6 comments/ 44772 views/ 29 favorites A Cumbuck's Tale Ch. 01 By: talismania Disclaimer: Welcome to my world! My stories are almost always fantasy-based and involve non-consent. All characters are human. This chapter has consensual sex and interracial plot elements. Later chapters will present non-consensual situations, sexual slavery, and romance. If any of the above bothers you, consider yourself warned. If you decide to read, I hope you enjoy the story! Chapter 1 -- They Suck Like Gods "A Lord, you say?" Gereg's voice rose to a fiery bellow. "A Staubaun Lord?" "I didn't mean it!" Henna pleaded, every word thick with tears. "I was looking at the good cloth for my dress, and he approached me. He said I was pretty—" "And pretty you are—pretty stupid, if you listen to one word from a Staubaun's tongue!" "She was flattered," their mother said in a sharp angry voice every one of her eight children knew well. "While the shopkeeper distracted me, she whispered with the man and let him kiss her." "Kiss her?" Condemnation of that evil act resounded through the small stone and timber house. "He befouled the girl with his lust? What manner of man is that? What manner, I ask you? And the shopkeeper in on it! Never will we set another foot inside his door! Foolish child, do you know what they do, these Staubaun Lords? Do you know why they prey on empty-headed girls like you? So they can rape you! They fill stupid young Kheld girls' ears with lies—tell them they're pretty—promise them gold and love ever after. Promise they'll build them a house! But their promises come to naught and vanish the minute their seed is spent." Cam listened wide-eared to Gereg's rant. His parents seldom spoke so bluntly about sex. And Henna . . . had she really let a Lord kiss her? To hear their mother tell it, Henna had encouraged the man by showing her legs and giving him long looks. Cam occupied himself by hauling water up from the well, tilting the bucket until it ran into the stone sluice that led to the kitchen cistern. Quietly, he put the bucket aside, minding the rope and checking the handle hitch as he always did. The last time a bucket had fallen down the well, Gereg had made him go after it. He now dreaded the cold dank walls and dripping stone enough to never want to have to go down the shaft again. As the voices within the house rose in volume, he pressed closer to the wall to listen. "I'm sorry, Badda. Really. I didn't mean it! I didn't . . . go with him—" "And a good thing! The Mother gave you one grain of sense! Do you know how big their penises are? Do you? Big as my arm!" Gereg's rage had lessened not one straw. Cam could well imagine his father brandishing one of his big, burly arms, thick with muscle, before his cowering daughter. "Staubauns in their lust don't care!" her father yelled. "They tear our girls bad, shred their openings and batter their wombs. The daughter of Alm Pergilsson bled to death! And those that don't die from being torn die giving birth to their half-breed brats. Is that how you want to honor your Mother?" "No, Badda. No—" Their mother's voice interceded. "Find yourself a good Kheld lad to take between your legs." Cam found it harder to hear what she was saying, or the words Henna sobbed in answer. The distraught girl fled the house moments after by way of the kitchen arch, her tanned legs carrying her across the yard. Cam knew where she would go and after closing the well he followed. Gereg owned a tradesman's plot on the silt-rich flats, but there was a small rise with a shed and a few ancient trees, the gnarled twisted roots of which had been exposed and the ground hollowed between them to form a hiding place. He hopped over the roots and joined his sniffling sister, the ground cool against his knees. "I heard, Henna," he told her softly and put his arms about her. They were both eighteen years old, the only twins out of eight children. Theirs was a typical Kheld family, plain and boisterous. "I didn't mean it, Cam," she sniffed. "I never thought he'd kiss me. It just happened. I like Bren Holbensson." "I know." He had noticed the wagon-maker's sturdy son finding reasons to visit. The easy-going youth with the sexy smile had been his friend since boyhood—though Cam had silently wished for more. "Badda thinks I'm a whore—" "No, he doesn't. He thinks Staubauns are monsters is all." "Maybe they are." "Some are, I reckon." A girl their age, their neighbor's pretty daughter, Brida, had been assaulted by a Staubaun man who had lured her in town. Brida had lingered for three days, her breasts and tender thighs bitten purple and her womb all torn up inside, pouring blood, because the man had been brutal with her. "Was that one?" "I don't know. I don't think so. But he wanted me, Cam. I felt him, how hard he was against my belly. It scared me so, but he was handsome and I—" she sobbed and he pulled her tighter to him. "Oh, Cam—" He held her for a while, stroking his sister's dark silken hair, until her shoulders stopped shaking and her tears had stilled. It made him angry that a Staubaun Lord should have preyed on his sister, that a man could just come up to her in a store and think he could do whatever he wanted. It also shamed and alarmed him that his pecker swelled between his legs when he thought about that man's erection, big and stiff, pressing against her body. Henna had been careless to let a Lord kiss her, but he also understood how it could have happened. Because they're so marvelous to look upon. Cam had seen Staubaun men in town, gold-haired and tall with broad-shouldered bodies and jewels flashing at their wrists or throat. Just the other day he had caught a Lord looking at him, and their eyes had met. Something in that rich brown gaze had approved of him somehow, and he'd felt all at once as warm as if he had the sun inside him. Henna sighed and nuzzled her head on his shoulder. Though tears still streaked her face, with its wide mouth and pretty nose, she had stopped crying. "I'll wed Bren the minute he says he'll build me a house," she vowed. "He will get the shop from his father one day and have a good trade." Cam flashed a look of approval, then sighed. "That's more than I will have. Meron gets this land and Badda's trade. I'll have to work for him, or build myself a trade of my own before I can get a wife." She pulled back from him then, and scanned his face with eyes that wondered how he could say such a thing. "You can get a wife, Cam. Go across the river to our kin home and get one of those high clan girls with land to fall in love with you." He laughed, but she was earnest. "You're handsome! Don't look away from me—it's true! Your looks and your smile make the girls shy. You can make a good marriage, work your wife's land and bless her and the Mother with beautiful children." His twin didn't know, no one did, that he thought about other youths more than he did about girls. "I thought maybe I'd live in town." Henna wrinkled her nose, brushing leaf litter and twigs from her best skirt. "Why? The place smells of fish!" Omadawn was a fishing town. Its trade consisted of eels, sweet sap in the spring, and skins from beasts hunted in the nearby hills. Cam was proficient at dealing with none of those things. His family made bricks. All he could really say about his vague idea of his future was that he did not see himself working in the brickyard forever, or wedding a local girl, none of whom had ever caught his fancy. The only future he dreamed about lately was the one he'd glimpsed for a moment in the eyes of the gold-haired man who'd admired him that day in Omadawn. * * * * That summer the weather turned warm and dry and local demand for building materials soared. The turn proved good for Gereg's trade. The brick maker put his large brood to work pressing straw into the region's yellow mud, which he poured into frames laid out on the flat ground. Once the mud firmed, it could be molded into bricks which were then baked in the sun until hard. Once hardened, the bricks were stacked and hauled. It was hard work, and Cam had just worked up from chopping and stamping straw to where his father trusted him with the hauling. Though he would never be Staubaun tall, Cam had gotten taller and stronger. His arms sported supple new muscle and he liked how his chest was broader now, more like his older brother Meron's. A sturdy teen son was good for heavy work and making deliveries took him into town sometimes and gave him a chance to look about at the world. He loved to just sit at street side and watch the bustle, inhale the smells of frying meats from street vendors, and listen to the cadence of rough river men brawling on the dock and the sing-song of merchants hawking their wares. Beyond them all, the Dazun river flowed like a broad silver ribbon. Hauling was sweaty work, dusty and dirty, and a body got thirsty doing it. Cam found a beer vendor and bought a meat pie swimming with juices, then staked out a spot around the corner in the shade, a favorite vantage from which he could also watch the river. Barges hugged the piers, but he often caught sight of larger ships, masted schooners and great curve-hulled yachts out in the deeper channels. Looking south, barely to be seen some days and not seen at all on others, an emerald line marked the far shore. Only small boats went to Amallar, he knew, because what trade existed with the Kheld domain was minor compared with that to be had with the richer Staubaun-ruled lands of the North bank, where his family lived. The biggest boats traveled to the North's great cities, all of which were but rumors to him. Staubaun cities were big, he'd heard, with streets of silver and houses roofed with gold. Khelds did not dwell in such places. They lived in small towns and made bricks and raised crops, and lived plain lives that never amounted to much but with which they were content. "—did so!" "Nah, ye nog." "Quiet now." Two other youths had wandered into the alley. They were Kheld and shabby, town boys by their look. Cam made a point of ignoring them as they turned their backs to him and continued their talking. "—it's a fence, see, a sucking fence—a place Lords go to get their dicks sucked. But they suck dick, too, 'cuz some of them like that." "But no one sees?" The first boy dropped his voice lower, just about a whisper, so Cam had to strain to hear him. "No, it's a fence, planks with holes—only dicks poke through. An' it's not outside, it's in a house, see—" "Then it's a wall." "No, it's a fence. A wall is thick, it's built to hold things up, or defend things like houses or towns. But a fence is just there to keep things friendly, saying to the neighbors this here is my garden and that there is yours, or these are my cows and those are your cows—" "So this here is Kheld dick and that there is Staubaun?" "Right! Because they don't never cross over. All safe, you see." "So it's a wall, 'cuz it defends 'em from us knowing who they are." "No, numb nuts. It can't be a wall 'cuz walls are thick. Not even a Lord could stick his dick through a proper wall. This is just planks, see, and so they call it a fence." Cam listened harder, slightly embarrassed by his interest in such talk. All his life he had heard that Staubaun Lords favored enticing young Kheld women to satisfy their lusty male members—but it was no secret some Lords preferred a different flavor. Ever since his first trip to the village with his father, Cam had wondered what it would be like if one of those landed, golden men should look at him with wanting eyes. Sometimes he lay in bed thinking about it, how one of those tall, broad Staubaun bodies might look without clothing, how being touched by a gold-hair's pale fingers might make him feel. His pecker swelled every time. Henna's misadventure had but thrown fuel on such thoughts. He often took his hard dick in his hand, spending himself just to ease the pressure. Both his father and brother were pressing him to bed a girl, though the prospect left him more panicked than anything else. Other boys his age talked about girls ceaselessly, but he figured if he could get a Lord to suck his pecker, that would feel as good—and for some reason the thought excited him more. His dick was stone hard already at what he was overhearing. "Look't him, 'e's listenin," the other lad, the one to whom the first had been talking, said. He looked at Cam coldly. All three boys leaned on the same wall, just off the street behind the same vendor. Only Cam, however, had food in hand. "Am not," Cam shot back. But it was true he hadn't taken a bite of his pastry in a good minute. "Are too. Listenin' hard, an' got yerself a hard one, too." Cam could hardly deny it. His dick announced his interest. "It's always like that," he said. "Just waiting for the next girl." The two street boys snickered. "That dick don't fancy girls, looks like. Wants ta be Lord sucked, reckon." "Might," he shrugged, admitting it only because these two obviously had tried it themselves. Proper Kheld society opposed any sexual contact between men at all. And even less so between Khelds and Staubauns. "But you know how it is. They never do our kind any good." "Just suck like gods and taste like heaven." "Says you, Law," the second boy scoffed. He looked unconvinced, the reason the other lad had been trying to persuade him in the first place. "Fuck you, Negg. Go to the Fence and find out for yerself," his friend said again. "What's this Fence?" Cam asked. "Place Lords go to suck Kheld dick. Seems they like the taste, young dicks 'specially. Just last night one sucked me for near an hour an' I came in his mouth four times. Best suck I ever had." "Best suck you never had!" Negg taunted. "Where is it?" Cam asked, uninterested in their dispute. The boys exchanged glances. "Can't tell you," Law said. "That's pigshit." Cam's dick throbbed in his loose pants of rough-spun wool. "An' like I would tell you, just cuz you have wood in your pants. Maybe all you need is a horn boy like me to suck it." Furious and offended, wondering why any pimple-pocked wog wharf weasel would think he would want that stupid, grinning mouth on his dick, Cam folded the remains of his pastry in its corn husk wrapper and thrust it into his road pouch, preparing to walk away. The boys dropped their leers. "He's being an ass," Negg said by way of apology. "Don't take it wrong. Need to buy our ear, is all. Can't be too careful, now, can we?" "Why the hells should I do that? Couple of wogs—" "Not like you, course. Pretty boy what wants a Lord to suck 'im." ANah. Just thought to try it, that's all." "An' so you should," Law said quickly. He tilted his head at Cam, assessing what he might ask for in way of compensation. "Negg here told you right. Buy our ear, that's all. Got enough coin for a couple of crocks?" Cam did. He had just gotten paid for a delivery, but on top of that the building owner had given him two extra silvers for helping to unload. He'd spent part of one silver on the pastry and beer but had enough left over to buy a round of ales at one of the shacks willing to serve younger Khelds what their elders preferred they eschew. "Good enough," he agreed, narrowing his eyes at them. Both were scrawny and ill-fed, and he had gotten some muscle to go with the inches he had gained the past couple years. "I buy the ale, but you don't drink a drop until you tell me where this Fence is." "I'll do you better," Law offered. "Buy the ale, then I'll take you there. You and Negg." "Not me," Negg vowed. His hard, pug-nosed face proclaimed distaste. "Don't care how good it feels, it's not worth it. That's how it starts, you know. First they suck yer dick, then you suck their's. And after that, they take yer ass and yer gonners." "No one's taking my ass," Law vowed. "Only cuz it's hairy as a dog's—" Cam's cheeks burned. He had never heard such talk before. Of course, it was given that Staubauns were as perverse and unscrupulous as they were beautiful, that they had larger cocks than Kheldish men, and used them more often. He'd heard that once any Kheld, woman or man, tasted Staubaun cock, they were done for. They would want only Staubaun cock thereafter, and crave it with a hunger beyond that for food or drink. A place like the Fence, where Kheld youths could go to suck or be sucked by Staubauns, had to be kept secret, because if the clan elders ever learned about the Fence and found it, they would tear it down and likely drive out of town any man they found there. To even visit such a place invited ruin. His father, Cam knew, would kill him for sure, if only to preserve his family's reputation for virile, good-looking sons who built sturdy houses for their wives and produced strong, healthy families. Nothing in Kheld society was more despised than a lowly, Staubaun-cock-sucking wog. Well, I won't suck, not ever. I'll just let one suck me, see what it's like. No harm in that, if no one knows. * * * * After some more talk and a second mug of strong ale, Law agreed to take him to the Fence, which was on the fringe of the town's east end. As night fell, they walked toward the river. It was a bad part of a poor neighborhood, stinking of fish and a nearby slaughterhouse. Planks creaked like crickets as they crossed muddy ditches rank with sewage. They came at last to an old stone house, once fine but long abandoned and hidden by brush, not far off the river. The place was dark, but the boy knocked on the door and said, "Hard dick." At that, the door opened. The man inside, a hard-eyed, thin-faced Kheld introduced by Law as Fernel, looked Cam up and down and indicated that he should pull out his dick. Cam did so without hesitation. He expected that the Lords were particular, and wanted only the best. The man lifted up a lantern and looked his member over, checking for pox and squeezing the head to see if he had any pus, before being satisfied and pointing to another door. "Wash it," he said. The door led to a washroom, barely more than a rickety stand with a cracked water bowl and battered pitcher. Cam washed his dick carefully, cleaning every surface. Law then led him around the corner and down a hall. At the end was a long, narrow room, dimly lit. He could see the floor but the ceiling was lost to shadow. Along one wall was the Fence. It was little more than planks hammered together and smoothed either by hand or use. What light bathed the room was low, the better to conceal its patrons. Other Khelds—some youths, some men—were there already. Most knelt on the hard dirt floor before the solid structure of polished wood, their mouths working on Staubaun cocks thrust through holes in the Fence. Soft grunting and moaning filled the air. A couple of naked penises, Staubaun surely, erect and pale as candles, awaited service through holes as yet unattended. Each was large and thick, beautifully colored and elegantly formed, unlike any Cam had ever imagined. Such flesh seemed to have been crafted for pleasuring, regal and deserving. Looking at them made Cam hot and excited but also uncomfortable. Several wogs knelt on the floor, slavishly servicing those cocks—a few older Kheld men, furtive and efficient, with hoods drawn up over their heads to conceal their faces, and a handful of drawn-looking, anxious youths hungrily sucking Staubaun juices. Cam forced his eyes away and turned his attention instead to the Fence's other patrons. A brace of Kheld youths and a few men stood on blocks and clung to grips nailed on the wall, their half-naked bodies pressed tight to the wall and faces glazed with pleasure as men on the other side of the fence sucked their dicks. The bunching of male buttocks, cheeks jiggling, as the men pumped toward some unseen goal captured Cam's interest in a way that made him blush. Some boys, who did not yet have men sucking what they offered, looked over at Cam resentfully, knowing another dick would be more competition, but a few were friendly. One youth smiled as if he had done this before and thought it was the greatest fun. "No watching," the attendant, another unsmiling young Kheld, hissed to Cam, jabbing him. "You gonna do it?" A Cumbuck's Tale Ch. 01 Nodding, Cam eagerly dropped his trousers, indicating that he wanted to be sucked. The attendant used a stick to measure up from his feet and set up some blocks under one of the round holes. Cam climbed the blocks and, finding the hole positioned perfectly, looked up for the grips. Grabbing the iron bars, he pressed his hips forward, pushing his dick through the smooth-edged, polished hole, offering his member to the Lords. What would it feel like when a man took it in his mouth? Just the thought of a tall, golden Lord lapping his dick caused his rod to swell and lift. Cam quivered with a rush of excitement. How long until a Lord noticed how stiff his dick was, and found it to his liking? To his left, one of the men sucking on a Staubaun member slurped noisily and gagged on the huge cock he pleasured, moaning in hunger as he slid his mouth up and down that unnatural thickness and length. The room stank of men, semen and sex. Cam had hardly had his dick in the fence for a minute when he felt something hot and wet press against his shaft. Some man—an unseen, never-to-be-seen man—was kissing his rigid member. "Oh, god!" he said. Grabbing tighter to the handles for balance, he pushed his hips eagerly against the board, thrusting every inch of his throbbing boner toward that unseen man. "Ah, yeah," he moaned as an anonymous tongue ran hotly up and down his eager shaft. He worried he might shoot his load right there, all over the Staubaun's perfect face. When the man pulled back the foreskin, baring the engorged head so that he could then lave his tongue all over and around it, Cam thought he would surely explode. This was like nothing he had ever felt before, nothing he could have dreamed. His drops of pre-excitement pumped freely as that warm undulating tongue licked every trace. His dick bunched, but the man pressed hard along the underside of his hard shaft to prevent him from shooting, continuing to kiss his dick head with big, wet slurps until Cam ground his hips and rolled his pelvis against the board. He had pumped his dick in his hand, of course, but this was so much better! At the last moment, the man took Cam's dick in his mouth. They suck like gods, the street boy Law had said, and it was true. As he felt his prong enveloped in wet, hot, sucking flesh, Cam did come, his excited prick jerking, shooting hot cum into that Staubaun throat. Staubaun Lords thought they were so damn fine, but one had just gotten down on his knees and sucked off a brick cart boy. Cam smiled happily and pulled from the hole the moment the man, sucking his shaft to the very tip the better to get every drop of him, released his dick from those unseen Staubaun lips. He went back to the washroom and rinsed his dick of any leavings, then went out the way he had come in. Fernel noted his look of satisfaction. "Come again," the man said, without a trace of humor. * * * * "He's been three times this week. Lately, he washes it off, gets hard again, goes back for more. Two, three times a night. Only wants to get his dick sucked, that one. Won't put his mouth on cock hisself. Asked him about it, but he thought I was for fun. 'I'm here so's them Lords can suck me,' he says." Fernel tucked a bright green penta leaf between his back teeth, crushing it a few times before nudging the moist wad into his cheek. "Just that?" The man Fernel faced had leaned back again into shadow after offering the leaf. "Some of 'em think that way. Ain't tempted a bit, just there for the fun." "But this one's special?" Fernel grinned, his green-stained teeth gleaming in the low lantern light. "Pretty, he is. Fine-looking boy—near out his teens but not yet, an' I can see he'd clean up real nice. Good-sized dick. But he's better yet, cuz he thinks this is just a lark, see? Ain't never given it away. No man's ever had his mouth or his ass." "You sure of that?" "Sure of his as I am of mine. I've seen his kind before. Want their dicks pleasured, but never give out. He don't realize, see, that the men sucking him off aren't all handsome and young. He can't see them, so he don't know. Men line up to taste that fine little buck prick of his. Gets them all happy cuz he's so hard and pretty. He's hard for it, but that's because he's thinking it's a handsome Lord what's gnawing on him, not some fat merchant." He sucked on the penta leaf in his cheek and eyed the big, hard-featured blond man before him. "I tell you, Ralen, he's perfect." "He'll be there tonight?" "Tonight. Maybe tomorrow. Now he's got a taste for it, young buck like that won't go long without getting jacked." * * * * Ralen liked Kheld boys. He liked them, understood them, enjoyed them—and he fucked them. What he mostly did, however, was find them. Fernel was one of his best sources for prime young rabbits. He took the wharf scum for his word and showed up that night in Omadawn, staking out the Fence. He stayed out of sight in the Back Room, waiting to be notified if the boy arrived. That night, he did not. Ralen was there again the next night. He was a patient hunter and, like Fernel, he knew the ways of randy young Khelds hooked on the joys of getting their dicks off. Alerted by a brace of clunks from a trip block, Ralen went to the view portal into the washroom and settled down to get a good look. He immediately lifted an eyebrow with approval. Fernel had not misled him. The boy had dark, handsome Kheld looks. Lively blue eyes, a fine straight nose above a wide, well-shaped mouth, with just a trace of young beard on his jaw. That would be removed, of course, and the unkempt hair, black as midnight itself, needed shaping. The youth had some scant body hair, but not too much, and healthy sun-kissed fair skin. A well-made boy, on the slender side but with shape and definition to his muscles from having done physical work. Ralen's cock gave a standing salute of approval and he smiled, mentally adding coin to Fernel's payment. A secret stair from the back room led up to a gallery overlooking the entire Fence and enclosure. He could walk to whatever vantage point he wished, see any person or interaction. He kept his attention only on the new boy, watching him grab a pair of grips and insert his stiff young dick through the Fence. The lad did indeed have a fine-looking, meaty young prick, and it immediately drew the attention of a man who, much like Ralen, appeared to have been waiting for the youth. Plump and silver-haired, richly coiffed and wearing a plain but well-made robe, the man quickly glided forward from the side wall where he had been standing. He promptly stopped in front of the perky young dick. Ralen did not move into position to see the man at the wall or study his technique. Neither interested him. His only interest was the boy, the way the youth gripped the handles and thrust his loins insistently against the Fence as the man began to feast on his eager young dick. He observed the way the youth's dark head dropped back, his features softening and growing more beautiful by the thrust as he descended into ecstasy. Yes, he thought, this one seeks pleasure. Look at him, accepting it shamelessly, demanding more. A fine little rabbit! He's barely begun to provide the pleasures a Staubaun Lord can draw forth from his body. After moving to the Staubaun side, Ralen looked down into the stall where the old man was greedily sucking the boy's prick and he smiled as he imagined for himself the moaning, humping young beauty on the other side grunting as he delivered a mouthful of creamy Kheld juice into the old cum-sucker's gobbling throat. Like Fernel, he knew the best rationale for the Fence was that it allowed lusty Kheld youths to imagine they serviced and were being serviced by handsome, horny young men like themselves, while never letting them see that the men who enjoyed their lapping young mouths and feasted on their eager little dicks were more likely to be older men like the merchant or, like Ralen, war-scarred veterans unlikely to inspire young men's dreams. The merchant, indeed, finished with a delicate swallow as the youth's depleted penis softened and withdrew. But the man remained standing where he was, dabbing his lips with a cloth and eagerly watching the hole to see if his quarry re-emerged. Remembering what Fernel had said about the young Kheld rinsing off and going back to be drained again, Ralen descended the stair. The Staubaun side of the Fence differed in significant ways from the Kheld side. The wash area had low lighting, stalls with curtains and fine ceramic bowls cleaned after every use. No plain board floor greeted lordly feet. Patrons stepped upon rich carpets into booths heavily curtained for privacy. The surface of the Fence itself was elegantly veneered in dark, burled wood that someone, not Fernel, kept clean and polished. Ralen proceeded immediately to the merchant's booth. "Share," he growled, pulling back the curtain and stepping in. A former soldier in the service of the King, he was taller and broader than the soft-living merchant. Though the man looked displeased, he also knew he could not prevail against this muscular newcomer and bowed his head, backing away. Minutes later, as expected, the handsome young prick reappeared, not quite as rigid as before but just as dusky and pretty. Ralen loved young Kheld dick. Though not as large as Staubaun appendages, Kheld pricks were also less grotesque—neat, compact, well-shaped mouthfuls swollen with thick hot honey. When clean, they were delicious, as were the youths attached to them. The wonderful musk of a clean Kheld prick drew him as he reached up and with two fingers tested the barrel of the boy's shaft for hardness. The skin was pleasingly smooth and fine-textured, pulled taut over a beautiful, engorged shaft already promisingly hard for having been drained just minutes before. A lusty little rabbit, then. Ralen kissed it appreciatively, then wrapped his lips around the shaft, tonguing the silken hard length that swelled for him until he heard the boy's open groan through the Fence. He pulled back and expertly slid the foreskin from the rosy crown. It was lovely to look at, plump and bell-shaped, flaring sleekly to an inviting ridge where it joined the shaft. Perfectly shaped for sucking, without any stink of uncleanliness or disease. Drops of clear fluid welled from it like nectar swelling the throat of a flower. Ralen teased the hole from which those droplets issued and was rewarded to feel the boy thrusting his hips forward, pushing the lovely little buck dick toward him, begging him to suck. Through the fence, he heard snatches of moaning . . . "take it, goldhair . . . suck it . . . you know you want it . . ." Amused, he tarried and lazily swirled his tongue over that smooth, straining prick head, testing the boy's responses, pleased to hear the youth's loins slapping the board through which his dick pushed like a plump, rosy sweet. It was easy to envision the young Kheld's muscles straining, his muscular buttocks bunching eagerly as he sought a Staubaun mouth for his hard dick. There was but one test more. Signaling to Fernel, Ralen waited. * * * * Cam had been enjoying the latest man's attention to his dick. He was surprised by how different it was . . . a harder grip and tongue, longer and more commanding licks. And then that tongue and firm masculine lips exploring his cock head and sucking his pre-cum . . . within moments, his dick was even harder than the time before. It was then that Fernel came up quickly behind him, slamming him hard against the fence and reaching between his legs. Before Cam even grasped what was happening, he felt the man lift first one testicle and then the other, pushing them expertly through the hole so that now his balls were on the other side also, nestled high and tight against his prick. Surprised, he tried to pull back, only to feel the rim of the hole cut into his balls. "Ow! No . . . oh Lud!" he cried. But Fernel had him pressed up hard against the Fence, holding him there. "It's time ye learned a new trick," the man growled in his ear. "Just hold still now, and enjoy it." With his face pressed to the boards, Cam could see two boys to his right and that they were looking at him with knowing, half-frightened smirks. He had seen for himself how some of the boys put their balls through the hole on their own, offering their sacs, too, to the men on the other side. Fernel left Cam clinging to the Fence. Trapped, his testicles completely on the other side of the hole and the edge applying painful pressure if he shifted position, Cam continued to submit to the greedily sucking Lord on the other side. The pleasure was intense now, pushing him up to the edge, but not quite over. A firm, knowing finger stroked his scrotum, assessing and gently rolling his full balls. Each bit of pressure was both pleasure and pain. "Bastard, fucking bastard—" he groaned, hanging tightly to the handles, his thighs quivering from the effort of keeping his groin pressed to the Fence. His dick felt immense, pounding! He'd never needed to spurt more than this, but every time he thought he must, something stopped him. The Lord's mouth engulfed him then, all the way to his balls. The man's tongue curled over them, catching both up and lifting them into his large hot Staubaun mouth. The wet heat enveloping him, the strong tongue massaging his shaft, nearly drove him mad . . . and still his load would not be released. Though he panted and grunted at the waves of pleasure that coursed through his loins, Cam was not having fun. * * * * Ralen watched the boy's testicles get pushed one by one through the Fence and his smile grew wider. Rosy and plump, like small plums in a barely rippled sac gathered at the base of that stiff, quivering prick, they were perfection itself. A moment later, he suspected, and the boy would have already spent his pearly essence. As it was, that event could be delayed a little longer, the boy's pleasure and his own extended. Hungrily, he took the boy's dick into his mouth. All the way into his mouth. Pressing his face all the way forward, his nose flattened against the Fence and his lips opening wide, he found the boy's balls and, using his lips to pull them forward, over his teeth, began to flick them with his tongue while at the same time swallowing the stiff young shaft with the powerful muscles of his jaws and throat. The boy was nearly screaming on the other side of the Fence—screaming with pleasure and pain as his testicles were stretched and sucked along with his young dick. Ralen milked him steadily, rhythmically, enjoying the pleasure of having a mouth full of young, succulent Kheld dick, of sucking the boy's firm balls and listening to the moans and cries that came through the board. He felt the organ in his mouth bunch and the first stream shoot into the back of his throat. This he swallowed, but he immediately released his jaw and opened wide, pulling back so he could watch the youth's final spurts. Clear white pearls gleamed as the boy's ejaculate shot up in an arc toward the ceiling. Ralen caught some in his hand and looked at it. No hint of pus or impurity. Lifting some on his finger, he tasted it and pronounced it unrefined, but capable, certainly, of being sweetened. With a disdainful smile, he wiped his hand on the boy's still stiff and captive prick, smearing him with his own juices, laughing as he listened to the protests on the other side. Like most Kheld whelps, this one wanted to be sucked clean, not deal with his mess. With the callous expertise of a hundred such encounters, Ralen pressed his thumbs under the lad's balls and popped them back to the other side, releasing him. The dick instantly followed as the boy dropped from the Fence and quickly left. But Ralan knew that he would stop to wash his well-sucked and abused member before he fled the house. And he knew where he could find him. * * * * Cam had never felt fear in his life until he had found his genitals trapped in the Fence with his rod down a Lord's throat and his balls held in the man's teeth. He had enjoyed knowing that he was using the sexual practices of a bunch of fey Staubaun Lords to get his dick off. This man, however, had not been pleasuring dick. The bastard had been showing Cam what he could do with Kheld dick, and that frightened him inexplicably in ways he did not like to think about. As soon as he was freed from the Fence, he stumbled to the wash room and cleaned his sore dick of the man's slobber and his own sticky slime. Without even bothering to dry, he tucked himself into his pants and belted up, leaving the house to Fernel's chuckles. "Looks like you passed the test, boy!" the man snickered, not even trying to stop him or explain. I'm never coming back! Cam swore, and knew he never would. He would get a girl from now on, even if he had to make bricks from sunrise to sunset to get the coin to court her. He did not see until too late the shadow that emerged from beside the porch steps. A strong arm locked about his upper torso from behind, pinning his arms and lifting him off the ground while a hand clamped a cloth over his face and forced him to inhale stinging vapors. He plunged into darkness like falling down a well. **My sincerest thanks go to my first editor, pryitout, who assisted with this chapter. His skills elevated my prose and his encouragement is deeply appreciated.