Shores of Tripoli

Young Billy landed in Charleston, South Carolina, by ship, at his uncle’s own wharf, Brown’s wharf, at the Cooper River foot of Queen Street. He was surprised to find that it was a lot warmer in Charleston in late October than it was in Massachusetts. And after coming from the more staid Boston, he was also taken with the frivolity he found here; it was the beginning of the social season in the city.

His mother’s brother, Charles Rawley, both a rice planter and a slave auctioneer, was one of the busiest businessmen of the city. He was a wealthy man, thanks to his two ships plying between Charleston, loaded with rice, to market in either Alexandria, Egypt, to be loaded there with slaves for the needs of the New World, or Boston to exchange rice and indigo for finished textiles and rum. It was one of these ships that had transported Billy. He had thoroughly enjoyed the sail, convincing the captain to let him apprentice as a sailor and learn the rudiments of the ship.

In return for the attention the captain had given him, Billy let the man play his channel with his cock. It wasn’t just pirates who fucked other men on sea voyages, Billy learned. It was a proclivity of merchant sailors too, there not being many women on a ship during long voyages. Now Billy was more sure than ever that he wanted a life before the mast—and being taken roughly with sailors’ masts.

Billy had been met on the dock by the manager of his uncle’s counting house, being told that the Rawleys were at church. The manager managed to convey to Billy that Charles Rawley was very religious and nothing came before that in his family’s life. Billy was immediately unsure how he was going to fit in here.

Charles Rawley’s star was on the rise, and he had just this year, 1802, taken possession of his newly constructed townhouse at 24 Queen Street.

It wasn’t a large house, certainly not to the standards of the house on Rawley Place plantation fifteen miles up the Ashley River, but as the family only resided in Charleston during the winter, social season months, it was quite adequate for Rawley and his wife and two teenage daughters.

Now, however, he had to make do with his troubled nephew from Boston. Billy’s father had bought out his son’s indenture to the printer, Henry Gawn, much to the latter’s consternation, and had given it to Rawley in exchange for Rawley putting up with a recalcitrant young man of unspeakable proclivities that his own father couldn’t countenance. Of course, William Senior hadn’t told Charles what those circumstances were—only that the son needed discipline, close supervision, greater contact with the church, and to be somewhere else other than Boston.

In his letter to his brother-in-law, William Senior had strongly suggested that Billy be put to work on the Rawley plantation, with no burden spared. Charles Rawley had taken this suggestion with more than a grain of salt, knowing that his Boston relatives had no idea how rigorous plantation life was for a cultivator of rice. That was why they enslaved natives from Africa for the work. No, he wouldn’t send Billy to the plantation. He would use him, making stock tallies, in the company counting house at the foot of Queen Street. When he saw the young man in the flesh, he was convinced that he had been right. Billy was small of stature and much too handsome to be working in the fields. He was muscular enough, having been worked hard at the printing trade, but he was more slender and boyish looking than the planters and overseers who closely supervised the working of the fields. He didn’t look like someone who keep slave laborers in line. And he certainly couldn’t do slaves’ work. No white man could be seen doing that.

Dressed well, which was one of the first orders of business, Charles thought, Billy would be quite popular in Charleston during the social season, though. All of the eligible young ladies would be buzzing around him, putting their fathers in a position to talk business with Charles. Charles even regretted somewhat that his own daughters were Billy’s cousins and therefore not eligible for the hunt.

As far as supervising Billy, he would give the lad space in the attic of his new town house to sleep and otherwise would occupy his time with work so heavy that he would have no chance to roam to engage in whatever mischief had gotten him shipped south. But he would keep a tight rein on Billy. An indenture was an indenture, and Charles Rawley, like all of the other Southern planters, knew what it meant to own the work of another human being—what the balance was between the profit they brought in and the cost of their upkeep.

If Billy had been consulted—which he hadn’t been—he likely would have asked what the difference was between being enslaved and indentured—other than the color of the skin of the man being subjected to the control. Total sexual control as from the pirate Benjamin Palmer, and total control over everything a man did were two different matters to Billy. He had his majority; he was approaching the age of nineteen. And his family was not poor. Why should he be controlled by any other person as tightly as an African slave was?

Life became full for Billy that winter, just as his father had planned and his uncle was providing. He was worked hard in the counting house and walked the three blocks from there to his uncle’s townhouse more often than not after dark either to be locked in for the night or, on rare occasion, to go out for the evening with his uncle at Rawley’s gentlemen’s club, Cooper’s. Cooper’s was housed in a townhouse residence tucked discretely on the short Orange Street, one block south of King Street, which served as a backbone to the oval-shaped peninsula jutting out toward sea between the mouths of the Ashley and Cooper rivers.

Here, Billy would sit behind his uncle and watch him at his major passion, gambling games, mostly poker, before the two were escorted upstairs to be treated each to a fuck with a young woman at Rawley’s expense. Billy dutifully performed and, in fact, was a favorite of the young ladies of the club, but his heart was not in it. He just knew that it would not be in his interest for his uncle to become more the wiser about what Billy preferred. He knew that his uncle sometimes watched through a peephole to gauge how virile and expert his nephew was, the capability to perform and breed being as important in the pedigree of a prospective bridegroom in the Southern plantation class as it was to the value of a stud horse. Billy made sure his uncle wasn’t disappointed in what he saw—nor were the young women he was with. As handsome as he was, he’d had considerable opportunities to lie with woman before he discovered his preference for men.

