Zelamir

Another Country

Chapter One

Rupert lent forward across the dining room table and spoke to Mum in his poncey high affected voice.

"Darling I have had another e.mail from Vanessa and she and Julian have asked us to join them in their gate in the Dordoyner in at the end of August for three weeks or so."

Rupert is Mum's current boy friend. He works for the BBC and wears plum coloured moleskin trousers. He's a plonker as only a man who works for the BBC, wear plum coloured mole skins and calls the Dordogne the Dordoyner can be. Mum's boy friends friends usually are plonkers.

"Dearest, how kind of them."

"Nicky," she said interrupting herself to speak directly to me in a very different tone to the saccharine sweet voice she used when addressing her beloved Rupert, "stop making those uncouth noises or you will have to leave the table and spend the rest of the evening in your bedroom."

"I would love to go but what am I do with Nicky. He's too young to leave here by himself. Do you think they would let him come too."

"Couldn't Leslie look after him while you were away?" Rupert asked hopefully as both my older sister and I protested noisily against the suggestion.

"Why couldn't, you send him off on an adventure holiday," my loving sister suggested, "I expect there are some quite cheep ones to be had if you're not too fussy about the food and accommodation."

"You only want to get me out of the way so you can move Wayne into the house and spend all your time having sex together 3;"

"Nicky!" Mother screamed.

"I might have a solution," Uncle Toby's voice low but strangely authoritative stilled the family row. "My leave ends as you know in the middle of September but I have taken a holiday cottage in Pembrokeshire for the first three weeks of that month. It was my intention to spend a little time by the sea revisiting the county where we grew up. Nicky would be welcome to join me there if he wished. I think he would enjoy it. The cottage is right down by the sea and there would be plenty for him to do there."

"Toby that is very kind of you and I do think it may very well provide a solution to our problem but that doesn't alter the fact that Nicky has been atrociously rude and I will not tolerate it."

"Nicky you will go to your room immediately and stay there till tomorrow breakfast, no pudding, no TV and no computer. Is that understood Nicky?"

"Yes OK Mum," I said pushing my chair back and standing up, "but that's what Leslie and Wayne will do soon as you're gone 3;"

"Nicky!" Mum's shout interrupted me but only for the moment.

" 3;and I don't want any of the pudding. It's only tinned rice.

I ran out of the dining room slamming the door behind me.

***

I lent back in my chair listening to the boy's receding footsteps as he clumped his way angrily up the stairs to his bedroom, wondering what I had let myself in for. Not because I had landed myself for a three weeks with responsibility for a bolshie little teen-ager. Boys seem instinctively to respect me and if Nicky did not the process of convincing him to do so would itself be entertaining.

What surprised me in my behavior was that I had made a move on the boy at all. It was not that he was unattractive. In fact he was quite a personable little animal, a slim flaxen haired thirteen year old with a nice round bottom he would in other circumstances have made a worthy target for my attentions. However I had resolved, before embarking on my first home leave for five years, that I would restrain myself during the three months I was committed to spending in the UK. Although the police at the moment there seemed to expending much of their energies in pursuing the peccadilloes of a deceased disk jockey and various octogenarian celebrities they would presumably still have some energy and enthusiasm left for applying the ever increasingly draconian child protection laws to current offenders.

Three months of abstinence seemed a not too daunting prospect especially when boys, admittedly of a brown skinned variety, were so plentifully and cheaply available to me elsewhere. The difference between Britain and the country where I work are not really the laws but the enthusiasm with which they are enforced. The British police seem to be consumed with a crusading ardour and would imprison anyone who as much as glanced at a pretty boy. The local police in contrast are too busy exacting protection money and similar highly profitable activities to be bothered about such a trivial matter. Very occasionally spurred on by interference by a foreign government or NGO they bestir themselves but the only people they bother are foreign tourists and even then a very reasonable payment will persuade them to bring the process to an end.

It had proved however more difficult than I had expected. When I arrived at Mary's house for the obligatory week long stay with my eldest sister I found Nicky, whom I remembered from my last home leave as a scrawny, though very active eight year old with almost match stick arms and legs, had developed into a very attractive well grown boy. I had managed to keep my hands off him but it had been an effort and I could not stop myself imagining him and an island boy, a jumble of pale and chocolate limbs, lying in my bed their heads, one flaxen the other the deepest black, buried in my crutch their agile tongues teasing my manhood.

It was not surprising I reflected that faced with the opportunity of being in charge of the boy for three whole weeks my resolution had crumbled.

"Toby that is really very kind of you," Mary exclaimed. "You do mean it don't you? Nicky can be a bit difficult."

"Difficult, isn't the word for it," Rupert exclaimed, "I just feel sorry for you having to put up with his boorish behaviour for three weeks."

"I expect we'll get on well enough. I have quite a lot to do with young people in my work and I generally manage well enough."

I found I shared my nephew's all too clearly expressed dislike of the man.

During the time we were eating the tinned rice pudding we discussed the detailed arrangements for my picking up Nicky when Mary and Rupert set off for France and their recovering him on their return.

We then had coffee (which was rather better than the pudding) in the sitting room.

I refused a second cup and standing up said, "I think it would be a good idea if I went up and told Nicky what we have agreed about his staying with me."

"Do you think that perhaps I should do it?" Mary asked, her lack of enthusiasm for the task apparent in the tone of her voice.

"No," I replied bluntly, "there won't be any argument if I tell him."

"What happens if he says 'no'?" Rupert asked in his superior clever clogs voice.

"I won't give him the opportunity to refuse," I replied walking out of the room and closing the door behind me. It amazed me that anyone could be so ignorant of the basic techniques of boy management.

I walked up the stairs making no attempt to hide the sound of my footsteps. I went past Nicky's bedroom and opened and closed the loo door while remaining in the corridor outside. Nicky would have been alerted by the sound of my coming upstairs and if he had been on his computer or doing anything else forbidden would have quickly stopped. Now he would believe I was in the loo and think himself safe until he heard the roar of the flush.

I stood absolutely still outside the loo door for a couple of minutes to give him time to resume whatever he was up to andI was pretty sure he would have been up to something. Indeed I had seriously misjudged the sort of boy Nicky was if he had not. I then crept as quietly as I could across the corridor and eased open his bedroom door.

Nicky's bedroom was not a big one but at first I could not see him. Then I spotted him. He was standing on a chair, with his pyjama trousers down round his ankles, with his back to the open door of the cupboard in which was set a small mirror. He was peering over his shoulder apparently trying to get a clear view of his bare bottom reflected in the mirror.

"Does my bum look large in this?" I asked and reached out to stop him tumbling off the chair in his surprise.

His face went first white with surprise and then red with embarrassment.

I laughed rather heartlessly I suppose but the whole thing was distinctly comical and I thought my question, while not exactly apposite because he had nothing on his bottom, was amusing enough.

He stared at me speechlessly for a good minute and then gasped out the plea made over the years by so many boys caught in the act, "you won't tell Mum will you please."

"I won't Nicky," I assured him with a reassuring smile, "you and I are going on holiday together and it would be a bad beginning if I started by telling on you to your Mum. Anyway by the end of our holiday I expect there'll be a great many things we wouldn't want your Mum to know about."

He stood for a moment thinking this over while I got an eyeful both of both his hairless crutch with his tiny ball sack and small swollen cock and, in the mirror behind him, his tight dimpled little bottom.

Then partly recovering from the shock of my appearance he remembered his exposed position and bending over, incidentally affording me another interesting view of his rump, pulled his pajama trousers up.

"I wouldn't worry much about that Nicky," I said lightly, "I'm used to it. Where I work boys a good deal older than you commonly walk about naked and nobody thinks anything about it. If you ever come out and visit me you will do the same. I don't believe in favoritism."

"Anyway I just came up to let you know that it's all settled. I will come and collect you from here the day before your Mum and that horrible little man Rupert fly to Bordeaux. I'll take you down to my flat in London for the night before driving down to Pembrokeshire the next day."

"I am sure we will have a very good time together."

"Now get that sexy little bum of yours to bed and go to sleep and no more fooling around to night."

Placing a hand on his shoulder I turned him to face the bed and sent him on his way with a sharp open handed slap on his, unfortunately, pajama clad bottom. I would preferred it to have been bare but that I was sure would come in time.

"Goodnight Uncle Toby," the boy said as he climbed into bed.

"Good night Nicky," I replied switching the light off and closing the door behind me.

I doubted if he would go to sleep very soon. I had, I thought, given him plentry to think about.

Back in the sitting room I accepted another cup of coffee from Mary.

"Did you have any trouble with Nicky?" She asked handing me the cup.

"No of course not," I replied surprised by the question.

***

Nicky lay in the darkened room his mind in turmoil. He knew from the media and school that there were men who liked boys and that was a bad thing. He was also aware from the press that these men called pedophiles were evil, the lowest forms of humanity and that they regularly as a result of their depraved sexuality killed or seriously injured their victims. He knew from school that there were men who liked other men and that was perfectly all right. Indeed that it was wrong to make fun of them or call them rude names. His secret searches on the Web had given him some idea of what such men do together and he assumed that it was not very different from what those other men did with boys

He had also become increasingly aware of disturbing and yet exciting ideas in the darker recesses of his own mind. The stories he told himself had become ever more violent and the part he played in them although of course ultimately heroic often involved suffering and humiliation on the way. Now the prospect of a holiday in a cottage by the sea with Uncle Toby offered a new setting and fresh story lines, his imagination fired and given direction by so much that Uncle Toby had said and done. Having a good time together, having things neither of them would want to share with his Mum, his bottom was sexy, naked brown skinned boys, his visiting Uncle Toby, Uncle Toby having no favorites if he did so, the physical strength of the man as he steadied him on the chair or turned him to face the bed, the sharp but pleasantly exciting sting of his smack on his bottom, all these things could have been deliberately designed to excite his imagination and to make his fantasies wilder and more extreme. Indeed this was exactly what Uncle Toby had intended.

Eventually Nicky exhausted achieved a climax for the fifth consecutive time, a personal best so far, and sank into an exhausted sleep.

For a moment he lay still reviewing the previous days events. He could not get over his surprise at Uncle Toby suggesting he should go on holiday with him. In the previous five days of his visit the man had largely ignored Nicky although the boy had once or twice looked up to find the his gaze resting on him. Then on the last evening of his stay Uncle Toby had first suggested that Nicky should stay with him for three weeks and then hinted at their enjoying illicit but unspecified pleasures together during that time.

With a start Nicky remembered that his uncle was planning to set off early so that he could get back to the flat he had rented in London before the rush hour. A glance at his watch told Nicky that it was approaching half past seven. He got quickly out of his bed and dashed across the corridor to the bathroom.

Downstairs in the kitchen his mother, engaged in frying the eggs and bacon for Toby's breakfast, hearing the scamper of running footsteps followed by the rush of the shower overhead glanced across at Rupert, sipping a cup of coffee and leafing through the Daily Telegraph before going to his office, with raised eye brows. Nicky that holiday had developed a habit of lying in bed in the mornings to such an extent that first his Mother and then Rupert had remonstrated with him but to no effect whatsoever. Now he was not only getting out of bed early but also taking a shower unprompted another almost unprecedented event.

Nicky was not a boy unusually aware of social niceties but he sensed in a slightly muddled inchoate way that it would be disrespectful of him to lie in bed on the last day of Uncle Toby's visit and he was a man who in some mysterious way commanded respect. I think all of us at some time come across someone who "has a way with boys." A school master perhaps whose mere presence silenced the noisiest and most unruly of classes, at whose approach the roughest and most obstreperous of youths became docile and obedient. Toby although his school-mastering days were sometime past was one such person.

However it was not only the boy's instinctive respect for the man that had brought him early out of bed and into the shower. As he stood under the shower the water coursing in silver streams over his naked body Nicky looked forward with nervous excitement to being once more in the presence of the man who had dominated his thoughts and indeed his nightmares since he had entered his bedroom the previous evening. Would Uncle Toby still want to take him on holiday? Would he still think his bottom sexy? Would they still have secrets to keep from Mum?

In a repeat of last nights event's Nicky slowly pirouetted in front of the bathroom mirror trying to reach an unbiased opinion about his appearance. It was something that he had done many times before without success. Indeed he couldn't see there was anything very much to say about it. His hair, flaxen, kept sensibly short, wasn't too bad. But as for the rest of him what was there to say. Round head, broadish forehead, blue eyes, generous lips which sprang easily into a cheerful smile, narrow shoulders and hips, thin arms, a slim body with no superfluous flesh, nice firm thighs but were, he wondered, his legs a little on the long side. And his bottom that Uncle Toby had described as sexy. He twisted about in front of the mirror trying to get a proper look at it but as always not succeeding. All he, could say was he could see nothing really wrong with it and after all what he thought didn't really matter. It was Uncle Toby's opinion that counted.

He picked his pajamas off the bathroom floor and wrapping a towel round his waste executed a quick dash back to his bedroom. His wardrobe was not an extensive one, his mother holding that there was little point in spending money on clothes for him when he grew out of them so fast. Apart from his school uniform it was limited to a couple of pairs of jeans, one reasonably smart the other distinctly shabby, a pair of baggy shorts that went down below his knees, a few T-shirts, jumpers and such like.

With his towel tumbled round his ankles he stood over his chest of drawers dispiritedly fumbling through their contents.

He was shortly going to have to submit himself to inspection by Uncle Toby and it was important to try to present himself in a way that would maintain and if possible excite his interest. Nothing he could see seemed likely to succeed in doing this.

Then at the very bottom of the drawer he found a pair of freshly ironed and laundered tan shorts. He remembered them well. They had been bought for him almost twelve months ago before they went to Minorca on holiday. They must have been washed and ironed by his mother on their return and then forgotten about.

He looked at the sun streaming into the room. The day was going to be a hot one and the shorts would not be he thought too inappropriate. They should certainly show off his bottom to advantage. They had been he remembered rather short and tight twelve months ago. They would be even shorter and tighter now, if indeed, he could get them on at all.

He pulled on a pair of Y-fronts and then set about easing the shorts over his hips. It was a bit of a struggle but he succeeded eventually in not only pulling them up over his hips but also in securing them at the waste and zipping up their flies.

He could as before get only a limited view of his bottom but he could tell from the way the shorts felt they hugged its contours tightly. He pulled on a white T-shirt and let it hang loose over the shorts waste band. The shorts were much too tight to allow the shirt to be tucked into them.

An added advantage of wearing the T-shirt outside the shorts was that the shorts were so short that when he stood upright the shirt hang down over them. All you could then see appearing from beneath the T-shirt were two firm young boy thighs leaving a tantalizing doubt as to whether he was wearing shorts at all.

It only remained to put on his trainers. This was a bit of a struggle. His shorts were so tight that he thought he might have to take them off altogether but in the end he succeeded in the trainers on and somewhat red in the face and out of breath he set off downstairs.

He entered the kitchen just as his mother was sliding the fried egg to join the two rashers of bacon and the slice of fried bread on Uncle Toby's plate.

"Good Lord Nicky," Rupert said sarcastically peering at him over his spectacles, "to what do we owe this honour." While Mary sighed wistfully and placed another two rashers in the frying pan.

"I say Mum," Nicky asked, "if I got up early every day would you do bacon and eggs for me?"

"It would be better if you learnt to cook them yourself Nicky," Uncle Toby remarked drily, "I am certainly not going to spend my time cooking your breakfast."

