Training Asu

"You cannot put it off any longer, my friend. If you do not choose for Asu soon, the priests will take him. The choice will no longer be yours-or Asu's. He is of age for starting the life chosen for him. He cannot do other than meet his destiny."

"I know that, Sargon, it is just so hard . . ."

Baltasar, the wood merchant, was sitting at a table outside of the tea shop in the bazaar, sipping a blend that the owner of the shop, Sargon, had recently received from the East and had invited his friend to try. Sargon had, in fact, been pestering him to stop by, but Baltasar had been keeping to his own apartments above his shop for some time-precisely because he didn't want to have this conversation with anyone.

"You know what Asu is meant for, Baltasar. You've known for years. His destiny for it has been evident since he was a child. He knows too, I am sure. He has not tried to leave the city, as some others have under these circumstances-until they are dragged back. So he is resigned to it."

"Yes, yes. All of that is true. But it's hard . . ."

"I could recommend the perfect place for him. There is a wine shop just inside the bazaar on the high road, almost in the shadow of the palace. That would be perfect for him. The wealthiest merchants and even the king's officers go there. He would be your family's fortunes."

And yet Baltasar hesitated.

"It is inevitable. He is of age. The priests would do the same with him. Why not secure the family's fortune rather than just having some meaningless tablet of favor from the temple to hang on your shop wall?"

After a brief pause. "You know of this wine shop? Do you really think it is the best opportunity for him?"

"I go there myself."

* * * *

"Do not wiggle away from the patrons like that," the wine shop owner, Hatim, hissed at Asu as he took him aside at the end of the long table the wine was served from. A soldier of the Palace Guard, Nasri, was leaning on the end of the table, several cups of wine into his evening. He, like all of the palace guardsmen, was a massive, heavily muscled man, battle forged. His chest and arm and thigh muscles were bulging. Clearly discernible as a mark of the elite palace soldiers was his short, heavy-leather slab skirt, sandals laced up to his knees, a chest medallion declaring his rank, and nothing else. The merchants and other private citizens of the town wore long gowns, called thawbs, of various quality of material. Most worn on the street were white in color.

"Sorry, master," Asu whispered back. "It is just so difficult."

"Do you want to be here, performing as required, or shall I take you to the priests at the temple myself?"

Hatim held his breath for the answer to that. Asu was far too beautiful for Hatim to want to lose him at the shop-and just as he and the tea shop owner, Sargon, had discussed, it would be one of the world's tragedies to see Asu taken into the temple, not to be seen again, even if then, until after his beauty had been wiped away by continuous sacrifices to the gods.

The youth was small, but perfectly formed, with curly black hair and a sensuous smile. It was hard to believe he was of age, but everyone in the bazaar knew of everyone else's age. They had all watched Asu grow to adulthood-some watched more closely and with much greater interest than others. Some with flashing eyes and licking lips and members that would harden under their thawbs as Asu walked by.

There was no hiding that it was time for Asu. Everyone knew it. Therefore the ravenous priests knew it as well. The giving of Asu to the wine shop by his father, Baltasar, estopped the certain plans of the priests, but for how long? If Asu could not cross over that curtain here willingly, the priests would take him and force him across the barrier. Asu knew that.

And Asu had just now traded his short cotton skirt, which, as he grew older and formed into perfection, drove many in the bazaar to distraction, for the thawb. The thawb could hide his form, but it could not hide his beauty. The priests will have noticed by now that the changing ceremony-the change from a short skirt to a thawb-that marked for all to see the cross to adulthood had been performed.

"I know, I know," Asu said, a slight edge of panic in his voice. "Just be patient with me, please. It's such a hard curtain to cross."

"Try faster," Hatim hissed. "See your sponsor over there. His cup is empty and he is showing its emptiness to you. He's a rich and powerful man. Take him this cup of wine-and do as he wishes."

Asu was trembling as he came around from behind the wine table. He was watching the nearly full cup he was carrying, trying hard not to spill any of the wine, his mind racing on this trip he was making-just across the wine shop floor, but perhaps across the curtain as well. As he passed around the side of the table, the burly soldier, Nasri, grabbed one of Asu's rounded buttocks cheek through the material of his white cotton thawb, and Asu nearly spilled the wine. When he looked into Nasri's face, the soldier winked and leered at him.

Asu scurried over to the table Hatim had directed him to.

"Put the wine cup down," Asu's father's friend, Sargon, said in an alcohol slurred voice, low and husky. "And come, into my lap, and feel what a man is like."