Nearly all of the gentlemen planters with city residences belonged to such a club. Not many belonged to one as exclusive as Cooper’s, though. In the spring and fall seasons they were at their upriver plantations and had a mulatto slave woman—or young man or boy—or two to provide variety to the attentions of their wives. Here in Charleston, they had their clubs. There were plenty of prostitutes on the streets for those of lesser status, but they, of course, were not the cream of the crop that the clubs provided.

Billy got to know the men frequenting Cooper’s very well, as it was a select group. Prominent among them was the Episcopalian rector of St. Michael’s church, only two blocks north of the club at the corner of Meeting and Broad. Billy saw the Reverend Andrew Apsley regularly at church and midweek services, as well, because Uncle Charles was taking William Senior’s plea of Billy’s increased attachment with the church very seriously. William was of the same mind as many that Billy could be “cured” by turning to religion.

Reverend Apsley was an avid gambler, and he never could resist a high-stakes poker game at the club. Billy would watch the tall, gaunt man, with fascination, sitting there in his pious black cassock and clerical collar, knocking back his rum, and knitting his thick, gray-speckled eyebrows. He was constantly gazing intently at those holding the other hands under his hooded eyelids and pursing his thick lips in a knowing “my God is sitting on your shoulder and telling me what cards you hold” manner. He didn’t often lose. He left the definite impression that he didn’t lose well. Among his other vices were the brown Virginia tobacco cigarettes he chain smoked and the superior attitude he took with all. Decidedly not among his bad habits, though, was that he never went upstairs to fuck the young girls.

He didn’t converse with Billy except for the moments of leaving on the steps of the church after Sunday and midweek services, but Billy had the impression when he visited Cooper’s with his uncle that the Reverend Apsley was ever aware of where he was, what he had said, and what he had done. Billy was just grateful that his uncle wasn’t a Catholic and that Episcopalians didn’t have confessional requirements.

Cooper’s was not Billy’s only chance to have sex with women that winter. His eldest cousin, Elizabeth, was very taken by him and showed every indication that he could take liberties with her if he wished—and his aunt, Charles’s wife, showed every indication that she wouldn’t mind a forced marriage between the two, regardless of the inbreeding taboos. Her family was from the mountains to the west, and in their somewhat more isolated and primitive conditions, cousin marrying cousin was not unheard of—or disapproved of.

Billy didn’t wish such an arrangement, however, and he politely held his cousin at arm’s length without doing her the insult of revealing that he preferred the cocks of men. He was less polite with the wife of the manager of the counting house who visited with special treats for the men several times during that winter and would have ridden Billy behind bales of wool if he hadn’t been nimble at staying at least one step out of her grasp.

There, of course, were no opportunities—at least for Billy’s initial months in Charleston—to fuck men. There were balls nearly every Friday or Saturday night that were as exhausting as they were boring for Billy. Saturdays and Sunday afternoons were taken up with either visiting or being visited, with the entire Rawley family decked out in expensive clothes and transported around the city in an open town carriage. There were men during these visitations that Billy thought were strongly attracted to him, but he and they were never left alone. And one young woman or another was constantly being thrust at him.

It was in otherwise innocuous conversations during these visitations, though, that Billy began to see a glimmer of hope for an easing of the gilded cage he was being imprisoned in. A common thread ran through the chit-chat from men who gravitated to him during family visitations but who were as restricted in what they could say and do in this context as Billy was. He noticed that such men invariably would ask him what he was doing after the season—in the spring. Would he be staying in the city or going to Rawley Place plantation with the rest of the family?

Invariably Billy would say that that was up to his uncle, as he, Billy, was indentured to him. He noticed, however, that the men’s eyes would light up and a little smile would flick across their faces when he added that, as he was gathering increasing responsibilities in the counting house, it was likely that he would be staying in the city.

It didn’t take him long to see this as his opportunity for increased freedom. If the rest of the family was fifteen miles upriver and only he and the town servants were at 24 Queen Street, who was there to tell him when he could come and go—and where he could go? There were servants in the house, certainly, but they were as much enslaved as he was. He was sure he could loosen his leash by loosening theirs as well, and that no one need be the wiser.

This is exactly what transpired. During the waning weeks of winter, Billy did all he could to make himself indispensable at the counting house, thus making Charles’s decision to leave him in the city a natural one that Charles could come up with himself.

There was nothing Billy wouldn’t do at the counting house—except for having anything to do with the sale of the African slaves taken straight off his uncle’s ships and sold on a block standing at the land side of Brown’s wharf right beside the counting house.