And then adding, as Nicky stared blankly at him clearly amazed at the suggestion, "and you might learn to make a pot of tea as well."

"I don't like tea," Nicky blurted.

"I do," Uncle Toby said coolly bringing the discussion to the end.

"And now, " he added pulling a mobile telephone from his trouser pocket and tossing it to the boy, "enter your mobile number in its memory, while your Mother cooks your breakfast. I may want to get hold of you before I pick you up next Thursday. There'll be plenty of time before then to learn how to cook breakfast and make a cup of tea."

Mary and Rupert exchanged amused glances over Nicky's bowed head as he worked away at his task.

Just over an hour later Nicky was standing beside the two grown ups as Toby drove off. If the boy could have seen the nature of the smile on his Uncle's face as he looked back at the slight flaxen haired figure of his nephew in the hired car's rear view mirror he would have been very frightened indeed.

As he drove back to London Toby wondered at his offering to take Nicky on holiday. The boy was certainly attractive and seemed to fall within the category of low hanging fruit but to make the offer without doing any preliminary work was, at the least, rash.

He made a list of the various things he would have to do before he returned to collect the boy on Thursday evening. The very first thing he would have to do, he told himself, was to somehow secure the use of the cottage, or rather old farmhouse, for the three weeks of his stay in Pembrokeshire for it was a complete invention on his part to say he had already rented it for that period.

However he was fairly confident he would be able to have the use of it. For one thing there was no possibility of it having been rented out already because it was not a holiday cottage at all but a rather nicely, not to say in parts, luxuriously equipped hostel belonging to the school where he had taught before he had been obliged to make a rather sudden departure from the UK. Shared interests and a sense of reciprocal obligations had ensured that he had remained in touch and on good terms with the then Deputy Head Master who had now succeeded to the Headship. It was highly improbable that the school would be using the cottage in the last few weeks of the summer holidays and this being so Toby had no doubt that he had only to ask to be lent the keys to the property.

However he initially encountered some difficulties in making contact with his old friend. A call to the school resulted in his being put through to the Head Master's secretary and being told by her that the Head was away at some unspecified location and being advised to try to get him on his mobile. A number of calls to that number failed to obtain any response at all despite Toby having left voice mail messages asking that he should call back. It was only late that evening as Toby was dozing in front of the television that he was woken by the clamour of his phone.

"Toby, Toby," the voice of friend thundered down the lines at him, "how are you boy? Sorry I didn't telephone you earlier we've just got back in from a spot of mackerel fishing."

A sudden suspicion occurred to Toby.

"Where are you then," he asked cautiously.

"We're staying at the school's Field Centre at TyRhos Sands. You surely remember it we stayed there a good few times when it wasn't in use by the school in the old days and had a very enjoyable time."

"Haven't used it much the last few years because I have been spending a good deal of my summer holidays in your part of the world but this year what with you coming here it seemed a good time to use it again."

"Are you still using it for much the same purposes?" Toby asked carefully.

"I have brought one of our boys here. His parents are both working in Libya and they asked the school to look after him over the holidays because they didn't think it was safe for him to spend the summer with them. I thought it would be a pleasant change for the lad to have a few days by the sea."

"That's a coincidence, I have just volunteered to take charge of my young nephew while his Mother and her boyfriend are off to France and was thinking exactly the same thing so far as he was concerned."

"You both come down here. How old is your nephew?"

"Just 13."

"Excellent he'll be company for my young Jason. Delightful child, very promising, head boy in the Junior School last academic year. Is coming up to the Senior School this coming term. Excellent Natural sportsman. I'm sure he will do very well indeed."

"I am sure he will by the sound of him but I wonder if Nicky is really a suitable companion for him. He's a good looking brat but I have no idea how good a sportsman or how he performs academically. Give you some idea 3; I have been thinking of getting him out to my place in the Easter Holidays for a few weeks I think he would fit in well with the native boys and I was bringing him here to give him a sort of preliminary taste of what that would mean and to see how easily he adjusted to it."

"I doubt if Jason's parents would be very happy for their son to associate with a boy like that especially since I was planning, assuming his parents still want me to stand in loco parentis to him during the Easter Holidays, to see if I could bring him out with me to stay a few weeks with you. Your boys are very attractive and willing youths but they certainly are not suitable companions for a young lad like Jason with a great future ahead of him."

"Still bring your little slut along here. It'll be good preparation for him joining your native boys. We'll keep him busy and he'll learn what to expect. Perhaps we could make young Jason responsible for his supervision. He'll like that, the lad's a natural disciplinarian."

"And it will do Nicky no end of good to learn that he has to just stand and take it while a younger boy knocks him about. I can imagine Jason will enjoy administering that particular lesson and it will be fun for us to watch." Toby rejoined heartily and replaced the receiver on its stand.

Over the next few days Toby occupied his time pleasantly enough revisiting old haunts and looking up old acquaintances. He thought occasionally about his coming holiday with mild enthusiasm but made no attempt to contact Nicky. He knew that the bate had been taken and that the boy's own struggles would drive the hook home, there would be time enough later to mould him to his requirements. He did however think very carefully about any equipment and supplies that might be required and spent some time shopping, some of it on the Internet.

Nicky on the other hand thought about hardly anything else than the coming holiday and imagining the things that Uncle Toby would do with him and to him. He thought about them awake and dreamed about them asleep. Uncle Toby dominated his mind and imagination. Erection and orgasm succeeded each other in an almost unbroken chain. His eyes were red rimmed and sore, his cock tender, and his hand trembled. Cum stains soiled his sheets and the front of his underpants.

What made it all worse was that he heard nothing from Uncle Toby. He had been sure he would telephone him on the day of his departure and he stayed up late in his room waiting for that call but it did not come. Nor did it come the next day or the day after. He considered asking his mother for the man's telephone number but something told him that that any approach from him would be unwelcome.

What made it all worse was that the fine sunny day of Uncle Toby's departure was followed by days of cold unremitting rain so Nicky was stuck in the house effectively confined to his bedroom with nothing to do but play computer games or watch Television quietly masturbating himself while weaving fantasies round the absent man.

At last Thursday came. The day Uncle Toby was due to return from London. The day before Mum and Rupert were to fly to Bordeaux and Nicky to go with his Uncle to London before traveling onto Pembrokeshire the next day.

It was still raining. Nicky lay in bed listening to the rain beating against the window panes of his room. He knew that Uncle Toby could not be realistically expected before late afternoon at the earliest. He would not set off till after he had had his breakfast and then he would have a good six hours driving ahead of him. Despite this Nicky could not make himself stay in bed. He got out of the bed, a mess of tumbled sweaty sheets and padded on bare feet over to the window.

He stood staring out on the street, the road a broad black band, rain glistening on the damp asphalt, the neat little houses with their sodden gardens lining it. It looked so safe, so reassuring and yet suddenly he felt isolated and alone.

Mum was so bound up with her boyfriend in the long term and so excited by the prospect of her holiday in France in the immediate future she seemed to have no time for him at all. She certainly had not noticed how he had spent more and more time in his room over the past week only coming out for meals and then eating little and rarely speaking.

His elder sister Leslie made it very clear that she was much more bothered about her boyfriend Wayne and considered her little brother a nuisance and a bore.

Uncle Toby appeared at first to be interested in him, volunteering to take him on holiday and hinting at an adventurous, if rather frightening future, of secret pleasures shared in the company of naked brown skinned boys. But either he had not really meant it or he had lost interest. Why else should Uncle Toby have let a full week go by without either telephoning or sending even a single text message. Nicky knew Uncle Toby had his telephone number because he had entered it in his mobile's memory himself.

He wondered if his Uncle would bother to turn up at all or if he did whether it would be just out of a sense of duty and he would have to spend three miserable weeks with someone who just didn't want him about. But still perhaps everything would be all right. Uncle Toby would appear and the holiday would be as exciting as he had hinted it would be.

Nicky turned from the window and began to get dressed. For a moment he toyed with the idea of wearing again the shorts he had worn on the last day of Uncle Toby's visit. Perhaps the sight of him wearing them would revive Uncle Toby's interest. Uncle Toby had after all described his bottom as sexy and the shorts, Nicky thought, being very brief and extremely tight showed it off very well.

But it was raining and there was a damp chill in the air. It just wasn't right for shorts. And anyway quite probably Uncle Toby had lost all interest in him in which case he would just see a thirteen year old boy wearing a pair of shorts too small for him and laugh at him. Miserably he pulled on the crumpled pair of jeans he had worn the previous day topping it off with a t-shirt and a dark blur anorak.

There was no one in the kitchen. Rupert had no doubt long since gone to his office while Leslie,who had a holiday job in the local Little Chef, would also have gone off to work. There was no sign of Mum but Nicky could hear the sound of someone moving about and opening and closing drawers in the bedroom upstairs that. she and Rupert shared. No doubt she was packing their clothes ready for their departure early the next morning.

Nicky thought about frying some bacon for his breakfast. He had for a time after Uncle Toby's departure followed his advice and got some lessons from his mother in rudimentary cooking. He had learnt how to do a fry up and had just got round to peeling and boiling potatoes when he had lost interest, disheartened by Uncle Toby's silence. Today like many previous ones he just could not be bothered but contented himself with three weetabix over which he sloshed a generous helping of milk from the fridge topped off with three heaped tea spoons of sugar.

After he had eaten this there was nothing left for him to do except return to his room and wait. His Mother caught him at the top of the stairs carrying an empty suit case in her hand.

"Have you packed yet?" she asked and continued without waiting for a reply for she knew very well that he had not, "you really should get on with it. Uncle Toby will be here sometime this afternoon and you should have it done by then."

"Ok Mum," Nicky replied with wary resignation, his voice flat and unenthusiastic.

"Well you need to get on with it Nicky," she snapped, she had got used to hearing that tone of voice from her son over the last few days and it irritated her, "there's quite a bit of sorting out to do. You're going to be gone just over three weeks so you need to take a few things with you, underpants and socks as well as jeans and T-shirts and a couple of towels for the beach together with your swimming trunks and don't forget your wash things."

"OK Mum, don't fuss."

"And for heaven's sake cheer up a bit. I don't know what's got into you. You seemed quite keen on going on holiday with Uncle Toby when he asked you but now you're a real misery. It was very nice of Uncle Toby to ask you and you should be grateful to him. Don't forget it's his holiday as well as yours and you'll ruin it for both of you if you don't snap out of it and cheer up a bit. You'll be with him for three weeks with Rupert and me out of the country. You'll be really dependent on him then. You don't want to upset him."

Nicky muttered something his mother failed to hear and taking the case out of her hand walked into his bedroom closing the door in something that was not quite a slam.

He heaved the suitcase onto the bed and began to tumble clothes willy-nilly into it not bothering to fold them or indeed to consider whether he needed them on holiday. He choose a couple of towels from the airing cupboard and jammed the lid shut. His overnight things could go into his rucksack and then that was the job done.

It was past one o'clock and still the rain beat down. Nicky settled down to wait. His misery increased as time dragged by. He tried playing a computer game but he was unable to stop himself breaking off from it with ever increasing frequency to peer out of his bedroom window to see if there was any sign of Uncle Toby's hired Fiesta though in his heart he knew he would not be there for a good hour or more.

His mind was in a turmoil of conflicting emotions. Fear that Uncle Toby had come to regret the impulse that had led him to to ask him to holiday with him fought with a faint hope that just maybe Uncle Toby's interest in him would return when they were once more face to face together with a determination to do everything he could to keep or revive the man's interest. And underlying all this a desperate utterly irrational need to see and be with the man memories of whom filled and dominated his mind

In the end he could not stand the waiting and the inactivity any longer. He crept quietly from his room and closing the door softly behind himself and tiptoed down the stairs. He could hear the sound of the television in the sitting room. His mother must have completed her packing and was watching some stupid property program. He took his anorak from its hook by the front door and slipped quietly out of the house.

He knew exactly the route Uncle Toby would take to reach the house from the motorway. The first part was through busy city streets but then his route would take him through a series off suburban streets where, outside the rush hour traffic was sparse. Nicky decided to walk the quiet part of the route and to flag Uncle Toby down when he spotted him.

He crossed to the right hand side of the road. That way he would be on the same side of the street as Uncle Toby when he appeared.

The rain continued to fall steadily. He had no covering for his head. His hair was soon soaked and water ran down the back of his neck spreading a cold damp patch across his shoulders. The anorak came only half way down his thighs and his trousers were soon soaked and clinging damply to him. As he trudged doggedly on it became apparent that the coat was far from waterproof and his clothing became generally sodden.

He reached the point where the quiet suburban streets gave way to the bustle of the city. There was no point in going any further. He stopped all he could donnow was wait. The minutes dragged by. The rain was cold and he began to feel increasingly chilled.

When the Fiesta materialized, a dull colourless shape in the gloom, the driving rain glistening in the twin bars of light thrown by its dipped headlights, it almost passed Nicky by before he recognized it. He waved desperately and for a moment he thought Uncle Toby had not seen him as the car passed. Then the brake lights went on and the car pulled over to the side of the road and its hazard lights began to blink. Nicky set off at the run towards it.

Uncle Toby had the front passenger window open by the time Nicky reached the car.

"Nicky 3; talk about a drowned rat, whatever are you doing here?"

Nicky hesitated. Suddenly he realized how stupid he had been going out in the pouring rain just to see Uncle Toby ten or fifteen minutes at the most earlier than he would have done if he had stayed in the dry and waited for him at home but he could think of no convincing alternative explanation.

"I came to meet you Uncle," he replied faintly.

Mercifully the man neither laughed nor expressed surprise

"Well," he said as if Nicky's explanation was the most reasonable thing he had ever heard,"you'd better get into the car out of the rain."

He flipped the heater to maximum and closed the passenger side window as Nicky slid into the car. As the temperature rose the car filled with the smell of damp clothes and boy and the inside of the windows began to mist up.

"You certainly are wet," Uncle Toby remarked resting the palm of his hand on the inside of the boy's right thigh squeezing and feeling the firm flesh under the damp cloth.

The boy caught his breath and tensed at his touch.

"I had hoped you would be wearing those shorts of yours," Uncle Toby remarked sliding his hand further up the inside of the boy's thigh.

Nicky stirred uneasily and murmured a protest. At the same time though he parted his knees and lifted his bottom from the car seat welcoming Uncle Toby's exploring hand.

"I thought I'd look silly wearing them in this weather – please Uncle don't."

Uncle Toby ignoring this last plea pushed his hand between the boy's parted legs and squeezed the damp cloth covering his crutch.

"You've got nice legs Nicky and I want you to show them off. You're to wear them tomorrow – and no underpants they will only get in my way."

He took Nicky's chin between the finger and thumb of his free hand and tipped his head back so he was looking up into his own face. His eyes sort and held the boy's. it seemed to Nicky that the man's were probing into the darkest recesses of his mind, that there was nothing hidden from his gaze.

A smile, contempt tempered by amused tolerance, touched Uncle Toby's lips.

He bent down and kissed the boy hard on his mouth. The boy tried to pull away and to protest and found the man's tongue thrust down into the back of his throat. Nicky tried to push the man away his clenched fists beating on his shoulders then suddenly he surrendered locking his arms around his neck and returning his kiss with unrestrained enthusiasm.

