Floating World Bitten Peach

Deng Qiao, owner of all of the cotton mills within sight of Langshan Mountain—Wolf Hill—at the fringe of the Yangtze riverside town of Nantung, sighed as he wiggled his hips into the pillows and held his young consort’s silken black-haired head in his lap. Ping, the singer musician, who Qiao had bought from the Cut Sleeve Nanleshijia—men’s pleasure house—was working vigorously on trying to bring Qiao’s cock alive, but it was slow going.

Ping lifted his head and looked up into Qiao’s eyes. Seeing concern there, he asked, “Why so sad, sire? Am I not pleasing you?”

“You always please me, little songbird,” Qiao replied. “It is only a small spasm. It will pass. Please continue. Your lovely mouth is taking my mind off the world.”

What Qiao didn’t say was that it was more than a small spasm he was feeling in his chest. He was feeling a hint of the inevitable. And above that, he was thinking of Ming Lei, the accursed pirate, who had begun to worry the shipping off the mouth of the Yangtze River. He had lost two cotton goods shipments in the last full phase of the moon, and his fortune was beginning to sift through his fingers.

Qiao cursed his luck. Forty years building his fortune and begetting sons off of the ugly but fruitful and wealthy Meilin, and now, when he had entered the reward-enjoyment phase of his life, the double curse. He had nurtured the young and handsome Ping, knowing full well that someday he could leave his family behind at the court of the King of Wu in Gusu and retreat to his Nantung home with a little songbird like Ping, to enjoy his mature years fucking how and who he pleased. And it wasn’t just that. He truly loved Ping; he had desired him for years before he could touch him, acting as the patron for the young man’s training at the nanleshijia—the men’s pleasure house—all for the privilege of taking that first bite of the peach—deflowering Ping—and then savoring it for years afterward. And then, when Ping had matured enough, Qiao had extended the invitation of sharing the Tea of the Full Moon with him, afraid, even though he was the patron summoning a jinan—a male prostitute—he had paid for, that there would be a form of rejection. He was confident that Ping would accept the offer—that was his responsibility to his nanleshijia master—but Qiao loved Ping and wanted it to be a union of mutual acceptance and desire.

Ping had been as shy as a bride. Handsome and beautifully formed, Ping had been demure and had trembled even before the touch. He had sat there, on the nanleshijia pavilion platform, under the moon as it opened wide into full blossom—just as Qiao envisioned Ping opening wide to him, and tasted of the tea Qiao had offered, the specially imbued tea that heightened some senses and dulled others, hardened the yang chu, the cock—and loosened inhibitions and opened the channel.

Ping was already sighing softly as Qiao moved his hand within the folds of Ping’s hanfu. The youth flinched as Qiao took a nipple between his thumb and forefinger and rolled it—but Ping did none of the things that signaled rejection or reluctance. In his courtesan training, Ping had been closely instructed in all forms of the foreplay—everything short of the biting of the peach. Instead, he moaned in a sound that came up from the very depths of him. Throwing all caution and ceremony aside, Qiao clawed at the sash of both his and Ping’s hanfu, and he was pulling the loved one he had waited for—not patiently—but waited for, for years, into his lap and was assaulting Ping’s virginal hole with his ready cock, barely giving the younger man sufficient time to open to him. This was the point at which Ping had not gone beyond in his training, but this was what Qiao had paid for.

The hard, throbbing yang chu—the erect cock—forced itself in deep and the thrustings were frenzied and resolute while Ping’s writhings were pained and passionate, building up to Ping collapsing, fully open and vulnerable to the assault, allowing his patron into his soft core, and Qiao crying out and quickly releasing his seed, a dream he had built up to for several years. Ping lost his chenchieh, his chastity, quickly in a violent, passionate taking. But, though he cried out upon full possession and panted heavily and whimpered at the taking, Ping gave himself fully, giving Qiao no cause to lessen his love or his insatiable desire for his handsome vassal. And thus was how Ping rose many levels of importance in the House of the Cut Sleeve.

Although it was customary for patrons to visit their jinan at the house of pleasure and even for the jinan to entertain men other than their patron, Ping had been separated from the opportunities of the nanleshijia and become Qiao’s Nantung retreat consort in exchange for comfort and a position in the household and a promise of a large inheritance. But now, a few short months later, Qiao was having trouble performing as he desired.

The second curse was connected with the first. Qiao was dying. Knowing that something was wrong inside, he had accepted the diagnosis—even had resigned himself to it beforehand. But he was keeping it to himself. In his world any sign of weakness could be a death sentence, a massive shock to the balances within a large household. His golden years would not be gold; they would not even be silver. They would be bitter, and they would not even be years. Bitter fruit. Bitter fruit indeed. He sighed again, willing his cock to harden, wanting to forget the real and the ironic in fucking the handsome Ping.

