Surviving Brother

I knew as well as anyone why the soldiers were searching the port of Utica, along the Mediterranean coast from Carthage, so frantically. The rumors were on the fly that Prince Abosir, the brother of the usurper king of the Phoenicians, Philosir, had fled west through the Mediterranean from the Phoenician capital at Tyre to Utica. Abosir was escaping the ire of his elder brother, who wanted no possible challenge to remain to the throne he had stolen from the previous king and his father, Hanno. The reports that the prince was being sheltered in Utica had grown to the point that Philosir sent his palace guard here to search for him. The palace guard from Tyre would recognize him. Particularly suspect as providing Abosir shelter were the Greek exiles living here, like my master, the philosopher Cleon. The Greeks had favored Philosir’s predecessor.

It was inevitable that Cleon’s villa would be searched. The danger of that wasn’t lost on me. The palace guard could just as easily recognize me—and recognize the threat I too posed to their king—as did Prince Abosir. Cleon, in a million eons, would not realize how I fit into this equation, however. I was but his manservant and bed warmer brought from Athens when he was banished here for his profligate beliefs and actions and inability not to dabble in politics.

Little did Cleon know that I too had a connection and claim to the throne of Phoenicia. The king Philosir had assassinated and displaced had been, it was officially believed, my father, which would make me Philosir and Abosir’s half-brother. My mother had been one of the wives, a Greek patrician married to him in a unity pact, of King Hanno. Only now, by the efficiency with which King Philosir rooted out the House of Hanno, did my own claim come into contention. As a half Greek of then a minor wife, I was overlooked. I had been smuggled away from the Phoenician coast by boat, had been shipwrecked and rescued on the island of Cyprus, and had, because of my favorable looks and perfectly formed diminutive body, been sold as a sex slave in Athens.

What no one other than my mother, one of the king’s councilor’s, and I knew, I was really the son of the heir of a competing family for the Phoenician throne who my mother had dalliance with but a family King Hanno had wiped out. Still, my mother held me forth as a contender for the throne and a brother to the current king. The councilor hedged his bets by holding me in reserve should it serve him to back me and oppose Philosir. The councilor, as much as my mother, had sent me off on the ill-fated journey to Greece to keep me a future possibility. Since I had not arrived at my destination, my mother’s family in Olympia, both my mother and the councilor no doubt thought I had perished en route.

But I had no real aspirations at that time to the throne. I had been content to be Cleon’s personal servant and sex slave. I enjoyed the attentions of an older man. Cleon surrounded himself with young, comely male slaves to fondle and bed and to share with more robust guests he was cultivating.

I was not fooled by the danger Cleon was accepting in aiding the fugitive prince, though. I knew of the guest, who he called Kaletor, and who he was keeping sheltered here in secret. Cleon had schemed unwisely in Athens and had lost. Was he scheming just as unwisely here, I wondered.

As I thought these thoughts, I was standing next to Cleon, reclining on his couch in the loggia overlooking the inner courtyard of the villa on the cliff over the sea on the outskirts of Utica, having just poured him wine from one of two ewers on the marble table next to the couch. He watched me like a hawk as I poured, with one hand under my shift and cupping my buttocks, his index finger seeking, and finding, my anal opening. I wriggled my buttocks for him and the finger penetrated me. He sighed as I jutted my buttocks out, taking him deeper inside me. Our sex games had become quite refined.

He didn’t tell me why he had two ewers of wine at the ready, but he always was quite attentive which one I poured from, the one closest to the front edge of the table. Until he had trusted that I knew which to pour from—always the one closest to the front edge of the table—he had always clearly designated the ewer I was to use. I had never poured from the other, about which he always said, “That is the wine for the farewell future.” I did not attempt to divine precisely what he meant by that, although the possibilities were sobering and caused me to take care with it.

“Pour another cup, Hyllos,” he directed, as I saw the mysterious guest, wearing just a short skirt, emerging from the shadows of the villa’s guest quarters. He was a magnificently built man, was the young man Cleon called Kaletor, but who I knew really to be the fugitive prince of the Phoenicians, Abosir. He was of military bearing and was built like a god. His chest was massive, his waist thin, the muscles of his torso like that of the beaten gold of a warrior king’s shield, his biceps and thighs bulging. And, as I knew from observing him bathing, he was hung like a bull. His hair was black, his facial features both handsome and fierce, as fitting of the usurping-by-force royal house of Phoenicia. He was lightly bearded, and his body was equally lightly hirsute in black, silky curls. He could not hide that he was a man of regal bearing and in his prime, probably not more than three-quarters of a decade older than I was.

