Atonement

"You didn't come to me last night," Fikrit growled at me as I walked up to this yacht outside Effendi's restaurant.

"But I'm on time now, aren't I? I've come here knowing what you have in mind. How many of your other men have done that?"

His eyes flashed anger with an edge of lust. "You think you know why you're going on this boat ride?"

"It's why I stayed away from you last night. It makes today all that more enjoyable. Time to build up tension, and strength . . . and cum."

"You don't know anything about it, or you wouldn't be here. I'm going to break you. I'm going to break you in two." I was standing on the quay and he in the stern of the yacht, but he had my forearm in a vice grip. I wasn't going anywhere he didn't want me to go now.

"That's what I want you to do," I said defiantly. "I want to be broken. But I won't pretend that I have been broken until I am, so do your worst."

"You won't have to pretend," he growled, as he jerked me into the boat, and, losing my balance, I fell in a heap on the deck. "Take him to the cabin, Ahmed."

The black Egyptian hauled me up, hustled me down some steps and down a narrow corridor and then into a cabin. He left me on a double bed against one of the cabin walls, my wrists and ankles bound and a ball gag in my mouth. I was still clothed in my T-shirt and shorts, though. I surmised Fikrit wanted to cut those off me at some point.

As the yacht maneuvered through the harbor, past the glaring walls of the castle, and out to sea, headed toward international waters, I was sure, I looked around the cabin. Quite an operating theater, I decided. The light in the cabin was dim, because all of the surfaces were covered in sheeting, which covered the portholes as well. The walls were draped in white sheeting as was the floor of the cabin. Sheeting was even pinned up to the ceiling. A hook, with two short chains ending in restraints dropped down from the ceiling near the middle. Spaced a bit from those and spread from each other, but parallel to each other, were two more hooks, both with short chains ending in restraints. On the floor underneath these hooks, I saw a large, rectangular metal tray with a rim on it. I started to pant and go hard.

I'd seen such a chamber before. I knew they existed in my line of work. I'd never participated in anything that went on in one. But I knew they existed. They encompassed my feeling of guilt of even knowing such chambers existed and were put to use—guilt for which I constantly sought punishment and atonement. I had had this guilt a long time before I sent Peter into Syria and he was executed there.

There were implements of torture—sexual torture—on a table on the other side of the cabin. I'd seen them immediately upon being manhandled into the cabin by Ahmed, but I had looked away. I knew they'd be here, though—chains, hand and ankle cuffs, dildos in various sizes, floggers, whips, gloves attached to batteries, clamps, ball weights, strings of graduated bulbs, what looked like an electric prod, sounding wands laid out on a cloth, razors . . . flaying knives. Different implements perhaps from the other torture chambers I'd seen, but just as lethal.

I'd barely had time to take it all in when the commotion started. I heard yelling. I heard Fuad scream. "Evasive action. Turn us west."

I heard the motors rev up and felt the force of the yacht's bow jerking up and the pressure of the increased speed. Then more shots, and screams. A bullet came through a porthole into the cabin, tearing through the sheeting, and I rolled myself onto the floor at the side of the bed. More screams and shots. Then the loss of power, followed not long after by the bumping of the hull of another a craft on this one. Splashes. Voices, still concerned, but not yelling now.

"What are you doing down there, Clifford Clarke?" An almost bemused voice, pronouncing the name distinctly, both of us knowing that wasn't my real name. He knelt down beside me, placing his Glock on the deck, and released the ball gag from my mouth. His hands then went to undoing the other bonds.

"Umm, quite a nice collection of toys here, I see," I heard him say as he popped the ball gag out of my mouth.

"Ted Severn, come to save me, I presume?" Both of us knew his name wasn't really Ted Severn.

A woman appeared at the door, alert and efficient looking, still on guard, She leaned against the door frame, holding her Glock in both hands, the barrel pointing up. Cynthia—the young woman at the bar at the Harbor Club the other night. She was looking straight ahead toward the stern of the yacht, a statue, not seeing or listening to anything from inside the cabin.

"You almost had yourself in one big pickle," the man whose name really was Andy, said, as he freed me from my bonds, hoisted me up, and sat me on the bed. "Seeing what's in here would have made me keel over dead before help arrived," he muttered, his voice full of awe.

