Tangier Season

Yorkshire, England, Late Summer, 1890

I felt the sting on my thigh and looked up to see that William had ridden up beside me and struck at me with his riding crop. I turned and twisted in the saddle and when he struck me again it was on the chest. Laughing, I gave my own horse the lash and its head and we were riding over the pastureland of Falconcroft, the castle hovering on the rise above the rolling terrain, me slightly in the lead and William behind me.

I made for a stand of trees down by where the river laced through the Harkwoods' Yorkshire country estate and pulled up there, well inside the cover of the foliage. William rode up beside me, embraced me with one arm, his hand gripping the back of my neck and pulling me up from the saddle. He was florid, in heat. His face loomed in front of me, and he took my mouth in his in a brutal kiss. He bit me on the lip, raising a trickle of blood at the corner of my mouth. "Enough of the teasing," he commanded. Three times more the crop struck at my ass, pulled up from the saddle, as he forced his tongue inside my mouth again in a breathtaking kiss.

Pulling away from him, I was off again, across the fields, headed toward one of the remote horse barns on the property hidden in a fold of a gully below and just out of sight of the castle. William was in pursuit, but my horse was faster and I was younger and lighter. I got to the barn before he did and had time to dismount, pull the saddle off the horse, and release the horse into the enclosed pasture by the barn before turning and entering the dimly lit building. William must have done the same with his horse when he reached the barn, as when he entered, he was carrying the saddle from his horse.

I had used the time to pick out a spot, a hay bale back in the shadows—I agreed that the time for teasing was past and I welcomed what was to come—but William obviously had a contrary idea. He lifted and set his saddle on top of a five-foot slatted wooden partition between two horse stalls and then turned and advanced on me. He was between me and the door to the barn, but that didn't mean much to me. I wasn't planning on going anywhere. It would have been useless to struggle against him even if I intended to do so, which I didn't. He was taller and bulkier than I was—he had me by a good sixty pounds and fifteen years.

I did, teasingly, try a feint around him to the open barn door, but he caught me with a lash of his riding crop on my chest, and when I staggered, he grabbed and pulled me to him, taking me into another possessing kiss. I opened to him immediately, returning the kiss hungrily as he grabbed at my balls through the thin material of my riding breeches. I gasped as he squeezed them—squeeze and release, squeeze and release. He slapped me hard across the mouth, threw me to the ground, and struck at me twice more with the riding crop. There wasn't enough force behind the blows of the crop to be damaging. They were more a declaration of domination—an intent to take; an intent to take hard.

It was clear that my role in this was to be the whimpering, helpless submissive—not a role I usually played, but I was in high heat for the man. I wanted something different as a bottom than I wanted as a top. Few men aroused the need in me to bottom for another man. This man did.

Moaning, I attempted to curl up into a ball but he was leaning down, pulling me up, throwing me over his shoulder, and marching to the wall where he had hung his saddle. He easily lifted my body and set my belly down on the saddle, my torso draped over one side and my legs hanging down on the other. I didn't fight it. My role was to submit.

Somewhere he had come up with leather straps. He came around to the front of me, grabbed my wrists, one after the other, and tied them down on the wooden slats of the wall below me.

"Please don't," I murmured, with a whisper, knowing he wanted me to beg that much and knowing that he'd just laugh, which he did.

On the other side of the stall, he jerked off my boots and then my riding breeches and underdrawers. He tied off my ankles on that side of the wall as he'd done with my wrists on the other side. I, of course, lay there, limp, trembling for him, murmuring empty objections, but letting him have his way.

He hit me repeatedly on the bare buttocks with the riding crop, and I groaned and cried out with each sting of the lash, writhing as best as I could. Embarrassingly, though, I was crying for the lash as much as against it and begging him to fuck me. I subsided into moans and gasps as his mouth and fingers went to opening up and preparing my ass. I relaxed my anus and passage, as I well knew how to do, and opened quickly to him. I hoped it was enough, and it proved to be. He was vigorous but not oversized. I had taken champion cocks from bruising men.