He was a god to command and to be obeyed, and ever since he had taken refuge in the villa, I had ached to lie under him and have him command me with his monstrous shaft.

Cleon, who I lay under several times in a week, was old in contrast, not that Cleon was soft. He was well-muscled for his age and gaunt, having lived at least six decades. He once had been a handsome man and most certainly had been a beautiful youth, which quite likely was what had led him into a lifestyle of lovemaking exclusively with men. He had told me that he had lost his virginity young, to a military man, and had enjoyed it so much that he did the same for other young men as often as he could to enrich their lives as they were coming onto the cusp of manhood. He had not taken my virginity—that had happened by the men who had “rescued” me in a shipwreck on the shores of Cyprus, but as I had been on that cusp of manhood at the time, I could understand Cleon’s point about the pleasure of being initiated young by a virile man.

Cleon also was heavenly endowed but more in length than in both length and girth as his guest was. It was becoming increasingly difficult for him at his age to achieve an erection. I still could bring it out of him, which probably was why he kept me close to him and chose to bring me, of all his sex slaves, into exile from Athens.

“Ah, you have come out of hiding, Kaletor,” Cleon said, as the man god came close to us and took the cup of wine I poured for him. He looked into my eyes as he did so, and I knew instantly what he wanted from me. I was aware that he had passed by the entrance into Cleon’s bedchamber frequently in recent days and stopped to observe me riding Cleon’s shaft. It was becoming increasingly clear that this Kaletor wanted the same from me. I knew equally that he could have it. I also knew that the Greek name Kaletor did not fit him. I knew the features of the Phoenician house of Hanno, and that he was Phoenician through and through.

“I cannot stand the inaction. I must exercise or go mad,” the man god answered Cleon.

“So, exercise,” Cleon said, with a laugh. “Take to the courtyard and exercise as you will. I will happily watch you, if you don’t mind my thinking licentious thoughts as you exercise and do some personal exercise of my own—or perhaps you might exercise with my young man, Hyllos, here. I see how you look at him. I don’t mind if you bed him. I know that your sac must ache from inattention since you arrived here. Isn’t he divine? Such a perfect small body, alabaster skin, silky black hair, startlingly attracting blue eyes. And he rides the cock expertly, I assure you.”

“Yes, he is a beautiful young man. You are lucky to have him. Greek, is he?”

“Yes, of course.”

“Strange though. He almost could be Phoenician as well.”

“The best of both worlds,” Cleon said, diplomatically.

“Yes, quite so.” Kaletor answered. “I will exercise. But I do it best by wrestling. And for wrestling you need two.” He was looking directly at me. I doubted I could give him much exercise in wrestling, as he was a powerful man, half again my size, and I was just a well-kept serving slave.

Cleon must have been having the same thoughts. “I doubt Hyllos can give you much exercise in wrestling, but I’m sure he could give you both exercise and sport—and release, as well—there in the courtyard as an extension of wrestling. I, in turn, could receive entertainment and release as well. Everyone can take their pleasure from that. I can add to my pleasure with Zaia here, my Assyrian captive slave.” He was pulling another one of his slaves, whose duties included warming Cleon’s couch—over onto his lap and brushing the young slave’s shift up to his waist and unknotting and brushing aside his loincloth.

He had not commented on my receiving pleasure, a young man of small stature and slim build, from a bull-hung man of military bearing, but Cleon knew me well. He knew I would take pleasure from a man of youth and power—and extraordinary size. From the time I had first been taken, by the band of soldiers who pulled me from the shipwreck in Cyprus and each forcefully had his way with me, I have enjoyed being covered in that way by a strong, rough man.

