I knew as well as anyone why the soldiers were searching the port of Utica, along the Mediterranean coast from Carthage, so frantically. The rumors were on the fly that Prince Xander, the brother of the usurper king of the Phoenicians, Jabez, had fled west through the Mediterranean from the Phoenician capital at Tyre to Utica. Xander was escaping the ire of his elder brother, who wanted no possible challenge to remain to the throne he had stolen from the previous king, Salem. The reports that the prince was being sheltered in Utica had grown to the point that Jabez sent his palace guard here to search for him. The palace guard from Tyre would recognize him. Particularly suspect as providing Xander shelter were the Greek exiles living here, like my master, the philosopher Phaedo. The Greeks had favored Jabez’s predecessor.

It was inevitable that Phaedo’s villa would be searched. The danger of that wasn’t lost on me. The palace guard could just as easily recognize me—and recognize the threat I too posed to their king—as did Prince Xander. Phaedo, in a million ions, would not realize how I fit into this equation, however. I was but his manservant and fourteen-year-old catamite bed warmer brought from Athens when he was banished here for his profligate beliefs and actions and inability not to dabble in politics.

Little did Phaedo know that I too had a connection and claim to the throne of Phoenicia. The king Jabez had assassinated and displaced had been a brother of mine, albeit much older, and from a line with far greater claim to the throne. My mother had been one of the wives, a Greek patrician married to him in a unity pact, of King Salem’s father. Only now, by the efficiency with which King Jabez rooted out the House of Salem, did my own claim come into contention. As a half Greek of then a minor wife, I was overlooked. I had been smuggled away from the Phoenician coast by boat, had been shipwrecked and rescued on the island of Cyprus, and had, because of my favorable looks and perfectly formed diminutive body, had been sold as a sex slave in Athens.

But I had no real aspirations at that time to the throne. I had been content to be Phaedo’s personal servant and catamite. I enjoyed the attentions of an older man. Phaedo surrounded himself with fourteen-year-old boys, his fetish being to bed them as they were transcending from a child’s to a man’s body.

I was not fooled by the danger Phaedo was accepting in aiding the fugitive prince, though. I knew of the guest, who he called Peiros, and who he was keeping sheltered here in secret. Phaedo had schemed unwisely in Athens and had lost. Was he scheming just as unwisely here, I wondered.

As I thought these thoughts, I was standing next to Phaedo, reclining on his couch in the loggia overlooking the inner courtyard of the villa on the cliff over the sea on the outskirts of Utica, having just poured him wine from one of two ewers on the marble table next to the couch. He was watching me pour like a hawk, with one hand under my shift and cupping my buttocks, his index finger seeking, and finding, my anal opening. I wriggled my buttocks for him and the finger penetrated me. He sighed as I jutted my buttocks out, taking him deeper inside me. Our sex games had become quite refined.

He didn’t tell me why he had two ewers of wine at the ready, but he was quite attentive which one I poured from, the one closest to the front edge of the table. Until he had trusted that I knew which to pour from—always the one closest to the front edge of the table—he had always clearly designated the ewer I was to use. I had never poured from the other, about which he always said, “That is the wine for the farewell future.” I did not attempt to divine precisely what he meant by that, although the possibilities were sobering and caused me to take care with it.

“Pour another cup, Hiero,” he directed, as I saw the mysterious guest, wearing just a short skirt, emerging from the shadows of the villa’s guest quarters. He was a magnificently built man, was the young man Phaedo called Peiros, but who I knew really to be the fugitive prince of the Phoenicians, Xander. He was of military bearing and was built like a god. His chest was massive, his waist thin, the muscles of his torso like that of a Roman shield, his biceps and thighs bulging. And, as I knew from observing him bathing, he was hung like a bull. His hair was black, his facial features both handsome and fierce, as fitting of the usurping-by-force royal house of Phoenicia. He was lightly bearded, and his body was equally lightly hirsute in black, silky curls. He could not hide that he was a man of regal bearing and in his prime, probably not more than three-quarters of a decade older than I was.