"Yes," I answered, trying to keep the slight note of disappointment out of my voice. Andy didn't know the extent of my fetishes and vices. He had no idea how aroused this chamber had made me, even knowing where it could end up. No one in the Agency did or ever had—no one but Peter. Hung from a chain and sounded? Been there, did that, enjoyed it under the hand of Peter. A hot and bothered Peter, in a chamber much like this, but just used for other purposes—by men like Peter—in an afterglow unleashing of the rush that brought them to men like me. Peter not that different from Fuad Fikrit. Not much different at all.

"The two men? Fikrit and the Egyptian?" I asked.

"Dead before we boarded. Several shots each. To keep this from being messy and to keep the opposition guessing, the bodies went overboard."

"And the cargo. Heroin, I assume? Overboard too?"

"Yep, heavy drugs. We'll keep those, though. They'll finance some good operations."

Good operations financed by selling drugs, I thought bitterly. Yes, I had a lot to atone for—and quite enough before Peter showed up. Peter was my path to salvation. The punishment I deserved. "The arms Fikrit provided to the Yemeni?" I asked.

"We intercepted that ship yesterday. Running a guns for drugs racket just like his brother, Fazil, had been doing. Even from here, just like Fazil. Quite ballsy of him."

"Yes, Fuad did have iron balls. Did you find the Yemeni where I told you, Andy?"

"Yes, but, Christ, Steve, you nearly took the fucker's head off."

"Yes, I did," I responded grimly. "But there's only so much you can do with a kitchen knife."

Andy gave me a surprised look and then sighed. "Guess it was just retribution. We finally decided yesterday that it was the Yemeni who executed Peter on tape."

I'd already known that. I'd heard the voice before—when it wasn't coming from behind a black hood on videotape, beamed to the world on the Internet, the assassin holding a sword in one hand and gripping Peter's shoulder with the other, as Peter knelt in front of him, facing the camera. Peter's face showing defiance and serenity . . . and, yes, possibly only seen by me, a flicker of arousal. Peter died as he had lived—violently. I was sure it was the death he wanted. So, even though I felt guilt because it had been my operation, the guilt that weighed me down went much further than Peter. It went to all of those other operations and activities I'd engaged in to protect my country, all of those other torture chambers much like this one.

I bet Peter had a hard on when he died.

"I know Peter was a special friend of yours—and your best operative—Steve," Andy said, laying a sympathetic hand on my shoulder. "I can completely understand finding Murad, the Yemeni, that way in the church graveyard."

Andy didn't even begin to understand my feelings in this. He, like a few others, had surmised that there was a sexual bond between me and Peter, but he had no idea of the nature and intensity of it.

I had felt guilty, wanted to be punished, even before Peter came on board in my unit. The sexual tension was there between us from the beginning. And I sensed the danger and violence just under his surface. He was achingly handsome and sensually muscular. Bigger than me—in all ways. Our operations threw agents together, sent them to the edge of their nerve and adrenaline. I knew he was hung. And I knew he was short fused. And I quickly surmised that he would fuck other men cruelly.

I had reamed him in front of the others one day in the office, knowing it would set him off—hoping it would set him off. He fumed all day, resentful of being bossed by a younger man, appearing at my office door after hours, when only the two of us were there. I could tell he was barely keeping it together when he spoke to me in clipped, breathy tones of increasing volume and obscenity. I slowly rose from my desk; came around to stand close to him, invading his space; and poked him in the chest with a finger while returning his obscenities.

That's all it took to goad him into action. He landed me with a punch and then knelt over me, beating me with his fists. I clawed at his clothing, getting into his trousers, grabbing his cock, telling him in no uncertain terms what I wanted from him, what I knew he wanted to do. Wildly we tore at each other.

He fucked me first there on the floor, me on all fours, both of us panting like animals, he crouched over my body and mounting me cruelly with a deep thrust of his cock. And then another thrust, and then pump, pump, pump, while I writhed under him, begging for punishment—for him to do his worst.

He fucked me a second time that night, clearing my desk with a sweep of his arm, bending me over the desk, looping his belt and throwing it over my head. Tightening the loop around my neck, jerking my head back, while I choked and clawed at the noose, and he pounded my ass.

I'd never been so hard; had never shot off so full and so far.

We lay there, him on top of me, still inside me, the noose loose now, both of us panting hard. Both of us realizing it had been a cleansing release. Both of us reveling in the glory of it. Both of us knowing we had set a new relationship—that we'd be doing it again and again and would go on to doing so much more in the same vein. And that it would progressively move to new highs, new testing of the limits.

"Liked that, did you?" he had asked gruffly after we were too exhausted to go on, but there was a grin on his face.

