The Greek Pimp

The platinum blond was groaning and making whimpering noises. Cosmo was fucking him slowly, treating him like he was precious crystal, and marveling at the unknown why that the young man was bringing out his sensitivities in this way. The Greek pimp had been so anxious to get inside the young man, Devin, a singer in the Abias Club of the Mazagan Casino, in El-Jadida, near Casablanca, Morocco, that, as soon as he'd gotten him on board, he'd just bent the small man over the foot of the bed in the main cabin of the yacht. The platinum blond had one small foot on the carpet. He was suspended over the bed with his other leg bent on the bed. Cosmo had one hand cupping the young man's breast and the other pulling back Devin's arm so that he was held steady and completely at Cosmo's mercy.

When recruiting a male prostitute and trying out the goods, Cosmo Eracules usually fucked them mercilessly-and then had his bodyguards fuck them as well, often in tandem-to ensure they could take it. He wasn't doing that with Devin, though, and didn't completely understand why. The beautiful young man with the platinum-colored hair cascading down to his shoulders, the milky blue eyes, the small, but perfectly formed slim body, and the alabaster-white skin had somehow spun a spell over him.

Cosmo had once been beautiful as well and had spun similar spells over men. But now, in his late fifties, he had gone the way that many Greek men did-from Apollo to a grizzled Zeus. Nearly hairless of body as a young man, Cosmo was now matted on the chest, forearms and calves with curly salt-and-pepper. His once arresting-featured face, the imperfections of which all balanced out to a distinctive visage of beauty, had now had the features coarsen to an ugliness that still, nonetheless, was arresting and commanding. The body had thickened, but he was still a heavily muscled, powerfully built man. What hadn't changed was that he still had a thicker and longer cock than most men, he had the stamina of a thirty-year-old, if no longer a twenty-year-old, and he knew how to use his cock to subdue and dominate a man.

He turned his leg so that he could look down to where the cock was buried between two milk-white orbs. He simply couldn't believe that something that thick was inside such a diminutive rosebud of a hole. But it was. He was only in four inches, less than half his length, and was moving the cock slowly in and out. The cock was pulsating and the muscles of the channel walls receiving it were undulating on the cock, making love to it. This had rarely happened to Cosmo before. He could do it in his youth himself. Now he was feeling what his lovers then felt and knew one of the secrets of keeping a man enthralled.

He was torn. He wanted to let loose and fuck the hole hard and deeper, but something inside him was holding him back, telling him to treat this small beauty like spun glass. His needs were getting the best of him, though. Four progressively deeper slides buried him seven inches inside.

Devin was panting hard and moaning deeply.

"Am I hurting you?" Cosmo asked. Why had he asked this? He was a pimp, assessing a prostitute for onward sale. When had he ever asked one before whether he was in pain? If they couldn't take pain like this, he threw them back. His clients paid for only the best. Of course, as virginal as this young man seemed, there was a market for that too. It wasn't a market that Cosmo served, however.

Devin murmured something between pants, and Cosmo crouched over the young man's back and leaned his ear toward Devin's moving lips.

"Fuck me good, Daddy." Devin turned his head and took Cosmo's mouth with his. His free hand went underneath his flat belly and found a small, but fully erect cock, and he began to stroke it. The undulation of his channel muscles seemingly was intent on pulling Cosmos deeper inside him.

With a groan, Cosmos sank his cock in another inch and began to stroke more rapidly.

Devin cried out, "Shit, yes!"

What sort of young demon was this, Cosmo asked himself. He was so shy and blushing in the club where Cosmo had assumed he was virginal and untouchable until a barman leaned over Cosmo's shoulder, asked him if he wanted to fuck the young singer he was mooning over, and named a price.

The Greek pimp was about to let out the stops and test the young man's metal just as he did any prostitute prospect, when Devin's channel squeezed his cock and he ejaculated-almost simultaneously with Devin, who had been stroking his own cock.

Cosmo stood, pulled off the spent condom and tossed it into a nearby wastebasket.

"You are so hairy-and so powerful," Devin whispered as he turned onto his back and looked at Cosmo's beefy body towering over him. "And, god, that cock. Let me suck you." The voice was one of a child, a high-pitched tenor, and almost to the point of baby talk. Such a contrast, Cosmo thought, already feeling his juices begin to flow again. What was this magic the young man was spinning? He moved in between Devin's thighs and Devin cupped his heavy balls. He moved his tongue to the balls, and Cosmo shuddered and moaned.

