Page 8 of The Shooting Season

“Can I touch it?” Euan smiled knowingly and nodded. Greedily, I reached for the beautiful rod of stone. The Staff was ten inches in length and four inches in girth, carved in black Obsidian. The phallus had been honed and polished by a master craftsman until it was smooth. The symbol of the snake was associated with the ancient Greek healer Asklepios because a snake had helped him heal the sick son of Minos, ruler of Crete. And so the snake was represented here on the Staff. A snake carving coiled around the shaft and the open maw of the snake design was incorporated into the bulbous head of the phallus. On the tip of the snake tongue, the largest pearl I had ever seen was embedded, and smaller pearls formed a design down the snake’s belly, giving the appearance of the spill of life-giving seed.

Back when we were boys Euan had told me that Lord Ardmillan obtained the staff from the Temple of Athena on the Greek Island of Aegina. The Lord had then regaled us with stories of magical healing powers, telling us that when used in a fertility ritual, the Staff could cure whatever ails the user. From this, I gathered that the staff was used for a sexual rite. I was fascinated from that moment. It was the most potent artifact I had ever seen and holding it, I was sure I could feel some sort of power pulsing in the stone. I needed the Staff to belong to me more than any item I had ever seen. I needed to use it to heal me… of my sinful desire for men.

I dragged my eyes from the glistening Obsidian rod and looked left and right to see that other guests were as enamored by the Staff of Asklepios as I was, particularly Mr. Engles who twirled the tip of his waxed mustache and licked his feminine lips as he looked hungrily at the stone phallus. I reluctantly placed the Staff back on the velvet cushion and Euan closed the box.

Euan returned the Staff to the other room and locked the door when he left. He pocketed the key. After an hour all inquiries had been made and the collectors appeared satisfied with the information received.

“If you have all had your fill we should return to the house and the blessed warmth of the fire,” Euan suggested.

I could not have agreed more.

In The Dark

With copious amounts of Port wine and Whiskey in my belly, I was warm and fuzzy-headed. I retired to my bed and hoped to get a good night’s sleep so I would be ready for the auction the next day. The fire crackled in the hearth and did it’s best to heat the large bedchamber but the snow was falling thick outside and a gale swirled through the house making the old stone and timber building shriek and moan. My bedside candlelight danced and cast eerie shadows on the walls. Extra blankets had been provided on top of the eiderdown and Mrs. McKelvie had seen to it that the serving maid left a warming-pan beneath the covers. I removed it and left the hot copper pan on the hearthstone, and then I slid into the warm bed. I used a small graphite pencil to write some pertinent notes in my diary before I slept. I found it helped prevent me from allowing thoughts to run riot in my head as I chased sleep. I said my prayers, blessed myself, blew out the candle, and snuggled into the bed.

I lay there, inebriated and elated to have at last held the Staff of Asklepios once again. Over the years I’d spent many hours in the British Library pouring over documents and notes from the archeological digs on the Greek Island of Aegina. I had read some dozen translations of myths and legends that told of the Staff and its use in ritual healing through sexual penetration. Legend told that it could cure a long list of maladies of the mind, body, and spirit. I would pay anything to own it. I believed that if I owned it I could use it and live free of my longing for male affection.

I fell into a doze and had not been abed for more than ten minutes before I heard the latch on my door click. Then moments later I felt my eiderdown shift. Someone was getting into bed beside me!

“What the devil—“

“Hush, Ben! You’ll wake the whole damn house.” Euan whispered. I slumped back into my pillows. This is exactly what he used to do when we shared rooms at university. It was as if the rules of propriety and common sense did not apply to him. Euan always did what he wanted, and was confident that the other party shared his desires. This kind of behavior was fine for boys, but we were grown men of good station. Euan was a father and a Lord of the realm and I had chosen a life of denial. I lay there frigid with anger and frustration at his presumptuousness. I had not shared a bed in years and wanted to punch the blaggard and kick him out of the room. But I could not make a scene and wake the whole house for surely it would be my reputation in tatters and not the new Lord Ardmillan, who could excuse being discovered in my bed by saying it was drunken high-jinx. Euan shifted over and pressed his chilly body to my side. At once my anxiety heightened.

“Hmmm, nice and warm.” He groaned in an amorous way that made my guts curdle and my plums throb. Euan slid his hand beneath the covers, laid it on my chest. I tried not to breathe and let him know how my heart was thundering. He pressed his bearded face into the crook of my neck. The last time we had lain together was thirty years ago when he was a fresh-faced youth. I had not known the sensation of his whiskers scratching my skin, mingled with his hot breath as he buried his face. It sent a jolt of delicious pleasure down my spine.

“And you smell good too, so masculine.”

“Enough!” I whispered in exasperation. I was discomfited by his closeness, tired and had no time for his impertinence.

“What do you want Euan? You had time at dinner and afterward to say whatever you needed to say to me.”

