Troy Tamed Ch. 04: Ready, Willing

My feeling of gathering isolation wasn't helped as we neared the coastline of the small Cape Verde island of Brava that Klaus Gehler said he owned a big slice of and I saw Gehler's red-tile-roofed native stone villa hovering over the top of a cliff. There seemed to be only a narrow pathway through lush semitropical foliage rising and cutting back here and there from the pier to the top of the cliff. Gehler had told me that he came here whenever he felt the need to be entirely cut off from the world, and the immediate impression I got of the locale supported this completely. There was no other sign of habitation as I scanned the island upon our approach.

It had taken us three days to sail from Malta to the Cape Verdes. In that time, Estaban hadn't visited or called for me a single time after that first day of multiple takings while Gehler was on Malta. Neither had Gehler. I was beginning to feel the same way I had with Coach Jacoby when I anticipated him taking me aside and fucking me—and he didn't. I began to wonder if—and, worse, worry that—I didn't appeal to either one of them, which I felt was odd even when I realized I felt that way. I should have been happy that they were leaving me alone. I was determined not to give in to this lifestyle that they represented. And, yet, the more they didn't accost me, the more agitated I got.

"Leave the luggage, Jack," Gehler said when the launch had been lashed to the pier and we'd scrambled up on the dock. "Estaban will bring it up."

I felt that the vines, large-leafed plants, and trees were grabbing at me as we mounted the pathway, which I found strange, as the Cape Verdes were, I thought, semiarid. I remarked as much to Gehler.

"Ah, we have Miguel and his now-deceased father to thank for that. Miguel is my gardener. I originally had my retreat in Bermuda until it got entirely too crowded, and when I moved down to here, I brought Miguel and his father with me. They are Portuguese. The gardeners of Bermuda are Portuguese, you know. We also brought the Bermudan techniques for gathering runoff water, and Miguel and his father created this paradise of vegetation similar to what I enjoyed on Bermuda. Don't you find it intoxicating?"

I just murmured a response that could be taken either way, because my immediate reaction was that it was stifling and a bit intimidating, but upon further thought, I guessed that intoxicating was just as good a term for it.

We brushed by Miguel near the first terrace. He was fighting with a stand of bamboo that threatened to obstruct the view of the ocean from that terrace. He was stripped to the waist of quite skimpy shorts. He couldn't have been more than twenty-five, which came as a shock to me. To have helped established plantings of this maturity in an unforgiving environment, he must have come here to work when he was a young child. He was dark skinned, although not as dark as Estaban was, probably mostly from the constant exposure to the sun. He was rather small in stature, but heavy with muscle in keeping with the hard work he had to do, which must have redoubled since his father had died. I wondered if he was the only gardener now. The estate obviously was large. Of course the landscaping, apparently on purpose, was wild and unruly on the ocean side of the house. But I could see around the side of the house toward the landward side, where there was a more park-like setting short of what appeared to be high stone walls surrounding the grounds on all sides except for the seaside cliff front. The walls didn't help me with my closed-in feeling of confinement.

The villa was in a rectangle, the longer side toward the sea. It was built around an interior courtyard, complete with stone flooring and a pond with a fountain and the ever-present overflow of big-leafed plants and exotic-colored flowers. Hibiscuses, bougainvillea, lipstick plants, hydrangeas, and banana trees predominated. The lounge area took up the ground floor of the side facing the sea, with Gehler's study and a small office he assigned to me above. The opposite wing, opening out onto the more formal, lawned park area had an open loggia with arched doorways on the ground floor and two bedrooms, each with bath, above. A hallway stretched across this section facing the inner courtyard, and a balcony ran the full length of this wing on both sides. The short wing to the west had a kitchen and storerooms on the ground floor, with a large dining room above with a bank of arched windows cut in the stone walls on each side. At the west corner, where the lounge was located on the seaward wing and the kitchen on the west wing, was located a breakfast room and staircase on the first floor, and a servant's room on the second. There were staircases and servants rooms in the other three corner sections as well. There were two more bedrooms with connecting bath on the second floor of the east wing. I was not shown what was on the ground floor of that wing. The sturdy wooden door to that was shut tight and had a padlock on it, and all of the windows were heavily shuttered.

