“Prince Rudolf,” I said, rising from my seat at the outdoor patio of the American Bagel and Coffee Company Café. I hadn’t seen him approach with his coffee in one hand and a bagel on a plate in the other. I’d been watching a boy on a skateboard rolling toward me in Vaduz’s Kunstmuseum square.

“It’s just Rudolf to you, Martin. I can call you Martin, can’t I? We’re in the club together now and Mr. Malvin seems a bit formal for what we share.”

“Yes, yes, it does,” I answered. “Please, join me, if you will.”

Prince Rudolf was something not fully clear to me in the Liechtenstein royal family. I just knew he wasn’t in the direct line of succession anymore and lived in a giant mansion on Haldenweg, the road winding up the mountain to Vaduz Castle, the seat of the Liechtenstein royals, from the financial center of the sixty-two-square mile, filthy rich princedom wedged between Switzerland and Austria. I understand that he was someone important with the princedom’s finances and thus wielded great power here.

I had lived here in an enclave owned by the prince of like-minded men for six months and had only recently come to Prince Rudolf’s direct attention. I was an artist, with a lucrative clientele in the underground arts, and my special collection of specialized old art had come to the prince’s attention.

“If only for a moment,” Prince Rudolf said, with an indulgent smile. “I have an appointment at the Kunstmuseum,” which was the small country’s cultural museum. I knew that the prince was on the board there. He seemed to be on the board of most everything in Liechtenstein, which had been one reason I’d gravitated to this remote alpine paradise to live and pursue my work and interests in some semblance of privacy and comradery.

As the prince was settling, my gaze went back to the square, where the boy on the skateboard had drawn close. I was happy to see that he was the same boy, claiming to be fourteen years old who I’d seen in the photo on the Internet site. He looked at me and nodded. I nodded back, and the boy skated past our table toward the other side of the square.

“I hope you are settling in well, Martin,” Prince Rudolf said. “You will make a good addition to our club, I am sure. Lord Howley had told me about your art and your collection—before he was taken up in the unpleasantness. I had urged him to stay here among us rather than going back to England. Was it he who told you about our little group in Liechtenstein?”

“Yes, it was. I felt I shouldn’t try to stay on in London,” I answered. “He told me this would be a compatible environment.”

“And the house on Hintergass ist gut, ist bequem—sorry, is good? It’s comfortable?”

“Yes, thank you,” I answered. “Those of us who have been able to rent from you in that compound are quite sympatico. I don’t know how you say that in German.”

“We say the same—sympatico. I’m happy you found such a place after the unpleasantness in London. You’ll be an excellent addition here—our chronicler, perhaps. You are a fine figure of a man and younger than most of us. And I’ve seen your art. Very impressive. You certainly know how to capture the mood and the emotion. And I’m interested in the collection of older versions of the art I understand you have.”

He paused there to chew on his bagel and then take a drink of his coffee, and I looked out onto the plaza. The boy on the skateboard was making another pass. He was looking at me. I smiled and signaled with my hand to go into a waiting pattern by patting the air beside the table, out of the prince’s sight, my palm down. I was hoping the prince would say something, and he did, at my prompt.

“I would be pleased to show you the collection anytime you wish, Rudolf.”

“Perhaps we could set a date—I don’t have my social calendar with me,” he answered, “tomorrow evening, if you are available. I am having a gathering at my house on Haldenweg ... do you know where that is?”

“Yes I know the house,” I said. I almost said “palace,” because that was what it was, a small palace, at elevation on the mountainside overshadowing the town.

“ ... and I would like you to attend. Formal dress. We wear masks, but I provide them ... and everything else that’s needed. A little recreation as a group activity.”

“Yes, I would be happy to attend,” I answered. “I’d heard about the gatherings from some of the others I have talked with in the enclave ... which reminds me, the house next to mine, the one with the grass tennis court. It seems to be occupied now.”

“Ah, yes, that would Karl Atler. He’s a member of the club. He travels most of the time. Tennis tournaments. He often comes here before Wimbledon—with one of the tennis players he coaches. They prepare for Wimbledon here. The grass court. This year he has one of the juniors, Brian Brushwood. Have you seen him practicing on the court—the young man, Brian Brushwood?”