The first time he had been asked to stand by and tally up the bids, he had been traumatized by the wretchedness of the creatures being sold. The one exception was a big, strapping warrior of a man, heavily muscled and his magnificent body and face pocked with blue tattooing. The man stood tall and straight and glowered with superiority and ferocity at any and all who came close to him. He bared his teeth and pounded his chest, making his chains rattle, at the mere audacity of the clerk standing next to Billy to suggest the opening of a bid. He looked murderously at any and all who opened their mouths to speak, and his gaze ended on Billy. Naked hatred and belligerence. The look of “I could and would tear you apart with my hands, given the chance,” sent a chill down Billy’s back.

What was startling, though, was that it was a shudder of sensuality. Billy knew that he melted to being dominated and abused by a powerful man—it was what made him a moth to the flame that was the pirate Benjamin Palmer. He was afraid of this giant of an ebony captive, yes. But at the same time he ached to be taken by one such as him. He’d never lain with a black man before. This one was naked and his manhood, in partial erection, was humbling to any other man on the wharf.

In the ensuing weeks, Billy often wondered in the night how it would be to be taken roughly by a black man—especially one as hugely endowed as this tattooed slave was.

There was no bid. All were instantly cowed by the ebony giant. In the end, he was sent in chains to Rawley Place to work in the rice fields if and as he could be broken down to do so. If he couldn’t, he probably would have to be put down, the manager of the counting house told Billy.

The experience was more traumatic than Billy wanted to face again, though. The thought of such a magnificent creature being put down simply because he wanted to stand as tall as a man in the New World as he had done in his African kingdom was repugnant to Billy, who had not grown up in the South, and thus had not inherently learned that black men were counted as less than human. After that, Billy made sure he had duties to perform inside the counting house when the slave auctions on Brown’s Wharf were in train.

What he found to do, though, was valuable enough to the Rawley fortunes that, expressing his regrets, Uncle Charles told Billy it would be best if he remained at work in the city during the spring.

Billy did what he could to show a slight pique at this imposition, making his uncle express regret that this burden was being laid on his young nephew’s shoulders.

* * * *

Less than a week after the Rawley family bustled its way out of Charleston, baggage carts in train, to open up the big house at Rawley Place, Billy was starting a new, but subtly different schedule. He appeared to be working at the counting house hours longer than he had been before, often not getting back to 24 Queen Street until the early hours of the morning, only to have to rise again shortly after dawn to return to work.

He was happier now, though. And this was primarily because he wasn’t coming straight back to the Queen Street townhouse from the nearby counting house. Instead, he was making a detour to the Prioleau Wharf area farther out on the city peninsula and, more precisely, to the Elliott Street waterfront. This was the rough and tumble quarter of the city that was given over to the common sailors who were in port and who were exploding with freedom and whatever cash they had accumulated that they had not been able to turn into liquor or sex for the months they’d been at sea before docking at the major port of Charleston.

It wasn’t just common sailors who gladly departed ship in Charleston to carouse. Piracy was still booming in the Caribbean, and Charleston was about as far north as their ships and crew would come on the North American continent to exchange their loot for booze and services. A Charleston that was prim and proper on the surface, but hedonist just below that thin veneer, was as happy to take golden Spanish coins from pirates as from any staid merchantman. There were more than a few pirates and sailors who wanted to hump other men on land as much as they did at sea.

Billy felt free and alive just to be mingling with these rough sailors. He wasn’t as large and menacing as those he tended to gravitate to, but he was nimble and smarter by far than any of them, and he was good at picking out men who wanted to give him what he wanted and would pay him for what he gave them. On the average of twice a week, Billy allowed one of them, usually the biggest bruiser of the lot, to take him into a back room or an alley and fuck him rough and hard. This was beginning, at least, to scratch an itch that had been plaguing Billy ever since he’d been shipped south. He considered it something temporary—just to take the edge off his need. It was giving him some financial independence as well. What he didn’t realize was that he was picking out men with an increasing aura of danger and meanness.

He realized—but too late, the mistake he was making one drizzly night in an alley opening some twenty feet away onto Edgar’s North Wharf, the roughest part of the quarter. He had sat in the lap of a grizzled pirate who was fairly well hacked up from barroom brawls and ship attacks and had felt enough of the prodigious equipment and need of the man to want him inside him. He had whispered his own immediate want in one of the man’s cauliflowered ears and been unceremoniously hustled out a side door of the boisterous bar and into the alley. Billy’s trousers had been ripped away, and the bruiser had produced a sharp knife in one hand and was mashing Billy’s face into a dirty brick wall with the other as he clumsily poked at Billy’s hole with the bulb of his cock.

Billy thought this was getting more out of hand than he wanted—especially with the appearance of the knife, which had already nicked him under the chin and was causing blood to flow. He tried to spin out of the man’s grip and run off, but the pirate was too strong for him. The knife slashed across Billy’s arm and he collapsed into concern for that wound, while the bruiser lifted him with hands gripping his waist and settled him down on a thick cock.

The man held Billy fast to him with one arm slanted up the smaller man’s torso and a fist gripping Billy’s chin. The other hand held the knife pointed up, with the tip nicking Billy just under his rib cage on the left side.

“Settle down and enjoy the fuck of your life,” the pirate hissed.

Billy did that, now being on familiar ground that gave him a buzz. He raised his feet off the ground and wrapped them back around the pirate’s hairy legs so that his feet could hook on the top of the man’s heavily muscled thighs.