And I did take pleasure from the wrestling match in the center of the courtyard, both the Phoenician prince and I naked, in a match that started in posturing and slippery holds and manipulation that moved to intimate holds and groping and ended with me on my hands and knees on the sand and Kaletor crouched on top of me, embracing me close, one hand clutching my breast and the other milking my cock, as he fucked me like a dog, covering me close, and thrusting, thrusting, thrusting deep inside me as I moaned and sobbed and was stuffed near unto splitting. I gave him better sport in the wrestling than he or Cleon would have thought I could, as I, in fact, had some training in the art. I didn’t just let him win, and I put up more of a fight than either man would have imagined I could.

He had the girth to tax me and I had, thanks to the refined guests Cleon had entertained during his Athens days, learned to control the muscles of my channel walls, grasping and milking his shaft as he stretched my walls wide and maximized the friction of rhythmically and rapidly sliding in and out, in and out. He came in a flood inside me as I spouted my seed on the sand, but he kept thrusting and groaning his repeated release, again and again, not, as Cleon had noted, having taken his pleasure for some time.

When he released me, I just collapsed under him, moaning, in satisfied exhaustion. He remained crouched over me, though, his shaft still half hard, panting and looking at me with lust. I knew that as soon as he recovered—which, as virile as he was, would be soon—he would be inside me, pumping, once more. I ached for that moment to come. I was lost to him.

And he, I believe, was lost to me, as well, staring down in somewhat wonder at me and murmuring, “You give very good sport, indeed.” And then he pulled me up to my knees with a strong arm under my belly, mounted me, and rode me again.

There was a commotion out at the entrance to the villa as Kaletor was pumping his seed in me a second time. Cleon had been reclining on his couch and watching us with slitted eyes, with the hem of his toga pulled up to his belly. Needing to be part of the taking scene, he was lifting the Assyrian slave Zaia up and down on his shaft as the groaning young slave sat in his lap facing the courtyard. At the sound of the commotion at the entrance, the Greek philosopher sat up on the couch, pushed Zaia to the side, and let his toga drop back down. He remained, composed, on the couch, though.

“They have come,” he said. “Hyllos, you know where the hidden room is. Take Kaletor there and remain there until I have seen to this.” He did not specify the nature of the present danger to me. He didn’t have to. He sent Zaia to accost the men invading his realm to find out their intent. I saw Zaia running elsewhere, though, toward the slops door, where refuse was thrown out into the canal at the back of the villa.

Rolling out from underneath the fugitive Phoenician prince, I took his hand and drew him deep into the remote section of the villa, to the room accessed behind Cleon’s family altar. We waited there, embracing, as it was clear that Kaletor was not finished with his exercise with me, as we heard, first, nothing, and then men roaming through the villa, speaking in the accent of Tyre, the royal city of Phoenicia. The one who evidently was their captain was directing them to take whatever they found of value from the villa and made a remark on how Cleon’s Greek exile had caught up with him and that he should not have continued dabbling in Athenian affairs. The doubt was being raised on whether this raid was about the hidden Phoenician prince at all. It may, rather, have been connected with Cleon’s continued dabbling in Athens’ politics.

For Kaletor’s—or can I honestly say, Abosir’s—part, he seemed less concerned with the search of the villa as in completing his exercises. We were lying on a pallet, he stretched out behind me and embracing me close. His thick snake of a cock was pressed into the small of my back. His face was buried in the back of my neck, where he was kissing and nibbling me. He pushed his cock head down to my entrance and a hand pressed over my mouth, the fingers pinching my nose, to stifle my cries as he thrust up inside me again and vigorously took his pleasure inside me yet another time. Once again he was as hard as a rock and as big as a cudgel, and I screamed a muffled cry of both pain and passion as he filled and stretched me.

For several minutes I lost track of the search of the villa and could only concentrate on the thick cock inside me, causing the muscles of my passage walls to undulate over the hard shaft and pull it ever deeper inside me. We both were panting and moaning as he unleashed his cum with a jerk and a little cry, and we both collapsed, his large body embracing my small one and holding me closely encased in his muscular grasp. His cock was still inside me, still filling me more in its flaccid state than most men did when fully erect.