This wasn't the way it was supposed to be. He was the master, not the other way around. The Greek pimp, roaming the world, picking up handsome young studs, and selling their services to rich high rollers. He had a commission to provide young men to an Arab prince here in Morocco. He'd been closing the deal on another young man, a German, when he'd heard Devin singing in the beach resort's Abias Club and was smitten.

"You are hardening again-so soon," Devin murmured after tonguing up one side of Cosmo's cock and down the other. "And so big. So very big."

"Have you had many men before? I didn't think-"

"Not many. None before going to work in the club. And none as big as you are."

All questioning ceased then, as Devin's lips opened over the bulb of Cosmo's cock, and the older man wasn't able to manage much more than a succession of moans.

"Wait," Cosmo murmured a bit later as he stood closer in between Devin's legs and the young platinum blond, having pushed a pillow under the small of his back, was tugging at Cosmo's rehardened cock, pulling it to his hole. "I have to get another rubber."

"I can't wait. And I want to feel you fully inside me," Devin cried out. The childlike high tenor voice made Cosmo shudder, and he grabbed Devin's waist in both hands and, this time, thrust deep inside him, giving no quarter, giving him the entire length.

Devin jerked and groaned. "Yes, all of you. Fuck me hard!"

Cosmo crouched at the end of the bed, pulled Devin's pelvis up to his, and began to stroke hard and deep. Devin's boyish torso arched back toward the surface of the bed, with only his shoulder blades and cheeks touching the surface. He was whimpering but he also was murmuring a litany of "yes, yes, yes, like that, fuck me, fuck me, fuck me." He grabbed Cosmo's beefy thigh with one hand and his own cock with the other, as Cosmo blotted out all thought of working with spun glass and stroked, stroked, stroked, deep, hard, fast. And fired off again and again and again, with the small beauty under him crying out "Yes, give it to me. Give me your cum!"

No one for years and years had pulled so much cum out of him-and given him so much pleasure. Pulling his cock out of the hole and watching the rosebud close right up again, with cum dribbling out and down the young man's inner thighs, Cosmo again was amazed at the treasure he'd found-and, possibly, ruined by losing his control.

But Devin already was reaching out for him and murmuring, "Do me again, Daddy. Fuck me again. You're so big. Nobody fucks me as big and deep as you."

Intellectually, Cosmo wasn't fooled. He'd told this before to men he wanted to impress as well. But emotionally, Cosmo was stricken. All of his experience and training as a prostitute himself and a pimp were tossed to the winds. He was lost to this luscious young piece. He was already having second thoughts about passing him on. Almost. Maybe as he felt old age coming upon him and his sexual prowess weakening, he just wanted to believe.

Later, after Devin had agreed to the astronomical sum Cosmo cited for Devin to sleep with a couple of rich men at the casino, Cosmo showed Devin to a smaller cabin on his yacht, The Apyko, where Devin would be staying as long as he was with Cosmo.

"I can't stay in your bed?"

"Occasionally, yes," Cosmo answered. "But I think you'd kill me with your sexiness if you were there every night."

They passed a room where the young German, who Cosmo had found losing at the punto banco table in the casino and had propositioned in the Abias Club bar as he watched Devin sing-progressively more interested in the platinum blond than the sultry, athletic Kurt-had been stashed.

He was on the berth saddled on top of one of Cosmo's bodyguards, a big, black Nigerian, and was riding the cock for all he was worth. The German had not hesitated at Cosmo's proposal to pull him out of debt. He had a great body and a hard, thuggish, but alluring, in its own way, face. Cosmo, who had tried him in a stall in the men's room at the club; backed against the back wall; legs spread over the toilet seat; and the German plastered on his pelvis, arms around his neck, feet leveraging off the wall, and channel bouncing up and down on his cock, figured he'd fuck anything for money.

The bodyguard didn't have that much money. So, Cosmo reassessed that the German would fuck anyone just for the hell of it. But he had a great body. He was highly salable. He was so wild he was time dated, though. Cosmo knew he'd flame for just a short time. The trick was to grab him and sell him at his brightest light.

* * * *

It took some time of unease for Cosmo Eracules to realize what was making him very uncomfortable with this scenario. When it hit him he began to sweat and to get lightheaded. His heart beat faster in his chest, and he felt a pain under his sternum. This had happened to him occasionally of late, and he had done what he could to push it into the background. He'd been blessed with good health all his life. He hadn't seen a doctor since he was a teenager in Famagusta, Cyprus. It wasn't convenient for him to get into that sort of maze now.