“Yes, I have.”

“A beautiful boy, isn’t he? Just fourteen.”

“Yes, when he’s practicing I haven’t been able to take my eyes off him,” I said.

“I suppose you would like to sketch him.”

“Of course.”

“We might be able to arrange something. He and Karl will be at the gathering tomorrow evening. But look at the time. I’m afraid I must be off for my appointment. No, don’t bother to rise. Stay where you are. I’m glad I ran across you. I wanted to invite you to the gathering.”

And, with that, the prince was standing at the table. He was an imposing man, tall and broad at the shoulders but slender down through the hips. He was a handsome man, of royal bearing, probably in his fifties and graying, but every inch the prince.

I watched him walk across the plaza, happy that we’d met and I’d been invited to a gathering at last. There was a flash of someone else rocketing between me and the prince’s withdrawing figure, though, and my attention went back to the boy on the skateboard. He stopped in the middle of plaza, expertly lifting the toe of his skateboard and stopping cold without falling down. He looked at me. I smiled and motioned him over.

“Are you M?” he asked as he reached the rail between the café area and the cobblestones of the square.

“Yes. Hans?” They were all named Hans in this country and, by custom, I made my assignations only with an initial. It made for privacy and convenience.

“Yes. You said you wanted a boy to paint. You’d pay 150 Swiss francs.”

“Yes, I did e-mail that. But you know that for 150 francs—”

“Yes, Ich verstehe—I understand,” he said. “I saw you here with Prince Rudolf. I understand. You have a car and we’ll go someplace?”

“Yes. You are a beautiful boy, Hans.” And he was a beautiful boy—slender and lithe. Under five and a half feet. He’d moved like a dancer on his skateboard. Curly blond hair in a mop of a halo around his angelic face. He was wearing shorts and a T-shirt that clung to his divinely proportioned body. He’d be the perfect artists’ model for what I sketched and painted. “You did say you were fourteen, didn’t you?”

“Ja, Ich bin vierzehn—Yes, I am fourteen. But I have experience. Ich verstehe, was Sie wollen—I understand what you want.” “Ich habe dich mit Prinz Rudolf gesehen. Ich bin bereit. I saw you with Prince Rudolf. I am prepared.” You are very good looking too. You look like you are in good shape. You don’t look old at all. Your accent. Are you English?

“American.”

“I like that. Gehen wir jetzt an deinen Platz?—do we go to your place now?”

“Yes, Hans, we gehen to my platz now.” I handed him 150 Swiss francs and guided him to my car with my hand on his butt. He didn’t flinch. He’d mentioned Prince Rudolf. And I knew the prince’s tastes. This Hans should be fine with it.

Pushing up with my hands and knees, I lifted my groin out from between Hans’s raised and spread thighs, pulling my cock, still hard and throbbing but released of its cum, out of his channel. I rolled up to a sitting position on the side of the bed. The lad, stretched out on his back, whispered, “Oh fuck, was für ein fuck—Oh, fuck, what a fuck.” His left arm was raised over his head, still tied to the brass top rail of the bedstead and his right, freed sometime during the struggle, dangling off the side of the bed, the thick cord that once had bound that arm to the rail still wound around his wrist. His ankles were still tied, with long enough leads from his to bend his legs and open them, to the corners of the footrail. The sheets under the boy were mussed up in the struggle to get him tied up and fucked. I hadn’t really forced him. I had told him to make me fight for it. When I got rough, he put up more of a fight, but it was useless against me. I was a strong, beefy man. He was but a small, fourteen-year-old boy.

His blond boy’s body was gorgeous in its wild “taken” pose. His small cock had gone flaccid and was resting on his lower, twitching belly, his cum glistening on his belly. I knew how to catch that in the sketch and was itching to get that started. His pelvis was elevating on pillows, his hole gaping open, still pulsating. I could capture that too even if it closed up before I could get to it. I could remember how wide I’d opened him. He was tight at first, but he was a boy whore. He opened up.

