*~*~*
The next day, Duga asked Oraj and Gerion to send to him two dozen of the harem’s best boys. These would be the ones who would be offered first to the jubilee guests at the revels. He knew Eyakan would be included in this group. The prince only ever chose the best of the best. Duga waited for the boys in the garden room, so called because it contained a variety of plants including sweet smelling jusubo flowers, along with many more, in addition to settees, chairs and a bed. Duga settled himself in the biggest chair in the center of the room and waited, although not for long.
The boys entered and stood in two lines in front of him. Duga nodded, and the boys disrobed. He stood and walked in front of them, as a general would inspect his troops. He didn’t touch any of them, just walked past them, carefully looking them up and down. The boys were in various states of arousal. One boy with long blond hair and bright green eyes was lazily stroking his cock. Duga went over to the boy, pushed his hand away and started massaging the boy’s cock until it had completely stiffened. The boy closed his eyes and breathed heavily through partially open lips.
“What’s your name?” Duga asked, the boy’s dick in his hand. He massaged it like the delicate jewel that it was. “Open your eyes. Look at me.”
The boy did as he was told, although it seemed that he had trouble focusing.
“Sisuma. My name is Sisuma. Oh, sir.”
Duga felt the sticky precum at the tip of Sisuma’s dick. “This feels good, yes?”
“Yes, sir.” Sisuma moaned.
“Sisuma, I want you to try to remember what I’m doing here with my hand. Remember how this feels right now. Remember this technique because you will make some visiting dignitary very happy if you do what I’m doing. Understand?”
Sisuma nodded as his back arched. “Oh sir. I—”
“You’re going to pop, aren’t you?”
“Yes. Please, sir. Can I?”
“Go ahead,” Duga said.
At that moment, Sisuma moaned and sighed. His fine blond hair flopped over his face, and his cock released its load. Duga milked Sisuma’s cock to get as much of the boy’s spunk out of it as he could. Some of Sisuma’s dick cream got on Duga’s hand. Duga snapped his fingers.
“Towel,” he said.
Several boys dove at a basket in the corner of the room that contained freshly laundered towels. One boy was quicker than the others. Duga took the towel from the boy without looking at him and wiped his hand.
“Thank you. What’s your name?” Duga at last looked at the boy. He saw standing before him a gorgeous young man with silky, dark brown hair and eyes the color of smoke.
“I am Eyakan, sir.”
Duga found it difficult not to stare. This was Eyakan, the boy the crown prince wanted to make his consort, and not just any consort. Eyakan would be a jubilee consort. Based on the boy’s looks alone, the prince had chosen well, although Eyakan was different from Prince Baboye’s usual type. The prince had always preferred more serious-looking types, like Duga. But Eyakan seemed an ebullient sort. Even now, it seemed he was having difficulty not smiling broadly.
“Eyakan. Yes. Thank you.” Duga looked down, trying to escape the pull of the boy’s smoky grey eyes. When he looked down, he saw Eyakan’s thick, hard cock. He looked up again. Eyakan was displaying the big smile that Duga thought was most natural to the boy.
“Now. All of you, sit down wherever you want, except you, Eyakan.” Duga moved the chair he had been sitting in when the boys had first come into the room. Now, when he sat in the chair, the boys would see him in profile. He opened his robe to reveal his cock. He motioned Eyakan to come stand in front of him with his back to Duga.
“Bend over.” Duga squirted some elodie tree oil from a bottle into his hand. He rubbed the oil in both hands to warm it up before he massaged some of it onto his cock. He poured some more oil onto his hands, warmed it up and began to rub Eyakan’s butt. He felt his own cock getting harder the more he massaged Eyakan’s butt, paying close attention to the taint.
He turned to face the boys who were gathered around, sitting on the floor and watching as closely as they could. Most had wrist tattoos indicating that they were full harem members. A couple had metal wrist cuffs marking them as initiates in their initial trial period. “You want to tease this area, massage it, lick it. It will help your partner relax,” said Duga, continuing to run his fingers over Eyakan’s taint. “Go slowly. I know things can get hectic at parties like the revels, but don’t let anyone rush you, whether you’re the top or the bottom. Lamasket is a wonderful thing. Let’s do everything to keep it that way.”
