Shores of Tripoli

Malta, 1815

Billy woke in the late evening and reached over beside him to find the bed empty. He looked over to the French doors out onto the garden on the cliff overlooking Malta's Valetta harbor, with its vast array of ships' masts in view beyond the edge of the garden. He sat up on the side of the bed, opened the drawer of the nightstand, and took out a silver cigarette case, containing rolled cigarettes from Spain, and a box of matches. After lighting up and taking a few puffs, he rose and walked over to the open door and leaned against the frame.

The contrast was interesting. The garden was lush, teeming with tropical flowers and the sounds and sights of the night insects. Crickets were pitching their concerns around the garden, and a frog, in the pond, was responding. Fireflies were making the garden magical. But just beyond that and below the cliff were the masts of an armada of naval vessels, adding a touch of the surreal.

The British Royal Navy had made Valletta the base for its Mediterranean fleet the previous year. That's why William Bainbridge had sent Billy here to recuperate, he had told Billy. The Barbary pirates had not remained chastened for long, and this was one of the few safe places in this part of the world where Billy could regain his bearings after more than a dozen years of captivity by what Bainbridge had called "the heathens."

"We cannot risk having you taken by pirates again, William," he had said. "You have suffered enough at their hands."

Bainbridge hadn't asked Billy much about what he had endured in those years, and Billy was reticent about it, willing for Bainbridge to think the worst so that Billy didn't have to tell him Billy's own part in it all—not that he'd ever lifted a hand in violence against Britain or its allies in any way. He now, at long last, was able to appreciate why neither Ben nor Khair ad-din had permitted him to become a pirate. He now at least did not have to lie about that and wonder if some victim of the piracy would someday see Billy and accuse him of perpetrating atrocities. The cages had been what kept Billy from constantly having to look over his shoulders now.

"If you don't stop standing there in the moonlight and looking so sexy, I think that I will die of lust," a soft baritone voice spoke from the interior of the garden.

Billy snuffed out his cigarette on the door frame and padded, naked and barefooted, out into the garden.

Wade Burnell was sitting on a stone bench, wrapped in a robe. He too had a Spanish cigarette in his hand, which he flicked off onto the lawn of the garden as Billy approached. Beside him, coming up off his haunches at Billy's approach and fully alert, was the great, black mastiff Wade had told Billy was named Blackie, but which Billy thought of as Son of Freedom.

* * * *

Wade Burnell, a young naval captain, nearly six years Billy's junior, was the U.S. consul general to Malta and the U.S. envoy to the British navy's Mediterranean fleet. Billy had asked about the black mastiff upon his first arrival in Malta, and Burnell had said that, when he was a young lieutenant on his first ship station some four years previously, he had acquired the dog's sire in the capture of a pirate vessel off Algiers. The dog had been despondent except when Burnell had found a bitch for him to breed, and had then died. This was the only male offspring in the resultant litter.

"But a dog on a pirate ship?" Billy had asked, his hands in his pocket so that the consul general couldn't see him trembling. "How did you come to inherit the dog? What of his owners?"

"The dog was the only living thing we took from that privateer ship before we scuttled it," Burnell had answered. "It lived because we could hardly see hanging a dog for piracy. But I don't think we did it a favor. It pined for its lost owner. Dogs have no discernment of the true character of their owners. They are blindly loyal to their master."

Blindly loyal to their master, Billy had thought. He too had pined for Ben for years after Ben had given him away. Was he any better than Freedom in his discernment of the worthiness of his master? And he made no bones about it. Benjamin Palmer had been his master.

Billy had turned away at that, stumbled to a squatting position, and felt like he would vomit. Misinterpreting the problem—thinking that Billy was nearly unhinged from his years as a captive, and believing that a man as small statured, good looking, and well formed as Billy could not have survived without giving the pirates what pirates were well known to want while they were at sea, Burnell had leaned down and gently lifted Billy and slowly helped him to walk into Burnell's bedchamber.

"It need not be as you had it," he had murmured. "I ache for you. If you let me make love to you, I will show you that it can be different from that. I would be good to you."