The pirate began the long, deep rhythm of the fuck. This was what Billy had come for. But he was concerned about that knife. It was pressing into him below his rib cage, and he felt like he was continually moving uphill trying to get out of its painful touch.

“Do you know what’s just above the point of this knife?” The man growled in Billy’s ear. And then, before Billy could respond in any fashion, the pirate continued, “It’s your heart. This is how I best like to take a man. This is your last fuck, so enjoy it.”

Billy moaned, fully getting the drift of what was happening here. He involuntarily flinched then as the cock drove unusually deep, and cried out as the knife point pushed in, going a bit farther in than just breaking the skin.

“You’ll be wanting to hold still for as long as possible. It’s gonna happen, but you’ll enjoy it more and longer if you hold still. This is what’s gonna happen. I want you to know. I want you to count the seconds left in your life by how good my staying power is. As I jack off inside you, the knife’s going up into your heart. A new fuckin’ meaning of a good death. You’ll want to keep me from shooting off for as long as possible, but you’ll love your last second almost as much as I do.”

Billy moaned again. But it was a rush for him too. He was hard as a rock too. There was nothing he could do about this. This was as high as it got for him in arousal.

He felt the man stiffen and knew that he was about to blow. “Chrisalmighty, you got a sweet ass. I’m gonna . . .”

Billy held his breath, poised for the fatal thrust . . . taking him into chaos as he had the sense that the dogs of hell were churning up his world.

* * * *

“It was only one dog. Freedom over there,” Ben Palmer responded to the first question Billy asked when he came to. Billy looked toward the corner of the captain’s cabin on the Black Falcon, where the coxswain from the beach at Shernhaven crouched beside Ben’s big, black mastiff and petted the dog. The dog was panting with his mouth hanging open, obviously enjoying the attention.

Billy could feel the cock slowly working his insides and he looked down his belly. Ben was standing between his legs, with Billy’s ankles propped up on his shoulders, fully encased and fucking him in slow pumps.

“Sorry, I couldn’t wait for you to come to,” Ben murmured. “It’s been months.”

The younger man sighed and lifted a hand to place it on Ben’s bulging breast, but Ben gently pushed it aside. “Not until we have these cuts taken care of.” He was washing Billy’s cuts and applying clean strips of cloth. His cock kept moving slowly inside Billy’s channel, though, and Billy rolled his pelvis up to get the full benefit of the long slide.

“What . . . ?” Billy began.

“Nob there was in the same bar you were in. I let him take Freedom with him so the dog could get some firm land to piss on. He knew what that bastard you went with liked to do with boys, and so he followed you out into the alley and intervened when the sex got rough. He sicced Freedom on the son-of-a-bitch. Between the dog and Nob using the man’s own knife on him, he won’t be having his special thrill anymore.”

“Ben . . .”

“What?”

“I’m scared.”

“Why’s that? You’re safe now.”

“I’m scared because it gave me a rush. I don’t want to be safe. It’s the scare that turns me on high.”

“I know. I know that about you. It gives me a rush too. But it isn’t healthy. For you, it isn’t healthy. For me, fucking a tight little ass almost to death is just fine.”

“Ben . . . I need you to fuck me nasty.”

“Billy, you know I’m not jealous of you with other men, don’t you? And you know I try to give you what you want.”

“Yes.”

“Nob over there saved you. And he’s got a surprise I think you’d like. I’ll give you what you asked for now. But he would like to watch.”

“OK,” Billy answered after a pause. He felt himself on the rise, so he did guess he liked that idea.

“And then I’m going to give you to Nob for half the night,” Ben said in a low voice.

Billy moaned, but felt himself going harder.

“And then he’s going to give you to the rest of the men in the forecastle for the rest of the night. Some of them are very rough and haven’t had sex in a while. I haven’t let all of the men go ashore yet.”

Ben turned his face from Billy so that the younger man couldn’t see how sad this made him. He wanted the best experiences for Billy—he knew that that was what turned him on—but he was afraid Billy would go too far, as he almost had done earlier tonight. It was a sacrifice to give him to the men, but he’d give them instructions. Billy would be returned to him alive—and in good enough condition for Ben to get what he wanted out of the relationship too.

“Oh, god, Ben.” Billy felt himself going weak, all of his blood going to his dick. But he didn’t have time to react further. Ben had grabbed his throat with both of his hands and was squeezing the breath out of Billy while at the same time slamming him hard, again and again, with his cock.

One, two, three, four thrusts, and the grip on his throat was released. Billy coughed and sucked in air. Ben tightened his grip again and Billy’s eyes bugged out. His cock was at full staff though, and was beginning to ooze precum. One, two, three, four, thrusts. Then release and gasp. Pressure. One, two . . .

Billy was still gasping for breath as Nob lifted him up, slung him over his shoulder and left the captain’s cabin. The coxswain sang out what was in the offing—sweet tail for the taking—as he strode down the deck toward the forecastle, and the crew, with hoots and whistles began to gather around.