Fearful that his cry had revealed our presence, we both lay there, holding our breath. But we heard nothing. Several minutes later we still had heard nothing. We warily emerged from the hidden room. Save for one figure the villa was deserted—and had been ransacked. The servants all were gone, undoubtedly fled or taken already to the slave block in the center of Utica. The only one still here—and yet not really here anymore—was Cleon. His body was lying on the couch where we had left him. There was a slight smile on his face and a dribble of blood and brownish liquid at his lips. The ewer that had always been there, readily at hand and awaiting its role in the drama, but never used was turned on its side on the table next to the couch. It had now been used, and I know my suspicions of what had been in that wine and why Cleon had called it his future farewell were confirmed.

* * * *

We went back to the hidden room and waited until dark. Kaletor didn’t bother to include me in his “where from here?” plans, nor did he show any interest in what was to become of me, although it didn’t take me long to divine that I probably wasn’t for the slave block in the Utica square—at least for now. Once we were settled on the pallet in the dark of the hidden room, Kaletor couldn’t get enough of me. He fucked me again, manipulating me to ride astride his cock in total submission to him, and then after resting again and then yet again. There seemed to be no end in the positions in which he could and would fuck me. He was a lover of great refinement and vast skill. It was as if he had been celibate too long in his fugitive state from the reach of King Philosir, and this possibly was the case. Possibly also, he was just a virile, promiscuous man who sensed something in me that he had to take from me. As he fucked me, he murmured about the smallness, youthfulness, flexibility, and smoothness of me and of the pleasure of debauching the innocence of me again and again.

He certainly had something that I was content to take from him—an extra-large and vigorous stiff staff between his thighs. I made no bones in acknowledging that I was promiscuous and most happy with a moving club inside me. I did have to be careful, though, not to call him by his real name, Prince Abosir, as that would tell him I knew more than it was safe for him that I knew.

What he did consult me on was what there was in the villa—or might be after Cleon’s killers had ransacked it—that could be used in a journey. He was disappointed that the journey would have to be on foot, which told me he was planning to go a good distance, because Cleon had no carriage or horses, never having perceived the need to leave the villa. Indeed, Cleon had always seemed to be just waiting here for what eventually happened to him. He frequently said that the influence of Athens extended far. I increasingly in that night came to believe that the intruders hadn’t come from Tyre for Kaletor but on the behest of Athens to silence Cleon forever.

I wove scenarios of how Kaletor could remain incognito in Utica and I could be his slave—as I already had become a slave to what was swinging between his thighs. But he said he could not take the chance and turned from asking about transportation to asking about food stuffs and wine supplies. Those we had in the villa, in abundance, and I doubted the scavengers had favored them over the marble statues of older men fucking young slaves that Cleon had delighted in collecting.

Kaletor didn’t leave me there—an indication that I had bewitched him as much as he had enslaved me sexually. We left in the darkest of night, carrying sacks of food and wine skins. He said we’d take only enough for three days, which gave me some indication both of how far we would go and that he’d given some thought to where we were going.

We went to Carthage, some seven-and-a-half leagues along the coast. We walked—briskly—at night and slept between rocks on hidden beaches by the sea or in fields or amid bales of grain in storage huts during the day—or we slept when Kaletor wasn’t fucking me. He never seemed to get enough. Neither did I. I was grateful that he was including me in his plans. He made the decisions; I felt fortunately that one of those decisions hadn’t been to exchange me for cash in hand on the Utica slave block. Carthage was a larger city than Utica, but still in the sway of the Phoenician empire. I thought that it was chosen as a larger city in which to hide, but Kaletor had other plans.

He had me wait on the edge of the city, outside the walls, for several hours, while he entered one of the city gates. I thought that perhaps he was abandoning me where he told me to wait, but he wasn’t. When he returned, he said, “We must hurry. The tide will soon flow out and the ship will leave us.”

He had booked passage—I knew not where and he would not tell me—on a sailing vessel leaving from the Carthage harbor. I had no idea then what he had used to gain passage on the vessel, and Kaletor, of course, didn’t tell me about that any more than he told me where we were going. I was just a slave and a sheath for his lust. Once on board the vessel and safely clear of the harbor, though, I found out. He turned me over to the ship’s captain, who took me to his small cabin, bound me to his berth, and fucked the stuffing out of me. The cabin was tiny, the berth taking up most of the space, and there being no window to the outside. But it was the only private place on the vessel, so I had to be content with that—especially considering what sexual services the man made me perform for him over a seven-day sail, coming to his cabin frequently and ravishing me in one way or other each time. I have no idea whether the screams of my rough taking could be heard elsewhere on the vessel. I was gagged with a dirty cloth that muffled the sound, but I’m sure everyone aboard knew what the captain was doing and what I was taking. In any event, Kaletor didn’t appear to demand relief for me. I later became aware that he was similarly engaged with one of the young sailors.