Part of the problem, Qiao reasoned as he flinched and felt a little spark of arousal when Ping took his balls in his mouth and started rolling them around in his cheeks while working on Qiao’s cock with his long, slender fingers, was that he had felt little warmth in Ping recently. There had been plenty of fire in Ping’s belly back in the pleasure house, when their trysts were a ritualized game. But here, in his own house, months after the biting of the peach, with no mystery or anticipation—or perhaps, Qiao had to admit, not having the variety of a young, virile yang chu in addition to Qiao’s withered one, Ping’s desires had gone dull. It was nothing in what Ping willingly exhibited; it was in what he could not hide.

There was progress on the rising of Qiao’s cock, but at a glacial pace. Seeing the problem and not wanting to have to stand by in service and watch this upstart Ping worming his way into Qiao’s heart for hours on end yet, Qiao’s chamberlain leaned down and whispered in his master’s ear.

“Perhaps some entertainment, master. I have something that you may find very helpful. A dancer, all the way from the land down under. Young, strong, old enough, but not appearing so. Perhaps if the master pleases, and Ping is unable . . .”

Ping snapped his head up, instantaneously sensing the danger to his position. He tried, not altogether successfully, not to flash a hateful look at the chamberlain. It was always household struggles for power in the homes of the Wu kingdom elite. Ping threatened the chamberlain’s position, who, in turn, held Ping in check. But the balance had changed. Ping was on the ascent—unless the chamberlain could somehow neutralize that. The dancer hadn’t just been passing through nor had he been an afterthought of any sort. The dark little down-under dancer was a card the chamberlain was playing.

Sensing the competition and knowing that Qiao was aroused by music, which is why he had been attracted to the singer musician Ping, the jinan put a little more effort into arousing Qiao’s manhood, using his tongue more on the slit in the cock bulb and swallowing Qiao whole and putting pressure on the root with his teeth. Qiao squirmed and gave a little moan and thickened—a bit, not much.

“Shih, shih. Yes, yes,” Qiao answered in slight irritation. “If I am paying for a dancing boy, let me see the dancing boy.” He was waving dismissively at the chamberlain. But the chamberlain knew his master well from long service. He had acquired an edge.

“Not a dancing boy,” the chamberlain said as he leaned down and murmured to Qiao and said in a silky, suggestive voice. “Fully manned—with a man’s talents and full experience—but the aspect and size of a boy—although, as you will see, not everywhere. Like Yongrui. You remember Yongrui?”

The chamberlain looked down at his reclining master with the countenance of pure innocence. Ping gazed sideways at the chamberlain in suspicion as he worked Qiao’s cock in his mouth.

Yes, Qiao definitely did remember Yongrui. A beautiful boy—but not really a boy. And not even a youth. He had the gift of perpetual youth. He had been Qiao’s tutor, his laoshi, and, in addition to teaching young Qiao the classics, he had also taught him the ways of the world—which included teaching him how to take a cock—Yongrui’s—and then when Qiao himself was fully manned, Yongrui had given himself to his student, fully, and thus taught him the pleasure that Qiao had craved all of his adult life, while he was doing his duty to his ancestors, and that he now was trying to fully enjoy on Langshan Mountain.

Ping felt the stirring of the cock in his mouth and the rumble of a sigh stirring through the master’s body. Who was this Yongrui, he wondered. And in what way could he endanger Ping’s position? How was he to know that Yongrui had died when Ping was still a boy—in fact just before Qiao had turned his eyes to the promising young, beautiful boy whose training had just started in the Cut Sleeve Nanleshijia? Still, Ping sensed a present danger. The chamberlain should not be this pleased.

Music started from singsong girls beyond the Western Pavilion curtains, and a young boy minced onto the tatami matting in front of the bed of pillows where Qiao was reclined and Ping was bent over his half-hard cock.

But it wasn’t a boy. Qiao could see that now. It was a young man. The chamberlain had called him the dark beauty from down under. He was small, but perfectly formed, with the cock and balls of a man much larger than he was evident inside the diaphanous transparent, billowy pantaloons that were his only clothing other than the gold-bangled belt that was duplicated in bands around his ankles, wrists, and biceps. The richly dark-skinned dancer moved with supreme, undulating grace. He never was still the entire time he danced. And he danced beautifully, mesmerizingly.

Qiao was interested, but only slightly aroused—at least by the dance of the dark beauty.

When Ping looked up, however, he was smitten and drowned in the beauty of the movement of the dancer—and not just by his movement. As small as he was everywhere else, he had a yang chu to rival any man’s. The discrepancy in sizes was enough to send Ping’s arousal soaring. And this was transferred in the love he made to Qiao’s cock. The electricity of Ping’s arousal flowed through to Qiao, and his cock became almost as proudly erect as it had when he had first taken Ping.

