And it blended with the other music, the music of those who held power, which flooded my senses. Mentally I reached out from the moment, exquisite as it was, and gathered other moments to me, welding the immediate past to the dizzying present. The feel of Lexius's lips--why hadn't I called him Lexius, made him call me Master? I would next time--the feel of his tight little anus when I'd raped him. I savored all this as the strap lazily revived my simmering flesh, and the banquet went on noisily.

I didn't know how much time had passed. I only knew, as I had in the hold of the ship, that something had changed. The men were rising, moving about. The strap was startling me now. I'd be left in peace, then it would lick at me. I was so sore that the scratch of a fingernail would have made me moan. I felt the blood teeming under the welts, and my c**k dancing in its leather bindings. The voices in the garden were getting louder, more drunken, more abandoned.

Cloth brushed my back, my head, as men passed me. Then suddenly my head was lifted, and the blindfold was pulled off, and I felt the bonds being loosened from my ankles and wrists and my chest simultaneously. I tensed all over, afraid of falling, of being dropped.

But the grooms quickly had me right side up, and I found myself standing in the grass, a desert Lord before me. Naturally, I hadn't the common sense or self-discipline not to look at him. He wore a full Arab headdress of white linen, and dark wine-colored robes, and his eyes glittered from a dark sunbaked face as he smiled at me. My stunned look seemed only to amuse him. But other such Lords pressed in. I was suddenly turned roughly. And a powerful hand squeezed my sore bu**ocks. There was laughter. My c**k was slapped, my chin lifted, my face examined.

And all around me I could see slaves were being taken down. Dmitri, still blindfolded, was on all fours on the grass, being well raped by a young Lord. And Tristan knelt before another Master, taking the man's c**k into his mouth with vigorous motions.

But even more interesting was the sight of Lexius, standing back under the fig tree, watching. Our eyes met for one split second before I was roughly turned around again.

I almost smiled, but it would have been foolish to do so. My reddened bu**ocks were really delighting these new Masters. They had all to squeeze them, feel the heat, see me wince. I wondered why they didn't whip all the other slaves, too. But no sooner had that little thought come to my head than I heard the straps at work on the others.

The Lord with the sunburnt face pushed me down on my knees and with both his hands kneaded my punished flesh, while another man caught my arms and wound them around his hips. He opened his robe. The c**k was ready for my mouth, and I took it, thinking of Lexius when I did so. And in back of me a c**k pushed at my bu**ocks, patted them, and entered.

I felt speared at both ends, and all the more excited by the thought that Lexius witnessed it. And I worked my lips hard on the delicious c**k in my mouth, falling into rhythm with the one that was driving into me. The c**k pushed deeper into my mouth, deeper into my throat, and the man behind me spanked against my aching backside with each thrust, until finally he spurted into me. I locked my arms tighter around the man I suckled. I nursed him harder and harder, while again my bu**ocks were pulled apart, kneaded and pinched, and another, bigger c**k slipped into me.

At last, I felt the hot salty fluid fill my mouth, and the cock, after a last few licks of my tongue, withdrew through my tight wet tips, as if savoring the motion as much as I did. At once, another took its place as the man in back continued to grind his hips against me.

It seems I took another in front and in back before I was stood upright again and thrown back, my shoulders caught by two men who pushed my head down so that I could see nothing but their robes, my legs spread apart by another man who entered me immediately. My body was rocked by his thrusts, my own c**k pumping vainly. A cool mass of cloth suddenly veiled my chest. Another man had straddled me. My head was lifted and cradled to receive his cock. I tried to free my arms to hold to his hips, but those who held me wouldn't allow it.

I was still sucking the cock, greedily, hungrily, my own hunger critical and painful now, when the man who had been raping me withdrew, quite satisfied I think, and I felt the strap licking at my bu**ocks as the men held my legs apart and up. I was whipped hard, the old welts blazing again, until I was moaning and twisting as I sucked the c**k and I could hear laughter around me. I cried bitterly as the pain grew worse. The hands that held my legs tightened. And I clung to the cock, working it feverishly until it came, and then letting the fluid fill my mouth before I slowly, deliberately swallowed it.

I was turned over again, and I glimpsed the grass beneath me, the sandals of those who held me suspended. My bu**ocks were steaming from the strap. And, as a new c**k entered my mouth and another entered my anus, I was whipped from the side, the strap curling over the same punished flesh, and then licking at my back and underneath, at my c**k and my ni**les. I went into a frenzy as the leather licked my c**k again. I pumped my backside against the man who raped me, and drew the other c**k into me deeply.

I had no real thoughts now. I had no dreams of other moments or even of Lexius. I was simmering with just the proper mixture of pain and excitement, hoping desperately that my Lords and Masters might at some point want to see my c**k perform.

But what need did they have for that?

When they were at last satisfied, I was allowed down on all fours and sent to remain motionless in the center of the nearby carpet. I might as well have been an animal for which they had no more need. And the Lords settled back. into their circle. They sat crossed-logged on their cushions and lifted their goblets again--ate, drank, murmured to one another.

I knelt there with my head low, as I had been taught, trying not to see them surrounding me. I wanted to look for Lexius, see that familiar figure again in the trees, know he was watching. But all I could see were the dark shadows surrounding me. I saw the glint of splendid robes, the sharp gleam of the men's eyes, heard the rise and fall of voices.

I was panting, and my c**k was humiliatingly alive, moving without my will. But what was that in the Sultan's garden? Now and then one of the men reached out and slapped my cock, or pulled at my ni**les. A mercy and a penance. A little laughter from the group, some observation. The situation was unbearably subdued and intimate. I tensed, unable to shield myself. And when my welts were pinched I cried softly, keeping my mouth closed.

The garden was quieter now. But there still came the sound of punishing straps and hoarse, triumphant cries of pleasure. Finally, two of the grooms appeared with another slave and they took me by the hair, and pulled me out of the circle as they pushed the new slave into it. They snapped their fingers for me to follow them.