Seven days and nights on the Mediterranean Sea, and it was only on the morning of the eighth day when the captain untied me and let me come up on deck that I knew what busy harbor we had sailed to. On deck. I was reunited with Kaletor, who left the side of the young sailor he undoubtedly had been fucking during the sail, and came to my side, looking at me and touching me in a way that told me that I would be on my back again as soon as we disembarked.

I didn’t need to be told where we had arrived. I had been born in this city—in Tyre, the principal city of the Phoenician empire, the seat of King Philosir, Kaletor’s, or should I say Prince Abosir’s, brother. The fugitive royal brother had brought us back into the mouth of the lion who was seeking him out across the Phoenician empire. If Philosir had been aware of who I was, he would be seeking me too.

* * * *

I could hardly tell the rooting of the real swine in the stall on the other side of the stable wall from the snorting of the swine whose knees were between my thighs, spreading them, and his cock, such as it was, was inside me. Of the two, the pig undoubtedly was the cleaner and didn’t have beer breath. I was on my back on straw in the stable, because, after paying the fee for me, the man didn’t have enough left to pay for a pallet in the tavern where Kaletor and I worked on the western edge of Tyre.

I had quickly learned why it was that Kaletor had brought me with him rather than selling me on the slave block in Utica. Selling me as a slave would have been a one-time recompense. Keeping me made me a source of profit that didn’t stop providing when he could pimp me for his continued gain—and when others weren’t using me, he could. And when he did, I would be satisfied to continue to serve him. I could have run away from him in Tyre. But then what? He pimped me, but he also protected me, freed me of having to make any decisions, and satisfied me in sex.

Kaletor was being bold to hide out under the nose of his brother, King Philosir. Tyre was the last place the king would look for his brother, and, although the prince, Abosir, would have to live in degradation not to be ferreted out in the capital city, while he was here he could make contact with his supporters. He was determined to overthrow Philosir and grasp the throne for himself. Increasingly, I was thinking of my own right to the throne, which I felt was stronger than either his or Philosir’s. Either I was from the line of Hanno as well, or I was from the line of an even older royal family that Hanno had overthrown and wiped out. Which one was dependent on who my mother wanted to claim from moment to moment as my father—and that depended on how the political winds of the moment blew. My maybe brother Abosir wasn’t the only one with supporters seething underground here and elsewhere in the empire. But my possible supporters would be harder to find, and I was far less equipped to mobilize them than the man now calling himself Kaletor was.

The one saving grace was that Kaletor had no inkling that I was a claimant for the throne as well—or could be if I had any means to claim it. To him, I was a source of income, working in a tavern as a wait servant and as a whore slave when some tavern patron fancied me and had the means to buy my services. Kaletor had signed on as a tavern enforcer, helping to keep order. Because of his military bearing, the sense of authority that naturally went with being a prince, and his magnificent musculature, Kaletor had become the chief of the enforcers of the tavern district on the western side of the city. As such, he also was a militia unit chief with authorities and responsibilities established by the local army garrison.

Because of this, he wasn’t at the tavern the evening of the attack and burning. Tyre was under a loose siege. An Assyrian scouting force was operating in the region, testing the city’s defenses. There had been reports of the Assyrians probing the eastern wall of the city and Kaletor and most of the tavern enforcers of the district had gone with the Phoenician garrison soldiers to check this out. Unfortunately for the western tavern district, though, a feint to the east of the city had been initiated to cover a lightning probe right here on the western edge of the city.