The tea shop owner pulled Asu roughly down into his lap and held him close to him in the embrace of an arm slung across Asu's little chest. Sargon was big and fat but his grip was strong. And his demanding lust was obvious. As Asu was pulled into Sargon's lap, he could feel the strength of a hard cock poking at his virginal buttocks.

"I have waited for years for this little one," Sargon growled. "Feel what I have for you?"

Indeed, Asu could feel it. Although he would normally wear a loin cloth under his thawb, Hatim had told him not to wear it in the wine shop. The shop owner had made no secret why that was so, and Asu had not needed to wonder why. The wine shops were brothels as well, and this one was a male brothel. The patrons did not come here only for the wine. The fate of each of the citizens of this city was sealed long before they reached adulthood. It depended on their family status and business-and in the case of the soldiers on their size and musculature and promise of fighting skills. For young men as small and beautiful and as well formed as Asu, their destinies were set for either a wine shop such as this or the priesthood, where their bodies would be used just as fully-and perhaps more brutally and more often. They just wouldn't receive the recompense that a wine shop gave, and the life span of a temple serving boy was sometimes marked in months, rather than years.

Sargon obviously wasn't wearing anything under his thawb either. Asu squirmed around on his lap-not being unwilling or railing against his fate, but being scared and needing more patience than he was being given. Sargon was fat and gross and smelled not just of the wine, but also of the opiate he smoked and the spices he was served in his food that few others in the city could afford. And he was being rough and brutal. With his free hand, he reached around and grabbed Asu's balls through the material of the thawb, and squeezed.

"Don't fight. Or do fight me, it will make the taking all that more pleasurable. I will have you here and now. I have waited and schemed for too long."

Asu, eyes watering, looked toward the wine table in panic. Hatim and the solider, Nasri, had their heads together in quiet conversation and were watching him.

Sargon was moving Asu's rump around on his cock, almost, but not quite, achieving penetration through the two layers of cloth. His hand stopped squeezing Asu's balls, but only so that it could gather up the hem of Asu's thawb and work its way onto Asu's leg. His long fingernails were scraping their way up the inside of Asu's thigh.

The young man wailed, "Not yet . . . please," and managed to break away from Sargon and almost stumble out onto the floor beside the table. He did go down on his knee, but while Sargon roared his anger behind him, Asu found his footing and struggled, the other men now in the hunt, each wanting to be the first, snatching at him with their hands as he passed.

He was nearly sobbing when he reached the relative safety behind the bar table again.

Surprisingly, Hatim didn't admonish him. Rather, he held out a cup of wine and said, "Here, calm yourself, Asu. Drink this to calm yourself."

Asu downed the cup of wine. Wine was not something that you were permitted to have before you came of age. Thus, although Asu had had a bit now and then and more than a bit in the week since his ceremony of change, this wine was stronger than he was accustomed to. So was the second cup.

He was feeling a bit woozy when he felt one of the soldier, Nasri's, hands on his arm and the other one on his waist. Asu looked, with unfocusing gaze, at the soldier's face. His expression was inscrutable. He was looking stern, but Asu noted a hint of a smile-and something else. The same lust that had been in Sargon's eyes.

As for Sargon, he was still loudly mouthing his indignation at his table, but was soon stopped as Hatim hovered at his table, another one of the serving boys beside him, Hatim's hand gripping the young man's wrist. Asu saw Sargon lifting the hem of his thawb to his belly, and Asu saw the plump, hard cock of the man. And then Asu watched the ass of the other serving boy descend on the cock. It was all unreeling like it was in a surreal dream, though.

"Your master is done with you," Nasri said in a growl. "I am taking you home."

"No," Asu whined. "He must give me another chance."

"You will come with me," Nasri said.

And there was no arguing with that, as Nasri had merely leaned over, taken Asu by the waist, and flung him over his shoulder.

Outside, after barely twenty steps, Asu was aware enough to say, "This is not the way to the wool merchant's quarter. This is not the way to my father's house."

Nasri reached up and slapped Asu on the rump and said, "Perhaps we are not going there. Perhaps I am taking you to the temple for the priests to debauch." And then he gave a hearty laugh.

* * * *

Supper couches, with gently raised backs, were fanned around the stone walls of the room. The floor was stone. So was the ceiling. There were torches, only half of them lit, fixed to the walls around the four sides. All of these couches were facing one, in the center of the room, that was flat.