** A Cumbuck's Tale Ch. 02 A Cumbuck's Tale, Ch. 02 Please be forewarned that in addition to heavy male/male erotic content, this chapter contains nonconsensual sex. Chapter 2 – And Taste Like Heaven The first thing Cam saw when his senses returned was a man's hard face, a Staubaun face, gold-haired and beardless with dark piercing eyes, a nose that was once-broken, and a mouth so perfectly shaped he couldn't stop staring at it. When he did, he saw how how big the man was. In shoulder breadth alone, he was easily twice Cam's size, and maybe three times. When he tried to move, he found he was naked—and bound. He lay face-down, his left cheek and his chest flat on a firm surface with his arms tied behind his back. He was not on the floor but bound to some kind of bench. Fear seized him further as he realized that his knees were spread wide and supported but his ass was raised and exposed, his penis dangling. "Awake, little rabbit?" The voice was like the man, shadowy and suggesting violence. No, please. This isn't real . . . can't be real . . . oh, gods, let me wake up. The cool caress of the man's hand on his naked ass brought him fully alert and made him lurch. Rope cut into his knees. "Hey . . .!" "There we go, rabbit. Nice and lively." "Let me go! You can't do this, you fucker. What do you want?" he asked, though he was afraid of the answer. "This is not about what I want." Cam stared. Now that his mind was clearing, he remembered where he had last been. This man must have seen him at the Fence getting his dick sucked and gotten the wrong idea. Something hard and firm, the man's thumb, pressed against his puckered asshole. "No! Stop it, you sick bastard Staubaun! Get your fucking hands off me! I don't want this!" Cam threw himself against his bonds, bucking and twisting, but could not escape that sickening pressure. "It's not about what you want, either." His heart leaped to his mouth as he realized then what the man was going to do to him. "Please, sir," he changed tack. "It's not what you think. I don't like men, see—not even a little, not like that—just thought I'd try it because I had a hard one." His head was damp and he felt less hair than he should on his neck. The man had washed him and cut his hair. The skin of his jaw felt smooth, shaved, the way Staubauns liked their boys, and there was a taste in his mouth telling him that had been scrubbed, too. His panic grew. He fought back a groan of new fear and discomfort when the man's thumb again tested his anus, this time more firmly. Cam grunted as his tight hole held fast. "But you enjoyed it, didn't you, rabbit? Getting your little Kheld dick sucked?" the man inquired calmly. Items clinked one against the other. Cam looked around at the room—stone walls with no windows, a stone floor, a few pieces of furniture. "Sir, I'm telling you—" "Tell someone else." The man's other hand slipped between Cam's legs from behind and closed around his dick, tugging on it with strong, sure fingers as he continued to push his thumb against Cam's tight, puckered hole. "No! Stop that! Help!" he cried, clenching his buttocks. To his horror, his dick began to respond to the Staubaun's milking. "Go ahead," the man urged as Cam's cries rang off the walls. "Scream your lungs out. No one will hear you." He leaned over him, his breath on his ear. "You can say whatever you want, boy—this randy little dick tells me everything I need to know." The man's fingers adjusted as Cam's shaft stiffened. They circled his engorged member, increasing the pressure on his growing length. "What is your name?" What could he do but answer? Maybe if he just played along . . . "Cam," he whispered. "I am Ralen. That's all you need to know about me. I already know a lot about you." Cam grunted and wished his dick would stop getting harder with every stroke of those strong Staubaun fingers. "You're a fine-looking young buck, you know . . . and you cleaned up pretty. Real pretty. You and this nice, Staubaun-loving dick." Ralen chuckled, his fingers tightening, tugging harder on the now-rigid shaft as Cam silently swallowed his shame. He hated that his body was betraying him this way. "That's right, Cam, you're hard for me, just like you were at the Fence. A lively young buck looking for Staubaun fun. Lord Penargos will like that." Cam had never heard the name before, but it sent him to the edge. A Lord . . . he envisioned a tall golden man dressed in furs and rich leathers, gazing down at him from horseback . . . His prick twitched in Ralen's masterful hand. He bucked as the tip of the man's thumb pushed through the outer resistance of his asshole. "No, please!" he begged, thrashing with alarm at the invasion. "Relax, Cam," the man soothed, leaving his thumb where it was and, mercifully, going no further. "I am going to prepare you. Lord Penargos is going to want to use your virgin mouth and ass, and I am going to make sure he enjoys both. It will be easier on you if you let me do my job. That's it, bear down—let me in." He resumed gently pushing his thumb into Cam's asshole. "Please, no—it hurts, oh, please no—oh Goddess—" The pain burned. Make it stop . . . please, make it stop . . . Ralen's thumb advanced an inch, then two, while with his other hand, his fingers pumped Cam's raging hard dick. After a few moments, the discomfort eased, though only a little. "You see, it's not so bad once it opens a bit. See, your little prick likes it. Bet it gets even harder when you have a cock inside you." This was the man—had to be the man—who had taken his entire dick, including his balls, into his mouth. Thinking about it, Cam nearly spurted on the spot, and might have had Ralen not released his throbbing erection. Cam howled as Ralen roughly used his thumb to pull open his asshole and some kind of nozzle slid briefly into him, delivering something warm and slick before being withdrawn. "Just a little oil, boy," Ralen said. He pulled out his thumb, but before Cam could gasp in relief, he inserted a finger, circled the tight band of muscle roughly, then forced a second finger in to join it. Again Cam struggled and grunted with pain. Lubricated by oil and eased by the prior passage of his thumb, the man's fingers slowly penetrated his tight orifice, overcoming its natural resistance. Again he felt an urge to bear down and when he did the fingers went deeper. "There we go. You've got a tight ass, Cam, perfect for a Lord's pleasure." "No, please," he begged, unable to escape. He was too well bound to the bench, his upper body immobilized, his legs strapped and quivering. "Not that," he sobbed, "not that . . ." His captor's fingers worked in his slick asshole, moving in a circle, gently stimulating. "Relax, Cam. Let yourself open. You're not going to crap. I saw to that while you slept. That's it—" Ralen slid his fingers in deeper as Cam's asshole grew accustomed to being stretched, "—get used to it, let it feel good." "Oh, Goddess . . . no . . . oh, no . . . please . . ." "That's it, rabbit, just a little more. You're going to be nice and tight," Ralen murmured, working his fingers in firm, deep strokes as Cam howled with shame and protest. Cam felt his dick extend, his balls lift as the man massaged something inside him, something in his tight, clenching asshole that sent jolts of pleasure straight to his already pulsing shaft. "You are loving this, cumbuck. Dicks don't lie. I see it twitching. In fact, I think you're going to shoot your little load." "No! No, you bastard. Oh, no—ungh!" Unable to stop himself, Cam sobbed as his prick bunched and he ejaculated, his seed splashing on the stone floor. He jerked and shuddered as his orgasm continued in helpless spasms from the fingers still sliding in and out of his ass. Only gradually did that horrible, luxurious stroking cease and Ralen withdraw his fingers. Cam cursed silently as he listened to the man walk across the room to a washbowl, heard the pouring of water, and knew that Ralen was washing his hands. The man next used a soft cloth to wipe the oil from Cam's ass and wash the semen from his now limp dick. His captor then calmly mopped the floor so that it was clean of ejaculate. Cam blinked miserably, staring at the walls, no longer hoping for any kindness. When footsteps told him Ralen again stood beside him, he refused to look up until the man grasped him under the jaw and lifted his chin. "Don't play stupid games, rabbit. You may not want this, but this is what you are getting, so I suggest you let me help you get through it. Hells, you even liked it, once you gave in." A cold smile met his resentful glare. "Try to deny it, but you know it's true. Your ass loved that. You're made for pleasure, both to feel it and give it. And you're going to give it. So let me help you and give you a few pointers on how to use your pretty mouth." Cam jerked his chin out of the man's grip and snarled at him with pure hatred. "You gods' damned Staubaun bastard! I'll bite your dick off! I'm not going to suck you!" "For once, you're right. Lord Penargos expects a virgin mouth, and a virgin mouth is what he'll get." Ralen sighed, his expression softening. He spoke in perfect, barely inflected Khelda now. "I wish I had more time with you. I don't. So let me set you to right. You are one hell of a good-looking Kheld boy. In fact, Cam, you are prettier than most. Those great blue eyes, that jet black hair—your damn beautiful mouth—you are what every Lord whose cock gets hard for Kheld boys wants. One look at you and any Kheld-humping Lord in the land would want to fuck you. And Penargos will. You see, I give him fresh new boys to tame—and he looks the other way at my smuggling indiscretions. Now, I think you are smart enough to know that I have a hell of a better chance of looking out for you should I give you to Lord Penargos for one night than if I sold your cherry ass to some Trulo brothel, where you'd serve a dozen Lords a night while your looks hold out—because I sure as hells won't be taking you back to Omadawn." Cam fought a new wave of panic at Ralen's blunt portrayal of his situation. Hells, even if he did escape, he didn't know where he properly was right now! He had assumed that he was still in Omadawn, but what if he wasn't? And that part about a Trulo brothel— "You damned Staubaun bastard!" he swore again, straining against his bonds. "The more you resist, the worse it will be for you. Penargos takes what he wants. If he can't get his pleasure easy, he takes it hard. Either you flatter him by letting him think you secretly like what he's doing to you, or he starts doing things he knows damn well you don't like. Things that will hurt you and maybe will kill you. Penargos won't care—and if you give him a bad time, neither will I." Oh, Mother . . . He didn't want to die. But he didn't want to be fucked, either. "One night?" he asked, knowing he had no choice, wondering if he could bear it. "One night. He never stays longer. Never takes a boy with him." "And then you kill me after, right?" Cam challenged, hating this man but fearing him too. Something much warmer than before gleamed behind Ralen's deadly smile and pitch dark eyes. "No, I don't." "Oh, gods . . ." "Learn to like it, Cam," the man advised him, reaching to a table and pulling it near. On it were several implements. "It'll be better for you, if you do." * * * * Ralen had gotten hard the moment he had abducted Cam. The only thing he had done to relieve himself had been to masturbate while he looked upon the unconscious youth. He would ruin no part of his latest gift to the man who secured his safety on this part of the river. Now, as he prepared to train the boy's mouth, he wished he could experience Cam's first plundering for himself. For all the terrified emotional flailing of Cam's resistance, something sensual and enduring lurked within his unawakened sexuality. The boy had barely begun to explore, much less embrace, his body's capacity for pleasure. He certainly could not imagine the depths to which other men would exploit his aptitude. Penargos, in every way a connoisseur of the pleasures young Kheld males had to offer, would not be able to resist him. Ralen was having a hard time doing that himself. He rubbed a balm upon those defiant berry-hued lips, not only for softening but for lubrication. "Bite a Lord's cock only if you are willing to savor the deed and die," he warned, though he little feared that Cam would truly tempt that fate. The youth was spirited but not stupid, and ultimately cared about his life. "If he doesn't slice open your gut just to let you watch his dogs devour your entrails, he'll give you to his men so that they can do the honors after they're done with you." "I can't suck dick." "Of course you can," Ralen assured him. "I sucked yours, didn't I? But you see, yours is a dick. Lords, on the other hand, are bigger than that. Their prongs are called cocks." He held up a cylinder shaped of leather, fashioned to represent male parts including two round balls. It was about the size of Cam's erect parts. "This is a dick," he said, then held up a second, similar object, but much longer and thicker several times over. "This is a cock. And you, Cam, are going to suck cock." "No!" Cam tried to pull away but rope cut into his shoulders, reminding him that he was bound to the bench. "I don't suck men, you bastard! I'm not that kind! I'm not some Staubaun-sucking wog—" "Maybe you are, boy. Did you ever think of that? You sought the Fence out on your own, didn't you? You get hard thinking about Staubaun men. Did you just think we would suck your pretty little rabbit dick and never want the rest of the package?" Ralen put aside the smaller phallus and smeared oil on the larger, rubbing it across the toughened hide. The thick oil glistened in the low light. "Don't worry about the length," he said. The leather cock was intimidating in size and thickness. "Only a well-practiced throat can take all of it, and he will know you are new. He'll know if you're enjoying his cock and trying to please him, which is what I suggest you do." When the boy, eyes closed, refused to open his mouth, Ralen grimaced. This one required some breaking after all. Pushing back the chair, he stood and went to the cabinet, from which he selected a sturdy leather harness. Efficiently adjusting the heavy straps, he secured the leather phallus to his loins and returned to the mounting bench, prepared to deal more harshly with his captive. This time, he remained standing. Grabbing a handful of Cam's thick black hair in his right hand, he pulled back until the boy yelped, then he seized the boy's nose with the fingers of his left and pinched tight. Now Cam had to open his mouth if he wanted to breathe. Futilely, his great blue eyes staring up at his captor, Cam struggled but could not prevent Ralen from thrusting his left hip forward, pushing the leather phallus between his lips. "Nuhh!" Cam protested the heavy object resting against his clenched teeth. "Open," Ralen ordered, yanking back hard on his handful of hair. He intended it to hurt, and it did. Cam dropped his jaw and the leather barrel slid all the way past his teeth until it encountered the back of his throat. Of course the boy gagged, his body violently heaving. He struggled in his bonds until Ralen drew back, unblocking his airway and leaving only a few inches of the massive member in that open, gasping mouth. "That wasn't smart, rabbit. I'm being gentle. You can be made to obey." He withdrew the phallus and listened to the boy's gasps, saw the growing realization in those terrified blue eyes. Cam saw how he could be forced. "Now, you're smart, so let's try it again," Ralen suggested, moving his hips forward so that the leather phallus touched those handsome young lips. His own cock throbbed with an arousal he made no effort to conceal. The boy had only to look to notice the bulge in his trousers. "Will you let me show you how to do this so he doesn't hurt you?" With a sound between a sob and a gasp, Cam nodded and blinked his consent. Ralen released his nose and watched, pleased, as the boy drew a deep breath, then opened his mouth to accept the fat oiled head of the phallus. The fake organ slid between his teeth. "There, you see, that's all there is to it," Ralen said, enjoying the sight of the youth with his mouth full of dark leather. Soon enough, it would be full of Staubaun cock. He moved gently, delivering shallow strokes, so that the cock head slid in and out of that receptive orifice. He relaxed his hand on the boy's head and stroked the heavy dark hair. "That's nice, Cam, real nice. Now close your lips over it and use your tongue on it, that's the way." Ralen could not feel Cam's ministrations, of course, but he was pleased to see the boy awkwardly following his instructions. "Your tongue will pleasure him best. Use it well, particularly along the underside or flicking on the head. Do to him what you like done to you. Lusty rabbit like you ought to have a good idea about that." Pulling the leather cock from the young man's mouth, he positioned it for the boy's tongue, the better to practice technique. After another minute, he slid it again between his lips, Cam's mouth opening to receive it. "That's very good, Cam. Now relax your throat, just take it in. The deeper, the better." He saw and felt the dry heave that seized the youth as the phallus set off his gag reflex. Ralen pulled the leather cock back, then slowly pushed in again, repeating the insertion until Cam succeeded in allowing the cock into his throat. "You'll learn to do it. You liked it when men sucked your dick, now didn't you? I'm sure you wondered what it would be like to enjoy a cock in your mouth—a big, thick Staubaun cock loaded with seed. That's right, Cam. This cock won't fill your mouth with a man's juices—it can't—but Lord Penargos will. And when he does, I want you to close your lips tight around his cock . . ." He slid the leather phallus once again between Cam's perfectly parted lips, ". . . that's right, just like that . . . suck, yes, harder . . . suck and swallow." He met the horror in those beautiful eyes and added, smiling, "That's right, rabbit. He's going to want you to drink it. And you're going to fucking enjoy every drop." * * * * It was barely an hour later when Lord Penargos arrived at the room. Cam, helpless and strapped to the bench, his body presented for the Lord's pleasure, saw the man enter and knew himself lost. A tall, golden-haired man of middle years, Pernargos already sported a large erection straining in a noticeable bulge beneath his clothing. That erection became more pronounced the moment he looked at Ralen's offering. With a cold smile, he walked forward, his powerful, commanding stride echoing between the walls. Wealth gleamed from garments of the finest leather and velvet, and sparked from a brace of great jeweled fastenings that secured his heavy cloak of silver fur. "Delightful! A beauty indeed. Ralen, you always find the most amazing little rabbits for me to play with." The man's arrogant voice, self-confident and amused, displayed the assurance of a man of power. "He's very pretty." He had arrived at the bench. Cam closed his eyes and tried not to respond as fingers heavy with rings touched his hair and stroked it. "Lovely, just lovely. You know I like the true native stock best. Look at me, rabbit," the voice ordered. Cam looked up into that handsome face, its gaze of dark, arrogant gold hungrily fastening onto his. "Glorious! Eyes like pools of summer sky." The cruel mouth smiled, revealing even teeth. He walked around the bench and Cam flinched as Penargos ran his hand over his shoulders, down his side, then slowly over the smooth curves of his buttocks. "Charming," the Lord said again, marveling. "An exquisite body. He's virgin, I assume? You have outdone yourself, Ralen." A Cumbuck's Tale Ch. 02 "I knew he would please you." "Indeed, he does." Penargos chuckled, unfastening his cloak clasps. "Well, let's get to it. He looks hungry, and I know I am. My prong right now would do a minaret proud. Two months without a randy boy, and I turn into a rutting stag." Cam stared at Ralen while Penargos divested himself of articles of clothing. Ralen held his gaze, his own unreadable. What thoughts were in his mind right now? That his captive had earned the Lord's approval and would get him more gold? He did not appear to feel any remorse in the least. The scent of spice oil and rich leather mingled with the tantalizing, gamey odor of male arousal as Penargos knelt before him. Cam looked at him, then, this golden man of power, fit and sleek, smelling of money. Penargos smiled, his eyes devouring. "What a pretty boy," he said, sliding his hand along Cam's cheek, lacing his fingers into the dark, heavy hair behind his ear. Cam gasped as the Lord pulled his mouth forward and angled his own so that their lips met. Cam groaned as those strong, masculine lips fastened hungrily on his, the Staubaun's mobile tongue invading his surprised mouth. Ralen had not kissed him or led him to expect it. Had he not been so expertly bound, he would have struggled more, but he could not move his head more than a few inches. Penargos' kiss was a branding, a possession. The Lord's tongue swept his mouth with tastes of meat and fine wine, and a searing male hunger that sent shockwaves through Cam's being. He groaned a second time, his dick swelling to full hardness between his legs as if Lord Penargos had summoned it. When the Lord broke his kiss and stood again, Cam caught sight of Ralen and thought he would die of shame. The big man had noticed his erection. A smug smile tugged at Ralen's lips. The hot, gamey smell grew stronger and Cam swung his eyes to Penargos. The Lord now stood before him, his naked cock fully erect and ready. Cam could not help a gasp of dismay as he looked upon that member, for it was larger even than the monstrous phallus Ralen had used to instruct him. Oh, please Mother, no . . . that can't be his cock! Glancing up at the Lord standing over him, he saw the tight, eager face of a man intent on being serviced. "Look at his fear. It's bigger than he thought it would be!" Penargos murmured in a deep tone of pleasure. He wrapped both hands into Cam's hair, holding him fast. "He'll enjoy it all the more for that." If you fight him, he will hurt you, Ralen had said. Now that he looked upon the cold-eyed man, Cam believed it. He saw murder in the way Penargos gazed back at him, assessing his helplessness and appraising his utility. Obediently, following the silent warning staring at him from Ralen's eyes, Cam parted his lips as Penargos pushed his pelvis forward. The tip of the organ was hot and silken, engorged and very obviously eager, the foreskin already retracted past a neat pronounced helmet. As Ralen had shown him, he tentatively kissed the commanding crown with its single, pouting eye and, stifling a sob of shame, used his tongue to lap at the single drop that appeared there. The taste of that drop—hot and slippery, thick with musk—was like a nectar he had always known in his soul. They taste like heaven, Law the street boy had said, and now Cam knew why. The seductive taste coated his tongue: masculine, warm and tantalizing. "Ever taste a Staubaun cock before, boy?" Penargos purred. Cam had never been bespoken by a Lord before, and it shamed him deeply to be so addressed by one whose cock was poised at his mouth. "No, Lord," he answered truthfully. His breath brushed the organ so that he felt its heat. "But it excites you. I can tell. You like it. You want it." No, he wanted to say. I don't fancy men at all. I don't want your cock in my mouth . . . But a look at his tormentor's cruel face told him that more punishment lay in wait for that answer than another. "Yes, Lord," he whispered, mortified by the lie that was not a lie after all. "Yes, I do." "Of course you do, cumbuck. You just needed an introduction. Your little rabbit tongue is perfect for love, soft and sweet. I like the way it feels. Open your pretty mouth." Wishing he could die instead, Cam obeyed, his stomach turning as the engorged tip pushed past his lips. The head, round and huge, filled his mouth, a horrible invader. He had only one hope now: Ralen had said Penargos wanted only one night . . . one night of twisted pleasure. Maybe, if he pleased him the way Ralen had told him, if he licked him proper and sucked him hard and did it real good, his tormentor would be satisfied. Lots of men lost interest once they got their stones off . . . Holding his jaw open, he fought his shame and began to use his tongue energetically, bathing the cock head in saliva, lapping at the fleshy knob as if it were a ripe, juicy plum between his lips. Drops of Staubaun cock juice welled against his tongue, salty and thrilling. "Enjoying it, rabbit?" Because he could not truly speak, he simply rolled his eyes upward and nodded his head up and down, which pleased Penargos well enough. "That's a good rabbit. Now open wide." Fighting tears, Cam nearly unhinged his jaw so that the Lord's cock could invade his mouth. Hard fingers tightened on his head, holding him fast as Penargos pushed past his teeth and tongue, deep into his throat. Alarmed, Cam tried to cry out, but only muffled protests escaped. Lord Penargos' hard cock was so thick that there was barely room in Cam's mouth for his own tongue beneath it. The monster filled his mouth and throat, blocked his airway so that he could not even breathe. And only half of it was in. Only half . . . He gained a moment's relief when Penargos slowly pulled back a few inches, allowing him to inhale a lungful of air . . . only to release it in a muffled groan as the Lord thrust his cock again deep into Cam's gaping mouth. More went in, but still not all of it. Remembering Ralen's instructions, hoping only to make his ordeal easier, Cam breathed through his nose and began to use his tongue, his lips, opening his throat as best he could to take more of that hot member in his mouth. Every time the cock went too deep and he gagged violently, Penargos withdrew enough for him to settle and breathe, only to come at him again. His saliva flowed and he seized every opportunity to slather it over the invading mass as it moved in and out. The sweet lubricating drops were flowing freely now, coating his tongue, pooling on it. Not knowing what else to do with the growing amount of spittle and cock juice, he swallowed. His throat muscles closed and opened, the cock head advancing with that motion deep into his throat, holding a moment, then pulling back. "That's a good buck," Penargos coaxed, richly approving. "Get used to doing that." The drops kept coming. Shamed, Cam found a rhythm, collecting and swallowing the salty-sweet fluid, actively sucking the enormous member as Lord Penargos moved it in and out. The noise of his sucking, juicy and soft, soon filled the room. "A delightful boy," Penargos said, looking over to Ralen as he pumped in slow, pleased strokes to Cam's efforts. "He has a talented mouth and a lively tongue. Soft and inviting. He was born to suck Staubaun cock, truly. Yes, boy, yes . . . open your throat . . . just like that . . . pleasure me well . . ." Cam continued plying his tongue as far as he could along the underside of the monster that slid like a demon's horn past his teeth with every stroke, seeking his soft throat, entering it. He understood now why some men, including Staubauns, preferred to suck smaller, Kheld dicks. Penargos' Staubaun cock was so large he could barely breathe and his jaw felt like it would dislocate at any moment. At least the gagging, a problem at first, had gotten less. Please, Mother, he prayed to the goddess that watched over every Kheldish soul, please let him finish, let it end . . . and please let him be satisfied with this . . . "Good little rabbit, suck the cock . . . take it deep . . . yes, like that, that's very good . . ." The head pushed into his throat again and he swallowed, taking it in, deeper than ever before. "I haven't had a mouth this sweet in months! Look at the little cumbuck sucking like a pup on a teat, begging for Staubaun cream," the Lord murmured, his breathing coming faster now, his hips thrusting in earnest. "I love this, the way they really want it, born little whores—suck on it, boy—beg well, and I will reward you with what you desire—" Cam first felt the swelling of Pernagos' seed stretch his lips, then balloon in his mouth, against his tongue as the stiffening vessels within that shaft were seized by the tremble of release. Though he tried to be ready for it, still he was caught by surprise by the powerful jerking of the organ and the amount of thick, salty sweet fluid that erupted into the back of his throat. He had never dreamed there would be so much! He gagged and choked, struggling to contain the flood, to swallow as he had been told he must. Spill no drop of his seed, but take all that he gives you. Let him think you like it and he'll go easy on you. The huge cock nearly slipped from his mouth at one point, but he clamped down and sucked it back in, lapping at a second surge of juices as his throat worked to swallow the first. "Suck it, little rabbit," Pernagos commanded, his voice dark and threatening as he held Cam's head, his fingers lacing in his hair, preventing him from pulling away. There was purpose in those fingers, something deliberate and cruel, but also appreciative and tender as the man grunted with pleasure. A third spurt of juices, less copious but no less intoxicating, occupied Cam's tongue. "Ah, Ralen, I'm in heaven. What a perfect little cocksucker! He's drinking it all! They really can't help it, you know, these Kheld boys. They so enjoy getting their first taste of Staubaun cock." He relaxed his hold on Cam's head and Cam opened his mouth, allowing the softening penis to fall from it. The organ was still semi-erect, covered with a few lingering strands of thick fluid. The Lord commanded that Cam lick it clean, keeping his hands in Cam's hair until the Kheld youth had used his tongue again to his satisfaction. Only then did the Lord release him. White strings of pearly semen dripped from Cam's gasping, open mouth. He looked past Penargos to Ralen, who nodded, satisfied. Whether it was Cam's performance that satisfied him, or Penargos' pleasure—or possibly the sight of Cam's abused, cum-dripping mouth—who could tell? But Ralen's lips, his damned beautiful lips, approved. He likes this, Cam knew then. He likes seeing me like this. He wished he could die right there, on the spot, for having ever thought about those lips. And why, oh why, did he have a hard dick? * * * * Ralen watched Penargos orally rape the bound boy and celebrated his multiple successes. The Lord had accepted his gift and already obtained pleasure enough, with more to come. Ralen's smuggling operation remained secure. Better yet, Cam had observed his warnings and orally serviced Penargos as thoroughly as other men had previously serviced him. That sight alone had brought Ralen's erection to full bore. There was more, of course, than mere profit to be gained from Cam's ordeal. Much more. The boy would soon begin to succumb to the insidious effect of the Staubaun semen he had ingested. The semen that reached his stomach would be destroyed, but sufficient traces of that semen had already been absorbed through the linings of his mouth and esophagus. Once his body absorbed more of those highly addictive compounds from the semen Penargos would soon deposit in his virgin ass, Cam would not just want to suck Staubaun cock, he would need to suck Staubaun cock. And he would need to do it often. By having their asses filled, even unwilling boys could be converted into cum-craving cock-slaves. Fuck-taming, it was called, and Penargos adored doing it. "Where did you find him?" Penargos asked, reclining in one of the room's two upholstered chairs as he partook of a restorative goblet of wine. The deep crimson back of the chair framed his elegant pale body. His penis, far from being completely drained, rose with amazing, ruddy resurrection from between his muscular, slightly spread legs. "A sweet-mouthed boy like that, clearly a rustic. They don't usually go for men, you know." "This one was curious. Hard dick, no girl. Thought he'd try fencing." "A Fence? Really? A virgin?" Penargos laughed, then snickered. "Some ratty merchant got lucky sucking that pretty dick." "A few of them," Ralen allowed. "Well, he was going to serve Staubaun cock, one way or another. A beauty like that would not have gone unclaimed for long." Penargos drained the cup and lustily eyed the tableau before him. "He's splendid, really, the best yet. A feast for jaded senses. In fact, that blushing bottom is calling me across the room." Ralen saw that Penargos' erection was again at full mast. The man truly was impressive, hung like a bull, with bull-sized testicles and a bull's courtship habits. Penargos was ultimately disinterested in any of the virgin boys he penetrated. He wanted only the novelty of sexually initiating and enslaving them. He never wanted to know them nor continue the relationship in any way. And he didn't care what happened to them after. His comments to Ralen were always as near as he came to expressing interest in his victims at all. He walked over to the bench again, and positioned himself in front of Cam's face and the boy's puffy, cum-flecked lips, which he touched lightly almost as if he cared. "Well, my pretty little cocksucker," Penargos observed. He met the glistening sheen of shame in Cam's uplifted eyes and gave a cruel laugh. "Looks like your calling has found you. No matter how much you might want to deny it to yourself, you liked that." Ralen saw Cam hesitate, the boy's traumatized, cum-affected mind unable to deny his own confused participation. Penargos, too, was very good at what he did. Ralen watched Penargos simply put his cock to the boy's lips, which parted obediently to take the rigid member. Sobs caught in Cam's throat as his lips and tongue began to work again, stimulating the Lord's cock until it swelled to full girth. Penargos gave the boy his hard cock to suck for a minute or two, petting the boy's head and reasserting his power while enjoying the feel of the boy's tongue as it danced over his cock head. Smiling, he watched the boy suck feverishly, detecting the unschooled efforts to make him spend himself again. But of course it was futile. Penargos had broken far too many buck boys to let such ordinary ploys distract him from his purpose. He withdrew and walked around to the other end of the bench, his cock extended majestically before him. "A virgin Kheld ass. This," he said, looking hungrily at Cam's splendidly presented bottom, "is something I have looked forward to for weeks." A Cumbuck's Tale Ch. 03 A Cumbuck's Tale, Ch. 03 Please be forewarned that in addition to heavy male/male erotic content, this chapter contains nonconsensual sex. Chapter 3 -- Gonners No, Mother, please. Cam pleaded silently, his mind seizing upon prayers as the only help that remained to him. Lord Penargos is too big! That thing'll kill me for sure! Ralen had restored the drop-shelf, so that Cam's head was again on a level with the bench. His oral rape, at least, appeared to have finished. Sobs caught quietly in Cam's throat as he lay on his left cheek and closed his eyes, awaiting the assault on his bottom. To his horror, Penargos noted his shameless erection. "Well, well," the man chuckled softly. Cam squirmed, ashamed by his obvious arousal as the Lord reached down, fondling his hard prick and tight balls. "See here! This pretty cumbuck likes Lords. His little rabbit dick is hard as a knot!" Cam blinked back tears at the indignity, glad when the man released him. "I will wager now that you have a Staubaun-loving ass, boy," Penargos said. "What do you say, rabbit? Do you want my cock in your ass?" What Cam really wanted was to die. To vanish from the earth, to never see a Staubaun again. To not respond sexually to what these men were doing to him. But he was responding. His dick pounded and throbbed and if anything was getting harder. More than anything, he just wanted to get it over with. Don't fight him, he told himself again, hearing the ice cold threat behind the Lord's simple question. Don't give him a reason to want to hurt you, Ralen had said. "Yes, Lord," he said, broken. "I want your cock, please." Then let me go. Just let me go. I'll go back to the brickyard and make bricks the rest of my life, and never go to town ever again . . . "Are you saying you want me to fuck you?" Penargos inquired, for clarity. Ralen had resumed his stance against the stone wall and was watching the exchange. Cam could tell because his eyes locked on those of his captor. I'm doing what you told me, Ralen. I'm letting him think that I want it . . . But this was not the way he had wanted it to happen, any of it. "Yes, Lord, please," he choked. "Fuck me." "In your ass?" "Yes, Lord . . . in my ass." "Excellent." Cam blinked back tears. The musky residue of Penargos lingered in his mouth, a reminder that he was a buck boy now, a piss-mouthed Staubaun-sucking wog. It shamed him to remember how often he had thought about Staubaun men, the things he had wanted them to do. When he heard the hollow sound of a clay pot lid being lifted, followed by the slither of grease, he knew that Penargos was slathering that towering cock. A moment later he gasped, tensing when the Lord pushed a heavily greased finger into his puckered opening and began to work it in. "There's a sweet bud. Tight and untried." The man circled and stretched him, added more grease and another finger, stretched him some more. Closing his eyes against the pain, Cam gritted his teeth and pressed his cheek to the wood beneath it as the man opened his asshole. The assault continued for several minutes, Penargos leaning over him, that cold voice in his ear telling him to relax, to open himself, that this was what happened to Kheld boys who went to Fences, that he was going to love having his ass used by a big Staubaun cock . . . that he'd wanted this all along, hadn't he? Please, let it be over soon . . . please . . . Little by little, the pain eased and he felt something more horrible still. It wasn't quite pleasure, not yet, but it was nearly that and he wished again for the pain. Don't let it feel good . . . please, don't . . . "Such a tight ass, nicely empty," Penargos noted, complimenting Ralen's preparation. He had three fingers in now as deep as they would go. Cam groaned from the discomfort. "Ah, he's like velvet inside. My sword is going to enjoy this fine young sheath." He removed his fingers from Cam's orifice and wiped them on a towel. Cam could barely move, so well was he bound, but he nearly leaped from the table when he felt Penargos lean over him and grasp his hips, pulling him backward. NO! Oh, gods . . .! He struggled despite himself as something large and unforgiving pushed into his sore, stretched asshole. Cam cried out involuntarily as that barrier, prepared ahead and slick, resisted for a long moment, then yielded with a terrible, burning pain. Something impossibly huge and hot forced its way into his body. He yelled at the intensity of penetration, his eyes flying open to meet those of the still silently watching Ralen. No . . . oh, no . . . Mother, please! "Oh, this is sweet," Penargos murmured, his voice thick with pleasure. Mother . . . oh, Mother . . . it hurts so much! "Help me," he choked, though he expected none. "It hurts so . . . please . . ." "Relax, little rabbit," Penargos advised in his dark, silken voice, so unlike his bright looks. "I'm just getting started." Firmly but not brutally, he pushed again. Cam