The man fucking me on the straw in a stable stall was grunting like a pig and, not having bothered to do more than strip off my leggings and unbuttoning his codpiece, was crouched over me and poking me with a slightly less than average tool. It was in erection, but it wasn’t taxing. I didn’t mind other than the smell, which was the same with most of the men who fucked me at this tavern. I didn’t think of the man as a lover. He had just dribbled his cum inside me when we heard the shouts and the beginning of the screaming. The man pulled off me and instinctively ran for the door of the stable, mesmerized by the glow of the flames already beginning to build in our tavern and others around it. He made it not much farther than the door when he was struck down by the sword of a towering and muscular Assyrian soldier.

The light of the flames outlined me as I sat up in the straw, naked from the waist down, and paralyzed by the violence of the sudden attack.

The Assyrian soldier advanced upon me, staring me down, his gaze assessing me for a danger I obviously could not be for him, being slight of stature, totally unarmed, mostly naked, and completely vulnerable. It was my luck that he was a man who used other men and that, whetted by battle, he was aroused and found me arousing. I saw the gleam of lust in his eyes, and I turned onto my back, raising my torso up on my elbows, spread my legs, planted my feet on the ground to raise and roll my pelvis to give him a good look at my hole, and gave him a saucy look.

He fell upon me. Luck was with me that the sword he used to slay me was not the one in his hand but, rather was the one between his legs. He was a well-hung, vigorous, and capable young man. And where the now-slain tavern patron hadn’t taxed me, the Assyrian soldier embraced, controlled, manhandled, penetrated, and rode me hard—as hard and expertly as Kaletor did. I thus gave him a good ride, as much from willingness as from fear and grasping at self-preservation.

He grabbed my ankles, split my legs wide, went down on his knees, breached my channel with his stiff staff, and plowed me hard. I struggled with him as he mounted and penetrated me, which he seemed to enjoy. But once he was inside me, I reacted as I did for all well-endowed muscular men. I settled down and merged with him in the fuck. The Assyrian soldier also seemed to enjoy my submission and moved into the familiar rhythm of the mutually engaging male-on-male copulation. After a few minutes of this, he turned me on all fours, mounted me, and rode me high on my ass as a stallion would ride a mare. I gave him all that he could want from me and pleased him enough that he spared my life.

He didn’t spare me from being taken captive and hauled back to the Assyrian military camp, though, when they were done putting the tavern district in the west of the city to the torch. And he didn’t spare me from being passed around among the soldiers and being fucked again and again and again. Although looking tender, I had been seasoned to such treatment, and this is what saved me. Soldiers loved an innocent look combined with expert riding ability.

When the Assyrian scout unit pulled back into their own territory, they took me with them. And I continued giving them the sport that encouraged them to let me live.

* * * *

The four seasons I spent as a slave in the palace guard garrison in the Assyrian capital of Ashur, on a plateau high above the Tigris River, were rougher than the ones I had spent as a sex slave in the villa of the exiled Greek philosopher, Cleon, in the Phoenician port city of Utica. But as the soldiers wanted to be able to continue to use me for their sexual pleasure, I probably fared better than the citizens on the streets in that city. I certainly fared better than those they came upon on the field of battle, used, and then dispatched.

As I was willing to open my legs to any man who had a need to scratch, had acquired training in maximizing the pleasure of the man fucking me, and was able to take many men in succession—and because the soldiers of the palace guard garrison were selected for their fitness and physical beauty—I managed quite well and was quite fond indeed of some of the manly soldiers, who returned that regard.

But my duties went beyond lying on my back on the pallets of randy soldiers. I also helped serve guests who came to consult with the garrison commander, who also was a very proficient cocksman, and anyone else of importance who came to inspect the elite guard troops. It was such an inspection tour that led to me being taken into the palace of the Assyrian king, Eil, who I was to find was a very proficient cocksman as well.

The governor of the region surrounding the capital city, Domara, came to formally inspect the palace garrison troops. In his entourage was one who, upon seeing me, called out, “Hyllos. It is Hyllos, isn’t it? How have you come to be here? I often wondered what happened to you in Utica.”

Zaia, the young man who I had known as one of Cleon’s favorite sex slaves in Utica, proved to be the son of Domara. He had been exchanged in prior times as a high-born hostage in a diplomatic exchange between Assyria and Phoenicia. When the diplomatic negotiations had gone sour for one reason or another, he had been debauched and sold into slavery in Phoenicia rather than being returned, and, because of his beauty and refinement, Cleon had purchased him. When Cleon was murdered in Utica, Zaia escaped and made his way back to Ashur.