What appeared to be the only house servant, a small, yet nicely formed African with black curly hair and features that showed some mix with European stock, barefoot and wearing only an orange-red sarong skirt tucked at his waist, had met us at one of the French doors from the upper terrace into the lounge and had followed Gehler and me around as Klaus acclimated me to the house. Klaus told me the houseboy's name was Jolo, and he just lowered his eyes in supplication, without sound, when I was introduced to him. He appeared to be hardly more than a boy, although Klaus told me that he had had him for several years. In the kitchen, we found a hulking German of coarse features and heavy musculature, perhaps in his forties, who Gehler introduced as Gerhardt, the cook and general housekeeper. Gerhardt leered at me in a manner that made me quite uncomfortable, and I was pleased when we moved on, climbing the stairs to the principle bedroom wing facing the landward side park area.

Gehler said that I would have the second bedroom in this wing, right next to his. Both bedrooms had two pair of double French doors giving access to the common balcony on the landward side of the villa. Gehler told me that it would be wise to leave the French doors open at night to catch whatever breeze could be captured at this time of year. He said the thick stone walls helped keep the villa relatively cool, but that, of course, there was no such thing as central air conditioning on the remote Brava island.

Remote indeed. I felt the remoteness. And all there was in the way of servants to take care of this estate were the cook, the gardener, and Estaban, as the general handyman when Gehler was in residence. The yacht's crew tended to remain on the ship unless or until Gehler wanted one of the young sailors to come to the villa for his own use. I was particularly struck that there was no evidence of any women in residence. It struck me then that Gehler's secretary was male—and even his temporary secretary—me—was a man.

Gehler left me to think my increasingly disturbing thoughts and to watch Jolo unpack my suitcases and occasionally give me a shy, appraising look. He really was a well-formed young man, although it still was difficult to think of him as a man.

The first evening went uneventfully. Estaban and Jolo served us in the dining room, with me at one end of a table capable of seating eighteen and Gehler at the other end. Gehler was in good form with his conversation, making every effort to put me at my ease and to give me a brief history of Cape Verde and of this small island of Brava. After dinner, we sat in the lounge and had coffee and cognac, and Gehler puffed on a cigar. Eventually he gave me a couple of hours of dictation of business letters that indicated that his business interest were far, wide, and highly lucrative—and involved some of the major leaders of European countries.

Then, declaring he was tired from the sea crossing to the Cape Verdes by way of Malta from where we had taken ship, at Nice, Gehler said that he was going to retire for the night. There didn't seem to be any question that I was retiring too. Gehler had that sort of ingrained power and authority. He spoke and all of those around him served.

I didn't resent his presumption, because I was probably more exhausted than he was. He still looked fresh and vigorous. He exuded power and vitality and, I had to admit, a sensuality that I found alluring despite myself. He was an uncommonly handsome man and extraordinarily fine of figure, especially for his stated age.

I showered, padded out of the bathroom, a towel tucked around my waist, opened the French doors as I was advised to do, and, dropping the towel at the side of the bed, sank onto the silk-sheet covered kingside bed, under mosquito netting, and fell into a deep sleep.

I don't know how long I'd been semiconscious and aware of the sounds wafting in through the French doors, but when I was fully conscious, I realized I was listening to the sound of full-throttle sexual taking from somewhere beyond the French doors. My eyes went to the French doors and my attention was arrested by seeing the silhouette of a naked body there. As my eyes adjusted to it, the figure materialized as Estaban. He was watching me. I started going hard in arousal. I wanted him. I had been apprehensive when he asserted he would take me at will, but he hadn't followed through. And the longer the time spun out that he didn't come for me, the more prepared I was for him to do so.

Seeing that I was awake, he turned and disappeared from the window. My legs, of their own volition, moved over the side of the bed and I was standing. I found myself moving toward the French doors, following Estaban. I struggled with myself mentally, telling myself that I didn't want this. But my body wasn't listening. My body was in high heat. The sound of fucking from the next bedroom continued, which wasn't helping to cool my ardor and feeling of sexual need.