had to bite back a scream, the pain was that great. He felt his asshole stretch to the limit, a sudden fullness invade his bowels. "No!" he protested. "No, stop!" "Learn to enjoy it, cumbuck," Penargos snickered. "You are well-breached. Many will travel this road. I'm just the first." When Penargos pushed again, Cam did not bother to scream. His asshole stretched again, his body accepted more Staubaun cock. Oh, Mother, he's too big! And it hurt too much. So much . . . Don't let him kill me, please . . . Mercifully, Penargos had stopped moving for a moment. Cam tried to relax as both Penargos and Ralen had told him was best, hoping his violation would hurt less if he didn't fight the cock being forced into his ass. Drawing deep breaths, he tried to relax the muscles in his ass and unclench his buttocks and found that it helped as Penargos resumed his advance. He groaned aloud at the fullness that slid into him, deeper, then deeper again. "The little cumbuck's helping me, Ralen," the Lord acknowledged his efforts, apparently pleased. "He's opening his pretty Kheld bottom to my cock." Ralen's eyes glowed. Cam wanted to die on the table. He knew the man could see the drippings from his throbbing stiff dick, puddling on the floor beneath the bench, while above him a Lord was working a long, thick cock into his ass. Mother, he hurt . . . hurt so much, the worst pain he had ever endured or imagined. Just as bad as the burning agony in his tortured anus was the cramping of his arms, tied behind his back, or of his wrists, twisted with cord. Tears ran down his face, wetting the table. "There, boy, there," Penargos soothed, gently—even tenderly—rubbing Cam's tortured bottom with one big jeweled hand in a cruel parody of a lover's touch. With the other hand, the Lord balanced his weight as again he remained unmoving for a moment. Cam held back sobs as the pain slowly eased. "You'll feel pleasure soon enough. I don't remember the last time my cock tamed so willing an ass. You've wanted to be seduced by a Lord for a long time, haven't you, beauty?" Though he tried to swallow the sound, a moan of surrender broke from Cam's throat as Penargos pulled his cock back nearly to the entrance, then slowly slid it back into him, pushing deeper even than before. Cam felt nothing but shame as he recalled things he had thought in the night. But he had never thought of this. "Perfect. Tight as a new boot!" Cam groaned with every stroke. Penargos was fucking him seriously now, pulling back his buried cock smoothly only to force it deeper on the return, penetrating him further with every thrust. He was being opened, used . . . Penargos riding his ass with deep strokes that claimed every last shred of his dignity and pride, owning him in a way he had never dreamed he could be owned. The chamber was filled with the smooth sucking sounds of the Lord's greased cock sliding in his well-lubricated ass. And his body was accepting it . . . wanted it . . . Help me, oh Goddess . . . please . . . it doesn't feel so bad anymore . . . "I love fucking Kheld bucks," Penargos said conversationally to Ralen. He stood upright behind Cam, his strong hands pulling the boy's hips back onto his big cock with every deep, deliberate thrust. "They aren't delicate like our boys. Their hot young asses can take a good pounding. They like it, in fact." "I can see that. His dick gives him away," Ralen pointed out. Cam moaned—with shame, with a horrible growing pleasure—as his body submitted to the rutting Lord whose big cock relentlessly pounded his ass. Penargos was entirely inside him now, the Lord's huge balls rhythmically slapping Cam's exposed, dangling sac and prick. Crisp hair crushed against Cam's buttocks as the Lord buried his cock hilt-deep. He groaned with humiliation as the Lord rotated his hips, demonstrating his accomplishment. "He's nearly there, isn't he, the little cum-whore? I knew he would like this, that he would want it." No . . . no, please . . . "I think we own him now. What do you think, Ralen? Can I make this little slave prick cum?" Penargos chuckled at the prospect. "In another moment, our pretty rabbit is going to show us how much he loves having Staubaun cock in his ass." No. Oh, gods! Not that . . . oh Mother, please . . . no . . . "Show us what a good little cock-slut you are, boy," the Lord demanded, increasing his pace, the power of his thrusts. Cam felt himself teetering on the edge of pleasure and pain. No one was touching his dick . . . not Ralen, not Penargos . . . no one. He wasn't even enjoying this. He hated having this cruel, big-cocked Lord in his ass, stretching it, pounding it, slamming his body in uncaring strokes against the hard wooden bench . . . reaming him . . . fucking him like a girl . . . Cam gave a strangled cry of shame as his dick bunched and unloaded, dribbling ropes of creamy semen on the floor to mingle with the puddles of pre-cum. His ass, responding to that shameful display, clenched and bucked on the ravenous cock that filled it. "There we go, little buck," Penargos enthused, his strokes quickening. He was grunting, breathing harder. "Your Kheld ass is begging for it now. Getting ass-fucked feels good, doesn't it, beauty? You're liking it now!" Slamming his cock deep into the hole he had just so cruelly opened, the Lord rode him furiously just before groaning in orgasm. Cam felt the huge cock in his ass thicken and pump, the warm flood of the Lord's juices releasing into his abused bowels. So much . . . he could feel it, a vile hot flood filling every crevice within, coating his passage walls. Sobs wracked his body from the shame of taking a man's semen inside him while openly spilling his own. When Penargos eased his thick cock out of Cam's ass, it was accompanied by hot juices that dripped down onto the captive=s balls and thighs. That, and pain . . . and a deep, pervading satiety unlike any he had ever known. Cam collapsed against the bench, his shoulders quaking, as drained as the Lord who had just pumped him full of Staubaun seed. * * * * Ralen handed Penargos warm wet towels and a cool goblet of wine. He then turned his attention to Cam, tending him with gentle, skilled hands. The boy had been raped, and would be raped again before the night was out. All he could do for him was to see to the easing of his abused body. One of the effects of Staubaun semen was to calm its recipients, so all fight had died in the boy, leaving no risk in releasing his bonds. He did so and, while Penargos watched, massaged circulation back into his captive's wrists and hands, pressed the cramps from his trembling thighs and tortured arms. Ralen washed the blood, grease and cum from Cam's thighs and genitals, then did the same for his ass, wiping gently around the boy's sore, abused hole. It was swollen and red, but already closing again neatly, a good indication that the sphincter had not torn and a hopeful sign for his future usefulness. For all his cruelty, Lord Penargos was highly skilled and little attracted to maiming, one reason Ralen had agreed to serve him in this capacity. He did not allow Cam to expel the Lord's semen, but made him hold the humiliating fluid—the better to absorb in full the enslaving compounds that would seal his fate. He then turned him over on the bench, securing him this time on his back, his legs pulled up and spread. The look in the boy's eyes, hopeless and pleading, made Ralen feel like the worst villain on the river, and maybe he was. He did nothing to interfere in any way with Penargos' entertainment. He stood against the wall much of the night, watching as Penargos glutted his senses on the many pleasures the youth's perfect young body provided. The Lord pinched and played with Cam's nipples until the Kheld's little rabbit dick grew hard, then he feasted on that offering much as Ralen had at the Fence, drawing the comely young shaft and plump rosy balls into his sensual mouth, where he tongued and sucked until Cam, groaning, released streams of Kheld semen while Penargos milked his shaft and watched his helpless spurting. Like a good little rabbit, he was soon hard again, and again was forced to spend his seed as Penargos commanded. Afterward, Penargos once more violated the Kheld's freshly opened, begging ass, pushing the youth's legs up and back, his muscular torso looming over Cam's face, his powerful buttocks driving his big Staubaun prick deep into the boy's body until Cam's little dick dribbled with surrender onto his flat young belly and he begged Penargos to fill him with cum. Again Ralen handed the Lord fresh warm wet towels and more wine. Again, he gently cleaned the shattered, unresisting boy. Now it was nearly dawn, and Lord Penargos had just finished breaking the fast. Before leaving, he had decided to have pretty Cam service him orally a final time. Ralen marked the sight: Penargos standing fully clothed in his lordly leathers and fur cape, legs widely set and clothing opened, the naked dark-haired boy kneeling before him. Cam's mouth worked hungrily on the Lord's large, lusty member, begging its gifts. He's well-broken, Ralen assessed with a pleased thrill. Pretty Cam craves Staubaun cock now, as much as before he reviled it. How sweetly he sucks! Penargos smiled, his eyes lidding and his hands pulling the boy's head hard to the golden curls of his loins as he pushed his cock deep into that pliant young mouth. Ralen watched the youth's throat, the way it opened and accepted, and swallowed. He was indeed a handsome little cocksucker. * * * * When Penargos was gone, Ralen drew a bath and tenderly bathed the battered boy. Even in his mind, he did not diminish the extent of the ordeal Cam had suffered. He fully realized that he had delivered the boy to a monster, albeit a rich and powerful one. Not an ounce of seduction had gone into the loss of the boy's innocence—only domination and pain. Ralen accepted that Cam would be changed and haunted. He also believed the young Kheld would be strong enough to survive and return. He drugged the wine he gave the boy, wrapped him in blankets, and bore him away. When Cam woke, he would not see a torture chamber. Once during the night Cam awoke in the darkness. He was in a bed, tucked in blankets, with Ralen seated beside him. Upon seeing Ralen, he struggled and cried out, but Ralen soothed him as best he could. "Hush," he said. "It's over." "Penargos," the boy whispered, as one might whisper a name out of nightmare. "I won't do that to you again." Those beautiful eyes, wet with tears, would not meet his. The boy only stared at the wall, a wall that was strange to him, plain and devoid of meaning. His body's violation had numbed Cam's ability to believe anything Ralen said. "Why me?" he asked dully. It was not the hour to answer that question. Such blunt talk required daylight, and time. "Sleep," Ralen commanded, and eventually Cam did, softly weeping at the pain that wracked his body and the horror that had shattered his world. At some point before morning, Ralen rubbed a narcotic balm on the boy's abused anus to relieve the burning soreness and allow his body to more easily expel the contents of his bowels. The effluence was mostly semen, mixed with grease and blood and a small amount of feces. That Cam's body was returning to normal habits presaged other recoveries. He gave him water and more drugged wine, forcing another day of sleep with only water and no food, glad when no trace of fever beset the youth's healing. Taking his rest in a chair beside the bed, he kicked his feet up on a nearby table and so slept that way, chin on chest. Ralen went to relieve his bladder come morning and returned to find Cam half-sitting in bed, staring at him in the watery daylight coming through the window. A thin blanket covered his legs below a too-large nightshirt. Some bruising marred the boy's mouth, rendering his lips slightly puffy and colored. Bruises also showed on his wrists and knees from his struggles against his bonds. "We're moving," Cam said. "We're on the water. My boat. Penargos is far away, so is Omadawn. We've been a-sail for more than a day. Hungry?" Ralen asked. He had boiled water for gruel and prepared a bowl. He placed it on the table and dragged it over. Cam looked at him, stricken and wary. "No," he said, barely above a whisper. "You should eat. Your body can handle it. That ass of yours is no worse for the ride." He met the youth's shattered gaze coolly. There was no point in coddling cumbucks. "In fact, you may soon be wanting another." "Oh, god . . ." "You'll find yourself needing it soon enough. You're going to want Staubaun cum more than you want food sometimes. Tell me when that happens. I'll take you to a Fence, let you guzzle cum from one of the cocks there." "Why don't you just make me your cock whore?" The accusation bore little in it of resignation. Only the guarded defiance in those eyes told Ralen that Cam knew better than to hope to escape. Ralen regarded him warmly. "I might do that." The boy blanched, though he did not look away. He had common courage enough to look misfortune in the face. Ralen pulled over a chair, seating himself and taking up the bowl. He dipped a spoon into it. "Come now, eat," he said. "You fucking cold bastard," Cam accused him. "Why do you even care? So you can sell me to the next man?" "I told you," Ralen said evenly. "I'll never do that to you again." "Why should I believe you?" "I won't blame you if you don't." Cam took that in. That answer had lifted a corner of hope. "So you're going to let me go?" "Maybe I will. Can't have you calling the King's soldiers if I do. Eat." He extended a spoon. The food smelled good, he knew. Good enough to tempt a young Kheld who had not eaten anything in nearly three days. Cam's body had not been so abused nor his mind so broken that he was past hunger. Taking care that their hands would not touch, the boy took the bowl and slowly lifted a spoon of the thick, sweetened porridge, gingerly easing it between his lips so that he could taste it. It was easy to get down and would be easy for his gut to manage. Ralen had nursed fuck-tamed boys before. "You're strong, Cam," he said, watching the boy eat. He endured the look that told him to go to hell. "You didn't faint or carry on the way some do, like animals. Didn't crap or piss yourself. He would have hurt you more if you had been weak, or if you had fought him and he thought you needed breaking. But you did what I told you, let him take his pleasure as he found it, and not get it out of hurting you. And I told you true, that there would be just one night. He won't be back, not for you." A Cumbuck's Tale Ch. 03 "But you won't let me go." "Be a fool if I did." Cam laid the spoon in the bowl. He had only eaten half the gruel. "I don't want any more." Accepting that, Ralen took the bowl from his hand and set it back on the table. "I won't mistreat you, long as you don't try to escape. My men are a rough lot, and killers, so you'd be a fool to cross me or them. I don't think you're a fool. A good-looking cumbuck like you can put gold in a man's pocket. Be glad I found you first and only peddled you for one night." " To him. When do you get to rape me? Tonight?" Ralen rose and took the bowl with him as he headed for the cabin door. "No," he said, shaking his head. "Maybe I will tomorrow, though." * * * * Ralen didn't rape him that day or the next. In fact, he didn't rape Cam at all. Neither did he let his captive go. He kept him close at hand until they reached Rahn Rock, which might as well have been a prison, it was that impregnable. From the hidden habitation atop the Rock, Cam stared at the river. To get to it, he would need to find some way down the island's steep jagged cliffs. Even if he could swim, he would not have tried it. He might tempt death in the water, but not certain death by a fall onto sharp rocks. There was a way down, of course, a stair of narrow stone steps carved into the vertical wall of an interior cleft, a passageway that led down to a cavern that formed a hollow at the base of the granite island. Ralen stored his smuggled goods there. He trafficked mostly in Sordani steel, which he sold to Kheld rebels in Neuberland, but he was just as willing to sell crude lr crystal incendiaries, dirty metals, stolen cargoes or slaves. Goods for which no legal market existed could be had from Ralen. As a result, he was very rich, and he was alive only because he was also very clever. They had left the Lower Dazun of the Royal North a week ago, traveling by boat upriver past Merath to the fork of the Dazun-Geroe. The unassuming appearance of the river barque, low and plain, belied its speed and Cam was amazed at the lands that they passed. He had never traveled farther than a village away from Omadawn, and only a few times across the Dazun to Amallar. In a few days on the river, he had seen for himself the great Staubaun city of Dazunor-Rannuli, with its enormous port and splendid crown of Rill towers, from which massive vessels larger than any ship he had ever seen shot through the air to the north or the south, carrying people and goods to far places. Further upriver he'd looked upon Merath, that ancient walled city with its blue Highborn palace upon the hills. The smugglers left such marvelous lands behind them, seeking wilderness. Where they were now, Neuberland, was less civilized—but not less dangerous. I was a high Lord's cum whore. Cam could not cease remembering how his helpless body had served a Staubaun Lord's pleasure. Ralen had told him Penargos was not his rapist's real name, that he would never learn the man's real name from him. But the man was high. Cam blinked, ashamed that he was aroused, still, by the thought of Staubaun men. Ever since that night, he could not count the times he had thought about wrapping his lips around a Staubaun cock and wanting to suck it until it released its hated essence. Ralen had explained his new affliction, laid it on the effect of Staubaun seed on Kheld tissues. Apparently the smuggler, and other Staubauns, understood it. Cam, on the other hand, did not need to understand it—he lived it. He was the one whose dick got hard whenever he thought about Staubaun cock, which was often, and whose body craved the ruling race's foul semen. Something in him wanted to taste it, experience it again. He stood aghast at the horrifying core of his new obsession. I can't fight it. I tried, but I can't. I didn't hate it enough. For the last two days since reaching Rahn Rock, his dick had been rigid. Now it throbbed with unremitting sexual urgency. He could jack off for relief, as he had been doing, but the craving remained. However much he hated it, he knew Ralen had not lied. He needed to suck Staubaun cock. He needed to drink cum—and he needed it something fierce. A Cumbuck's Tale Ch. 04 Chapter 4 -- Claimed By A Smuggler Chief Cam's heart beat faster when he looked over his shoulder and caught Ralen gazing in his direction. The smuggler's eyes followed him the way those of a man who owns a watering hole might watch a wild horse he meant to capture. He gave Cam food and solitude and did nothing to scare him. But the man could also be sure his quarry would eventually approach the water, lower its head, and drink. That Ralen liked his looks and wanted to use him sexually, he had known from the first. But Ralen had made clear that he would not take him by force the way Penargos had. He was waiting until Cam had no choice but to turn to him. Like now, with his body on the verge of shaking like he had the chills, only it wasn't cold at all. And how just being near Ralen was torture because he could smell the cum in him, so that thoughts of Ralen invaded his dreams—only it wasn't Ralen he dreamed about, but Penargos and how that big cock had filled his mouth with the sweetest juices in the world. Damn cold bastard, like that makes him any better—making me want cum, then making me want him. Part of the reason he had resisted so long was just because of that. If I had a knife, I'd skewer him proper, and let his fucking men skewer me after. Except that Ralen's men, being a hard lot, probably wouldn't kill him. They would just use him themselves, much as they pleased, after which fun they would sell his ass to some Lord, a prospect hardly much better. He had seen what they were like. Cam guessed enough to know he was now a commodity of sorts, and it was through that hard knowledge he evaluated his abductor anew. He's not the worst of them. Ralen's not a fine citizen, but he's honest in his way. He's not even bad-looking for his age, just a bit rough, and at least he's clean. Cam blushed as he realized he was thinking about his captor's body. He had done that a lot of late, watching Ralen on the boat, admiring the powerful swing of the man's solid torso, the confident stride and strong arms. And Ralen's hard handsome mouth drew him, too, always inviting . . . something. Damn Staubauns. They were so sure of themselves. Feeling Ralen's eyes still upon him, he walked away, leaving the terrace for a more private place. His steps took him toward the grotto. The stone path led to a glade entirely enclosed by a steep ravine of waterfalls and vines clambering down dark wet stone walls that ended at a deep pool beside which autumn orchids bloomed. The water probably flowed to the river through underground passageways, but there was no real telling. Cam liked the place because it was secluded and pretty, and also because Ralen's men never went there. Only Ralen. He was not terribly surprised to hear those firm steps coming down the stone stairs hard on the heels of his own. Not terribly surprised to see Ralen walk toward him. The man plagued him with his presence. "Solitude, rabbit?" Cam stared at him. Ralen's face, scarred and lived in, broken-nosed, at least was familiar. And the desire there, unspoken but hot and near the surface, lured him as brightly as flame lured any man lost in the dark. "I need it, you bastard," he whispered, stepping toward him, drawn in a way he had never been drawn before. Ralen gently touched his face, guided his mouth. Cam gasped as their lips met. Ralen's mouth tasted of whiskey, of danger. The man's tongue moved against his, exploring, inviting. The hunger with which Ralen greeted his overture, celebrating the moment, convinced him. This man, who had harmed him so much, now offered the means to relieve his torment. "Let me . . . I need to . . . oh, Goddess," he whispered against those stern, insistent lips that his own welcomed so hungrily. "You know what I want, Ralen." "I do. But you have to say it." Cam hated him as much as he wanted him. "Let me suck your cum." "You really need it, don't you, rabbit?" "Yes, just let me." Ralen pulled him over to the nearest large tree, a great oak probably as old as the island itself, and leaned back against it. His large, rough hands unlaced his rustic trousers. He was powerfully Staubaun, tall and solidly built, hard and fit. He was also aroused, fully erect after days of waiting for this petition. Cam's breathing quickened as he looked upon the sight of the golden-haired man, his hard body patiently offering an engorged, towering cock. The sight resonated to his core. Knowing what to do, he slid to his knees before that offering and took it in his hands, then his mouth. He had never held a Staubaun cock before, only his own, smaller dick. Ralen's male member was heavy and thick, so hard Cam felt as though he gripped a rod of silk-sheathed bone. Its heat amazed him. So did the shape of it, like a triple tower of sinew crowned by a perfect, flaring head. He felt right then that he had never seen anything so perfect or more beautiful. He kissed it, tasting Ralen's clean, musky maleness, the silken heat of the cock's fine-grained skin. He let his mouth drift downward to Ralen's dense golden curls, at once soft and stiff, intoxicating with musk. Not yet prepared to lick the man's balls, he began to lick that enthralling shaft of flesh from base to tip. So long and thick, near-bursting with juices. Running his tongue around the tip, he teased back the foreskin and tasted the first heady drops that presaged his satisfaction. The sweetness of those drops intensified his craving and he lapped at Ralen's cock head, cleaning every drop that emerged. Wanting more, he wrapped his lips about the head. Ralen moaned with pleasure. "That's good, little cumbuck," he murmured, "I won't last long." Cam moaned with pleasure of his own as Ralen's rough fingers curled in his hair, holding his head. Feeling Ralen's swollen cum-vessels with his tongue, he sucked harder, taking more of that marvelous cock into his mouth. Give me your seed, he silently yearned, ashamed to be sucking cock but loving it, too. His tongue stroked the length of it. I need it. Give me Staubaun seed . . . He lapped the underside, pulling back to swirl his tongue hungrily over the engorged head, then sucking deep down the shaft again. A steady stream of clear, musky-sweet pre-cum presaged the bounty to come. Don't hold it from me . . . please give me cum . . . "My rabbit . . . my pretty rabbit . . . nibble away, my beauty . . . little cumbuck, gods! Gods!" Ralen thrust his cock deep into Cam's working mouth, his cock head finding the open back of his throat. Willing his body to obey, Cam took Ralen's cock deep, his muscles swallowing, milking the creamy juices he so craved. Penargos had taught him that much, at least. Cam kept his mouth hard on that shaft as it jerked and released. Ralen's cum was less bitter than Penargos' semen, richer and even more copious. Cam swallowed and sucked every drop until at last the softening cock slipped from his mouth. Already he felt his body absorbing what it needed, as Ralen had told him it would. His jitters and wild craving eased. Ralen's look was warm with more than satiety. Now it was he who dropped to his knees, took Cam's head in his hands, and kissed him again. Before Cam realized what was happening, he was on his back, vines and flowers crushed where he lay, with Ralen above him. * * * * Ralen had needed only to wait. Waiting was difficult mostly because his desire to possess his prize burned hotter than his patience. He had known the boy's body would eventually subvert his mind, and that Cam would be compelled to relieve his urgency by seeking a source of Staubaun seed. Although he had offered the boy the anonymous shame of sucking seed at some Fence, he'd hoped the youth would turn to him instead. He was readily available and had proven himself, however roughly, to be the youth's protector. Though he would have preferred for this appealing, sexual creature to desire him, he found nothing wrong with being the beneficiary of Penargos' fuck-taming the boy. Sensing the right moment, he had followed Cam to the grotto. How beautiful he is! His fondness for the youth's looks, conceived that first night at the Fence in Omadawn, had only grown stronger. The black, just slightly curling hair glowed like midnight silk against smooth, sun-brushed skin. Cam's expressive, softly-colored mouth, just slightly wide, promised delight. It had been sheer ecstasy to kiss that mouth, to taste Cam's surprised, tentative heat, the delicious moment when the youth had returned some of that ardor. There was passion in this Kheld, an inescapable capacity to experience pleasure that made him perfect for love, even beyond the surface need that left his mouth hungry, sucking at Ralen's Staubaun body and scent. Thrilled by that need which he had watched being implanted, Ralen had exposed his cock and offered it to the boy's craving. Rape by Penargos had done nothing to make Cam experienced, but the boy owned a natural oral talent for pleasure and an intuitive understanding of how to please a man's organ. Ralen had not lasted nearly as long as he would have liked. With a little training, this sweet-mouthed cumbuck could grace a Denizen's palace! he thought deliriously, for he well understood the value of every commodity, including that of Kheld boys fuck-tamed for the secret Staubaun slave trade. It pleased him to know that he had gained such a boy for himself. Cam sucked every drop of Ralen's voluminous cum. Staubauns produced massive amounts of semen, requiring frequent release, but for well over a week Ralen had denied himself other outlets. The boy was worth the saving of it. Yes, little cumbuck . . . drink . . . enjoy . . . and remember there is more waiting for you whenever you need it. But there was more pleasure to be had, much more, and he knew the ways to get to that nirvana. Pushing the sated, surprised boy back onto the moss and vines, Ralen proceeded to kiss him, tasting his own salty musk on Cam's lips and residing in the gasping recesses of his yielding mouth. "My turn, rabbit," he growled. "I may not need Kheld cream the way you need mine, but I like the taste—and you have a hard dick that needs draining." "Oh, gods . . . Ralen . . ." Few moments are sweeter than that of hearing one's own name upon a lover's lips. Grinning, Ralen understood the surrender implicit in Cam's use of his name at such a moment . . . the longing . . . the consent. He lifted the youth's tunic above the tent-like protrusion of his loose trousers, loosened those and pulled them over his hips. Cam's juicy young dick stood above his loins like an eager horn, hard and ready. Ralen made it good for him. He showed the boy what it was to have his dick adored, his body pleasured. Cam had serviced and been serviced, and he had been raped, but he had not been driven wild with pleasure—and he had not been desired. There was desire on Ralen's lips, hard and stern but sure of that which they possessed. Desire moved his hands in stroking Cam's trembling body. Desire moved him to suckle the boy's lovely bronze nipples and trace a hot wet path down his arching belly to the musky curls of his loins. Desire put his mouth on Cam's swollen member and moved his tongue, the delicate edges of his teeth, the firm rhythmic sucking of his throat that drew out the boy's sweet rutting core until Cam was humping and moaning, Ralen's arms embracing his hips, holding him as the boy bucked in his imprisoning arms and mouth. "I'm cumming, Ralen! I'm cumming . . . oh, gods . . ." The boy's cum tasted faintly of cherries, the earthy flavors of those fruits and grains Ralen had been feeding him. There were ways to make Kheld cum sweet, and Ralen knew them all. He kept Cam's dick in his mouth and continued to lick the occasional swell of drops that emerged from the softening organ. Cam lay gasping and stunned, his body gradually coming back to normal. Ralen let the boy's wet dick slip from his mouth and moved over him again, looking warmly down upon Cam's sexually satisfied face. "You're mine now, rabbit. My cumbuck. My suck boy. And I don't share." Cam's blue eyes fastened upon him gratefully. "I'm glad." Beyond that, of course, there was confusion—shame mixed with pleasure, accomplishment with uncertainty—at what he had done. He had never thought of himself as a boy who liked men. And now he belonged to a man who most definitely liked them. A man about whom his feelings had to be enormously conflicted. In time, Ralen thought, he'd sort it out. For him, it didn't matter. Fuck-tamed Kheld boys always gave him what he needed. * * * * "I thought all Staubauns were Lords, or nearly," Cam said to him a few days later. They rode on one of Ralen's barges, heading upriver. Two men stood openly at the prow, but other men hid, well-armed, near the stern and among the crates of cargo. A broad lugsail billowed with a stiff westerly wind. "So why are you a smuggler?" "A low life, not a high life, you mean," Ralen asked. "Well, yeah." Ralen nodded. The question was a fair one. "Khelds, they think all Staubaun men are Lords and the women Ladies. That's not how it is. We're a high breed, true, but not equally. I am a Lord's bastard, sired on a well-born girl. I never knew either of my parents. The bastard sons of well-born daughters aren't raised in noble houses alongside legitimate kin. They're given to servants to raise, then given to soldiers. I was raised by a soldier to be a soldier." "Hard life?" For days now, Cam had found Ralen interesting. "A few battles. Liked fighting but not the King's army, so I left for the frontier, fought Khelds for the Neuberland Lords. I was with Ral later when he took Gignastha, but I didn't like the slaughter. Khelds aren't a bad folk, just need better leaders. I got to know the language, see, so I could work both sides. There's gold in it." "So that's it? Gold?" Ralen grinned. "Gold, and boys like you." Cam blushed. It had been three days since he had surrendered so whorishly to Ralen on the island. It didn't help that he was beginning to crave cum again. I'm a cocksucker now, a freaking wog, a cumbuck like he calls me. I need to suck Staubaun cock whether I like it or not. Trouble was he had liked it, a little anyway, when he was sucking Ralen's. It had seemed so right, somehow, to want a man that much and be wanted back. Sometimes, like now, he sensed that Ralen knew. "Come here," Ralen said, indicating the deck at his feet. Cam stiffened, but when Ralen indicated again, more sternly, he obeyed. He sank to the deck and sat beside the man's legs, dreading what might follow. He felt an almost irresistible need to suck cock. "You want it, don't you?" the Staubaun asked. He was threading some rope through a pulley, adjusting the tension in the line. He looked down at Cam's white face and nodded. "I can tell, you know. But I won't feed you, not on the water. Won't take for myself what my men can't have, too. Besides, you're not likely to run off, are you, if you're craving cum and you're not in Staubaun lands? Not when you have me ready to give it to you soon as we get back." At least he now knew when he would get it. They met with the Kheld rebels offshore of some shoals. The outlaws came out on rafts, just a few of them at first. Furtive, small dark men, they looked at the swords, counted what they wanted. They then left two men, two others going back to fetch the gold. Those men returned with more Khelds, but there was no more than a momentary thought of danger. Ralen was known to them to be trustworthy, and they wanted the swords. Cam had heard that there were Kheld rebels in Neuberland, though he had never seen any, not in Omadawn. The King's grandson, Stefan, was said to be quietly supporting them—and the Sordani were supporting the other side, so of course they would not want their good swords getting to Kheld hands. Ralen provided a useful service to the Khelds, that way. He also sold the rebels a few boxes of hollow glass balls with beakgum stoppers and some jars of volatile liquid to make flamers. In addition to the gold, the smugglers took on supplies, including several kegs of good Kheld ale and a few more of hard aged bran. On the way back down river, Ralen's expert boatmen poled the river's black waters and kept watch, for they did not wish to light lanterns or otherwise let it be known the barge was there. They did break open one of the kegs of bran, drawing cups and drinking. Cam accepted a cup when offered it and amused Ralen and his men alike when he nearly spit out the first mouthful. It was not that the brew tasted bad, but that it was so strong it burned his mouth. It took a few more tries before he learned the proper way to drink it. By morning, they reached the island again and glided in the darkness of pre-dawn into the watery cavern. More of Ralen's men awaited them, happy to unload the barge. Ralen led Cam up the stone passage into the fort and to the high bedchamber. Cam felt his dick grow hard even before the door closed with finality behind them. Shaking slightly with anticipation, he stripped from his clothing. It was pure silver morning when Ralen kissed him fiercely, and he ardently kissed back, astonished by his body's response. "Gods, Cam, you would bring a Lord to ruin," Ralen murmured, looking deep in his eyes. "That first night I saw you, I knew it was but a matter of time. Taking you was like plucking a big, ripe plum. A man has only to bite into it to drink its sweet juices. Giving you to Penargos was perfect." "Not him, Ralen. No—" but he moaned again as those strong lips seized his. "He showed me what a horny little cumbuck you truly are. Admit it, you cannot forget that big cock in your ass." "Ralen, please." But his dick was hard as a rock as the pirate's fingers wrapped round it and squeezed, milking drops of pleasure with expert strokes. He looked at Ralen desperately. "I want your cum, you know I do. You promised you would give it to me." "That's right. I am going to give it to you." Ralen pulled at his leather breeches and jerkin, removing both items. The smuggler was about forty years of age, with a soldier's hard body and the beautiful fair skin of his race. He had hair only on his head and at his groin, and nowhere else, showing a torso ridged with muscle. His cock rose like a tower, bulbous-tipped and marvelous. Cam wanted to suck it dry. But when he tried to sink to his knees, Ralen pushed him instead to the floor, on his back. "Hey!" Even on his knees, Ralen loomed over him. Before Cam could react, Ralen had pushed his legs up and, wedging his broad shoulders under Cam's knees, forced his legs open and back, pinning him. The Staubuan moved forward until his cock slid hard against Cam's erect dick. "This is how I want you," Ralen growled. A feral smile curved his lips as the early sun painted his blond hair with streaks of gold. "Ralen, no . . . please, not like this!" "You want cum, don't you? You need it." He did. He wanted it badly. He needed cum, and Ralen knew it. But he couldn't forget that night, would never forget it. Just the feel of Ralen's powerful cock sliding against his, the man poised between his spread legs, caused him to remember the horror of Penargos leaning over him, kissing his mouth as that brutal, ramming cock filled Cam's ass with pain. Pain followed by cum, then numbing, helpless pleasure . . . "Yes, but not that way. Ralen, please—" "You need it in your ass." "No, Ralen, please—" he pleaded. "Not my ass! It hurts too much!" "Shhh, baby, shhh." Ralen soothed him. He pushed the wet, cum-dripping tip of his cock against Cam's exposed, neatly puckered asshole. "I'm going to insist, but I'll make it good." Using his fingertip, he smeared his generous juices around the tightly closed orifice. A Cumbuck's Tale Ch. 04 "Oh, god . . ." "You're a cumbuck, remember," Ralen reminded him. "You have a cumbuck ass. Penargos made sure