As the week passed, my desire for Mishael intensified. So too my need to abstract him from his present master, Yaryd. This was going to be a challenging feat because of the code of honor that existed between masters that was unspoken but well known. We did not try to steal each other's boys. In any case I had no intention of incurring the wrath of my compatriot by dishonoring the code and thereby setting a mob of peeved masters unleashing their judgment on me.
I had no desire either to do a cowardly thing as stealing Mishael. I wanted him to come to me on his own free will. I wanted a slave who was also a free agent. I had always abided by another code of behavior - that which existed between masters and their bottoms - that the _s_e_x_ and play were safe, consensual and legal. I was thus left with one recourse only, and that was to convince Mishael that he would have a better life with me.
Sasha had stopped visiting me in my dreams. He no longer needed to. It was as if he had accomplished his task and was certain that I knew what mine was.
I know what I must do, my angel, I assured an invisible Sash, on my drive to Yaryd's manor. I know. I never felt Sash too far from me even though I no longer had visions of him. I felt his presence with me all the time that I was in New Canaan.
It seemed that my third visit to Mishael had been an imposition that was inconvenient to Yaryd. I had stumbled onto another serendipitous discovery.
"It's just a social call," I said to Yaryd, at the door. "Surely Mishael is allowed this?"
"We're in the middle of giving him a tattoo," Yaryd said. "But come on in. You might find this quite interesting."
I was invited into the house and immediately my eyes fell on the small company of men in the middle of the living room. I could not see Mishael for a while but when one of the others turned back and then they all got up to make their acquaintance with me, I found the youth on the carpet. Naked from head to toe as usual, he had spread apart his legs, his knees bent and drawn up, as if he were about to receive a blow job or anal intercourse.
When he heard me, he raised his back up slightly, supporting his weight on bent elbows. His face seemed to light up to see me. His green eyes were two lucid gemstones. I smiled and greeted him. He returned my ardent observance of social amenities with a cheerful and appreciative, "hello, sir".
Surrounding him were bottles of antiseptic, cotton, color dyes, candles and needles.
"I hear you're getting a tattoo," I said, feigning fascination.
"Yes," he replied, "Yaryd said I should. Then everyone would know that I belong to him and he owns me. The tattoo will identify me with Yaryd forever."
"I see. Is this what you want?" I asked cautiously.
He cast his eyes at his master, dumbfounded, as if the question was irrelevant.
"Answer the doctor, Mishael," Yaryd said. "Isn't this what you want?"
Mishael looked down on his exposed genitals and then up at the guests. He blushed prettily.
"Yes, sir," he answered in a soft voice.
Yaryd smiled, and turning to me, he said: "You're welcome to watch. Will lemonade be all right? We're out of beer at the moment."
I nodded and took a seat on the settee. This had been given new upholstery for I recalled that the previous upholstery was a different floral pattern the last time that I was here. I had not noticed anything worn or torn about it. This truly was a display of plutocratic excess.
The tattoo artist and his two assistants resumed their task. I watched their needle being put to piercing Mishael's inner right thigh, very close to his scrotum, painstakingly perforating the youth's skin with the outline of an eagle's beak. The youth was groaning slightly from the pain while the needle took its time to transmogrify his smooth skin.
Mishael suddenly turned to me, looking at me imploringly.
"Is there something you want, Mishael?" I asked.
"Would you hold me, sir?" he asked.
"Certainly," I answered.
I went round to his back and sat cross-legged behind him. I wrapped my arms around his chest. He fell back comfortably against me.
"I don't really want ....he didn't really ask ...." he said quietly, his statements fragmented.
"It's not too late to change your mind," I persuaded, not feeling in the least surprised at his revelation. "You just have to tell him."
But Yaryd had entered the room with a tray. I felt Mishael fidget ever so slightly in my arms. I stilled him. He yielded to my hold, and then sensing that he was beginning to yield to my will, I prodded him.
"Tell him," I whispered.
He turned askance and surreptitiously brushed his cheek against my shoulder which was level with his cheekbone.
"I ...." he started but stopped.
I prodded him more vehemently.
"Sir," he said finally, betraying a modicum of fear in his voice, "I don't want a tattoo, sir. Please tell the men to stop."
Yaryd glared at me as if he knew that I had put his boy up to this. He knelt in front of Mishael and said tenderly: "What's wrong, Misha? I thought you'd be happy I'm doing this for you. You've been completely self-sacrificial and obedient, the perfect slave. I'm just trying to reward you and show you that you'll always have a place here and in my heart."
This had to be the first time that I was seeing any semblance of tenderness in Yaryd. I began to understand a lot more. It made sense that Mishael, or anyone, would respond so willingly to Yaryd's enslavement. He was a clever man. If he knew he could not use tyranny to compel anyone into submission, like the tyranny that I had seen in my previous visits, he would employ tenderness, and blackmail. Such as he was doing now.