Eyakan held still as Duga lubed his asshole. He was well-trained, thought Duga. He could see why Eyakan had attracted Baboye’s eye.
“You all know that to go far in the harem, to attract the most favors, and reduce the chance that you will be sent out, you need to be ready to bottom any time of day or night. Very few harem boys last long if they only top.”
Oraj only topped, remembered Duga, but that’s why he was brought into the harem. Thasali knew that some of their visiting dignitaries wanted to bottom to a large, imposing figure like Oraj.
Duga inserted one and then a second finger into Eyakan’s ass. Eyakan held still and quiet as Duga slid his fingers in and out, widening his hole.
“You should all be clean and ready for lamasket like Eyakan. Always use lube. Assholes don’t lubricate themselves. If you do top, start small with one or two fingers to widen the asshole. When you bottom, your partner should know what to do, but, if he doesn’t, you can politely request what you need. You shouldn’t speak up too much without being spoken to, but no one is allowed to hurt you. No one is allowed to play rough without your permission. You can always speak up about that.”
Duga turned to Eyakan and placed his hand on Eyakan’s back.
“Tell me, Eyakan. What would you say to a diplomat from another royal family if he was about to krask you? If he was going to perform lamasket, and you were already bent over like this?”
“Sir, I need to be stretched first,” said Eyakan. His voice was strong but not demanding.
Duga turned back to the assembled throng. “That’s good. It’s short and to the point. What are some other examples?”
An initiate with dark brown skin and mesmerizing blue eyes raised his hand. “Sir, I want your finger first.”
A harem boy with creamy skin covered with freckles said, “Sir, please stretch me.”
“These are all good,” said Duga. “The key is not to talk too much but still get your message across. You don’t want anyone to think you’re pushy. No one likes a pushy bottom.”
Duga instructed Eyakan to stand up and sit on his cock. With his back to Duga, Eyakan positioned himself over Duga’s cock, making sure it was close to the entrance of his asshole. In one smooth motion, he lowered himself onto it. Both men moaned. Eyakan squirmed as if adjusting the fit. Then he started slowly moving up and down. Duga knew he should have been saying something, perhaps discussing the finer points of using your thigh muscles to aid in the thrusting action. But all he could do was moan and grunt as he thrust his hips in a counter motion to Eyakan bouncing on his lap. He reached around Eyakan and discovered that the young man was stroking his own cock. Duga put his hand on top of Eyakan’s so they could stroke together. Several moments later, Duga could feel that his dick was ready to shoot.
“Get up and turn around,” he said.
Eyakan did so without delay and stood facing Duga, who grabbed hold of his own cock and stroked it rapidly. Eyakan came first, grunting and gasping. Some of his spunk ended up on Duga’s groin. When he came, Duga threw his head back and expelled a heavy breath, as if he’d been holding it in the whole time. He flung one hand toward Eyakan, grabbing the boy’s thigh, and pulled him close, causing Eyakan to nearly lose his balance. There was a moment, so brief that Duga would wonder later if he remembered it correctly, when Eyakan and Duga looked directly in each other’s eyes. In that moment, Duga th
ought he recognized something in Eyakan, but then the other boys started clapping. Eyakan looked away first to accept the congratulations of his fellow harem members. He even took a couple small bows.
Duga felt flustered, something he was unaccustomed to feeling. To cover it, he wiped his groin area with a towel and stood up.
“Listen! Quiet down,” he said brusquely. “I want you to pair up and practice. First, give each other cock massages, but don’t come. Just make each other as hard as possible. Then, you can move on to sitting on each other’s cocks. I’ll come round to assess your technique and offer suggestions for making it better. Well? What are you waiting for?”
The boys began to pair off. Several of them grabbed at Eyakan, who picked out a slender, arrogant-looking young man, someone Duga would never have guessed Eyakan would choose. Duga didn’t pay too much attention to Eyakan after that because he had several other boys to advise. Most were sexually competent but needed to learn how to better respond to their partner’s desires, even those that were unspoken.
