“He’d want you to take care of me as only a Master can.” I lower my lashes and lick my lips, my own subtle sexual advances.
“How do you like being taken care of, Giovanni?” he asks, his eyes glazed with lust.
“I like to be bred by my Master. And dominated by my king.”
“Turn around,” he says and after I do, he carefully removes my collar and sets it on the table right beside him. Then he stands to drop his pants, plucks open the buttons of his nice shirt and pushes the tails aside, then sits down again. He looks so debauched with his fine slacks pooling around his ankles and his cock hanging out, just waiting for an eager boy like me to come along and ride it. Master strokes himself, and I watch the foreskin peel back from his head like a snake sheds its skin, the head of it blooming, succulent and wet.
“Vieni, ragazzo.”
I climb onto his lap from where I’m sitting on the floor and carefully remove my plug. Master drinks his sparkling water, unhurried, and watches me stretch myself with two saliva-slicked fingers fucking in and out of my hole. Here I’m allowed to touch but only for the purpose of preparing myself for his penetration. The foreplay is largely unnecessary, but Master appreciates a little theater.
“Ahhh,” he murmurs contentedly as I slide carefully down onto his cock. Once seated, Master clenches his ass cheeks and adjusts his hips so that I sink all the way onto my mount. I start with a sensual rhythm, rolling my hips so that I can feel every inch of his snake inside me, a massive eel squirming in its tight cave. Slow and steady, I ride him for several minutes before realizing our guests (and Anthony) are watching me take care of my Master. I am prideful at times, so I toss my long mane of hair over my shoulder and reach my arms behind my head, displaying my athleticism and control.
“Such a showoff,” Master says in between husky grunts, though he admires me too. He pulls an ice cube out of his glass and drags it across my nipples and down the center of my navel. I shiver from the chill of the ice contrasting to the warmth of our bodies and the friction of his penetration. I lubed up beforehand, but I still feel the drag and burn of his thick organ against my sensitive tissues. He places the ice cube in my mouth, followed by his two fingers stuffing it inside. “I wish I had a second cock to put here.”
I murmur some agreement and Master’s hand slips down to my neck, where it often strays. He takes hold of my throat with one hand, clenching and unclenching his fingers while I ride him, making me gasp for breath, making me whimper and moan. He will likely leave bruises, something to look for tomorrow. In my dizzy, half-light vision, I see Alessia take note of the complete dominance my Master has over me, and I preen at my own submission at his hand. There is a certain freedom in this voluntary subjugation, to surrender one’s ego to the will of another. The lack of dignity in being choked and fucked in a roomful of strangers is also a kind of release. Master is the star of this performance with my body as his tool of pleasure. The room is quiet, except for the sounds of our fucking—skin slapping skin, Master’s grunts, and my stifled pants and groans, noises that beg without begging.
When Master finally comes, his neck is corded and tendons rigid, his mouth pulled back in a tight grimace. For the briefest moment, he’s no longer in control, and I get a heady rush of power in being the one person who can render him so helpless, if only for a few seconds. He floods me with his release, pumping my guts full of hot, sticky cum. My own cock dribbles semen through the cage, a boy’s humiliation that he cannot even climax like a man, but my contentment lies in knowing I’ve been well-used by my Master. I have made my offerings to Eros, god of lust.
“Molto bene,” Master says, breathless as well. He shifts so that I might sink down onto his lap where I continue to roost on his softening cock. I would gladly die right here and now in my Master’s arms, supremely contented. He strokes my hair while the men resume their conversation, something about the strength of the Italian economy under Mattarella.
7
Over the next two weeks, we visit several landmarks—St. Mark’s Basilica in Venice, the Asinelli Tower in Bologna, the Uffizi Gallery in Florence, and the Leaning Tower of Pisa. Master takes me to a few choral and orchestral concerts as well, but the highpoint for me is the Villa Borghese in Rome. We spend two days exploring the massive gallery where Bernini’s sculptureApollo and Daphneis housed as well asRape of Proserpina, which depicts the moment Hades steals Persephone from the earth with the intent to make her his wife in the Underworld. Master tells me Bernini sculpted it when he was 23 years old, only a year older than me, and points to the detail in the marble of Hades’ fingers dimpling the flesh of Persephone’s thigh where he grasps her.