Seeing his chance and his need to solidify his position, Ping rose, took Qiao’s cock in his hand, and slowly descended his ass canal on the now-hard member. He did so, though, with his back against Qiao’s chest. Ping sensed—correctly—that the dancer was the catalyst. That his own arousal for the dancer had flowed through to Qiao. And he knew without a doubt that it was Qiao’s arousal that had to be maintained. Qiao encircled Ping’s chest with his arms as Ping fucked himself on Qiao’s cock and tweaked his young consort’s nipples. Ping answered in the moanings that he knew were expected and desired—and that were further arousing to the master. He turned his head and they kissed.

When Ping turned his attention back to the dancer, he gasped and gulped in breath. The dancer had shed his pantaloons. He was holding his overlong cock in his hand and swinging it as he undulated his body. And there was a thick golden bar piercing the head of his cock.

Ping had never seen such as this before—and it put him into an arousal such as he had never felt before. His channel and hips went into overdrive, and his groans and moans mounted to meet the cries of desire coming from Qiao. Qiao exploded in a flowing that he had not managed in nearly a month.

Yes, he could die happy, he thought. If he could just experience this once again each day before he died. Memories of Yongrui swam up and clutched at him, and his love for his Ping overflowed in tears of appreciation.

Ping sighed and snuggled back into the embrace of his master, feeling the vitality of the old man wash away, knowing that his position in the house of Deng Qiao had been safe gained for at least one more day.

The chamberlain ushered the dancer out of the room. He was not really displeased at Ping’s success with Qiao. In fact, he was very pleased with Ping’s reaction to the dark beauty from down under. It fit into his plans precisely.

Later that night, Qiao stirred in his sleep—the pain in his chest almost unbearable. He could not sleep because of it. Would this be the night, he wondered. He had been told it would not be this soon—but soon enough. But how does mere man know of the plans of the ancestors anyway? Qiao thought bitterly—but not without acceptance of inevitability, which was blessed by a sense of peace.

He turned and reached for Ping. But he was not there.

He rose, worried about where Ping had gone. Wanting him there, holding him, if this was to be the night. On silent feet and covered only by a soft, cotton robe, Qiao padded to the chamber that was Ping’s when Qiao preferred solitude.

He heard the sounds of passion before he reached the room. He knew what they signified. But who? Who could it be? He moved ever so quietly to the chamber opening and pulled aside the silken covering over the door.

Ping was on his back amid the pillows, arms thrown akimbo over his head, head lolled to the side with a glazed look of deep satisfaction on his face, legs spread wide, and the dark dancer’s pelvis between his legs, fucking him with long, strong strokes with that oversized cock of his. The long, thick shaft pulled out to the point of which the gold bar in the bulb sparkled in the moonlight and then Ping clutched at the dancer’s shoulder blades and, with a prolonged moan, thrust his pelvis up into the dancer’s groin for the long slide deep inside his soft core and emitted a cry of passion as the dancer’s bulb danced at his very center. Ping had already come—twice—lost in the maddening rubbings of the large gold bar crowing the dancer’s cock deep inside his channel.

If he had had a sword, Qiao would have rushed them both and dispatched them there and then. How dare they? Under his roof, under his protection. But just as he was about to burst into the room, there was a dull, panicking thud in his chest. A missing of a beat or a bursting of something? There was no telling, but suddenly Qiao could not breath, and there was a painful pounding in his chest. Instead of confronting the two, he withdrew to his own room and willed himself to be calm and still and to hope that the pain would pass, which, in time it did. Even though he was trying to remain calm, that did not prevent him from thinking. And his thoughts turned to possibilities. The more he thought the more he realized that he could not do without Ping. He could as easily have killed himself as to either kill Ping or lose him. No, life would go on as usual with Ping—as long as Qiao still had life in him. But the dancer. The dancer.

The chamberlain had seen it all. Not only the wild fucking of Ping by the dancer, who the chamberlain himself had led to Ping’s room, but the voyeurism of Qiao as well. When Qiao withdrew, so did the chamberlain—a little disappointed that Qiao did not intervene straight away and do what needed to be done, but at least with the knowledge that he had mixed up the relationships inside the house of Deng Qiao. And as long as the relationships were in flux, there was always the possibility that his own position would be enhanced.

Meanwhile, the dancer and Ping fucked on, Ping never before having been taken so vigorously and expertly and with such stamina—meltingly so from one who seemed only a boy—and certainly not with a gold bar caressing every fold deep inside his channel. Ping felt the stirrings of deeper feeling than lust. Ping was beginning to have an inkling of what constituted man-to-man love.

The only man he had had inside him before now had been Deng Qiao. Ping had had no idea what a young, virile, monster yang chu could do with his arousal and feeling of complete taking. When the dancer disappeared from the household the next day, Ping cursed that he had ever learned what true fucking could be like.