After about an hour, Duga dismissed the harem boys to their other studies. While a harem member’s primary purpose was sex, he was also expected to achieve a certain level of prowess in other subjects, such as foreign languages, economics, history, literature, music and art. A harem boy had to be ready for intelligent conversation if that was what a member of the royal family or a visiting dignitary wanted. The harem members also had lots of time to participate in games that kept them in top physical shape.
And all the while, Duga wondered if one of the young men he helped actually planned to end the crown prince’s life. He couldn’t be distracted from his goal to find the possible assassin, even by someone as beautiful as Eyakan.
*~*~*
At dinner that evening, memories from Duga’s past as a harem boy threatened to overwhelm him. He remembered himself and Shebi as young men, awestruck and innocent. Duga hoarded food even though as a harem boy he would always have plenty. He didn’t trust that he would always be fed, at least initially. Only by focusing on the chatter of the other staff members seated at the high table with him was he able to withstand the onslaught of memory.
“Resedna and the Thasali household have never seen a viable rebel movement, and they never will,” Gerion said, raising his wine glass to honor those at the table. “Long live Thasali.”
Suddenly, Duga heard a sharp laugh from the man sitting to his left. It was the games master, a small, muscular and compact man called Kuzabu. Gerion seemed put out by Kuzabu’s laughter.
“If you’ve got something to say, Kuzabu, say it. Don’t just neigh like a rabid burninga,” Gerion said with a scowl.
“How can you be so sure of that, Gerion? You can only push people so far for so long before they’ve had enough.” Kuzabu took a swig of some mountain tea. “What do any of us know of what is going on outside of this complex or beyond Resedna? We could be in for a very unpleasant surprise.”
Kuzabu had a point, Duga thought. The harem compound was an almost perfectly sealed environment. Outsiders who didn’t have permission or an invitation from the Thasali family were not permitted to set foot on the compound’s grounds. For most harem members, except for occasional visits to the Thasali palace if they were lucky, the first time they left the harem was the day of their retirement or expulsion. Harem staff and harem members were like precious flowers, almost always kept in a perfect hothouse environment, rarely seeing the outside world.
“Even all this,” Kuzabu said, gesturing at the dining hall, “the hope that the harem offers a precious few may not be enough to quash the rumblings. Do you think peasants, Mudflat rats, Saltmarsh jerks and others will continue to accept that the only way to avoid their desolate futures is to be rented out to assorted merchants and passing dignitaries for their pleasure?”
Gerion’s mouth curled up into a sneer. “This gives you a living, Kuzabu! What would you be doing without all of this? I dare you to find something better.”
Duga wanted to argue, to say that he had been one of those Mudflat rats that Kuzabu had spoken of. He had made it out, but he couldn’t say anything because here he wasn’t Duga Rigers. He had to continue the charade of being Cassiel Menasta, the harem’s new sex trainer. He was from Tafeld. He had never been a harem boy.
Oraj, who had been sitting back with a hint of a smirk on his face, joined the discussion. “Be careful, Kuzabu. Thasali can reach into our little world at any time. They often know what we are thinking before we do.”
“Yes, master. The Matriarch’s spies are ever present, yes.” Kuzabu let out an exaggerated sigh and spoke very little for the rest of the meal of sallabeast, grubergreens and bread.
“Gerion is a great patriot, quite devoted to Resedna and Thasali.” Oraj puffed out his chest, pounded his fist on the table and said, “We should look to his example, especially as this is the Matriarch’s jubilee week. I do love a good jubilee. A few years ago I traveled to Qetesh for its king’s jubilee celebrations. They put on a good show. The revels were amazing, with some beautiful and talented boys.”
Mekko, the music master, leaned over to Duga, placing his hand lightly on his knee. “Our Gerion is most devoted to Thasali, I’d say. He bleeds purple, blue and yellow.”
Although the name of the game in the harem was sex and Duga had seen loads of beautiful men in the harem, Mekko was particularly sexy, albeit in a very different way from most of the harem members. Duga felt his cock stir. Mekko, an older man with long snowy white hair that drifted to the middle of his back, must have sensed it because he began, in a tantalizingly slow manner, to move his hand up from Duga’s knee closer to his groin.