When I’d pulled out of him and jerked the condom off, I’d deposited my cum on his hole, and I could capture that in the drawing as well, leaving the impression he’d been barebacked. His two pert balls, the size and texture of ping-pong balls, jutted up from under the base of his cock.

His mouth was still yawning open, his eyes slitted, a dazed look in them that I would have to work hard to get just right, but no matter what the rest of his body would show in the drawing, I wanted his eyes to deliver the message that he had been royally fucked.

“Scheisse. Ficken. Du warst zu gross—Shit. Fuck. You were too big,” he whispered in an exhausted, weary voice.

“You knew I was big. You could see that before I put it in you. You’ve been fucked before, haven’t you?”

“Ja, aber ... yes, but you were grausam—cruel.”

“You’ve been fucked by Prince Rudolf before, haven’t you?” I would believe the prince has fucked every fourteen-year-old boy in the princedom.

“Ja.”

“Am I as cruel—grausam—as the prince?”

“Nein, aber du bist grausam genug—No, but you are cruel enough.”

“You don’t want me to be cruel?”

“Vielleicht ein bisschen grausam. Du bist ein Meister der Fick—Maybe a little cruel. You are a master of the fuck. Do you untie me now, or do we fuck again?”

“You want me to fuck you again?”

“Ja, naturlich—Yes, naturally.”

“And do you want me to be cruel to you again?”

“Ein bisschen—a bit.”

“No, I don’t untie you now. That and the rough part were all to set the scene for the drawing. You agreed to model. You agreed to the sex.” I put a hand on his right leg and lowered it to where it was flat on the bed. He started to move the other one too. “No, don’t move. Stay in whatever pose I put you in. I’m going to draw you now. See, like the other drawings on the wall around the bed. Your experience will be immortalized.”

“You were cruel to them too,” he said.

“Yes, yes I was,” I said.

“That one there. Over there. You did not—?”

“He was fine,” I answered. “You will be fine.” Nathan had been one of my favorite models—one of Lord Howley’s favorites too—in London. The drawing was of him hanging on an X-frame, sagging in exhaustion. He was facing the frame, the welts showing on his back and buttocks. I think I had rendered the welts quite well. The scene had been Lord Howley’s setup. He had pushed the envelope in London. That’s why he was in prison now and I was here. The age of consent in Liechtenstein was fourteen. Not so in England. No matter the age, though, Lord Howley pushed the envelope. I didn’t use the boys anywhere as near as hard as Lord Howley had done. I used them hard, though.

“I will pay you 150 francs more,” I said, as I rose from the bed and went for my drawing supplies. He was just fishing for more money. I was big, yes, but not that much bigger than other cocks I’m sure he’d taken. And I certainly wasn’t as cruel as I’d heard Prince Rudolf could be.

“Stay just like that. In that pose.” First, I had to have a cigarette. No, first I had to get rid of this spent condom I picked up from the sheets where I’d discarded it. Sometimes I wanted that in the sketch, as well. But this was to be a bareback fantasy. I tossed the condom in the wastebasket. I opened the nightstand drawer and took out the pack of cigarettes and a book of matches. There was a pile of condom packets in the drawer and I extracted one of those dropped it on the top of the nightstand too. Hans saw that and moaned.

“Willst du mich noch mal ficken?—will you fuck me again?” he asked, a whimper in his voice.

“Yes, Hans, I’m going to fuck you again. I’m going to give you another 150 francs and I’m going to fuck you again. You are a very nice little piece. And you are going to say yes to it again aren’t you?”

“Du bist zu gross,” he whined. He was angling for more money, but I knew I was paying generously by the going rates in Liechtenstein. Gays gathered here in droves, and they fucked like bunnies. Rent-boys were easy to come by and were cheap. They also were beautiful.

“Not anymore, not for you. I’m not too big for you anymore, Hans. You are reamed for me now. I leaned over and slid two fingers in him. He groaned, but he was slow rocking on the fingers, so I knew he wasn’t unhappy. So, say Ja, Hans. Ja, I can ficken you again.”