After having made love to Billy to show him that sex with a man need not always be rough and humiliating, Billy had murmured that the position had been the one of the Elephant, covering the prone Billy closely from above and engaging in that fucking motion that involved only the movement of the two men's pelvises that Billy had come to think of as a camel loping across the dunes of the desert.

Burnell had wondered that Billy had a name for the position, and Billy revealed that he had learned much of the male Kamasutra positions from the Indian eunuchs in the Tripoli palace. The young naval officer, rather than being disgusted or distressed by the refinements of male-on-male sex that Billy had learned, was eager to learn them himself, which led to months of pleasurable training under Billy's instruction. Burnell was aroused rather than repelled that Billy had proven to be a trained, willing, and yielding male courtesan rather than a traumatized victim.

* * * *

Billy approached Wade in the garden and leaned over and kissed him on the lips. The black mastiff stirred beside Wade, but didn't wake. Wade placed his hands on Billy's naked hips while they were kissing, and when their lips parted he pulled Billy toward him and opened his lips over Billy's cock, making slow love to the phallus. His hands moved around to Billy's buttocks cheeks, which he kneaded while he sucked, pulled apart, and positioned his hands so that he could move an index finger from each hand inside Billy's entrance and tease the hole to open to him.

Billy held Wade's head between his hands and moaned until he felt like he might explode from the attention. Then he gently pulled Wade's mouth off his cock and leaned down and gave him a lingering kiss. While they were kissing, Billy's hands were unknotting the belt at the waist of Wade's robe and opening the thin garment. He reached down and took Wade's cock in both hands.

Wade was already hard for him. Wade was young and virile and in superb shape. This was Billy's first young man who didn't think only of his own pleasure. The Turks and Arabs were satisfying cockers, but lovemaking was not in their lexicon. To those sailors on the

Black Falcon

, Billy had been more of a notch on their leather belts, a rite of passage—marking off having been inside a legendary bottom. And Wade was appreciably younger than he was. Billy had let a young naval lieutenant visit him in his cabin on route to Malta, but he had been close to Billy's age—and had been rough, interested only in getting his rocks off with the small, sexy passenger who had been the subject of rumors of having been the sex slave of Arab pirates for a dozen years and knowing arousing sex techniques from the East. The young lieutenant had left Billy's cabin able to corroborate at least the last of these rumors.

Wade was gentle and sensitive to Billy's needs during a fuck—and he was virile and hard whenever Billy needed him to be hard even if they'd made love several times already in the coupling. He also was eager to learn what Billy had learned about being with a man. All American naval men had heard whisperings about the sex techniques of the East. Billy was teaching them to Wade.

Billy turned and sank his channel on Wade's hard phallus in the sitting position on the bench. As soon as the cock was seated, Billy began to move his pelvis slowly, forward and back.

A groaning Wade, hands gripping Billy's waist, asked, "What again is the name of this position?"

"This is known as the Swing," Billy answered.

"I like this position," Wade murmured between gasps.

"You like all of the positions," Billy said with a small laugh.

"But of course. Can we go through them all tonight? How many are there?"

"More than the night will accommodate. You've heard of the tales of a thousand and one nights, I'm sure. I do believe that the masters of the male Kamasutra have a position to go with each of those nights."

For fifteen minutes they both were lost in the fuck. When Wade had ejaculated, Billy swiveled his torso, careful to hold Wade inside him as he knew this would not be the last of it, and murmured, "Why couldn't you sleep? You've been like this for a couple of days. Is there a worry I can help you with?"

"No one can help me with it, William," Wade answered, using the name that Billy had chosen to use henceforth, now that he was his own man: William Evans Junior. Thirty-two was much too old to be a Billy, even though there were those who would say it still fit his small stature and still miraculously youthful appearance.

"I've been trying to decide how to speak to you of this for days," Wade continued.

"Directly would be good," Billy said, taking Wade's lips with his again. "Whatever needs saying, you can say to me."

"All right then. You have to leave."

"You've grown tired of me?"

"Never," Wade answered. "But I've received dispatches from Washington. I'm sorry to have to tell you, but your father has died, and your mother, who is beyond herself with joy that you are alive, would have you return to take on your father's business and responsibilities."