* * * *

It was a great honor—and an opportunity, more than one opportunity Qiao eventually would realize—when the Duke of Shi, ruler of the prefecture Nantung was in, chose to visit the Deng cotton mills. The warrior lord had a considerable army of his own and provided a great opportunity for cotton sales for war tunics for his soldiers. Such a consignment would go overland, and Qiao could avoid risking its seizure by the pirate Ming Lei at the mouth of the Yangtze. It had been fortuitous that the lord had been amenable to an evening’s entertainment at Qiao’s home after they had toured the busy mills in Nantung.

“It is a daunting task,” the lord said with a sigh from the comfort of the pavilion platform’s pillows—mellow and relaxed by the proffered food and drink—and not least by the special entertainment that Qiao knew the duke enjoyed when it could be obtained on the sly. They sat back and indulged in the choice tidbits and gazed up at the misty upper reaches of Langshan Mountain. Their mood mellowed as they listened to the sweet song and samisen being played in the near distance by Ping, who was artfully positioned on a tatami platform. Royal blue silk skirts billowed around him where he knelt, but his chest and arms were bare. Qiao had purposely had him arranged this way. After having seen Ping’s response to his taking by the young down-under dancer and experiencing the singer musician’s renewed ardor in the days that followed, Qiao had decided to try to accomplish two desires at the same time.

If the Duke of Shi could be influenced in his cotton buying by the charms of Ping and if Ping were then satisfied by a more virile and satisfying cock than Qiao could provide, there would be both rice in the house’s bowls and peace in the bed chamber. Qiao, long a secret connoisseur himself, knew of the Duke of Shi’s appreciation for the artistic and the exotic and the male. He also knew that the duke was monstrously endowed and took his pleasures on young men roughly and cruelly, and Qiao still harbored a resentment that sought some form of punishment for Ping for his indiscretion with the down-under dancer.

“A daunting task, you say?” Qiao murmured, hoping he could bring the desultory chat back to cotton cloth.

He was in luck here. “Yes, we have a destiny, you know, Qiao. The campaign of the Kingdom of Wu into that of Chu is doing very well now. And, since young King Jiayi has replaced that old bastard Jili, relations within the land of Wu have also become quite brighter. I have been appointed the quartermaster general of all of the armies of Wu. So, I am not visiting cotton mills only for the needs of the prefecture. I have the army of a kingdom to clothe. From what I can see your mills are very much in contention for the entire contract.”

Qiao looked to the lord in interest and ready to form words that would increase the lord’s favor toward his mills. The duke wasn’t looking at him, though. He was looking and smiling benignly at Ping, who had taken on the look of a frightened deer. Ping was not really frightened, though. He had been coached by Qiao that the Duke of Shi liked his conquests to be innocent—and slightly apprehensive. Qiao hadn’t told Ping that the duke also liked his conquests to be completely used and defeated.

The lord sighed heavily as he licked his lips, eyes focused on the graceful and provocative movements of Ping as he strummed his lute and softly sang his song—now appearing to do so directly to the Duke of Shi. “So many soldiers and so much cotton cloth needed for war tunics,” the lord said.

“The Deng mills would be honored to serve,” Qiao responded in a low, throaty voice. Although conflicted by the thought of Ping being used by another man, Qiao knew such a commission could bring the Dengs back into the highest ranks of favored families of the Kingdom of Wu—and it might also make Ping less restless.

“Yes, such a difficult decision,” the lord murmured in a heavy, measured tone.

The Duke of Shi fucked Ping hard and cruelly on the tatami platform, holding Ping crouching on all fours, with his perfectly rounded buttocks orbs lifted, steady with a clutching palm on the little singer’s belly, while the lord hunched over his hips and pounded away like he was using a ram to invade the jinan’s inner sanctums. And after he’d recovered from his first ejaculation and Ping whimpered softly underneath him, the lord pushed Ping over onto his shoulders, hauled his legs up, and fucked down into him again like he was driving a stake into the ground. The lord had a riding crop in his hand and was using it as he would on his war horse when in full pursuit of the enemy.

Ping’s body was assaulted and bruised like he was the enemy the Duke of Shi was practicing to defeat, and although Ping cried for mercy, the warrior took no prisoners and gave no quarter. What he gave was a deep drilling inside Ping that was nothing like Qiao was capable of giving, nor did it show any of the concern for Ping’s pleasure that the down-under dancer had been careful to provide.

In the darkest hour of the night, Qiao lay on his pallet, listening to the screams emanating from the main pavilion, cries that were a mixture of pain and pleasure, the edges of which the old mill owner could not discern. He regretted the brutality, but he could not pretend that he had not heard that this was the fetish of the Duke of Shi or that he wasn’t pleased that Ping was pleasing the man who, potentially, would be the best customer the House of Deng had ever had. Trying not to listen to Ping’s pleadings and moans—and to the slapping of the riding crop, Qiao calculated in his mind how many bolts of cotton material it would take to cover the bodies of the soldiers of the army of Wu and how much of this could be delivered by land to avoid the pirate ship of Ming Lei.