Nob’s secret—and, no doubt the origin of his name—was a thick but stubby cock that looked like it couldn’t do a thing inside a man but that, when given entry, grew in both length and girth and had Billy gasping as Nob fucked and pumped the young man’s cock hard to ejaculation.

And then it was a multitude of grinning faces and naked men and wagging cocks in erection or getting there fast. Billy writhed and moaned and groaned and grunted and shouted out at the continuous taking until dawn.

Back in the captain’s bed in the early morning, Billy was laying on his back on the bed, one ankle on Ben’s shoulder as the pirate captain sat on the edge of the bed below him.

“That’s three,” Ben murmured. “I got these in Egypt. I was told they are called Persian Delight.”

Billy was holding very still, reveling in the three porcelain balls on a string that were inside his channel. There were three to go.

“Ben, you don’t really mind. About last night.”

“No, you told me what you needed. I gave you what I could. Don’t ask me to snuff out your life during sex, though. That would snuff out my life as well.”

“Ben . . .”

“Yes. Four . . . and five. God have you been stretched. You need some rest to get that back to tight enough for me to be interested.”

Billy twitched and moaned. “Take me with you this time. I want to go to sea.”

“You want smelly, ugly men fucking you night and day?”

“That too. Ugh.” The sixth porcelain ball was inside him. “But I want to be one of you. I want the danger. Of being a pirate.”

“Not today. But maybe tomorrow. Be at your family’s pier at dawn and . . . maybe.”

Billy sighed, reaching out for Ben. But Ben was standing now.

“And, are you ready for this, Billy.” Ben grabbed Billy’s ankles, wishboned his legs, and started working his cock inside Billy’s channel behind the six porcelain balls in there.

Billy arched his back and cried out in frightened pleasure.

Freedom, laying in the corner, whimpered, and covered his eyes with a paw.

* * * *

Billy stood at the end of the wharf for hours the next day, looking out toward the sea, willing the sails of the Black Falcon to be there. But to no avail. Several times men from the counting house came out to ask him what the matter was, but he just shrugged them off.

He should have known. Ben had given in too easily. Would there ever be a way that both he and Ben could get what they wanted out of each other and for both to be happy? He had no idea.

That night, he dressed in elegant clothes and walked the four and a half blocks across town to Orange Street and Cooper’s gentlemen club. He knew that he would find what he wanted, what he needed, there.

He arrived late in the evening, knowing that most of the patrons would be gone—but that the one patron he sought would be there.

The Reverend Andrew Apsley was just moving from the gaming room to the gentlemen’s lounge for a late snifter of port and a few more of his special Virginia tobacco cigarettes. But he stopped dead in his tracks in the entrance from the front hall into the lounge when Billy entered the front hallway and the doorman had evaporated to wherever the servants disappeared when they sensed their presence wasn’t wanted.

The rector stood tall and gaunt, looking like an avenging angel in his black cassock with the slice of white high collar at his neck. His eyes burnt like black coals, boring into Billy. His thick lips puckered into a slight scowl.

Billy sensed that the minister was going to admonish him for not attending church services at St. Michael’s since the Rawleys had left for their plantation. But that wasn’t what Billy had come for. He had come for something far more dangerous. He knew he wasn’t wrong. In the weeks he had watched Apsley—and especially how Apsley had watched him—Billy knew he wasn’t wrong. And, more important, he knew that Apsley would be relentless and cruel.

“I came to play poker, but I have no stakes to offer,” Billy said.

“You have assets far more valuable than money,” Apsley answered. His voice was like a whip crack. Billy moaned, knowing that it had already begun.

After Billy lost at poker, which he knew he would, Apsley returned to the lounge and ordered his port. After the servant had vanished, Apsley sat in a wing chair, his legs spread, and Billy knelt before him, going up underneath the cassock, and finding the man naked underneath. His cock was erect, curling up cruelly. There was a fat silver ring piercing the glans, a style Billy had heard was becoming popular on the docks of Marseilles but that he shuddered in pleasure to find on this man of the cloth. Billy wasn’t surprised at the nakedness or the obvious preference, though. In those earlier visits, he had noted that the reverend never went upstairs with the girls, but that he often left with a young man. Billy never had seen any of these young men again. The mere thought of the possible implications of those factors had Billy trembling with arousal.

Billy began to suck the man’s cock underneath the cassock, reveling in the danger of the act, knowing that another guest could walk in on them at any moment.

He gasped and gagged and then one of his hands went to the buttons of his own trousers and then to his hardening cock, as Apsley grabbed his head through the fabric of the cassock and held it in place and he began thrusting his pelvis up, pushing his cock to the back of Billy’s throat until he came and Billy sputtered his surrender.

When he’d cum, Apsley pushed Billy to the floor, stood, and readjusted his cassock. “Get up and come with me,” he growled.

“Yes, sir,” Billy answered.

The church’s rectory was in St. Michael’s Alley at the side of the church itself. The objects Aspley had gathered in the basement of the house were ones he told anyone who asked had been collected for a museum of the Catholic Church’s Inquisition period.

The rack he tied a naked Billy to was one where Billy’s belly was folded over a saddle affair on a trestle and his legs were tied in a wide stance to legs of the machine. His arms were stretched out wide at either side and tied down on wings extending from the central structure. It was a simple device really, and it held Billy bent over, with his head hanging down toward the floor, quite effectively and completely.