"Ah, yes, family responsibilities. I have trouble thinking of the needs of anyone other than me. I am not surprised my father has died. It has been many years and he wasn't a well man."

"That's not true that you haven't thought of others; you have taken care of my needs—completely—these last several weeks. It is because of my loss that I've been reluctant to tell you. And there is more."

"More?"

"You have inherited more than your father's business. Another Boston businessman, Benjamin Palmer, has been declared dead too, after a long absence. He was a shipowner and captain as well as a rum and textile manufacturer, and he was thought to have been lost at sea. He has left all he owns to you. You are quite a rich man."

"Ah, gentle Ben. A family friend." It hadn't come as such a blow after weeks of having the chance to adjust to it. He thought of the black mastiff, which often lifted his chin and gave Billy a worshipping gaze, almost as if it realized they had a connection.

"A family friend?" Wade asked.

"One of my earliest lovers."

"Ah, well."

"Knowing that I'm now a rich man, would you be averse to fucking a rich man?" Billy whispered.

"Are you numb inside? Can't you feel me hard inside you again? You will be fucked again now whether you want to be or not."

Billy felt a little of the old thrill of being taken without being consulted. There was a flash of arousal, and he wanted it again—now.

"Have I taught you the Bonobo position yet?" he asked, his voice thick with need. "No matter if I have. That's what I want now. We'll need a firm, yet yielding surface. Your back isn't sore, is it? This will challenge your stamina—but it will be well worth it for both of us. Come, take me inside."

And then, as they struggled to rise from the bench, Billy added, "And, oh, would you be terribly upset if I took Blackie to Boston with me?" If Ben had left him all of his possessions, then the mastiff was really his responsibility too—and his last connection to Ben.

Boston, 1816

I left the counting house early. Two ships had come in during the morning at Hutchinson's wharf, and the bars on Ship Street should be awash with half-drunk sailors. I went to the Black Falcon Tavern, which I owned, Blackie on a leash trotting beside me. Blackie was always enough to keep me safe. There I sat at my special window overlooking the bar below and ogled the sailors carousing down there—and dreamed of what had been and what I still could have if I was careful—or crazy. I never had been completely cured of the want to be manhandled and punished, and the mere thought of it made me hard. And the boisterous, bald-talking sailors brought up other memories too.

I have frequently over the past year thought of devising some need for business down in Baltimore or up in Providence, somewhere where I would not be recognized. Somewhere that I could find a big-cocked sailor in a dockside bar who I could take to a private room and who would fuck me rough and to memorable exhaustion.

That, however, now seems as much a remote dream as that Ben will walk through the tavern door and Blackie will perk up his ears and turn his head to me and be Freedom again.

Sufficiently hard and aroused, I left the tavern and walked out to the old schoolhouse, no longer on the edge of the city, but enough enclosed by untouched forested lots around it to accord Sam Hale the privacy he seeks from his position at Harvard College. The schoolmaster of my earlier days had bought the schoolhouse and the cottage that went with it when a new schoolhouse was built.

I met him there in his cottage at twilight, and he fucked me in what has become a favorite position for both of us, although I must confess that we are getting more varied in our fucking of late: me on my back with his knees pushed under my buttocks, raising my pelvis to him, and him sliding my channel back and forth on his cock until he has come. Then leaning over me and taking my cock in his mouth and sucking me to ejaculation. We had not gotten to this part when he first fucked me—incompletely—in that position, and I'm fairly sure that in those days I would have come before he did. But I've had much more experience, many more men, and very many more fuckings than he has since our first, failed encounter, and it takes longer to make me come now.

That said, as we become more as one in a melded mechanism of congress, Sam wants me more frequently in each meeting, and in more positions, and he laments that we cannot move against each other, and he in me, through the night. I have visions of him ascending to Mahmud Karamanli's seven-position taking in one session. And I would welcome it from Sam, I think, if I could be with him through the night. It would take me a night to accommodate what Mahmud Karamanli could do with me in an hour. Another reason, I suppose, to dream up imaginary business in Baltimore or Providence.