The next morning, as Qiao saw off a smiling Duke of Shi—smiling in such a way that the abacus in Qiao’s brain was already clacking off potential profit, Qiao found Ping sobbing in his chamber. The master embraced the consort in his arms and rocked him back and forth, but Ping’s sobs were inconsolable.

Qiao was having trouble controlling his own emotions as well—and even having trouble discerning all of the conflicting emotions at play. He was sad and distressed. But he was aroused too at the vulnerability and depths of emotion in his young lover.

Ping was in unintentionally fetching dishabille, having not been able to do more than drag himself to his chamber when the Duke of Shi went off to sleep for a few hours before he had to depart. He was clutching the silk skirts he had been wearing on the tatami platform to his bosom, attempting to hide the welts on his chest, buttocks, and thighs, but when Qiao came into the room and gently pulled the silk away to survey the damage, Ping writhed, almost naked, achingly beautiful of body, within the embrace of his master. Miraculously Qiao’s cock was hardening, and Ping, knowing his place and also having been strangely aroused by the Duke of Shi’s masterful, if rough, play, willingly and fully gave himself to his master, opening his legs, rolling Qiao over on his back and mounting the old man’s pelvis, pulling Qiao’s cock inside him, and riding him in the undulating movement of a ship on rolling sea. Sobbing away but giving his master full measure of what he had been taken into the household to provide. Qiao raised his lips to Ping’s torso and kissed the welts and bruises he found there.

In grateful flow, loving Ping more deeply than ever, Qiao ejaculated what he suspected, from the pounding of his heart, was his last spouting of Deng seed from his loins, all the more moved and appreciative in this revelation.

Holding the trembling Ping in his arms, he whispered, “You are willing to stay with me forever? To be taken to cross over with me, if that is what I desire? And to serve whoever I send you with?”

“Yes, sire. I am yours forever,” Ping murmured without hesitation. Ping was recovering from his experience now. And as he recovered, the memory of what the Lord of Shi had done to him adjusted. He would be loyal to Qiao, yes, but now and again he would welcome the variety and danger and ultimate testing that one such as the Duke of Shi could give him.

And Qiao believed his young lover—that Ping would maintain the honor of his position in the Deng household to the death, if necessary, even though his heart might be with another. And very shortly Qiao had to face that reality.

* * * *

One evening, not long after, the first son of Qiao, Longwei—Dragon Greatness—arrived for a visit. This was an unusual occurrence. Longwei was his mother’s son, and Qiao was virtually ignoring his first wife. Longwei—and, for that matter, the senior wife Meilin, assumed that Qiao had taken up with female concubines in his Nantung retreat. For his part, Qiao did nothing to disabuse his family of that notion, and he kept concubines near him, although it was Ping who slept with him at night—at least until Longwei’s unexpected arrival.

Longwei appeared when Qiao was sitting on the summer decking by a waterfall that fell from a steep incline of the looming Langshan and listening to Ping, sitting on a tatami platform, playing his lute and singing a sad song for Qiao.

Fortuitously, Qiao’s concubines were gathered about him. Longwei gave his father a nasty stare when he appeared unexpectedly, purposely not announced by the chamberlain, who, when they appeared, was disappointed that Qiao and Ping were not engaging in a lewd act. Qiao just smiled blandly, though, reveling in the knowledge that Longwei could have received a far more shocking sight than concubines fanning their master and rubbing his aching legs with soothing oil.

Ping had fully recovered from his bruising and the welts that the Duke of Shi’s riding crop had left on his body, and he was posed just as he had been for the Duke of Shi, swathed from waist down in blue silk skirting, but bare of torso and arms.

The afternoon light was filtering between the trees under the waterfall, with a beam falling full on Ping. Longwei, who was a man who fully appreciated young men, took his breath in sharply when his attention went from his father to that of the singer and lute player.

Neither that effect nor the handsome countenance of Longwei were lost to Ping either. The eldest son was all of the things that Qiao had been thirty years earlier, but that he largely had now lost. He was handsome of face, stood tall and proud, and had the build of a wrestler. Qiao had such length of yang chu that could take pride, even in its withered years. And Ping’s first thought was whether the elder son had inherited the father’s endowment and whether he was young and virile enough to thicken quickly and to maintain strength.

That night Ping was to find out that the answer to both questions was yes.

Discussion between father and son was polite, but strained, through the evening meal and the entertainment afterward, with Ping playing the lute and singing and three of the concubines dancing in willowy movements for Qiao and Longwei, who reclined on pillows in the main pavilion overlooking the waterfall.