Billy cried out in ecstasy at the glorious never-before-experienced pain of the whip lashings of his back and thighs and buttocks followed by the paddling of his exposed and sore buttocks cheeks.

The fucking was fast, hard, and cruel, with Apsley grabbing the hair on the back of Billy’s head and arching his torso back. Billy concentrated on the effect of the thick silver ring inside him and, as he ejaculated for the second time since he’d been on the rack, he knew he’d made the right decision to seek Apsley out.

When Apsley crouched down in front of him, smiled up into his face, and moved his lit cigarette toward Billy’s nipple, the young man’s eyes went wide, his adrenalin spiked, and his moan arced into a scream.

Over the course of the spring and summer, Billy visited Apsley’s basement more than six times. It was obvious that the clergyman was fond of the young man, if for no other reason than that Billy was permitted to walk out of the dungeon room under his own power in order to return that many times. For the danger of it, Apsley also took Billy out to Sullivan’s Island to the north of the city to observe a cock fight. Billy sucked Apsley off as they sat in the back of Apsley’s carriage with the top pulled up enough to put them into the shadows as Apsley watched the cock fighting and licked his lips. Apsley continued to watch the cocks tearing each other apart even while Billy was perched in the clergyman’s lap and riding his cock.

If any of the other patrons watching the event also watched the debauchery in Apsley’s carriage, nothing was said in public. Soon thereafter, though, Billy started to have “chance encounters” and suggestions of assignations from some of the men he had met in their homes during the social season who, through some excuse or another, had found they had business that needed to performed in the city, away from their plantations, and who had, hopefully, it was evident, asked him if he would remain in the city after the social season was over and his uncle had retreated to his own plantation.

Such encounters were numerous enough that rumors began to seep out—and then to fly.

When Charles Rawley returned unexpectedly during the fall harvesting of the rice on his plantation, lured back by the rumors, he found Billy tied to the four-poster bed in the master bedroom of the Queen Street townhouse and being fist fucked by a half-drunk sailor.

A week later, Rawley now fully aware of why his brother-in-law had sent Billy south, bundled Billy off to the Rawley Place plantation with instructions of his own that paralleled William Senior’s earlier request that Billy be put at hard labor and closely supervised—and the Rawley women were brought back to Charleston weeks ahead of the start of the 1803 social season.

* * * *

Rice planting was among the most human-labor intensive and demanding of cultivations. Conducted in river marshes of hot, humid, mosquito-infested locations, the crops had to be closely developed and maintained, with individual attention to individual plants, over a seven-month period stretching from late March to September. The fields were drained of water and the seed was sown by hand. The fields were flooded for a week to water the seeds and then drained again. The plants had to be weeded—also by hand—so the fields were periodically drained, and the workers moved from plant to plant in the soggy soil, weeding out all but the rice plants. Then the fields were flooded again to give the plants the continuous moisture then needed to grow. This cycle went on periodically through the late spring and hot summer months. The constant flooding and draining took a heavy toll on the banks of the fields, so these had to be monitored and repaired constantly. When the rice plants were harvested in September after the final draining of the fields for the season, the rice kernels had to be beaten out of the stalks, hulled, and then polished for packing—all by hand—loaded on boats, and floated down the river to the city from which the rice was then transported to its final market.

Billy arrived at Rawley Place, escorted by the plantation’s hard-driving overseer, Hammond, during the last weeding of the drained fields before the last flooding. This was perhaps the most labor-intensive weeding period and the process had done its worst to the banks. In keeping with Charles Rawley’s instructions, Billy was immediately sent among the slaves weeding the fields, and when he had become fully adept at doing this, he was turned over to the crew repairing a levee in the lowest field. Every member of this crew was a strong male slave, those with the most developed musculatures, as the work was the hardest.

To Billy’s consternation—and his arousal, as well—the defiant ebony giant he had seen go unsold on the block at Brown’s Wharf earlier in the year because of his belligerent and unyielding nature, was a member of this crew. The other black men were hunks, as well, but this one man was the dominator. All of the rest acceded to his direction.

His attitude had not changed appreciably. When Hammond brought Billy forward and told the crew that Billy was to receive no special consideration and was to be worked hard, Billy saw the gleam in the eye of the ebony giant, who was introduced to him as Spear. A good name, Billy thought, having seen the man’s spear on the auction block. He was wearing short leggings held up with a rope now—as were all of the men, including now Billy, with Spear’s showing a particularly prominent mound at his groin.

Hammond told the men that, although a member of the plantation owner’s family, Billy would be staying in the overseer’s house with him. Billy saw that this statement had an unusual effect on the men, who exchanged secret smiles and some sneers. Billy found out that very night why this was so. Hammond lived alone, he knew of the rumors of why Billy was there, he fucked men, and Billy was totally under his control.

