Fourteen-year-old shepherd boy Altan Demir moaned as he bent over in a row between the grape vines on the lower, southern slopes of Turkey’s Mount Ararat. His stepmother’s brother, twenty-five-year-old Ender Yavuz, leaned over him, whispering how it would all be wonderful. He knew what Altan needed and was pining for, and Altan didn’t voice disagreement. The older man held Altan in place with one hand on the boy’s hip, psychologically controlling the trembling youth, while the other held Ender’s erection, rubbing the bulb of it on the boy’s puckering hole, coaxing the boy to open more to him before starting the deflowering. He pointed out that this contact had made Altan go hard, so that was proof of what Altan wanted. The boy didn’t disagree—he said nothing, he just stood there, bent over, breathing heavily and trembling.

It had been a campaign of several weeks for the older Ender, recently returned from national military service to work in the Demir vineyard between the Turkish town of Ciftik and the base of the biblically significant mountain in Eastern Turkey, to get the boy into this position. Ender liked seducing fourteen-year-old boys.

The man had worked hard to know the sweet, perfectly formed small boy biblically. Today was the day. The point of penetration was now. Altan was panting and trembling but he was about to take it.

The two couldn’t have been more different. Altan was young, sunny, innocent, and open, taking his blond looks and perpetual smile from his now-deceased mother. Ender, although handsome, was dark, sultry, moody, and sly like a fox. Altan had been attracted to his stepmother’s brother since Ender had arrived and the older man had done all he could to foster this. Altan was conflicted and indecisive about what he wanted, whether or not he wanted men as was his inclination. Ender was about to take that decision out of the boy’s hands.

One of Altan’s sheep had run into the vineyard and Altan had come for her. As he liked to do, Ender was working in the vineyard bare-chested. He had been in a horny mood and had his cock out of his trousers, pleasuring himself, in the vineyard row. Altan had come upon him and had stopped, mesmerized, by the sight of the older man stroking himself off. Ender had turned and smiled at Altan, but he had continued stroking himself. Altan was about to regain control and to run off when Ender darted up, caught him, made Altan grasp and stroke his cock, and unbuttoned Altan’s fly, pulled him out, and stroked him as well.

Altan struggled within the older man’s grasp, but not too vigorously or too much determination, and Ender managed to strip the boy of his trousers and undershorts. Pushing on the boy’s back to cause him to bend, standing, at the waist and palm the dirt path between the trellised vines, Ender went down on his knees behind Altan and pushed his face between the boy’s cheeks, searching for and finding the rosebud of a virginal opening with his tongue.

After weeks of campaigning the virginal little fourteen-year-old was his and ready from what two years in the Turkish military had trained Ender to do to evaporate the resistance of a young boy. Fourteen-year-olds were the favorite of Ender’s. If they were virginal, as his sister’s stepchild was, all to the good. They were developing into a man physically, but they were still tender, flexible, yielding, unsure of their sexuality, and susceptible to seduction. Ender had turned several boys already. Altan would be just one more.

The bulb in place, but just resting on the pulsating rim, the entrance slowly dilating to the need, Ender wrapped an arm around the boy’s belly and held him in place. He prepared to take the plunge. He’d have to hold the boy close at first and probably even cover Altan’s mouth with his hand, while he was invading and stretching him, but it would be a glorious taking—for Ender at least.

Now, he thought, licking his lips in anticipation while Altan panted and whimpered within his grasp.

“Altan. Where are you, boy? Are you in the vineyard? Your sheep are out of the pen. Come gather them in, boy.” The voice was gruff, commanding. Altan’s father, Onur.

With a huff, Ender released Altan and disappeared up the line of grapevines. Snuffling and trembling, Altan reached down, retrieved his underpants and trousers, pulled them up his legs, and moved in the opposite direction Ender had taken to answer the call of his father. He found his lost sheep on the way out of the vineyard and thus could produce the reason he’d gone into the vines if his father asked.