Seeing that his father, Domara, give me favorable glances, Zaia whispered to him the nature of my services to Cleon, the Greek. This led to my being bought by Domara, not exactly to the garrison’s liking, but Domara was the regional governor, so there was no complaint to be given for that purchase. I spent the next three seasons in Domara’s bed, writhing under a cruel master with a demanding long and vigorous cock, a fist he liked to put inside me, and insatiable appetites. During a visit by King Eil to the governor’s residence, the king spied me among the servants laying out the dinner banquet and, once again, an obligatory but unwelcome exchange was made that resulted in my being invested in the king’s male harem.

The harems in the Ashur palace—both the women’s harem and the men’s harem—were large. For three nights initially I slept in the king’s bed, used fully and with a refinement of technique I hadn’t experienced since lying with the Phoenician throne contender, Prince Abosir, in the guise of the soldier Kaletor. The king was not overly large of equipment and he had a pot belly that required giving thought to positional maneuverability, but he was a handsome man, who had studied the art of lovemaking long and well. Every time he had me moaning and coming before he exchanged his toys with his cock and rode me to his own pleasurable finish. His harem was large, though, and he had procreation with his formal wives to consider. After that initial “honeymoon,” it was ten days before he sent for me again for a single night and then not for progressively longer interludes until, for the next five seasons, I only rarely was called to his bed. The men of the harem, unlike those of the women’s harem, were not neglected when only rarely called for by the king, however. The guards of the male harem were highly privileged—and well endowed. I continued to be favored and regularly fucked.

I had dropped considerably in the listing of favor for the king’s bed and when the king of Phoenicia came on a state visit, I was sent to the bed of one of his ministers after the state banquet as a gesture of hospitality.

The minister, Babak, who I had every reason to remember, recognized me almost immediately, as he was disrobing me.

“Surely, I know you,” he said. “You are at least partially Phoenician and related to the House of Hanno. No, no,” he then assured me when I rolled away from him in fear of being unmasked and dispatched, “your secret is more than safe with me. I am sympathetic to your cause. Don’t you recognize me? I am the councilor to the king who helped your mother whisk you away to Greece. But we never heard that you arrived in Greece.”

Unfortunately, I didn’t feel empowered enough to have a cause. And I did arrive in Greece but not where and how had been planned for me.

Babak continued, however, as he resumed stroking my body and my cock in preparation for mounting me again, making clear that whatever cause he might employ me in in the future would not preclude him from mounting me in the present. “The look of the various royal families of Phoenicia is distinctive. Hyllos. I should have recognized that name as soon as they named the slave who would be sent to serve me.”

“No, I won’t deny it,” I said. “You are Babak, are you not? You were partial to my mother’s case in the struggle for succession. So, you will betray me to your king, Philosir, now, will you not—after you have had your way with me?”

“I will enjoy your desirable body now, but I will not betray you, no—not if you bend to my will—first in giving my shaft sport and then, possibly, in working with me. And, have you not heard?—no, I guess you will not if you have been secluded in King Eil’s harem—Philosir is no longer king. He was deposed and dispatched two seasons ago.”

I had no time to pursue the issue at that point, because Babak was in heat and full erection and already had me bent over the bed again and his hand between my legs. He was a taxing lover, one whose fetish, like Governor Domara before him, was plowing me with his hand, up to his knuckles, as I writhed and cried out, before mounting me. When he did, I was so exhausted that I just lay there as he bounced up and down on top of me, grinding me into the pillows of the platform bed and choking me with his hands, controlling and restricting my breathing.

He may have seen my potential for the throne of Phoenicia, but, at least for now, he wasn’t loath to tax me within an inch of my life as if I were a worthless whore he had picked up from the alleys of Ashur. In my submissiveness I endured it all and gave him the sport that would make him want to come back to me again and again.

He praised me afterward for my ability to stay with him and give him added pleasures as he was ravishing me. “You have had much practice under a man, have you not?” he asked.

“Yes. I have survived,” I answered.

“Such skills for one so young.”

“I am not as young as I appear,” I answered. In fact, I was beginning to worry about approaching the end of both my physical beauty and my ability to pass as very young.