He was sitting in a club chair in a fourth-floor suite of the Mazagan Beach Resort on the Mediterranean coast just outside Casablanca, Morocco. Beside him, in another chair, sat Devin. Behind them stood a Nigerian and an Arab, Cosmo's current bodyguards and general "muscle." The Arab he'd come to sell the German and Devin to was in the other room, the suite's bedroom. His own two bodyguards, both Arabs, were in there as well. Cosmo was seated so that he had a clear view of the king-sized bed in the other room.

Kurt, the German, was on his back, naked, on the bed. He was bound. His arms were stretched over his head and tied together at the wrists. His legs were spread and bent, feet flat on the surface of the bed, held in place by restraints at the ankle that tied off around the bottom legs of the bed on either side. He had a ball gag in his mouth and pillows under his buttocks, holding his pelvis elevated at the edge of the foot of the bed. The Arab was standing between his legs, pulling his robe-called a dishdasha-over his head. His naked body was lean, but well-muscled. His cock was long, but not thick. He was in full erection.

The Arab thrust his cock into the German's hole strongly, grabbed him by the waist, and started to pump hard and deep. Kurt was going with the fuck, elevating his pelvis more by pushing off with his feet and matching the rhythm of the Arab's fuck with the swinging of his hips. Cosmo nearly rose from his chair in frightful recognition of what this reminded him of. But he thought better of it and sank back down. It couldn't be the same, he thought. And the Arab sampling the goods was part of the very lucrative deal.

The Arab leaned over and put his mouth on one of Kurt's nipples. From the jerking Kurt was doing and the offbeat change in the move of his hips, it was evident that the Arab was chewing on the nipple. When he moved to the other one, Cosmo could see the smear of blood on the first one. The Arab's hands were going to Kurt's throat, and he was rhythmically choking and releasing. Kurt was gasping for air, which wasn't easy with the ball gag in his mouth. He had completely lost the rhythm of the fuck and collapsed on the bed, his head turned toward the bedroom door, and a panicked look in his eyes.

Cosmo was shuddering, something he'd only once done before when he was in this position, and Devin placed a calming hand on his forearm. Cosmo turned to look at Devin and was slightly dismayed to see that the young platinum blond's eyes were wide and he was licking his lips. He was enjoying the spectacle in the other room. Cosmo wondered if the young man understood that he was being sold to this Arab as well, that it soon very well would be his limits being tested on that bed.

The Arab produced a short, multithonged hand whip and flicked it over Kurt's chest and thighs enough while he was stroking with his cock to raise welts. This must have been particularly enjoyable to the Arab as, with a jerk, and a long, hissing sigh, he came. He withdrew from Kurt's ass, pulled the condom off, turned, and walked into the living room of the suite. One of the bodyguards in the bedroom took up the position between Kurt's thighs that the Arab had vacated, entered Kurt's ass with a thick cock, and began to slowly pump.

"He will do nicely, sir," the Arab said as he walked into the room, his cock swinging low but still half hard. "Is this the other one? He looks luscious, but I wonder how long he will last. He looks much too delicate."

"I didn't catch your name," Cosmo said. "Or where you're from."

"I'm from Kuwait. My name is Amir. Amir al-Shabat."

Cosmo almost cried out in dismay. Al-Shabat. A relative of Jamir al-Shabat-the man who had used Andreas this same way years and years ago and had forcibly bought him-and who had wanted the young Cosmo too, and would have had him if Cosmo hadn't escaped. He'd never heard from Andreas again. Selling a man to a man such as this-

"And is this sweet young man the other one you've brought to sell me?" Al-Shabat repeated. "You guarantee he is of age? Although perhaps I'll pay you even more if he isn't-and if you can attest that he's still a virgin."

"No, no. This is my young protégé," Cosmo quickly said, standing, and pulling a confused-looking Devin up from his chair. "I only brought the one today. If you are pleased with the German, I'll bring you another like him."

Another like him, Cosmo thought, one who is hardened to it all; one who has half a chance to survive it.

In the other room, the bodyguard was being replaced between Kurt's thighs by the other one. Kurt once more was alert, with his pelvis raised. As the second bodyguard entered his channel, he began moving his hips, going with the fuck. He had recovered and was going with the fuck-at least for now.

But could Devin take this? He showed surprising resilience, but Cosmo couldn't imagine that his slight body could take what Kurt's was getting. And besides, Cosmo was realizing more now that before how much he wanted Devin for himself.