The center couch had red-leather ropes attached to each of the four corners. The two at one end were tying off the wrists of a young man, swarthy in complexion, with a short beard and black body hair. The young man, not much taller than Asu, but more heavily muscled, covered in blue-tinted tattoos of primitive symbols, and thin of waist, with flaring thighs, and bulbous buttocks cheeks, was supporting the weight of his torso on his shoulder blades. His belly was inclined up, his jet-black cock and his heavy balls flopping back and forth, his black bush mingling with the more reddish, auburn bush of the man holding his torso on the incline and, kneeling between the darker-skinned man's thighs, grabbing his waist, and fucking him in hard thrusts.

One of the dark-skinned man's arms appeared to be broken-he screamed each time the thrust of the cock of his assailant jerked it. There were bloodied slashes across his chest and his thighs, and a dirty rag tied around one of his ankles. He was bleeding from a knife wound in his side. His knees were bent and lacerated-Nasri remarked to Asu that this was caused by sinking to them in defeat on the battlefield-and his bare feet, his ankles bound to the long, red cords at the foot of the couch, were flat on the surface of the lounge on either side of the soldier's beefy thighs.

It was obvious that it was a member of the Palace Guard who was fucking him. The short skirt with the leather slabs was on the floor next to the couch, the soldier's sandals next to that, and the medallion of rank was still around the soldier's neck, swinging back and forth in rhythm with the thrusts of his cock. The soldier's musculature was magnificent, as it was with all of the palace guardsmen, and his cock was thick and was pistoning hard and fast.

The man tied to the couch had been screaming when Nasri carried Asu into the room over his shoulder. They had not gone to Asu's father's house, but they had not gone in the direction of the temple, either. The solider had carried Asu into the entrance of the king's palace and turned immediately to the right, entering the guard house and proceeding through that to the living quarters of the Palace Guard.

The man on the couch had long, black hair, in ringlets, and as Nasri and Asu entered the chamber, hearing the man's screams from as far away as the entrance into the palace forecourt, the soldier fucking him had grabbed him by the hair, punched him in the face with a fist, and pounded his head against the hard surface of the couch until the man was reduced to moans and groans.

The soldier grabbed the man's legs by the ankles and wishboned him in a wide, high spread to the limits that the red cords binding his ankles would permit, and started fucking his hole with deeper, anger-filled stabbing thrusts.

Upon entering the chamber, Nasri stopped about five paces from the center couch, pulled Asu down the front of his body, and held Asu to his pelvis. Still dazed, Asu had no trouble discerning that Nasri's cock pressing in the cleavage of his buttocks was harder and bigger than Sargon's had been.

Nasri pulled Asu's thawb over his head and cast it aside on the floor. All Asu was wearing now were his sandals and the golden chain around his neck that his father had given him for good luck.

"Hatim has paid me to get you over your reluctance," Nasri said. Both he and Asu had their eyes trained on the taking on the couch. "He wants it done fast and completely, and he wants you returned fully conditioned and resigned to it. Are you going to fight me?"

"No, Sire," Asu murmured. "I want it done as much as he does." His voice, however, revealed the great fear and regret with which he spoke this accepted truth.

"A pity perhaps," Nasri said. "I like an attempt to fight. That man on the couch has fought. But he has lost. A captive from battle yesterday out on the plains. Karan there saw a friend of his lose his life to this man in battle. The captive was given to Karan. I thought that Karan would be finished with him by now, but he is toying with him. He had started when I left for the wine shop. I thought the taking couch would be free. No matter, though, I will initiate you standing here while we watch."

Asu moaned and trembled in Nasri's embrace. Nasri was holding the shorter young man off the floor, with just one arm encircling his waist. Asu's body was jutting out from his at the pelvis, and his arms were dangling beside him. His head was lifted, though, and he was watching the brutal fucking on the couch. The soldier was up on his feet, crouching, taking deep, slamming thrusts into the captive's channel. Rearing his buttocks back to where the long, thick cock came out of the hole, and then ramming it inside with a hard thrust of his hips. The captive was groaning quietly, just hanging there, supported only by the soldier's hands on his waist raising the man's pelvis to the punishing cock. The wounds on his chest, side, and thighs had opened and blood was oozing out of them. There also was a trickle of blood coming down from his scalp in front and his lower lip and an ear, torn where the soldier must have taken bites out of him. Cum was dribbling out of his hole. There had been several takings. The soldier had even taken time out for refreshment and then come back to resume the attack.