"Very much so," I had answered, smiling wanly. He'd done what I wanted but much more so than I'd been bargaining for. "It did clear the air."

"And showed who is gonna do what to who," he had muttered.

I was Peter's boss, but, from that moment, he dominated me. He had made that perfectly clear to me, and it was what I wanted. Testing his command, he used me cruelly—and when I responded to that with greater arousal and want, he moved me on to increased pain-pleasure, to sharing me with other men, to new and more inventive toys of pleasure and sensual torture.

It wasn't really true that I later sent Peter to Syria. He had told me he was going. It was what he wanted to do. It even, I'm sure, was how he wanted it to end. Perhaps his one regret would be that I was not there to share it with him.

But God knows I had been trying to be there.

"What are you going to do now, Steve," Andy asked. "Straight back to Langley, or do you want some time off?"

I had planned to jump right back into it if this operation went as planned. Now I wasn't so sure. I felt like I had atoned for Peter to the extent of my specific guilt for that and to the extent I'd ever be comfortable with it. But there was so much else to feel guilt for, to seek punishment for. But, who was I kidding? I lived for the punishment. Peter knew that. No one else in the Agency did.

"I think I'll stay on here for a week or so before returning," I answered.

My first thought was to look up Ergon and his buddies—maybe even try to get them back working on the house. But that was too tame for me in this moment, in the mood I was in after being inside Fikrit's floating torture chamber. Ergon had gone soft. And, I had to admit it, I'd gone soft for Ergon too. I didn't need—want—that now. Maybe later in life. Maybe when I'd mellowed. Maybe I'd have the restoration of the Turkish house completed—maybe even by Ergon, Jamil, and Sami. Someday, maybe.

What I wanted now was the UN soldier and his buddies. I still wanted it to be as hard as I could get, as aroused as I could get, as fucked as I could be. I still needed to be beaten into ejaculation.

"There's a place I've always liked, on the coast, west of here," I said. "You know, you were there yesterday. Rosie's on the Rocks. I think I'll spend some time there before I get back into the traces at the Agency."

* * * *

It was the next Friday, during the special 5:00 p.m. session, when my blond giant UN soldier and his buddies reappeared at Rosie's, blowing in like a raucous wind storm. My soldier came straight to me. "Me and my buddies—"

"I've rented a room for the day," I interceded.

"My buddies. There are seven of us today. My buddies want—"

"I'll take them all."

"We thought that maybe—"

"One at a time, two at a time. I don't care. Punish me. It's what I want."

One of the soldiers was chanting "Gangbang, gangbang, gangbang," in a low, monotonous voice, as we were all pressing into the room I had rented.

"Geez, the room is small," I heard another say.

"We'll make it fit," I heard from a third one.

I'll make it fit too, I was thinking. I'll make them all fit. I already was straddling the hips of one strapping soldier, his back on the bed, his feet on the floor, my channel skewered on this cock, when my blond giant worked his way in behind me and between the spread legs of the soldier under me. My soldier gripped my throat with one hand, making me gag, growled "Take it" in my ear, pushed my torso down toward that of the soldier under me, moved his hand to holding his bulbous cockhead to resting on top of the root of the cock inside me, and thrust inside. Both the soldier under me and I yelled and began thrashing about, sending the cocks inside me to rubbing and pressing to the limit of my endurance inside me. The blond giant started to pump.

All around me, faces, leering, laughing lustful and nervous laughs, hard cocks out and being stroked. Other soldiers waiting their turn. Some not waiting. Soldiers were sitting down on the bed close on either side. A hand came in to grip and start stroking my cock from one side; another hand from the other side possessing my balls, lacing them between strong fingers and separating, pulling, rolling, and squeezing them. Crushing them.

I writhed on the two cocks inside me in pain-pleasure, building toward shooting my first load. Another soldier was standing on the bed, over the soldier under me and in front of me—grabbing my head and forcing his hard cock between my lips. I opened to him gladly. One also standing, crouching over the shoulders of the soldier working my balls, crouched beside me on the bed, his free hand cupping my cheek, stroking his cock close to my face—an anxious one, I discovered, as I felt his cum hit my cheek and neck and dribble down my shoulder blade.

From the doorway, an observer couldn't even have told I was in the middle of this mass of hard, virile, lust-driven young male flesh.

I was zooming toward ninth heaven. I'd never speak of this in Langley. I knew that Andy and the others wouldn't understand. Peter understood, though. Not thinking now of anything I'd done in the past. That was good enough for me.

- FINI -