I was buried in the pile of silken pillows on the pallet in the hotel tent overlooking Qaraum Lake as the early morning sunlight, reflecting off the shimmering water of the lake, was stealing in through the open tent flap. I was smothered in the embrace, with my young English valet from the El Faiyum Desert dig, Gil, pressing down from me from above, holding himself over me like a crab, with his arms and legs bent and planted in the hard surface of the pallet. He was a flexible lad of sixteen, was Gilbert, whose father, Grayson Pilkington, was paying a large chunk of the fare for my archeological dig in Egypt and had insisted his youngest son be given an education and an adventure. Well, Gil was having an education and adventure now as, staring up at the ceiling of the tent he rose and fell on my cock. As it turned out, Gil loved taking cock from an older, experienced man like me.

Yes, indeed, he was a flexible little fellow. He also was blond, handsome, now berry brown thanks to the Egyptian sun, perfectly formed, all smiles, and ready to go back to his school outside of London full of tales to tell of Egypt in the first decade of the twentieth century. I’d given him tales to tell. There would be even more before he ever saw the shores of England again. To be a handsome, blond boy in the land of the pharaohs was to be a gooey honey pot. Men would continually want to be sticking their tongues in that sweetness.

As he fucked himself on me, I sensed we were being watched, which seemed always the case in the El Faiyum region southeast of Cairo. Of course, my other, Egyptian boy, Amr, would be ever vigilant, no doubt ever looking for evidence of what pleased me in bed, but since I fucked that fourteen-year-old servant, who did all of the dirtier duties I could not assign to Gil, it did not matter if he saw me in bed with Gil. I also did dirtier fucking with the Egyptian boy than I would with the English one.

But, looking around, I could see that it wasn’t Amr peeking in through a rent in the tent canvas. It was that saucy son of Prince Nuri. Femi was the lad’s name, I thought. I had been told he was fourteen—the age I was generally drawn to and able to indulge in here in Egypt. The boy clearly wasn’t shocked. He remained there, watching us as I clutched Gil’s narrow waist between my hands and the boy, using the leverage of his feet and hands, rose and fell on my shaft. Before I had tensed, jerked, released, tensed, jerked, and released and Gil had lowered himself into my embrace, my lips going to the hollow of the boy’s throat, the prince’s son had withdrawn.

When Gil and I were dressed and exited the tent on the shore above the beach on the western side of the large, shallow Qaraum Lake, the boy, Amr, still was not in evidence. Ours was just one tent in a dozen or more strung along the side of the lake and functioning as a hotel. Three of the tents were larger—a dining tent, one for the guests to congregate in, and the prince’s own tent. The entire hotel had been taken by Prince Nuri to deal with the annual split of the takings from the sanctioned foreign-concession ancient tomb site excavations in the desert to the southeast of the lake. I headed up the English concession. Here, at this gathering, were the Germans and the Russians as well.

Not finding Amr nearby, I sent Gil for our breakfast from the dining tent near the end of the string of tents beyond that of Prince Nuri. While I waited, I drew up a camp stool in front of my tent and settled down to watch the awakening of the lake under the beams of the sun rising behind me over the ancient city of El Faiyum, closer to the western shore of the Nile from here.

I loved this time of the morning near the lake, which, along with the nearby Nile River, made this part of the country, which once was called the bread basket of Rome, lush in vegetation and wildlife, at least when compared to just a few miles to the southeast, where the irrigation systems didn’t reach. The El Faiyum Desert was barren, but, the land not being useful for cultivation, the ancient Egyptians had used it to locate tombs of the royals and nobility, so it was rich in other treasures. I had spent the spring and summer months there heading up the excavation of a couple of tombs of the ancient nobles, something the Egyptians were now permitting as we moved into the twentieth century. Upon annual instructions from the Ministry of Antiquities, I had brought the treasures I had excavated here to the lake, as did the German and Russian excavators for a tally with the Khedive’s administration.

The head of the German excavation company, new to Egypt, had wondered at the division of the spoils being conducted here, outside Cairo, but the Russian dig chief, Gotlieb, and I just laughed at his naivete. The public answer was that we were nearer the excavation sites here. The real answer was that the Minister of Antiquities didn’t want the other Cairo ministries to watch their participation and profiting from the plundering of Egypt’s history.

Awaiting my breakfast, I sat at the top of the slope down to the lake and watched the sun wake up the fowl life. The lake at this point was shallow enough to almost be a marsh, and, indeed, there was a vast area at the shore to the north with reeds where I knew the ducks liked to hide. But in front of me, what I saw was a sea of pink, where a vast number of flamingos were standing almost motionlessly in the shallow water, fishing for their breakfasts. A bit further out pelicans were swooping down and more actively pulling fish out of the water. A fuselage of shots and thousands of startled ducks rising out of the reeds, already set in formation, told me that the Germans were up and out in the reed boats to dispel the boredom of waiting for their turn for their first, inventory, meeting with Prince Nuri and his factotum, Husani Hamide.