He was a god to command and to be obeyed, and ever since he had taken refuge in the villa, I had ached to lie under him and having him command me with his monstrous shaft.

Phaedo, who I lay under several times in a week, was old in contrast, not that Phaedo was soft. He was well-muscled for his age and gaunt, having lived at least six decades. He had been a handsome man and most certainly had been a beautiful youth, which quite likely was what had led him into a lifestyle of lovemaking exclusively with men. He had told me that he had lost his virginity to a military man at the age of fourteen and had enjoyed it so much that he did the same for fourteen-year-old boys as often as he could to enrich their lives as they were coming onto the cusp of manhood as his had been. He had not taken my virginity—that had happened by the men who had “rescued” me in the shipwreck early in my fourteenth year, but as I had been on that cusp of puberty at the time, I could understand Phaedo’s point about the pleasure of being initiated at that age by a virile man.

Phaedo also was heavenly endowed but more in length than both length and girth as his guest was. It was becoming increasingly difficult for him at his age to achieve an erection. I still could bring it out of him, which probably was why he kept me close to him and chose to bring me into exile from Athens of all his catamite slaves in Greece.

“Ah, you have come out of hiding, Peiros,” Phaedo said, as the man god came close to us and took the cup of wine I poured from him. He looked into my eyes as he did so, and I knew instantly what he wanted from me. I was aware that he had passed by the entrance into Phaedo’s bed chamber frequently in recent days and stopped to observe me riding Phaedo’s shaft. It was becoming increasingly cleared that this Peiros wanted the same from me. I knew equally that he could have it. I also knew that the Greek name Peiros did not fit him. I knew the features of the Phoenician house of Salem, and that he was Phoenician through and through.

“I cannot stand the inaction. I must exercise or go mad,” the man god answered Phaedo/

“So, exercise,” Phaedo said, with a laugh. “Take to the courtyard and exercise as you will. I will happily watch you, if you don’t mind my thinking licentious thoughts as you do and do some personal exercise of my own—or perhaps with my young man, Hiero, here. I see how you look at him. I don’t mind if you bed him. I know that your sac must ache from inattention since you arrived here. Isn’t he divine? Such a perfect small body, alabaster skin, silky black hair, startlingly attracting blue eyes. And he rides the cock expertly, I assure you.”

“Yes, he is a beautiful young man. You are lucky to have him. Greek, is he?”

“Yes, of course.”

“Strange though. He almost could be Phoenician as well.”

“The best of both worlds,” Phaedo said, diplomatically.

“Yes, quite so.” Peiros answered. “I will exercise. But I do it best by wrestling. And for wrestling you need two.” He was looking directly at me. I doubted I could give him much exercise in wrestling, as he was a powerful man, half again my size, and I was just a well-kept serving slave.

Phaedo must have been having the same thoughts. “I doubt Hiero can give you much exercise in wrestling, but I’m sure he could give you both exercise and sport—and release, as well—there in the courtyard as an extension of wrestling. I, in turn, could receive entertainment and release as well. Everyone can take their pleasure from that. I can add to my pleasure with Maron here, my Assyrian captive slave.” He was pulling another one of his slaves—we all were fourteen-year-old boys—Phaedo was want to sell his sex slaves when they reached fifteen—whose duties included warming Phaedo’s couch—over onto his lap and brushing the boy’s shift up to his waist and unknotting and brushing aside his loincloth.

He had not commented on my receiving pleasure, a boy of small stature and slim build, from a bull-hung man of military bearing, but Phaedo knew me well. He knew I would take pleasure from a man of youth and power—and extraordinary size.

And I did take pleasure from the wrestling match in the center of the courtyard, both the Phoenician prince and I naked, in a match that started in posturing and slippery holds and manipulation that moved to intimate holds and groping and ended with me on my hands and knees on the sand and Peiros crouched on top of me, embracing me close, one hand clutching my breast and the other milking my cock, as he fucked me like a dog, covering me close, and thrusting, thrusting, thrusting deep inside me as I moaned and sobbed and was stuffed near unto splitting. He had the girth to tax me and I had learned to control the muscles of my channel walls, grasping and milking his shaft as he stretched my walls wide and maximized the friction of rhythmically and rapidly sliding in and out, in and out. He came in a flood inside me as I spouted my seed on the sand, but he kept thrusting and groaning his repeated release, again and again, not, as Phaedo had noted, having taken his pleasure for some time.