Unsuspecting and very pleased with Kurt, the Arab confirmed that he would be interested in having two or three more young men like Cosmo, and Cosmo, Devin, and the two bodyguards backed out of the suite.

* * * *

Devin clung to Cosmo's chest, lying on top of the Greek on the bed, his pelvis in motion on Cosmo's cock, draining him yet again. Cosmo's balls ached from the number of times the young man had drained him this evening-when Cosmo was supposed to be out at the casino, filling the Arab's order.

There was such a thing as too much of a good thing.

The next day, they were driving into Casablanca in a hired limousine, which came to a stop at a nondescript wooden door in a compound wall. The door was opened to them by a young Arab, with sultry looks and downcast eyes with fluttering eyelashes, who looked not much older than Devin.

Once inside the courtyard to the palace, the fabulous wealth of the owner was evident. Devin was smitten with the lavishness of everything he saw. He was equally in awe of the distinguished-looking gentlemen, much of the same age as Cosmo, who met them at the top of one of the wooden stairways rising to balconies at various locations in the stone-paved courtyard with a massive iron fountain in the middle of it.

The room that the filthy-rich, titled, and reclusive Baron Henri Bourbon, wearing a burgundy-colored silk robe, ushered them into was a combination lounge and bedroom. The walls and bed curtains were covered in silk, the floor with Oriental carpets. Everything spoke of old money-and lots of it.

Devin was duly impressed with the opulence of the room-and with the length of the baron's cock, which rivaled that of Cosmo, when the man opened his robe. The young platinum blond raised no objection when, with Cosmo sitting and watching from a wing-back chair, the baron asked to see Devin naked. Nor did Devin object when the baron pressed him down on the bed at its foot on his side, pulled one of Devin's legs up along his torso, with Devin's ankle at the baron's shoulder, held Devin's side down with the other hand, and slowly, at great length, fed his cock into Devin's ass.

As the baron stroked inside Devin, Cosmo was a bit put off that Devin was making the same noises of wanting the fuck from the man's long cock that he had made with Cosmo. But by now Cosmo had figured out that the young man was just playing the hand he held in the game of survival, just as Cosmo had done all his life. The catch was that Cosmo cared for this young man-more than he had for anyone before. It was perplexing and scary for him. He had made it through life being as hard as nails. He couldn't give in to his desires at this point.

Cosmo stayed in the room through the second fucking. Devin was on his belly at the bottom edge of the bed, with the baron standing between his thighs. Devin's arms were pulled back and his chest arched up by the baron's grip on his wrists. The young man was begging for an ever-deeper fuck as the baron's cock slid far up inside him, withdrew nearly the whole way, and then the long slide again. Cosmo noted that the baron seemed to like to hold Devin in bound positions, but he made little of that other than the quirk of it.

"I believe I would like one more sample before I decide," the baron said when he was finished. "Perhaps Mustapha can show you into another room and be of service to you in the meantime."

Mustapha, the young man who had opened the compound door to them, was a sweet fuck. Cosmo took him missionary style because he wanted to see the eyelashes flutter as he pumped the young man's channel.

"God, the cock, the cock, Master. Gigantic. Thick. You're killing me," Mustapha was crying out.

Cosmo didn't feel toward this sultry piece the way he felt toward Devin-and was determined not to become maudlin. He had been fucking the young man at no more than seven inches depth. He dove all the way in and increased the pace. "No, this is killing you."

"Fuck, fuck, fuck," Mustapha cried out. He began to pant and moan deeply. Cosmo fucked harder. He had to give up these concerns for the men he fucked that Devin had raised in him.

After he'd finished, still saddled as he went half flaccid, although he knew he wasn't finished, and with Mustapha still moaning, he asked, "Am I bigger than the baron inside you?"

"You know I cannot say you are, Master."

Cosmo was tracing some red welts on Mustapha's chest and touching at a blue bruise on his side. "Did the baron do this to you?"

"I fell down the staircase from the balcony. I . . . oh, oh, OH!"

Cosmo had recharged and was starting to stroke again.

"Yes! Yes, you are bigger! Thicker by far, though the baron reaches as deep."

"You want less of me?"

"Noooo!"

"It wouldn't have mattered if you said yes. Tell, me, my dark little beauty. Am I not a more cruel lover than the baron?" Cosmo needed to be cruel. And this was but a servant. He needed to assert himself as a pimp, to will himself not to care.

"No, in truth, Master, you are not as cruel as the baron."