There are moments when I almost have told him that this favorite position for both of us is the male Kamasutra position of the Octopus. But I've always stopped myself. Somehow, I think it more fitting that, between us, we think of it as fucking at the height of our mutual arousal. I cannot stop Sam from discovering that name for it for himself, though. I had learned that from what Sam had told me all those years ago—that it's the equal enjoyment, and the wish that your partner be receiving as much pleasure in the fuck as you are, that is what makes it lovemaking—something very special.

That's why I came back to Sam, why Sam is the only man fucking me now. Because with Sam it is lovemaking and it is equality.

Equality and not being controlled and brutalized is important to me now—despite the edge of lingering desire that sends me to the bars to watch the rowdy sailors and to dream.

As I have written, I probably don't have to tell Sam now that it's the position of the Octopus. He will have read that for himself now, although he never has told me he did.

When we first came back together, no words needing to be spoken. I just walked up to him splitting wood, bare-chested, by the door of the cottage, and he carried me inside to his bed. We were content with just that one fucking, being more interested in hearing what had happened to each of us since our last coupling. But four days later and then just two days after that, and then the very next day, both panting in heat, the Octopus and a sweet encore, usually in the position of the Elephant or the Greyhound—just basic positions to Sam to give him the deepest access and because they set me to moaning more than some of the other positions that require more attention and effort. They are more intimate, I feel. More the positions of lovers.

And the Yin and Yang position. Always, when we feel we want to merge into each other, the Yin and Yang position.

But I ramble. I don't have the facility I should for the storytelling. Sometimes I think it is harder to write about the life than to have lived it.

After our latest encounter, in the dark, I returned home to the house on Foster Lane—to my beautiful bride of six months, Jenny. Twelve years younger than I am, and so deeply infatuated with me that she blushes and casts her eyes down in public but opens her legs and pulls me inside her and begs for the cocking in the privacy of our bedroom. She's so trusting that she asks little of my past; happy enough that we are so wealthy in the present. And that I have a cock that fills her purse perfectly and as frequently as she asks for it.

After the usual late supper—Jenny assuming that I had been slaving in the nearby offices on Ship Street late—she gave me that look. Even though she is five months gone in her pregnancy, she wanted me inside her. I fucked her gently in what I would tell her was the Spoon position if that didn't lead to more questions and to the unraveling of topics I did not want my choice of having a wife and family to unravel as well. I tried to tell her of the difference between the equality of the slow, gentle fuck and what she says she wanted. But in the end, I took her as she had cried out that she wanted—deep and hard. We climaxed nearly together. She thinks this is magic; she has no idea the training I've acquired to weave this magic.

Jenny says she wants a dozen children. We probably shall—as long as I can continue visiting Sam in his cottage to enjoy true passion. Otherwise I would just as soon withdraw from it all and become as my Indian eunuchs were.

After Jenny drifted off to sleep, I quietly left the bed and climbed the stairs to this room, my old bed chamber, now where I write.

Writing was Sam's idea. He said that I needed to write it all down, both so that I would never forget the events of the last dozen years and so that I could come to grips with it. I didn't want to tell him that I wasn't ashamed by what had happened or traumatized by it, as I was afraid he would think I was an insensitive freak. How can I tell one like Sam that I am addicted to the cock—still? Surely he can understand that by how often I beg for it when we are coupled.

I was rather taken with the idea of writing it down, though. And when I started to, and Sam began reading it, I found—even if he would not admit it—that reading it increased his ardor in our lovemaking.

"The pirate did this to you?" Or, "You moaned when the Arab prince did this with you?" he would murmur upon demonstrating that he had just read of a particular position, and I would answer, "Yes, but not as well as you do." And I would mean it, because he would be doing it to pleasure both of us, not just himself.

We have established a new routine of late, my having found that he is as eager to learn as the consul in Malta was. I take him the chapters as I finish them. He reads them, and then we fuck. Last week, he fucked me for the first time in the position of the Reed before we had even discussed it. That's why I think he is learning from what he reads—and that he knows which position is that of the Octopus.