Gerion made a sound like he was snapping his upper and lower teeth together before saying, “There’s nothing wrong with devotion and patriotism, Mekko. I am grateful every day for the gifts I’ve been given, and it’s Thasali who have given them to me.” He shrugged then and smirked before going on. “Master Oraj speaks of Qetesh, but its royals, the Kayembe, are nothing in comparison to Thasali.”
Duga thought Gerion’s little smirk odd but thought little of it once Mekko insisted that Duga try the baked talphoux, a tangy fruit Duga had always adored, dressed in burninga cream. The dessert was divine. The cream slid smoothly down his throat. All the food was delicious and abundant, just as Duga remembered. The conversation at the high table turned to more trivial matters to which he found he could barely pay attention. He made a stab at it, as he was playing the part of a member of the harem’s teaching staff, even if only for a short time. Mekko’s hand still rested high on Duga’s thigh, while Mekko provided a discourse on many of the individual harem boys’ finer qualities and skills. It became clear to Duga that Mekko had fucked many of them, but the one who had thus far evaded his grasp was the boy called Eyakan.
“You gave him some pointers this afternoon, didn’t you, Menasta?” Oraj said teasingly.
Duga didn’t answer at first because, when Mekko started talking about Eyakan, Duga’s eyes found the ebullient young man in the dining room. Also, he momentarily forgot who he was supposed to be and that he needed to respond to the name Menasta.
“Pardon, Master Oraj?” Duga said.
“You heard what I said, Menasta. You were just distracted by Eyakan’s radiance.” Oraj sighed. “It’s no wonder he’s become the crown prince’s favorite.”
“Indeed.” Duga stood. “I think I will grab an early night. Excuse me, gentlemen. See you in the morning. I bid you good fortune.”
Mekko also stood. His shirt was slightly open. Duga could see small tufts of white hair covering a well-defined chest. “If you don’t mind, Cassiel, I’d love to see you to your rooms.”
Duga smiled. “Thank you, but no, Mekko. I’ll see you tomorrow.” As Duga walked off, he heard Kuzabu teasing Mekko about getting the brush-off from the new sex trainer.
“Menasta has some discernment, after all,” Kuzabu said, chortling.
*~*~*
Duga’s office and adjoining sle
eping room were a bit of a walk from the dining hall, so he took his time ambling through the quiet corridors. As he sifted through the various memories and thoughts he’d experienced since his arrival in the harem, only one didn’t fall through the holes in the sieve: Eyakan.
The boy—no, the young man—was beautiful. Duga had enjoyed fucking him immensely. He wondered what it would be like to have sex with him without an audience and in a less clinical setting than mandatory sex training. He thought of bringing Eyakan back to the home he had on the palace grounds and into his bedchamber. They could linger there as the light from the big sun and the little sun disappeared into night and all three moons rose in the sky. He could send Menefy away for a while so they could have the house completely to themselves.
As the door to Duga’s office came into view, he shook himself free of such a fantasy. He was not who Eyakan thought he was, for one thing. And for another, even though his time in the harem would be short, he didn’t like the idea of becoming a perpetual lecher like Mekko seemed to be, as sexy as that man was. Perhaps the most important reason to cast aside such thoughts of Eyakan from his mind was that the crown prince had already staked his claim to the boy. No one got between a Thasali royal, especially the crown prince, and a harem member they had chosen to elevate to consort. Doing such a thing was reckless at best. At worst, it could be fatal.
When Duga first joined the harem, he wondered why Shebi seemed so popular with so many members of the royal family, but Duga didn’t get as many requests. It didn’t make sense because they also were a popular team for those who liked to watch. Initially Duga thought it was because the crown prince had said that only he could krask Duga’s ass. He realized much later that others had taken that declaration as a sign to stay away from him as much as possible and that the crown prince would eventually make Duga his consort. They knew it was wise for them to stay away.
Duga was about to open his office door when he heard someone behind him. He turned and saw Eyakan standing there in a loose-fitting robe. Duga didn’t startle easily, but he flinched. It was as if he had conjured Eyakan through the power of his fantasies, but he was real, not a dream.
Tales of the Thasali Harem Box Set Page 6
