price for their meal and a good time, if they are interested. I like fit Danish men very, very much.”

“Do you?” Yes, that definitely was a pass. He was giving me a “special” smile and he touched me on the arm. Another Efes was delivered, Akkaya having snapped his fingers and pointed to my empty beer bottle and the young waiter having scurried for the replacement. There was another bottle of beer, the one Akkaya had brought with the food, so it seemed like the man was pushing booze at me.

“I had a perfect Danish soldier come to the restaurant just yesterday. He was a beautiful young man, very fit, very vigorous. I believe his name was Maximilian. Would you by any means know him?”

“Yes, I know a Max who is one of the Danes,” I answered. I wasn’t going to take it any further than that in trying to get Akkaya to tell me what he knew, if anything, about Max’s disappearance. I knew already that Max had spent some time here at this restaurant before disappearing. Max was pretty openly gay when he wasn’t on duty, so I took it that Akkaya mentioned him to gauge my own inclinations.

I looked down at Akkaya’s fingers on my forearm just so I knew he put them there and signaled that I wasn’t going to shrug them off. He was running along the edge of suggestive conversation too, hiding, I was sure, behind being Turkish and not being able to find a less suggestive word in English. His English was excellent, though, so he didn’t fool me.

Fine, I thought, I didn’t have a lot of time to get this unraveled. I wouldn’t be coy.

“You know Max quite well.”

I turned my eyes on him and gave him a “let’s not beat around the bush” gaze. “Max and I have fucked. You know, Sevişdik. I have used him hard. We’ve had fun with a whip. Ben Max üzerinde kırbaç kullanın ve Max zevk alır—I use the whip on Max and Max enjoys it.”

“Ah, you speak Turkish very good,” the man said, with a smile. No reference at all to what I’d said, but I had little doubt that he understood me.

“Did you fuck him yesterday? Is that the way in which you like Danes?” I asked, pressing in.

The man smiled and sat down at the table across from me. He turned and snapped his fingers to get the young waiter’s attention. “Another beer for our Danish soldier friend, Baris. Quickly now.”

He had gotten Max drunk yesterday before taking him upstairs in his restaurant and fucking him. Was he trying to do the same with me? Yes, probably. I wouldn’t get drunk like Max did, but this man thinking he could do that would move this along nicely.

“Your friend was delightful in bed,” he said. “Danish men are lovely. We did it right up there. I live above the restaurant. He was fine with the restraints.” He gave me a “would you be fine with restraints too” look.

Ah, the restraints. Max had mentioned that. “Ah, binding. Very sexy,” I said.

Akkaya smiled, having been given leave to dip deeper into the fetish. “And he was fine with the whip, which you have mentioned. Tell, me, do you always use the whip or do you sometimes like the whip used on you?” His eyes were slits of lust and he was almost salivating when he asked that.

“Maybe both,” I said. “And did you have enough Danish yesterday, or are you hungry for more?” I asked. I wanted to see his upstairs. I wanted to know if Max was there now, tied up somewhere, between uses. Or if there was something else I could learn about where Max was from what I could see upstairs.

“You can never get enough Danish,” Akkaya said, with a smile. Sitting in front of me, he pulled the tail ends of his shirt out and flared it more, showing me his muscular chest. His right foot was out of its sandal and he raised his leg, pushing the foot between my thighs. I reached down, took the foot in my hand, and pressed it into my crotch. I hadn’t had any trouble starting a hard-on for him. He gasped and smiled. Then he ground the foot into my crotch. I grunted and grimaced, but held, which told him what he wanted to know and made him smile. As far as he now knew, I was into receiving pain.

The waiter delivered another beer, saw where we are in the dance of the mutual seduction, smiled, and moved off. I’m sure that Akkaya had engaged with men like this before at the tables, although perhaps not as blatantly. The waiter would see that we got privacy. I pulled my T-shirt over my head. Akkaya’s eyes bugged out and he gasped. It wasn’t an unusual gesture for this scene. The sun was hot, this was a seaside holiday town, and any guy with a good chest was baring it. The gasp, I’m sure, is that I’m not just any guy when it came to chest musculature. I’m sure he was getting hard to see that there was some welting on my chest. I didn’t tell him that I’d gotten it on a strenuous rope course in recent PT qualifying.