Toby allowed the kiss to continue for a good minute then he reached up and pulled the boy's arms apart and pushed him back down into his seat. He held him there holding him by his wrists forcing the boy's hands down on either side of his body, feeling his thin bones move under his fierce grip making him feel his strength.

"Whore," he said smiling down into Nicky's frightened face.

He released the boy and lent forward to wipe the condensation off the inside of the windscreen before switching off the hazard lights and easing the car out into the traffic.

Nicky huddled down into the passenger seat. He tried to sort out his emotions, He had never been kissed like that before in his life. Being kissed on the lips was disturbing enough, having Uncle Toby tongue thrust down his throat was just plain unhygienic and dirty. Anyway what was the point of it what did uncle Toby get out of it?

But even as Nicky asked himself that question he found the memory of the man's lips pressed against his and the man's tongue darting snake like down his throat stirred him. As did the easy almost effortless way Uncle Toby broke the grip of his arms about his neck and forced him back down into the passenger seat. He had felt the man's strength before when he sent him to bed and he had found that knowing the man was strong enough to enforce his will and was willing to use his strength to do so was both frightening and, like having his tongue down his throat, strangely exciting.

Toby said nothing as he drove the car the short distance remaining until he reached Nicky's home. He saw no need to. The boy had taken the hook and was not going to get away. He knew the lad had to be given time to adjust and to learn what was required of him in his new role. He also realized that it would all take longer with a British school boy like Nicky than one of the brown skinned boys whom he usually schooled, impelled by poverty as well as lust, and coming from a culture with a traditional tolerance of man/boy relationships. Nicky's instincts he was sure would be no different from those of the most lascivious of island boys but they would just need a little longer and a little more effort to bring to the surface.

He turned the car into the drive of Nicky's house and bringing it to a halt pressed the button on the dashboard releasing the catch to the boot.

"No point my getting wet as well as you," he said to Nicky, "get my overnight case from the boot and take it up to my room. Then put some dry clothes on.

And then, when Nicky remained slumped in his seat apparently oblivious Toby's commands, he reached across and roused the boy with, what he judged to be a mild clip across the side of the head. Nicky jumped out of the car and rubbing his stinging ear, for what in the opinion of the giver of a clip is moderate may seem very different to the recipient, ran through the pouring rain round to the boot of the car. Toby got out more slowly and standing in the shelter of the porch rang the doorbell.

Outwardly confidant he braced himself, as Mary opened the door. He was ready for the sound of rushing feet behind him and Nicky throwing himself into his mother's arms sobbing out hysterical accusations of abuse. He thought it unlikely, every move he had made was designed to build on what had gone before gradually tightening his hold over the boy. It was very difficult for the boy once embarked on this process to break free.

If it did happen he didn't think the consequences would be too serious. It would be the end of his attempt to add Nicky to his string of boys but there were plenty of other sluts to enjoy. As for the police the boy had suffered no physical injury and he doubted if Mary and especially her boyfriend Rupert would want to press charges after he had explained to them that if they did so he would make similar allegations against both of them.

Those allegations would of course be quite baseless but that didn't matter, once made they would have to be investigated. The fact of that investigation would undoubtedly come out and as everybody knows there is no smoke without fire and all the rest of it. Better surely just to let the matter drop.

"Hello Mary," he said when his sister appeared at the door, " a cup of tea would be very welcome."

He stood to one side to let Nicky squelch past carrying his case.

"Nicky," he said as the boy laboured up the stairs, "decided to come and meet me and has I am afraid got very wet as a consequence."

He laughed inviting his sister to join him in his amusement at her young son's foolishness and passed on into the sitting room for his tea.

Nicky, having placed his Uncle's case on the spare room bed, crossed the corridor to his own room. He was soaked to the skin and shivering with cold. He quickly stripped off dropping his wet clothes in a sodden heap on centre of the bedroom floor. To get some warmth back into his body he climbed onto the bed and pulled the duvet over himself. As the warmth slowly returned to his naked body he thought about his Uncle Toby and his coming holiday with him. He remembered the feel of the man's lips pressed so fiercely against his own, and his tongue thrusting down into his throat. His initial reaction of shock and disgust was still there but it was much fainter, replaced by a rising excitement which became stronger as he also remembered the man's strength as he so easily broke the grip of his arms about his neck and forced him back into his seat. With that strength Uncle Toby could do anything he wanted with him or to him if they were alone together and they would be alone a great deal of the time during the holiday. He was scared but he was also excited.

He slid out of the bed and took a wad of toilet paper from where he had hidden it in the chest of drawers in the corner of his bedroom. Back in bed he rolled onto his tummy. The duvet rose and fell with increasing urgency as he fucked the mattress.

He woke with a start. A glance at the clock on his bedside table told him the time was half past six. He had slept for a good hour. By now Mum would be putting the finishing touches to their supper and Rupert, long back from his office and with a guest in the house would be fussing about making the pre-dinner drinks, G&T for Mum, a whiskey and water for himself and probably the same for Uncle Toby.

Nicky wondered what Uncle Toby thought of his absence. He hoped he didn't think that he had been upset by what had taken place in the car, the kissing and the tongue down his throat and everything, and had been deliberately hiding in his room He had better get dressed and get downstairs quickly. He certainly didn't want to offend Uncle Toby or make him think he was upset by him.

He could at least send a clear signal to Uncle Toby on that latter point. One of the first things Uncle Toby had said to him this time was that he was disappointed he was not wearing shorts and that he was to wear them tomorrow and not to bother about underpants. If he wore the shorts now it would surely show the man that he wanted to please him. Even more so if he did without underpants only supposing there was some way to let him know that this was so. Nicky couldn't see any way of doing this but perhaps something would turn up. Anyway not wearing them would cause no problem he could see and might even help.

He pulled the shorts on.. They were so tight that the absence of underpants made it noticeably easier to get them over his hips and to fasten their waste band. Pulling on a dark blue t,shirt.he scooped up the pile of damp clothes from the bedroom floor and set off downstairs. He didn't bother about shoes or socks. He had a sort of feeling that maybe the less he wore the more Uncle Toby would approve.

In the kitchen the potatoes were boiling quietly on top of the stove. Mum was nowhere to be seen so she had to be in the sitting room having her gin and tonic. Nicky went quickly to the utility room and dumped his damp clothes in the drier. Turning it on he went through the kitchen and across the hall to the sitting room.

Loud voices and laughter came through the sitting room door., There was a sudden silence as he entered the room and everybody turned to look at him.. Mum and Rupert were sitting side by side on the settee. The two armchairs on either side of the fire place were occupied respectively by Uncle Toby and Leslie. On the side tables beside them rested tall thin glasses that usually only made an appearance at Christmas partly filled with amber fluid, minuscule bubbles rising upwards.

"Nicky whatever have you been up to?" his mother asked. "I was just about to shout up the stairs for you. Your Uncle Toby must have been wondering where you were too."

"Sorry Mum, sorry Uncle To, I fell asleep and only just woke up. I put my wet clothes in the drier Mum. I hope that is Ok?"

"I'm surprised just that you didn't leave them as you usually do in a smelly heap in the middle of the floor," Leslie remarked nastily.

"Well I didn't," Nicky replied shortly and with he thought great restraint for such exchanges between brother and sister usually ended with him loosing his temper and being sent from the room..

"And Nicky dear," his mother broke in again apparently oblivious to her daughter's interruption., her voice raised and slightly slurred. "He's such a nice man your Uncle Toby I mean, I'm sure you"ll have a wonderful holiday with him, so very generous, three bottles of champagne, you know you're a very lucky boy. You must be very grateful to him."

"I'm sure I'll have a wonderful holiday and I am very grateful, Mum," Nicky said grinning across at his Uncle, pleased to have the opportunity to let the man know directly that he had not been upset by that weird but very exciting kiss.

"We'll since you are here now Nicky," Uncle Toby remarked jovially "you can act as our Ganymede and keep the glasses filled."

And then added as he noticed the blank look on the boy's face.

"You don't know who Ganymede was? He's a character out of Greek mythology, cupbearer to the god's." He didn't think it necessary or indeed wise to particularize more closely the exact functions required of the 'lovely boy'. The time for that would no doubt come.

"Now come and stand by me and I will show you how to pour the Champagne."

"Come on, here on my left," Toby ordered tapping his left thigh. "Stand close you won't be able to see otherwise."

Reaching round the boy so his hand rested on the back of his right thigh he drew him close turning him so that he was facing into the room.

He had not set out deliberately to get them all drunk. In fact in a selfish unfeeling sort of way he was quite fond of his sister and his decision to bring down a few of bottles of champagne with him was prompted by nothing more than a feeling this was an easy way of bringing some excitement to what he regarded as a drab and boring life. The thought did occur to him that sharing in their consumption would somewhat alleviate the tedium of the shared evening meal. He had not expected that it would give him the opportunity to openly grope his, in his opinion at least, very attractive pubescent nephew. Now that it had though he intended to take every advantage of the opportunity.

Apart from anything else it should show the boy that he could expect no protection from his mother or other members of the family and that therefore he might as well accept the situation and submit to Toby's embraces.

"Now," he continued, "very slowly and gently you tilt the bottle so the champagne dribbles into the glass. Watch."

As Toby topped up his glass he slipped his thumb unseen by the rest of the room up the back of Nicky's shorts.

"Now you do it," he ordered as he pushed his thumb into the cleft of the boy's bottom.

Nicky shifted uneasily at his touch but did not protest. The neck of the champagne bottle clicked against the rim of Tony's glass as the boy slowly completed topping up his glass.

"Good boy, now take the bottle round and top up everybody else's glasses starting with your Mother's"," Toby said slapping Nicky on the rump by way of encouragement.

Nobody seemed to notice Toby smack Nicky or think it in anyway odd.

I would never have got away with it, thought Toby, unless they were three quarters cut. But then I would have hardly tried it on myself if I wasn't the worse for wear.

"Toby," Mary called excitedly, "this is a wonderful party thank you very much indeed."

"Just a little bit more Nicky sweetly then you won't need to come round so often. There that's just right take the bottle over to Rupert and fill his glass the poor darling is looks very thirsty to me."

"And Toby you seem to have a real way with Nicky. He's usually so sulky and difficult and the last week he has been particularly bad just, sitting in his room fiddling about on his computer. I don't know how you do it."

"I hardly know myself," Toby replied laughing, "a lot of the work of my NGO involves street kids so I suppose I am used to dealing with boys, although boys with nothing rather than spoilt boys with too much."

"You think Nicky has too much and is spoilt?" Mary asked thoughtfully as if the idea had only just occurred to her.

"Of course he is," Rupert spoke vehemently, drink unleashing his bottled up resentment at having to tolerate years of juvenile sulks and snubs., "I'd say send him off to some old fashioned school somewhere where they'd knock the nonsense out of him if only I made enough money to pay the fees."

Nicky while this was going on had completed the circuit of the room filling the adults' (in his view this included Leslie though she was only eighteen) glasses and unsure of what to do next had gone to stand beside Toby. It was strange to stand there listening to the storm of criticism levelled at him. He was tempted to protest and to point how unjustified much of the criticism was but somehow his uncle's hand squeezing the back of his thigh just above the knee kept him silent.

"If you can't afford to send him off to school why don't you give him to Uncle Toby," Leslie asked directing a hostile glare at Nicky, "Uncle Toby seems tone able to handle him."

"Funny you should say that,"Toby seeing a chance to extend his hold over Nicky spoke quietly, "part of our work on the Island is to provide a refuge for street kids. We make it a condition that before we accept a child it's parents, should there be any and most often there's not, sign a document surrendering it to us. "

"Mum will sign Nicky over to you Uncle Toby if you agree to take him in hand and teach him to be an obedient thoughtful boy, won't you Mum."

Leslie for some reason clearly thought this highly amusing and burst into high pitched squeals of laughter.

"If I take him I can promise he will at least learn to be obedient," Toby said quietly giving Nicky's thigh an extra hard squeeze.

"I'll certainly sign it," Mary said giggling happily. "Just think Darling of coming back from our holiday in the Dordogne and finding Nicky transformed into a perfect child."

"Such a change," remarked. Rupert braying with laughter.

It seemed to Nicky all the people in the room apart from Uncle Toby and himself were sharing a common but secret joke.

"Nicky," Uncle Toby said releasing his hold on his thigh, "you are neglecting your duty. Fill the champagne glasses and see they are kept full."

Looking round Nicky saw that everybody's glass except for Uncle Toby's was empty. This surprised him as he had refilled the glasses quite a few times already. He hurried round recharging the empty glasses while Leslie went in search of paper and pen.

"We will need a witness not a member of the family and not a party to the agreement, That means you Rupert," Toby remarked.

"That's fine me, all in a good cause,". Rupert replied cheerfully taking a further generous swig of his champagne.

"Well then has anybody got a pen and a bit of paper? Oh thanks Rupert," who true to his profession produced a pen and a small pocket book from his jacket's inside pocket.

"Now let me see we follow a simple straightforward formula."

Toby tore a page from the notebook and began to scribble.

"And there's the question of valuable consideration," he said pausing in his writing and looking up, "I have to pay something for the boy to have any chance of the contract being legally enforceable."

"Well what do you have in mind," asked Rupert his accountant instincts surfacing at the mention of money

"We usually offer forty five local dollars on the island for a healthy well grown boy of Nicky's age. That's about five pounds in sterling but five pounds can go a great deal further out there than in the UK. Fifty pounds I think would be a fair price. What do you think Mary?"

"Fifty pounds sounds fair enough to me. It's not as though any money will really change hands."

"Right I'll just finish drafting the agreement and I will pay you the money.""

"Now Mary," he said a minute or two later, "take a look at this contract and see if you think it's acceptable."

"Oh give it to Rupert, he's much better at contracts and that sort of thing."

Rupert took the document and scanned through it quickly his lips moving as he read.

"' I Mary Anne Bayliss being the mother of the boy Nicholas whose thumb print (for identification purposes only) is appended below.'"

"What's all this about identification purposes only Toby?"

"To make clear the contract doesn't depend in any way on the assent of its subject. It effects a straight forward transfer from Mary to me of Nicky. The contract is between Mary and myself, Nicky is not a party to the contract he is simply the thing being transferred."

"Of course I see now," Rupert continued reading from the agreement in a fast low mumble,

"Do here bye transfer all my property possession and power over the said boy to Mister Toby Newgent in consideration of the sum of fifty pounds', and so on, and so on, and so on. Seems ok to me Mary you might as well sign it. I know I wouldn't pay fifty pounds for the brat. Well rid of him I think if it is really for only three weeks.."

"Here's the fifty pounds then," Toby said taking notes from a well filled wallet. " Take them to your Mum and the agreement as well for her to sign."

"Uncle Toby, Uncle Toby," Leslie suddenly screamed shrilly, "you mustn't do it, you really mustn't it's bad business practice."

"Whatever is the matter Leslie? Mary asked gaping at her daughter.

"Buy sight unseen. We mustn't let Uncle Toby buy what might be a pig in the poke. Nicky get that t-shirt off and drop your shorts so Uncle Toby can have a good look at you," and she burst into loud screams of laughter.

Nicky flushed crimson with embarrassment. The thought of his mother and sister seeing him naked horrified him.

"Come on Nicky, come on," Leslie yelled wildly, "get them off or I'll take them off you." , Jumping to her feet and knocking her half full glass of champagne over she advanced on Nicky who made a dash for the door.