of that. It loves being filled with hot Staubaun cum." Cam felt Ralen lift more pre-cum on his finger, work it not just around but into his softening asshole. What Ralen said was true. At the end, even Penargos had drawn real orgasms from him, had awakened pleasure. And he needed Staubaun cum so much even his ass was betraying him now, welcoming Ralen's finger, slippery with the juices he craved. Ralen continued to milk his cock for more lubricating drops, which he continued to work into Cam's increasingly willing anus. What the hell, the man was going to fuck him anyway. Cam relaxed his legs, gave himself over to the man's ministrations. "That's it, rabbit, open up. You're a cum slave now. And I'm through being patient." Ralen's weight shifted, the man reaching for something on the stand near the bed. The sound of a jar being unlidded. The crackle and slap of lubricant being slathered on a cock—he had heard it before—and then the cool sensation of a slippery finger being introduced into his tight ass. Ralen circled and stimulated his sphincter gently, then firmly, teasing it open. "You have a beautiful ass, Cam. Perfect, muscular . . . so tight and smooth. Just like all of you, so damn gorgeous. Ah, beauty, you have no idea how I've wanted to sink my cock into you." Cam gasped at the invasion, controlled his breathing, tried to relax. What Ralen was doing did not feel so bad. In fact, it almost felt good . . . did feel good. And his body craved cum, craved it so much . . . his ass ached to be filled with Ralen's seed, ached for the ease it would bring. "Ralen," he said, not sure if he was protesting or pleading. His dick was a rock hard knot of arousal. "Ralen . . . please . . ." His asshole, now stretched by two fingers and thickly coated with lubricant, flowered with invitation. Ralen slid a third finger into him and he moaned. He was so open . . . so ready. The fingers withdrew and his legs trembled with anticipation. "Hells, oh hells . . . fuck me, Ralen . . . fuck me . . . fuck me, please!" "Sweet Cam," Ralen growled, angling his body into better position. The head of his cock pushed at the offered opening. * * * * Cam's ass was everything Ralen had dreamed it to be. Responsive. Tight. Willing. The youth felt some pain, he knew, when he first entered. There was no other way for a boy still new. But his member was not as large as Penargos', not as traumatic for the boy to take, and he had taken even more care to ensure he caused no damage. His cock head popped deliciously through the first tight anal ring and he emitted a low sound of pleasure. Continuing to press, his passage eased by a layer of slick jelly he pushed through the second ring. His cock slid into an ass of honey with the grip of a velvet glove. He reveled in the pure sensation of entering Cam's velvety tight passage. "Ah, boy," he groaned, pushing the youth's legs up, the better to enter him deeply. "Ralen," Cam gasped, eyes closed, his perfect lips forming the name. Perhaps he was naming the man who was penetrating him because doing so aroused him, perhaps to remind himself that it was not Penargos whose big cock stretched his ass. Ralen didn't care. He leaned forward, kissing those lips, drinking the name and the gasp of pleasure that followed. Ralen proceeded patiently, his cock buried deep in a boy fit for a Denizen's bed. "Don't tease me, Ralen . . . don't make me wait," Cam begged. His heavenly blue eyes gazed up at him, glazed with need. "After you made me wait?" Ralen chuckled. "I've waited too long for this not to enjoy you with every last inch." Cam gasped as Ralen pulled his cock back until it was nearly out of his ass, then slid that thick pole back into him with a single smooth motion. "I want you to feel it, cumbuck. Really feel it, having me inside you." He pulled back again, then plunged forward as Cam's hands clasped his waist and his hips moved with him. "Like that? I do. You're better than a girl, Cam. You're tighter, and you've got a hard rabbit dick." He balanced on one arm and with his other hand reached for Cam's erection. "There you go. Feels good, doesn't it? Almost as good as having Staubaun cock in your ass." Ralen kept his cock moving, thrusting slowly, watching as the pain in the youth's expression faded, and pleasure gradually took root. Penargos had barely tapped the sensual delights of Cam's young body. "You need this, cumbuck," he murmured, thrusting forward to the hilt, so that his body covered the one he impaled. The hand gripping Cam's dick pumped against both their bellies. He looked down at the youth and smiled. "You can tell me all you want that you don't like cock in your ass, but you do." "Please, Ralen—" "If you weren't with me, enjoying my cock, you'd be seeking out Fences and haunting the wharfs, looking for Staubaun cocks to suck. And you'd let them fuck you, if that's what they wanted. Hells, they'd line up for a chance to stuff their fat stoats into a pretty young rabbit like you." Cam's lips parted, whimpers of pleasure joining those of shame as his hips lifted to the tugs of Ralen's hand on his dick. The Kheld's arousal dripped in slippery strings onto his belly. His legs tightened around Ralen's waist and he lifted his ass, pushing it to greet every stroke of Ralen's invading cock "Cum-slave," Ralen taunted, letting him know what he was. "No, please," the youth whispered. "Look at me," Ralen commanded and, when Cam did not, commanded it again, "Look!" The boy raised his head and opened his eyes. The sight that greeted him—Ralen's broad, golden body poised between his legs, a big Staubaun cock smoothly fucking his ass—brought him to the edge. Something began to pound harder between them—Ralen's right hand working Cam's throbbing dick. "This is the way you want it, boy. You want Staubaun cock any way it wants you, even in your Kheld ass." "Oh, gods—" There was no denying it. That silken ass was clamping on him now, the boy's prostate being stimulated with every one of Ralen's rutting strokes. The pleasure by now far outpaced any pain. Cam gave a single cry as his dick bunched and spurted hot plumes of Kheld cum over Ralen's hand, onto Ralen's hard flat belly. Ralen threw back his head, savoring the rhythmic bucking of the boy's orgasm. "What are you, boy?" Ralen held him down harder and pumped him sternly, possessively. His cock sucked in and out of Cam's young ass like a piston. "A slave," Cam half-sobbed. "A fucking cum-slave." "That's right. My little Kheld slave with the cum-loving ass." "Oh, gods . . . oh, Ralen . . . fuck me, please!" The words sent Ralen over his own edge and he roared at the power with which his cock gathered and released, sending his pent-up seed spewing into Cam's waiting ass. The boy felt his explosion and, with a strangled cry, held still so that his ass could better receive the ejaculation. He so needed cum, he dared not risk spilling even a drop. Covered with sweat and gobs of seed, Ralen remained above Cam for several minutes, allowing every ripple of the boy's ass to squeeze a few more drops of seed from his softening cock. "Stay with me, Cam," he said, giving in to the surge of desire he felt toward this talented boy he had abducted for a Lord's pleasure and now kept for his own. "You'll be my slave, true, but you won't even know it. Give me your cock and ass when I want them, and I'll give you all the seed your mouth or ass can guzzle. Fair trade. My protection is worth a lot in these parts." As the boy opened his eyes again, showing pupils wide with the pleasure-enhancing effects of the Staubaun seed that now filled him, and gazed upon him with confusion, Ralen bent forward and kissed him. He tasted Cam's surprise, his acceptance laced with fear—and arousal. The youth's body, just like his mind, associated sex with men. Good. I have him now. A few more good ass-fuckings, and the boy would be converted completely. Ralen kissed him again and looked forward to another round of lovemaking that evening. For the next few days, he intended to keep Cam's cum-slave ass well-filled. * * * * Cam gave in to his lot. As humiliating as it was to be Ralen's cumbuck, he quickly saw the advantages. Though they directed leers his way, the smuggler chief's men left him alone and for the most part were pleasant enough. They gave him reasonable work to do, perhaps on Ralen's orders and perhaps not, because it was given that all of the band had to perform hard work to earn their share in the spoils. He gained more respect for not acting like he was spoils himself, and being willing to tackle the toughest chores. He gutted fish and worked his fingers raw knotting net and it wasn't any worse that way than being at home pounding straw between bricks or cutting the lot, then hauling it into town. Ralen's men taught him to swim like a fish, diving under the barges to help lash new line or cut loose hidden caches secured to anchors driven deep into the rock floor of the riverbed. They might tease him and ruffle his hair with rough, rope-callused hands, but they knew better than to poach on Ralen's private stash. From time to time there were other youths, or even women, held only briefly and roughly used. They were never kept long before being dispatched. "Back to the wharves," was the way One-Handed Brasco, the gang's cook, put it, suggesting that was where the victims had been found. Cam learned by listening that it was the lot of such Khelds as himself, gripped by the need to consume Staubaun seed, to haunt river towns in hope of finding what they sought. Most of Ralen's men were not truly Staubaun, but of mongrel birth—half-breeds and Estols, even a few that were Kheld—and the boys and women they took on received very little satisfaction. That he might find himself in such straits was reason enough not to refuse Ralen's goodwill. It could be worse, Cam reminded himself. He's a hard one, bad as they come, but it's to my favor that he wants a good-looking boy on his dick. He blushed as he thought of that big, Staubaun cock and how much he now enjoyed it. He really did love Ralen's cock, its bulk all silky sleek under his lips, gamy and huge in his mouth as he tongued and sucked the hot, salty juices from its spurting tip. He even liked the way that cock felt in his ass whenever Ralen took him that way. His ass opened easily now. So easily, in fact, that Ralen pronounced it well-trained. Ralen trained him in other things as well. Cam spoke decent Stauba for the first time in his life, and knew how to handle a weapon, though not with anything approaching expertise. He also knew a lot now about navigating the Dazun. Though they had not returned to the parts of the Dazun he called home, Cam could read a map and name every town on the river; he knew which towns were best for what goods, which port masters could be trusted and which required bribes, and how not to get cheated by short counts on loads. He knew a lugsail from a staysail, a mast from a trawl beam; he could haul sail and lash line and wield a stout pole in the shallows. From the bargemen, he learned how to read the river's currents, both those on the surface and those below, and that water was a changeable beast best mastered by experience because no man in the world could ever own the strength to tame it. He knew not to trust Staubauns in Dazunor-Rannuli, where every corruption in the North might be found, but that those in Orndall or Gustan could be counted on to honor their word. The best men for building or fixing river craft were to be found in Trulo or Dazunor-Rannuli, the best outfitters were in Merath, and the Amallar towns of Skairen and Eldwash provided the best taverns. All told, Cam's life assumed a pleasant shape. Ralen taught him to script and work numbers, at both of which Cam proved a quick study. There was a place even among smugglers for a sharp lad who could put things in writing. Outlaws kept few records, but Ralen maintained a written inventory. If days were for work, nights were for pleasure. Like many men who live life on the run, Ralen best expressed his passion for life in the arms of a lover. He possessed Cam's body ardently and without reservation, leaving no expression of pleasure unexplored. Unlike many Staubauns, he felt no ambiguity in his predilection for Kheld youths, but indulged his preference wholeheartedly. Cam's hard young dick was the focus of Ralen's frequent attention, his body petted and mouth adored, his intelligence and company encouraged. That the smuggler enjoyed his companionship at least as much as he desired his body became clearer by the week. Cam found his new life easy to accept. He'd be damned, though, if he'd ever forget he was a captive and a slave. A Cumbuck's Tale Ch. 05 A Cumbuck's Tale, Ch. 05 Chapter 5 – Love and Loathing "Fire on the water!" The barque was a day past Konop, headed down river toward Merath to pick up a cargo. Ralen and Cam had retreated to the fore cabin after setting the watch, though they had not immediately slept. Ralen kept strictly to his code about no sex on the boat, but he enjoyed acts of service, calling upon Cam to bathe him or stroke the tension from his neck and shoulders, after which he'd pull Cam into his arms until they both fell asleep, their bodies and breaths mingling. They were so entwined in sleep when Meuk raised the alarm. Like all river men they slept in clothing they could work in, and the two ran out to see where Meuk pointed. Not far downstream from them, across the dark span of the Dazun, orange light glowed and danced. Save only for flood, fire was the most feared of dangers for a boatman. Wooden vessels, their planks tarred to keep out water, burned more easily than they sank. Some cargoes burned even more fiercely. The boat ahead of them, flames visible as they drew near, was not a heavy cargo barge but a small open schooner of a kind often used to convey merchant goods or passengers between towns. The air was filled with the cracks of fire fiercely burning upon the deck and the screams of terrified animals. More horrible still were human screams from below. "Get me some hooks!" Ralen shouted. His second, Partas, ran up dragging coils of heavy rope with grappling hooks on the end, used to haul in derelicts or corpses. Ralen and Partas quickly tossed the hooks over the side of the schooner and Cam joined the other men in hauling on the line as the helmbok turned to bring their boat closer to the burning vessel. "What if we catch fire, too?" Cam asked urgently. He helped Ralen lash the line fast. "That's your job now, rabbit," the big Staubaun said. He reached into one of the deck boxes and hauled out an axe, which he thrust into Cam's hands. The dark metal head glinted in the light from the roaring flames now just yards from their vessel. "Fire gets too close, or starts up the ropes, you cut us loose. Got it? Cut the line." Without waiting for Cam to answer, Ralen leaped for the side and crossed over the plank the other men had laid. Three of them crossed, dark against the glow. Cam wanted to cover his ears against the screams. The nightmarish shapes of animals thrashed on the decks, most in crude cages, or collared and secured by lines, some already on fire themselves. A smell of charring flesh mingled with the acrid stink of burning wood. He heard the thunks of axes being wielded on the other boat, shouts from the men he knew, Partas and Meuk, but not from Ralen. Where was he? He turned his head for just a moment from the heat of the flames upon his face. The fire was growing hotter. Some of the human screams ceased, then they all did. From the deck of the schooner Partas and Meuk were tossing lines over to the barque, the remaining crew scrambling to catch them, securing the lines to the sides. Then the men on the burning boat commenced throwing live animals over the side, into the black and orange water. Small pigs in crates. Goats tied to ropes. A calf. They crossed over the plank again, each bearing a thrashing goat in his arms. "Where's Ralen?" Cam shouted. Partas coughed and pointed back to the burning boat. But there was no Ralen to be seen, only flames growing hotter and higher. Fire licked the lines now, spreading fast. Sparks the size of birds flew about the vessel. "Cut the line!" someone shouted. "Wait! Ralen's not off!" Meuk cried. Cam would not have cut the line had they all wanted it. He ducked involuntarily as part of the schooner's deck collapsed, sending a fountain of sparks high into the air. Several embers landed on the barque's deck, where the crew quickly found them and put them out. Shouts to cut the line renewed. All feared that they would now catch fire themselves. "Go to hell!" Cam shouted back at them. Partas loomed at his side, growing nervous but not yet shouting either. Then they both saw the familiar large man silhouetted against the flames, running for the plank. He bore a human shape, small and pale, in his arms. The boats had shifted in the current and the plank with it, but he ran onto the bridge, using it to leap for the barque. His crewmen grabbed him as the plank slipped and, right as they pulled him onto the barque, fell. In that same moment, wielding the axe with all his muscle, Cam cleaved the first line and, running to the second, cleaved that also. Using stout poles, the crew pushed the burning hulk of the derelict away. Men hauled up pails of water to chase down embers and every trace of smoke. They would do so for hours and be on alert well into the next day. A few more animals, secured to the lines Partas and Meuk had tossed over and swimming as best they could next to the boat, were quickly hauled on board. Ralen, skin reddened by the fire and with some of his hair singed, for Cam could smell it, lowered his burden to the deck and immediately dropped to his knees beside it. He was coughing, but not yet ready to tend to himself. Cam joined him and helped brush back strands of dark hair from the face of a young Kheld woman who looked to be roughly the same age as him. The face had only a few blemishes, but the body, naked and thin, showed bruises and burns, especially her hands and arms, both blistered to hell. His stomach wrenched, however, when he saw that one leg was even worse, the slender ankle and foot black and bubbling with blood. A blackened metal shackle was bolted to her ankle, the severed rope to which it had been attached still smoking. She wasn't quite conscious, all twitching and whimpering. "Hells, Ralen," Cam said. He looked up horrified into the Staubaun man's intent, purposeful eyes. "Take her to our cabin, Cam. We'll do for her best we can." He broke out coughing again. Partas handed Ralen a cup of water, which the leader drank gratefully. The men, who had come over, looked at the girl and shook their heads, both at her wounds and the sight itself. "Damn slavers," one muttered. With the help of One-Handed Brasco, Cam gathered up the girl, who weighed hardly anything, and carried her to the cabin. It had but the one bed and they laid her on it. Cam lit the lamps and saw at once that she needed more help than he could give. Some of the burns weren't too bad, except those on her arms, which were bad enough, all blisters and swelling—but the leg was a nightmare. Red flesh exposed by the char bled and wept about the ugly metal shackle. The only good thing proved to be that the burn was less than it looked at first glance, mostly the top of the foot and only part up the leg. He found a sheet and covered her torso and thighs, concealing her nakedness. His handling, gentle as it was, stirred her and she wailed and contracted her limbs in pain. "It's all right now," he said. "You're on our boat." At the sound of his voice speaking Khelda to her, the girl ceased to struggle and stared at him as if she could hardly believe it. "You're Kheld," she whispered. He nodded. "I'm Cam. What's your name?" "Tegwyna." He smiled. Tegwyna meant 'little pretty one'. "Well, you're safe now, Tegwyna. We'll treat you good, see. Get you to a healer." "Maegda . . . Angharid, where are they?" There had been others? If so, they had burned to death on the schooner. No other people had been taken from it. Cam found he could not tell her that. "I don't rightly know. I'll find out. But you have to rest." "Hurts . . . hurts so much." She stiffened and fought him, and it was all he could do to keep her from clawing at her ankle. He knew where Ralen kept the elfshod—used when men were bad hurt, or had a tooth gone whole rotten that needed pulling. Ralen kept the potion in the cabin locker, away from the men who might use it up in place of spirits. Ralen had even taught him how to measure a dose that would put a body to sleep but not stop breath. He fetched it quick and, cradling Tegwyna's head, poured the infusion to her lips so she could sip it. "This will help you. Do you good." She downed what she could and turned her face to his shoulder while he cradled her awkwardly. Her tears soaked through his shirt. "So bad. It=s been so bad . . . the bad man . . . suck for water . . . suck forever. We scream and no one comes. They won't stop screaming." "Ssshhhh." Keeping his hand on her matted brown hair, he tried to calm her. He put the bottle on the table and replaced the stopper before stuffing it in his pocket, where it would be safe from falling. One never knew if a boat would rock on the river. All it took was a half-sunk log or a sudden change in the current. "Saw them . . . on fire. Shining dancing girls . . ." Her big blue eyes filled with horror and he could see her slipping from him. "Take us . . . to the High-Hole." Cam knew where she meant. Neuberland Khelds called Dazunor-Rannuli the High Hole, short for High Holy, after one of the names they had learned upon first encountering the Rill town. He heard the wood door creak open and turned to see Ralen. The Staubaun had smudges on every part of him, and burns on his boots and leggings. Cam didn't doubt for a minute the man had gone through fire to pull Tegwyna from the schooner's burning cabin. "Her name's Tegwyna," he said as Ralen came to kneel by the bed beside him. "I gave her something." Tegwyna's gaze fluttered open and fixed on Ralen. Her eyes widened then and her mouth moved in terror. "Ay! A Lord . . . no, Mother, oh no . . . Angharid! Angharid! Help us!" Cam bent over her again, placing his body between her and that of Ralen, who quietly moved to the other side of the room and the bench under the cabin's sole window, where he would be out of the girl's line of sight. There he waited and watched Cam calm the girl until she again seemed to fall into slumber. "I think she'll sleep now," Cam said, coming to join him. He kept his voice low. "Guess she doesn't like Staubauns." Ralen grimaced wryly. "What about you?" Cam asked, checking over the big man's hands, his face, the exposed parts of his body. Seeing burns, he reached into the nearby locker for a jar of salve and began applying the soothing ointment to Ralen's hands. "How could you run right into that?" "I heard the girl's screams. Can't just let a soul die that way without trying to get them out of it." He winced at Cam's touch on the tender knuckles of his left hand, where the skin was tight and red. After another glance to see that Tegwyna was asleep for certain, he leaned forward and said, still in a low voice. "There were three of them. Three girls tied in the cabin. Two were already burning. She wasn't. Smart little thing tore her clothes off. Clothes catch fire faster than skin. I couldn't help the others. I used my dagger to cut the rope and was able to pull her away. Just before the floor gave way." "Bastards! Someone just left them there. Them and the animals." "The damn crew jumped even before we boarded. We turned the boat around after, hoisted some sail, went back to see if we could find them. We hauled one man out of the water. The slaver." Alarmed, Cam looked to the girl, then back to him. "Does he know she's here?" Ralen nodded. "He asked what we'd salvaged, I told him. He's half-drowned himself, cursing his crew." "Not half as much as I'm cursing him about now." Cam felt nothing but disgust at the idea of sharing the boat with such a creature. Khelds abhorred Staubaun slavers, a breed that preyed upon their kind for the lowest purposes. "He was going to sell the girls in Dazunor-Rannuli." "What he does on the river is not my business. Neither is it yours," Ralen reminded him, his eyes river-cold. Seeing Cam's hurt, he relented. "But I won't allow suffering. We'll see the girl to a healer. There's a stiff west wind tonight. We'll make Konop by morning." Doing so would set them at least a day back from their arrival at Merath but the pirate was willing to do it to help the girl, a poor thing toward whom he had no obligation at all. Cam weakly returned the smile, grateful for Ralen's kindness. If kindness it was, with the slaver also on board. "Then that's the second best thing of the day," he said. "Is it? What is first?" "Seeing you come out of that fire." * * * * Eubuleus the slaver was a prosperous trader along the Upper Dazun. His three-mast schooner had plied the larger ports of the Gobba frontier, particularly the capital of Bayserba and the farming towns of Annech, with occasional forays to the Kyredon frontier. Although he dealt mostly in such goods as peddlers would trade in small towns, he found slaves to be lucrative and there were always a few in his inventory for return voyages. Dazunor-Rannuli's wealthy sybarites had endless appetites for pleasure and Neuberland had a seemingly endless supply of fresh young Khelds to suit their tastes. He found it no more wrong to snatch a few Khelds from the fields than he found it wrong to take a few fish from the river. For the most part, neither did most Staubaun traders, so he did not foresee any trouble from Ralen about his activities. All the less when he saw the youth Ralen brought to the deck for the next morning's breakfast. "Now there's a beauty," he said, breaking his bread over a pewter plate, all the while assessing Cam with calculating dark eyes. The crew all sat together, sharing from the same loaf. "Cumbuck, is he?" "Mine, not yours," Ralen reminded him, with a warning glare. "No, no, of course. But I know a man in Dazunor-Rannuli . . . well, the price would be more than you might imagine." Seeing that neither Ralen nor any of the men seemed interested in his dangling offer, Eubuleus brought up a more important issue needing discussion. "Of course, the real thing I need is to be taken to a more populous location, a reasonable town. Merath, perhaps, or even Dazunor-Rannuli if you would be going so far." Ralen gazed at him calmly. "Do we look like a passenger vessel? We don't have room. I want my cabin back." He hadn't liked sleeping on the floor. "We don't need room. Just a spot on the deck, the smallest of spots to be sure. I'll sell the beasts in Konop, give you good gold for the passage. There are plenty of boats up and down the river, of course, but not many stop here, you see." The town, a trade port for provincial farmers, lined the river bank prettily. A few barges but not much else crowded the wharf. "I need to get down river before people find the burned remains of my boat and start thinking I am dead." He licked his lips nervously, drawing attention to their fullness. "Sell the girl in Konop, too, and I might think about it." "With fresh burns? All weeping and pain? I'll get nothing for her there." Eubuleus looked offended. "In the big cities, there's a market for pretty cunts like her, even the way she is. I could clear some profit, at least. She's a cumslut, of course, and would do better in a large city where she could find work. Konop hasn't so much as a slophouse." Cam stared at the man, his stomach turning. He had seen enough of the North's big Staubaun cities by now to know the market of which Eubuleus spoke: beggars, many grotesquely mutilated, working for cruel masters, and crippled whores pandering to the lowest tastes of a population sunk in decadence. And he had heard of slophouses, female versions of the sucking Fence. If pretty Tegwyna was a cumslut, he looked upon the monster who had made her that way. Eubuleus was no better than Penargos, and he was way worse than Ralen. "Make him leave her in Konop," he urged to Ralen. "Better yet, have someone to take her across the river." Ralen frowned at his having spoken out. The slaver merely smirked. "They stick together, don't they?" Eubuleus observed. "Never to be trusted." He shrugged when he again did not provoke a response. "You know I'm right about the slophouse. The town's too small to have one." Cam was with Tegwyna when the slaver came for her. He had spent an hour washing her best he could, especially her long hair. Combing out the tangles had taken the longest part and he thought there might just be as much hair on the floor as on her head, for he had cut it as well to get rid of some of the worst of it. She had smiled when he told her he thought she looked pretty, but it was only the truth. She had a sweet face, just like his sisters and other young Khelds he had known, with pale freckles across the nose, and a generous mouth that looked like it would rather laugh than frown. His heart had lurched for her. He knew why when Eubuleus walked in. He watched her eyes grow wide with horror, her realization that her captivity, which she had thought over, was not. By then, he knew that she and her friends had been snatched by Eubuleus' men, all three at once, while washing clothes at the river. The girls had been spared rape only because they were virgins and virgin girls were highly prized by Dazunor-Rannuli's jaded aristocracy. Eubuleus himself had boasted of how he had fuck-tamed each pretty girl orally, forcing them to suck plenty of Staubaun cock, ensuring that they would willingly accommodate their new masters when he sold them in Dazunor-Rannuli. "For what more can a Lord ask than a sweet dark-haired girl hungry for his juices, who cries out with joy as he pierces her virgin flower?" The healer in Konop was an Aletris of the Stol Dorma and did not want to treat a Kheld slave, even a clean one. In the end, however, the slaver, who had rescued his gold if not his goods by floating the chest on a nest of planks until he was rescued, paid the woman enough coin to sway her sensibilities. It took a smith from the town an hour to saw off the hasp of the manacle so that it could be pried open from around the swollen, oozing flesh of Tegwyna's ankle. Debriding the girl's burns, the healer wrapped the ankle and foot with gauze soaked in the juice of the curu plant, which she said would cool the tissue and prompt it to heal. She applied a salve of the same plant to the burns on Tegwyna's hands, which the girl had used to try to put out the flames on her leg. She then sold the slaver elfshod and bandages, along with a potion to help the poor girl sleep. "She watched her friends burn alive. You imagine the nightmares," the unhappy healer snapped at the protesting man. Once back on the barque, Tegwyna slept. The slaver had hobbled her again, this time by tying her good ankle securely to the one end of the bed and one of her wrists to the other. That Ralen had sturdy hardware in place for just such measures reminded Cam that he belonged after all to a man who sometimes trafficked in humans. When the slaver went back with his livestock into town, Cam checked on the girl from time to time. To his dismay, Tegwyna only cried and barely wanted to talk with him. "You're just a slave, too," she whispered, shaking her head so that her dark brown hair moved like shining water to obscure her face. She had not even asked if her conclusion were true. He raged and snarled against the rest of the crew when they said the most harmless things to him after, until by afternoon they left him alone. The slaver returned, his goods gone. He gave a portion of his meager proceeds to the crew for having saved the beasts and also for having erected a tarp and privacy screen of planks upon a portion of the deck. Ralen conceded that the girl could not be sold in Konop and agreed to let the slaver transport her on his boat as far as Merath. Cam hated that decision. He hated that Staubauns would refuse to care for a poor burned girl just because she was Kheld and a slave, and he hated Eubuleus' too frequent looks in his direction, looks that weighed his value and what it might cost to get him. The slaver and the girl were moved out of Ralen's cabin and onto the deck, and that night at least Ralen and Cam got a good night's sleep. A Cumbuck's Tale Ch. 05 Late the next day when the sun had just begun to sink into the western trees, an hour when Ralen and the crew gathered atop near the wheel and played at wands, Cam saw the slaver lift the unresisting Kheld girl in his arms and carry her across the deck, then down into the aft cabin, the very one he shared with Ralen. He liked it even less when the slaver closed the door behind him and did not come back out right away. Leaving the game, he crossed the deck, not knowing what he meant to do. Not, that is, until he heard Tegwyna's muffled cry of pain. He ran in without thinking twice only to stop cold at what he saw. Tegwyna was on the bed, both her legs around Eubuleus' fat hips, her thin smock open in the front and bunched up about her waist. Tegwyna's bandaged foot, the wrappings spotted with seeping fluids and blood, moved up and down in time to Eubuleus' buttocks as the slaver's cock, pale and thick, as big around as slender Tegwyna's arm, plunged greedily into her unresisting body. "You fucking Staubaun pig!" he yelled. Picking up the nearest thing he could, a wooden chair, he hoisted it high. "Get off of her!" "Go away, cumbuck," Eubuleus growled, though he stopped thrusting. "No!" Cam lifted the chair higher, to show he would hit him with it. The only reason he did not was that he would in all likelihood hit Tegwyna's injured leg as well. "Now get off her. Worth so gods damned much as a virgin, is she? You gods' damned fucking lying pervert pig—" He never expected the Staubaun to move so fast, until the man swung at him. Though Cam swung the chair, all it hit was the man's outstretched arm, eliciting an outraged roar. The barque was not so large a boat the confrontation had gone unheard. Ralen was first in the room and others came after. Between them, they pulled the fighters apart. Eubuleus cradled an injured arm and Cam sported a bloodied lip from the punch the man had landed after the chair broke, and they continued to hurl insults and spit at each other, but they were separated. Through all of it, Tegwyna never even moved, just lay silently on the bed with her legs spread like a whore's, covered in her virgin's blood and Eubuleus' slime. "The bitch is mine!" the slaver railed. "Your little cumhole's got no business—" "She's fucking burned, you Staubaun asshole—or don't it matter to you that she's in fucking pain—" Cam stopped only when he felt Ralen's heavy hand on his neck. "Out," the big man said. "But Ralen—" Cam protested. "Out. Both of you." Ralen gave Cam a shove to the door. "She stays in here." They left the girl within, with One-Handed Brasco to keep an eye on her. He had both of those and they were sharp enough. Once everyone was outside, the other men released Eubuleus, who took the opportunity to restore somewhat his dignity by hiking up his trousers. Ralen walked up to Eubuleus and stood over him like a great golden bear, forcing the man to look up to meet his gaze. Not all Staubauns were the same height, and Ralen was both taller and of bigger build. "I told you, slaver," he said, emphasizing the politeness in a way that rendered it menacing, "no fucking on my boat. No fucking the cumbuck, no fucking the girl. Not you, not the men. No one fucks on the water. You knew it and you had to go do it. Now you know why." The slaver's eyes darted, seeking disagreement among the men and finding none. It had been one of Ralen's rules for the dozen years some had known him. All of them had abided by it, including Ralen himself. Eubuleus had lived on the river long enough to know their type, rough men having to live in close quarters, each ready to kill the other over something one had that the other wanted. And Ralen himself was a scoundrel and a killer, about as dangerous a rogue as could be found along the Dazun. "She needed it. She was starting to mewl like a cat. Couldn't have that, now, could I?" he complained. "I'll cum in a cup, you too, and you give her that. But no fucking the girl." He saw that Ralen was unrelenting. "It won't happen again. I'll get her off the bed." "She stays. That way I can be damn sure it doesn't. Tomorrow we reach Lygge. You—and your girl—get off there." "I paid you good gold for passage to Merath!" "You'll get it all back. I want you off." Disgruntled, the slaver had no choice. He walked away, unhappy, the costly yellow robe he had bought in Konops sweeping the deck and teased by the wind. The men, shaking their heads yet again, dispersed again to the aft deck to resume their game. Grabbing Cam's arm, Ralen led him to the bow, where he sat him down upon the grappling coils. The setting sun was at their backs, throwing out long shadows. "The girl belongs to him, Cam." "You know it's wrong, Ralen." "Do I?" "We got to take her away from him. It'd be easy for us." "Yes, it would. We outnumber him, don't we? It's what—seven of us and one of him? But I can't do it." He frowned and looked heavily down the length of the barque, with its wide wooden deck empty for now of cargo. "Think what it would mean if I did, if I took Eubuleus' slave—any man's slave—and word got around. It would mean any man could come along, and take you, and say I get what I hand out." "But she doesn't want to be his slave!" "Do you want to be mine?" Cam looked at him, hard. When he opened his mouth to speak, he was thinking again. "No. That was decided for me." Ralen nodded, and sighed, and would not meet his eyes. After a time, he said. "I'm not a slave owner. Never have been. You were the first." To the surprised stare Cam shot him, he nodded again. He hunkered down beside the youth. "Do you think I kept every boy I ever gave to Penargos? No. Not one. A few I sold, because they had sold themselves to me first. The others, I let go, told them they were free to do what they wanted about it. It's bad being a cumbuck, but it's not a death sentence." "But you kept me? Instead of letting me go? Why?" Cam felt that knowledge work like a needle in his heart. The others had been set free after . . . had returned home. He remembered his