How could Bernini depict rape in such a beautiful, masterful way? Having studied this particular sculpture prior, I know that historians will argue that in the context of the subject, the word “rape” refers to the traditional translation of the Latin wordraptus, which means “seized” or “carried off” and not to sexual violence, but I think we’re all fooling ourselves to believe Hades didn’t rape Persephone, if not during the very act of kidnapping her, then surely soon after, once he had her cloistered in his underworld lair. To call her his “wife” is only to soothe our own conscience about the violence inflicted upon her, especially when “captive” or “sex slave” is far more appropriate.
You may argue this is just a myth, something make believe, but the stories we tell ourselves and the gods we worship sometimes say far more about a society than its facts and figures.
Is it strange that I feel comforted to know the crime of rape is as old as time? And that society has been trying to justify the act and erase the pain and grief of its victims for just as long? To couch the aggressors, the rapists, as powerful, lusting men unable to control their own passions. In Apollo’s case, he was struck by an arrow—so, faultless. For Hades, Persephone had the audacity to attract his attention while picking flowers by the riverside. And in both stories, the victims were delivered by yet another being. Daphne’s father transformed her into a tree, and Demeter, Persephone’s mother, reclaimed her from Hades for six months out of every year. In this way, the victims are stripped of all their agency and become mere objects, bodies to be coveted and plundered.
I find myself overwhelmed by the beauty and mastery that surrounds us. And while the connection I feel to both Daphne and Persephone’s plights seems natural and right, the sympathy, and even more disturbingly, thelustthat I have toward the gods who pursued them seems much more monstrous. I tell Master about these conflicting emotions and ask him what they might mean and more pointedly, if there might be something wrong with me.
“There is nothing wrong with you, Giovanni,” Master assures me in a soothing tone. “And it’s not wrong to feel this way either. Very strong emotions, even terror and rage, sometimes blend and comingle with pleasure, and these sorts of associations form all the time. It’s why we have safewords, because we never know what traumas we might unearth when we play.”
“Do you ever wonder if there’s something wrong with you?” I ask because Master’s confidence always seems so unshakable. “To want to hurt me the way you do?”
“Yes, but I came to terms with my sadistic urges long ago, and I only want to hurt you in ways you’ll enjoy.” He studies me. “Did you ever fantasize about being hurt when you were younger. Or being rescued?”
I dreamt of being rescued so many times from my mother, even before the kidnapping. When my grandfather took me away from her the first time as a child, I considered him to be my knight in shining armor who’d slayed the dragon at last. But I don’t think that’s what Master means.
“The housekeeper’s son used to come over sometimes and we would play tag,” I tell him, recalling the big, bruising boy named Christopher who could also be surprisingly gentle when showing me a bug or a flower. “I liked it when he caught me because he didn’t just tag me, he wrestled me to the ground and made me beg him to let me go.”
Master smiles and touches my hair. “You do beg so beautifully. Did you ever cry?”
“Sometimes.”
“I bet he liked that too. Did you find the experience arousing?”
I nod. I was young but in retrospect, I can see where those urges might have led. I recall Christopher’s flushed face while he attempted to pin me, squirming, beneath him, the satisfaction he expressed in rendering me helpless. How I could have wounded him with words or told my grandfather about it, but I did neither because I liked it too. “How about you?”
“There was a boy who let me hurt him.” Master pauses and purses his lips in displeasure. “My father found out and forbid me from seeing him anymore, but I think that was what solidified it for me.”
“How did you like to hurt him?”
“Pinches, slaps, scratching...” Master says in a musing way. “I wanted to mark him, and I liked to make him a little bit afraid of me too. It made me feel powerful and in control. I think he liked the part where I took care of him and doted on him afterward.”
“You are very good at aftercare.”