"Grab him Rupert. Don't let him get away,". Denise yelled.

Rupert made no effort to catch Nicky but simply stationed himself, arms crossed, grinning broadly, blocking the only door out of the sitting room.

"Uncle Toby, please," Nicky cried turning to his Uncle urgently but confidently looking for help. Confidently because Leslie's suggestion that he should parade himself naked in front of his sister and mother was so gross that it was inconceivable that his Uncle Toby would support such an outrageous suggestion, inconceivable also that a fellow male, someone with whom he was going on holiday would support a girl in such a request.

Toby paused to think while the boy stared at him hopefully. Certainly he'd need to give Nicky a thorough examination fairly soon and the boy would not escape knowing the humiliation and indeed discomfort of a complete and detailed physical inspection. But was this the time for it? If he proceeded and none of the people present objected they would all be implicated in the boy's abuse. They were by now 'all pretty drunk and he thought there was a good chance he would get away with it. On the other hand he could not be sure. Mary especially worried him. She was the boy's mother and no doubt shared the current Western illusions about the innocence of the young. Drunk she might accept behavior that sober would pray on her mind and lead to a public confession that would embroil them all with the police.

Better he decided to err on the side of caution but that did not mean that an excellent opportunity to further the boy's education should be allowed to go to waste, simply that he should exercise restraint.

As time passed Nicky's confidence that the man would support him waned and he began to look increasingly panic stricken.

At last Toby spoke.

"Get a move on Nicky, do as you're told, " he said sharply.

"Uncle Toby 3;," but Nicky's protest was cut short.

"Nicky, you won't like it if you annoy me, Get your clothes off."

The boy looked round for support and found none.

"Mum!"

He made a last desperate appeal but it fell on deaf ears.

"Do as your Uncle says dear. It will be less trouble in the end."

Friendless, on the verge of tears and red with embarrassment Nicky pulled his t-shirt over his head and dropped it on the floor. His hands went to the waist band of his shorts, fingers fumbling with its fastenings. He eased them down over his hips. He let go of them and quickly clasped his hands together shielding his crutch allowing his shorts to tumble to the floor about his ankles.

Even as he stood there naked in front of everybody on the verge of crying from shame and humiliation, he was aware of other emotions. Shame and humiliation was there certainly but also a strange Intense excitement. It gripped him the moment he slid his shorts down over his narrow hips. It was as if a door had opened and something deep inside him had been released and in the turmoil and misery of the moment he seemed to glimpse peace and fulfilment.

"Oh look he isn't wearing underpants, filthy little brute. I bet there are tram lines on those shorts," Leslie screeched, bringing Nicky abruptly back to the miseries of the moment.,

"Fold your clothes and put them on the arm of my chair. Don't leave them tumbled in a mess on the floor." Toby snapped.

Doing his best to shield his crutch from view Nicky, eyes smarting from unshed tears of humiliation, stepped out of his shorts and bent quickly to pick them up.

"There's really no need to try to cover yourself up Nicky," Leslie giggled, "you've got nothing to hide so far as I can see, apart from that funny little twig thing sticking up in the air with its pink cap. "

"Has anybody any idea why he has an erection. Seems funny to me but I suppose its just because he's a dirty minded little brute with no self control."

"Shut up bitch," Nicky goaded beyond forbearance yelled at his sister.

"Nicky be quiet," Uncle Toby spoke quietly but firmly, "that was extremely rude and impertinent. Just do as your told. Come on fold up your clothes as I told you to."

He considered ordering the boy to ask Leslie's pardon for his rudeness but judged it better not to push things that far. It was still early days with the lad and it might provoke a mutiny that he would need to employ physical force to quell and he wished to avoid that at this stage in the presence of the boy's mother.

Nicky folded his clothes up clumsily and placed them on the arm of Toby's chair and then stood back facing the man, his hands once more held in front of him in a more or less vain attempt to shield his genitals from view.

"How can I make a judgement about your value standing like that you stupid boy." Toby snapped in exasperation, "clasp your hands together behind your head. Come along I don't know why it takes you so long to do everything.."

Reluctantly Nicky moved his hands away from his crutch and clasped them together behind his head. Toby smiling coldly ran his eyes slowly over the boy's naked body. Nicky scarlet in the face and on the verb e of years hung his head in embarrassment.

"Excites you does it? Being naked in front of us."

"No. Please Uncle Toby can we stop this now."

"Well something must," Toby remarked ignoring the boy's plea, "that little prick of yours is rock hard."

"Turn round, let's see your back.."

"No keep your hands up behind your head." Toby barked as Nicky attempted once more to maintain some last vestiges of modesty by covering his balls and cock with his hands. He stood facing his mother and her boy friend and of course Leslie. He kept his head stubbornly down as though by not looking at them he would somehow make them vanish but he was still acutely conscious of his nakedness and his exposure to their gaze.

"Skinny little runt," she remarked, "I think your paying over the odds for him Uncle Toby. I wouldn't pay anything for such a miserable looking weed."

"We'll I'm satisfied with the price," Toby announced, it was time he thought to bring the incident to an end.

The agreement transferring Nicky from his mother to Toby was signed, countersigned, witnessed and the boy's thumb print applied to it.

"Please Uncle Toby can I get dressed again" the boy asked plaintively.

"For heavens sake boy get on with your work," Toby said impatiently ignoring the boy's plea, "all our glasses need filling up. Fill Leslie's glass first it is completely empty."

"And when you've got our glasses filled get a bowl of warm water and a cloth from the kitchen and swab the carpet where the champagne was spilt."

Nicky tried to pour the champagne one handed using the other hand as cover, however inadequate for his balls and prick, which tiny as it was insisted on standing erect. The bottle however was heavy and he was forced to use both hands to pour the wine.

The Champagne had played its accustomed part in stifling inhibitions and loosening tongues. The volume of noise rose, the comments and jokes became broader and Nicky found himself fondled and stroked as he went round topping up the glasses. He felt sick with shame a d humiliation. The very worst thing was that his mother and sister were both witnesses of this and participants in it.

He felt dirty and ashamed. He hated it and he hated himself for being involved in it. And yet something held him there, made him accept the drunken pawings of his naked body, the giggles and the mockery. He hated and despised himself all the. more because he knew he could have brought the whole thing to an end, not now when everyone apart from Uncle Toby and himself were stupid with drink, but if he had refused at the beginning to strip or to take the champagne round naked then he was sure none of this would have happened. Uncle Toby would have had to back off and the rest of them would never even have got started let alone turned into the braying mini-mob that were now running riot.

If he had really believed that his mother had sold him to Uncle Toby there would be some excuse for him. However Nicky was not a stupid boy he knew his mother had not got the power to do that and indeed what she could do to him was very limited indeed and he knew where to turn if she or anyone else overstepped the mark. But he knew he was not going to phone child line or go to the police or anything else like that or indeed simply run away although he would have been hard pressed to explain why he was not going to do so. For one thing Uncle Toby had established such dominance over him that breaking away from him, defying him was almost unthinkable and certainly something he could not do. Then the memory of the man's hands caressing him and the feel of his lips on his excited him and drew him back to him. But as yet dimly and uncertainly Nicky had begun to realize there was something stronger than either fear or lust that gripped him and held him.

Then having filled all the champagne glasses he had to get down on his knees on the floor and wash the carpet at Leslie's feet where she had spilt her drink. At first mercifully she ignored the naked boy at her feet but when he carelessly turned his back to her she saw her opportunity and thrust a foot between his thighs and pressed upwards forcing him to raise his bottom in the air and exposing it to her inspection.

"Uncle Toby, she said loudly, "look at Nicky's bottom. He can't even have bothered to wipe it, no wonder there were brown tram limes on the inside of his white shorts. He must have pulled his shorts up without even bothering to try and wipe the shit away."

"Filthy little brute, he needs house training like any other animal before he's allowed in the house."

"Look Uncle Toby, look," and she began to jerk her foot up and down between Nicky's legs, forcing him to wriggle his bottom, in an attempt to secure the man's attention.

"Stop it you bitch," Nicky yelled and scrambling to his feet rounded red faced on his sister.

"You're a nasty mean bitch picking on me all the time and I did wipe my bottom and I bet it's a bloody sight cleaner than yours., you dirty tart 3;"

"Nicky!" Toby's roar brought Nicky's shrill tirade to an abrupt end and he ran from the room slamming the door behind him.

"I do apologize," Toby, who had carefully remained sober while the rest of the party had become more and more drunk, said.

He had not planned Nicky's outburst and abrupt exit from the room but he could see an opportunity to turn it to his advantage with a few carefully chosen words..

"I am afraid poor Nicky is not always the politest of boys nor the most considerate."

"He is not," Leslie said with great emphasis. "He's the rudest most selfish little brute going. He's always calling me names and spreading stories about me and Wayne. He's just plain nasty."

"You think you've had a hard time with him. God knows what I have had to put up with," Rupert broke in, "I've done my level best to be nice to the little tyke but every effort I have made has been rejected and all I get is cheek and insolence."

"But what really makes me angry is the way he behaves to you darling," he continued speaking to Mary, his voice trembling with anger heated no doubt by the considerable amount of alcohol he had consumed. "He expects you to wait on him hand and foot and he doesn't lift a hand to help you in the house."

"Yes I am afraid he is not an easy child, perhaps it would have been different if his father had stayed," and Mary began to sob quietly.

And so it went on as they remembered past grievances and dwelt on current ones, stoking each others resentment against their chosen victim.

That reflected Toby as he lent back in his chair silently listening to the increasingly threatening exchanges was how mobs always work be they of 3000 or 3. Soon the moment came that he knew from when he started the conversation rolling was all but inevitable.

"What the boy needs is a damn hard flogging," Rupert remarked.

"I feel guilty that I was 't firmer with him myself," Mary said, "but it so hard for a woman alone dealing with a stubborn willful boy."

"Well," Leslie chimed in, "now's the moment we can set things right. Why don't we get the brat down here and give him a good thrashing."

"Do you really want to have the boy beaten," Toby asked rising to his feet and unbuckling his belt.

Chapter Four

Toby crossed to the sitting room door opened it while Mary, Denise and Rupert all expressed their vociferous support for Nicky's flogging.

"Nicky," he called up the stairs in an authoritative voice.

The summons was met with total silence.

"I am so sorry," Mary said rising wearily to her feet. "If only I had been firmer with him when he was younger he wouldn't be so wilful now. I'll go and bring him down for you."

"Who," asked Rupert as they listened to Mary's receding footsteps as she mounted the stairs towards Nicky's bedroom, "is going to do the beating? Now we've got round to it we want the job done properly. Mary has had to put up with the little brute for more than thirteen years and hasn't so far as I know lifted a hand to him so she rather disqualifies herself. I am quite willing to give it a try and indeed I find the prospect of laying the cane across a whimpering the brat's tense and naked bottom quite attractive but I have to admit to a total lack of experience and I take it that there is more to it than simply cutting and cutting again."

"As I have bought the boy from his mother," Toby intervened smoothly, "I feel his misbehaviour reflects directly on me so that it is my duty to curb him. Fortunately we have on the island a refuge for street kids where I play a role from time to time in a managerial capacity and where the discipline imposed is on what might be described as traditional lines so I have had some experience and acquired a degree of skill as a chastiser of the young."

With these words Toby unbuckled his belt and drew it from the loops around the top of his trousers. He stood facing the open door into the hall holding the doubled belt in both hands. From time to time he moved his hand towards each other and then sharply drew them apart so that the the two halves of the doubled belt snapped together with a loud menacing crack.

Meanwhile Mary climbed the stairs. She stood listening for a moment outside Nicky's bedroom door. Hearing the sound of muffled crying she pushed the door open.. Nicky had pulled his pyjama trousers on and was lying face down on his bed his head buried in his pillows, his narrow shoulders shaken by sobs.

Fuelled by alcohol and the memory of past transgressions, in truth none of them very serious but in recollection magnified beyond all measure, Mary's resentment of the boy hardened into a cold rage. It seemed to her that from the very first moment he entered the world, a pink bawling homunculus ingesting milk at one end and extruding shit at the other, he had demanded attention and thwarted her ambitions and plans. As a baby his needs, vociferously expressed, had held her captive in the house and driven her husband away. Nor had things improved as he got older. To a suffocating dependency on her he added a selfish determination to drive any rival from the house. Ralph had been very good, putting up with any number of slights and provocations but she knew even his patience would be exhausted in time and Nicky would succeed in expelling him.

Now though Toby seemed to offer her a glimmer of hope. She knew that the contract of sale was really a sham without any legal force but if Toby would only take charge of the boy temporarily, just long enough to knock some sense into him, perhaps she would be freed from his cloying tyranny.

Nicky lifted his head from the pillow and turned his face towards her, tears glistening wetly on his cheeks.

"Why did you let Leslie treat me like that?" the boy demanded. "I hate you all."

Mary felt anger rise within her. Thirteen years of putting up with the selfish little brute's tantrums and temper fits and that was all the gratitude she got. However she allowed no sign of her rage to escape her.

"Come on Nicky," she said speaking softly, "Uncle Toby wants to have a chat with you downstairs."

"I don't want to speak to him," the boy said fighting back the tears, "not after what he let Leslie do to me. What does he want to talk about anyway."

"I don't know Nicky. May be about the holiday you're having together in Pembrokeshire. You set off tomorrow and there's things you probably need to arrange."

"I don't want to go with him not after what he let Leslie do.," Nicky repeated himself stubbornly.

"Don't be silly Nicky you'll have a good time in Pembrokeshire and he probably wants to say he's sorry about Leslie. Now come on downstairs and don't keep Uncle Toby waiting."

Saying this Mary held out her hand. Nicky sniffed loudly, wiped his nose on the back of his hand and then, reaching out, took hold of his mother's hand.

Mary led the way downstairs keeping a firm hold of her son.

Coming down the staircase Nicky could see through the open door from the hall into the sitting room. The further he descended the further into the room and the more he could see. First just Uncle Toby's brogue clad feet standing spread apart on the sitting room carpet facing the door. Then a step further down the staircase his legs up to his knees. A further step and the boy caught sight of the man's hands and the doubled belt.

Just at that moment Toby brought his hands together flexing the belt and then drew them sharply apart. There was a sharp crack as leather struck leather. Nicky stopped dead and tried to break away from his mother's hold. Mary, far bigger and stronger than her son, kept a firm grip of his hand. Exerting all her strength she jerked the boy bodily forward and threw him down the stares. Loosing his footing Nicky descended the staircase in a flurry of flailing arms and legs finishing on his knees on the tiled floor of the hall.

Ahead of him stood Uncle Toby his feet planted firmly apart on the drawing room carpet. Nicky's eyes focused on the heavy leather belt held two handed doubled across the man's body. Again Uncle Toby flexed the belt and then moving his hands sharply apart tightened it with a sharp and to Nicky terrifying crack.

"Get up Nicky and come and stand in front of me," Uncle Toby said speaking very softly and quietly.

As he spoke he smiled and Nicky catching sight of the smile glanced desperately around for a way of escape but there was none. His mother coming down the stairs behind him blocked his way back into the hall. Leslie and Guy grinning in anticipation and flushed with excitement waited in the drawing room ready to overcome any reluctance on his part.

"Come on Nicky," Uncle Toby spoke again and smiling that cold cruel smile that seemed to drain the strength from Nicky's limbs beckoned the boy forward pointing to a spot about a yard from where he stood.