“Am I in good enough shape for you?” I asked.

He licked his lips and murmured, “Superb. You are in magnificent shape.”

“As good as Max was?”

“Better. Superb.” He reached over and touched one of the raised welt lines on my chest and I let him. “Did you enjoy receiving this?”

“Yes,” I said. And I had. I enjoyed going through the PT course. I’d let the man misinterpret what I meant with the “yes.” “Max'i siktin ve kırbaçladın mı?—Did you fuck Max and did you whip him?” I asked, trying to keep the tone noncommittal.

He gave me a wary look and then laughed. There wasn’t much of a reason to be coy; he was running his toes along the side of my hard-on through the material of my shorts. “Yes.”

“Upstairs, above the restaurant?”

“Yes.”

“Do you want to fuck me or do you want me to fuck you?”

“Either, as long as you will help me get into the mood.”

I rather thought he already was in the mood.

“With a whip?”

“Evet, with a whip.”

A man of few words when the other man was offering himself as easily as I was.

We fucked in the attic of the three floors above the restaurant, the restaurant oriented to the harbor and the house above it, opening out onto the street behind and orienting to the town. I asked Akkaya for a brief walkthrough on our way to the attic, him believing I was intrigued by the Byzantine architecture of the building and me looking for signs of Max. There was no evidence of him up to the attic room.

The upper room was a mildly sadomasochist sex chamber. That it looked like a mild version of bondage and rough sex disturbed me a bit. There wasn’t anything mild about the chamber up at Saint Hilarion castle. If Akkaya was the man, I would think that this room would be every bit as demanding as the other, and more careful about collateral damage. There was no Saint Andrew cross; there were no splatterings of blood and body fluids on the floor and drop cloths. Conversely, there were implements of the art hanging on the walls—restraints, gags, dildoes, a hand whip, leather straps, leather gloves, harnesses—the bed had restraints at the corners, there was a sling suspended from the ceiling in the corner, and the ceiling over the bed was a mirror. But there was no stained rubber sheeting around. There had been at the castle. If the acts got messy, it would have seemed there was more need for rubber sheeting than at the stone-clad castle ruins.

When I had completed a circuit of the room with my eyes, I turned to find Akkaya standing there, naked, other than his gold medallion on the chain. He was in fine fettle for a heavy man his age—solid, well proportioned, sexy with his hairiness and tattooing. His cock was of respectable size and was in full erection. His balls hung low. There was an almost apologetic little smile on his face. He was holding a dildo in each hand, one big and the other bigger, and gesturing to the bed, with its restraints at the four corners.

“I hope you don’t mind a bit of bondage when it’s my turn to drive,” he said. “It arouses me especially.”

“And the toys? The dildoes?”

“Yes, the toys,” he said. He now had a hand whip in his hand and was switching it against his leg.

From the elevation and hardness of his cock, I didn’t see how he could be any more aroused, but I humored him. That meant I took a chance. To get in the mood, he had me kneel below the bed and he restrained my wrists to the posts at either end of the foot of the bed, which stretched my arms and shoulder muscles out. Then he stood behind me and whipped me on my bare back, and I let him. If it had gotten too rough, I knew I had the strength to pull the bed down and escape the bonds. He didn’t put a lot of strength into it, which added to my doubts that he had been the one to whip Max at Saint Hilarion. Max had been used much harder than this.

When Akkaya decided he was sufficiently in lust, he put me on my back on the bed, restraining my wrists at the two ends of the headboard. He worked me over with the dildoes after eating me out and blowing me and he did do some choking breath play while he fucked me in a missionary. After he did me, he did himself, mounting and riding my cock in a cowboy. He had me at his mercy—or thought he did; I was sure that I could break out of the restraints if I really wanted or needed to—and he did nothing else. He didn’t use any of his fancy toys other than the whip below the bed and dildoes of two sizes on the bed.