Qiao was making an effort to show lustful interest in the concubines, determined not to reveal to his family in Gusu that his reasons for separating from them were worse than they imagined. Longwei, however, openly showed interest in Ping.

As they reclined there, Longwei made one last effort to reason with his father for his mother’s sake. “You are missed in the capital, Father. The new king of Wu, Jiayi, is open to changing all of the entitlements. He says that the commissioners of his dead father were keeping too much for themselves. We could be negotiating better commissions for the House of Deng.”

“We can do that right here, son,” Qiao said. “And for that reason it’s important that I stay here for a while—and that you work for our family on the Gusu side.” He then explained to Longwei the slow but promising negotiations going on with the Duke of Shi for the army cotton material contract. “The quartermaster general for the Kingdom of Wu is here, in the prefecture of Yangzhou, not in the capital. It is here that we will win or lose the best business opportunity we have with the Kingdom of Wu.”

“It may take more than favorable purchase terms to achieve a contract in the kingdom, Father,” Longwei said. “Perhaps you have been out of the capital too long to—”

“I know what it takes,” Qiao answered with a hard edge to his voice. “It is I who built our family’s fortune. Do you not think that I found the way to the Duke of Shi’s good graces? He is a connoisseur of young male flesh—if you can possibly imagine such an inclination. Do you not think Ping, the young man playing so beautifully for us over on the tatami, would appeal to such a man? The Duke of Shi has already visited here and departed quite pleased—and well bribed.”

Longwei could not argue about that. Indeed, Qiao could tell the young man didn’t want to argue—or even talk with Qiao further. Longwei’s full attention had gone to Ping, who had now turned three quarters from the father and son and let the silk skirting drop half way down the line of his buttocks, so that the two men got the full benefit of the curve of Pings back going down to the orbs of his buttocks and the inviting crease in between. Longwei, knowing the Duke of Shi’s sexual proclivities, turned his thoughts to imagining what the lord had done with and to Ping, and he found himself going hard and his breath coming out in shallow pants. Qiao looked at his son and discerned what the young man’s thoughts were.

This was enough to put both father and son in full arousal, but only Longwei was able to show that it had. He, though, didn’t wish to any more than his father did. Just as the father didn’t want to reveal his inclination to the son, the son did not want to reveal his to the father.

“It is getting late, Father, and I have covered a great distance today.”

Qiao took that to mean that the son wanted to retire, when, if he had been less concerned with showing interest in the concubines and more concerned with watching his son that evening, he would have understood that Longwei was trying to send Qiao to bed.

Longwei’s ploy worked, though. “The chamberlain has shown you your room, Son,” Qiao said. “I and the concubines will now go to mine and leave you to get your rest.”

“I will go in a few moments, Father,” Longwei said. “I have not heard this song before. I would like to hear it to its conclusion.”

When the father and concubines were gone, Longwei rose and went to the tatami platform and sat next to Ping.

“That was a new song to me,” he said. “It was beautiful, but it was so sad. Do you only play sad songs?”

“Yes, that is all I play,” Ping said. His eyes were downcast as he could hardly maintain his steady breath in the presence of this beautiful man. He was sure that if he looked directly into Longwei’s eyes, Longwei would know that Ping wanted him to make love to him. He had been told earlier by Qiao to act as if he was an unbitten peach and to say that he was a virgin to men if Longwei asked. Qiao’s original intent was to do all he could to keep Longwei from scenting the true reason Qiao wanted to be away from his family. That he had had to reveal that he had let the Duke of Shi use the young musician had changed his original intent. Not having overheard this conversation, though, Ping could not know that he was no longer expected to act the virgin.

“I have tried to learn the lute, but I had trouble with the fingering,” Longwei said in a low, husky voice that made Ping melt to him. “Perhaps I was doing it wrong.”

“Perhaps,” Ping said. “Do you want me to show you the correct positions?”

“Yes, please.”

Longwei moved very close to Ping and put an arm around him so that his hands could be next to Ping’s as he held the lute and showed Longwei the positions.

Ping realized his hands were trembling. But Longwei’s were not. They were strong and steady on the Lute.

“You use a scent in your hair,” Longwei whispered. “The fragrance is intoxicating. It gives a man ideas.”

“Sire,” Ping whispered.

Longwei’s lips were at the hollow of Ping’s neck and Ping inclined his head seemingly involuntarily, giving Longwei greater purchase there. Longwei took a hand away from the lute, but not the arm embracing Ping, and he untied the sash of his hanfu and pushed the folds of the robes from his body, revealing a long, proud, fully erect cock.

His face still downcast, enabling him to see the richness of Longwei’s endowment, Ping murmured, “Sire, I am innocent, unknown by man.”