Asu felt the leather skirt of his own soldier hit the floor and get pushed aside with a foot. And he felt the hard cylinder of the cock, skin on skin. Long, hard, thick. Another Palace Guard requirement. Virility was the pride of the city. When the guardsmen marched on parade in the city, they marched naked except for their medallions of rank. If they could not take pride in what was swinging between their thighs, they would not be in the Palace Guard. Nasri's cock was lodged between Asu's thighs, pushing at the base of his balls and cock. He was slowing stroking, dry fucking Asu already.

"You are so big," Asu murmured in fright.

"The best to initiate you. When you can take the cock of a palace guardsmen, you will have no trouble in the wine shop. This is best for you. Tonight you will take more than one palace guardsman's cock. I promised to return you fully prepared."

Asu moaned and began to shudder.

"Do not fear, my sweet little one. I will take good care of you. I almost would not take Hatim's money. To be the first in one like you-to ream you to Palace Guard requirements-is reward enough in itself."

Over the next several moments, Nasri worked to get his cock inside Asu's hole, but it just wasn't working. Nasri was too big and Asu too virginal. Nasri gave up on the direct approach. He carried Asu over to one of the other couches, crouching down as he moved and retrieving the leather bands used as belting for his leather skirt. Laying Asu's back on the end of the couch, he called out, "Bring me taking grease."

In short order a Nubian slave arrived with the requested lotion. In the meantime Nasri had tied Asu's ankles together, pushed his legs up to his chest, and then tied his wrists in front of him, so that his legs were encased between his chest and his bound arms. When the slave arrived, Nasri was tonguing Asu's hole and patting it, commanding it to open for him.

Asu was moaning at the unexpected pleasure of this sensation. He arched his back and groaned loudly, though, when Nasri's beefy, greased fingers started to work at opening his channel up.

"Sorry that you must be bound," Nasri whispered. "But this must happen, and quickly. There will be no running away from me as you did from that fat, rich merchant, Sargon. Hatim has declared that when you come back you will sit on Sargon's cock-or not come back alive."

Asu moaned as much for what Nasri had said as for what he was doing with his fingers.

"Servants," a voice rang out from the center couch. "I think it is finished for now. I wouldn't want to use him up in one session. Come clean up and throw him in the cells."

Asu heard a scurrying of feet, the sound of something being carried off, scrubbing of the center couch and the floor around it-and then silence.

"Ah, good," he heard Nasri say. "We can use the taking couch after all."

Bound at all four corners of the couch, but with enough give that he could kneel on all fours, Asu had his head raised and his mouth hanging open, panting heavily and whimpering. Nasri was covering him close from above and slow pumping his cock inside Asu.

The screaming and begging for mercy were over-had been over for nearly half an hour. It had been difficult even with the taking grease and the preparation by the fingers, but Nasri was insistent and determined-and Asu was bound and helpless. Asu could take no more of the demands on his knees and elbows and, with a groan, he sank to the surface of the couch.

"Just as well," Nasri muttered. "I must ensure full access."

Asu had no idea what the soldier meant until he felt the giant pull out of him and the leather strips being secured around his thighs and his calves, holding his legs close together. He arched his back and screamed again as Nasri started working his cock into the now-tightened channel.

There had been a change of shift in the palace guardsmen, and those going off duty had passed those coming on duty in the supper room. The city was large, but the repute of Asu for beauty and the end of the counting of his days for the change ceremony were well known, so all stopped beside the center couch while passing from and to their duty. They could not believe their good fortune, when Nasri told them what he was doing with Asu, why, and that they all might have a part in it.

"We are preparing him for his wine shop duties, training him to take the cocks of men," Nasri told all who asked. "If you wish, those of you coming off duty, stay and you may have him too. And for those who are going on duty, we will still be here when you are relieved. But he is not for rough taking, lads. We are conditioning and hardening him, not punishing him. Keep that in mind, as hard it is, I know, for you not to be rough. I'm sure that all of you, like me, want to have him survive for our visits to Hatim's wine shop. He is our guest tonight, not our captive. The bindings are for his benefit."

Nasri came this time inside Asu. Asu had already come countless times in nervousness, fear, shock, and, eventually, the glory of the taking. As Nasri untied the leather strips around Asu's thighs and calves, another strapping, young palace guardsman stepped forward.

"Retie him on his back; just the arms," he said. Nearly a dozen hands moved quickly to untie Asu's wrists and ankles from the red cords; turn him, groaning; onto his back; and then rebinding his wrists to the corners of the couch. Taking a plump pillow from another couch, the strapping soldier climbed up onto the center couch with his knees, pushed the pillow under the small of Asu's back, wishboned his legs with fists grabbing his ankles, and slid a throbbing, hard cock inside him, easily opening a channel that had already been stretched by Nasri.