The figure was descending the balcony staircase to the terrace below when I got to the French doors and looked around. I followed. Down the stairs and back across the exterior and around the corner of the house. My eyes were on Estaban's buttocks, the cheeks undulating as he moved, my mind going back to when I was gripping them, holding them to me as he fucked me deep on my berth in Gehler's yacht, long after I'd stopped struggling against him and was luxuriating in the fuck. I wanted that. I wanted that again.

He went into a door back into the house. When I got there, the door was closed—and locked. Almost sobbing, I knocked at the door and scratched at it. Like a cat in heat who couldn't get at the Tom, I thumped on the door and sank to the stones below and whimpered my need. The door didn't open to me. Cooling off, I stood and slowly ascended the stairs to the balcony off the bedroom wing. This time as I passed Gehler's room, I looked into the room through the open French doors. The room was in darkness, but, with the help of the moonlight I could see the small figure of a young man on the bed, on his side, turned away from me, his buttocks at the foot of the bed. Gehler was standing at the foot of the bed, holding the young man's left leg up his chest, and fucking the young man in long, slow strokes. As if he heard a sound on the balcony, Gehler turned and looked directly at me. After a long moment during which we both stood transfixed, I pulled back in the shadows and slipped into my bedroom.

I retreated to my own bed, thrashing around as the sounds of sex continued, but finally succumbed to an exhausted sleep. It wasn't a restful sleep, though. In my dream, the door Estaban had walked through had opened and I found myself in the kitchen. Estaban was there, but so were other men, all naked. Gerhardt and two of the sailors from the yacht and Estaban—and even Coach Jacoby. And they all took me, my back on the heavy oak table in the center of the kitchen and various men holding my legs while, in turn, they took me. I felt nothing, however. I wanted to feel their cocks working inside me, but I felt nothing. They all turned their heads toward the door and I expected to see Klaus Gehler there, preparing to enter the kitchen and to enter me and to make me feel something. But it was Stefan walking toward me and smiling.

I woke with a start. I was shocked to find that I had my hard cock in my fist and that I had come. I rose quickly, in embarrassment, and closed both of the French doors. I went to the bathroom, cleaned myself off, and then returned and collapsed back in the bed, my sleep for the rest of the night fretful and filled with feelings of concern and guilt. For hours I devised ways of saying that I must leave the island immediately, but dawn arrived with no inkling of how I could politely do that without revealing what I increasingly wanted, despite my attempts at resolve. I couldn't even physically leave the island without Gehler making it so. I had no idea if he would let me go.

The next morning Gehler was chipper and moved energetically around his study, dictating to me and being more effusive and jovial than I had seen him in the short time we had traveled together from Vienna to the Cape Verdes. He was wearing a T-shirt and shorts, and I was impressed at how well defined his musculature was and how well he V'd down to a thin waist at his age. Even at leisure, he wore his clothes elegantly, like a model for an expensive men's store. I had no doubt that his clothes had come from such a store.

He made no mention of what had happened during the night—and that he had seen me at the French doors into his bedroom.

The next two days went uneventfully, with him somehow getting me to talk about myself and my hopes and ambitions without him revealing much about himself at all. But he was a brilliant man, well conversant with the politics and economics of the world, obviously earning his position in the world of finance honestly. And all the while there was the sense about him of a commanding general, holding the lives of all of his soldiers in his hands. Certainly that was how the servants responded to him.

The next incident in what I came to realize was my spiral down into degradation occurred two nights later. I awoke in the night slightly gaseous and knowing that all I needed was a glass of milk, as this was what had always worked before when my stomach was slightly off—the cook was an excellent one, but the Portuguese-based food that was being served was slightly more spicy than I was used to.

I had already found and drunk the glass of the milk from the refrigerator in the kitchen when I heard the sounds—quite similar to those of the other night. The sounds of sex. I was drawn to the sounds, which seemed to be coming from the lounge just a short distance away in the wing facing the sea.