Reluctantly Nicky moved forward. His knees felt weak and his legs shook.

"Did your Mother tell you to put on your pyjamas trousers?" Uncle Toby enquire mildly.

"No Uncle Toby, I 3;,"

Nicky got no further in his answer before Toby exploded into violent action lashing the belt across the front of Nicky's thighs.

"Don't you dare say 'no' to me whore and I'm not your Uncle Toby anymore either. You call me 'Mister Toby' or better still "Mister Toby Sir", You show me respect. You here me boy."

"Scream would you," Toby continued, "I'll give you something to scream about."

The room descended into pandemonium, the deep enraged roars and curses of the man rising over and dominating the boy's shrill screams and desperate pleas for mercy, all punctuated by the sharp explosive crack of leather striking naked boy's flesh.

"Toby please Toby," Mary's woman's voice rose urgently over the noise, "do stop please. I don't want blood on the carpet. It will spoil it if you get blood on it. Please."

Toby stood back panting deeply looking down at the sobbing boy driven down onto his hands and knees on the floor by the blows showered on his defenceless body.

"Get up," he ordered and when Nicky took a little time to respond moved in closer and drove the toe of his heavy shoe into the lad's ribs.

"So it was your own idea to put your pyjama trousers on ?" Toby demanded of the boy.

"Well it wasn't a very good idea," Toby said cutting brusquely across the boy's mumbled reply. "Take them off. Quick now."

Toby raised the strap threateningly and Nicky abandoning any idea of unknotting the waste band hastily pulled his rousers down over his narrow hips and let them tumble to the floor about his ankles.

Automatically he moved his hands to hide his genitals and then howled with pain as Toby slashed down with belt knocking them apart.

"You keep your hands down by your sides whore," Toby shouted. "Let the whole world see what a disgusting little brute you are. Look at your cock sticking up quivering with excitement. You're not shy and you're not modest you're just a filthy minded little bitch boy who is constantly on heat. "

Toby paused and there was a moment of silence broken only by the sounds of Nicky's quiet sobbing.

"Your mother has been telling me about you," Toby said resuming his tirade, his voice shaking with cold fury, "demanding everything and giving nothing, a spoilt, lazy, selfish, stupid little bully who has made her life and the life's of everybody else who have had the misfortune to be involved with you a misery."

"You didn't care how unhappy you made her or anybody else, all you cared about was getting your own way and bugger anybody else and she poor lady was too kind and too weak to stop you,"

"Well Nicky I have to tell you those days are over. I'm taking charge of you now and you'll find I'm neither weak nor kind and as a starter I'm going to warm that tender little bottom of yours with my belt."

"Get down across the arm of the settee."

"Come on boy."

There was a sharp crack and Nicky squealed as Toby cut him yet again across the front of the thighs with the belt.

Nicky glanced round looking for help but saw only flushed faces, parted lips and eyes glittering with excitement. Toby raised the belt for another blow and with a stifled sob the boy hastily got down over the arm of the sofa.

"Get your bottom right up in the air Nicky" Toby said and slipping his left hand between the back of the boy's thighs pushed upwards.

"Six strokes I think," Toby said patting Nicky on his raised bottom.

"I suppose Nicky," He continued speaking in an almost conversational tone of voice, as he stood back looking down on the boy's naked body stretched out over the arm of the settee his pale bottom lifted ready for the strap's harsh kiss, "this will be the first time you have been beaten."

"I thought so," he continued interpreting a faint sob from the boy as an affirmative. "The one thing you've got to remember is that you have to stay down until you are told the beating is over and you have been given permission to stand up. If you stand up before then or roll off the sofa or anything you will have to get back up, none of the strokes up to then will count and the beating will start all over again."

"Now Ralph, as this is Nicky's first beating and I don't want to over face a young horse, would you be kind enough to help him. Just get a firm grip of his shoulders and hold him down while I apply the belt to his nice little rump."

"Got a firm grip Ralph, good."

Toby lifted the doubled belt over his shoulder paused a moment as the boy clenched his bottom in anticipation of the pain to come and then struck down with all the strength he could muster. There was an explosive crack as leather struck taught stretched boy's flesh followed after a second's pause by a shrill howl of juvenile agony. Nicky's body jerked convulsively as the strap curled round his bottom and bit into his tender flesh. A white stripe briefly bisected the curve of Nicky's bottom where the strap had landed which darkened and reddened as the blood flowed back and the bruising began to form.

"Got him alright Ralph?" Toby asked as the man struggled to hold the boy in place.

"Yes, I've got him OK but he's surprisingly strong."

"Well hold the little turd tight this one will hurt him more."

Again there was the hiss of the descending strap followed by the sharp snap of the strap biting into bare flesh. This time Nicky's scream of pain was supplemented by the frantic drumming of the boy's bare feet on the floor as pain coursed through his body.

"For heaven's sake Nicky try to keep the noise down a bit," Toby said impatiently, "have some consideration for the neighbours."

But the boy's screams rose in volume and intensity as the beating progressed and the boy's naked body writhed under the lash.

At last the final stroke ripped down across the broken flesh of Nicky's bruised bottom.

Toby bent down to examine his handiwork.

"It looks like the Sunday joint before it goes in the oven," remarked Leslie giggling with excitement..

"Oh dear," Mary said, "I do hope the dinner isn't burnt. I've forgotten all about it in the excitement. Perhaps you would all go though while I put it on the table."

"Don't worry about me at least," Toby said taking hold of Nicky by the ear and twisting it hard as he dragged the sobbing boy into the dining room, "I'll enjoy my meal whatever, beating a boy always gives me an appetite."

Keeping a grip of Nicky's ear he caught hold of a dining room chair with his free hand and pulled it from the table spinning it so that its back was up against the wall.

"Get up on there facing the wall."

"Please Mister Toby Sir could I have something to eat?" Nicky whimpered.

"No you damned well can't. You're going to get used to going to bed hungry with a sore bottom. Now get up there."

Toby brought the strap cracking down across the seat of the chair.

Nicky suspecting the next cut would be across his own bottom if he delayed any longer scrambled up onto the chair.

"Face the wall and clasp your hands on the back of your neck, feet slightly apart. Let everybody see the bruises on your bare bottom so they know what an evil badly behaved brat you are."

Toby bent forward to examine the damage he had inflicted on Nicky's bottom.

"I don't think there's any actual bleeding. I aimed most of my strokes along the crease of his arse where they'll burn most and linger longest."

"Look," he continued using two fingers of his right hand to hold the crease open," you can see there's no blood just deep discolouration. He's going to feel that for a time."

He prodded Nicky's bruised flesh, it's colouring deepening from an angry red to a blood shot purple with a. yellowish penumbra extorting a shrill squeal of pain from the boy.

Toby laughed and delivered a hearty open handed slap across his young nephew's ravaged backside.

"You're not going to enjoy the car journey tomorrow boy," he remarked laughing heartily before turning away to take his place at dining room table.

"Give me quite a bit of that ham Mary," he ordered cheerfully, "a little mild exercise flogging a boy's bottom before a meal always does wonders for my appetite."

Standing on the chair facing the blank wall, his hands clasped behind his neck and his bum burning from the strap, Nicky felt isolated and rejected. He could hear the sound of voices and laughter from the adults sitting round the dining room table behind him. He even could initially make out individual words and phrases but soon the voices merged into a jumble of indistinguishable sounds and the wall began to waver in front of his eyes.

He came round lying on the floor. Through a thick mist he could see Rupert and Uncle Toby looking down on him.

"What the hell do you think you are doing you stupid boy?" demanded Rupert angrily.

Nicky yelped as Toby kicked him hard in the ribs.

"Get back up quick," he ordered.

The mist was clearing a bit and Nicky saw Leslie advancing on him as he lay helpless on the carving fork clasped in her right hand.

"Let me get at the stupid little sod," she ordered her voice brittle with rage.

She was standing over him. She stabbed down with the fork driving the two sharp prongs into the side of his thigh.

The pain was intense. Nicholas screamed and jumped to his feet clasping his hand to his wounded thigh. Looking down he saw blood welling from between his fingers and beginning to flow down the side of his leg.

"Stupid boy," Leslie raged, "crashing down like that he made me tip my plate over my jeans – look at them."

She gestured down at the front of her jeans which were stained with fresh food.

"For God's sake," Mary screamed grabbing Nicky by the back of his neck and hustling out him out of the room into the hallway, "what did I say about keeping blood off the carpet? Can't you show some sense. Stand on the tiles where it will be easy to wipe off."

She clipped Nicky on the back of the head in her irritation.

"If somebody would get some plaster I'll slap it onto the wound and we won't need to bother about the bleeding," Toby remarked mildly.

"You going to make him get back up on the chair?" Rupert asked after the plaster had staunched the bleeding.

"No," Toby replied, "he'll only fall off again. Once a brat starts falling about he'll just go on doing so till he gets some sleep and he's got a long couple of days ahead of him what with going up to London tomorrow and then onto Pembrokeshire the day after. He can go up to bed now."

"What happens if he does a runner?" Rupert asked with all the natural caution of an accountant.

"He won't," Toby replied confidently. "He's too tired and too frightened to do anything else but crawl into bed and pull the duvet over his head and cry himself to sleep."

"How do you know? I'd runaway if I had been treated like we've treated him."

"You're not thirteen years old, scared stiff with a sore bottom," Toby rejoined sharply and taking hold of Nicky by the chin tipped his head back.

"Look into his eyes if you doubt me. There's nothing there, no life, no resistance, nothing except fear. Anyway how are we to secure him? I haven't got any manacles or leg irons. I didn't know they might be needed."

"I know what you might use," Leslie interrupted the two men abruptly, "hang on. I'll get it."

She crossed the hall to open the inside door to the garage. She went through it to return a few seconds later carrying a short length of chain with a small padlock attached to one end.

"The chain and padlock to lock up Nicky's bicycle," Leslie explained, "I borrowed it the other day and just thought of it. Here's the key. Do you think it would be any good.?"

"Thanks," Toby said, "it'll do fine. I'm sure I'll find something to tether the brat to."

"Come on boy, upstairs don't hang around, you've caused enough problems already tonight," and he set off urging Nicky on up to his bedroom with a series of sharp open handed slaps across his already bruised bottom.

Half way up the stairs he turned and called down.

"I suppose you've got a chamber pot somewhere Mary. Could you fetch it up please I don't want Nicky making a mess in the night."

Toby looked round Nicky's bedroom swinging the length of chain idly in his hand. As he did so the naked boy stood beside him, head down and shoulders slumped, all the fight gone out of him.

"That'll do," Toby exclaimed and pulling the duvet off the bed threw it down on the floor beside the radiator. Gripping Nicky by the back of his neck he marched him across to stand beside the duvet, kneeling he passed the chain round one of the central heating pipes and passed it back through one of its own links. Then he looped it round the boy's ankle and fastened it in place with the padlock. He jerked the chain hard ensuring that it was tightly secured.

Mary came into the room carrying an earthen ware chamber pot.

"Put the pot on the floor by the boy would you please Mary. Now Nicky squat down and have a shit."

Surprise followed shortly by utter dismay chased the themselves across the boy's face. The demand that he should squat and relief himself in full view of his mother and Uncle Toby was so outrageous that it took a few seconds for the full meaning of Toby's words to register. When at last they did Nicky was momentarily struck dumb with horror and surprise.

"Stop gaping at me boy and get on with it," Toby snapped hefting the doubled belt menacingly in his right hand.

"Mum, please 3;" Nicky whined 3; But even before he could complete his desperate appeal Toby had brought the leather strap cracking down across the front of his thighs.

"Get down on the pot like you were told boy," Toby roared and raised his hand to strike again.

Nicky hurriedly obeyed

"I don't why he always has to make such a fuss about the simplest of things," Mary remarked tiredly.

"Don't worry, he won't be so fussy after I've had him for a few days," Toby replied looking down at the top of the boy's fair head as he crouched at his feet on the pot his narrow shoulders shaken with silent sobs.

"Come on get on with it," Toby said prodding the boy in the bottom with his foot, "don't keep us hanging about."

"Finished?" he asked a second or two later..

There was a faint incoherent mumble from Nicky's hunched figure.

"Good stand up."

Toby glanced quickly down into the pot as Nicky scrambled to his feet.

"Good that will do 3; Now stay where you are while I get some loo paper for you to wipe yourself clean."

Toby was back from the bathroom very quickly carrying a large wad of toilet paper. He tore it roughly in half and handed one part to Nicky.

As Nicky bent over to wipe his bottom he felt that he had reached the ultimate in humiliation being forced to shit himself in front of his mother and then to wipe himself clean with her watching him.

He was soon though to be proved wrong.

"Drop the used paper in the pot," Toby commanded, "now legs apart and bend over right over and li'll check if you have got yourself really clean."

"Mary your son is really a grubby little brute. "

"You'll have to learn to do a better job than that Nicky. Stand still while I clean you up properly."

Placing one hand on the back of the boy's head he began to work vigorously at wiping the boy's bottom clean.

"That's better," he said at last having forced the paper between the lips of the boy's anus. "You can straighten up now Nicky and you'd better do better next time or you'll be getting another taste of the belt."

Nicky straightened up and Mary exclaimed in surprise..

"It's just the way Nicky's seems to have a perpetual erection," she explained in reply to Toby's questioning glance. "Are all boys his age the same. Do you think he started to masturbate already?"

Toby shot a quick glance at his sister seeing her eyes slightly unfocused and her face flushed with drink decided he would take the opportunity offered to further undermine young Nicky.

"I'm glad you asked me that Mary," he said seriously, "I recognised some time ago that I needed I to have a serious talk with you about Nicky."

"Boys come in all shapes and sizes," Toby said carelessly cocking his head at on one side and taking a good look at the naked boy who stood, head bowed, his little prick upright and quivering beside him. "Nicky is of a fairly common type and one of which there are all too many examples among the street kids on the island. Physically quite advanced they are emotionally limited if not retarded. Often superficially quite likeable they are utterly irresponsible. If they want something they grab it regardless of the consequences for themselves or for other people. They lack any sense of restraint or self awareness. I am afraid that if Nicky hasn't already started on a career of minor pilfering he will do so before too long.

"Oh dear Nicky is difficult but I didn't think he was that bad."

"You ask whether I think the boy has started to masturbate. Well he's thirteen years old and I would guess he has been at it since he was ten or eleven. But it is easy to establish one way or the other by a simple experiment."

Toby grabbed hold of Nicky by the arm with to hold him still while with the other he began to gently manipulate the boy's hairless balls.

"Stand still boy," he snapped as Nicky tried to pull away from him.

"Oh please, please don't Mister Toby please," the boy begged on the verge of tears. He could not conceive of a greater humiliation than being forcibly masturbated in front of his mother.

"Stand still," Toby ordered sharply as the boy drew back.

"Please no. Please 3;,"

The boy's protests fell away into incoherent moans and whimpering as the man's questing hand aroused his lust. The boy's head went back, his eyes glazed over, his breath came in short harsh gasps through parted lips.

"There you are. I said so. He's coming. Now here we are."

Nicky's head went back. He arched his back. The muscles in his hard little rump tensed and moved convulsively as he shot jets of boy juice into Toby's cupped hand.

"Look I told you so," Toby said holding his hand out for Mary to see as Nicky stood hunched and panting between them.