Asu could feel the difference of the cock, which surprised him, and although he cried out at the first thrust, this one wasn't as thick as Nasri was, so Asu felt prepared to take him. He also was younger than the rest and over anxious. Four thrusts and he exploded, adding his semen to that already contributed by Nasri.

"The gods be cursed," he cried out.

"No tragedy," Nasri said. "There is room at the end of this line."

The third man was content with taking Asu the same way, but subsequent guardsmen each had his own characteristics and preferences and feel. One even had Asu rebound with his knees pulled into his chest and ankles tied to wrists, laid him on his side on the couch, stood next to him, and plowed him sideways. Once taken across the curtain, Asu was grateful for this education-although the lessons could have stopped several hours before they did.

Mercifully, he was not there for the next change in shift. The captain of the guard strutted in on the proceedings, asked the gathered guardsmen what in Hades were they doing with this young civilian of the city. When he was told, he ordered them to unbind the young man. Then he reached down and picked Asu up, threw the spent youth over his shoulder much as Nasri had done much earlier in the evening, and took Asu to his own, private quarters.

* * * *

The captain of the king's Palace Guard, Mahir, was not of the world of the subordinate guardmen's supper couches, or of the city's wine shops, or even of the city's merchant world. He was a senior official of the king and was a man of the palace court. His was not of a world of fucking serving boys in the wine shops; his was of the world of courtesans and of taking young men fully and well on silken couches and leaving them both sobbing and sighing, unable to close their legs and not wanting to, grasping at him for another throw.

Asu was trembling and moaning, hiccupping and groaning as the captain carried him into his bedchamber. The contrast between Mahir's quarters and those of the palace guardsmen was startling. Within the same stark stone walls that held the guardsmen's supper room, a luxurious chamber had been assembled-tapestries on the walls, carpets from the Orient on the floor, leather-seated campaign chairs, a large sleeping couch, covered by the skins of exotic wild animals, and a many-armed chandelier in the ceiling, casting bright light from a hundred candles.

A young man of handsome visage and dressed only in bangles and rouged nipples lay on the couch when Mahir entered, carrying Asu over his shoulder. Mahir waved away the courtesan, and when he, pouting, had removed himself, Mahir pulled Asu down to in front of his body, with Asu facing the bed. He encircled Asu's heaving belly with a strong arm, covered the young man's privates with a beefy hand, and let his hardening cock part Asu's thighs, the bulb pressing against the base of Asu's ball sac, giving Asu the sensation of his torso resting on a gigantic, throbbing cylinder. Asu knew what it was, though, and he panted in fearful anticipation.

The contrast in living styles was not the end of it. Mahir's body was unlike those of the younger Palace Guard soldiers, as well. To their Apollo physiques, he was a Zeus. Massive, barrel chested, and thick waisted, but all hard muscle, his cut torso the model for the shaped body plates the soldiers wore into battle. His thighs were as the trunks of the cedars and his feet and hands were broad and long, with long, plump digits. The shoulder-length hair of his head and short beard was gray-blond, the gray beginning to take control. Other than that he was hairless except for the blond thatching in his pits and a luxurious blond bush, in which nestled the prize cock and balls of the regiment-his championship equipment contributing to why he was the captain of the guard. Many of the other guardsmen had indulged in body tattooing. Mahir only had a double row of black notches running down either side of his trunk, ominously celebrating the men he had dispatched in battle.

Mahir kissed Asu on the neck and in the hollow of his shoulders, and on his ears, taking those into his mouth and licking around them, before putting his lips next to Asu's ear and speaking softly, in a deep voice.

"You cannot escape your destiny, young man. But you can control it and learn to use it and let yourself revel in it. You have a beauty that makes men dribble, a small size that makes men feel more the man, and a very nice set of privates . . ." Here Mahir stopped cupping Asu's cock and balls and moved the hand back to where it parted Asu's buttocks cheeks and found and gently rubbed Asu's entrance, already conditioned to pucker and open to the touch. ". . . the plumpest orbs I've parted in some time-I can hardly wait to part them with more than my fingers-and a hole that, though now a bit swollen, is fit for a king's cock. Perhaps after a few months in the wine shops . . ."

"You are so different. You make it sound so different," Asu murmured. "Not like the soldiers out there, not like the men in the wine shop. You speak to me, saying things that make me stir. But in the end you are going to take me too, aren't you."