The gunfire having already loosed the flamingos in addition to the ducks and the sighting of Gil, accompanied now by the servant boy, Amr, loping along the top of the slope down to the lake with the pans containing our breakfast sent me back into the dimmer and cooler confines of the tent. The opening of the tent had been arranged to take in what breeze there was off the lake. Still it was hot, close, and humid enough that I was wearing only the loose, white robe of the Egyptians. I would dress as an Englishmen when I was summoned to the prince’s tent—and I would suffer in the heat there. The prince, tall, handsome, and elegant, would be in a rich version of the cooler Egyptian robe and, no doubt, would be pleased at my discomfort.

The late morning found me unencumbered by any clothing. I lay, naked, among the silk pillows on the pallet in the hotel tent, as did both Gil and Amr. The two lads lay with me, one at either side of me. The fourteen-year-old Amr lay panting, and quietly whimpering, on his back, legs spread and bent, feet flat on the pallet, an arm slung across his face.

He was the one of the two I preferred to fuck, mostly because he was the smaller and younger of the two and I had no reason to be delicate with him. Gil was English and I had connections back to civilization through him, so no matter how willing he was, there were broader concerns in how to use him. Amr was an orphaned peasant of the desert. I could use him as I wished. I had taken him with little preparation other than some strikes to redden his buttocks and listen to his cries and a few penetrations of the leather phallus I used top open up the boys. This was rounded off with a few strikes of my riding crop. Then I was on top of him and inside him, Amr completely docile to my need and sport, enjoying how tight the stretch was to penetrate, possess, and breed him.

I spent longer with the sixteen-year-old Gil and took more care considering he was English and the son of a patron. I was not fearful that Gil would reveal what we were to each other, though. He worshipped me and could not get enough of my cock. I took my time opening him up with the leather phallus as Amr lay on my other side if for no other reason than, although I was a robust man of forty, it took me a brief time to regain my virility to seed a second young man. The longer buildup time require for second cocking, though, gave me opportunity to enjoy every aspect of the beautiful blond boy’s body. When I was ready, so was Gil, the leather phallus having opened him to my need. I put him on all fours and mounted and fucked him like a dog. He was wanton, pushing back on his buttocks to take me deep.

As I was releasing my seed with Gil, I heard the call from outside the tent. “Hendricks. Are you in there? It is close to time for your inventory meeting with the prince. Come out and attend me.”

It was the arrogant voice of Husani Hamide, the prince’s man, the keeper of Prince Nuri’s meeting schedule and anything else the prince wished to have done for him. If my initial meeting time was soon, he had done what I had bribed him to do. He had given me an early audience. That would mean I would have to give him what else I had agreed to, including a necklace he desired from the tomb dig. I didn’t like it, but it couldn’t be helped.

Gil and I scrambled up and dressed, and I sent Gil to the storage tent that had been assigned to me to start carting up the treasure I had to show the prince. I told Amr to stay where he was, that his service on his back would continue. Then I went out to greet Hamide, who was a short, fat, ugly little man but, however, was a very powerful man at the time of the treasure accounting.

“You have assigned me an early audience,” I said, as I came out into the sunshine.

“Yes, as agreed,” the little fat man said, giving me a grin. “You meet with the prince in two hours’ time. Is now a good time for me?”

“Now is as good a time as any,” I answered, setting my jaw to avoid trying to renege.

“Good. When you come, you will bring your English servant too, will you not?”

“It was a good year. It will require all of the servants I brought to bring forth all of the treasure we have uncovered.” I would talk of the abundance of treasure I had brought at every possible turn. It would hide what I was keeping back and not reporting.

“Good,” Hamide said. “May I go inside the tent?”

“Yes, of course.”

The fat Egyptian was already pulling his robe over his head as he entered the tent. I could see that although he was small in stature, he was monstrous in cock and balls and was in full erection. Before I stepped off toward the common tent to have a drink and to greet the other archeologists there while Hamide was having the sport I had agreed to in exchange for a favorable inventory meeting time with the prince, I approached the tent and caught a glimpse of him backhanding Amr, who had risen from the pallet to his feet. The strike sent him back onto the bed, though. Hamide was on and inside the boy immediately, covering Amr with his body, which was strong even if obese, and I heard Amr cry out at the initial penetration.

Amr was on his back, with Hamide on top, grasping the boy’s wrists, forcing Amr’s arms over his head. The boy was writhing under the man, panting and groaning, as Hamide, thicker than I was, worked his shaft inside. Slowly, Amr settled down, and when I saw him grasp the Egyptian’s shoulder blades with his fingernails and the man’s hips with his knees and start to rock with the fuck, I knew he would be all right. I remained only long enough to see that the Egyptian was fully saddled and taking the boy hard and fast.

I did give slight thought to why Hamide ensured that Gil would attend the inventory meeting with me, but I quickly pushed it to the back of my mind. I probably shouldn’t have, but thinking more on it wouldn’t have changed anything.

While I was on my way to the common socializing tent, I passed by the tent of the Russian archeologist Gotlieb, a massive, ball but hirsute, redheaded man in his early fifties. The sounds of sex drew me to the entrance of the tent and I looked in. Gotlieb, naked, was on his back on his pallet, and Femi, the prince’s fourteen-year-old son, slight but perfectly formed of body, berry brown, with flashing black eyes, was riding the Russian’s cock. The Russian was lying, head to the top of the bed and the boy was saddled on his pelvis, facing the entrance of the tent, grasping the man’s knees as the man grasped his waist, and riding the man’s proud shaft in the loping gait of a camel sailing across the dunes of the desert.