"Quite a good load of boy juice," Toby remarked judiciously after examining the congealing puddle in the palm of his hand. "Quite enough to get a girl in trouble and I wouldn't be surprised if that's the next thing the little brute will get up to. That and theft and street robbery and drugs unless he is checked."

Casually Toby wiped his hand clean on the tightly drawn skin of the boy's rib cage leaving a long smear of drying cum.

"Oh dear," Mary exclaimed, "what ever shall I do?"

"We'll one thing you can't do is to change the nature of the boy. What he is he, worst luck, is. But I can change his behaviour. We have had some experience in dealing with feral boys on the island and we have evolved a programme that tames the most difficult of them. I think after I have had the boy for three weeks you will notice a marked improvement in his behaviour. He will altogether quieter and more obedient and respectful and I'll even do something towards controlling his self abuse. It won't be a permanent character change so you'll need to keep bearing down on him but if you find him getting out of hand again you can send him out to me on the island for a refresher course."

"That would be a great change and one for the better but it's a bit hard on you to have spend your time teaching Nicky to behave himself."

"On the contrary Mary I am sure I will enjoy myself.

Toby moved his hand from the back of Nicky's neck and clipped him lightly on the back of the head.

"Get down on the duvet cover," he ordered.

With some clinking of the chain round his ankle Nicky stretched himself on the floor and Toby folded the duvet over him.

"If I hear a sound from you," Toby grated prodding the boy with his toe to make sure he was paying attention, "I shall be back in here giving you another hiding with the belt. You understand me?"

"Yes Mister Toby Sir."

The boy's voice was hardly more than a whisper and as he fought to choke back his sobbing.

Nicky lay in the dark the stripes on his bottom and thighs burning fiercely. If he had been born fifty or so years earlier the chances are that by thirteen he would have been used to the ritual of being beaten; the humiliating preliminaries of stripping, bending and presenting his tightly clenched bare bottom raised ready for the strap; the sharp agony of the actual flogging, followed by the period of humiliation and repentance of 'corner time'.

Now though, a child of the twenty first century and of the enlightened West, Nicky had been denied any experience that prepared him for the ordeal that he had just endured. At his school boys modestly showered after sports without removing their shorts and strove afterwards, through complicated gyrations with towels and underpants, to hide from public gaze the more intimate, and interesting, parts of their bodies while the cane had not been used within the memory of any teacher, let alone boy.

He struggled to grasp the reality of what had happened to him. That he had been forced to stand naked in front of his mother and Leslie, that Mister (not Uncle for he was forbidden to call him that now) Toby had set out deliberately to hurt him, these were things so utterly foreign to his world that it was difficult for him to accept they had actually happened. Yet the burning pain that seemed to flow from his bottom and fill his whole body announced in the most convincing fashion that they had.

But it was not the pain and humiliation associated with the beating that he found the hardest to grasp. More shattering to his world was his rejection by his mother. That his sister should turn against him did not surprise him. Their relationship had always been a difficult one but his mother had just always been there, For as long as he could remember she had been ready to support him and comfort him apparently unstinting in her love and affection but now suddenly he knew that this was a lie. Far from giving him the unconditional love that he supposed she resented every fragment of attention that he had expected and demanded over the years. Slowly through the fog of pain and the turmoil of his emotions the fact and scale this rejection dawned on him. He was alone in the world with no one to turn to for protection or help. And to make matters worse she had handed him over to her brother for three weeks, a man who had savagely beaten him while she and her boy friend and his own sister watched and enjoyed his humiliation and suffering. Then, the ultimate humiliation, Mister Toby had then masturbated him in front of her.

Nor would that be the end of his ordeal for Mister Toby had spoken of having him brought out to him in the East to bring variety to his existing household of dark haired, chocolate coloured street kids

Nicky had had up to Uncle Toby's appearance no real experience of sex beyond his own clumsy fumblings with himself and no knowledge beyond what he could glean from hurried and surreptitious sorties onto the Net and the explicit but only partly understood language of the school yard. That knowledge though, supplemented by his as yet limited experiences at the hands of Mister Toby was enough. He remembered Mister Toby's lips pressed against his, the man's tongue darting snake like into his mouth, his hands exploring his body and toying with his genitals, and his sheer overwhelming strength. Despite his hotly burning bottom, his bitter humiliation at Mister Toby's hands and his fear of what the future would bring Nicky felt himself grow hard.

He rolled over onto his tummy.The chain round his ankle clanked and for the moment he lay in the dark trembling, fearing that Mr Toby would be alerted by the sound and return to give him another dose of the strap. Minutes passed, the door stayed closed. His cock pressing against the duvet beneath him swelled and hardened. He thought of Mister Toby, of the man's tongue thrusting down into his throat, his hands exploring his body, the strength that allowed the man to handle him with as much ease as if he was an inanimate slab of meat. He thought of the future, of the coming three weeks that he was to spend with Mister Toby in the cottage by the sea in Pembrokeshire, with a mixture of fear and excitement.

He realised he had better get a wad of toilet paper or a handkerchief. He got his knees under him to crawl across to the chest of drawers but was checked by the chain about his ankle. He knew he should stop but he could not, it was too late. His imagination ranged further into the future and his excitement and trepidation swelled inside him. He was out in the East on the island among a crowd of naked brown skinned boys. Mr Toby was there, naked too, sporting an immense cock that jutted aggressively from a thick ginger forest of coarse pubic hair.

Nicky was sucked into a vortex of writhing, sweating, chocolate coloured flesh as he and the other boys swarmed around Mister Toby struggling to arouse the man competing with one another to caress and excite with tongues and lips. Wriggling and pushing his way though a tangle of bare limbs he managed to press his face into Mister Toby's crutch. Running his tongue along the length of the swollen column of flesh and gristle that rose, cruelly demanding from Mister Toby thick forest of coarse dark red pubic hair he felt the man's blood seething under his touch.

Then the inevitable happened. His blood surged and he gave himself over to the exquisite all absorbing pleasures of a multiple orgasm that banished everything else from his consciousness.

As always the moment of escape was only a brief one. The blackness cleared from the boy's mind and he was aware once more of lying naked on his face in the dark. Under his tummy he felt his ejaculated sperm, a large wet patch, warm and sticky, slowly congealing where it lay, soaking into the duvet. It was too late now to clean it up even if he had had the means to do so, which he had not. All he could do was to lie there tethered in place by the chain about his ankle until Mr Toby came to release him in the morning.

And what would Mr Toby think, and more to the point do, when he saw the unmistakable evidence of what he had been up to. Mr Toby had spoken to his mother about breaking him of the habit of masturbating and he could hardly miss seeing that that was exactly what Nicky had been doing. The man would surely not let such open defiance pass. Nicky supposed it would probably mean another thrashing with the belt on an already well striped bottom.

Nicky lay there exhausted but unable to sleep. The stripes on his bottom burnt with redoubled intensity. He looked forward to the morning and the coming of Mr Toby with sick dread. He imagined the man looming over him as he huddled naked on the floor; Mr Toby's foot prodding him in the ribs forcing him reluctantly to his feet and then the man's sharp exclamation of disgust as he caught sight of the semen stains on the duvet. Then what? Would Mr Toby set to work straight away with the belt as he capered and howled under the lash or would he drag him downstairs so that the rest of his family could witness his shame and punishment?

But this Nicky realised was just the beginning.

Day after day stretched ahead of him, under Mr Toby's harsh tutelage, naked and fearful of the strap. Obedience alone would not be enough. He would have to learn to abandon any vestiges of pride or modesty that he might retain, to devote himself to Mr Toby service and pleasure, to anticipate his wishes and needs and to act to satisfy them before they were expressed or even recognised It was a terrifying prospect but also a strangely exciting one.

***

It was only when the first grey light of the early summer dawn was beginning to filter into the room that Nicky at last fell into an uneasy sleep. He woke to find sunlight streaming through the window. He was lying on his belly the duvet, damp with sweat and other liquids, under him. Thinking back he was uncertain how may times he had cum during the night. Once when Mister Toby had wanked him in front of his mother, once more after he was left alone in the darkness, but after that he was not sure. Thinking back the night was a jumble where dreams and half waking fantasies merged seamlessly together.

He had no watch but judging from the brightness of the sun and the sound of the occasional car passing in the street outside it was well into the day. The house though seemed to be strangely quiet. He had got used over the long summer holidays to lying in bed well into the day and knew the different sounds that filled the house as the hours passed. By mid-morning both Rupert and. Leslie would have long left for work, Rupert to tussle with endlessly on behalf of the BBC with figures in his office and Leslie to wait tables at the Little Chef where she had her holiday job. Mum though would be there and there would be the sounds of her moving round the house. Now there was nothing but silence.

It seemed as if the house was deserted. Of course Mum and Rupert would have left some hours ago to catch the flight to Bordeaux and Leslie would have set off for work at her usual time and would by now be busy serving all day breakfasts.

For a time he lay enjoying the quiet his still burning backside a reminder of the ordeal he had endured the previous night. Then he began to worry. Was he alone in the house? Where was Mr Toby? Had he gone too. There was no sound of movement in the house. If Mr Toby was gone what was going to happen to him?

The thought of Leslie serving all day breakfasts reminded Nicky that he had had no supper and he began to realise how hungry he was. He sat up and pulled at the chain padlocked round his ankle trying to free himself by forcing it over his heel. But it was soon clear that it had had been much too tightly fastened to allow this. He manoeuvred himself round on his bottom so that his feet were braced against the wall and then taking the chain in both hands tried to break it loose from the central heating pipe to which it had been secured. However the heating having been installed many years ago was robustly made and neither the chain nor the pipe showed any sign of yielding.

Nicky fought panic. All right he told himself I maybe alone in the house and Mum has certainly gone off on holiday but probably Mr Toby had gone out just to get something from the shops and would be back in a minute. And anyway Leslie would be back from work in the evening and would let him loose then. All he had to do was wait and be patient though he wished somebody would turn up soon. He was getting hungrier and hungrier.

Time dragged by. His computer was on the desk under the window. If he could have reached it he could have played a game or gone on the Net to pass the time but the chain round his ankle was too short. All he could do was to lie on his side staring at the blank wall of his bedroom and wait.

He should he told himself just go back to sleep. Certainly he was tired enough but he was too frightened and nervous to do so..

Time passed, how much he could not tell but it seemed an awfully long time. He told himself he had to be patient, someone was bound to come in time.

But suppose no one did. Perhaps Mr Toby had gone to the shops and had a heart attack or car accident or just decided that he wasn't going to be bothered to come back and fetch him. Suppose Leslie Instead of coming back in the evening took the opportunity offered by Mum being off on holiday to move in with her boy friend. He had heard the pair of them whispering together about spending a few nights together. What if tonight was the first night of a number? How many days would a slightly built already very hungry thirteen year old boy last without food and water?

Nicky decided he wouldn't struggle. Why should he? Life didn't have much to offer him. Nobody cared about him, not Mum, not his sister Leslie nor his Uncle Toby or rather Mr Toby. So he wouldn't make a fight of it. He would just lie down and wait until hunger and thirst killed him off. That would make them all feel guilty.

He imagined Mum finding his naked emaciated body curled into a ball on the bedroom floor on her return from holiday. That would be in three weeks time. He would probably have begun to rot by then. There would be an awful smell and flies and for all he knew rats.

He settled himself to wait for the end.

He woke from a light doze with a start. He thought he heard something rustle. Perhaps it was a rat. There was no reason if rats were about why they should wait till he was dead before they started to snack on his flesh. He was tethered in place. All they had to do was to find him, wait till he was asleep before beginning to gnaw on his body or face. Perhaps even now they were waiting their chance under the bed, or behind the desk or the skirting boards. They would start to eat him while he was still alive just as a crows did with a dying sheep, starting with the eyes.

Nicky lost it. He somehow scramble to his knees, seized the chain tethering him in place and began to yank on it with all the strength he could muster screaming for help, for someone to come and free him. The quiet acceptance of his position was forgotten replaced by an hysterical determination to free himself before the rats which in his imagination were now creeping ever closer about him.

Toby returning from dropping Mary and Rupert at the airport heard the boy's screams and the sounds of his struggling with the chain as he unlatched the door into the house.

Slamming the door behind him he ran up the stairs. He had deliberately not hurried on the way back from the airport, stopping for a leisurely coffee and a read of the morning paper at a service station.

There was plenty of time he thought to get to London before the early evening and it would do Nicky no harm to be left alone to stew for a couple of hours. A period of quiet reflection so that the brat grasped the full hopelessness and misery of his situation could not but have a beneficial effect. He had expected to return to find Nicky very subdued and very frightened. In brief in exactly the state of terrified submissiveness that one wants to induce in a brat. Instead Nicky was yelling his head off and by the sound of it was in danger of wrecking the house in his attempts to break free of the chain round his ankle.

Grasping the short length of rubber piping he had helped himself to from the neatly rolled garden hose in the garage on the grounds that he needed his belt to hold his trousers up and he had to have something to beat the boy with, he dashed up the stairs.

Bursting into Nicky's bedroom he found the boy in a frenzy, screaming hysterically, as he fought to break free of the chain. Bent double so that he could grasp the short length of chain with both hands, his bare heels scrabbling for purchase on the bedroom floor, he threw himself backwards trying to wrench the central heating pipe round which the chain was looped from its brackets. The pipe had withstood his efforts so far but Toby could see that the screws holding the brackets in place were beginning to start from the wall. If that happened the screws would not hold and then it would not be long before the pipe broke and the house flooded with water. The boy had to be stopped.

Hysteria and terror gripped Nicky to the exclusion of everything else.. He did not hear the thud of Toby's approaching footsteps as he pounded up the stairs, nor the crash as the man threw open his bedroom door.

"Stop that now you stupid little cunt," Toby roared as he hurled himself across the bedroom floor towards the stooped figure of the frantic brat and he smashed the length of hosepipe down across the crown of Nicky's fair head.

"Don't you dare raise your hands to me when I'm beating you," he thundered and delivered a second blow deliberately catching the brat across the back of his hands that he had raised in an attempt to protect his head.

Nicky howled and hastily dropped his hands. Toby seeing his chance delivered two sharp blows, fore and backhanded to either side of the boy's head deliberately catching him across the ears.

The slut slumped forward and Toby smashed the pipe down across his narrow shoulders.

For a brief moment the blow left a broad pale, almost dead white line, across the boy's lightly tanned skin which rapidly darkened as the blood flowed back and the bruise began to form. Toby watched fascinated as the colour of the stripe changed and deepened from angry red to a blood shot purple. Before the day was over he knew the mark would spread, darken further and acquire a yellowish pen-umbra as the deeper bruising came out.

He hoped it was not a sign of racial prejudice but he could not hide from himself that he found white boys in many respects considerably more entertaining to beat than darker skinned brats. With the latter you missed most of the subtle changes of colour that the rod forcibly applied etched across the lighter boy hides.

The boy had now collapsed on his knees and was bent forward his face pressed to the ground, narrow shoulders heaving, whimpering quietly.

Toby paused for a moment enjoying the spectacle of the boy's distress and wondering to himself whether his whimpers were more of fear and despair than of pain. However time was getting on and he wanted to have the boy and himself in London before it was dark.

Bending down Toby took careful aim and flicked the hose so its tip snapped against the soul of one of Nicky's bare feet. His body jerked convulsively as if he had had an electric probe applied to his foot.

