Shelter From the Storm

This is a direct continuation of Part 2. That chapter ended with Aston on the walls of the fortress, on the brink of a life-changing decision: will he go back to the world outside? Or will he stay in the harem, give up his freedom, and become a slave-boy for all the men?

This is the final installment in this story. As before, there are light non-consent elements, and it is a purely gay male story with no women in sight -- just a lot of cock ...

***

The golden light of the sunset on the towering stone walls of the fortress was warm and beautiful. It made the entire place seem solid, unshakeable, and deeply rooted. But right in that moment I had become suddenly oblivious to the beauty of the sunset. I was frozen, a shiver of alarm running through my body, as I watched Kirios striding towards me along the battlements.

Was he ... was he about to ... did I want him to ...

Because after all, he had a right to my body if he wanted, just like all the other men. While I was within the fortress, I had to obey the rules, even if I did choose to leave when that moment came.

So much for coming up here on the walls so I could get a clear head and think through my decision.

A few feet away from me, Kirios stopped, and looked at me. On his chiseled, olive-skinned face, there was a knowing, amused smile.

"So," he said. "Taking some time out, Aston?"

It really was incredible the way he seemed able to read me like that. Those piercing dark eyes once again seemed to be looking deep into me, and I had the uncomfortable sensation that there was nothing I could hide from this man. He could sense how I felt, sense what I wanted -- sense it, perhaps, even better than I could feel it myself.

Kirios chuckled, and turned to lean on the battlements, looking out over the shadowy landscape. He was magnificent in profile -- that hard jawline, those long, curly black locks, those lean muscles on his bare arms below his rolled-up sleeves.

"Have you been in the stable this whole afternoon?" he asked me.

"Um -- yes," I replied. "With -- um -- with Pete and Ben."

He shot me an amused smirk. "And how did it feel, idling away the time with some other little boys?"

My stomach twisted with pleasure. It was an extremely confusing sensation.

"I -- well -- they, um, they made me feel very -- er -- very welcome."

I could tell exactly how lame I sounded. But Kirios just laughed, and stretched his arms behind his head, grinning as he looked out again at the hills and woods below us. For a moment, there was silence. I stood beside him, unsure what to do. Then he spoke.

"I was preparing for this a long time before the collapse, you know."

I looked at him, startled.

"Oh yes," he nodded. "I realised a long time ago that this is how it's meant to be. That a community like this is the natural order of the world. The great collapse just made it easier to make it happen."

He smiled at me, and leant again on the battlements, looking completely at his ease.

"I was head of a business back then. A small company in high finance. We were discreet, smart, and very successful. I made a

lot

of money."

He sounded totally indifferent to it. There was no trace of regret for that long-lost, civilised world.

"And working in my company, there were a number of ... boys. Technically men of course -- fresh out of their economics degrees, in their early 20s and knowing nothing about the real world -- but deep down, they were boys. They thought they wanted success and money and women. They thought they wanted to be in control, to get ahead, to run their own lives. But deep down ..."

Kirios gave a slow, reminiscent grin.

"I think on some unconscious level, they joined my company in the first place because they wanted to submit. Something in them responded to me when I interviewed them, even if they didn't realise it at the time. And so there they were -- three of them, in our offices, young and fresh and not having any clue what they really wanted. What they really

needed

."

I wasn't sure why, but I was hooked. I was hanging on his every word.

"And I didn't do anything with them at first. After all, I was socialised against it, wasn't I? Oh, I don't mean being gay," he added, seeing my questioning look. "I never had any trouble accepting that I want boys. No, I mean socialised against

taking it

. We all got taught from our earliest days that using our natural power to dominate others is wrong. That following our clear instincts to take our pleasure in the naturally subservient is not okay. We were all forbidden, all our lives, to accept our part in a natural order of men. An order where some men are fitted to be in control, and other men are fitted to be owned, used, and enjoyed, submitting all their being to the pleasure of a stronger man.