“Ah, Ben, don’t be such a prude. There are some things one cannot say…or do in polite society!” Euan snickered childishly as his playful fingers made their way beneath my nightshirt. I shuddered at his touch and my skin was aflame. In the darkness, it was like we were boys once again.

“There’s no sin if we do it in the dark.” Euan had fervently told me that first time he got into my bed at university and tugged me to spend in his hand. The next morning he behaved as if it had never happened. I was confused and perplexed by his behavior, but that time led to it becoming a regular routine to slake our mutual desire, and each time I protested he told me “There’s no sin if we do it in the dark”.

But then Euan wanted more, he wanted us to go further and in the light. So did I. Our secret trysts led to my invitation to Dunecht Hall for the shooting season. It was then that he taught me how satisfying giving, and receiving a good, rough buggering feels. Oh, how I’d loved it and craved it like a beast.

I lay there in the warm bed, stiff, in more ways than one. The reflection of transient moonlight bouncing off the snow sent a beam of white light through the gaps in my drapes. I turned and saw the devilish glint in Euan’s eyes for a split second before cloud covered the moon.

“Do you remember—” Euan began as he ran his fingers over my warm belly and up to my hairy chest.

“How wonderful it feels to rub our cocks together and shoot-off in each other’s mouths.”

Oh, I did remember and I did not want to. My resolve was being sorely tested. I tried to banish the thought of it from my mind, to pray those memories of stolen time wrapped in Euan’s arms away, but it had not worked. I still yearned for Euan Ardmillan today as much as I had done thirty years ago.

“I… I don’t do things like that anymore,” I insisted, fighting with my desire. His fingers passed over the silver cross, and then he took it and rubbed the smooth metal over my left nipple. I was immediately aroused and outraged that he would use the cross in such a blasphemous way, but then he sucked and bit at the other nipple through my nightshirt while using the silver cross to tease. My whole body erupted with repressed need and my hips pushed involuntarily up off the bed. I let out an animalistic groan of desire. I wish I could have stopped the sounds ejaculating from my mouth but I could not. Euan was incorrigible and he knew how to pull my strings. I hoped that the guests on either side were dead asleep, or if not, believed it was a moan from the gale outside.

It would be proper to request that Euan should cease his ministrations but I could not find the words to command him to stop. So I lay there with my eyes tightly closed telling myself there was no sin in the dark, allowing his clever fingers and devilish lips to play my body as if I were a piano and he a virtuoso.

“Oh Ben! You are still so adorably responsive.” Euan delighted. “See how your cock stands for me with just the lightest brush of my fingers,” He said pushing back the eiderdown. “Come now. Open your eyes and look at it in the moonlight. It’s so beautiful.”

I was equally aroused and revolted with how easily Euan could toy with me. I did not want to open my eyes and see proof of how he affected my body. I told myself I did not want this, but my flesh betrayed, sending a flood of heat and sensation to my prick.

“I’m rather jealous actually,” Euan admitted. “My cock has not made such a ruddy stand in some time.”

I was stunned by Euan’s admission of a lack of virility for he was a man of great appetites, and of course, one’s stand is what makes a man a man. I wanted to enquire further but then he shuffled under the covers and snuck between my splayed thighs. He pushed my silken foreskin back to expose the sensitive head of my member and then ran his whiskered chin from root to tip. The sensation was overwhelming. I bit my lip and gripped the sheets and again my hips pushed forward. Euan snickered to himself in satisfaction and then placed my engorgement between his warm lips and as he eased my slick sheath up and down he sucked me into his throat.

I murmured a Hail Mary under my breath as my treacherous fingers untangled from the bed sheet and instead tangled in Euan’s silver hair so I could hold his head in place. I remembered Euan’s pleasures and understood he would not be satisfied until my spend coated the back of his throat. He craved the taste of me as desperately as any opium addict craved oblivion in the smoke. And so I closed my eyes and gave him what he wanted. I pushed up between his warm, wet lips in slow steady strokes, letting him lick, suck, and enjoy the shape of the large intrusion in his mouth. Euan moaned with satisfaction. I lost the ability of cogent thought as I was overtaken by unholy lust, and desire pulsed through my veins. It had been so long, so damn long and my need was as vast as a thousand oceans. The bedsprings squeaked abominably but I was too far gone to care. Euan’s fingers massaged and tugged at my plums and I could hold back no longer. I was sure for a split second as I reached my pinnacle that I must be closer to God, such was the exquisite rush of pleasure coursing through me. My hot spend exploded from my rod and shot down Euan’s throat. His whimper of delight at my taste aroused me more and sent a second and third stream of seed shooting into his gullet. I had not permitted myself to spend in quite some time so after such an exquisite climax I was boneless and light as a feather and with Euan gasping between my thighs I was satiated in a way I had not known for years. It felt…indecent, yet completely delightful.