“All the better,” Longwei answered in a hoarse voice, enjoying what he now knew was a game, as he had been told that the Duke of Shi had already bitten this peach—hard. But to pretend that Ping was a virgin was more arousing to Longwei than being assured he was. Longwei appreciated experience and skill. “You do not wish to remain that way forever, do you?” As he was saying that, he took Ping’s chin in his hand and lifted his head, staring directly into Ping’s eyes. He saw there exactly what he had hoped to see. “No, I think not. May I be your first?”

Ping emitted a little whimper but did not answer.

“If no, say no,” Longwei whispered. “Silence would be a yes.” After a moment of silence between them, he murmured, “Thank you. Lie down and brush your skirts open.”

“I’m afraid,” Ping murmured, playing his role to the hilt.

“I will be brave for both of us. Just let me lead you through the gate.”

Ping gave a little whimper again. Longwei gently took the lute from his hands and placed it well away from the taking field in the center of the tatami platform. Then he, again gently, pushed Ping down onto his back, ran his hands under the hem of the voluminous skirting and pushed the material up to where it bunched on Ping’s chest. He took in his breath noisily when he saw that Ping was naked underneath the skirting—and that his body was perfectly formed.

His mouth lowered to Ping’s yang chu and slowly swallowed it down to the root. Ping sighed and set his hips into a slow roll to match the rhythm of Longwei’s sucking. Longwei’s fingers went to the rim of Ping’s opening, and Ping moaned and opened his legs in a wider stance.

When Ping had ejaculated down Longwei’s throat, Longwei bent Ping over onto his chest and ran a hand down his back and over the orbs of the young man’s buttocks. Longwei was a buttocks man and spent several moments cupping and stroking and separating them. Having pulled them apart, Longwei looked down at the rosebud of an opening between, which Ping was making quiver in such an inviting tease that Longwei’s mouth moved to his channel opening. Ping rewarded Longwei’s attention there with little moans and sighs, and he rolled his hips in waves, murmuring appreciation of the sensations when Longwei’s tongue invaded him.

Longwei turned Ping on his back, and, with Ping lifting his legs over Longwei’s shoulders, raised Ping’s pelvis to him and returned his attention to the puckered hole as if he were drinking nectar from a cup. Ping dug his hands into the hair on the back of Longwei’s head and muttered, “Now, now, now,” whereupon Longwei raised up on his knees between Ping’s thighs, possessed Ping’s mouth with his, and slowly pressed into Ping’s channel with his cock. Ping was panting hard and clawing at Longwei’s back, using all of the tricks he’d been taught as a jinan to fool a man into thinking he’d been the first.

It was a long journey of Longwei’s cock up inside Ping, But when he was fully encased, he disengaged from the kiss. Ping arched his head back toward the tatami mat, with Longwei holding his body steady with a palm of his hand in the small of Ping’s back, and Longwei’s tongue and teeth went to Ping’s pert little engorged nipples.

“Now you are mine, little once,” Longwei murmured. “A bite of the peach. Now I suck the nectar dry.”

“Do it. Take it all,” Ping whimpered.

Longwei began to pump, first in slow, long, steady strokes, and then faster, in off-beat rhythm and stroking that had Ping jerking and then moving his hips, taking control of the stroking, bringing it back in rhythm. He knew how to keep his channel tight on a cock. He also knew how to make his muscles undulate over the cock so that Longwei was getting the loving of his life. Longwei grunted and talked in the language of the gutter of what he was doing to his conquest. Ping moaned and groaned and murmured of being stretched and filled to the limit as he’d been taught to say to clients—but this time meaning it all.

When Longwei ejaculated, Ping cried out, and crossed his legs tightly around Longwei’s waist, holding him inside, taking all of the seed Longwei had to give.

In the shadows, the chamberlain watched, smiling and contemplating how he could use this to get rid of the jinan.

Later that night, Qiao rose from his bed and quietly pattered out into the corridor. He could not go a night without attention from his young lover. But when he went to the room formally assigned to Ping, the singer wasn’t there. Returning down the corridor, he heard the unmistakable sounds of lovemaking. He peered into the doorway to his son’s room.

Ping was laying on Longwei’s mat on his belly, and Longwei was stretched out on top of him. Only their hips were moving, but there was no doubt where Longwei’s yang chu was churning. The two were kissing, so neither heard Qiao’s low gasp or saw the expression of grief and shock on his face.

That night, with his concubines sleeping on mats around his bed, Qiao suffered a heart attack.

It did not kill him, but it was serious enough that Longwei did not leave the next day as he intended. Or at least that was the excuse he used.

Both Longwei and Ping moved around the mansion as if in a cloud of smitten love—all except when either was in the presence of Qiao, commanded by his doctors to remain in his bed.

The two young men fucked whenever and wherever they could.

“You must return to Gusu with me when I leave,” Longwei whispered to Ping after a tryst. “I will set you up in your own house. I will give you whatever you want or need. All you have to do is open your legs to me.” So taken with Ping was Longwei that he had completely put out of his mind what his father had said about the Duke of Shi having been first. Ping had been so much the innocent in Longwei’s lovemaking that Longwei had come to think that his father had lied out of pique at being instructed on how to win a government contract.