family, his former life, a time so far away after only ten months that it seemed like a dream. Ralen's eyes hardened again, his lips slid into a look Cam knew well. "Because I wanted to." When had Ralen known? During the rape? After? Stunned by that revelation, Cam did not even know what his own feelings toward this man might be. They had become tangled again, haunted by that night. "You're perfect for me, Cam. Perfect for my life and perfect for my bed. When Penargos had finished with what he wanted, I knew what I wanted. I wanted you." "You bastard—" "I thought I could protect you, Cam. I . . . I didn't want you to suffer more than you already had." "Protect me? How? By shoving your cock up my ass?" Cam couldn't look at him. In Ralen's silence he heard an answer he could not bear. The force of Ralen's desire stunned and also strangely thrilled him. Like an earthquake or a Dazun flood, it had come upon him without warning and altered his life beyond measure. That one man's lust should have changed his life seemed at once impossible and inevitable, because he could no longer imagine it otherwise. "That girl Tegwyna," he said, finding it difficult to say anything but easiest to say that, "Eubuleus doesn't want to protect her. He wants to sell her, maybe. Or fuck her the same way he would fuck me, or any Kheld, because we're handy and don't matter. He doesn't see her as a person at all." With a short, bitter smile, Ralen touched Cam's face, stroked his fingers over the soft growth of beard lining his jaw. "I won't take her away from him, rabbit. Because I would never let anyone take you away from me. You've stolen my heart, boy. But I won't help the damn slaver any further. Tomorrow morning, I put them both off at Lygge." He rose and walked away, his shadow preceding him across the sunset-painted deck. * * * * Cam thought hard about what to do before he did it. He knew the Upper Dazun well enough by now, and recalled all that he knew about what it held before reaching Lygge. He took the last watch and in his walking the deck he made sure to give his watch-mate, old One-Handed Brasco, a bottle of Ralen's best brandy. A perk, he said, for keeping Tegwyna safe. The kind-hearted man smiled and, having a weakness for spirits, did the bottle proud. While he was doing so, Cam every quarter hour drew in another foot of line attached to the four person ketch the barque dragged behind like an afterthought. Soon it was barely trailing the boat at all. At the very end of his watch, he stepped around the drunken Brasco and entered the cabin. Ralen was sleeping soundly on the floor and Cam stepped surely around him to kneel beside the bed. With Brasco's dagger, he sliced through the rope leashing Tegwyna, leaving only the length the slaver had knotted in a makeshift collar about her neck. He had no time to worry about that. The girl's eyes fluttered open once or twice, but Ralen liked his sleep and had given her a strong dose of the elfshod. Tegwyna neither fought nor welcomed him as Cam scooped her up in his arms. "She needs to pee," he said to Ralen when the big man stirred. The Staubaun grunted in his sleep and rolled over, neither caring nor seeing which door he heard open or close. The sides of the unladen barque stood a few feet above the water, but Cam pulled the boat easily alongside and lowered Tegwyna into it without making more than a usual amount of noise, then climbed down himself. Pushing off with an oar, he soon was rowing toward the Amallar bank. By the time they noticed him—and Tegwyna—gone, he would be well away. * * * * Rowing was hard work and Tegwyna lolled weak as a kitten against the prow seat, so there wasn't much talk. Not that Cam's heart would have been in it. His heart was in turmoil. Leaving Ralen felt completely wrong. Had he really stolen the bandit's heart? His own felt torn in half at what he was doing. As angry as he truly was at having his life stolen from him because of one man's lust, he also knew he felt more truly alive now than he had ever felt in Omadawn. He didn't know what the hell he wanted to do. But that was his problem, not Tegwyna's--and he knew exactly what he wanted to do about her. He couldn't let Eubuleus get off the barque in Lygge with this girl as his slave. The Staubaun bastard would rape her again, almost for certain, and then he'd sell her to other men who would rape her. Maybe take her to a man who would cut off her burned foot or hands so he could sell her to a beggar gang. A pretty, maimed young woman might do well enough for such a lot, but her life would be unimaginable. He doubted Tegwyna would survive it. There was a Kheld town on the Amallar side, as was often the case cross river from any Staubaun port. This one was inhabited primarily by several families of Darms, a Kheld clan and a hard-working lot. Oily yellow lanterns topped a couple of shacks, serving as makeshift port lights should any vessel have reason to approach the sorry wharf by night. A fisherman up early on the piers directed Cam to the town's healer, Anrheddu Mab, who had studied under a woman who had trained at Argoellin glade. The old woman, her black hair striped with wide white streaks that framed her face with light, looked over Tegwyna's wounds. "Can she stay here with you, Mother?" Cam asked as politely as he remembered. He had not been near a proper Kheld matron since leaving home, and his own language sounded strange off his tongue. "I took her off a slaver, see, and I got to leave her somewhere. She's in an awful bad way, but he'll do her worse. Can you hide her?" "We will hide the poor child, should any come to seek her. You did well to bring her here. Slavers know better than to come into our towns," old Mab said. Her lined face smiled tenderly upon him. "The burns were treated skillfully, and I believe they will heal though she be left lame. As for the other, she will find it hard to bear at times, but we have had our young women thus afflicted before. Our women bear their burdens and we have half-Staubaun lads enough from whom she might find ease. The young men the Staubauns take have it harder." Her round bird-like eyes lingered on his. Cam nodded. He reckoned it true. A woman craving a man was a matter Khelds understood. They could help Tegwyna here in this sleepy river town, but they couldn't help him. Among his own people, he would be despised, looked down on as a Staubaun-sucking wog, lower than the bottom of a beggar's shoe. Khelds didn't approve of men being with men that way, whatever the reason for it. * * * * When the crew noted that the ketch was gone and raised the alarm, Ralen's first thought upon waking and seeing the girl gone was that Eubuleus had taken off in the night. But when he reached the deck, there was the yellow-garbed slaver beside the rail, demanding the girl and screaming about his property being stolen. And there, too, was drunken Brasco being held ass-bare at the side while his mates tossed a pail of cold river water over his head. He knew then that he would not find Cam anywhere on the boat, and neither would he find the slaver's useless girl. "He took the cunt. They hang together, that kind—always do—once a Kheld, always a Kheld. Thieving little cum-drinker! He stole her!" The veins on the side of the slaver's neck bulged. The sun was not yet up, allowing them to see the port lights of Lygge in the distance. The city, second largest in Merrydn after Merath, attracted heavy river traffic. There being nothing else to do, not knowing where the boy would have made land, they continued to the town. They could launch a search from there. Eubuleus, presenting himself as grievously wronged and pointing out that he no longer had the slave girl with him, demanded passage when they continued to Merath, and Ralen, knowing his slave boy to have committed the wrong, agreed. He had never considered that Cam would leave him. He needs to suck cum, the little Kheld bastard. We're four days out and he's feeling it hard. Did he have it so bad, here with me? Ralen stared out at the brightening water, torn between anger and loss. "Without the ketch, we can't go ashore," Partas grumbled at the inconvenience. "I'll flag the port masters and see if they have a berth for the boat." There probably would be something available, but he resented having to pay the fee. They dropped anchor outside the port and waited. Signals were slow work and it might take some time before Partas got his answer. Brasco huddled on the deck, his shirt wet in the morning cool, cradling his head in his one hand and occasionally groaning. He had downed a whole leg of Kheld brandy and had to be suffering for it. Ralen was still silently cursing his changed personal situation when Meuk wandered over to his brooding leader. "That looks like our ketch," he said, pointing out on the water. Ralen leaped to his feet and ran to the opposite side of the barque, squinting through the haze into the first rays of the sun. "He's coming back. He knew where he'd find us." Pulling out his spyglass, he angled for a better look. "Cam's alone. He ditched the girl." He continued to watch the boy, still a miniature but now identifiable. "Prob'ly on the Amallar side. Jarla." Meuk named the town. Ralen nodded. Through the eyeglass, he continued to watch the strong young back clad in the blue and brown jacket Ralen had given him but a few weeks before, the steady confident rhythm of the youth's oar strokes lifting and cutting decisively into the water. Other men, alerted by their leader's preoccupation, came over to look. Partas abandoned his flags and laughed. "Pay up! That's what you get, wagering against an honest lad." He hadn't cared about the damn slave girl, but had not believed for a moment that Cam would steal the ketch. The slaver, too, came over, though he merely glared with disapproval. When Cam was within a few yards of the barque and angling so that the men could throw him a line, Eubuleus turned to Ralen. "Make him give back the girl," he demanded. Meuk spat into the river in scorn. "Fat swallow. The little bitch is with folk now won't give her up. He's seen to that. Khelds don't hold with slavers." "Then give me the boy," Eubuleus proposed. One of the men, shouting, tossed Cam a line and seconds later the ketch bumped against the solid planking of the stern. The slaver met Ralen's affronted glare. "He stole my property, which makes him a slave and a thief. Slave-stealing is a crime in Lygge. He's nothing but trouble to you. Just give me the boy and we're even." He all but licked his lips at the prospect. The lad was worth twelve of the girl he had just lost. Ralen turned on him, foregoing the pleasure of watching Cam climb back onto the barque. Climb back into his life, whole and willing. "Damn you, no. You lost a slave, you get her price. That's it." "That slave's a thief!" The smuggler snorted. "We're all thieves on this boat. You included. You stole that cunt in the first place, didn't you? She wasn't born a slave, you made her one. But you won't make one of Cam. Or haven't you got it in your head yet he's a freeman?" "Him? A fucking cumbuck?" "Cumbucks get fucked, slave or free. But a slave can be bought and sold, right? Well, he can't be bought because no one is going to sell him. I'm not about to do it and no other man is going to get the chance, so he's no more a slave than any man here." Ralen dismissed the gaping slaver and walked over to the side where Partas had just lent his hand to help Cam climb back into the boat. Ralen grabbed the youth by the arm and coldly met his questioning look. "I did what I had to, Ralen," the Kheld youth said through cold-stiffened lips. He had been out on the water for hours, likely, rowing to get back. "Smart move, coming back," Ralen said. He allowed a thin smile. "I would have had a hell of a time finding you if you hadn't." Cam's blue eyes widened as he realized Ralen's meaning. The smuggler would have spared nothing to track him down. He knew he was in for it. "Go to the cabin," he said, shoving the boy in that direction, past the slaver. "We need the damn ketch." * * * * They sent messages on two boats due to leave up river from Lygge, then set out again into the river. Eubuleus remained on board, without a word of disapproval from Ralen. He wanted the slaver on board. "He's trouble," Ralen said to Partas, who nodded. Both foresaw Eubuleus reporting his grievances to local authorities as soon as they berthed at Merath. Even if Merathi officials were not disposed to pursue the matter of the man's stolen slave, Eubuleus could make other claims equally as bothersome. "Get rid of him at Fogall." The river at the Cut was deep. A bound man in a sack filled with stones might wash up a year later, by which time it would not matter. But though he saw Eubuleus killed and dropped over the side to silently disappear beneath the surface of the Dazun, Ralen bore no hard feelings toward the slave whose rash acts had prompted the deed. Cam's actions had sprung from truer foundations than Ralen himself possessed and far from scorning the boy for his conviction, the smuggler felt his love grow deeper. He could not own Cam because it was his deepest belief that the lesser man cannot own the better. But he could hold that man and he could degrade him, and he could find himself within that mirror. So it was that he did not punish Cam overtly, but simply withheld the one thing Cam most needed from him. As they neared Merath, he felt the boy's hot eyes upon him, detected the taut look of desire, the hint of softness about that proud young mouth. He smelled it in the cabin after the boy had retreated there to relieve his own need in private. He knew it by the way Cam, otherwise so given to solitude, stayed always near him. A Cumbuck's Tale Ch. 05 That's right, cumbuck. Remember what you are and why you need me—because tonight I'm going to remind you . . . and good. A Cumbuck's Tale Ch. 06 A Cumbuck's Tale, Ch. 06 Please be forewarned that in addition to heavy male/male erotic content, this chapter has scenes of nonconsenusual sex. Chapter 6 – Everything Changes They docked at Merath as night fell, throwing lines about the pilings and pulling the barque snug to the dock. After securing the boat, the men scattered with Ralen's blessing into the city. High on the hill, the iridescent blue towers of the Crescent Palace of the city's Highborn princes, the Merrydeons, illuminated the night. Cam's heart never failed to swell with awe at the sight, the building was that high and beautiful. But ethereal beauty did nothing to ease his restless burning or release his mind from the sexual images that fueled his waking dreams. The taste and smell of men . . . the weight of cock upon his tongue, the girth filling his ass . . . his craving seared him to the soul. When he felt Ralen steal up behind him, heard the big Staubaun's solid tread and glimpsed his shadow cast by a nearby lantern, he turned to him without even trying to hide the desperate need that consumed him. "Ralen," he whispered. The big man's lips found his and Cam gave himself heatedly to that kiss, gasping as Ralen's tongue slid forcefully into his open mouth, playing there for a long minute before retreating. The large hand brushed his face. "You really need it now, don't you, cumbuck?" "You know I do. I need you so much. I know you're angry with me, Ralen, but I—" "I should have given you my cock to suck a day ago, I know. You're a hungry little rabbit now. You'll suck any cock, won't you?" "What are you talking about? No, not just any. Ralen, don't—" Those dark eyes locked on his. "Let's find out, rabbit. Let's find some cock for you to suck." The Staubaun took hold of Cam's arm, and Cam flinched, his stomach turning over with dread as the other man dragged him up the plank and onto the dock. The night air, chill and crisp, smelled of wood fires from nearby boats and taverns. Once on solid planking, Cam pulled free. "No, I won't suck some stranger! Not that. I'm not a whore." "Are you sure?" Cam stepped back. "I won't do that." Nervously, he looked to the docks. Merath was too busy a port for there not to be people about, prowling the dimly lit piers and the shadows between warehouses. He already knew better than to wander such places alone at night. Always before, he had been with Ralen and even then it had been after or between his cravings. Never when he was like this, in the full grip of his obscene need. Not like now, when his limbs trembled with the jitters. "Aw, hells, Ralen," he pleaded. "You want it, too. You know you do. As much as I do, right? Just let me, why don't you?" Why was the Staubaun doing this to him? In punishment for all the trouble over Tegwyna? He had heard the struggle the evening before, heard the splash of something heavy tossed over the side. Partas had told him it was Eubuleus. He had not seen the slaver since then and knew better than to ask. What might Ralen want in turn for taking a man's life? "You heard me, didn't you?" Ralen said softly. "You're not my slave anymore. Maybe I just like fucking slaves." "You want a slave? I'll be a slave." He would say anything. Right now, he even meant it. "You want to please me?" Ralen touched his hair, beside his mouth. "Yes." Cam pressed his cheek against that hand and closed his eyes. Unable to look upon that unreadable face, he opened his mouth to kiss those fingers, suck them as Ralen slipped them one by one into his mouth. Please, just let me suck your cock . . . let me drink your cum . . . that's all I need. "Anything. Just let me please you." "You'll please me—by sucking any cock I put in front of you." He barely registered that Ralen drew him along the pier, to the wharf where hulking warehouses stood like gape-mouthed giants and rat-like men scurried among shadows cast by yellow lamps. Cam kept his eyes down, aware of steps slowing as they passed, of men looking at him as Ralen ushered him along. He knew why they stared. He was young, half-clothed, good-looking . . . and in need. They saw the fine sheen of perspiration on his skin, the hungry look in his eyes, the way he breathed hard because he was fighting the jitters. Ralen, please . . . The Staubaun pulled him into the shadow of some crates stacked high alongside one of the warehouses. From it, they looked past several doorways and into a nearby alleyway. Two of the doorways were already inhabited by furtive figures that stepped out whenever a taller, Staubaun-looking man walked past, then slipped back into the shadows when the man showed no interest. Cam watched even though he did not really want to. One of the figures got a passerby to stop and step into the shadow, then knelt down before him. He saw the Kheld=s face sharply in the light: dark-haired, clean-shaved, still young, open mouth greedily working on a long, pale Staubaun prick. He could almost taste the hot flavor of cock, the surging vessels under the skin, the salty, pungent release . . . Then it was done, the Staubaun simply tucking himself back in and moving on, the Kheld licking his lips and fingers lest he miss an errant drop. Cam turned his face away. As he did, he looked into the alleyway and saw a tall man standing not far away, fingering a big exposed cock, staring at him. No, Ralen, not this . . . not us! The man walked forward, his dark cloak billowing with each stride. Cam flinched when Ralen's hand on him tightened. "Go away," Ralen said when the man stopped only steps away from him. He pushed just enough of his cloak aside to show the leather-wrapped hilt of a soldier's sword. "I found him first." Cam breathed a sigh of relief. But the man's eyes, undaunted, continued to bore into his, drinking of the hunger looking back. "You're just watching," he said. He had Staubaun eyes: dark, arrogant and unyielding. Ralen shrugged. "I want him to see what he's in for." The man's eyes glowed. "Caught yourself a new one, is he? You did good." Never taking his gaze from Cam, he bowed to Ralen and backed away. Bending near Cam's ear, Ralen whispered, "He's only the first, rabbit. He could see you are hungry. I sent him away because I disliked his demeanor." "Don't make me—" "I won't have to make you, rabbit. You want it. I'm here to protect you. You'll choose the man. I see a few coming. Would you like a nice, fat merchant? The one in the blue coat looks harmless enough. And his seed would ease you, taste like heaven on your tongue." "Please, Ralen, don't—" "Shall I get him for you, rabbit? Or make you get him for yourself?" He would suck the fat merchant, he knew. He would have sucked the first man. If any Staubaun man came to him and bared a ready cock, he would drop to his knees and not think twice about sucking the thing. "Get him for me, then. I'll suck him," he whispered, hardly caring anymore, squeezing his eyes tight against the pain of being so in need. "I will because I have to. But it's only because I can't have you. It's you I want, only you." The smell of sex invaded his nostrils, filled his brain. His dick had been harder than stone for an hour and his balls hurt like all hells. He needed to suck cock now more than he had ever needed a drink of water, his body so craving the act that he could no more resist it than he could resist drawing breath or an exhausted swimmer resist being carried downstream. He staggered when Ralen pulled him roughly forward, hard against his much taller body as the big man moved deep into the shadows the crates provided and stood with his back to the brick building. He pushed Cam to his knees on the hard gravel. The pebbles bit into his knees. "Then show me, cumbuck," Ralen growled. "Show me how much you want it." He pulled his cloak about them both, obscuring further what they did. Cam needed no more urging than that to fumble desperately with Ralen's trouser lacings, releasing the Staubaun man's swollen cock. The eager organ sprung forth, slapping his cheek, already dripping with juices that he lapped and sucked at with such abandon as to suggest he had no skill at all. He cared nothing for pleasure. It took a minute of such mad feasting before the first effects of Ralen's pre-cum reached his brain and some part of him remembered that Ralen's pleasure would lead to his ease. He began to administer to the big, throbbing cock in earnest then, using every skill he knew that might bring Ralen to orgasm quickly. Grasping the hard shaft in his hand, he angled his throat so that he could take him deeply, sucking the sweet smooth glans hungrily until he felt the first thickening of the cum veins within, then sliding that cock deep into his throat, taking all he could. "That's it, rabbit," Ralen urged, his hand holding Cam's head beneath the heavy wool of the cloak that concealed their activity, "Just like that—" Cam pulled back just to the plump juicy glans, swirling his tongue expertly over the head, then swallowed him again in one long stroke, using his throat and mouth to draw on the bunching organ. He only peripherally took note of Ralen's gasps, his grunts of pleasure, as the big man gave three barely controlled thrusts, groaning audibly as his cock released its pure streams. Cam resumed his sucking then, pulling his head back so that he had the end in his lips, his tongue lapping happily and hungrily over the still spurting glans, tasting the treasure even as he swallowed. As he drank from the well, his body eased, his need abating even as he sucked. Never had Staubaun cum tasted so good or so sweet. Ralen, thank you . . . you bastard . . . I needed you so . . . When he finished, tongue laving the softening head as it retreated from him, he buried his cheek against the musky heat of his lover's curl-thick groin, inhaling his scent and delicately licking his round firm balls in thanks. The cloak withdrew, letting light in again and air, letting him remember that the world contained more than Ralen. Crates loomed to his left, a brick building to his right. Looking up, he met his lover's smiling dark eyes. "I hate you," he said. No man hearing those words would have believed them. Ralen grinned. "No, you don't. You want to hate me, but you don't have it in you." "Damn you anyway." Somewhat sated, Cam looked around at the wharf, felt the pebbles now painful beneath his knees. He had not expected to leave the boat and was wearing only loose cotton slacks and deck shoes. He pushed to his feet, well aware of what any man watching was thinking. Just the truth. "You doubted too quickly. I told you I don't share," Ralen said. He flung his great cloak about the youth and pulled him close as they walked back toward the boat. Cam knew then Ralen felt he'd been punished enough. He was hungry still and the men would be away for hours yet. He didn't doubt for even a moment that Ralen intended to see that by morning he would be too well-fucked and too exhausted to stir from the cabin. * * * * Cam woke from a hard sleep the night Staubaun soldiers took Rahn Rock. Ralen's band had been three weeks back from Merath, preparing to make another run to Gobba. As the alarms clanged and were then cut short, Ralen ordered him to stay in the high room and then ran out himself, grabbing his sword and leaving Cam half-dressed. Scrounging, the Kheld found his small sword and stood watching the door in terror, waiting for Ralen to return. He first noticed that soldiers had made their way up the cliff when they came in from the garden. The men were Staubaun, probably mercenaries hired by Lords who knew about Ralen's arming of the Khelds. Caught by surprise, Cam swung desperately but never landed a blow. The soldier he swung at knocked the weapon from his hand. He then fought with every other means at his disposal. He kicked the first man in the balls and threw the chamber pot at the other, buying himself precious seconds. Fleeing to the door, he made his way to the inner passage and was more nimble on the stair. The dark way wound downward, to the cavern where apparently the Staubauns had not yet gone. He had just reached the dank dock when an arm wrapped around his neck and pulled him to a hard stop. "Well, ain't this lucky!" a hard voice snarled. Cam recognized Ralen's load boss, Meuk. "Got me the little cumbuck." "Meuk!" Cam croaked desperately, just before the man slammed his head hard against the stone wall. Cam's legs collapsed beneath him and he dropped heavily to the wet stone floor. Then he felt only movement, his body being shifted, carried . . . dumped. The familiar sensation of being on water. His head hurt so badly he was sure he would vomit, even wanted to vomit, except that he couldn't. It was all he could do to gasp air into his lungs, turn his face out of the water that gathered in the bottom of the wooden boat. He couldn't say when he knew for sure that he was in a boat. The possibility had occurred to him at various points throughout his misery, as he drifted toward consciousness, then slipped again into haze. He heard screams and sounds of fighting, then nothing. As his consciousness returned, his ears picked up the sound of water slapping wood and owls screeching somewhere far away. From time to time he heard Meuk muttering to himself above the measured dip and pull of a paddle. From that and the feel of the boat, he knew that they were traveling with the current, headed down river. He forced his eyes open and, turning his head, saw a water-pale dawn. "Awake, boy?" Meuk asked. He was little more than a shadow when Cam lifted his head to look at him. "Where are we?" "Damn near the fork of the Geroe now. Thinking now we maybe shook 'em and they won't be coming after us." Cam tried to sit up, only to find that his hands were tied, as were his legs, bound with rope at the ankle and knee. "Hey, Meuk—" he protested, testing those bonds, panic setting in with the futile effort. "Gotta look out for myself, don't I?" the grizzled river man said, no hint of malice in his voice. "Couldn't have you yelling and letting on then, can't have you throwing yourself out of the boat now." "I won't do that. You think I want to drown? Damn figging big river. You can untie me now, damn it." By twisting his body and using his elbows, he was able to angle his torso upright—but he remained sitting on the floor of the skiff, his ass soaking in water. He gazed at Meuk in surprise when the man made no move to help him. "Sorry, lad, but I'm not stupid, see? They damn got Ralen. It's death or prison for him, and death more likely. But me, I got to live now, don't I? Me and the clothes on my back won't go far. But you, boy, are going to help me line my pocket." Cam's bowels went cold. "Don't say that, Meuk," he said. "That's cruel." "Cruel, it is. But maybe not so bad for you. You're a pretty boy, far prettier than what these wharves usually get. Lords tend to snatch your like. I'll charge enough and you won't get scum." "Aw, no, Meuk," he choked, getting sick all over again. "I can't do it. Ralen stole me, you know, and I just—" "Save it. Do I look like a man who cares? You're a fucking cumbuck, aren't you? Ralen kept you well, pumping your pretty mouth and ass as much as he did, but you're going to be doing without now. In a few days, see, you'll be hungry. Seems to me cock is going to start looking real tasty." What looked back at him through Meuk's eyes was the soul of his nightmares. The lascivious knowledge that had driven Penargos to rape him in the first place, to turn him into this . . . thing that Staubauns found so pitiful yet desirable. Knowledge of his own sensual nature, and how it had been twisted so as to make him a slave to Staubaun cocks. And the knowledge, too, driven home by Ralen at Merath, that he could not escape his condition. * * * * The first two days, Cam resisted. He refused to eat the fish Meuk caught from the river and pan fried during brief stops on shore. He refused to bathe. He refused to speak or cooperate in any way. Meuk didn't care. By the third day, Cam felt the need stirring within him, but still hoped it might die away. By the fourth day, he knew it would not, but hoped that he might hide it. He should have known that he could not. Meuk marked his restlessness, the heightened shine of his eyes, the way his tongue moved across his lips. He marked, too, how Cam's dick stood upright within trousers filthy from days of travel. He availed himself of this last, tying Cam down and washing that rigid prick before sucking off its pent-up juices while Cam, unaroused and helpless, cursed at him in every language he knew. Meuk didn't care. He was simply tasting the merchandise. He must have liked it, because he came back for more, raping Cam's ass as the cum-craving boy sobbed face down in the bottom of the waterlogged boat. The act provided no ease at all except to Meuk. They tied up the next day at Lygge. Cam had been bound hunched over in the boat for so many hours he was cramped and desperate for movement. His entire body ached for release. Filth coated his unwashed skin, he stank and he had begun to itch unbearably. In exchange for a bath and a good meal, he promised Meuk he would not make any trouble. His hunger now was desperate and undifferentiated. His starved gut craved food with the same gnawing pain with which his blood burned for the drippings of Staubaun loins. While grain cake and an apple did not substitute for semen, they did dull the clamoring in his gut. Even that much relief was now worth purchasing. Having removed his clothes for cleaning hours earlier, Meuk threw a filthy blanket over him and hauled him across the wharf toward a jumble of rough buildings. At the crude public bathhouse that served the wharves, Meuk pushed Cam forward so the burly Estol overseer might see him. "Let me clean 'im up, that's all I ask," Meuk wheedled. "Can't do it. He's a damn stinking Kheld." Like most cities on the north bank of the Dazun, Lygge forbade Khelds use of public baths. "For a little clean water and soap, I'll let you use his mouth. This one knows how to please a man." Cam shivered against the rude wood planks while the two men talked. Meuk had spent his dick before they set out but his need was not less for it. He knew he would suck any cock, even this man's, in desperation. "I don't know." "Look at him. Get you hard easy, he would." The bathman scrutinized him. Cam kept his head down, refusing to meet the man's eyes. Maybe if he looked wretched enough, or sullen, the man would send them away. But Meuk jerked back the blanket to show him off better. The bathman hesitated. "Well, he's a good-looking cock-sucker." "Young, too. Sucks Lords usually, the likes o' him." "He's fallen on hard times, if he's whoring for the likes of you." The bathman spat into the street. "I'll get you a private stall so none others'll see him. He sucks me like he means it and I'll get you some soap leavings." He led them—Cam covered by the blanket—to a curtained stall with a stone floor and gutter and a wooden water spout overhead. While Meuk went to stand against the plank wall, Cam let drop the blanket and knelt before the bathman's exposed, rapidly hardening organ. The cock was barely that. It was stubby and small, with a fat ugly head. Taking it in his mouth was better than looking at it. His tongue drew in the rubbery member and laved it with feigned interest. It felt false and wrong, a travesty of an activity he had come to enjoy, and the man's amateurish pumping kept him off his rhythm. A couple times he had to control an impulse to gag. The man did not seem to notice. He grunted with pleasure and wrapped his hands about Cam's head, holding him the better to plunge his organ deep into his helpless mouth. It became easier then, a simple matter of opening his throat and swallowing and trying to breathe around the man's pubic rolls as he crushed Cam's lips and nose hard against his groin. A Cumbuck's Tale Ch. 06 "Adequate," the man pronounced when he was done and Cam had licked clean his softened member. "Take as long as you need. But cover him again on your way out." It was late in the day, cool and shadowed. The water was ice cold. Meuk first used his knife and a bit of the soap to scrape the hair from his captive's jaw. For once Cam was glad he barely had any facial hair. Once that was done, Cam washed while Meuk watched. A slight smile turned the edges of the smuggler's lips. "Getting dick hard again, aren't ye? Too bad I can't afford you something pretty to wear. Pay more, they do, what if the boy looks better than a beggar." "So long as the next one is Staubaun, I don't care what they pay." Cam used the soap and scrubbed under his arms. All his life, he had kept good habits and he did want some Staubaun man to find him clean enough. "Ah, now, that's not right. More they pay, the better they treat ye. And the more we eat." The man chewed on a sliver he had been using to clean his teeth. "I'll watch your back, and see to it they pay." Cam turned to him. "Just one. Just enough coin so we eat. I'm not a whore." It made him sick to know he had just serviced a man so he could bathe. "That's what we'll tell 'em." * * * * Lygge was a busy port and there were Staubauns there. The gold haired merchants docked their big boats at the mercantile piers and frequented stone and timber taverns lining the waterfront. When dusk fell, Cam was glad for Meuk and even gladder for the short sword hanging from the rat-faced Estol's belt. His clothes, which Meuk had washed and air-dried, were now clean at least. There was a bite of autumn in the air and Cam shivered slightly because he did not have a cloak, but it was also true that he was better seen this way. A few men glanced at him where he huddled in the shadow of a warehouse while Meuk, standing on the dock, sized up potential contributors to their welfare. Cam would not meet their eyes. He kept his gaze averted while Meuk spoke with the man he had found. ". . . real cumbuck, he is, been fuck-tamed proper, if you know what I mean . . . good cocksucker . . . wouldn't lead you wrong, he's pretty, see . . ." Hearing footsteps approaching, he lifted his head to look into the eyes of a tall, burly man wearing a fine hat on his Staubaun gold hair. Cam could not begin to guess the man's age. Staubauns were long-lived, but he guessed the man was probably older than Ralen. The man, seeing him look up, broke into a hard cool smile. "Pretty indeed!" Both Cam and Meuk noted that the well-made breeches ballooned as the man's excitement grew. "Myself and my lads, all night for five gold rams." Rams were the second largest gold coins minted by the King. Cam looked at Meuk in dismay. The Estol smuggler smiled and nodded. "It's a fair price. Four men," he told Cam, "on their boat, with me standing at hand. Tire them out early and we still get their gold." The man, understanding them, guffawed. He fumbled open the buttons on his breeches, pulling out his raging hard cock. "Kneel down, boy. I want a test suck." Meuk shouldered his way in-between. "No gold, no suck. He ain't free. One gold in advance." Cursing, the man fished in his jacket, coming up with a small gold coin, which he pressed into Meuk's hand. "I'm too hard to fucking wait." The scent of warm Staubaun cock so near had already caused Cam to fall to his knees before the towering pale organ. It was thinner than Ralen's, and it beckoned him to taste it in a way the bathman's had not. He pressed his mouth to the hot organ, worshiping its presence and shape, then began to lick the entire length of it. This he did ever more urgently as the Staubaun growled with pleasure. That growl deepened the moment Cam took the bulbous cock head into his mouth and began to suck, his mouth working up and down that glorious, straining length. He tasted the cum in it, just waiting for him to tease it forth . . . "Yes, boy, yes . . . gods, what a great cocksucker!" He groaned and clamped his big hands about Cam's dark hair, holding his head in place as his hips began to thrust. "That's good, boy . . . suck it out . . . suck it all out!" A few men prowling the dock had stopped to watch. Cam, kneeling on the splintered planks, surrounded by kegs of mash and salt, no longer cared. His mouth worked on the lusty prong of the man standing before him, sucking the swollen rod that already had coated his tongue with seminal fluid and now promised to explode with juices. He was surprised to feel fingers close in his hair and pull his head back, the wet cock springing free of his open mouth. The Staubaun closed the fingers of his free hand around the rigid shaft and pumped vigorously, groaning as he ejaculated in the air. Great spurts of semen flew into the air, out of Cam's reach, landing in