"So for the longest time, I didn't touch those cute, clueless boys. Even though some part of me knew, even then, that boys like that are meant to be nothing more than toys for men like me. I was their employer, and I thought that meant it would be wrong to take them for myself. But then ..."

He paused, still with that wistful smile on his face.

"I had had a long day, and a couple of deals had worked out badly for me. I was less patient, less inhibited than I normally would have been. Everyone else had gone home, apart from one of those three boys. He came to my office to deliver some papers."

I realised I was holding my breath.

"He didn't struggle. He didn't resist. It was like some part of him had known all along that this was coming. Of course he was shocked, he was frightened -- I remember him looking up at me with that scared look on his face ... but at the same time, his instincts told him to obey me. Somewhere inside him, he knew that this was what he was made for.

"After that, I took him whenever I wanted. I would call him into my office, tell him to get on his knees under my desk, and order him to worship me with his cute little mouth. I'd bend him over the desk, or put him on my couch, and spend as long as I wanted working out all my stress in his peachy ass. He never objected. I assumed, when I started, that he would want me to give him a promotion or a raise -- that if I was going to use him like this, he'd at least expect me to favour him in some way. I thought that was how these office affairs were supposed to work. But do you know what? He never even hinted at it." Kirios gave a satisfied smile. "I honestly believe it never even crossed his mind. He wasn't submitting to my cock because he wanted me to be his sugar daddy. He was submitting to my cock because he understood that this was the correct relationship between us. That a boy like him belonged in that position: at my beck and call, obedient, knowing that his ass was the natural property of bigger, stronger men.

"So then, of course, I moved on to the others. One at a time I called them into my office, and I made them suck and fuck for me. Oh, they were such good boys ... and just like the first one, they both accepted it without even a question. After I gave them their first pounding -- oh, the noises they made, there's nothing in the world like the moans and squeals of a boy taking a big cock -- after those first poundings, I told them that this was how it would be from that time on. And both of them just nodded, and said yes sir, I understand sir, I'll do whatever you say sir. Like they knew that this was their place.

"Would you believe it, I actually thought at first that I might have to keep them secret from each other. As if any of those boys would have dared to even

think

that they had a right to ask me not to take my pleasure in any boy's ass I wanted. That's how much we're taught to think it's not okay, you see. We ignore all our own instincts, all the things we know are right, because we're taught to think that three boys all submitting to one man's cock is somehow unequal, or unfair, when in fact it's the most natural thing in the world. Of course, I didn't hang on to that idea for long. Soon I realised that not one of them would have dreamed of expecting that he would be the only boy I'd fuck. They understood that a man like me has a right to fuck as many boys as he wants, and those boys are just lucky to be used by him.

"So of course, I was soon calling them into my office two at a time, or even three at a time. I was making them make out for me, and fuck each other for me. Not one of them ever questioned my orders, or suggested that I should be giving them pay or promotions for all the times I used them as my slaves. Pretty soon I was ordering some of them to come to my house in the evenings and on the weekends. They always came, of course. I remember the first time I had all three of them in my house for the weekend. They didn't put their pants back on until they left on Monday morning. I had them in my pool, in my bed, in the shower, on the couch, on the floor -- I'd never come so many times in my life until then. All I did the whole weekend was empty my balls into their mouths, onto their faces, and into their asses. Whenever I ran out of steam I'd just order them to lick and suck for me; and after ten minutes of that, I was always ready to give one of them another pounding."

My cock was pressed urgently against the fabric of those tight pink shorts that were still my only garment. This story was making me deliriously turned on. I found myself suddenly yearning that I could have been there -- that I could have been one of those three boys in Kirios' house, being a good little slave for him for days on end.

"So that was how I realised how things are meant to work," Kirios went on. "After the collapse, I knew I wanted to set up a new community -- somewhere where life could be the way it's meant to be. And so you see, the collapse has actually made things easier. It's cleared away all of the custom and law and inhibition that always stopped us from living the way our bodies and our instincts crave. Now there's no government to stop us, and no moralists to shout over the top of us. The natural order prevails. Men like me take what they want; boys like you get used as slaves. And every one of us knows our place."