They were mere shadows, but it unmistakably was the form of two men, one large and one small, having sex on the carpet in the middle of the lounge floor. The smaller man was on his belly, stretched out on the floor; the large man was crouched over the smaller one, at the level of his pelvis. He was on one knee and the other leg was thrown across the smaller man's pelvis. One hand of the large man was holding down the thigh of the smaller man and the other hand was palmed between the smaller man's shoulder blades. The larger man was fucking down between the smaller man's buttocks at a side angle.

The sounds I heard were the sounds from the smaller man of his taking. They were sounds of acceptance and enjoyment. I couldn't readily identify who was there—and I didn't want to suppose. I didn't want to know. Still, I felt the shock of discovery—of being an unwilling voyeur; of hearing and seeing what wasn't meant for me—and then the greater shock of realizing that I was finding this arousing sank in. I was fisting my cock, which was engorging, and I suddenly was aware that I was naked. I turned to leave, only to find that the cook, his stare a leer of lust and interest, was hunched in the shadows, at the door that must lead from his quarters into the kitchen, his eyes glued to me. I blushed in embarrassment, his presence galvanizing me, and I slipped out of a doorway into the center court and ran for the stairs in the far corner of the villa and then to my room. I closed the door firmly behind me and buried myself in the soft bedding. And, once again, I got very little sleep that night.

I wasn't so much disturbed by what was going on in the house—my mind had worked that out early on, especially when no women surfaced in attendance. But I was partly disturbed that I was exposed to it and that I felt so isolated and unable to leave the situation. And I was mostly disturbed because of its effect on me. It was arousing. I had worked so hard to sublimate all of my inclinations in that direction. And here my body was fighting with me for control, wanting to succumb to the temptations. The only saving grace was that I didn't seem to be a focal point of anyone's advances. Increasingly, though, I realized that I didn't want to be saved.

I sat up in the bed, adrenaline rushing from having admitted it. I knew that Klaus Gehler was the center of this taking. I admitted for the first time that he was somehow manipulating me, preparing me for something. For what, I didn't know. But I knew it was Gehler who was teasing and taunting me, making me want something I had been determined not to want. And somehow I knew it was him who had been fucking the smaller man in the lounge tonight. Despite the shadows, I knew that the man in control of the sexual encounter tonight was Klaus Gehler. I just didn't want to think of him that way—as a sexual predator. But, no, I had to admit that wasn't quite right either. I increasingly was thinking of him in sexual terms. And as being desirable.

I buried my head under the pillows and tried to steady my breath. I very definitely was deeper into a situation that I found disturbing and threatening than I wanted to be. I told myself I must fight it hard.

The next afternoon, Gehler told me that we would take a couple of hours respite from the dictation—that he planned to take a nap and perhaps, after a lunch in the breakfast room, alone because he was more sleepy than hungry, I might like to explore the park on the landward side of the villa. He said he thought I had not had time to walk those gardens yet, and he was correct in this assumption.

The park was more intricately landscaped than I had assumed at first. There were several hidden gardens, set off by dense foliage along the sides and at the corners, just inside the outer walls.

Once again I heard them before I saw them, and I should have just turned and gone back into the villa. But I didn't. I was compelled to follow the sound. Gehler was sitting, naked, on a stone garden bench. Facing him, also naked, and suspended over his lap, was Miguel, the small, young Portuguese gardener. Gehler was holding Miguel's left leg up high under his armpit, giving me a clear view of his cock pumping up into the young man's ass. Miguel was transfixed. His eyes were closed, and he was fairly purring and moaning in pleasure as he moved his hips in rotation, providing much of the motion that moved Gehler's thick cock up and down and from side to side inside his ass. Gehler's body was magnificent. Powerful and well-muscled, his belly flat, barrel chested, with hard biceps and thighs.

The two were kissing deeply when I first caught sight of them, and then Miguel took his lips from Gehler's and moved them down to Gehler's left nipple. I gasped at first seeing that Gehler had a silver nipple ring in his right nipple. This was so incongruous with his elegant, distinguished persona that this, more than the sexual act they were performing, aroused me.