"Besides," he continued, "have you so soon forgotten how scared and lonely you were before I took you into my home? You said then that you had no one and nowhere to go. You said you wanted to belong to me. Don't you still?"
"Well, yes, Yaryd ...." Mishael answered. He had started to weep.
"But not in this way," I added, cutting off the boy in mid-admission. "It's really quite enough, Yaryd, isn't it? Don't confuse the boy anymore with your sycophancy."
I rose from the floor, pulling Mishael up along with me. I told him to go to his room, dress himself and wait for me. Then I grasped my host by his left arm and dragged him into the kitchen.
"You're quite a clever man, Yaryd," I told him, "and you have succeeded at fooling Mishael. I don't know why Mishael feels beholden to you, but whatever it is, money, favor, his life, I'm willing to pay to have him be free of you. I want him. I won't deny this. I'm attracted to him. I've fallen in love with him. And so I'm willing and able to buy him from you if you won't make it easy by setting him free. You don't know what it is to be a master. You have no idea what it is a boy needs. For one thing, you simply have no love for Mishael. You use kindness and tenderness not as a show of love but to manipulate and play on his delusory need for you. It's part of your egregiously anachronistic perception of enslavement. You have no idea what it means to Mishael to want to serve you. Haven't you heard - slaves have already fought for egalitarianism. Let him go freely, sir, for I desire him and he me, but if not, state your price."
Yaryd laughed.
"What do you know about my love for Mishael?" he said. "If I did not love Mishael, I would not be doing any of this. He enjoys it. He didn't know it at first when we initially met. I found him at the bar, making quite a noisy fool of himself with his clumsy solicitations. I brought him home and taught him the joys of servitude. You see, I understand kinds like him. I know his type. He needs someone to control him. He needs a life of discipline, even arbitrary discipline. I'm able to give him this life. He needs me."
I shook my head.
"Perhaps he does need all the things you say, but your error is that you do it for him simply because it turns you on," I suggested.
"It turns Mishael on, too," Yaryd rebuffed. "He enjoys being in bondage. He responds well to being dominated, being told what to do. It's how he likes to love. Just ask him. He'll tell you how he likes to make love, be made love to. How he likes, as they all say in colloquial parlance, to cum. Ask him also how he likes it rough."
"No, sir," I demurred, "with all due respect, it's how you like and know to love, and you've brainwashed Mishael to believe it's also how he likes to love. But I shan't refute your observation about what Mishael likes. Perhaps he is everything you say he is. But that's a small fraction of what makes him a person. You don't know the rest because you give him no latitude to show you the rest. He's not allowed a mind of his own, not to mention privacy. He doesn't even have private parts anymore, the way you liberally flaunt his nudity to strangers. Of course, there's no shame in being naked but you instill in him a shame to be naked. How dare you! Now state your price, sir, or let him go freely with me."
Yaryd considered me and then stated his price in a lengthy discourse.
"You _f_u_c_k_ing son of a bitch," I snarled, when he had finished.
"Are you afraid you won't be able to do it?" he jibed.
"I am more than able to do it," I retorted.
I was indeed impatient to accept his challenge, however irksome I found it. But I was not thrilled about the humiliation it would make Mishael feel.
"I despise you, sir. But if it means Mishael is free of you, so be it," I told him at last.
We returned to the living room. I volunteered to go up and bring Mishael down. Yaryd said that he would be waiting for us in the basement.
When Mishael and I arrived at the basement, we found Yaryd unlocking some ankle and wrist restraints. These were large and heavy, like those used in the era of our barbaric forebears when dungeons were the order of the imprisonment of criminals, dissidents and heretics.
"Take off your robe, Mishael," Yaryd ordered. "We're about to play a game."
Mishael disrobed himself naked. After that, Yaryd had the boy's arms raised above his head and his wrists cuffed with the iron restraints that were linked to the ends of the heavy chains which dangled from the ceiling. The restraints lifted Mishael up about three inches from the floor. His toes were stretching desperately to find an anchor.
Now with his body naked and dangling, and every bit of his five-inch penis, his full low-hanging scrotum and his round dimpled bottom so completely and utterly exposed, helpless and trembling, and his face a mask of fear and bewilderment, Mishael was a study in poetic contrast. He was the symbiosis of classical innocence, renaissance beauty and twentieth century tragedy. He was simply splendid, and I longed to gather him in my arms and save him from himself, for as his master had said, some people like Misha, were born too tragically beautiful and to be in servitude.