“Would you like to be king of the Phoenicians?” he asked. “You have the pedigree.”

“Who would not?” I answered. “For me, however, it has been a struggle just to continue to live.”

“If you work with me, and remain under my tutelage, we can make it happen. If you can please King Abosir in his bed as well as you have pleased me, you can move to the center of the Phoenician court again, and we can bide our time and take our risks. I have never given up on your mother’s plan.”

“King Abosir?” I asked in shock.

“Yes, the former king’s brother. He returned to Tyre, right under the king’s nose, and worked his alliances until he managed a successful palace coup. He has given us a blueprint, I do believe.”

I remained speechless. This was the first I had heard of Abosir becoming king of the Phoenicians, and realized that he was here, in this very palace.

“Come, rise and clean yourself up,” Babak commanded. “I have passed on young male slaves to be initiated on the pallet to King Abosir before. I believe he will delight in you as well?”

You have no idea, I thought. I was fearful, though. I no longer was as young as I was when Abosir first bedded me nor was I anything close to an innocent. Would Abosir still want me? But this was my chance to leave Assyria and return to Tyre. I would take it and cast my die on Abosir’s reaction and response in seeing me again.

* * * *

Abosir’s response was visceral and exuberant. He bedded me immediately, almost before Babak could get out of the chamber, covering me close, entering me deeply, and exercising his desire to the utmost. I had forgotten how overpowering and good he could be. When he was done, I had been totally fucked. When he was done a second time, I was wiped out and whimpering. When he was done a third time, I just lay there, stretched out, entirely open and vulnerable, both anus and mouth gaping open, my anus dribbling his cum, my mouth bubbling my total surrender.

“I thought I’d lost you in the attack and fires in the tavern district,” he had said when we had cooled down and our hands were becoming fully reacquainted with each other’s bodies. “Yet, I couldn’t bring myself to accept that you were gone, and I’ve looked for you everywhere. The gods have been good to me to have you so coincidentally reappear again—dropped in my lap like this.”

Forced down on his monstrous cock was closer to the glorious truth.

Yes, well, I don’t think the gods were finished playing their games. To Abosir, who I had known as Kaletor, I just was a Greek sex slave, fortuitously made available to him once more for his sexual pleasure. Little did he know that I was a sickness being inserted into his world to help bring him down.

And well inserted I had been, with Babak’s continued help and guidance. Abosir made my transfer to him a key condition in the friendship pact negotiations between him, for Phoenicia, and King Eil, for Assyria, to provide each party a breather time to prepare for renewed hostilities between them. King Eil at least appeared to lament heavily the loss of me, although it is possible that he had forgotten I had ever been in his household. In any event, I was owned and continued to be owned. I had been owned by Eil, following a long succession of owners, and now I was owned by Abosir again. I really had no choice.

But King Abosir has been good to me. He brought me back to Tyre and he did not lock me up. He gave over to me a large vineyard and wine press in the rolling hills overlooking Tyre and the Mediterranean Sea and set me up as a landowner and prominent businessman in my own right. I still am summoned regularly to service him in his bed in the palace in Tyre and he visits me in my country villa when the pressures of statecraft get to be too heavy for him. He remains a consummate lover. If the gods go my way in the future, I will miss him.

Sometimes he sends Babak to fetch me or relay messages from him, which is fortuitous. Babak likes to bed me as well, and I, of course, let him. He has a cruelty that arouses me to new heights, as sex with as many men as I have had has tended to numb me to commonplace positions and practices. I may be owned by men, but I control them also and will do so for as long as my body is desirable to them. When Babak comes, we scheme for the advancement of the once-discarded royal house of my ancestry, whichever that one actually is. Sometimes Babak sends others who are willing to look to a change in king, as well. Sometimes I win their interest and allegiance by letting them fuck me too. I’m sure there’s a certain pleasure in knowing you are fucking a future king.

I grow my grapes and make my wine, biding my time, and serving the sexual needs of whatever man, King Abosir and others, who can fit into the mosaic of weaving my own empire until I become the king of Phoenicia myself. I learned a lot of palace intrigue during the five seasons I was in the harem of King Eil of the Assyrians, and I am now ready for those wars myself.