white splotches nearby. With a cry, Cam jerked toward the spilled treasure, only to have the Staubaun yank his hair again. The Staubaun looked down at him. "You've got a bit more sucking to do before you get that, son. I want your mouth and your ass nice and needy for the boys." Tucking his softening cock as best he could back into his pants, he nodded to Meuk. "I'll take you to the boat." * * * * The boat was a big one, a great low-slung river barge due to head downstream in the morning with a big haul of lumber. The Staubaun barge master, with lading money in his purse, wanted to treat his three man crew and himself to a night of fun. A veteran wharf-man, he knew what Cam wanted and needed—and also that the youth would do anything and service any number of men to get it. The Estol crew, all three of them young and strapping, celebrated their luck by enthusiastically fucking the Kheld youth for hours. Though Cam sucked the juices from each hard young cock and endured having his ass filled by each Estol crewman in turn, none of those ejaculations could blunt his now painful need. His craving for Staubaun seed so consumed him that he would suck anything, fuck anything, just on the chance it would give him ease. From his place in a great wooden chair at his work desk, the barge master watched his crew enjoy the night's recreation. Smiling, he stroked his sleek towering erection, taunting Cam with it, reminding him of why he labored on his knees. Gods, I need it . . . that Staubaun's big cock. If I don't suck those juices, I'll die. I need it . . . please, I feel like I'm being fucked by animals! He groaned as the biggest man, a sandy-haired Estol who had been vigorously pumping his ass raw, roared and thrust deep, spurting his load. His mouth was already slimed with the leavings of all three men, though he had licked his lips clean as best he could. None of the cum he had swallowed had tasted anything but rank and disgusting, making the ordeal far less pleasant than that of sucking Staubaun cum. He had drained this Estol brute twice already, once with his mouth and once with his ass. He hoped this time would be the last as that cock flopped out of his ass and the broad hairy body pushed away. Breathing hard due to the exertions he had made in thrusting back in his effort to get the Estol off, he lowered his head to where his hands rested on the floor. Before, another man had always taken the other's place. "Looks like we wore him out, don," one of the Estols laughed, soon joined by crude agreement from the others. "That you have, and yourselves with him. He's done his work with you. Go clean up," the master told them. One by one, they left the quarters. The man rose from his chair and went to Cam, kneeling beside him. He laid a hand on his hair. "How be you, son?" Cam opened his eyes. "How would you be?" The Staubaun's dark eyes softened, but his face remained stern. "Get yourself to the washbowl. Clean what you can. I'll give you what you need. You took good care of them, and now I'll pay you proper." Cam used the washbowl. He scrubbed his mouth until it hurt. He scrubbed his dick and squatted over the chamber box to squeeze out what they had put into his ass. Though they had used lubrication the barge master had provided, his asshole was sore and so was his body. A look in the small mirror nailed above the washstand showed a face he no longer remembered: framed by dark hair but with shadows beneath blue, haunted eyes. Whatever he had suffered at Ralen's hands, he had not been a whore before this night. Now he would never escape having been one. He returned to the barge master still gripped by cravings he knew he would do anything to satisfy, uncaring about what would be demanded of him. The Staubaun's dark eyes warmed as he looked upon him. "You won't like hearing it, son, but you are the most beautiful creature any of us will ever fuck." "Better to be ugly, then." "Not true. Without your looks, you'd have to pay me. I don't do men unless they're pretty. Come here." When Cam did and was standing before him, he pointed to the floor. "Kneel." He leaned back in his chair again. "I want to watch you suck me." The need Cam felt was no less for the sore muscles of his violated mouth and throat, the rawness of his tongue as it licked that long, splendid shaft once more. The Staubaun did as he said and simply watched, his breathing quickening, his tip welling with clear, sweet juices that Cam lapped up without resentment. He did not feel cheated. Perhaps it was better this way, having pleasured the others first. Perhaps he would have hated it more if he had first sated his need and then been forced to pleasure without gain. He had no experience in such things, no map by which to navigate such unknown territory. The only thing that mattered, the only solid reality, was the Staubaun cock between his lips as he took it deep, all the way to the man's thick base so that the cock head entered his throat and he commenced to swallow as the barge master, with a great satisfied groan, released a thick flood of juices. He gulped it all, happily, with relief, continuing to suck and lick every drop of the barge master's semen as he slowly pulled back, releasing that clean, wet cock from his now satisfied mouth. "Now that was a fine cocksucking," the barge master praised him. Legs spread and his large, depleted cock falling flaccid between them, he wore a pleased smile. "And damn if you aren't the prettiest cumbuck I ever had do it. Khelds are seldom so fine to look upon. That man out there is selling you too cheap." Cam had nothing to say. He just wanted to be done with it. He had been four men's whore for a night, just to get a mouthful of Staubaun cock juice that would barely stave off his jitters. But Meuk had got his gold, got it in advance. They would eat, at least, and maybe Meuk had got enough gold that he would not feel any need to sell Cam again in the next town. He wondered how much gold Meuk would need before being satisfied he had enough, and his insides turned hollow as he realized that there was never enough gold to satisfy a man for whom gold mattered so much that he could sell another man. An hour later, he sucked the Staubaun barge master again, silently but greedily, as only a cumbuck could. Meuk met him on the pier, smiling at the barge master's praises and the extra gold coin the man pressed into his hand. "Buy him something nice," the barge master directed. "And when you get to Merath, go to the Bird Nest. Tell the ale man that Nabbe Don sent you. You'll have to choose well, but you can get a better class of buyer for him there than what's skulking on the docks." Before leaving Lygge, Meuk purchased a small pail of dried cherries and two loaves of coarse bread with eel which he gave Cam to eat. He also bought him a cloak of dark grey wool, plain but warm, and a clean shirt and breeches. But he didn't give them to Cam to wear until they reached Merath three days later. A Cumbuck's Tale Ch. 07 Please be forewarned that this chapter contains nonconsenual sex. Chapter 7 -- Nothing Left to Lose The Bird Nest tavern sat on a prime spot where Merath's mercantile piers abutted the warehouse district. The tavern was built over the water and men had to climb stairs to reach it, but once there they could sit on wide wooden decks and look out over the docks and river to keep an eye on both their vessels and the traffic, of which there was plenty. Looking down river, they could see the great widening of the Dazun where the big river of Rannul joined to nearly double the river's volume. Not far upriver was a pretty view of the splendid grey stone arches of the Aldazor Bridge, across which travelers made their way to the interior territories of eastern Amallar. Cam looked at the torches flickering along the Aldazor span with longing. Except for having set foot in a few small river towns and having deposited Tegwyna there, he didn't know hells about eastern Amallar—only that it had to be a better place than this. He sat at a table on a deck overlooking the docks. Meuk hunched at his side, wolfing down a plate of lentils and pork barely illuminated by the hand lantern the serving bob had set. Cam wore his new clothes and was glad for the cloak because the night promised to be cold. They had arrived at the tavern at nightfall, Meuk swaggering into the place for all the world like a Lord himself. He might as well have been, with Cam in tow. Men looked up at the entrance but then continued to look, the better to see what Meuk had brought with him. Meuk had introduced himself to the ale man as the barge master had told him, and showed Cam to him, letting it be known that the young Kheld's services could be bought. Not cheap, mind. One had only to look at him to see why. The ale man had nodded and given them a table along with an agreement to send any suitable customer their way. Cam was still aware of getting looks, but it was better out here with the night to blot out things he did not want to see. The sound of the bench opposite him being moved, wood scraping across planks, drew his head up. The man who faced him, already seated, wore a hat graced with dark feathers that dipped across his bright golden hair. He was a mature man of at least forty years, Staubaun and handsome. Eyes the golden brown color of ripe acorns swept his countenance imperiously. "The ale man was right," the man said, richly satisfied. "He is pretty." Those eyes remained fixed on Cam's face, haughty lips smiling as they read what he was feeling. "Not hard looking, either. Most cumbucks have been whores for so long, they've turned into hags." "This one's new," Meuk informed him. He used the flat of his broad knife to shovel beans into his mouth. "So I see. But he's well into it. I can see the need." Cam could not take his gaze from those knowing others. "What say you, boy?" the man asked. "Want to wrap those fine lips about my Staubaun cock tonight?" The man smelled like sex, hot and rank. His cock, unseen beneath the table, was probably already hard. Cam averted his eyes lest they betray him further. He could already taste the man's juices upon his tongue, the silken feel of that fluid as he guided it down his throat and swallowed. It was what he needed and wanted—and feared. His dick, already excited by his state of need, stiffened into full arousal at the nearness of this dangerous man. Meuk had been studying him, noting the effect. "He's not cheap," Meuk said. "Not another like him 'less you go to a pricey brothel." "He'd do it for free." "He would. But I don't let him. Gold to me first. How many of ye?" The man smirked. "One. Just me. I'm enough. But I'm not sold yet. Some cumbucks are just talk, all mouth. I want his pretty young ass." Meuk stopped knifing beans into his mouth long enough to eye the man greedily. "Three gold rams gets you all night." "I don't want all night. I just want his Kheld ass." The grizzled Estol looked disappointed, but only for a moment. He nodded. "One ram. Straight up." Meuk, no. Not this one. Cam shot a warning look at his companion, but the Estol had resumed scarfing down his meal. The Staubaun glared at Meuk. "A gold ram? Just for a fuck? I can get a boy to give me his ass right outside on the dock for a frigging krug!" Meuk shrugged. "Your choice. This one's pretty and his ass costs a gold ram." He held the man's look until the Staubaun cursed and reached into his purse, flinging a large gold coin down upon the table. Pouncing on it, Meuk fingered it and nodded. "Use the room upstairs. I'll pay the ale man." The room cost only a krug for an hour, and offset the price enough to mollify the man. The man held Cam's wrist as he led him up the tavern stairs and into the first of three rooms at the landing. The room was tiny, barely more than a closet, but it had what was needed. A plain tall bed, consisting of a frame holding in a straw-stuffed mattress, was the only piece of furniture. "Take it off," the man ordered as soon as he had closed and secured the door. "You had damn better be worth a gold ram." He watched, his brown eyes hard and critical as Cam removed first his cloak, then the rest of his garments, unwrapping his loincloth last. After a moment, the Staubaun smiled. "Nice." The man's erection, which had been noticeable before, stiffened visibly within his fine trousers. An elegant hand, three out of five fingers glittering with massive rings, reached out to fondle Cam's shameless dick. "I like it when Kheld pricks salute me. I bet you were fuck-tamed, weren't you, blue eyes?" Cam looked at him warily. Why did this man want to know? When he did not answer, the Staubaun grabbed him by the jaw and squeezed until he yelped. "Tell me!" "Yes, Lord," he whispered. "I was fuck-tamed." "You liked it, didn't you? Getting a big Staubaun cock shoved up your unsuspecting ass? That's why you keep coming back for more." No, that's not why, he wanted to tell the man. I come back because men like you fucking destroyed me. Because you made me this way. But that was not what this man wanted to hear. "Yes, Lord, I like Staubaun cock. I need it," he said, willing this encounter to get underway. The sooner it did, the sooner he would get the seed he needed and the sooner it would end. "Yeah, a regular little fuckmouth, I bet." Releasing Cam, he sat on the edge of the rickety bed. He quickly opened his leather and silk breeches to expose his engorged member. It was not very long, but it was thick, a truncheon of a cock from which the foreskin had been removed to expose a thick, bulbous head. Drops of clear fluid already beaded at the tip. "That's right, boy, lick your lips. You've got the jitters good and I like that. You'll be nice and hungry. Well, on your knees, then, and get to it." Resigned, knowing there was no other way until he could somehow break free of Meuk, Cam knelt on the creaking plank floor. It was drafty and hard, but he ignored the discomfort as he reached for the Staubaun's cock. "Don't touch it, you dirty Kheld," the man snarled, slapping Cam alongside the head. "Just your fucking mouth." He used his tongue then, licking the thick, heavily veined shaft. The man wanted his balls licked and Cam did those, too, swirling his tongue lavishly over both walnut-sized testicles enclosed in their soft sac. Although apparently a man of means and perhaps even of rank, the Staubaun was not a bather. The golden bush at his loins stunk of sweat and traces of urine and there was a sour taste to his meaty, thick-skinned cock. Cam didn't care. The clear droplets with which he bathed his tongue while working his saliva wetly up and down that heavy, throbbing shaft were all that he cared about. He did not protest the man's hard hands grabbing his head and forcing that cock deep the moment he took the thing between his lips. He could not protest the hard thrusts that rammed the back of his throat . . . the angle was all wrong, cutting off his air. When Cam tried to pull back, just so he could breathe, the man held him fast. "Oh, no you don't! Drink it, cocksucker!" Please . . . I can't . . . He thought the man would rip out clumps of hair, he was holding him so hard. Those powerful thighs and buttocks pumped that huge cock so brutally into his mouth that it hurt. He was choking, suffocating. Desperately, Cam grabbed the Staubaun's spread knees with his hands, tried to propel himself away. "Cheating, cheapass Kheld!" the Staubaun swore as his rhythm was disrupted. Cam pulled back the moment he felt those strong hands release his head. The wet prick slipped from his mouth as he gasped for air. Then there was only red pain as a huge Staubaun fist slammed into his face and he fell backward. The Staubaun grabbed Cam's shirt and wadded a sleeve, jamming it between his teeth to block his cries. "Think you're going to play stupid games with me, eh?" the man growled. He seized Cam with hard hands, lifting him easily and throwing him face down on the bed, legs over the edge. Cam could neither get the shirt out from his mouth to cry for help, nor fight the man whose much larger body now pinned his to the bed. The massive arms held him down, strong legs prying his apart. Securing Cam's neck with one forearm, the Staubaun spit into his free hand and used that to wet his still raging hard cock. There was grease in the jar by the headboard, but he ignored it. "This had better be one gold-plated ass, you fucking cumbuck," he grunted, positioning himself, then thrusting. It hurt like nothing ever had. Like even Penargos never had in raping his virgin ass. Like hell itself. Cam screamed, but the shirt muffled his cry and if anyone heard him, no one came to the door. He endured only pain as the thick cock rammed into his dry unstretched asshole. He endured more pain, during which his dick went flaccid and he drifted in and out of blackness as the Staubaun fucked him violently. "This is what you want, isn't it, Kheld? Coming here with your pretty eyes, thinking we'd fawn all over you . . . well, you're getting what all Khelds get, a good hard slave fucking. Gods damned Kheld slaves, only thing you're good for—" It seemed like forever until the Staubaun's paced quickened and the brute roared like an animal as he thrust hard and deep. Cam screamed again as the man's bitter semen flooded his ravaged, torn tissues. As much as those juices almost immediately quelled his every craving for them, he felt hollowed out even before that large cock left his ass. No sooner had the man stood than Cam slid from the bed to the floor, where he managed to remove the shirt from his mouth and curled, gasping, his ass bleeding and his bowels seized by terrible, cramping pain. He did not look up as the Staubaun adjusted his clothing and left. He knew that all he would see in those eyes would be scorn. Minutes later, Meuk edged in, then darted to his side. "Aw hells, boy," was all he could say. Cam didn't look at him, either. He let Meuk mop some of the blood, using the shirt, already bloody because Cam, in his agony, had bitten his tongue. He let Meuk help him dress, using the cloak to conceal that he now had no shirt. But he refused help in walking and edged on his own power down the stairs. His legs still worked. His ass was bleeding so much that it streamed down his leg and soaked his pants through. He hurt like hell with every step, his bowels knotting so fiercely that he walked bent over double for half the way, but he did it somehow. He nearly fell into the boat and lay on the bottom, sobbing. "Damn, boy, damn," Meuk kept saying. "I didn't know. Swear I didn't. A fine Lord like that, gold on his buckles. We're leaving Merath now, see? We'll go to Dazunor-Rannuli, we will. Go to the Rill town. They'll be a better class there. We'll get you the sort that will treat you better." But Cam didn't think they would. * * * * Cam watched the river. He hadn't spoken to Meuk since they'd left Merath. He had barely moved. He sat with his back propped against the bow and watched the sun on the water. His body still hurt, though his bowels had settled after he'd crapped blood for a night and day. Pure blood, red as life itself. He hadn't crapped in a half day, which he thought might be good. His mind had cleared enough to know that if he stayed with Meuk, he would die. He gets gold, I get hell. The fuck with that. He watched the river. He wasn't wearing shoes. Meuk had taken them off so that he could get off Cam's trousers, which he'd washed the blood from and laid to dry across the fish hold. He didn't have a shirt anymore, as that had been ruined. He wore only a loincloth and the thin tunic he had been wearing the last time he'd seen Ralen, with his fine new cloak as protection against the sun and first autumn chill. The cloak was barely enough and Cam tugged it closer about his shoulders. But he watched the river. He knew that Meuk watched him. I'm his meal ticket. But he's not mine. Meuk had a sword. Meuk usually kept Cam's ankles hobbled and his wrists loosely tied, but he had left those off due to all the cramping and crapping, and also because Cam was being unusually unresisting and passive, and he thought him too broken to try to escape. Meuk did not know why Cam watched the river. They were nearing Dazunor-Rannuli. Cam feared reaching that city. He feared its swarming waterfront and languid canals above which palaces rose like cliffs and from which wealth bubbled like rot. There were Kheld corpses enough already in Dazunor-Rannuli, women and boys sold to the brothel trade and vanished forever into the bottomless pleasure pits of that corrupt city. He no longer believed he would not be added to their number. If he was sure of anything, it was that Meuk meant to sell him. As he watched the river, he saw how the number of boats increased. No city on the Dazun drew more traffic. Large boats. Small boats. River barges of all sizes, gliding toward the shining beacon of the city's Rill port. Meuk was watching him, but more and more Meuk was forced to also watch the river. As they neared the outlying piers, boats often stopped to await signals from port masters as to available berths. The water got crowded. Meuk steered into shallower water nearer the Dazun's banks, which at that point were inhabited by foundries and mills. He sought the less congested channel, the better to glide beneath the narrow near arches of Dazunor-Rannuli's fabled double bridge. Other boats, small like theirs, did the same, leaving the wider channel at center to the barges and big trading vessels. The waterway grew more crowded. Meuk turned when another boat came too close on the riverside. Good enough. Cam flung his cloak overboard and followed it into the water. Hoping Meuk might mistake it for him, Cam left the cloak floating on the surface and dived. He swam underwater, across the current, toward another boat he had seen off their stern. He surfaced only once, to gasp for air and, seeing the other boat's hull looming near, quickly dived again, going under the shallow vessel. He was glad he had learned to swim well. Surfacing again on the other side of the red-painted pleasure boat, he struck as quickly as he could for shore. He did not think Meuk would abandon the boat in pursuit of him, but it was possible. Reaching the bank, his soaked tunic and loincloth clinging to his skin, Cam caught at branches and growth to haul himself out of the water. From there he found his way to the street. People looked at him oddly, but he didn't care. The worse thing was that he was soaked and cold. But he had planned his escape well. Meuk was now downstream—and the piers to which Dazunor-Rannuli restricted Kheld river traffic was upstream, not far from where he stood. Someone will help me, Cam was certain. His folk might be rough and impoverished, but they never turned down another of their kind when in need. Khelds didn't hold with slavery, a Staubaun practice they abhorred. At the very least, they wouldn't give him over to any who might come looking for him. More likely, some boatman would see him safely across the river to Amallar where Meuk would never dare to go and thus would never find him. He shivered as he ran barefooted over the cold stone-paved streets, ever looking behind him, keeping to the shadows. He would have a few days, at least, before the craving came on him again and he would be forced, against his will and against hope, to seek Staubauns again. * * * * The Dazun rose and retreated in its ancient dance with the moon, and Cam never spent more than a day except he was on it. Months passed as swiftly as water. They were not easy times, but Cam put all that he had learned to good use. He was young and quick, and there was work on the river for a strong, sharp lad experienced with rope and sail. Initially hiring on with any Kheld boatman in need of a hand, he lived poor on what they would give him and scoured the wharves as his condition demanded for such Staubauns as would pay coin to enjoy the pleasure he could bring. He hated his life of walking the docks of ratty Dazun towns by night, trying to find men who would not hurt him, sucking Staubaun cock in darkened alleyways. His instincts were good and he encountered few mishaps, preferring to go without before taking chances. Seeking ease before the craving ruled him kept his mind clear. It paid to be clever, to know the taverns and Fences, to never go off with any man alone, to choose before being chosen. He learned the value of his looks, and that while men would pay more for his ass than his mouth, they were less to be trusted with it. One of his first purchases had been a sturdy small dagger that could be hidden in his boot, and he used it when he needed to. At first he traveled from boat to boat, town to town, not bothering to accumulate possessions. He discarded his old clothes when he got his hands on anything better and ate what his boat mates would spare or tavern owners tossed. He traded sex for food. Better yet was when he could trade it for money. Every coin that came to him, he stitched into the double lining of his tattered coat. Ever since fleeing Meuk, he had tried to find out what had happened at Rahn Rock. All Meuk had told him was that Staubaun soldiers had overrun the island, killing all they found, and how they had been lucky to make their escape. But what happened to smugglers upriver of Merath barely found ears on the teeming wharves of Dazunor-Rannuli, where men cared only for empire and trade. Only one Kheld boatman from Neuberland could tell him anything at all. "The Lords of Gobba and Annech, them what drove Kheld settlers out of their lands, are boasting they cleared out that nest." But the man had not known anything about a man named Ralen or what had become of him. Cam had even gone to Neuberland once himself, though fearful of Meuk and dreading having to seek seed from the Kheld-hating Staubauns of that region, but even there the rumors had been few. The smuggler Ralen was in prison, one man said, and that lifted his spirit, but try as he might, he could never learn more than that. Staubaun magistrates did not answer Kheld questions and he risked being thrown into prison himself if he asked too many. * * * * One day, three months after his escape from Meuk and with winter looming through a heavy gray sky, he returned to Omadawn by way of a barge hauling lumber. He walked up the lane and saw Meron wielding a shovel, unloading a cart of clay in the brickyard. Bricks made during the summer from yellow mud stood in stacks like hayricks around a new house built near the hawthorn thicket. He had been gone over a year, and in that time his older brother had taken a wife. He stopped at the edge of the yard and watched Meron work, seeing the sturdy back and arms of a brick maker, caked with honest dirt. Cam had taken care to scrub away the filth of his poverty, and his clothes were as clean as he could get them, but they were too big for him and hung all wrong. After some minutes, Meron looked his way. A Cumbuck's Tale Ch. 07 "Cam?" Tossing aside his shovel, Meron jumped down off the cart and ran to his brother. Those strong arms pulled him in, crushing him for a long moment. Cam would have embraced him back had his arms not been pinned. Then Meron pushed away and looked at him hard. "Where have you been? We thought you dead!" Others had noticed them and squeals resounded. Before Cam could say anything, they were beset by the rest of his family. Garth and Urlen, robust young teens, greeted him with thumps and cheers, and seven year-old Reeve jumped around like a pup, but Drewsa looked sullen and the younger girls, Beena and Crica, were called back by their father before they ever reached him. "Leave," Gereg said to the girls and the younger boys. "Go back in the house." Cam waited until they had done so. Meron, at least, stayed outside in the yard, though he stood beside their father now. "Hello, Badda." "So you've come back, tail tucked between yer legs—" Something cold reached like a hand into Cam's chest and started squeezing his heart. The pressure was so great he could barely draw breath. "Wanted to show you and Momma I'm not dead." "Better off if you were." Meron exhaled sharply. "That's not true, Badda." But Gereg would have none of it. "Got to sucking Staubaun cock in town, that's what I heard. Ran off or dragged off, all the same. He's a damn Staubaun-sucking wog." A flurry of color burst around the corner of the house. One of his siblings must have found their mother, probably working in the garden nearer the stream. She ran toward him, skirt flapping wildly. "Cam!" she shrieked and threw herself into his arms. He held her tightly, buried his face in her hair and not just so he need not look at his scowling father. She smelled like home—vanilla and soap. His tears flowed freely now, wetting her hair and pooling in his throat. "I'm sorry," he choked. "I wanted to come back sooner, but I couldn't." "Oh, Mother help the weary, look at you." She stepped back and put her hands to his face, which he'd not shaved for three days, then embraced him all over again. "You're so thin! You need a meal. Drewsa!" she called to the house, "stir the coals and set a table." Gereg's face flushed red. "Not in my house!" Each word sliced like a knife through Cam's heart. "Yours, no," his mother said, eyes bright with joy. "Mine! My house will receive my children. It's my house under our law and Cam will hear none of your hard words while he is within its walls." All Cam wanted to do at that moment was leave, but his mind had gone numb. He felt as though he'd fallen into deep water and was being dragged down to the bottom. His heart labored like he was dying. Fighting more tears, he wiped his face with his sleeve. Having no recourse, with his wife looking so fierce and Meron nodding his willingness to back her, Gereg relented. "So be it, woman. But your son will not be staying. He can eat his fill and lighten your heart, but then he must go on his way. And I want the others out of the house when he's in it. I'll not have him pollute the children with his filth." "There'll be no talk of that, Badda," Meron countered quietly. Cam met his brother's gaze and saw in it some of Gereg's disgust, tempered only by a calmer nature and a dogged determination to honor their family bonds. "Make sure of it. And don't let your mother give him money. That's what he's here for." Cam stared at him, aghast. "No, I don't want anything! All I want is your blessing." "Get hers, then. Because you're not getting mine." Gereg stomped away without looking back. * * * * His mother told him where to find Henna. Just two months ago his twin had wed the wagon-maker's son and moved into a tidy cottage Bren had built for her behind the wagon-shop. He went to her as soon as he left his mother's house. Spires of lady's caps in last bloom marked the path to a stoop lined with pots of lamb's tongue and evermay. When Henna answered the door, she dropped the spindle of wool in her hand. Cam smiled at such a picture of domesticity. His sister's kisses and hugs and squeals of joy caused the vise about his heart to release. After fighting Gereg, his mother had grown careful and sad, though she had fed Cam well, given him a suit of clothes, and insisted that he visit her again. His vanishing had caused her pain, but not so much as knowing the cause of it. Henna's happiness at seeing him was untainted by such cares. "I'm doing well enough," he told her, though that was gilding the truth. Whatever he said to Henna would get back to his mother and he didn't want to worsen the wound. Someday he would put to rest once and for all his father's allegation that he'd only come back for money. At the end of their visit he slid the knife from his boot and took up his old coat. He slit every coin from its hiding place. Altogether he had ten gold coins and twenty two silver. He gathered the coins and placed them into astonished Henna's hands. "Keep them for me," he pleaded. "Can't have my coat getting too heavy and I've really no better way to hide them, living on the water as I do, going boat to boat and place to place. But it won't always be that way." "But you may need it!' "When I need it, I'll come to you. And if I can't come to you, that means I'm dead and don't need it anyway. If you don't see me in a year, I want you to have it." "Cam—" He told her another lie. "I've got work, Henna, an honest man's living. I'll come to see you when I can, so you'll know I'm alive." "But why didn't you come before, Cam?" He couldn't tell her. Knowing she wouldn't turn away from him no matter what his situation only made him want to protect her from a truth she could never imagine. Henna had a sweet good life untouched by ugliness. It'd be nothing but selfish to burden her with his. "Bad company and stupid choices," he said, giving her a rueful look. "Ended up far upriver, past Merath and all. Had to work my way back, that's how I got the coin." Bren came through the door and looked so surprised and stiff Cam didn't say much more. Once it was clear he made Bren uncomfortable, he left. He wandered back to the dock, where he found a merchant who in return for loading buckets of fish guts meant for the eel farms gave him passage to Trulo. * * * * That spring, using the coins he'd given Henna and what he earned over the winter, Cam bought a small boat and found he could make a spare but honest living ferrying hard goods and supplies bought in the bustling Staubaun cities to sell to Khelds in towns across the Dazun River. He spoke fluent Stauba and bargained with Staubauns better than most, so his prices were good. His trips took him on a regular course that brought him once every seven-day to Dazunor-Rannuli. The wind was stiff but the day clear when he tied his boat at a battered pier in the Beardfen, as the Kheld port district was known. He arranged a handcart for the next morning and set out for the Staubaun merchant quarter just east of the bridge, in the Old City. Stone-paved streets alive with darting couriers and curtained litters wound between painted storefronts. A deep thrum reverberated over the city and he glanced upward as a silver charys larger than the largest boat on the river sailed overhead toward the Rill Mount at the heart of the city. Riches filled its belly, of that he was sure. Grain and spices, lubricants and horses, bolts of rare fabrics and plats of fragrant woods, and of course gold and wine. Big Staubaun boats and merchant cartels would distribute this Rill bounty all along the Dazun. Cam's goal was to get a few juggers of the wine. The wine merchant, Glauvas, owned a shop on a street shaded by taller buildings two streets removed from the Lower Canal. Cam paid and arranged delivery for twenty bottles of Tollech's fruity vintage, for which he had two buyers. Smiling, Glauvas showed Cam another bottle, this one of finer glass. About its neck was a silver ring flashing with green jewels. The wine merchant poured a stream of deep purple wine into a goblet. "Smell this. Taste." Accepting the glass, Cam sniffed and was amazed. The scent of grapes was heavy, almost like raisins. When he sipped, the wine kissed his lips with blackberries, then danced across his tongue with pure cherry notes and whispers of heaven. "Teremar wine," Glauvas answered the question before he could ask it. "And not just Teremar wine, but nectar drawn from the vineyard of the Highborn Princes themselves, the Thrice Royal Sordaneons. They release only a few bottles a year, and I got my hands on ten of them." "How much?" he asked. One of his customers, a status-craving Kheld chieftain with a taste for Staubaun luxuries, would pay twice the cost for something this fine. "Five gold kings." "For all ten?" Glauvas laughed. "For one." Cam thought about it hard. If he bought one bottle, he wouldn't have coin for his other purchases. It took ten gold rams to make a king. Three of those bottles could buy him a better boat. He thanked Glauvas for the glass, but shook his head. "Three kings," Glauvas said. "For you." Cam looked at him in surprise. The merchant was always fair, but never open-handed. Cam dealt with him precisely because of this, and because Glauvas never attempted to exact sexual favors in return for bargains. The amiable Staubaun preferred women and was always purely business. The price, however . . . Cam calculated his potential profit. Though suspicious of the largesse, he nodded and reached for his purse. The merchant stopped him. "I have only the sample here today. Come back tomorrow at the midday bell and I will have your bottle." * * * * Cam earned a living with his small boat, but he still needed Staubaun seed. That meant trolling the waterfront. Though experienced in the hard ways of the world, he was but twenty years old, still young enough to be in constant danger of being preyed upon by unscrupulous slavers or their agents. Good-looking Kheld youths were in great demand in the cities along the river. Even if he avoided slavery, he still risked rape. For that reason, remembering only too well the Lord in Merath who had injured him so badly that he had on and off crapped blood for a month, Cam restricted his contacts to a few men he had gotten to know well. After leaving the wine merchant, Cam visited two other vendors, negotiating lower prices with both, then sought seed from a Staubaun tavern keeper he trusted. To his dismay, the man was ill and his replacement at the bar said he'd not be back for several days. The man eyed him warmly while running his tongue across his upper lip, letting Cam know he understood the reason behind his inquiry. The brazen solicitation put his guard up. Even if the man could be trusted, something Cam could not bank on, a half-breed with a hard one couldn't give him what he needed. Dazunor-Rannuli's waterfront still terrified him, so he resolved to wait it out this time. If he left tomorrow afternoon, he could make the Fence at Rainill the next evening. Dazunor-Rannuli's Fences, of which there were many, had a reputation for sending good-looking young Khelds to the brothels or selling them off on site to any Lord who dangled a purse. He slept that night on his boat, his dagger in hand beneath his pillow. The next morning Cam made his rounds with the handcart, loading it with crates of spices, nails, latches, buckles, and bolts of fabric destined for a peddler in Hothyswell. It took two trips along the city's narrow streets to haul all his goods back to the boat and load it, along with the delivered wine and a few dozen sacks of rice. He then headed to Glauvas' shop as the midday bell tolled over