This took Cosmo aback. It was not what he expected to hear-what he'd wanted to hear. He made some effort to prove that he was.

Later, when Cosmo rejoined the baron, clothed once again in his burgundy silk robe, the baron declared himself very satisfied with Devin and handed the sale money over to Cosmo. Devin wasn't present, and Cosmo regretted that he didn't have the chance to see him again. He offered money for Mustapha, having been pleased with him and assured that the Arab would be too, but the baron said the young Arab wasn't for sale.

The young man, Devin, had to be given up. And where else better than in a lavish environment such as this, with another old man to dote on the youth? Much better than in the clutches of such as As-Shabat. And the money was even better than the Arab had been offering.

He had another bit of a clutchy feeling when Devin so readily had agreed to stay with the baron, but he pushed it out of his mind as he was driven back to the casino in El-Jadida, where he could resume filling the order for Amir al-Shabat-and, hopefully, get back into the in-control mode of the Greek pimp.

* * * *

The first inkling of trouble came to Cosmo as he was sitting in the Abias Club bar waiting for a nearly destitute young Scandinavian gambler to decide whether to take him up on his offer and to meet him here. This would be his fourth young man and would fill out Al-Shabat's order. The other three were on ice aboard The Apyko, with the Nigerian bodyguard babysitting them. The Arab bodyguard was standing near the entrance of the bar.

The bartender and a cocktail hostess were talking near where Cosmo was sitting. He couldn't quite hear them, but when he heard the word "Greek" his ears tuned their way.

"Wondered what happened to him," the cocktail hostess said. "But to be found that way . . . wasn't he a close friend of yours?"

The bartender didn't say anything that Cosmo could hear, but just then his attention went to the door, where two uniformed men were talking to the Arab bodyguard. They were leading him away. Cosmo's survival instincts clicked in. It wouldn't be the bodyguard who had come to the attention of the authorities; it would be him, for some reason. If the authorities were after him, he could count on the bodyguard to cover for a little while-but not for long.

Cosmo turned in his seat to face the bartender, prepared to ask him for clarification of what he and hostess were talking about, but the mere look of fright and then speculation on the man's face when he saw the Greek told Cosmo much of what he needed to know. It was the same bartender who had hooked him up with Devin to begin with.

"Say, aren't you the Greek who-?"

Cosmo was out of his chair and across the room to the entrance in no time flat. He headed for the terrace swimming pool area overlooking the marina. En route to the marina where The Apyko was docked, he stopped the cocktail hostess who had been talking with the bartender in the club.

"I overheard you talking about some problem with a colleague," he said, flashing enough Dirham, the currency of Morocco, to loosen her lips.

"Yes. Devin, one of the singers in the Abias Club. A cute young man, but not for me, if you know what I mean. He just disappeared a few days ago. Didn't show up for work. And last night they found him torn up badly in an alley in Casablanca."

"Is he? Did he-?"

"I heard he will live but that he'll be crippled up badly. Too bad. Really cute face and bod, and he sang like an angel."

Cosmo pressed the money into her hand and moved quickly over to the terrace steps down to the marina. But looking down into the marina from there made him pull up short. Uniformed men with submachine guns were walking the three young men he'd already bagged to sell to Al-Shabat and the Nigerian bodyguard off The Apyko.

He drew back from the edge of the terrace. He couldn't be here. The authorities obviously thought he had something to do with Devin being beaten. And of course he did; it wasn't something he could deny. The bartender no doubt was talking to the authorities now and linking him even closer to the platinum blond. Fear for himself plus concern for what had happened to Devin-and the full extent of how Devin had gotten under his skin-washed over Cosmo. He couldn't dwell on any of this just now, though. He had to get on the move.

Passage through the hotel or casino would be unwise, he realized, so he started walking around the edge of the complex. Once in front, he walked farther down the road toward Casablanca and hailed a taxicab to take him into the city.

The man who opened the wooden door at the baron's compound was old and grizzled. It wasn't Mustapha.

"Where is he? Where is the baron?"

The old man obviously didn't understand English. He stood there smiling and looking a bit stupid.

"Baron Henri Bourbon. I must see him."

The name registered and the old man smiled, bowed, and motioned for Cosmo to follow him, which he did. He was led down, not up, this time, into a vaulted, rock walled chamber, leaving Cosmo just inside the door and withdrawing.