Climbing the slatted partition with hands and feet on either side of my draped body, he set his feet in the opening in the slats near the top of the wall, worked his cock inside me as I both cried out at the violation and begged him to go deeper. Riding my ass high, like we were in a race for the gold, and he the jockey and me the thoroughbred, he rose and fell on my ass, lashing away at my rump and thighs with his riding crop, picking up speed, depth, and intensity. He was experienced. Size didn't prove to be an issue. He both knew to give the prostate extra attention and how to kiss all sides of the channel walls as he stroked in long, hard, cruel thrusts.

We both trumpeted our coming, he deep inside me and me against the saddle. I whimpered and sighed as he dismounted and kissed my blushing buttocks repeatedly and ran his fingers over the welts he had raised there. He then untied my wrists and ankles, said, "Cheerio. You're a jolly good lay. I enjoyed that. No more teasing now," and strode out of the barn.

I lay there, stretched over the saddle, for a few moments more, both moaning at and reveling in the forceful taking. I only rarely played the submissive, but this was well worth the ride. The American author and composer had seemed more diffident than this earlier, and I'd thought that my teasing would lead to me being dominant. But he proved to be a firecracker and to know just the right parameters of pain and pleasure that would excite me.

Groaning, I pulled myself down from the wall, gingerly pulling on my underdrawers, riding breeches, and boots after carefully running my hands over the welts that weren't too bad and probably would disappear before we all had to gather in the drawing room before supper. Still, there would be a memory of this afternoon in the sting I'd still feel in sitting at the dining table. When I got to the door of the barn, William Bowles was covering the distance between the barn and the main house of Falconcroft, a great pile of Gothic stone appended to a medieval castle keep, at the top of the rise. He was flicking his riding crop against his leg as he jauntily walked along. I moaned at the remembrance of the dominance and slight cruelty of the man I'd only known since the formal and tame luncheon on the lawn earlier in the day. I wondered how he knew I'd take and harden for the lash and lie under him.

* * * *

"I urge you to accept your uncle's invitation to be his secretary for the season in Tangier. I don't like what I hear coming from London these days." Lady Cybil, Lord Harkwood's sister and, not incidentally, my mother, had pulled me to the side of the drawing room during cocktails before dinner. She was looking very distraught, and I wanted nothing more than to assure her.

"He asked as soon as I arrived this morning," I answered. "And of course I said yes. It's very generous of him. The salary is more than satisfactory."

"Good. He's as steady as they come, is Sydney," she said. "He will be a good influence on you, and Tangier should be far enough from London."

For enough from London for what. But, ah, then the London gossip had reached out to Yorkshire, I thought. Who would have thought that such news would travel so far so fast. I'd only been with the group for a few months now. I could see why Mother was worried. I didn't want her to be. Life had been rough for her these last two years. Widowed—tragically—she now was living almost full time under her brother's wing here at Falconcroft. I had still been at Oxford when my father shot himself. It was publicized as a gun-cleaning accident, of course, but everyone knew better. He'd gone bankrupt, having put all of his money into trying to develop what they called a motor car, a somewhat noxious, in many regards, notion that had had no place in England at the close of the nineteenth century. Let the Americans drive down that rat hole, many here said, and I must say I agreed with them.

My relations with my father always had been strained. I worshipped him, of course. He was a handsome man, as all Wilsons were, and perfectly formed, and, I can openly think about it now, massively endowed—as all Wilsons undoubtedly were. But he was an angry man, fast to use the cane. Where many would remember moments of affection from their father, I remember moments of the cane. As I moved into puberty I, surprisingly, found that the cane made me go hard. But those were moments, at least when he paid attention to me. I confess that I sometimes committed sins just for the attention it got me from my father. When I got older and he was still using the cane, I realized that it made him hard too. In that regard, I felt I had a certain amount of control over his emotions.

When I was sent off to public school, I endured the cane rather less—in contrast to most of my fellow students—than I did at home. Perhaps the combination of the man I worshipped and his use of the cane was responsible for . . . but there was no need to dwell on that—especially there, in the drawing room, where I was grateful that men stood while women were permitted to sit. I had not completely recovered from a smarting ass, thanks to William Bowles, who was standing across the room and guffawing with my uncle.

"Perhaps when you're in Tangier you will catch your uncle's archaeology bug," my mother went on to say. "That's a noble pastime."