"Oh yes, little one. In the end I am going to cock you too. I'm going to cock you as you have not yet been plowed. I did not bring you in here just for a fatherly chat. But, although well meaning-and for your own good-Nasri and the men were using the wrong approach with you, I think. As he tells it, it was not unwillingness or rejection of your destiny that made you resistant, but it was fear of the cock, a hating of it possessing you. Is that not so?"

Asu did not answer, but Mahir could feel him already relaxing in his grip. His free hand was roaming all over Asu's body, gliding over the curves, into the crevices, covering the young man's breasts and rubbing the now-engorged nipples.

"When we are done here, you will love the cock. You will see it as your gate to riches and pleasure. You will understand your body as the key to open the hearts and purses of other men, within days or weeks-which must be finished before I can bring you back into the palace-you will be totally conditioned to the largest of men. You already have had the largest of men to be had in the kingdom. From tonight, it will be you controlling men, with your beauty, for as long as it lasts. And if you're clever enough, when the beauty has given out, the riches will sustain you. And when you are properly conditioned, no longer sore down here from the preparations of the palace guardsmen, you will have only pleasure-your own pleasure-from the cocks."

"I can obtain pleasure-my own pleasure-from the . . . the cock?" Asu murmured. He was panting in shallow breaths at the attentions of Mahir's hand on his body. And his voice was slightly slurred, thick with something he had not yet identified as arousal.

He did, however, realize that his own cock was engorging at the touch of Mahir's hand and fingers. Mahir began a slow, sensuous stroking of Asu's cock.

"Yes, before you leave my bed, you will be begging for the cock. And you will have pleasure. You have pleasure now, do you not? Did any of my soldiers bother to do this for you?"

Asu shook his head in a negative. He could not speak through his low moans and groans. This indeed was pleasure, this stroking of his cock. All of his attention was now riveted to the hand stroking his cock.

"There are pleasures to be had in the act, little one. Pleasures that you can demand and control, while still demanding rich rewards. And soon, very soon, riding the cock will be second nature to you. You can then concentrate on getting your enjoyment as much from having it inside you as you do from the rewards it brings in."

"I don't know. I can't imagine . . . I'm so frightened."

"Think beyond the wine shop. Think of being in the palace and of riding the cock of a king. He is expert, but he is not built like his palace guardsmen are. He will give you pleasures you can only imagine now, without taxing your guts as the soldiers did . . . or as I am about to do."

Asu squirmed a bit within Mahir's embrace.

"Yes, little one, as I am about to do. The guardsmen who snatched your virginity, your first soldier, Nasri, is in training to succeed me-someday. He is being trained in the positions of India. He thought that what you needed was a rough taking to prepare you for the wine shop. After seeing you-and yes I have heard about your charms from the talk of the street-I believe you should be conditioned to the king's bed. While you are in the wine shop, I will send Nasri to you, and he will teach you the positions of India. But tonight, little one. Tonight you are mine-your sweet hole is a sheath for my thick sword. I wish to be inside you when you are still tight, before you are slack. Your walls will be stretched to the point of split. You have yet to be cocked as I am going to cock you."

Asu groaned and nearly fainted, with Mahir still holding him close.

This was part of the conditioning. Mahir was pushing Asu to the brink with the imagery of what was to come. This was all part of the foreplay that his guardsmen had not learned helped in the battle.

Asu moaned, close to ejaculation, his hips in motion, with Mahir having loosened the grip on the cock to permit Asu to stroke inside his encircling beefy fingers. Mahir placed his index finger on Asu's piss slit and pressed into it while his teeth went to Asu's ear and gently pressed into and scraped along the lobe. With a cry-which he still did not know was ecstasy-Asu breathily announced that he was about to explode inside.

Quick as can be, Mahir released both Asu's cock and his body and had turned both himself and Asu so that Mahir was kneeling in front of Asu, supporting Asu's body in a half crouch, with a strong arm around the small of his back. Asu's torso was arched back, away from Mahir. Mahir's mouth covered Asu's cock, and his free hand went to Asu's ball sac. He gently pulled Asu's balls down from his body and then squeezed the balls, again gently. With a howl of release, Asu ejaculated down the Palace Guard captain's throat.

"Tell me now that you cannot get pleasure from your destiny," Mahir said as he lifted Asu and lowered the young man's shuddering body, belly down, on the sleeping couch.