And he was given every reason to think he could have done more, more intensely. It was really a bit of a downer, too restraining. I’d been looking forward to a bit more taxing effort—and therefore the understood permission to work him over in return. Everything stopped short of that and not because he couldn’t have pushed it further. This wasn’t on the same level as Max had received up at the castle.

When the missionary and cowboy were over, it was over. He let me loose, thanked me, directed me to the shower, and told me he hoped we could do it again. I left thinking that this hardly was the treatment that Max got up at Saint Hilarion, and I hadn’t put any breaks on it being so if that’s what Akkaya wanted.

“I look forward to using more of your toys and more of your body the next time,” I had said in leaving. He’d given me a tight little smile and said something about building up to relationships.

I half expected him to invite me to take a ride—a ride up to Saint Hilarion, whether he told me the purpose of that or not. There was the possibility that he wouldn’t engage in the rougher play here at home but would do so up on the mountain. I was pretty sure, though, that he’d enjoyed me enough here that if was into rougher stuff, he’d want to do that with me. But he didn’t propose anything rougher.

Thinking of Saint Hilarion, though, I decided that I might as well check that out again. Maybe there was some reason that that was where Max would have gone after leaving my place. I had no idea how he would get there, but maybe he liked what he’d gotten or maybe he wanted the guy who had assaulted him and used him hard to think Max wanted it again and had called for a ride to and repeat experience at the castle.

It was worth a try. There weren’t any other good ideas occurring to me. In the back of my mind I was thinking of the cute little Turkish soldier, Errol, too. Akkaya might have been fully satisfied with the session in his attic, but I can’t say it completed me. Chances were I wouldn’t see Errol again by driving up past what must be his army camp, but it was worth a shot.

* * * *

As I was approaching the turnoff to the road up into the mountains, past the Turkish army camp, and up to Saint Hilarion on the heights of the Kyrenia Mountains ridgetop, a black Mercedes was turning out of the road, headed in the other direction—toward the Merit Park Casino. Mehmet Ergon was at the wheel, and once turned, he was moving like a bat out of hell.

I wasn’t surprised at what I found at Saint Hilarion or why Ergon had been so antsy about having someplace he had to go that afternoon that kept him from staying and playing with me more.

Max was bound in what we called a banc de prière, a prayer bench where one knelt before a wooden frame to support the forearms while in prolonged prayer. The sexual device version of this had stocks on the top edge of the frame. Max’s head and wrists were trapped in the stocks and his knees were lashed in place to the frame. His back was a bloody mess from having been whipped. The whip was on the floor nearby; its strand tips were barbed. It could—and did—do a lot of damage. The handle of an impossibly thick dildo protruded from his ass, and the handle of my knife was sticking out of his back.

Max was beyond help.

The first thing I did was take the knife out. He was beyond relief from doing that, but there was no reason to invite suspicion toward me in any of this. I took the knife out to a water trough half full of fetid water and cleaned it off. I walked for five minutes to an upper ward of the castle ruins, where the crumbling wall overlooked a ravine buried in dense foliage. I threw the knife as far out into the ravine as I could.

I then came back to the dungeon, took out my cellphone, and started making calls. It was too late to prevent this from being a sensationalized international incident. While I waited for the various authorities to arrive, I put my story together—enough for it all to be clear—not more than was necessary on the sexual aspects, at least where I was concerned. In my calls I made clear that once the others were here and the scene pinned down, we needed to take a ride down to the Merit Park Casino and Hotel to find a man named Mehmet Ergon.

After that unpleasantness had been taken care of, I drove back to Kyrenia Harbor and to the Trypiti harborside restaurant. I was in a mood and decided I’d spend the night in Kyrenia. I knew a man there who melted to big bad Danes. I thought that I’d like to get just a bit more rough with him than we’d experienced that afternoon, do more in building up a relationship. He had the toys for it, if he could muster the stamina for it. I was in the mood.

It was my turn with the whip.