What she meant was that she didn't like what I was up to London, which it was obvious now that she'd had reports of. It wasn't just Oscar and Alfred and Robert, or Bosie and Robbie, as I knew the latter two as. It was the whole arts thing. Oscar—Oscar Wilde—of course was the anchor of our little group. Robbie and Bosie, Robert Ross and Lord Alfred Douglas, nearly the same age as I was, were the major spokes from Oscar's hub, even closer in with Oscar than I and a few others were. It was all quite tidy. I fucked Robbie and Bosie, and Oscar fucked us all. And he didn't just physically fuck us; he fucked us with his witty prose as he rode our asses.

Assuaged, Mother drifted away and Uncle Sydney, with William Bowles and a very pregnant, small, mousey-looking woman in tow, moved in my direction.

"There you are, Gregory," Lord Harkwood said as he approached. He was a very hardy soul, was my mother's brother. A good bit older than mother and the issue of a different wife, he was florid, large boned—ever moving toward, but not quite at, obesity. Even at something past fifty, his hair was flaming red and his manner was what could be termed an amused gruffness. In other words, the classical country squire. He spoke in louder decibels than anyone else in the room, probably the result of a refusal to wear a device that would enhance his faltering hearing. He wasn't a soft man, by any means. Although heavy, he was more muscle and gristle than fat, a man who obviously spent most of his time in the outdoors engaged in one blood sport or the other.

In contrast, the man he was shepherding over to me was the perfect university don type. He was even dressed the part, his dinner tux looking awkward on his body to the point of hiding how well I now knew his body was fashioned. The horn-rimmed glasses he wore and the diffident nature he was exuding emphasized the isolated scholar impression he made.

"I wish you to meet William Bowles, the novelist and composer. He's from America, but he married locally. This is my nephew, Gregory Wilson," Lord Harkwood said as he pulled Bowles toward me with a beefy hand on his forearm.

"It's Billy, call me Billy," Bowles said, as he looked at me as if nothing had happened that afternoon.

"Oh, we've met already," I said and was gratified to see the trace of concern rush across Bowles' face. He no doubt wondered if I'd expose him here in civilized company. He had told me "no more teasing," but could keep him guessing. "At luncheon," I added, putting the man out of his misery. "You were off at your golf club, Uncle. Luncheon was laid out on the lawn. It was very nice." And later I was laid in the barn, I thought—which also was very nice. "We even rode together this afternoon." At least Billy rode me.

"You ride?" Lord Harkwood said, turning to Bowles and perhaps wondering that a man such as Bowles was presently presenting spent any time outside a library at all.

"Yes, I do," Bowles responded.

To which I couldn't resist adding, "And he rides really well. He's an excellent rider. And he is an expert with the crop."

Bowles gave me a little smile, sharing now in the double entendre, realizing no doubt that I had no intention of giving him away. I was having too much fun.

"Oh, and his wife, Patricia," Lord Harkwood said, pulling the bulbously pregnant little woman forward.

"I didn't know Billy was married," I said, trying to keep the acid in my voice for Bowles' recognition only and trying my best not to append "to a woman" to that sentence. I wasn't having quite as much fun now. "I didn't see her at lunch."

"She went to her parents' house first, in the village," Bowles quickly explained.

"And do you engage in riding as well?" I asked, turning to Bowles' wife and trying to keep a straight face. Considering the bulge of her stomach, unless Bowles was being cuckolded, she was fully engaged in riding with him.

"Yes, of course. But not just now, as you can see."

"So Billy has to do his riding with someone else for the present," I said.

"It would appear so," Patricia said, and we all politely laughed.

Before I could think of a way to torture Bowles further, the village vicar came over. "Patricia, I'd like you to meet Dr. Sturbridge. He'll be following your progress."

"I would like to meet him too. I'll come with you," Bowles said. Then, with a bow to Lord Harkwood and a shot of his own at me, "I enjoyed our ride this afternoon; I look forward to being able to do it again—perhaps on more vigorous terrain next time," he was gone.

The dinner gong rang, but before we went in, my uncle said to me, "You didn't bring your man John with you. Will you need one of my footman to dress you?"

"I managed for dinner, but, yes, that would be helpful," I answered. "Charles has served me before. Perhaps—"

"Then Charles it will be," Lord Harkwood said, as we paired up in traditional order to go in to dinner.