Asu felt his legs being moved apart and the knees of the captain come down between them. He sensed the massive torso hovering over his back. He felt the warm breath on the back of his neck and then the kiss there. He turned his head and saw the heavily muscled arm, with its puckered battle scars, planted firmly on a gigantic closed fist at the side of his shoulder. He felt the bulb of the cock-the monster cock-at his hole. It was being rubbed across his entrance. And then taken away and slapped against his buttocks cheeks. Then back to the hole, rubbing across it, stopping to pulsate at his entrance, pressing in, but just a bit, back to rubbing, sliding along his perineum to the base of his ball sac, and then back to rubbing across his entrance. He only barely realized that he was raising his pelvis to the cock, widening his stance, anticipating the invasion, as he had done for the guardsmen when he knew they were going to slide into him-almost revealing, to anyone but himself, that he wanted it.

"Such a small body," Mahir was whispering in his ear. "A small, tight channel, even after the attentions of my soldiers. But mine the largest cock of all, none that you have had, none that you will have will fill you as this one will. Sliding slowly inside you, into your stomach, your walls stretching to the limit-almost beyond the limit-no matter what angle you give it, how far apart you spread your legs and your plump buttocks. And then the start of me moving in and out, in and out, inside you . . ."

Asu moaned deeply. "Master . . . please."

"Please what, little one?"

"Please."

Mahir laughed, and then Asu sensed the captain withdrawing from him, moving down on the couch. Strong hands, on each side, lifted Asu's pelvis with hand holds underneath him, gripping him and raising him between his groin and the tops of his thighs. The sense of warm breath on his swollen hole. The cool touch of a tongue, starting tentatively but gaining in command and demand.

The long sigh. Asu not realizing that it came from him. He had moaned again too, but now he sensed something more. He was sighing. And visions of that cock flooded his mind. Sliding into him, filling him, moving inside him.

"Please," he weakly murmured, moving his pelvis in almost imperceptible motion back and forth against the tongue.

The pressure of a finger. Moving inside, revolving, finding his prostrate-a feeling of need and of urgency that Asu had never felt before. Both a pleasure and a want that he'd never imagined feeling. A hand encasing his cock, stroking it. Not gently now-fast, hard pulls. Milking him.

"Please!" Asu screamed to the stone ceiling as he exploded again and then collapsed, into an exhausted half sleep.

/The dream was sensual, full of pleasure. The man covering him handsome and regal, a crown of golden leaves encircling his brow. His purple silken thawb pulled up to his waist, a golden chain and a swinging medallion around his neck as his torso hovered above Asu. Asu could see one of his own legs running up the man's torso, the other one being held up and out by a well-manicured hand, heavy with jeweled rings. The man was stroking inside him, but Asu's pelvis was just as active, counterthrusting, trying to pull the cock in as far as those of the soldiers Asu had known and of the powerful Zeus of a guard captain. Asu's hands were on the man's chest underneath his thawb, working the coin-sized, hard nipples. Working the man, working for the pleasure and rewards of the man, but working for Asu's own pleasure too./

Asu woke, stretched out on his side on the animal skins-covered couch. The captain was stretched behind him, embracing him and gliding his hands on Asu's body. Asu's topmost thigh was raised and resting on the closed legs of the beefy soldier chief. The bulb of Mahir's cock was resting against Asu's entrance.

"Ah, awake are we, little bird? Pleasant dreams?"

"Umm," Asu answered, only half awake, but aware that he was moving from imagined pleasure to real pleasure. He turned his face to Mahir's, who, for the first time in the night, moved his lips to Asu's, pressed them open with his tongue, and fully possessed Asu's mouth. Asu groaned for him. Mahir moved a hand to his hard cock and revolved the bulb around the rim of Asu's hole. Asu groaned more deeply. Mahir raised the knee of his upper leg and placed his foot flat on the surface of the couch. This raised Asu's leg and turned his pelvis more toward Mahir's groin. Asu could feel his hole open more-blossoming, throbbing, ready and wanting now for the slide of the cock. So could Mahir. The bulb moved inside, just the bulb, though. Mahir revolved the bulb inside the hole entrance. Then, to the tune of deeper moans from Asu and the heaving of Asu's belly and the sound of his pants, Mahir pressed the bulb in a bit, then pulled it out. In and out, in and out-still just at the surface. Revolve. The entrance was open, sucking at the bulb.

Asu pulled away from the kiss. "Please!"

"Please what?"

"Please. I beg you. Give me the cock! Put me to the sword."

"Ah, you beg me now for it, do you? I told you you would, didn't I? You are realizing that the act can be as much for your pleasure as for the other man's now, aren't you? That you can make that happen, control it. I assure you that you have me; that I am desperate to be inside you. The only reason I could hold back is that I knew I was going to cock you, whether or not you asked for it. But I am as much yours at this moment as you are mine. You can seize your destiny rather than shrink from it."