He turned, and looked me dead in the eye.

"Do you know your place yet, Aston?"

My breath was coming in short, fast pants. I couldn't look away as he held my gaze.

"I ... um ... maybe," I whispered.

He raised an eyebrow. "Maybe?"

My head felt jammed. I couldn't think. A wild, desperate desire was hammering inside me. But something in my head was still holding me back. I don't know if it was fear, or shame, or pride in my freedom, or sheer stubborn unwillingness to let go. But I was still hesitating, still teetering on the brink, not letting myself give in to the hungry, aching, deep, passionate yearning that was filling me inside.

"I don't know," I said.

Kirios looked at me. Then he sighed.

"Very well, Aston," he said -- and he sounded disappointed. Not disappointed for his own sake, but disappointed like a teacher or a parent: the disappointment that told me I had not lived up to what I should be.

"Follow me," Kirios told me. I wanted to stop him -- I wanted to take back my answer, tell him I was sorry, do anything to please him -- and I was suddenly hating myself for not saying yes, for not being ready, for not being able to say I knew what I wanted. But he had turned, and he was walking away along the wall, and all I could do was hurry after him.

Kirios led me down a flight of stairs that led inside, into the corridors and chambers of the fortress, and down some snaking passageways. We didn't see any other men or boys. At last Kirios led me into a small storeroom lined with shelves. He lifted something off a high shelf, turned, and placed it in my hands.

It was a pile of clothes -- dry, clean, and folded. My clothes. The clothes I had been wearing last night, when I came in out of the storm.

"Change into these before you leave," said Kirios. "Leave the shorts in here -- don't take them with you."

My stomach plummeted. I stared in alarm at Kirios, and I was suddenly feeling slightly sick.

"But I still have another night!" I burst out. "I don't have to make a decision until the morning!"

He frowned at me -- a disapproving, disappointed frown.

"Aston, if you haven't accepted what you want by now, you are never going to be able to accept it. After your experiences here last night and today, you have no excuse for not realising what your place is meant to be. I would have expected you to be ready. Evidently, I was wrong."

It was like a pit had opened up beneath me. I felt like I was falling, horribly, into a terrible, cold gulf.

"You're not ready to make this choice, Aston," Kirios told me. "And I cannot accept you into this community if you are still in denial about your true nature. Change back into your clothes, and go."

He turned to leave. I felt like I was about to cry. I felt abandoned. I felt terribly alone. I wanted to call after him, tell him I was ready, tell him I could do it, tell him I wanted ... but even now the words stuck in my throat.

Kirios paused in the doorway. He half-turned his head to glance back at me.

"If you wish to speak to me again before you leave," he said quietly, "I will be in the main chamber in the central tower." And then he was gone.

I felt numb. I couldn't believe it. Except that I

could

believe it, and that was what made it so awful. With no warning, I had been thrust right back out of the beautiful, sensual, exciting, extraordinary world that I had found in this fortress. For 24 hours I had tasted a giddy, happy, deliriously fun new reality. I had come alive in a whole new way. But that reality had been an illusion. I should have known. It was too good to be true. And now that illusion had been ripped away, leaving me with the world outside, and with myself -- my own familiar, ordinary, disappointing self. The me that had not been able to tell Kirios I wanted to stay.

Slowly, not knowing what I was doing, I took off the little pink shorts. I pulled on my freshly laundered garments, and thought miserably of how soon they would be dirtied and smelly again. I laid down the pink shorts on a spare shelf -- and felt tears pricking insistently in my eyes, and a horrible lump in my throat. Fighting down the urge to sob, I stepped out of the room.

I went down a staircase, and found myself standing in a short corridor with one end opening onto an inner courtyard, and the other end opening onto a room I recognised, even seeing only a glimpse of it through the partially open door. It was the guard room I had entered last night. The room with the door that led out into the world outside.

Just ... just not yet

, I told myself.

Let me pause here for a moment. Not yet. Not yet.