“You give me by far the easiest duty,” Ping said with a small laugh. He didn’t say yes to Longwei’s proposal, but he was so much in love with the younger version of Qiao that he knew he’d go with Longwei if that’s what Longwei wanted, no matter what.

Qiao began to get better, and he got cranky. One night, while Ping was still in the main pavilion, playing a sad song on his lute for Longwei, both waiting for the household to settle so that they could fuck wildly, one of the concubines came to Ping.

“The master is calling for you, Ping,” she said. “He wishes you to attend him.”

Ping looked over to Longwei.

“You must go,” Longwei said. “We have the whole night.”

Qiao dismissed the concubines as soon as Ping had entered the room. “I have missed you terribly,” he said. He was propped up on pillows in his bed. “I can’t go any longer without being inside you.”

“But the doctors have said—”

“Bahh to the doctors,” Qiao said. “Come sit beside me.”

Ping went and sat on the side of the bed. Qiao pulled back the covers and spread his sleeping robe, revealing his withering, but still strong-looking body. His cock was half hard.

“Please.”

Ping leaned over and took the old man’s cock in his mouth and began to work it. It responded perhaps more strongly than it had for many weeks. Perhaps, Ping thought, it was from the days of abstinence.

Qiao reached over and pulled Ping’s hanfu off his shoulders and moved his hand down the hard torso and into the thatch of hair at his crotch. He took Ping’s cock in his hand and started to stroke him.

Please let me give him what he wants, Ping prayed to the heavens. He willed his cock to harden. And it started to. He turned his thoughts to the body of Longwei, the young, virile version of Qiao, and he hardened more. He thought of Longwei making strong, deep love to him, and he managed to ejaculate.

Qiao sighed a satisfied sigh. “Please,” he said again.

Ping mounted his hips and saddled his channel on the long, now fully erect cock and began to gently ride his master’s staff. Qiao sighed and moved his hands lovingly over the curves of Ping’s chest and belly, hips, and thighs.

Feeling Qiao getting closer to coming, Ping rode more vigorously. Qiao was burbling with delight, urging Ping to ride harder.

As Qiao came, strongly and profusion, his head rolled to one side, his eyes set in a blank stare, his mouth formed a satisfied smile, and he departed this life.

The chamberlain, who was watching from a crack in a door, raised the alarm, and the household gathered in shock and concern in Qiao’s bed chamber before Ping could do more than move off Qiao’s body. He was in such shock himself that he didn’t adjust his hanfu or tie the sash. So, his torso and yang chu were in clear view between the edges of his hanfu when everyone entered the room.

Longwei came into the room, took one look at his father’s body and half smiled. Then his gaze went to Ping and the smile froze. He turned and stalked out of the bedchamber.

The chamberlain had Ping locked in a storage room for two days.

When the door was opened after two days, Ping raced to Longwei’s room to find the door closed and locked. He beat on it, calling to Longwei to let him in, pronouncing his love for Longwei and not caring who heard.

“He will not hear you,” the chamberlain said, with a satisfied smile on his face. “He left to return to Gusu yesterday.”

“Left for Gusu? But he was going to take me.”

“You cannot go to Gusu,” the chamberlain said. “I told him everything of what you were to the old master. You are only going as far as the Cut Sleeve Nanleshijia. The new master of the House of Deng has sold you back to the pleasure house from whence you came.”

“You have violated two of the fundamental laws of being a jinan,” the chamberlain continued cruelly. “You fell in love with a forbidden man, and you aspired to a position above your station.”

“But the inheritance I was to receive—”

Ping went no farther. He could tell by the hearty laugh of the chamberlain that any thought of the promised inheritance was all a dream.

While he was still laughing, the chamberlain grabbed Ping’s wrist in strong grip and pulled him farther down the corridor.

“Where?—”

“As part of the sale agreement, Master Longwei granted me a taking.”

Ping whimpered but he did not struggle. He knew the chamberlain was right—about both mistakes.

The chamberlain took Ping into Qiao’s bed chamber, giggling at the thought of doing it in the dead master’s room, on his bed. He pushed Ping down on the edge of the bed; ripped at his robes; quickly revealed Ping’s nakedness; and untied his own sash and pulled his robes open. Grabbing Ping’s ankles hard enough that Ping winced and called out that there was no need for this, that he wasn’t resisting, the chamberlain wishboned Ping legs, moved between his thighs, and stabbed at his hole with a short but thick and hardened cock until he had managed to gain purchase, and then he thrust hard, again and again and again, his hate-driven fucking closer to that of the Duke of Shi than of either Longwei or his father.

Ping turned his eyes to the side and repeated over and over again in his mind that he would never love a man again.