At the base, Hammond was a primitive man. He was stronger than he looked, being gaunt and wiry. There was no fat on him. He was all muscle, with the veins of his arms popping out because they had no fatty tissue to travel through. He had to be strong to manage the slaves, although there were several underseers to help him. He walked with a bull whip that he knew well how to use. He didn’t use a whip on Billy, though. He didn’t need too. He was so hard-bodied and hard-minded that he could do whatever he wished and Billy knew that he could.

He didn’t have to use any coercion. He simply told Billy at bedtime what he wanted from him and pulled his nightshirt over his head. Billy sank to his knees in front the naked overseer and gave him the preparation and the incentive he demanded. Then he pulled Billy’s nightshirt over his head and motioned toward the bed. As Billy reached the bed, Hammond approached him from the rear and bent Billy over the bed, with Billy’s hands planted in the mattress and his feet on the floor.

Hammond was a man of routine. Every night Billy was with him, he wanted the buildup to ejaculation the same way—in four positions, all basic. Nothing inventive about Hammond. It started that first night as it would every subsequent time, with Hammond wrapping an arm around Billy’s bent body from the back and fucking him in a set rhythm of two shallow and one deep and then repeat. Then he wanted Billy on his back with Hammond holding his legs out and Hammond’s thin hips pumping between in what most knew as the missionary position. Once again two shallow and one deep in repeated rhythm. Billy would just lay there, his face turned to the side, counting the faded flowers in the wallpaper of the far wall. The third position—the one Billy thought of as the “he’s tired” position—had Hammond on his back and Billy riding his cock. This was the only time variety was permitted, and it had to be Billy who varied the routine if it was to happen at all. Billy could face Hammond or away from him, Hammond didn’t care, as long as he could rest and still maintain his erection. In the climax position, rested, Hammond needed to do the driving to the conclusion. Billy was stretched out on his stomach, his eyes cast to the wall on the near side of the bed, once again counting faded flowers, with Hammond crouched over his hips. There was no usual rhythm this time. Hammond was too close to ejaculation at this point to care. This position didn’t last for long, as they didn’t go into it until Hammond felt he was near to eruption.

Twenty-three minutes. Billy could have almost timed it out to equal length each time—if he had been of a mind too. He had actually done that the third and fourth nights, watching the clock on the mantle at the fireplace because he’d gotten the drift that the routine would be set. But then he lost interest after that. Twenty-three minutes. Seven minutes each to the first three positions and the last one in two or less. It was usually only during this last one, where Billy felt that, at last, Hammond was lost to his need to explode, that Billy managed to explode as well.

Billy usually did come sometime in this process. This was still being controlled, if not fucked rough. There was nothing special in Hammond’s cock working inside him. But this was still someone controlling him and working out his form of rage on Billy. So, sometime during the process, Billy did work up enough arousal to come himself.

When Hammond had come, he wanted Billy out of the bed immediately, and he just turned over on his side, facing another faded-flower-papered wall and started snoring.

Billy didn’t mind. He sensed that he had gone too far in Charleston. Vanilla sex was fine with him for a while. It gave him opportunity to review what he had done and what he really wanted. He knew that what he’d been doing was self-destructive. He just didn’t know how to stop. Maybe the way of his father and uncle was best: to work his ass to exhaustion and to keep his sex vanilla and routine. Enough of that and he might lose interest in men. He knew that at some time he would need to take a wife and become as fat and dull as other men of his class. Perhaps taking the thrill and danger away would “cure” Billy of his “illness” just as his father thought it might.

The vanilla routine didn’t last for long, though. The day that the levees were all repaired and the fields were flooded for one last time before harvest, it appeared that everything was finally in order on the plantation, with no other immediate chores at hand, toward the late afternoon. The crew moved wearily to a stand of trees in the plantation house’s lower garden, just above the river’s edge, off to the side of the rice fields, and near where the plantation’s wharf ran out into the river. At least Billy was moving wearily, every muscle of his body screaming its objection. Objectionable as it was, though, the work was hardening Billy’s body to the point that whereas he had been well formed before, now he was muscled and cut.

“What now?” he asked as he flopped down on the moss under a magnolia tree.

“Tomorrow we begin to check the tools for the harvest to make sure all are in order,” said one of the most heavily muscled of the blacks. His skin was a lighter color than most of the others, and he had two names. His first name was Felix, but he was permitted to use Rawley as his surname. Billy had had no trouble understanding why that was. He was a family by-blow by one of the female slaves. Probably a half-brother to Charles himself—young enough to be Charles’s too, for that matter. Whatever he was, he was often the one who spoke for the group. Spear made the decisions, but Felix voiced what those decisions were.

“But today, now,” Felix continued. “We fuck.”

“What?” Billy asked, in confusion.

“We fuck you. Spear wants to fuck you. He wants to show a Rawley he is not afraid of them.”

“I’m not really a Rawley,” Billy objected, but he looked up from where he was sprawled. Spear was standing over him. He was naked and holding a half-hard cock out.

“Make love to it, and then we fuck.” It was the most words Billy had yet to hear Spear string together, and his accent was so thick, Billy probably could not have understood what he was saying if it wasn’t obvious what he wanted from the belligerent and aggressive stance he was taking. It was almost as if he wanted Billy to try to refuse to suck his cock so that Spear could beat the shit out of him—and then still make him suck the cock.