"Up, up you insolent little cunt," Toby screamed in his ear. "You get to your feet turd if one of your betters enters a room."

"And do you know who your betters are?" he asked driving his toe into the Nicky's rump as the brat scrambled to his feet.

"Everybody apart from other filth like you," he told Nicky answering his own question.

"Well let's have a look at you whore," he shouted and raised the rubber hose threateningly.

"Please don't hit me any more Mister Toby," Nicky pleaded cowering away from the man looming over him.

"I said let's have a look at you. Come on," Toby grated.

The boy he thought to himself as he flicked the tip of the hose pipe against the side of Nicky's arm had the eyes of a frightened animal.

"Please Mister Toby please," the Nicky pleaded, tears streaming down his cheeks.

It seemed to him he was hurting all over. His bottom was sore, his shoulders were sore. He eyed the length of rubber hosing in Mister Toby's hand fearfully. He'd only had four blows from it but they had hurt and he would do anything to avoid being hit with it again. But it was clear Mister Toby was about to do precisely that.

The man was holding the pipe down by the side of his right thigh weighing it in his hand. Nicky was almost mesmerised by the way its end moved menacingly inches away from his bare thigh, snake like ready to strike and bury its fangs in his bare flesh.

It was clear Mister Toby was waiting for him to do something, something that followed from wanting to have a look at him. Mister Toby had used those words twice now and would not wait much longer. Already he was moving his feet just slightly further apart, lifting the short length of pipe, setting himself to resume the flogging. At any moment the man would start to lay into him again. Panic stricken Nicky raked his mind trying to work out what Mister Toby expected him to do. Terror gripped him driving every thought from his head except fear of having to endure the agony of another beating. He felt the strength drain out of his legs, his knees began to shake under him. He was loosing his balance. Soon he would be down on his knees. He clasped his hands together, his last hope he thought in a confused sort of way was to beg for forgiveness. Forgiveness for what he was not clear, but he must have done something very evil and bad to have everyone turn on him and beat him the way they had.

The act of clasping his hands brought a flash of memory that took him back to the previous evening. He was standing on the chair facing the dining room wall his hands clasped behind his head his sore bottom on display.

Suddenly he knew what he had to do. Struggling to still the trembling in his legs he turned so that he was facing Mister Toby and bowing his head he clasped his hands behind his neck.

He felt exposed and vulnerable. He could feel the man's cold eyes resting on his naked body. It seemed to him he was being looked at not as an individual, a boy who had feelings and thoughts that had to be considered and taken account of, but as a mere thing or object. He remembered the previous night and his Mother and Mister Toby discussing his sale price. Now he thought, like then, Mister Toby was treating him as if he was no more than a young animal, a pony perhaps or a puppy, that he had bought and needed to break or train.

He was very aware of the sheer size of the man standing so close and towering over him. Mister Toby was big enough and strong enough to force him to do anything he wanted. He could not, chained by his ankle to the wall, even try to runaway.

But with the fear came a strange feeling of excitement. He had felt it a little the previous evening when he had first been made to strip and stand naked in front of Mister Toby now it returned in even stronger form. Fearful, his naked body bruised and sore from multiple beatings, he still felt as though together with his clothes, his modesty and his dignity he had lost something else, something constraining and burdensome.

This feeling made no sense to him but he felt it and it excited him. His prick already semi- stiff hardened. It leapt quivering to attention, it's swollen pink tip peeping out from his foreskin and bumping against the front of his tummy just below his belly button.

"Good little slut."

Mister Toby's approval, sent the blood racing to Nicky's cheeks as he blushed with pleasure. The man had achieved such dominance over the boy that his praise delivered even in the most insulting terms excited him. He squirmed in excitement and gratitude. He tried to say something but fear and nervousness almost choked him and he only managed to croak a few indistinguishable sounds.. His already distended cock seemed to swell a fraction more and the boy pushed his hips forwards seeming to offer his hairless balls and eagerly quivering cock to the man in a gesture of total submission.

Mister Toby looked at Nicky a thin smile of amused contempt on his lips. He saw Nicky's eyes glazed with lust and excitement his ribs moving under the thin flesh of his ribcage as he struggled for breath, and heard his moans of frustration. So far the boy had responded well to schooling.

Mister Toby reached out and took Nicky's so blatantly offered testicles rolling them gently between the finger and thumb of his right hand. The boy's body shuddered with excitement. Arching his back Nicky whimpered softly.

"You love it don't you bitch?" Mister Toby murmured quietly and taking a firm grip of the boy's balls drew him closer.

"Mister Toby Sir, please, please 3;" Nicky's voice was little more than a hoarse whisper and tailed off into incoherence.

Chapter Six

Toby gripped the boy's chin between the finger and thumb of his free hand. Tipping Nicky's head back he spent a few seconds looking down into the slut's face. Nicky seemed to have problems drawing his breath, it came in short shallow pants through slightly parted lips. His face was blank and empty of expression but his eyes were wide with lust and fear.

The man smiled a cruel, mirthless smile, that hardly touched his lips and then bent and kissed Nicky hard on the mouth. . He thrust his tongue between the boy's parted lips who moaned and pushed his naked body forward pressing close against the clothed man.

Toby slid his free hand down Nicky's back feeling under his fingers the ridges he had scored with his belt across the boy's smooth flesh. He allowed his hand to rest on the curve of Nicky's firm bottom. Nicky whimpered and moved uneasily as the man's touch simultaneously reawakened the soreness of his deeply bruised flesh and raised his lust to new levels of intensity. He locked his arms tight around the man's neck as Toby gently probed the cleft in the boy's bottom with his index finger. Toby abandoning his teasing of the Nicky's small throbbing prick shifted his right hand to the back of the boy's neck gripping it firmly as he crushed the slut's lips under his own. Nicky arched his back and moaned softly as Toby began to gently probe his boy hole pressing his finger tip between the lips of his anus doing enough to excite but not to hurt the slut.

Suddenly Toby pulled away from the boy. Taking Nicky's wrists he gently but firmly pulled them apart.

"Get your hands back behind your head and keep them there," Toby ordered quietly as he guided the unresisting boy's hands back into position.

"Stand up straight and stand still," he snapped as he continued to finger the boy's hairless balls and small but rigid prick.

Toby's agile fingers lifted Nicky to fresh heights of excitement and lust. The boy moaned quietly and his eyes lost focus, his breath came in ever shorter and harsher pants as he was taken nearer and nearer to the point of crisis. He threw his head back and his body shuddered as he spurted boy juice over Toby's hand. The orgasm over he slumped down, almost doubling over but still, Toby noted with satisfaction, keeping his hands clasped behind his head; a reassuring indication of the ascendancy that he had already established over the brat although he knew there was much more work to do before the boy reached the stage of total and unquestioning subservience that, in Toby's opinion, was his natural and proper condition.

Nicky a moment before born clear of all earthly bonds or fears by the force of his lust crashed down to earth as the cum gushed from his little cock over the palm of Toby's

hand. One moment he was riding high and clear the next he was a terrified boy ashamed and embarrassed by his failure to control his animal nature.

"Please Mister Toby," he whimpered, "I am sorry Sir, please don't hit me. I didn't mean to do it."

"Straighten up Nicky, shoulders back boy," Toby said his voice amused almost kindly. "Don't take on so. You're a slut and sluts are always squirting cum. It's just part of being a slut."

He knew he would have to curb this aspect of the Nicky's sexuality before his mastery of the boy was complete, he knew also that this would be a struggle and more easily brought to a successful conclusion if he had the use of certain devices to supplement the strap and his own will power. For now he would concentrate on the easier task of destroying the boy's pride and modesty and with them his inhibitions.

Toby reached out and wiped the palm of his cum soiled hand on Nicky's face; grabbing the boy by the scruff of the neck with his free hand as he struggled to turn his head away. Toby felt the boy's nose move under the palm of his hand as he liberally smeared the congealing semen over his face, spreading the viscous mess over eye brows, nostrils and lips.

Toby looked down at his hand and saw it was still sticky and soiled with thick white fluid oozing between his fingers. He rubbed his hand in the boy's mop of flaxen hair in a vane attempt to get it completely clean. Then with an impatient exclamation he thrust it into the boy face.

"Lick it clean whore," he ordered.

A smile flickered across his face as he looked down into the the brat's filth encrusted features that registered distress and disgust with almost comical intensity.

"Lick it clean,," he repeated and then, when the boy whimpered and tried to turn his head away, he deliberately stamped down on the brat's bare foot grinding the heel of his heavy leather brogue down onto the boy's unprotected toes.

Nicky , struggling desperately to break the man's grip, squealed with pain.

"Lick it," Toby grated for the third time remorselessly screwing, his heel down and increasing the pressure. Toby knew he had to enforce obedience to the order once it was given. To do otherwise would destroy his own authority. He had to continue until the brat complied even if that meant reducing the boy's foot to a bloody pulp of broken flesh and fractured bone. And he would do exactly that if necessary although there would be consequences that in one way or the other would have to be overcome. It was a test of wills that he was going to win and the sooner Nicky accepted this the better for the boy.

In the end it did not take all that long for the boy to accept the inevitable. Toby felt the tension flow from the Nicky's body as he silently conceded defeat. A moment later the boy's tongue was damply licking the filth from the palm of his hand.

"Do the job properly and swallow it," Toby ordered.

He pulled his hand away from the boy and briefly inspected it.

"There,s some more of your dirt at the base of my hand. Come on clean it up.,' Toby ordered sharply.

"Now between my fingers and then the back of my hand.," he commanded.

Toby stood for a moment looking down on the crown of the boy's fair head bent over his hand feeling his tongue busy between his fingers. Then he pulled his hand, damp with the boy's saliva, away and drawing it across Nicky's chest wiped it dry.

"Straighten up," Toby ordered and knelt to unlock the chain around the brat's slender ankle.

Kneeling on the ground he could see the semen stains on the duvet cover and his nostrils caught a hint of the faint rank smell of spilt boy juice.

Back on his feet Toby found himself looking down into the boy's frightened tear stained face. He landed three rapid open handed clouts across the boy's face, fore hand, back hand, forehand, the force of the blows rocking the lad on his feet and splitting his lip, sending blood trickling down his chin.

"Get your head down filth," Toby roared in simulated fury at the whimpering boy. "You keep your eyes on the floor in the presence of your betters."

"Now stand still while I take a proper look at you."

While rather beneath his standing in the NGO Toby, whenever the opportunity offered, liked to undertake the initial inspection of new arrivals at the refuge.. He did so because he both enjoyed the work and thought he was rather good at it. He had over the years picked up a certain expertise in recognising the symptoms of the more common diseases, fungal infections and parasites that a street brat might carry. A boy however attractive or however persistent and pressing the pleas of its mother or other sponsor, would never be accepted into the refuge if somewhere on its body it bore for instance the tell tail signs of ring worm or scabies.

But Toby was not only an excellent judge of boy's flesh he also had over the years acquired an expertise in reading boy nature. He could sense almost instinctively whether a boy was cursed with that perversity of spirit that meant that he would always withhold the total and unconditional submission required of refuge brats. What Arab slave traders on the Ivory Coast in the good old days called the "Devil's Eye" and which if detected in a captive Negro condemned him to instant death.

Not many boys were rejected for this reason simply because few suffered from this flaw. He suspected that it was rarer in the dusky island brats bred from an underclass steeped in poverty, conditioned by centuries of exploitation and abuse than among Western boys reared in a culture of rights and privilege. Although he knew half a millennium ago starving boys were being, by order of the Privy Council, picked up off the streets of London and shipped to Virginia as virtual slaves; and five hundred years before that one of the main exports of the British Isles was indeed slaves along, according to the Venerable Bede, with hunting dogs and wine.. So maybe under the apparent bravado Western boys would prove to be, if put to the test and that was exactly what awaited Nicky, as tractable as those from the East. It only required a little more work and effort.

If Toby was asked how he knew a boy was free of the fault he would say he was not sure, it was partly the way the brat carried himself, the set of its shoulders, the way it walked, partly how the boy reacted to the feel of his hand on his body, partly on what he saw in the depths of the boy's eyes but whatever it was he knew. And he had known almost from the moment he had first set eyes on Nicky that beneath the accumulated inhibitions of the twenty first century lurked a hot little boy slut. Remove those inhibitions, liberate the slut and Nicky would be as sexy a boy whore as any of his brown skinned brothers.

Most people referred to what he was doing to the boy as schooling or breaking. Toby though knew he was setting the boy free, liberating him from the myriad rules and conventions that the twenty first century imposed even on fourteen year old boys, letting the natural slut break free reducing the boy's world from a confusing jumble of conflicting rules and conventions to a place of stark simplicity where one thing only would be demanded of him, complete unquestioning obedience.

But before that could be achieved the boy had to be stripped of all pride and modesty reduced to the mere animal that he essentially was.

Toby recognised that a Western boy like Nicky, well housed, well fed, benefiting from free high quality medical care would be much less at risk of the myriad diseases and infestations that he had to guard against when considering admitting some half starved street kid from a filthy sub-tropical slum to the refuge. That did not mean however that he would skimp his examination of the boy.

"I don't know what I have done to be lumbered with a useless ungrateful lump of excrement like you," Toby grumbled as he began this examination of the hapless naked boy, running his fingers through his fair hair and bending to examine its roots for signs of lice.

"You're such a selfish ill mannered nasty little turd," he continued twisting the lad's ear painfully back to check for lice and fleas or the myriad other infestations that a grubby boy's body can harbour, "that even your own mother was glad to be rid of you."

Toby gripped Nicky's face with his right hand forcing his mouth open by pressing his index finger and thumb hard into either side of his jaw. He tipped the boy's head back and peered into his mouth checking for broken or rotten teeth.

"I'm your only chance now boy. I'm the only person left that might take care of you."

He put his forefinger into the boy's mouth and began checking firmness of his teeth.

"And you've hardly got off to a good start have you slut?"

Nicky, his jaws forced apart and Toby's finger pushing against a molar situated right at the back of his mouth could only mumble some incomprehensible plea.

"Stupid, lazy, disobedient, ungrateful brat. The only thing I will say for you; you're a sexy little bitch. But that won't be enough to safe you're skin. Sexy little bitches are three a penny out on the island. For me to keep you you'll have to prove you're as good as them and better. It's a competition slut and a competition that you're loosing even before it has begun."

Withdrawing his finger from the boy's mouth he took the lad's chin between his finger and thumb and began to rotate and tilt the boy's head then he transferred his attention to his neck placing his hands on either side of it and squeezing it with the tips of his fingers, checking for swollen glands.

"You'll have to make me want to keep you," Toby continued quietly, "Convince me that you can make an obedient little whore eager to please and capable of pleasing. Otherwise it's the end of you. There are plenty more where you came from. I paid your Mother forty quid for you which is a hell of a lot for a dirty little tyke and I'm not going to waste more money throwing good after bad."

Toby gripped Nicky by the elbow and pulled his bent arm upwards checking the boy's armpits for sores and the tell tale signs of ring worm. Satisfied he turned his attention to Nicky's chest. The boy was slim without being painfully thin, his ribs were clearly visible but did not stretch the skin or protrude like those of some young African famine victim. He had no difficulty in taking a pinch of flesh from the boy's ribcage between his finger and thumb. Nicky was not overweight for a Western boy but he certainly carried rather more weight than the average street kid. Worked hard and kept hungry he would soon fine down.