the waterfront from its housing in the Porthouse Tower. Beneath his light leather jacket, the linen shirt Henna had made for him clung with the sweat of his morning labor. The purple awning over the wine shop's entrance dripped from rain the night before. When the brass bell over the door rang, Glauvas appeared and bade him come into the back room. He then shut the door. Cam stiffened to see another man seated at the merchant's desk, clearly waiting. Glauvas walked over and picked up a bottle with a green-jeweled silver ring about the neck. He handed it to Cam. "Yours for three kings, as we agreed." Relaxing, Cam took the coins from his purse and passed them to Glauvas. He took the heavy bottle and placed it immediately into the sturdy carry sack slung over his shoulder. The other man in the room watched him, his assessment frank and warm. Cam from the first had pegged him as Staubaun, even though a hood covered his hair and a good part of his face and a long cloak covered the rest. The man exchanged glances with Glauvas. The wine merchant smiled. "Cam, I would like you to meet my friend, Myron. He has a proposition for you. I'll be in the other room." "What kind of proposition?" Cam demanded, but Glauvas had already left them. Myron pushed back the hood of his cloak, showing the face of an older man, probably patrician, with good skin and a straight nose. Hair gone silver crowned his high forehead above brown eyes ringed with gold at the outer edges. "I am looking for companionship." "A suck boy, you mean." "To put it crudely. I enjoy youth and beauty, and you are one of those rare Khelds blessed with the latter. But I was also told you were hard-working, of good character, and discreet." He pointed to an upholstered chair. "Please, sit. I mean no disrespect." "You just want me to suck you." Because such expectations were a fact of his existence, Cam took the seat and studied this Myron anew. The man's confidence, his aura of entitlement, even the soft twill weave of his deliberately plain garments, pointed to a man of high status and possibly wealth. "I want to gain the pleasure of your companionship, your sexual companionship. If both of us are agreeable, I could make the arrangement regular." "I have a boat. I like my work. And I won't belong to any man." Those dark eyes appraised him. "I will make no demands on your time apart from what you agree to give to me. My hope is that when you are in town, you contact Glauvas, who will direct you to a room where we can pursue our mutual satisfaction. You will find me clean, gentle and trustworthy. My only purpose is pleasure." The scent of the man, masculine and sharp, triggered Cam's lurking need. Myron's bright eyes betrayed desire and he was probably already hard, his unseen cock secreting tell-tale droplets. Cam's condition allowed him to smell such things. It went with the jitters nearly full-blown just beneath the surface of his skin. He wondered if Myron could tell. Fact was, he wanted cock in the worst way and a clean Staubaun man, rich and respectful, wasn't the worst of his options. He'd been ready to go to a Fence. Though he shied from assignations, he didn't think Glauvas would go to all this trouble to set up an introduction when he could have sold him off months ago had he been of that mind. Slowly, Cam nodded. Something regular, the man had said. "I need someone tonight, if you're good for that. I still got cargo to secure, and need to pay someone to watch my boat." Myron's smile warmed every crease of his face. "Come back tonight then. Glauvas will give you the address of the room, and send a man to watch your boat." A Cumbuck's Tale Ch. 08 Chapter 8 -- For What It's Worth The address Glauvas gave him led Cam to an older neighborhood with narrow alleys shadowed by window gardens that dripped greenery and orange flowers. Flowers could not mask the faint odor of sewage and rot from the stagnant canals he crossed on bridges of stairs. The non-descript building presented a plain face to the street, but the door was of solid wood with a small shuttered window. When Cam knocked, someone opened the shutter to look then let him in. A white-haired woman gestured him toward a staircase where a thick carpet muffled his ascent. At the top of the stairs was a single door, which he opened. When he found Myron alone within he put his last fear to rest. The room's austere accommodations, with a large bed and only one chair, brought to mind another room and Cam hesitated, not knowing what to do. Without a word, Myron laid a finger on Cam's lips, tracing their shape until they parted. Still silent, the man began to undress him. When Cam stood naked with his discarded clothing piled at his feet, Myron retreated to the chair and sat back in it, studying him. "You are every bit the beauty Glauvas claimed you would be." "Nice of him to pimp me out." "Don't be angry with him. He's being a friend. I hope you never have to chance the wharfside again." Desire warmed that Staubaun voice. "Come here, beauty. I will spill myself just looking at you, so take it if you wish." Cam knelt between Myron's knees. The carpet was soft and deep. As Cam waited for the man to open his trousers, he noticed ink stains upon the fingers. The cock that reared up, almost slapping him on the cheek, was long and elegant, the barrel slender and tapered. Wrapping his hand around the hot shaft, Cam gently slid back the foreskin and began softly laving the head with his tongue. The crown, with a wide eye and pronounced flare, was already slippery with arousal. Those drops of Staubaun essence drew him on, along with a clean, heady musk rising from the silver curls at the base. Myron's right hand, bare of rings, moved to his head. Fingers combed his hair deliriously, then laced among the strands. "Oh, beauty," the man gasped, stiffening. "Oh, yes!" Not yet ruled by the jitters, Cam took his time. He nibbled and licked along the shaft, wetting it entirely, flicking his tongue along the underside. Next he paid special service to the balls, licking lightly and swirling each orb with his tongue before moving back to the cock in his hand. Here, now, he was in command. The long, pale organ quivered with excitement under his fingers, wetting his lips with droplets of arousal. He guided the fully engorged head into his mouth, where he lapped it with strong, long strokes. Myron's breathing, the lifting of the man's hips, betrayed pleasure. When his tongue detected the swell of imminent release, Cam took the cock head deeper into his mouth, enveloping the head completely. He sucked hard and deep. A resonant growl erupted from Myron's throat. The burst of semen that followed slid easily down Cam's gulping throat, as did the next emission. He continued to suck the softening member until it was fully depleted, cleaning it and swallowing every trace of ejaculate before letting it fall from his mouth. He looked up, pleased with himself, to see Myron sprawled in the chair, head back and breathing hard. "Beautiful—and talented, too." Myron wore a satisfied smile. "I like cock," Cam said. "Yours is perfect." It was only the truth. Myron rose, then drew him to his feet. The man looked sated but not yet ready to end their time together. Cam wondered if he owned the room, or rented it. He watched Myron strip off his garments, revealing a pale body soft from easy living but clean and reasonably fit for an older man. Like all Staubauns, he was hairless but for the head and groin. Though of plain workmanship, the bed welcomed their bodies with a sumptuous luxury, the mattress firm beneath soft sheets. Cam lay on his side, calm and relaxed under Myron's admiring hand as the man angled on one elbow above him, gazing warmly upon what his fingers caressed. He closed his eyes and gave himself over to the simple pleasure of being stroked, enjoying another man's hand tracing the hard muscles of his upper arm, skimming his waist, firmly owning the curve of one buttock. When the Staubaun lightly brushed a thumb across one tight nipple, Cam inhaled sharply, his body reflexively arching to beg more. It was then that Myron leaned over and kissed him. Cam opened his mouth, allowed the Staubaun to gently penetrate him with his tongue. He sucked on it, indulging pure sensuality. It had been months since he had felt anything but raw jitters and need. Now this man's every touch ignited his flesh, awakened senses he had all but forgotten. Strangely, though his nipples tingled and his hard dick ached for release, he felt no desire for the man who aroused these things. He felt nothing for Myron other than a vague gratitude for giving him the semen to quench his jitters. All the rest, his body's ardent response to sexual stimulation, sprang from roots Penargos and Ralen had nourished and twisted. He surrendered to the pleasure because it was pleasure, and because Myron was talented also. "So, blue eyes," his patron said in that calm, arrogant voice all Staubauns seemed to cultivate, "it's not just the craving. You enjoy men." "Yes," he whispered, gasping when Myron trailed his left hand down Cam's belly to the dense curls around his dick, now throbbing so hard it wouldn't take much more to make it spend. "Have you any idea how beautiful you look, like this?" Those Staubaun lips pressed to his collarbone and Cam quivered at the spice scent from Myron's silver hair. Why did Staubaun men always do this to him? Damn them. "Please," he whispered. Myron's fingers circling the base of his dick nearly owned him. Myron didn't cease his caresses. His hand moved to Cam's thighs, his head lowered until his hot mouth covered one erect nipple. Nip led to nibble, creating currents of sensation that left Cam gasping. He pressed his mouth to Myron's hair, then arched his body to give his nipple even more to that torture. Myron ceased tormenting that morsel and moved across his chest to tease the other. "Oh, Goddess!" Cam swore. It had been so long. The men he sucked to kill his cravings never pleasured him in return, never gave back. Even the few he had allowed to fuck his ass had done so with as much consideration as they gave to pissing in a pot. Myron shifted, moving over him, and Cam rolled onto his back beneath the older man. The bed creaked as the Staubaun parted his thighs and hooked his knees over solid arms that then pushed his legs up toward his chest. Thus positioned, Myron lowered his body and began rubbing his long cock in measured strokes against Cam's engorged dick. The man knew what he was doing. Myron's cock, half-hard to start, within just strokes attained full hardness, until it commanded Cam's smaller dick with ease. Cam spent himself with embarrassing quickness, covering both their organs and bellies with sticky white cum. He gazed, stunned, full into the face of the intense, and still very erect, man looming over him. "Will you let me inside you, beauty?" Glutted with sex, Cam looked into the tender brown-eyed sternness of a man who was not truly asking a question, because he already was sure of the answer. A good ass-fucking held off the craving longer than a few sucks. "Yes." After reaching across him for something on the table, Myron took position between his legs, urging Cam's legs upon his shoulders. Closing his eyes, Cam submitted to the necessary preparation. Maybe he would enjoy it, this time. He tensed at the touch of Myron's finger, cool with some kind of ointment, to his asshole, but then relaxed when the finger, after rubbing and teasing for several long moments, pushed into him and circled gently. Whatever Myron was using was slippery, good stuff such as Ralen had once used. Ralen. Any other man in his ass always felt wrong, no matter how many times he did it. Like being cheapened. Cam turned his head away, eyes closed the better to imagine it was Ralen between his legs, teasing him open. Ralen . . . the only man in his life who had ever wanted not just sex, but him. Myron introduced a second finger, scissoring until his opening could accept a third. When Myron hooked a forefinger to brush the spot within that sent pulses of pleasure straight to his belly, Cam gasped. The fingers withdrew. Myron pushed forward then, spreading Cam's legs, and pushing his long cock against the waiting orifice. Cam hadn't been ass-fucked in months, but his body was too well-trained, and his current state of stimulation too pronounced, for his anus to resist penetration. A tight sweet burn accompanied the fullness of having a cock in his ass, but there was little actual pain. Myron's preparation had been expert and thorough. Cam locked his legs around the Staubaun, welcoming the long slender cock that left him feeling so well-filled and yet so completely open. It might not be Ralen's cock, but it fucked him just as surely. He clenched his ass muscles, his own way of fucking back. "Oh, beauty, your ass sucks cock even better than your mouth!" Myron plunged into him with deep, sure strokes, his voice thick with pleasure and lust. Many thrusts later, the Staubaun's cock released and semen flooded Cam's hungry ass. The warm fullness gratified him even before he felt the calming effect of his body absorbing the seminal fluid that made him a damn fucking cum slave. He was fed now, safe for another week. Myron rolled onto the bed and stretched alongside him, holding him almost like a lover. Perhaps the man envisioned himself as one. More likely he was simply decent. Cam welcomed the arm that pulled him near as they both sank into a post-coital slumber. * * * * The sound of Myron rising and dressing woke him. Cam blinked until his eyes focused. Judging by the lamps, there was still plenty of night left. The Staubaun stood at the bedside, smiling down at him. He placed a heavy purse beside Cam's hand. "Take this, beauty, for the pleasure you gave." Cam sat bolt upright at that. "You gave me what I needed, and I liked it, so we're good. I won't take your money." "Then I will leave it here." "And so will I." Myron sighed, but he retrieved his purse. "The room is paid through the night, so you may stay if you wish. Would you be interested in seeing me again?" Cam nodded. The man gave as much pleasure as he got, which was a far cry from anything he might find on the docks. "Just don't try to pay me." After adjusting his cloak and moving toward the door, Myron turned back. He had a pleasant face, for an older man. "Glauvas will be our intermediary. The room will be different each time. Just let him know when you get into town. If I cannot come for you, I have friends who would be available, if you would agree to that. We are respectable men, with interests our society has consigned to the streets. We dream of finding partners such as you." He weighed that. He'd known that Staubauns liked fucking Kheld boys, no secret in that, but never thought about how it might not be easy for some of that lot to find boys to fuck. Going to Fences or wandering the wharves was the usual way. But this was different. Myron was offering to arrange reliable sources, clean safe men he could suck in nice rooms. "I'll meet them," he agreed. "And if I like them, I'll pleasure them, just like I did you. But they better not try to pay me, either." A slight smile tugged at Myron's lips as he left and closed the door behind him. * * * * In the morning, Cam left the house early. He was half afraid the old woman would ask him for money, but she just kept to her dusting and didn't, so he went out the door. He dashed straight away to his boat, where one of Glauvas' men gave him a brisk nod and sauntered off. The man never acted like he knew what Cam had been up to, though with any Kheld on the waterfront staying out all night that had to be the thought. He was all the way to Rainill before he found the extra crate in a corner near his bunk. He opened it to find six more bottles of that fancy Teremar wine with the silver rings on the necks, all winking with green jewels. It would be just like a Staubaun weasel to set him up as a thief, but it seemed more likely Myron had found a way to pay him. Muttering the whole way, Cam kept to his schedule. He didn't have so many customers he could afford to lose even one to a missed delivery. He kept every bottle save the one he'd paid for, which he sold to the Kheld chieftain for ten gold kings, making enough profit to pay for his whole trip. On his return to Dazunor-Rannuli a week later, he watched to see if any of the city guard lay in wait to clap him in chains, but none were to be seen, so he headed straight to Glauvas' shop. The wine merchant beamed at him. "I'm giving back the wine," Cam said, before Glauvas could get out a word. "What wine? The juggers of Tollech are too young to have gone vinegar." "The Teremar wine. Six bottles, put on my boat while your man was watching it." "That was no wine of mine. I've still got six of my ten. Did my man mention a delivery?" "I didn't ask. Who delivers in the middle of the night?" But they both knew the answer to that question. Glauvas lifted an eyebrow. Cam sighed and shook his head in disgust. The merchant clapped him on the shoulder. "You might as well get used to it, lad. Your alternative is to forage on the docks after dark for your ease. The fact of this matter is wealthy men of any character at all are going to want to give you gifts. It alleviates their guilt at enjoying what has been done to your body." He drew Cam over to a chair and bade him sit. "Here," he said, breaking out a bottle already uncorked and poured two glasses. "This one's new, from Merced. I hear the Ardaenan king serves it at his table." The wine was good, bright with lingering notes of apples. After drinking half a glass, Cam asked, "Why? Why are you helping me?" Glauvas pondered the deep red liquid in his glass before raising his dark eyes. "Because you're fighting it, not letting it destroy you. I've been watching you making your route, keeping your contracts, timing your visits. You're determined and smart, and I like that in any man. Thought I could give a hand by hooking you up." He added to Cam's cup, then his. "It helps that you're damn good-looking." "Myron's not his real name, is it?" "No." Cam hadn't ever really thought it was. He took a deep sip of the fruity Merced wine, then put down the glass. "Just tell him no more damn Teremar wine, right? I'm not sure I can sell it, and I would rather drink river water than something that costs a gold ram every sip!" "If you want, I could buy that Teremar wine off you for four kings a bottle." "Not a chance. If I can sell it at all, I can get twice that downriver." Glauvas laughed and leaned over to pour more wine into his glass. "Shall I let him know you're in town?" Cam nodded. * * * * The next year demand for Kheld goods grew when the King's Kheld-sired grandson, Stefan, became Prince of Dazunor and sat on the High Seat at Trulo. Stefan ordered his domain to open more avenues of commerce to Amallar, and Cam benefitted by his existing ties in the Staubaun towns along the river. His first boat, bought with Staubaun gold he had earned on his knees, soon earned him enough gold to buy another. He leased a bit of land in the Kheld river port of Tualla. The town was well-situated on the Amallar bank between Eldwash and the Trulo Bend. Over the next few months, he built a small warehouse with a long, sturdy pier and began storing his inventory there. The damn Teremar wine helped him buy a refurbished barge and he was well on his way to prosperity. He would never need to whore for Staubaun gold again. He hid as best he could his forays into Staubaun towns in search of men to stave off his jitters. Thanks to Glauvas, he no longer needed to put himself at risk in Dazunor-Rannuli. The small group of men who sought his attention were respectful and discreet. He was attractive and clean, not bitter, and generous with his body—once he was familiar with a man and let down his guard, he truly enjoyed the acts he bestowed. Though often his liaisons sought to win his favor with gifts, and sometimes he would accept such, he extended no promises to them. He met Myron every second week at a rented room on the waterfront. He still knew nothing about the man but that he would be there. The arrangement, which had worked for nearly a year, suited him well. He would arrive in the afternoon after traveling upriver from Rainill, order his goods and secure those he had ordered the week before, then after dark would make his way to the room. The next day, his need for Staubaun semen sated, he would return to his boat and resume his trade, sailing downriver to Rainill again and then on to Omadawn and Tualla. * * * * Dazunor-Rannuli's palaces glowed like flame as the sun dipped through blood-red clouds the day Cam sailed in with a hold full of pungent Frendeli cheese. After unloading and making the delivery, he tied down the next leg's cargo before sharing a cup of bran with his only help that trip, an older Kheld man of uneven wit and no family with whose distant kin he had formerly boarded. Soon after, he left the boat in the man's care and sought the dusk-shadowed waterfront. Though Khelds were forbidden to wear arms in Dazunor-Rannuli, Cam carried a dagger strapped to his side, well-concealed by his cloak. He had spilled Staubaun blood on a few occasions in the first rough year after his escape, though not since, due to the success of his cautions. He might be a cumbuck, but he lacked the desperate manner associated with that condition. He knew where his source would be found and, even if that man did not appear, another would be there who was just as Staubaun and just as safe. He could get what he needed on the docks if he had to. His looks had not dimmed, if the glances he still got meant anything. There were Staubauns enough who admired dark-haired young men with deep blue eyes that promised only pleasure. Cam had just stepped into the narrow alley leading to the address Glauvas had given him, when he realized he was not alone. His hand fled to his dagger but was caught by a crushing grip just before something dark and loose—a sack—was thrown over his head. A hard arm circled his neck and pulled him off balance, a blade pressed to his ribs. "You won't need this, friend," a Staubaun voice informed him as other hands, clearly from a second man, swiftly divested him of the weapon. He had never heard a voice so murderously calm or felt hands more efficient. Fear such as he had not known in a year seized him. "What do you want?" He prayed against a dozen possibilities. "You. Just you. Your services, your time if you agree. You will be well-compensated." "My services?" "We know why you come here." There were but two men, certainly Staubaun, though their speech had a cadence with which he was unfamiliar. The south, he thought. "It sounds to me that you are looking for a whore," he said, forcing calm into his voice, trying to buy time to think. "I'm not one." "We know. But you are what we are looking for." "Go to hell." He gasped as the second man pushed him against a wall and pressed the sword harder against his ribs, reminding him it was there. "You don't want to do that, cumbuck," the Staubaun said in a low voice, his words continuing to be coldly impersonal, even with the insult. "All we have to do is take you in that room and wait long enough. We made sure your friend would be busy." He adjusted a cloak over Cam's shoulders, a cloak with a hood that would hide the sack covering his head. AWe know who he is, and that you don't. We know who you are. Where you come from, how often, and why. It's nothing to us. But you need to find a man tonight, and our Lord just wants a little of your time." A Cumbuck's Tale Ch. 08 "Your Lord?" "We don't disappoint him. Come quietly." There were such Lords in Dazunor-Rannuli as men never disappointed, such Lords as might command men such as these. Such Lords as always got what they wanted. Mouth dry, his craving already high and knowing he ultimately would go with them, willing or not, Cam went without further struggle. The men, instructing him to walk with his head down, led him from that place. They guided him in many directions, at last carefully down a ladder onto a pier and from there to a boat. Whether he was now on the river or one of Dazunor-Rannuli's canals, he did not know. Cam did not sense that they meant him harm, but their anonymous Lord, a man who would send men to abduct a victim for him, terrified him to the core. He knew they were on the river when he felt the stronger waves of open water. He knew they had reached another boat when he felt the shifting movement of the one he was in, the sounds of lines being dropped. One of the men drew him to his feet, placed his hand on a ladder. Rung by rung, he climbed up until other hands helped him onto the vessel. The boat was tall—a yacht, not a barge—large and moored. There was hardly any sway. The men led him along a deck, into a structure, down some stairs—not the usual boat rungs, but real steps. They paused, the Staubaun whispering in his ear, "Mind your manners, if you have any," before they led him into a room. Only when they were inside, did they remove the blindfold. Cam blinked, adjusting to the low pleasant light and his surprising surroundings. The room was rich beyond anything he had ever seen even on land. The wood, the fabrics, even the scent were redolent of luxury. He looked at the only other person in the room besides his two captors, surprised to see a young man nearly Staubaun tall, but surely no more than twenty years in age. Cam stared into the most amazing eyes he had ever seen, dark-lashed and clear, with a silver color that belied otherwise Staubaun golden looks. After receiving a nod from the youth, the two men bowed and then left. So he really was their Lord. His host walked to the center of the room, where a massive couch waited beneath a ceiling medallion so fine only a master could have carved it. "So you are a cumbuck." The statement, delivered boldly in a darkly toned voice easily as marvelous as the youth's looks, demanded confirmation. "For what it's worth," Cam provided. "You don't want to be one?" "No." "But it gives you pleasure?" "Sometimes. I can do without the craving." "Maybe I can help you with that. What is your name?" It would be impudent not to answer. "Cam." Feeling bold, he added, "What's yours?" "You don't need to know that." The response effectively quashed any hope that their mutual youth might make them equals. The shirt the young man wore, dark grey silk so lustrous it could have been fur, whispered of enormous wealth. "I have a proposition for you. There is something I want to do—involving acts I understand you are willing to do. Just this once and never again. But it's very specific, and a little . . . unusual." Cam tried not to smile at the youth's naiveté. "It all comes down to dick, mouth or ass." The silver gaze hardened. "That's not what I meant. It's a matter of whose dick, mouth and ass." "Mine, I figure, and yours." "Mine, to be sure. But I want to pretend, just for a few hours, that yours belong to another man." Cam had heard of such things, though he had never done it. He had once listened to another cumbuck tell about a patron who liked to pretend he was being fellated by his own brother. This sounded like a similar thing. He nodded, thinking it would be easy enough, particularly given who was wanting him to do it. He had fucked and been fucked by less comely men than this strikingly handsome youth, whose identity had begun to intrigue him. "Sure. I can do that. Just tell me what to call you." "Staubaun bastard. Freak. Monster—every foul Kheld name you can think of. I'm not giving you my name. As for me," those perfect lips smiled beneath cold eyes, "I will call you Stefan." Stefan? The Prince? The King's grandson and now ruler of Dazunor? Cam let that sink in, but there wasn't much to think about. He reckoned the acting was the easy part. Stefan was Kheld, after all. "Then Stefan I will be," he agreed. "You look a lot like him," the Staubaun youth continued. He walked across the wide room, unfastening the ties of his elegant shirt, removing it. Cam saw at once that his young patron had a fine body: lithe, sculpted and toned although not yet matured fully into adult proportions. He moved like a warrior—or a predator. "You have his build and his hair, and your facial features are remarkably like." Cam stared at him, amazed by more than his beauty. Did this astounding youth actually know the Prince? "Is that why you chose me?" He began to strip off his own garments, glad for once of the work that kept him fit. It had been a long time, ever since Ralen, that he had felt any desire at all to please or be pleased by a man for himself. His dick had already hardened with appreciation for what he was seeing. "I didn't choose you. But it may be why they did." The young Lord—for even if he was not pure Staubaun, he was very clearly a Lord—sat down upon that wide couch to remove his boots. Cam, more experienced in the expeditious removal of clothing, finished before he did. "Am I willing or unwilling?" he asked, clarifying an important point. "Willing but unwilling. You're a cumbuck, after all, and you want it, but you don't want me." Cam lowered to his knees before the now undressed youth and smiled. "Maybe I do want you—but I'll pretend that I don't." For the first time, the young Lord's smile reached his eyes. The expression was powerfully winning. He, too, was agreeing to dissemble. For all his native command and confidence, he was uncertain how to proceed. Cam wanted to relax him. Far from disliking this encounter, he no longer felt in immediate danger. "Is this your first time?" he asked. Kneeling before the youth, he reached out tentatively toward the young Lord's rapidly stiffening cock. It was a beautiful member, pure rose ivory and as perfect as the rest of him. The smile grew feral and all the more alluring for that. "You don't need to know that, either—Stefan." Wrapping his right hand in Cam's hair, he pulled him forward, angling his mouth so that their lips met in a kiss. The gesture was raw, intimate. Cam gasped at the power of the young man's sensuality, and that it should strike through his body so precisely, so surely that every nerve ending came to life. Desire swelled within him like music. Whoever you are, Cam thought deliriously, opening his mouth to that delicious exploration, I hope Stefan appreciates how you feel about him! His hand for the first time touched the other youth's cock and he wrapped his fingers around that sculpted summons. "You bastard," he whispered, as heatedly as he could. "I always knew you'd want it," the words growled against his lips, his throat as the young mouth moved along the pulsing line of it before the hand in his hair firmed and thrust Cam's face down toward his cock. "Do you want to be a cumbuck, Stefan? You know you do. Suck it." "Burn in all seven hells, you perverted Staubaun fuck—" "Just one taste. I want to feel your tongue." Cam stuck out his tongue just enough to draw it over the plump cock head placed to his lips. A slippery bead of pre-cum coated his tongue's surface. "I did it. There. Now get away from me with your vile Staubaun cock." "Not until I've filled your fucking mouth!" "No!" Though he put up token resistance, Cam mouthed that beautiful cock between gasps. "I'll kill you before I suck you, you mother-humping, whore-sucking shit!" Cam reviled his Lord lover with all the obscenities he could dredge from his Kheldish soul. Though his feelings jumbled the words, his mind kept up the act until the blessed silence that followed his lips closing in surrender over that perfect cock, the sweet pre-cum drops of which slid like nectar into his very soul. The sounds of his eager slurping and the young Lord's pleasured groans filled the paneled room. "That's it, Stefan . . . I knew you'd be good at this . . ." Yes, my Lord, I'm very good at this, better than he would be, Cam rhapsodized. You dream of Stefan—and I'll dream of you. Opening his throat, he took that magnificent cock deep, adoring its thickness and length, his hands caressing the gasping youth's marvelous thighs. Those other hands tightened in his hair, pulling his head down as the young man's loins lifted. "Gods, Stefan, you really want it!" The first burst of juice welled powerfully against his tongue before erupting in his mouth. Wanting to please the young Lord, Cam kept him deep and gulped at the flood of semen, only at the last pulling back to catch the final drops, swirling these ecstatically in his mouth. The youth's emission was honey-sweet, musk and spice, like no man he had ever tasted. But it satisfied his craving as only Staubaun cum could. His captors had not cheated him. Smitten and grateful, he indulged himself, licking that still tumescent organ with soft attentiveness as the youth blinked at the ceiling and caught back the breath he had just spent. "Gods. Now I know what they mean. That was . . . like nothing I've ever felt before." I am his first man! Cam smiled, if only to himself. He had never to his knowledge decanted a virgin before. It was odd to think they might be the same age and yet he knew so much more. Happy simply to be where he was, doing what he was doing, Cam kept the youth's organ in his mouth and continued licking, doing his best to play the conquered. He was not surprised when but a few minutes later, after an interlude of silence spent entirely for the young man's pleasure, that splendid young cock stiffened anew. Pulling his mouth from that cock, he looked up at the handsome, pleasure-sated Lord with deliberate, blue-eyed provocation. "I hate you," he said again. He had noted which words hit closest to the mark. Those silver eyes bored back into his. Though he sensed the pleasure behind them at his subtle resumption of their game, he also detected an underlying cruelty that, if it ever broke out between them, would end his indulgence and, quite possibly, his life. The youth's next words smote him like ice. "I'm going to break you." This isn't about love, he knew then, for he had seen its kind before. But neither was it, completely, about hate. Cam let himself be pulled, his body dragged upright to the upholstered couch and bent forward over the high, padded end. Nearby stood a stand, the jar on it already open. The youth had thought about how he would do it. Reassured, Cam resumed playing the part, castigating his tormentor one moment and pleading for mercy the next. He delivered cues within his pleas. "You half-breed Staubaun freak, go fuck yourself!" he railed, struggling lightly until the other youth overpowered him and pinned his limbs. He kept up the protests as the youth smeared lubricant around his asshole, employing pleas to guide him to use the most arousing method. "Please, stop . . . don't put your slimy finger in my Kheld ass, you bastard!" His gasp of pleasure as that finger pushed into him was not feigned. "Gods, you're tight, Stefan. You're really tight." "Don't, please!" The finger in his ass felt tender, almost loving, for all the cruelty in its intent. He felt a second finger push at his entrance and begged for it, too. "Oh, no . . . not two! Please, no!" The second finger pushed into him alongside the first, stretching him further. Those fingers moved inside him, exploring his tight, slick channel. "And you're hot, too. Do you know how hot you are?" "Please . . . don't make me want it . . . oh, Mother, not like this . . ." "Like what, Stefan? Like a cumbuck whore?" "Don't, please . . . damn you, you fucker, you gods' damned Staubaun fucker . . ." The youth's fingers caressed his captive asshole surely now, opening and relaxing it. He was a quick learner. Cam could barely contain the pleasure he was feeling. That hard young cock rested against his leg like a thick, hot brand. "Not that spot . . . oh, gods!" The youth had found the chestnut-sized bump within his rectum. Relishing Cam's response, the youth massaged it again. "I'm going to cum . . . fuck you! Get your hands off me!" The youth removed his fingers, and the urge to ejaculate calmed. Cam gasped, strung out between his raging dick and the sweet tension in his ass. He did not have to wait long. The youth was himself impatient. "You deserve this, Stefan," his tormentor said, positioning himself. "You so deserve this—" "No, please!" He felt the young Lord bend over him, pressing down on his back, strangely intimate . . . face alongside his head, that dark voice in his ear. "You really do!" He was no longer Cam, but Stefan. Stefan the proud . . . Stefan the royal born, the King's grandson . . . Stefan receiving a Staubaun cock in his ass. "Fuck you!" he cried, even as the youth's hard cock pushed into him and he had to force himself to continue to rant and resist, to protest the cock penetrating his begging ass. He made it as tight as he could as the handsome youth forced him open. "You bastard, you fucking, ill-born bastard!" "You hate this, don't you, you posturing little Kheld? You hate having me inside you." "Yes, I hate it! God damn you—I hate you, you prick!" But his Kheld dick was pounding with excitement, ready to burst with the pleasure of being so elegantly penetrated, the young Lord's cock sliding hard and sleek in his well-trained ass. "Liar!" the youth hissed, his strong young body pressing Cam's down even as his cock moved powerfully in his ass. The pace was personal, deliberate . . . meant to punish but also to pleasure. "You love it. This is what you want, what you really want . . . right, Stefan? My cock enjoying your ass?" Yes. Yes, please. Enjoy my ass. He both loved and hated this aristocratic young man who was taking him by mock force. "No, please . . . you fucking bastard . . . oh, please . . ." Cam no longer knew if he protested or begged. He was feeling too much, was too far in it. Adoring, he opened himself to that pounding, gave himself to it. He had accommodated bigger cocks, but this one owned him as only two others ever had. Penargos. Ralen. Rape and love. "You can tell me, Stefan. Tell me that you love it." "Oh, gods . . ." "Tell me," the voice purred in his ear. Cam wanted to tell him, with his body, with his very being. Wanted to tell him how good it felt, how perfect, how right. Though he wanted to remain separate, in control, he could no longer deny the ecstasy taking hold of his body, pushing him over the edge. He pushed his ass up and back, begging for that plunging organ as it penetrated his core and impaled him on love's tender blade. "I love it! Gods help me, I love it . . . fuck me, please," he begged, without