His father didn’t ask, but later that day he observed something he didn’t like, something he didn’t like at all.

Later in the afternoon, when Ender had come in from working in the vineyard, he stripped down to his underpants and stood under the barrel set out from the roof of the shed he slept in next to the stall of the family horse and let the accumulated rain water wash him off.

Altan saw him from the sheep’s pen and stood there, trembling, thinking about what almost had been and watching Ender’s sleek, well-muscled body turn this way and that under the cascade of water. Seeing that the boy was watching him, Ender smiled and posed for him. He pulled his cock, half erect, out of his underpants and wagged it for Altan. Altan sucked in his breath and tried to look away, but couldn’t.

At the edge of the family house, Onur Demir also saw what Ender was doing—and that his son blushed but didn’t turn away from it.

That night the father said to his son, “Tomorrow, I want you to take the sheep up to the meadow on the slopes of Ararat for their first spring feeding.”

“Won’t this be too early in the season, Father?” Altan asked. “I usually take them up later than this. It may be too cold up at that meadow.”

“Dress warmly, then,” Onur said, showing “do not question me” irritation. “I want you to stay up there for a week before bringing them back down. My wife will put together food for you to take with you.”

There was no further arguing with that. Altan said, “Yes, Father,” and went to the small lean-to that had been added on to the side of the one-room house for him to sleep in. He heard the padlock being put in place on the other side of the door. This didn’t surprise him all that much, though, as his father locked him into the lean-to and out of the main room of the house on the nights he was going to fuck his wife. He didn’t want his son to walk in on his surprise that happened between an older man and his much younger wife.

Altan had no inkling why he really was being sent up onto the mountain and being locked into his small room that night.

When he left the next day, Ender had stationed himself at the end of the last row of grapevines toward the mountain. Altan’s father escorted his son farther than that point, so Ender couldn’t call out to him, but he mouthed something to the young man. Altan wasn’t looking, though, and whatever message Ender was trying to convey did not get delivered.

The hermit’s cabin—really just a shed fronting a cave in the rock—was located an hour’s walk up the slopes of Mount Ararat. Altan’s goal with his small flock of sheep was a pasture another two-hour’s walk up into the rocks. The pasture was a small circular space with sweet grass in the middle, rock walls surrounding it on three sides, and a fringe on the down-slope side that contained vegetation the sheep didn’t want to eat. Once they were in this meadow, they were content to stay there for as long as the grass held out. Altan brought them to this pasture three or four weeks of the year—always later in the spring than this, though.

When he’d driven the sheep to a path that was within sight of the hermit’s cabin, he stopped to rest. The hermit came out to the door of the fronting shed to see who was coming up the mountain. He obviously was in the midst of shaving, as he had a mug in one hand and a razor in the other and there was lather on one cheek.

The hermit was a mountain of a man. He wasn’t fat, but he was hulking. He stood in his doorway, looking out at Altan, in just his trousers, suspenders drooping at his sides. His chest was bulging with muscles and he was hirsute. Dark-haired and swarthy, he looked thuggish and mastering at the same time. He lived alone, with few visitors. Over the past few years, he had sensed when Altan was coming and going with the sheep and usually managed to be standing in his doorway, watching—not smiling, just watching—as Altan passed by.

In recent years, as now, Altan hadn’t just passed by. He’s stopped here to break his journey with the sheep for a rest. Today, he stood there for several minutes, looking at the hermit in the doorway. The hermit, in turn, stood and looked at Altan for these several minutes as well. It was the hermit who broke the vigil, turning to his side to leave room for Altan to enter the shed, through the doorway, past the hermit, if he wished. When Altan didn’t so, the hermit withdrew, disappearing into his cave. Altan journeyed on, then, up to the pasture on the lower slopes of Mount Ararat, where, as he had surmised, the temperature was considerably lower than down at Ciftik on the plain below.