It took a few moments for the horror of what Cosmo saw to register. It was some sort of torture chamber-a chamber of sexual BDSM. The baron was there in a black silk cape and nothing else and holding a scourge whip. A young man, covered with red welts, was hanging, naked, from wrist restraints attached to a chain anchored in the ceiling of chamber.

Cosmo gasped when he realized it was Mustapha.

"Well, this is an unexpected pleasure," the baron said, with a smile, when he turned to see Cosmo at the door. "Have you brought me another young man? I hope he is as luscious as Devin. He was delicious. Lasted for hours. I wouldn't have expected he had it in him."

Cosmo could hardly speak he was so shocked and angry. He brushed by the baron and released Mustapha's wrist restraints. The young man fell into his arms.

"You can't do this," he cried out to Henri. "I didn't bring you Devin for you to do this to him. I brought him here to protect him from someone who probably is far less cruel than you are."

"I can't do this? This is Morocco and I am the Baron Henri Bourbon. I can do what I damn well please here."

"I am taking Mustapha away," Cosmo declared as he started half carrying, half dragging the young man toward the entrance to the chamber. The baron made no move to stop him.

"You may try, if you like. I am serious that I would like you to provide me with more young men like Devin, though." Still he made no move to stop the escape.

Cosmo got Mustapha to the door of the compound and through it. He leaned the young man up against the compound wall, whipped off his own jacket, and did what he could to wrap it and tie it with the arms around the young man's hips, to cover his nakedness as well as he was able. "Are you all right? Can you walk? Do you have someplace you can go?"

Mustapha lifted his head and gave Cosmo a peculiar look. "Yes, of course I have somewhere I can go," he mumbled. He scrabbled at the arms of the jacket and managed to pull it off his body and give it back to Cosmo. Then, with a lurch, he turned and stumbled back through the open doorway and into the compound. The wooden door slammed shut, and Cosmo heard the bolt being shot home.

On his way out of the maze of narrow streets from the compound and back into the market area, Cosmo stopped at a tea room and put a telephone call into the police. He told them there was a young man being beaten and gave the address. He didn't connect it with Devin, because he was too connected with that already. He had no idea whether the police would follow up-and he suspected that the baron was quite right and they wouldn't-but it was pretty much all he could do for Mustapha. Obviously, no matter how rough life was with the baron for Mustapha, the young man must believe the alternatives for him were worse.

The guilt was eating at Cosmo. Mustapha had already told Cosmo what the baron was going to do with Devin. Cosmo had, deep inside, suspected it just from the way he'd seen the baron fuck Devin twice. Mustapha had said the baron was more cruel than Cosmo even while Cosmo was trying to regain the hardness required of a pimp.

There was nothing that Cosmo could do for Devin now, though, and Devin had brought some of this on to himself.

Self-preservation was foremost now. Cosmo had been in this business for nearly forty years. He had rarely been in as dangerous a position as he was now, but he was a fighter and a survivor.

As dusk was falling, he took a taxi back to El-Jadida, back to the Mazagan Beach Resort and casino. Once again he worked his way around to the side. The Apyko was still there. A guard was standing on the dock, but all of the lights were out in the yacht. Cosmo would just have to hope and pray that no one was stationed on the yacht. He was still a good swimmer. He'd once been a champion swimmer.

He stripped and slipped into the water of the Mediterranean beyond the reach of the lights from the resort. As silently as he could, he swam to the bow of the boat, facing away from the dock. Using a rope coil hanging over the bow, he pulled himself up onto the deck of the ship. He came around the side of the superstructure and waited for the guard on the dock to look away from the sea and toward the casino. Keeping low, he slipped around to the side against the dock and silently untied the mooring lines. Inside the ship, he found, to his relief, that it was deserted.

He heard the guard yell and start moving down the dock when he flashed on the engines, but he was well away and unaffected by the pursuing burst of submachine gun fire-and out of the harbor and churning the sea-before any further response could be launched.

As he motored The Apyko back toward his safe haven in Limassol, Cyprus, he schemed on where he went from here. Devin was regrettable, but it had been a close thing with him. Cosmo had to realize that the older he got, the more susceptible he was going to be to bonds of affection with young men, now in the golden years that had passed him by. He must either be on greater guard or he must start winding his operations down. He now was on the radar with law enforcement as never before.

He needed to cool his activities in the Mediterranean for a while, perhaps even pull away from the sea. He couldn't see giving up the casino angle, though. It was just too perfect as a source for both needy young hunks and rich men willing to pay for them. But maybe an entirely different venue altogether. Maybe the casino capital of the world-Las Vegas.