The thong tapped my shoulder. It tapped my chin and pointed to the bed, to the spot before Tristan's cock. I moved slowly, tentatively, but the directions were clear. I was to lie beside him, facing him, but with my head at his cock, and my c**k at his head. My heart was racing now.

The cover felt rough beneath me, the thick embroidery oddly like sand under my skin. And I felt the manacles cruelly. I had to struggle like an armless thing to assume the correct position, and lying on my side was awkward, and I felt like the bound victim now. And there was Tristan's c**k right near my lips. And I knew that his lips were near my organ as well. I twisted against the manacles, against the abrasive cover, and I felt my c**k touch Tristan, but, before I could move away, a hand on the back of my head urged me forward. I took the gleaming c**k into my mouth and felt Tristan's mouth close on me in the same moment.

The pleasure engulfed me completely. I moved down on the cock, my lips tight, my tongue playing with the length of it, my mouth savoring it, and felt the hard sucking on my own c**k carry me up and out of the divine penance of the last few hours.

I knew that I was undulating, straining against the manacles, that each motion of my head on the c**k made me look all the more like a lost soul struggling vainly on the altar of the bed, but it did not matter. What mattered was to suck the c**k and to be suckled by Tristan's firm, delicious mouth, to have all my spirit dragged out of me. And when at last I came, thrusting uncontrollably into him, I felt his fluids feeding me as if I had been starving forever for them. It seemed we rocked each other's bodies with our strength, our muffled moans.

And then I felt the hands separating us. I was made to lie on my back, my bound arms under me, forcing my chest up as my head fell back, my eyes half closing. I couldn't see the nipple clamps, of course. But I could feel them, and feel the chains against my chest, and it seemed these were mountain peaks of exposure.

Then I realized that the Sultan was smiling down on me. Brown eyes, smooth lips, drawing closer and closer. It seemed a deity descending, who only accidentally bore a resemblance to an ordinary man. He knelt on all fours above me.

And his lips touched mine. Or, to be more truthful, they touched the wetness on my lips. Then he opened my mouth and his tongue dipped deep inside and lapped at Tristan's se**n, which was still on my tongue, still in my throat. And realizing what he wanted, I opened my mouth to him, kissing and being kissed, and wishing I could feel his whole weight, even if it did hurt my clamped ni**les. But that he denied me as he hovered over me.

I knew that Tristan was being moved. That Lexius was near. But I could think of nothing but this kissing, the desire ebbing as it had to do after the climax, and then coming back painfully and exquisitely soon.

And now it was not really kissing. My mouth was pushed open wider by his tongue, and he lapped the se**n out of my mouth, cleaning my mouth with his tongue, as it were, as each prod of it aroused me.

And slowly, through the haze of rekindled feeling, I saw that Tristan was behind him, above him. I felt him press down against me. His body felt like Lexius's body had felt, pampered and silken, strong but lean. His fingers moved over my chest, released the nipple clamps. They slipped to the side with their chains, were taken away. And his chest rested against my sore skin, making it throb deliciously.

Tristan was above him, looking down into my face. Radiant blue eyes. And, when the Sultan groaned, I realized that Tristan had entered him. I felt the weight.

But the Sultan went on searching my mouth with his tongue, forcing my jaws wider. Tristan thudded against him, pushing him against me, and my c**k rose between the Sultan's thighs, feeling the sweet, hairless, protected flesh there.

When Tristan came I bucked, stroking the tight thighs with my thrusts, pushing again to climax, and I felt the thighs press together to take me. I came, moaning, even as the Sultan's tongue went on with its work, lapping at my teeth, lapping under my tongue, licking my lips slowly.

He rested then for a little while, his arm under my neck. I lay bound and helpless beneath him and let the pleasure die away slowly.

Then he stirred. He rose up, refreshed, ready for more, and then straddled me. His face was almost boyish as we looked at each other, a bit of dark hair fallen in his eyes. I saw Tristan sitting on the left, looking at us. The Sultan pushed me firmly to mean I must turn over on my face. And I struggled to move myself.

He rose up to give me space to do it, and I felt Lexius's hands assisting me. Then I was on my chest, and I felt the leather bracelets being taken off. My shoulders relaxed. My whole body softened against the cover. The hard, bronze phallus was drawn out, and as I lay still, my anus burning like a ring of fire, his all too human c**k slipped inside, stoking the fire and increasing it. How good that felt after the cold bronze, that human thing inside me. I kept my hands at my sides. I closed my eyes. My own c**k was pressed to the rough tapestry cover. And my sore backside rose to feel his weight, feel his rocking cadence.

I was in a daze more pure than any that I'd known earlier. And it was a gratuitous sweetness that he was using me, would empty into me, and I knew something about him now, something interesting, though it did not really matter. He wanted the fluids of other men. That was why those Lords in the garden had been allowed to use us, why the grooms had not washed us before they put in the phalluses.

It amused me. We'd been purged, then filled with masculine juices. And now he had eaten from my mouth and he reamed out my backside slowly as he worked towards the pinnacle, his body sealed to the abraded, welted flesh. He took his time, and I saw in lovely blurred images the garden again, the procession, his smiling face, all the bits and pieces of this mosaic that was life in the palace of the Sultan.

Before he was finished with me, Tristan had mounted him again. I felt the added weight and heard the Sultan moan with a slight, supplicating sound.

Chapter 15

LAURENT: MORE SECRET LESSONS

TRISTAN AND the Sultan lay in an embrace on the bed, both of them naked, and they were kissing, their mouths feeding slowly upon each other.

In silence, Lexius motioned for me to withdraw. I watched him pull the curtains round the bed and lower the lamps. Then I proceeded on hands and knees out of the room, wondering why I so much feared Lexius's disappointment that I had not been chosen to remain instead of Tristan.

It seemed an impossible thing. Tristan and I had both been ordered to please, and then pitted against each other. Could there have been two chosen to remain?

In the shadowy corridor, Lexius snapped his fingers for me to move quickly ahead. All the way back to the bath, he whipped me hard and in silence. At every turn in the corridors, I hoped he might slack off. But he did not. And, by the time I was given over to the grooms, I was throbbing with pain again and weeping softly.