When he released me, I just collapsed under him, moaning, in satisfied exhaustion. He remained crouched over me, though, his shaft still half hard, panting and looking at me with lust. I knew that as soon as he recovered—which, as virile as he was, would be soon—he would be inside me, pumping, once more. I ached for that moment to come. I was lost to him.

There was a commotion out at the entrance to the villa as Peiros was pumping his seed in me a second time. Phaedo had been reclining on his couch and watching us with slitted eyes, with the hem of his toga pulled up to his belly. Needing to be part of the taking scene, he was lifting the Assyrian slave Maron up and down on his shaft as the groaning boy sat in his lap facing the courtyard. At the sound of the commotion at the entrance, the Greek philosopher sat up on the couch, pushed Maron to the side, and let his toga drop back down. He remained, composed, on the couch, though.

“They have come,” he said. “Hiero, you know where the hidden room is. Take Peiros there and remain there until I have seen to this.” He did not specify the nature of the present danger to me. He didn’t have to. He sent Maron to accost the men invading his realm to find out their intent. I saw Maron running elsewhere, though, toward the slops door, where refuse was thrown out into the canal at the back of the villa.

Rolling out from underneath the fugitive Phoenician prince, I took his hand and drew him deep into the remote section of the villa, to the room accessed behind Phaedo’s family altar. We waited there, embracing, as it was clear that Peiros was not finished with his exercise with me, as we heard, first, nothing, and then men roaming through the villa, speaking in the accent of Tyre, the royal city of Phoenicia. The one who evidently was their captain was directing them to take whatever they found of value from the villa and made a remark on how Phaedo’s Greek exile had caught up with him and that he should not have continued dabbling in Athenian affairs. The doubt was being raised on whether this raid was about the hidden Phoenician prince at all. It may, rather, have been connected with Phaedo’s continued dabbling in Athens’s politics.

For Peiros’s—or can I honestly say, Xander’s—part, he seemed less concerned with the search of the villa as in completing his exercises. We were lying on a pallet, he stretched out behind me and embracing me close. His thick snake of a cock was pressed into the small of my back. His face was buried in the back of my neck, where he was kissing and nibbling me. He pushed his cock head down to my entrance and a hand pressed over my mouth, the fingers pinching my nose, to stifle my cries as he thrust up inside me again and vigorously took his pleasure inside me once again. Once again he was as hard as a rock and as big as a cudgel, and I screamed a muffled cry of both pain and passion as he filled and stretched me.

For several minutes I lost track of the search of the villa and could only concentrate on the thick cock inside me, causing the muscles of my passage walls to undulate over the hard shaft and pull it ever deeper inside me. We both were panting and moaning as he unleashed his cum with a jerk and a little cry, and we both collapsed, his large body embracing my small one and holding me closely encased in his muscular grasp. His cock was still inside me, still filling me more in its flaccid state than most men did when fully erect.

Fearful that his cry had revealed our presence, we both lay there, holding our breath. Both we heard nothing. Several minutes later we still had heard nothing. We warily emerged from the hidden room. Save for one figure the villa was deserted—and had been ransacked. The servants all were gone, undoubtedly fled or taken already to the slave block in the center of Utica. The only one still here—and yet not really here anymore—was Phaedo. His body was lying on the couch where we had left him. There was a slight smile on his face and a dribble of blood and brownish liquid at his lips. The ewer that had always been there, awaiting its role in the drama, but never used was turned on its side on the table next to the couch. It had now been used, and I know my suspicions of what had been in that wine and why Phaedo had called it his future farewell were confirmed.

