Mark 4

Mark felt such a target was sufficient to give boy a modest sense of achievement but, and more important, he would have done it for Mark, under Mark’s instructions. Each act of obedience, Mark reckoned, made the next one easier. ‘Start with small challenges not with threatening ones,’ Mark thought, ‘and let boy be free to deliver rather than breathing down his neck’.

After the two of them had originally arrived from the station, Mark had deliberately left boy to change unobserved even though he would like to have surveyed boy’s body. Mark knew the value of holding back, of making space, of building up a sense of anticipation rather than leaping ahead. How easily, he knew from past mistakes, he could leap in with questions and with his own thoughts, leaving little opportunity for an explorer like this boy to do his own exploration.

As boy rowed on he was torn between rowing as hard as he seemed able or keeping at a pace where he could answer questions… between finishing as quickly as he could and taking time, continuing at a pace where he could still talk and letting himself think. He had taken his exploration on a stage already - away from the virtual world of e-contacts here he was with Mark and there was also the irreversible encounter with uncle.

‘Where was uncle now ?’ boy wondered, interrupted by the sound and smell of cooking coming from behind him. Presumably Mark intended to give him some lunch…’and what do I know of Mark ?’ boy mused. In his mind’s eye he thought about the man now cooking behind him.

‘Tall,’ boy thought seeing Mark in his imagination, ‘with that muscular torso on that lean body…,’ mentally boy stripped off the tight capped black T-shirt and those figure hugging black jeans but he left Mark’s shining boots on and imagined Mark standing at the station exit in those dark glasses and in those polished boots but otherwise naked… standing firmly there each wrist grasped by the opposite hand behind his back.

Then his imagination turned to look the other way on the platform and he saw uncle standing firm in the same way, with nothing on except his boots and four thick steel rings, through his septum, through his nipples and through his cock.

Those inner eyes focused on the tribal band tattooed on uncle’s upper right arm and his thoughts turned to what made a sub…uncle ready to appear in public in humiliating kit.

Mark had been so masterful and yet gentle and welcoming… welcoming, yes, but also, and often, still, silent, waiting, revealing little.

Revealing little yet opening his home, inviting boy in, engaging in conversation and, yes, by now knowing – at least in outline – what had brought boy to this point.

"Call me, Mark, boy !" the words that accompanied that firm handshake, "We’re going back to my place to talk."

"Yes, Mark, Sir", boy had replied – he had practised saying "Sir !" and even Mark’s injunction had made it hard not to add, "Sir !".

Mark was clearly a disciplined man – boy thought of the beautifully polished boots and that neatly edged No.2 buzz cut of Mark’s wiry red hair – ‘Was Mark a master or may be a rather superior sub ?’ boy wondered.

Mark had reacted swiftly enough to "Sir !",

"No, boy, just Mark will do well enough as we chat," Mark had said and that very word ‘chat’ seemed pretty informal and non-directive. Yet Mark’s figure gave him a natural authority – taller, better built and a few years older than boy.

As he rowed, boy looked down at the studded black rubber tiles polished to a good shine. In this room, as in the hall, the lower walls, up to a dado rail were black and above that the walls were white. Behind him Mark continued to cook in the kitchen and maybe lunch would be served on that bar-height glass topped table with the high stools like seats on old tractors.

The calories were clocking up steadily and soon boy would have delivered his 400 and something else would have to fill the time – what had he given away about himself while learning so little about Mark. Somehow talking while rowing had made opening up easier – he had not been looking Mark in the eye – in some ways he had been talking to himself while Mark listened in.

"How do you come to be here today ?" Mark had asked and boy remembered that he had replied, "because I obeyed an order". That order on the Archive Chat Line and,yes, he had admitted that he had been trying to discover about being a eunuch slave.

Putting "Sir !" after that answer had come so naturally – he had grown used to using Sir when chatting to masters over the past two months –‘was that all ?’boy thought, ‘two months,’ and he thought of his best e-friend and of the e-mail correspondence they had had.

It had been the realism of that e-friend’s experience that had encouraged boy to take up today’s invitation. ‘But who is Mark ? Where does Mark fit in, or uncle, and the Network to which Mark had referred ?’ There was a question in boy’s mind about how many of those with whom he had chatted on the Archive were also involved in the Network and what was the Network about….boy though back over the life story that he had told and how the idea of being a eunuch slave had been gradually developing in his mind over ten years….in his mind, then on the keyboard and now boy had come out, as it were face-to-face with Mark.

At last he could talk openly with someone who expressed no shock, who seemed to accept him just as he was, someone who had made space for him. He thought back over the encounters at school and reckoned that this was the first encounter in which he had taken an initiative…’well, OK, he had obeyed an order but he had taken the initiative to be on line’.

Mark had come over to check on progress and boy was cruising through the 390’s towards the target 400. As boy passed 400, Mark suggested a gradual slow down, "take your time boy. Go gently on for a minute or two".

Once boy had come to a halt, Mark gave him another pint of water to drink and let him catch his breath. Then there were some more stretches to do before boy was shown up a short staircase at the end of the hall.

Off the passage that seemed to lead towards the back garden was a door into a shower room cum lavatory, neat in that the lavatory was the sort of hole in the floor affair that boy had encountered in some places in France. The rest of the floor had off-white tiles with a roughened finish and the walls had black tiles. There were two shower heads: one, with a flexible hose, had obvious controls for flow and for temperature but the other, a good size head coming down from the ceiling, must be controlled elsewhere.

When boy looked up to see whether the controls were above him, he noticed three steel eyes placed in a triangle . They were matched by three similar eyes towards the bottom of the walls.

"Leave your kit out here, use the hand shower, wash yourself thoroughly and I’ll go and get you a towel. I guess that your bladder is under some pressure but don’t relieve yourself just yet."