We ate in the family dining room, but the room still seemed cavernous for our group of ten. The top of the table was adequately lit by candelabras on the table top and hanging from the ceiling, but the light was dimmer below that, which, in my case hid a certain amount of sin. The table could easily accommodate twenty. Lord and Lady Harkwood took up the opposing ends, as was fitting. They were a warring couple. Margery Lady Harkwood was tall, dark, thin, quiet, spare of speech, and hawkish to Lord Sydney Harkwood's florid robust blustering. Margery was American. Her family was floating in manufacturing money, which had made her the savior of Falconcroft from the land tax. The two did get along, but best at the nearly forty feet that separated them now at the table.

I was seated at Lord Harkwood's left, with Billy Bowles on the other side of me. My mother was sitting across from me, on her brother's right. The lord filled me in on the rest of the guests. Seated next to Bowles was his wife, Patricia, and then her father, the vicar. That explained a bit, I realized, which Billy confirmed to me in conversation. Patricia was from here and had returned here to give birth at her parents' home. Billy wouldn't be here for the birth, although he didn't tell me where he'd be.

I knew where he wanted to be, though. During the meal, he periodically—when the three footmen weren't serving us—placed his heel on top of my foot in the darkness under the table and ground it in, reminding me what he could be when he wasn't acting the role of shy professor. When the footmen were serving us, he pulled away. As counterpoint, when Charles was serving me, I gave him a special smile and brushed his sleeve with mine as he hovered over me. Charles had been raised and trained at Falconcroft. He was a year and a half younger than my twenty-one years, but we had been playmates when I visited Falconcroft and had made some discoveries of life together. In the last year, the play had become quite intimate. I, of course, always took the lead and played from on top.

Dr. Sturbridge, the village doctor, was seated on Margery's left, with the vicar's wife beside him, and then, between her and my uncle, sat my mother.

As with any semiformal meal in one of the big country houses, this meal was replete with landmines, most of which burst below the surface and were not openly acknowledged.

"Nephew Gregory here has agreed to serve as secretary for me this season in Tangier," Harkwood announced to the table.

"Has he?" Margery said, looking up sharply. "You hadn't told me you were taking the fall in Tangier again, Sydney."

"I always take the season in Tangier," the lord answered back. "I hate late fall in England. You know that, Margery."

"I think it's wonderful Gregory will be going with Sydney," my mother piped up. "He needs to get away from London, and Sydney will be such a good influence on him—and the chance to see exotic Tangier. He'll learn a lot there."

"Will he?" Margery said, this time looking pointedly at my mother. I wondered what Margery had heard about Tangier. I certainly had heard about Tangier. I was somewhat surprised my uncle went there, but then the archaeological dig that he had a firman—an authorizing document—for was there, west of Tangier, a temple to Apollo, so that would explain that.

"Yes, I think the study of archaeology will be so much better than what he's been engaging in in London," my mother said. Then she clamped her mouth shut as if she'd said what she was thinking too openly.

"In exotic Tangier?" Margery asked. I could hear a snort in her voice, but she too didn't press the subject further.

"Oh, you live in London?" the vicar asked, looking down the table at me. That was quite disconcerting at the moment—being addressed by a vicar, when, between course services, Bowles' hand was in my lap, covered by the darkness under the table, and he was crushing my nuts with his fist. He already had had me panting by tracing my engorging cock through the material of my crotch. "What is it you do there?" the vicar continued.

"I'm studying poetry and putting my hand to some playwriting," I answered, trying not to make my voice show the exquisite pain of the strain being put on my balls—or go up two octaves from Billy's attempt to castrate me. Mercifully, Billy took his hand away, as the footmen were appearing bearing the next course.

"Ah, you have a mentor there?" the doctor chimed in. "I hear the arts scene in London is quite lively at the moment."

I opened my mouth to speak, but my mother hijacked a conversation that was getting too close to what she wanted avoided. "I hear an art exhibit is being added to the village fall faire this year, Dorothy." She was addressing the vicar's wife, who had been given an opening to discuss the faire and the part that Lord and Lady Harkwood could take in that this year. "Well, Lady Harkwood will be there, I guess. I guess you will be off on your dig, Lord Harkwood."