knowing why, only that he felt it acutely. Felt the desire, the surprise and the sweetness. "Fuck me! Fuck me, gods damn you! Fuck my royal Kheld ass! Use me, you bastard . . . make me yours!" "That's right, I'm fucking your royal ass, Stefan. The way you really want it, the way it should be—not ruler, but ruled—" Cam cried out then. . . cried out the way he knew Stefan would, in anguish and shame because his ass was being thoroughly, completely Staubaun-fucked. Pleasure surged through his loins. His dick, captive against the cushions, bunched and thumped against his belly, sending forth spurts of seed to spread in a warm pool beneath his writhing body. The cock pounding him continued to plow his tight, orgasming hole. "Gods, Stefan! I own you now . . . and you feel so damn good!" "Oh, Mother . . ." Cam ejaculated a second time, again flooding the upholstery. The damn couch was certainly ruined. "I hate you," he gasped, half meaning it. "I hate you for this—I hate you—" "I hate you, too." The game must have ended there for him, too, for the young Lord, thrusting hard and deep, groaned with his own ejaculation. Another groan seconds later was followed by a second gush. There might have been a third. Cam sighed happily, savoring the warmth dissipating through his body. As always following gifts of Staubaun seed, he felt completely sated. The young man, pulling out of his ass, stared at him in amazement and dropped to the floor. That he had enjoyed his play appeared certain. "I may never do this again," he said, "but I'm glad I did it this once." I'm glad you did, too. Just looking at the well-satisfied youth who had taken such pleasure in his body was reward enough. He is the most beautiful man I have ever had, in any way. He almost understood now the Staubaun men who so praised and pursued his looks. The young Lord eventually pushed to his feet and went to a closet, pulling out two soft towels. He directed Cam to a washroom as large and splendid as any the Kheld had ever seen even in the houses of wealthy merchants. That a boat should have such a facility seemed impossible. Cam knew enough to press a lever for water, relieving himself of the humiliation of asking. The water was warm, a rare luxury even on land and he savored the indulgence. He washed down his body in front of a mirror large enough to show his entire torso, yet so fine there was no distortion in any part of that image. He looked like a man well-fucked. It showed in the eyes and tell-tale fullness about the mouth. He also saw his body clearly for the first time in two years and was surprised to see there was now some dark hair on his thighs and how obvious it now was on his belly. I'm no longer a boy. I'm very much a man. He could not remember it happening and now needed to wonder if he might soon have to remove hair to make his body more appealing. When he emerged again into the paneled room, he felt a twinge of disappointment to see that his young patron had donned a tunic and loose trousers of soft lustrous grey. Even so casually attired, he looked impeccably royal. For the first time, it occurred to Cam that the youth might actually be royal. Many of the great Houses had dwellings in Dazunor-Rannuli. He went to his small pile of clothing, and began to don the pieces. "How would you like me to reward you?" the young man asked. He was haughty again, but not unfriendly. "Anything you ask." "Anything?" Cam dared a grin. The offer was a bold one. "Anything I agree to do." The smile was real. Anything. What might a royal youth be able to do? The very thing he could not? It occurred to him to be cautious. Such an offer could be terribly loaded, but so too were the possibilities. Cam drew a breath. "I don't need gold," he said. "I do well enough with my boats, you see. I get by. But—" he swallowed, then jumped ahead with it, "—there is a man—" "A man?" He had captured the youth's interest, if only the sly, amused edges of it. Something new looked back at him, unreadable. "You want me to kill someone?" Cam looked up sharply. "No! I—" He caught the youth's look and averted his gaze again at realizing he was being toyed with. This was a very dangerous young man. "He's a Staubaun man. I used to be with him. I—I was told he was dead, or in prison. But I found out. He's in prison, see, and I—" He stumbled over the words. "You want him out." He nodded. "Yes. His name is Ralen. I don't know if he has any other name, guess I never bothered to find out. I was an idiot then. He taught me a lot. He was a smuggler on the Dazun, and in Neuberland. A group of Lords in Neuberland, with the help of Merrydn, caught up with him three years ago. He's in prison somewhere in stinking Gobba. They won't tell me where." A Cumbuck's Tale Ch. 08 The youth looked intrigued, and only in part by the request. His manner hinted that he had heard men plead for other men's lives before. "And that's all you want, this man's life?" "You said anything. I told you what I want. It never hurts to ask, right? I'll take gold, if that's what you want to give me, however much it was worth to you." "A careful answer." Those confident eyes continued their study of him. "Surely you guessed that I meant to kill you after. Why didn't you ask for your life? How do you know I have changed my mind?" Cam met his question honestly. "Because if you mean to let me live, I'll live—and I might also get what I asked for. And if you mean to kill me, you'll do it anyway." The young Lord smiled. A Cumbuck's Tale Ch. 09 A Cumbuck's Tale, Ch. 09 Chapter 9 -- Navigating a New Course The young Lord's men gave him a meal and more gold than he could carry. The two henchmen conveyed him, hooded again, back to his boat, along with the gold. When he reached Tualla three days later, he found a letter waiting for him, informing him that a vault had been purchased in his name in a banking house in Dazunor-Rannuli, into which someone—no one would divulge whom—had deposited a sum of gold fit for a Lord. Cam used a portion of his new wealth to try to buy Ralen's freedom. For the very first time in the year they'd known each other, he asked a favor of Myron—and the man complied, providing him with a reference that put him in touch with a well-known litigator. That man helped him find and hire a Staubaun intermediary of sufficient stature to bribe the magistrates in Merath. But the process stalled in Gobba where the Lord of that domain kept the only records of prisoners and was not interested in answering questions about the fate of Kheldish sympathizers. After spending a week in the city, Cam was advised not to push too hard. The Lord of Gobba was more likely to kill a man a Kheld wanted to free than he was to release him. Disheartened, Cam left with a heavy heart, not knowing what else he could do. Though he now had wealth, his fortune was great only by Kheld standards. A few more bribes and it would be gone. It was strange how at first he had only wanted to survive—survive Penargos, survive being a cumbuck, survive the river—and he had clung to anything that would help him in that. Now that his survival was less pressing and his situation less dire, his wants were more elusive. Even after all these months, he did not understand fully why he so wanted to find Ralen. The Staubaun bastard had stolen him from his ignorant village life and dragged him into one even more confused—but none of that mattered. All that mattered was that while the sex had been great, the smiles had been heaven. His night with the young Lord had taught him that sex was not love and that hate was complicated. He did not know what he had taught the young Lord, except that they had shared knowledge from the same bowl. On returning from Gobba, he stopped only briefly in Dazunor-Rannuli to replenish supplies and learn that his orders had been placed and picked up according to schedule. He spent the evening on a tavern deck overlooking the wharves, nursing his ale and watching what took place in the shadows. The strolling, arrogant Staubaun men. The slight, furtive figures of twisted Kheld boys and men hopeful of scoring Staubaun cock. Where before he had felt hopeless, knowing what lay in wait just under his own skin, he now felt only sick. What he did not feel, though he still lived in terror of it, was the craving that had once driven him to lurk in those same shadows. "Cumbuck?" a man whispered hoarsely, pausing at his table. He was Staubaun, not uncomely and seemed reasonably clean. His direct gaze held more hope than disdain, and conveyed knowledge that not all cumbucks were slovenly or desperate. Before, Cam would have considered him. "No," he answered, feeling no craving at all despite three weeks without. "Look elsewhere." He said it forcefully enough the man left. He left soon afterward himself, having arranged an assignation with Myron. He wanted to thank the man for his help, and express it breath on breath and skin on skin. The litigator had let slip that Myron was a renowned poet, and shown Cam a slim book—widely praised and read, said the man—that celebrated the poet's relationship with a beautiful young man he meets while crossing the dark river of his sorrow over a lost love, reviving his ardor upon grassy banks with honeycomb kisses and loins like a hibiscus. Cam didn't think he was any of those things, but if Myron thought so it brought no harm. As he walked the narrow street toward the room, he felt strangely hollow and bereft, afraid Myron would strive to comfort him and fail. His cravings were gone, but there was something he still wanted to find, if only he knew where to look. * * * * He spent his next overnight in Rainill and the following evening made Omadawn, surprising his sister. The rest of his family was still awkward with him and Gereg never spared calling him a Staubaun cumwhore. That Cam lived, and indeed thrived because of his trade on the river, brought no comfort to a father who had preferred thinking his son dead to knowing the obscene nature of his survival. Whenever Cam paid a visit, Gereg would leave the house, and so Cam's visits to Omadawn were few. This day he had goods to deliver: Merathi cooking pots and Sordan-milled spices awaited by a Kheld shopkeeper and two boxes of fine Lacenedoni linens and brushes for a peddler whose sole supplier he was. He left the latter with the peddler's wife, along with a box of ointments and pomades such as city folk used in their grooming and for which he was certain the peddler would find buyers. Khelds fancied society's luxuries to the very degree they did not have such items for themselves. Only one bundle more did he have as he walked to the town fringe and the house Bren had built for Henna out of hand-hewn wood and local stone. It was a sturdy house, as sturdy as their love, and Cam had helped her to furnish it comfortably. Now she had gotten with child and was as round and happy as any woman he had ever seen. In Dazunor-Rannuli, he had bought a gift of fine soft blankets for the baby, and was surprised to find the child not born yet. "Cam!" Henna exclaimed, waddling to embrace him. Her belly pushed like a ram's round head against his body. "Where have you been? The peddler's been asking and there's a man looking for you in Tualla." He hugged her as best he could, given the encumbrance. "A man?" "The town sent a message here, but we had to say we hadn't seen you. He either wants work or to give you some," Henna reasoned. Her round face was all smiles and she touched her hand to his cheek, an unexpected tenderness. "You look different." "Worn out, most like." "No," she said, studying him, her mouth tugged by indecision. "Less burdened." She fingered his jacket of dense gray wool and blue leather. "And you're wearing finer clothes." Cam laughed, because he had gotten a new wardrobe from the best clothier in Skairen, hoping to favorably impress the magistrates in Merrydn and Gobba. "And I'll get you some, too, once you get back your figure. How big is that thing going to get?" When he left in the morning, Henna gave him some advice along with a bag of food for the day. "It's time you get a wife," she said. "Mother would tell you, but you never go visit. Find yourself a good girl and build her a house." It was Kheld custom for a man to build a house to shelter his new bride and their children. But Cam now knew why he had never found a girl to pursue, and why he never would. "I'm not going to get a wife, Henna," he said. "I like men and always have, probably always will. And men also like me, so if anything I'll end up with one of them." Her big eyes rested on him sadly. "So it's like Badda said." "Mostly." He swallowed. "But we'll never change, Henna—you and me. I love my family, it's just—I don't fit in anymore, because of that." She wrapped her arms around him and crushed her face to his jacket. "I'm glad you came back to us, Cam. It's only that I want to see you happy. And right now you seem so sad! Find a man, then, if that's what you want." He laughed. Finding a man might well prove harder than finding a good girl. * * * * With spring runoff, the Dazun was swollen and wide, more so at Tualla than at Rainill. The river bulged at the town before flowing between ranks of high hills toward Trulo and the Frendel valley. The water was high as evening drifted near and Cam tied his one-man boat to the slip of his small pier and warehouse. It was a good location, leased early on the now prosperous waterfront, with solid plank work he and Bren had spent a good part of the last summer putting down. Over the last year, he and his sister's husband had renewed their friendship and were again easy with each other. His barge was tied at pier, half-loaded with lumber from the local mill, and he knew his second boat would be unloading at Gustan. As he approached the building, he saw the man sitting against some bales of straw under the overhang, watching him. He lost a step as he wondered what to do. Until he saw the man stand, Staubaun tall. Until he saw his face. "Gods, Ralen," he said. Life, clearly, had treated the former smuggler hard. The big man was thinner now, had lost muscle and health. But it was the same face, with its once broken nose and sardonic smile. The gold hair was now streaked with grey. "Hey, Cam. Gods, you haven't changed. Still the beauty. I—I'm surprised you remember me." "Remember you? I've never forgotten you." Cam embraced him then, threw his arms about his neck and clasped him close. Ralen had washed, for he smelled of good Kheld soap, the kind town wives made of white lard and sweetgrass oil. "Hells, Ralen, I've been looking. Come in." The man wobbled, looked uncertain. What had they done to him in that Staubaun prison? Cam fumbled with the latch, even the simple lock too much for his racing mind. The rooms inside served as both office and, in the back, his sleeping quarters. The furnishings were plain but sturdy, and there was a stove in one corner, though as yet no fire in it. He showed Ralen to the best chair and soon had the fire going. He set out some beer from the pots he had brought back from Omadawn and what was left of the food Henna had given him that morning. A true Kheld wife, she had given him enough bread and meat for three men. "I've been looking the whole while, when I wasn't keeping my body together, but them damn Staubauns, you know—no one would tell me a thing. How did you find me?" he asked. "I'll tell you that if you tell me how you did it." Cam sank into the other chair, the table between them. "Were you in prison, then? In Gobba?" "Ever since the day the bastards caught me." Ralen met his gaze and granted a crooked grin. "Imagine my surprise when one day they haul me out of that lightless hole and into clean air. All they gave me was a boot to the ass, passage to Merath, and an envelope with two words on the paper inside." He did it. That young Lord. It was the only explanation. "What two words?" "Cam and Tualla." "He left it up to you. To find me if you wanted to. Damn cruel way about it." Ralen sighed and took a deep drink of his beer. "Crueler not to. Now you tell me your part in it." Cam could not keep the smile from his face, so overwhelming was his joy at seeing Ralen and knowing that one night had so changed his life. "I don't know. It's the strangest thing. I—I've had a few rough times of my own, but I got this boat going, you see, and this business. But I won't suck men where I live, see, so I set it up where I would be in Dazunor-Rannuli every seven day and small ports in between, where there were regulars." He blushed at the look Ralen gave him, pained and also sympathetic, letting him know that he felt responsible for that. "Well, it worked for me. But then a couple months past, I docked in Dazunor-Rannuli and these two men stopped me. Said they knew who I was and who I was meeting, and that all they wanted was me to come with them, cuz their Lord needed a little something." "They all do." "Don't they? Especially that kind. But this one was different. Not what he wanted, so much, that wasn't different—but he was. Hell, he was the same age as me." It would only hurt Ralen, maybe, to know he had enjoyed the sex, so Cam didn't see any point in telling that part. "In return for what I did, he asked what I wanted. Anything, he said, and he sounded like he meant it, so knowing he was a Lord and all, I told him I wanted you out of that prison." Ralen stared at him, eyes blinking, then he put his face in his hands. When Cam saw that his shoulders were shaking, he went to his friend's side and cradled Ralen's head to his body, holding him best he could, stroking his head and hair until the Staubaun's sobs subsided. It was a release, he knew. Maybe only now did Ralen accept that his freedom was not a fluke, that it had a cause and was real. Cam had shed tears for himself a few times, though usually alone and for pretty much the same reasons. "Damn it, boy," the big man murmured, getting a grip on himself. "Damn it. I didn't know. I didn't know anyone cared. I thought if anything you had to be dead, fucked over by those sons of bitches, living in hell as a slave . . . I didn't know . . ." "I thought you were dead, at first. Meuk told me you were." He met the question in Ralen's tear-wet eyes. "He got me off Rahn Rock, but he put me to work. I got away from him in Dazunor-Rannuli. After I got on my own, I asked around for you, but no one knew anything for sure. Some said they thought you was dead. It didn't sound right to me, see, so I kept asking. Then one man told me you might be in prison." "That bastard Meuk, he's slime and always has been. Gods, I'm sorry, Cam, that he ever got his hands on you." Cam wasn't about to hold it against him. "It turned out all right, didn't it? I grew up fast is all. Saw quick enough that I'd do better on my own. And I did, even before that young Lord gave me gold enough. Guess he liked the service." He grinned to Ralen's grimace. "Stay with me, Ralen. I want you to." The big man shook his head, not so much in denial as disbelief. "I look like hell." He rubbed his neck. "The town must be talking. I sat out there three days, waiting for you." "Well, you found me." * * * * The prison had been hell. The Staubaun soldiers had spared Ralen's life on account of his pure race and what he might know, but the Lord of Gobba had not been lenient with him. The swords Ralen had been selling to the Khelds for years had been used too often to kill Gobba's soldiers and enable Kheld squatters to infest the Lord's sparsely populated land. His sole encounter with Engordon Skolos had been violent and brief. But Ralen was Staubaun and had a few powerful friends who might be offended by his execution, and so the Lord had simply tossed the captive into his deepest dungeon—where he could be forgotten. He had been raped during his captivity. Not every brute inclined to such acts preferred Kheld prisoners or found Staubaun men intimidating. After the first few months he had made some friends among the guards, many of whom were permanent and bored, and so he had not passed his days in isolation. The first few weeks of his ordeal had been the worst. He had not known Cam's fate and the thought of the Kheld youth fallen into Staubaun hands filled him with despair. If the soldiers had not killed the boy, certainly they had raped him, just as Ralen had been raped, multiply and viciously. If the young Kheld survived that, he would be given to some Lord for his pleasure, or worse, be sold to a brothel. The foulest fate of all, and perhaps the most likely, was that some officer would claim the youth and pander him from camp to camp, town to town, to any man with a coin. His inquiries brought neither news nor answers, only pain, for the soldiers had told him none had escaped and, thinking it great fun, would bring him body parts in proof. And so he had ceased to ask. In time, he convinced himself that Cam was dead. He resigned himself to living day by day, never completely without hope, but without hope of that. To think that the lively, good-looking boy he had loved might be suffering because of him was torment beyond bearing. And then the prison doors had opened and a man he did not know had simply thrust an envelope into his hand and, giving him the warning that he must never again set foot in Gobba, had put him on a barge to Merath. Opening that envelope and reading the words it contained had filled him with hope. But prison had left him wasted and weak, and he had sickened on the journey. In Merath, the barge hands left him retching on the wharf. A good woman of the Stol Dorma had found him and taken him to the public sick house, where he had drifted for several days in a dangerous state until he could properly drink and eat again. It had been another week before he could get a barge to take him on, and that only because he claimed he could cook. That barge went to Trulo, but passed Tualla on the journey. The barge had signaled the town and a small boat had been sent out to fetch him. The one coin the women of Stol had put into his hand upon his departure from the sick house, he gave to the fresh-faced lad who had pointed out to him the warehouse of Cam Gereggson. So that is his kin name, he thought, for he had never asked it. To know the boy's family would have been to know there were others in his life who might miss him or claim him. Had he found them again? Tualla was not far across the river from Omadawn. It made sense Cam would stay near the river. Once a cumbuck, always a cumbuck. Cam needed to suck Staubaun cock, and there were Staubauns all along the river. The boy had clearly done well enough for himself. He owned boats, the lad had said, and this dock and building. Who knew but that Cam had found himself a wealthy patron or two. It stood to reason. Cam. Tualla. Ralen pressed out the folds in the note, read it for the thousandth time, then folded it again. The message never changed. It never vanished or faded as do dreams, no matter how many times he took the paper from his pocket and opened it to reveal the words. Cam. Tualla. A kindly Kheld woman, having been told of him, gave him meals and a place to sleep until the young trader returned. "He's sometimes gone two weeks or more," she said. "Has kin on the other bank." But she knew nothing more than that. Her food was filling and gave him strength, however, and he walked patiently each morning to the warehouse to wait for the rest of the message. A man came on the second day he was there, a middle-aged Kheld with bull-like shoulders and nearly no neck, to receive a wagon-load of crates, which he loaded onto one of the two boats at the pier. He left soon after, saying he did not know when Cam would return but that he was taking these goods to Gustan. The man seemed as honest as he was plain and it amused Ralen to think of Cam as having someone in his employ. As the last day edged to dusk and he had seen the small boat approach, he had not immediately known who it would be. Many boats throughout the day came to Tualla, as Cam was not the only trader there nor even the most prosperous. But when the boat did not deviate from its course, but headed toward the jutting angle of the heavy pier, Ralen had risen to his feet. He knew the young man even before he saw his face, knew the movements of that body, limber and light, the quick energy with which he leaped from moving boat to solid dock. The way he lashed a line. He had taught him those things. Now it was his heart that leaped, his hopes that lashed his fingers to the note he clutched in his hand. Just to see Cam again was a triumph of wonder. More wondrous still were the things he learned next—that the youth's heart remained unchanged, that he could still smile and care, and that he had forgiven all that he had not forgotten. * * * * "It's a good location. We're the closest Kheld port to Trulo, see?" Cam pointed down river to the bend, just beyond which Dazunor's capital city would be found. "A canal here would cut two days off anything going by way of the Frendel to the interior, so I have plans." Ralen could not help being amazed by him. "You'll build an empire yet." "Might," Cam laughed. He sank down onto the grassy rise. His boatman had arrived early to work at the warehouse and so he had taken Ralen out in the small boat to show him the scope of his enterprise. They were now well down river from the town, the boat tied to the bank below this high hill. Tall trees—chestnut, maple and oak—rustled leaves of flame at their backs as the two men surveyed Dazunor's swells of hills across the river. A Cumbuck's Tale Ch. 09 A month ago, Ralen had been in a Gobba prison, pissing in a trough, starved and hopeless. Now he basked in Amallar beside the only person he gave one damn about and who gave a damn about him. A youth who had somehow persuaded a total stranger to save his life. Ralen was not surprised that just looking at Cam caused his cock to balloon with desire. His only surprise was that Cam had not come to him before now. Perhaps he had arrived in Tualla already sated. "I'll stay," he said, as if that matter had not already been decided. "At least for a while. You could use a good river man, and I'm the best." Cam's brilliant smile made his heart want to explode. Feeling stronger than even a few days before, he reached for the young man, cupping a hand around his head to draw him near. As he had hoped, there was no resistance. Cam's lips parted to his. Gods, what a boy! he thought, his hungry mouth devouring the very eagerness that filled his own. And he may well have shared a Denizen's bed, however little he knows it! It was seldom, maybe once in a lifetime, that a man bedded a pure beauty. Such a creature now returned his kiss with all the ardor of true love. His mouth moved over Cam's, tasting, exploring, getting to know him again. It had been too long, a lifetime . . . The youth's hand opened his shirt, fingertips brushing Ralen's erect nipples. He breathed harder. His former slave was more skilled now than before. Cam undid Ralen's belt, opened his trouser lacings, slid the pants down over his hips. Ralen's cock stood up, erect and proud. Autumn grass, no longer new, prickled his buttocks and thighs, but he no longer cared. Cam was with him. His beautiful Cam. The young man locked gazes with him, something challenging, asking . . . then amused in a way that was thrilling. He bent over Ralen's cock and began to work with his mouth. "Gods, cumbuck," Ralen groaned, arching his buttocks upward, offering up his cock to those talented lips and tongue as they slid down the shaft, then up again, leaving no part of his raging prong unkissed and unadored. "I've dreamed of this." "So have I," Cam murmured, ceasing only as long as it took for the warm breath of his words to caress Ralen's cock before resuming his enthusiastic attentions to that engorged pole. Drops of excitement welled in a steady stream from the flaring cock head and the youth lapped at them eagerly. "Rabbit, slow down. You'll push me too far—" Every flick of Cam's tongue, firm and expert, threatened to send Ralen over the edge. He doubted he had ever been harder. He tightened his fingers in the young man's heavy dark hair, welcoming the moment when Cam took his cock head and most of the towering shaft, too, deep into his mouth. Ralen felt his testicles tighten. He had been too long celibate, could not restrain himself any more than could an untried boy. "Oh, gods, Cam . . . I'm going to cum . . . I'm going to . . ." He fell back completely, his hips lifting and bucking, groaning in orgasm as his jerking shaft shot his pent up load into Cam's rhythmically sucking mouth. He spent a second and third time as the youth continued to mouth him gently. Looking to his partner a minute later, seeing the dark-haired youth framed by sunlight, the wind teasing his hair along with the smile in his eyes, Ralen felt nothing more than overwhelming gratitude to whatever god had brought his life and that of this young Kheld together. "Well, that hasn't changed," Cam said. "What is that?" "You still taste good." Ralen grinned. "Ah, cumbuck," he growled, moving over him as Cam, smiling, let himself be pressed back onto the grass, "Let's find out if you do, too." Pushing up the blue tunic, he opened the front of Cam's trousers to bring forth that treasure. He had sucked Staubaun or mongrel cock in prison, but no Kheld dick in that time, and now realized how he longed for that taste. He inhaled the clean musk of a young Kheld male and happily extended his tongue to lick the hot gamy skin of that rosy pole. Already it quivered with anticipation. Cam was no longer a boy and his genitals were larger now, his dick thicker and balls shadowed with short dark hair, but the entire package fit as neatly into Ralen's mouth as it had two years past. "Oh, Ralen, yes," the Kheld youth gasped to the strokes of the powerful tongue massaging his completely enclosed prick. "You're the one . . . the only one I want . . . please, you're the only one who can . . ." The only one who could know where he had been and what he now needed. Savoring his success, Ralen hungrily sucked the hot, hard dick of his handsome young lover until Cam, with a cry of pure pleasure, released his stream of salty Kheld cum into his throat. He noted upon licking the last drops from Cam's tip that the youth had gone back to a diet not so rich in fruit. That made him less sweet but not less tasty. Neither was he done with his sated and surrendering prize yet. His own cock had revived again, and there was more of which he had dreamed. With a predatory grin, he rolled the youth over onto hands and knees, pulling down his breeches but not bothering to remove them before positioning himself behind him. Feeling Ralen's erect cock slide against his buttocks, Cam pushed back against it, signaling his own need. "You always were the sweetest boy I ever fucked," Ralen bent over the smaller body of the Kheld and slowly pressed forward, easing his cum-slick cock into Cam's well-trained hole. Had the youth been inexperienced, he might never have entered without more lubrication—but Cam's ass was at least as skilled as his mouth. Overcoming the initial resistance he expected, Ralen groaned with pleasure at feeling his cock slide smoothly into that tight buttery heat. Was it any wonder that men paid gold for this? "Tell me you're mine, Cam," he insisted, unable to keep himself from demanding that proof. "My cumbuck, and mine alone. Tell me." "Please, Ralen—" "You're the one I dreamed of, in prison . . . at night . . ." Cam was fucking him back, like a horny rabbit. "Don't stop, Ralen . . . I'm yours, you bastard, I'll always be yours . . . I always have been . . . just don't stop . . ." "This is why I did it," he grunted, his cock rejoicing in the tight, clenching ass he screwed with every ounce of strength that was in him. "Made you a cumbuck. You were so damn beautiful, beautiful and brave, the perfect fuck . . . you still are . . . unghhh . . ." His cock, disobeying his desire to hold back that he might deliver further confessions, succumbed to the assault of pleasure and released the dams. His orgasm sent fresh spurts of cum deep into the youth's welcoming orifice. He was vaguely aware of Cam gasping beneath him, those muscular young thighs quivering as the Kheld's excited young dick ejected a thick stream of semen onto the bronzing grass. If any watched the two men on the hill, they saw a rare sight. A Staubaun male bent over the smooth body of a younger Kheld male was not unheard of, save in the place they did it. Such a thing might be common on the Staubaun side of the river, but few Staubauns comported with their lovers on a hillside in Amallar. That had been one of the reasons Cam had chosen to live there. "You haven't changed," Ralen grinned, rolling onto his side even as Cam did and noting the young Kheld's look of deep satisfaction. "Still the same horny rabbit." Those sky-colored eyes slid to his, freshly sober. "I guess we'll find out. I don't think I'm a cumbuck anymore." Ralen lost his smile, though he continued to gaze softly upon his young lover. "That doesn't change, rabbit." "I haven't had the jitters in weeks, Ralen. Not since the young Lord in Dazunor-Rannuli." His look was fully serious, utterly truthful. "I haven't craved cum at all. Not a drop." He broke gaze and sat up, looking instead out over the river. "Not even with you, just now." "That's—" Ralen began, then stopped, because what Cam was telling him was impossible. "But you—" "Don't misunderstand. I enjoyed it! I love your cock, Ralen, and I love you." The blush that rose to Cam's cheek at that admission was as endearing as the sentiment in his words. Ralen watched him, transfixed. "I'd do anything to give you pleasure and I get mine doing it. It's just that . . . I know that craving. It was with me like a woman's curse . . . every few days, I'd feel it start and by every seven day I would suck any gold hair that stuck a cock in my face. Which they always did. I never had trouble with that." He glared with disdainful memory of every man who had ever approached him. "But that craving, it doesn't go away, Cam. You saw the old Kheld men on the docks, not able to get any, the way their brains rot." The young man nodded. He had seen that, and more. He had seen those old mouths pissed in and raped by louts. He'd also seen the mercy killings carried out by wharf patrols. "Yeah, I saw. And I listened to all the talk, too, about ways a body might get rid of it—eat this thing, or that, or bathe in Lord's piss, or what have you—and how none of it really works and there's those that die trying things nobody should ever do." He returned his gaze to Ralen, wanting to be believed. "But something got rid of it for me. I sucked your cock because I wanted to suck it, and I want you in my ass so bad because I like feeling you inside me. And if that's perverted, then so am I. But the craving . . . all that feeling like I would do anything to get a mouth or ass full of Staubaun cum . . . that's gone. And I'm glad it's gone." So that was why he hadn't come to him sooner, in need. Ralen stared at Cam, stunned, not sure of his own feelings. As a Staubaun, he had enjoyed the benefits of his race's peculiar ability to sexually addict those it found useful for that purpose. His specific reason for abducting Cam two years ago had been so Penargos could sexually enslave the boy. It was a common enough Staubaun perversion and one he had further turned to his advantage by afterward keeping Cam for himself. It was not a chain of events of which he was particularly proud, though also not one he regretted. Yet he had never interacted sexually with any Kheld male who was not a cumbuck or about to become one. If Cam no longer craved Staubaun seed . . . "Then why did you want my cock?" he asked, that being the most important question. Cam looked at him in surprise. "Because it's wonderful! Because you are. I always thought you had the best one." Which answered that. Ralen could not help but be pleased, yet he stood amazed by the impossibility from which it had sprung. He sat up on the grass. "Tell me more about this young Lord," he demanded. Cam shook his head. "I know very little. They were very secret." He frowned at Ralen's frown. "There weren't nothing special about it. Nothing I want to talk about. I won't ask what they did to you. Don't ask what other men did to me." But Ralen was not mollified. "I don't want to know what he did, Cam. I don't care what this man did, or what you did to him. I want to know who he is." "Like I said, I don't know. He wouldn't tell me his name, but they generally don't, you know." He folded his knees and wrapped his arms about them. "All right, so he didn't give you a name. Names can be false. Looks aren't. What did he look like?" Cam shrugged. "A Staubaun, like all the others. But not really." His dark brows drew together in thought as he gazed into that memory. "He was different. Darker hair than yours, more like brass than gold. And his eyes weren't Staubaun at all. They were almost silver, like the eyes of that half-Ardaenan who repairs hulls at Eldwash." Ralen nodded and thought, then blew out the last of the air in his lungs. "Don't tell anyone, ever, what you just told me." The Kheld youth turned on him, all questions. "You know who he is?" "No. Just enough to know it's better if we don't find out." He covered the lie by rising to his feet and looking up river, toward Dazunor-Rannuli. "I'd like to help you expand your operation. I still have some of my gold because I never told them where I hid it. If you'll take a partner, I'd like to be that man." "You are that man already." "We won't always be able to live together, the river will see to that. But I want us to have our own place, maybe a house." Cam's eyes widened to blue pools. "A house?" "Dazunor-Rannuli, I'm thinking." Any man who made his living legitimately on the river ended up in the Rill city one way or another. He and Cam might as well start out there. "Nothing fancy, of course, at least to start, but I expect we'll do well enough to need a place to entertain clients—and each other." The Kheld laughed. "Are you building me a house, Ralen?" He could hardly miss the inflection, and recalled something he'd heard about Kheld courtship practices . . . then laughed. "If that means what I think it does, rabbit, then I'll build you a fucking palace." Judging by Cam's smile, he'd said exactly the right thing. ******* Thank you, readers, for taking the time to visit this story. I enjoyed writing it . . . and hope you enjoyed it, too!