“Ja,” he said, in a small voice. “Fick mich wieder—Fuck me again.”

“Stay just like that Hans. I’ll be back with a sketchpad in a couple of moments.” I pulled my fingers out of his channel. First, I’d go open the window and smoke a cigarette. As I was standing there, naked, leaning on the inner frame of the window inset into the thick old walls of the stone house, I gazed down into the yards of the compound of houses Prince Rudolf owned at the corner of Hintergass and Ergertastrasse, north of the Kunstmuseum Platz. I was directly overlooking the swimming pool and grass tennis court surrounded by a high chain-link fence of the house recently occupied by the German tennis court. Karl Atler was out there hitting the ball with his Wimbledon-bound young protégé, Brian Bushwood. They were both just in athletic shorts and tennis shoes.

Brian was a beautiful young redheaded boy. He was muscling up nicely, but the prince had said he’d just turned fourteen, so he was still growing and he was right in the wheelhouse of what aroused me most—something all of the men the prince rented to in the compound agreed with. It’s what made us sympatico.

I lingered, smoking my cigarette. Play stopped and the two players were moving around the court, picking up tennis balls. Brian stopped and looked up at my house. I was sure he could see me in the full floor-to-ceiling window I was lounging in. I didn’t pull back. I remained there, smiling down at him. It only lasted for a moment, but he was the first to pull away. Then I flicked the butt of my cigarette out of the window, went for my drawing supplies, and went back to the bed and worked on the drawing of Hans.

I was quick with my drawings, relying on the swift strong strokes to capture the essence of my subject. Hans was a good model, lying there in the pose I’d fucked him into and just moaning quietly. I didn’t do a full drawing. Just enough to know I could fill it in later and have the effect and likeness that I wanted.

Afterward, I put the drawing supplies away and came back to the bed. I was hard again, imagining fucking a fourteen-year-old boy while I was doing my drawing. It wasn’t Hans I was imagining fucking, though. It was the luscious redheaded tennis player, Brian Brushwood.

As I hovered over the boy on the bed, he murmured “Du bist zu gross—You’re too big,” to me again, which I ignored and then, as I reached down and then up to untie his ankles and wrists, he asked, in surprise, “Wir werden nicht wieder ficken?—We’re not going to fuck again?”

He was a little poser. He wanted me to fuck him again. He wanted the additional 150 francs I’d mentioned. He also wanted my “too big” cock.

“Yes, we’re going to fuck again, Hans,” I said, as I stood over him, opening the condom packet I’d placed on the top of the nightstand, while Hans watched me, wide-eyed, and then smoothed the rubber down my reegorged cock. I was a fast reloader. I could do this again and again all day and night. And then we fucked again, this time me taking him fully with me so that what he’d leave remembering is that he’d said “Ja” to it and left satisfied.

With his hands and legs free, I gathered him up in my arms in a close chest-to-chest embrace and slowly, deeply entered him, watching his eyes, watching them come alive, at first pained and then surprised at the depth and fullness I was reaching, and then full of need, want, and lust, as, together, we set the rhythm of the deep stroking. Both of us were panting, Hans moaning, me groaning. At full depth, I had held, rocking ever so slightly, waiting for him to open fully to me, which, at length, he did. With a deep groan, eyes flashing, he cried out, almost in anguish, “Ja. Fick mich tief!—Yes. Fuck me deep!”

I started into long, deep slides, setting a rhythm accompanied by Han’s moans and the thumping of the brass headboard against the wall and the squeaking of the bed springs—a regular symphony of fuck. As I moved into strong ever-more rapid thrusts, he cried out “Ja. Ja. Fick mich hart! Scheisse! FICK MICH!—Yes. Yes. Fuck me hard. Shit! FUCK ME!” His fingernails dug into my shoulder blades and the heels of his feet rubbed on the meat of my calves and his hips were moving with the rocking motion of my pelvis. He shot his cum up between our heaving bellies, but I fucked on until he was jelly in my arms, collapsed, head arched back, tongue hanging out, mouth blowing bubbles.