"Oh, the gods, oh, the gods. Put me to the cock now. I beg you."

"You may have it now, yes. But to complete your conditioning-and so that you know it is done-you may only have the cock one way. You will ride it yourself."

Mahir lay on his back, his fists locked behind his head, looking-at least initially, amused and triumphant-as, facing him, Asu straddled his midsection with his knees, his channel-through no little effort-sunk on Mahir's cock, and rode him in languid motion.

"I . . . I . . . didn't know," Asu murmured in a thick, dreamy voice.

Asu's body was too beautiful and desirable for Mahir to yield control for long, though, and Mahir had held off longer than he would want-certainly longer than he thought he could, although, with this young beauty he did, indeed, have a prize for a king, a toy he could gift the king in exchange for the king's continued good favor. This was a primary function of the captain of the king's guard. To condition and provide young, pliable, beautiful male bodies for the king's bed.

Asu was riding his cock well, leaning back, grabbing his ankles, and rising and falling on the cock by leveraging with his knees and calves. His eyes had a glassy, cum-filled look in them-and, indeed, the ride was cushioned by the cum of several guardsmen-and he was babbling almost incoherently, permitting himself to be lost in the pleasure of the cock now. Mahir had not a shred of doubt that the youth was fully conditioned, fully enjoying what he was getting.

But the scene, the experience, was much too arousing for Mahir too. He could take no more. With a roar, he raised his torso, grabbed Asu by the waist, and called out in a commanding voice, "Give over the cocking to me now. You have done well. Just lay back and enjoy it."

Dutifully, Asu let his torso relax in a backward arc, his arms dangling at his side, as Mahir began pulling Asu's channel up and down on his cock, slowly at first, but increasingly faster, deeper, harder.

"Yes, cock me! Put me to the cock me! Cock me!" Asu cried to the stone ceiling.

Harder and harder, faster and faster. Brutally slamming the huge cock inside the small, but accommodating body. Breathing heavily, chanting a war chant, losing all control over this beautiful, young body. Rising to new heights of arousal himself because the little one was dancing the cock now. Crying out for it, writhing and throwing his little body around. The little body taking it hard and deep, sucking it deep inside. Climbing to the heights of the cock, slamming himself down to the depths of it. Spouting out on Mahir's belly, causing the flood to work its way up from inside Mahir's balls. This would be a big blow, even for Mahir. He could feel it boiling, rising up from inside him.

* * * *

Asu didn't make it back to the wine shop until the next afternoon. Mahir could not let him go until both were beyond exhaustion. And Asu sobbed that he didn't want to go, and was only assuaged when Mahir whispered an assurance in his ear that, when it came to bed partners, what was the king's was also Mahir's.

Hatim, after being assured that Asu was fully ready to accept his fate and his position in life now, assigned Asu to a room in the back of the shop and let him sleep and heal for three days.

On the night of the third day, however, a naked Asu was sitting on the cock of an obviously happy and aroused Sargon in the same chair that Asu had wriggled away from him in four nights previously. Without command to do so, Asu was leveraging on the balls of his feet on the floor on either side of Sargon's lap and was rising and falling on the cock, such as it was-requiring no effort for Asu after the soldier cocks he had recently known. It was all that Sargon could imagine wanting, though. Asu was saying all of the things that Sargon wanted to hear about how wonderful Asu's sponsor was to him. Sargon was strumming the beautiful young man's nipples and savoring the victory of his long campaign, having no idea how short the time of his sponsoring and recompense would be. Sargon was alternating the stroke of his hands between Asu's cock and his nipples-because Asu demanded the attention of him and Sargon was too much the slave of Asu's channel now not to give the young beauty what he demanded.

Asu's performance was helped by two factors. He was so soused with free wine provided by Hatim that he didn't particularly care who was fucking him, as long as there was a pile of cash on the table in front of him-and as he rose and fell on Sargon's cock, he was looking over to where the soldier Nasri was standing at the end of the bar table and looking at him. Later, after the wine shop closed, Nasri would be taking Asu to Asu's little room behind the wine shop and would resume teaching him new sexual positions of India that were sure to increase what men were willing to pay for Asu's body. And in just weeks, the palace, the king-and Mahir. And Nasri had said that the king knew the positions of India better than he did, was more flexible than he, and would give Asu even more pleasure, despite the differences in the cocks, while taking his own, than even Nasri could give him. It was doubtful Nasri actually believed that, but he was as much the king's man as Captain Mahir was.

The basic training of Asu had been concluded satisfactorily for all.