I walked slowly down the corridor to the courtyard, avoiding looking back at the guard room. I reached the courtyard and surveyed it, barely seeing it. Night had fallen now, and there were no men or boys in sight. Rising high above the rest of the fortress, the grand cylindrical central tower stretched upwards into the night on the far side of the courtyard.

There were lights in the high windows.

All of a sudden, I felt a new resolve sputtering to life inside me -- a determined flame flaring up in my chest. Why should I accept the world outside? Why should I go back to that lonely, cold, and hopeless life? Maybe I

did

know what I wanted. Maybe I

was

ready to make that choice. This place was the best thing that had ever happened to me, and I didn't want to give it up.

I looked up at that tower. Kirios had told me he would be in there if I wanted to speak to him again before I left. Well, maybe I did want to speak to him.

I took a deep breath. And I strode forwards across the courtyard.

There was an open door at the base of the tower, and stepping through it, I found a spiral staircase climbing upwards. I made my way up the shadowy stairs, my heart beating wildly in my chest, still not sure exactly what I was going to say to Kirios, but knowing that I needed to say

something

. At the top of the stairs I came out onto a dimly lit landing. Another staircase climbed further upwards, but from behind a closed door on this level, I could hear a murmur of many voices. It sounded like a large, jovial gathering -- I could hear chatter and laughter. Warm electric light was creeping around the edges of the door.

My stomach twisting with frightened, nervous anticipation, I opened the door.

I didn't know how many men were in this fortress. But I knew immediately when I opened that door that I must surely be looking at almost every single one of them. Every single one of the

men

, that is, because I wasn't counting the younger and smaller ones that I had learnt to think of as boys; there were only two or three of them, moving around the room in their tiny pink shorts, carrying trays of food. The men stood around the large, high-ceilinged chamber, chatting in small groups, with glasses of what looked like champagne in their hands. There was a crackling fire in a fireplace just to my left, and a table along one wall laden with fruit and snacks. It seemed to be some sort of party.

But as I stood in the doorway and heads turned to look at me, silence spread suddenly across the room. In a moment, every single man had stopped talking. They were all turning to look in my direction, and I felt like I was caught in a bright spotlight. Nobody seemed surprised to see me. Indeed, I could have sworn that some of them were looking at me with amused satisfaction on their faces, as though my appearance had confirmed something they had been expecting.

A man stepped forward, the crowd parting to give him space. It was Kirios. He was looking at me not with a disappointed frown this time, but with a warm, welcoming smile. And there was something else in his face too ...

Hunger. He was looking at me with intense, possessive hunger.

"So," he said quietly. "Here he is. I knew you'd come, Aston."

I blushed furiously. Some of them men chuckled.

"Everyone is gathered here," Kirios said, looking straight into my eyes, "to witness your initiation ceremony, Aston. If you choose to do it, you will pledge yourself here and now, in this room, to the service of our pleasure. You will give up your freedom, and you will become the permanent property of the fortress -- a plaything to be enjoyed by every man here, whenever he wishes, in any way he wants. I have called us together so that every single one of your new owners can be present to see you join our community."

My heart was hammering in my chest. The entire room had their eyes on me -- the men watching me with hungry, possessive stares; the few boys, standing attentively at their sides, watching me with riveted curiosity.

"You may not take the night to think on it," Kirios went on. "Not anymore. The time has come to decide what you want, Aston. Once you complete the ceremony, there will be no going back. You will be a sex slave. Of course, you will be protected, and you will be looked after. But you will no longer have the right to make your own decisions about anything that we do with you."

Kirios paused, and regarded me with an amused smile.

"Are you ready, Aston?"

Ready. Ready to give up my freedom. Ready to become a possession, a toy, an object, a plaything. Ready to never again be in control. It was madness. How had I let it get this far? I was standing on the brink of giving away all the values I had been taught -- my independence, my autonomy, my dignity. How could I want to lose those things?

But didn't I also want to be happy? And didn't I want to be cared for? And didn't I deserve, after all, to feel alive, and to feel pleasure, and to feel joy?