We went back to the hidden room and waited until dark. Peiros didn’t bother to include me in his “where from here?” plans, nor did he show any interest in what was to become of me, although it didn’t take me long to divine that I probably wasn’t for the slave block in the Utica square—at least for now. Once we were settled on the pallet in the dark of the hidden room, Peiros couldn’t get enough of me. He fucked me again, manipulating me to ride astride his cock in total submission to him, and then after resting again and then yet again. There seemed to be no end in the positions in which he could and would fuck me. He was a lover of great refinement and vast skill. It was as if he had been celibate too long in his fugitive state from the reach of King Jabez, and this possibly was the case. Possibly also, he was just a virile, promiscuous man who sensed something in me that he had to take from me. As he fucked me, he murmured about the smallness, youthfulness, flexibility, and smoothness of me and of the pleasure of debauching the innocence of me again and again.

He certainly had something that I was content to take from him—an extra-large and vigorous stiff staff between his thighs. I made no bones in acknowledging that I was promiscuous and most happy with a moving club inside me. I did have to be careful, though, not to call him by his real name, Prince Xander, as that would tell him I knew more than it was safe for him that I knew.

What he did consult me on was what there was in the villa—or might be after Phaedo’s killers had ransacked it—that could be used in a journey. He was disappointed that the journey would have to be on foot, which told me he was planning to go a good distance, because Phaedo had no carriage or horses, never having perceived the need to leave the villa. Indeed, Phaedo had always seemed to be just waiting here for what eventually happened to him. He frequently said that the influence of Athens extended far. I increasingly in that night came to believe that the intruders hadn’t come from Tyre for Peiros but on the behest of Athens to silence Phaedo forever.

I wove scenarios of how Peiros could remain incognito in Utica and I could be his slave—as I already had become slave to what was swinging between his thighs. But he said he could not take the chance and turned from asking about transportation to asking about food stuffs and wine supplies. Those we had in the villa, in abundance, and I doubted the scavengers had favored them over the marble statues of older men fucking boys that Phaedo had delighted in collecting.

Peiros didn’t leave me there—an indication that I had bewitched him as much as he had enslaved me sexually. We left in the darkest of night, carrying sacks of food and wine skins. He said we’d take only enough for three days, which gave me some indication both of how far we would go and that he’d given some thought to where we were going.

We went to Carthage, some seven-and-a-half leagues along the coast. We walked—briskly—at night and slept between rocks on hidden beaches by the sea or in fields or amid bales of grain in storage huts during the day—or we slept when Peiros wasn’t fucking me. He never seemed to get enough. Neither did I. I was grateful that he was including me in his plans. He made the decisions; I felt fortunately that one of those decisions hadn’t been to exchange me for cash in hand on the Utica slave block. Carthage was a larger city than Utica, but still in the sway of the Phoenician empire. I thought that it was chosen as a larger city in which to hide, but Peiros had other plans.

He had me wait on the edge of the city, outside the walls, for several hours, while he entered one of the city gates. I thought that perhaps he was abandoning me where he told me to wait, but he wasn’t. When he returned, he said, “We must hurry. The tide will soon flow out and the ship will leave us.”

He had booked passage—I knew not where—on a sailing vessel leaving from the Carthage harbor. I had no idea then what he had used to gain passage on the vessel, and Peiros, of course, didn’t tell me about that any more than he told me where we were going. I was just a slave and a sheath for his lust. Once on board the vessel and safely clear of the harbor, though, I found out. He turned me over to the ship’s captain, who took me to his small cabin, bound me to his berth, and fucked the stuffing out of me. The cabin was tiny, the berth taking up most of the space, and there being no window to the outside. But it was the only private place on the vessel, so I had to be content with that—especially considering what sexual services the man made me perform for him over a seven-day sail, coming to his cabin frequently and ravishing me in one way or other each time. I have no ideas whether the screams of my taking could be heard elsewhere on the vessel. I was gagged with a dirty cloth that muffled of the sound, but I’m sure everyone aboard knew what the captain was doing and what I was taking. In any event, Peiros didn’t appear to demand relief for me. I later became aware that he was similarly engaged with one of the boy sailors.