"Mishael," Yaryd said now, interrupting my thoughts, "the doctor has told me that he wants you and he desires to be your master. He believes that he can give you what he thinks you need. He believes that he can give you love. He also believes that his new theory of vassalage can contribute to your all round welfare better than mine. Of course, I beg to differ. I believe I have been able to serve your needs very well so far. But he is adamant and I think, to be fair for he has been a gentleman and has saved your life, he should be given the chance to prove he is worthy to be your master. Now this is what's going to happen: you're going to be paddled by each of us on your bottom. Neither of us is allowed to touch you anywhere else that is likely to make you ejaculate. The one that's able to make you ejaculate from the fewest number of swats with this paddle shall evermore be your master."
The duel thus commenced. A coin was tossed to determine who would paddle the youth first. Yaryd won the toss. He smiled, aware that he held the ante. One need not be a scholar to figure out that without the benefit of an extended refractory time, Misha must take longer to cum a second time.
Yaryd had disappeared behind the confused youth and I saw the paddle raised just above the small of his back.
WHAP! The first swat landed on both Mishael's bottom cheeks. The boy's body jerked back and forth.
WHAP! The second swat landed on the left cheek. Mishael let out a moan. His dangling naked body spun about slightly.
WHAP! This landed on the right cheek. The boy's penis had hardened further and grown another two inches.
WHAP! Landing on his right thigh, this next swat drew out another cry of pleasure from Mishael's open mouth.
WHAP! WHAP! WHAP! WHAP! WHAP! WHAP! WHAP! WHAP! WHAP! WHAP!
The beating went on for fifteen minutes. Mishael's bottom and thighs took a total of a hundred and two swats before he suddenly let out a shrill cry and then his semen spurted out so powerfully in long streams that they reached and splattered the ceiling.
Mishael's eyes filled up. My heart turned over with compassion to see him treated like cattle. But I had to play Yaryd's game to be able to stake my claim on the boy. More than ever before I wanted Mishael to love and give me love.
But now it was time to give Mishael a rest. I had insisted that he be released and allowed to clean up. He sighed in relief for the chance to be on terra firma again.
Misha was taking a long time in the bathroom, so I went to get him. I found him huddled on the edge of the tub. His penis was latent. He looked up at me; his pretty eyes were red and puffy.
I returned to Yaryd without the boy.
"It's over," I said to Yaryd. "You've won. I won't treat him the way you treat him. If I have to spank him, it's because he wants or deserves it. Besides, if I won Mishael this way, I'd be no different from you. I'd never know if it was truly what he wanted. You see, sir, this is all a game to you. But it's not a game to me. It should not be a game to Mishael. He needs to have a sense of context for why he's fallen into this need for a life of discipline and control, as you put it. Playing games with his feelings will not help him understand. Good bye, sir."
I prepared to leave. This had been an impossible mission from the start, I whispered as an apology to Sasha, on my way to my Jeep Cherokee.
"Wait," a soft voice called out to me, halting me in my tracks. "Have you forgotten something?"
It was Mishael. He was dressed in a shirt, jeans, and plimsolls, his face washed and radiant. He looked different as if he had finally discovered he had a personality and had the right to show it.
"Would you take me with you, sir?" he asked. "Would you teach me what all this is about?"
"What about Yaryd?" I asked.
"I told him, sir," he said with a bittersweet smile. "I told him I didn't like the way he belittles and humiliates me. I love you, sir, and I want to follow you. I want to serve you and be loved by you in the way you spoke of. I heard everything that you said to him, sir."
"I see," I replied flatly.
His locket sparkled in the sun suddenly, blinding me.
"That's pretty," I commented, and then teased, "I'll bet you've got a picture of your Momma in it."
"No, sir," he answered grimly, "I don't know anything about a mother. But the sisters at the orphanage said I had an older brother. I don't remember him, though."
Misha wrangled the locket over his head and then pressed on a clasp. The locket sprang open. He showed me the two photographs of a pair of toddlers.
"See," he said, "we look almost alike. The sisters said his name was Sasha. It's written on the back, too."
Misha pried out one of the photographs and turned it over on his palm. He handed it to me. I read the inscription 'Sasha' in plain scribble.
I took the locket now from Misha. I studied the photographs for a long time, amazed at their extraneous interference of my moment with the youth.
Sasha and Mishael, I whispered. "It's you, isn't it, Sashi? Even now, at the end, you're with me. And Misha, he's the one you spoke of when you said you'd never let me be alone." Suddenly it was all coming together for me.
"Sir?"
I looked up at Mishael. "Get in the jeep," I said.
The drive had been a rather quiet one. Now approaching the state line, I turned to my new boy. "As soon as we arrive at your new home, you will strip completely naked for a severe spanking," I told him.
He stared for a moment at me. "Why, sir?"
I shot him a frown. "Because," I said, "for one thing, I say so. For another, you had spoken disrespectfully of your former master back there. Lastly, you had violated civility by eavesdropping on conversation that you were not invited to take part in because it was none of your business. Am I making myself clear?"
"Yes, sir," he replied, and then added, "would you also tie me up, please, sir?"
I felt the old stirring in my groin.