But Billy complied—gladly. When Spear was pleased with his work, he grunted to Felix, who was naked now as well. In response to Spear’s command, Felix lifted Billy up to his feet from behind, laced his arms under Billy’s armpits and clamped his fists together at the nape of Billy’s neck, immobilizing the young man. Spear moved in close; he lifted and parted Billy’s legs and slowing worked his cock into Billy’s channel to much moaning and sighing from Billy.

This was far better than Hammond. Billy loved having the black cock inside him. And he loved having Felix hold him captive for the assault.

Fully encased, Spear held there. Billy wrapped his legs around Spear’s waist and hooked his ankles above the black slave’s bulbous buttocks. His hands free now, Spear touched Billy’s chest, tracing the remnants of the whip and cigarette burn scars from Billy’s encounters with the Reverend Andrew Apsley, which were fading but were still evident. Billy was being lulled, wondering if this was all that would happen.

But then Spear started to pump him. Hard and deep. And to punch his chest and twist his nipples. Billy opened his mouth to scream, but one of the other slaves was there with a strip of material to gag him. Billy’s eyes were wide and watering. But they were alight with fire. He screamed silently again as Felix started to enter his channel with his cock from the rear, pushing in above Spear’s now-dormant, but full implanted tool. In their brutal double-penetration fuck, Felix fucked for a while and then rested as Spear resumed the rhythm of the fuck. Billy shot off again and again up Spear’s belly until, with much vocalization, Spear and Felix managed to ejaculate nearly simultaneously.

Billy had been silenced, but Felix and Spear hadn’t. An underseer heard and then saw the commotion. He went for Hammond, who arrived and watched in hiding from behind some bushes, in time for the climax.

The slaves let Billy slide off their cocks down to the ground. Hammond was taken by surprise, though, when Billy unsteadily rose up on his knees, hugged Spear’s legs, and took the slave’s cock in his mouth and cleaned it. The overseer realized then that Billy had enjoyed the double fucking by darkies. He turned away in disgust.

Spear raised a foot, planted it in the center of Billy’s chest, and pushed Billy to the ground on his back, holding Billy pinned to the ground with his bare foot. He and Felix turned toward the other men of the crew, with Spear giving an invitation to anyone else who wanted to have their turn with Billy. Enough did to occupy the crew until dark. Even Spear showed amazement when Billy opened his legs to the first man who knelt over him and guided the man’s cock inside him with his hands.

When Billy struggled to the overseer’s house, Hammond came out on the front porch; cursed Billy, telling him he’d have no part of an ass that had been taken by a darky; and told him he could go to the single-men’s hut on slave row. Billy did so gladly and was to enjoy his nights better from then on than he had in the overseer’s house. Billy could not lie to himself. No, he could not prefer the vanilla sex offered by Hammond over the exciting, masterful punishment he received from others, including ebony studs. Being free didn’t make your cocking superior.

Out of curiosity, Billy crept up to a window of the overseer’s house one night at a particular hour, just to see how much of a man of routine Hammond was. Sure enough, he was going through all four stages of his sex need with one of the younger, more effeminate male house slaves. And Billy could see that the young black man was laying there, counting the faded flowers on the wallpaper just as he’d done.

On the fourth night in the slave men’s hut Billy felt the heaviness of Spear’s body lower itself on him on his mattress of feathers and corn cobs on the dirt floor, Billy turned his body within Spear’s embrace; opened his legs to the giant, already in full erection; and rolled up his pelvis.

“You are so good,” Spear murmured. “No more hate fuck. Tonight we make love.”

“No, please, Spear. Take me hard again. Keep that hate in your eyes. Remember that I am of the Rawleys. That it was white men like me who brought you here and enslaved you. And I would have done it myself given the chance.”

Spear growled his remembrance, rose up on his knees and backhanded Billy across the cheek, snapping Billy’s head to the side, putting him into a daze. Billy snapped out of the daze almost immediately, however, as Spear grabbed for his balls and, squeezing them, lifted Billy’s pelvis off the surface of the mattress. Billy screamed in pain and glorious anticipation as Spear thrust his cock hard and deep inside Billy’s channel, still gripping Billy’s balls hard. Eye’s watering, gasping for breath, Billy reached down to grip the buttocks of the man assaulting him, and cried out, “Yes, yes. Punish me. Fuck me hard!” The glorious pain of being taken hard and deep and rough in the passion of rage was sending Billy to heaven.

Barely a week later and full of spite and hurt pride, Hammond contacted Charles Rawley in Charleston and told him his nephew was conducting lewd practices with the male slaves.

This was the last straw for the Charleston branch of the family. The last time Billy saw Charles Rawley was on Brown’s Wharf as Billy was being put aboard the Elizabeth, one of Rawley’s merchant vessels, named after his daughter who had sought to seduce Billy herself, and the same vessel that had brought Billy to Charleston from Boston. Billy was being sent as a sailor on the vessel in its journey to deliver a cargo of polished South Carolina rice to Alexandria, Egypt.

Billy tried his best to resist conveying to his long-suffering uncle that this was exactly what he had wanted all along—to be sailing before the mast.