Toby squeezed and twisted the boy's nipples and laughed as Nicky moaned in excitement.

The whore's surely not going to cum again he thought as he saw the boy's prick snap to attention, its pink helmet peeping out from the foreskin a bead of precum glistening on its tip.

"That 's enough of that," Toby remarked catching hold of the boy's small hairless balls between his finger and thumb twisting and squeezing them hard. Nicky cried out in pain but Toby kept the pressure up until the boy's prick shrivelled and lost its rigidity.

Nicky gasped as Toby probed his stomach, searching for telltale lumps and hard little nodes,, pressing his thumbs deep into the boy's tummy.

Now Toby turned his attention to the lad's crutch pulling his tight hairless balls to one side

so as to get a clear view of the skin at the very top of his thighs, a warm sweaty hidden area, which in the case of many island boys provided an attractive habitat for body lice, ticks and other parasites.

Not so, thought Toby, it would seem with Western boys as he pried apart the creases in the skin at the top of Nicky's thighs and finding no sign of eggs or mature insects.

This was though more a function of the climate rather than higher standards of personal cleanliness Toby reflected as he rolled back Nicky's foreskin and found the boy as grubby as any brown skinned street kid.

For a moment Toby stood meditatively rolling the loose skin between his finger and thumb, picturing a stained wooden tube slipped over the boy's small penis, the fore skin pulled back over it, and the light glinting on the sharp steel of Stanley knife as it sliced the tightly drawn boy's flesh.

The boy's mother might object, but what could she do about it? Once the job was done it certainly couldn't be undone and she couldn't make a fuss without betraying her own involvement in the boy's abuse.

Nicky stirred uneasily bringing Toby back to the present. He didn't have to make his mind up straight away. It might be better to wait till he got the lad out East when there would be time enough to allow the wound to heal and for the boy to earn his passage money and keep.

Toby felt the boy's skin cool and satin smooth under the palm of his hand as he ran it down Nicky's thighs squeezing them to test their firmness and the depth of their muscles. He carefully examined the skin at the back of the boy's knees for blemishes before turning his attention to the his shins. Then as Nicky steadied himself with both hands against the wall he lifted each foot in turn and subjected it to a close inspection checking yet again for ticks and parasitic worms and paying special attention to the skin between the boy's toes.

Satisfied he straightened and pressed down with the flat of his hand between Nicky's shoulder blades. Responding to the pressure the boy bent forward unintentionally offering his tight boy's rump for inspection.

"Head further down and feet apart," Toby ordered kicking at the inside of the boy's ankles.

"Get your hands round your back and pull the cheeks of your arse apart. Give me a good view of that tight boy's pussy of yours."

In the space of one night Nicky's world had been destroyed, the comfortable, safe world of an average middle class English boy had been shattered and replaced by a much darker more dangerous place. A world where the provision of clothes, food, warmth, shelter, were a matter of course, where the rod or the cane had so long been banished that they had lost their terror, where his body was privileged and sacrosanct, protected against all abuse by the most stringent laws enforced to the letter by cohorts of police and social workers had been shown to be no more than a mirage. As these comforting fantasies were ripped away the ancient inescapable realities reasserted themselves.

Not that Nicky, lonely and terrified, his naked body sore from the strap, aching from hunger and fatigue stood back and dispassionately listed and analysed his humiliations and sufferings. Rather he experienced them as an inchoate jumble of emotions and sensations. It seemed that his mind was a fierce maelstrom of dark waters that tumbled and roared in his head in a confusion of terror and pain.

He could hear Mister Toby's voice harsh and peremptory, demanding instant obedience but the very fierceness of the man's voice increased his terror so that the words became confused in his mind and lost all meaning.

To Mister Toby of course the cause of the boy's apparent disobedience was immaterial. An order had been issued and the boy had to be made to obey it.

"Come on fuck it move boy. Don't you play shy with me whore," Toby roared in a sudden access of rage. Grabbing Nicky between the legs with one hand and by the scruff of the neck with the other he drove the boy's head into the bedroom wall. Toby felt Nicky's legs give way under him but keeping his grip on the boy's neck and balls he smashed his head into the wall for a second time

Releasing his grip Nicky collapsed onto his hands and knees his head ringing from the multiple blows.

"Up, up," roared Toby stepping back and landing a hefty kick up Nicky's bottom that slammed his head a third time against the wall.

"Get your hands behind you and open your arse up. Come on whore, show me your boy cunt Open it up."

Nicky out of his mind with fear, confused by the shouting and kicks, lost all control. He began to howl, not the dry hard sobs that the rod extorts from a well beaten boy but the terrified unrestrained screams of an animal in extremis, the shrill blood-chilling cries of a hare caught fast in the jaws of a hound or a rabbit with its legs caught and smashed in the jaws of a gin trap.

The boy seemed to grasp that he had to get back on his feet and that he had to present his open bottom to Mister Toby for inspection but he seemed unable to prioritise these two imperatives and tried to do them simultaneously. With his fingers dug into the crack of his his bottom pulling his anus lips apart he could not use his hands to lever himself off the floor. This forced him to undertake the most grotesque contortions as he scrambled to get himself back onto his feet while keeping his balance and maintaining his grip on the cheeks of his rump Contortions that involved pushing his desperately wriggling bottom back and up in a way that presented Toby with a most inviting target for the toe of his heavy brogue shoe.

Eventually Nicky managed to drag himself back on to his feet. Modesty, dignity, pride all had been denied him. His naked body wracked by sobs, he stood, his head down level with his knees, his hands pulling the cheeks of his bottom apart..

Chapter Seven

Toby looked down at the boy's open bottom so humbly and invitingly presented to him and congratulated himself on a job well done. Nicky he thought could hardly have made more plain his total and abject submission. It was, he told himself a beginning but only a beginning. Pain, fear, hunger and exhaustion were powerful tools if intelligently used for managing and schooling brats but breaking a boy properly was a long term project and could not be achieved in a single night or indeed a mere twenty four hours. It was not a question of simply terrorising Nicky into obedience. That if one was prepared to be sufficiently cruel could be achieved in a matter of hours and would last as long as the pain of the last beating was fresh in the boy's mind.

That might be enough in less developed parts of the world where the law was still designed for its natural and proper purpose of protecting property. There you reported a runaway boy to the police and then simply waited for the telephone call asking you to collect the battered and tearful brat from the station. It would not be sufficient in the more effete West where pernicious notions of human rights and even worse child rights had taken hold and any involvement of the police would require a speedy departure from the country. Here imposing obedience was only the first step on a long and painful journey that would end only when Nicky had learnt to accept his servitude and to love as well as to fear him.

Toby's immediate task though was to complete his examination of the boy. He placed the flat of his hand on the small of the boy's back.

"Steady, steady," he said reassuringly as the boy started and murmured at his touch.

He smiled to himself and shook his head. The contrast between Nicky's pristine little pink hole and the well used, often slack lipped and gaping boy cunts of the street kids on the island told its own tale of contrasting Western privilege and moral propriety with Eastern promiscuity and poverty.

Toby moistened his index finger with saliva and then gently ran its tip along the crack of the boy's bottom. Nicky murmured and stirred wriggling his bottom, pushing back and lifting it in response to Toby's teasing.

"You like it don't you whore?", Toby murmured as he slowly increased the pressure of his finger tip on the boy's anus.

Nicky moaned softly but made no other reply. Toby slapped the boy sharply on the bottom with the flat of his spare hand

"Come on whore, answer me when I ask you a question. You enjoy it don't you?"

"Yes Mister Toby, yes I do." The boy's reply came in the form of a hoarse whisper.

"Keep down and put your hands on your knees,' Toby said quietly as he gripped the boy by the hip with his free hand.

"Now push out like you're shitting."

Toby increased the pressure of his finger on the boy's anus and Nicky cried out shrilly in surprise and pain.

"Keep you head down," Toby ordered sharply, "and push out like you're shitting like I said before. It"ll relax your bum and make it easier for you."

Nicky said nothing but but sobbed quietly.

"You'd better do it whore," Toby snapped impatiently. "One thing is sure, that boy cunt of yours is going to be opened up however much you whine."

Toby pushed down hard ignoring the boy's whimpers which increased in volume and urgency as he increased the pressure . Then he felt the lips of the boy's anus part as he forced the tip of his index finger into the boy.

"Oh God. Oh please Mister Toby. Oh fuck,". Now the boy was almost screaming.

"Keep the sound down. Think of the neighbours, And I won't tolerate you using bad language. It's not respectful." Toby admonished the boy.

He would have hit him to emphasise his commands but with one hand holding the lad down and the other part way up his arse that was not for the moment practical. Instead he concentrated on forcing his finger deeper into the brat. He met less resistance once he had got the first finger joint fairly past Nicky's rectum and into the boy. As he thrust ever deeper he felt Nicky's guts clamp tight around his finger not now so much resisting it as trying to draw it in further. The noises coming from the brat also changed. The harsh sobs of distress lost their intensity replaced by softer moans as lust got the better of pain.

Nicky threw his head back and his moans grew wilder and louder as Toby's finger tip probed ever deeper. Toby twisted his finger and pumped the brat's rectum deliberately working him up to a fresh climax. The Nicky's body shuddered convulsively and Toby quickly slipped his hand between the boy's legs and gripped him firmly by the balls, steadying him as yet another orgasm raked his body. Toby stood quietly simultaneously pumping the brat's bottom with one hand and kneading his balls with the other as a series of multiple orgasms ran their course.

"Right little whore aren't you Nicky," Toby remarked cheerfully pulling his finger out of the boy.

His finger came clear of Nicky's bottom with a loud plop. Toby glanced quickly at it and then wiped it clean leaving a brown streak across the egg white flesh of the boy rump.

"You really enjoy it don't you. I spotted you right off. Get you properly schooled and you'll make a good fuck boy."

"Now let's get you cleaned up we need to be getting on with things"

Toby grabbed Nicky by the scruff of the neck and hurried him into the bathroom. Keeping a firm grip of the boy he lent inside the shower and turned the cold water on at maximum volume. The roar of the water almost drowned the shrill squeal of shock wrung from the boy as Toby threw him under the shower. Recovering his feet the naked slut, the water streaming down his body, tried to escape but Toby cursed him and forced him back under the shower.

Leaving the boy cowering under the cold deluge Toby filled the wash-basin with warm water and then having found soap and a flannel pulled the Nicky out onto the bathroom floor. Toby gripped the boy by the chin and tipped his head back.

The dripping boy stood quietly shivering as Toby sponged away the blood, congealed semen and other filth that masked his face. Under the dirt Toby could see his hands had left their mark on the boy. His mouth was bruised and swollen, one eye was discoloured and closed, a deep bruise marked one cheek bone. Nicky's, ribcage too was heavily bruised from where he had used his boots and fists on the brat while the boy's shoulders and bottom were ribbed with livid welts raised by his belt.

Toby knew he would have to get Nicky somehow to his house in London that day and then onto the holiday cottage in Pembrokeshire the next. No doubt if the boy was too damaged to allow his being seen in public he could simply lock him in the car boot and move him around like that. The idea had its attractions. the process would be somewhat reminiscent of the "Middle Passage" in the great days of the Transfer-Atlantic slave trade. Nicky's attitude would probably be much improved by the experience as no doubt was that of the Negros in the old days. But it would not be without its risks. Quite apart from anything else what would happen if there was an accident? Toby knew that the discovery of a badly bruised trussed and naked fourteen year old boy in the boot of his car would, to put it mildly, cause concern.

From that point of view it would be much safer to transport Nicky as an ostensibly normal passenger. The boy as he could see was marked, indeed badly marked but this was largely confined to his face, shoulders, ribcage and bottom. He had tried to lay off the boy's legs and had generally succeeded. There was one angry weal where a badly aimed cut from his belt had caught the boy across the back of his upper thighs and a few mild grazes and bruises but nothing more than usually decorate the legs of an active brat. A t-shirt and a pair of shorts should hide most of the damage to his body most of the time. There was nothing that could be done to hide the damage to his face. However while that was pretty noticeable it was no worse than a boy might pick up in a particularly violent school fight. Taking one thing with another and allowing for British reserve and reluctance to intrude on strangers Toby thought he would be able to travel openly with the boy without being challenged.

The other obvious danger in trying to travel with Nicky in such a way was that the boy would attempt to bolt or make an open appeal for help. However there seemed to Toby that there was nothing in Nicky's attitude or behaviour that suggested that this was at all likely. The boy stood quietly, his head bowed, his shoulders slightly bent, as Toby washed down his naked body. There was nothing about him that suggested either resistance or resentment.

Toby was kneeling on the floor sponging away the dried semen that had squirted over the front of the boy's belly. Warm water coursed down the brat's body covering his tiny prick and hairless balls with a silver sheen. Even when Toby transferred his attention to the boy's crutch, swabbing it clean with the damp cloth, Nicky just stood there passive and uncomplaining making no attempt to cover himself or move away.

This did not surprise Toby. It was almost exactly the same reaction of boys newly admitted to the refuge on the Island. Parted from their families, physically and often sexually abused, subjected to a regime that left them frightened, hungry and exhausted they lapsed into extreme passivity, accepting without protest whatever was required of them.

What was more once reduced to this state the slightest relaxation in severity, the smallest of kindnesses, would engender the most extravagant gratitude on the part of the recipient. A scrap of food, a pat on the bottom, a ruffling of hair would bind a slut to you with hoops of steel. You had though to be careful, let kindness degenerate into indulgence and the boy would become demanding and spoilt. Avoid that trap though and a brat could easily be persuaded to be a willing accessory to his own abuse. Desperate for attention and eager to please the boy would do anything to gain the affection of his master.

Toby stood up and taking the Nicky by the chin tipped his head back and looked down into his face. The boy' gazed up at him his face almost blank, his lips slightly parted, his eyes those of a young calf being led to the slaughter house or a puppy that had been savagely beaten, fearful, beseeching without a hint of resentment.

Toby bent down and kissed the boy hard on his mouth. He slipped his free hand down the boy's back until it rested on the curve of the brat's bottom. He slid his tongue between Nicky's parted lips and thrust it into his mouth and down into his gullet. He probed the cleft of the lad's bottom with his index finger searching for and finding his hole. Nicky suddenly threw his arms around his neck and Toby found his arms full of naked wet boy.

Toby kissed the boy fiercely and then reaching behind his neck took hold of his thin wrists and pulled them apart. He held them for a moment holding them apart and squeezing hard. He felt the bones shift under his grip, a half suppressed murmur of pain was forced from the boy. Toby spun the boy round till he was facing the open bathroom door.

Releasing Nicky's wrists he landed a hefty open handed smack on the boy's bare bottom as he pushed him out of the bath room.

"Come on whore let's see if we can find something to fill your belly before we set out," he said gripping Nicky firmly by the elbow as he urged him down the

The kitchen was a place of squalor and chaos. Dirty plates and cutlery cluttered the working services while the sink was filled with unwashed cooking utensils. Toby abandoned his hold of Nicky's elbow leaving the boy standing in the centre of the room.

Toby pulled the unwashed meat tin in which the ham had been baked from the zinc.

He turned back towards Nicky and saw with approval the boy standing where he had been left his hands down by his sides. The foundations of the brat's subjugation had been laid. Exhaustion, fear and rough treatment had served their purpose. The boy's will had been broken, his pride, his modesty destroyed. It was just though a beginning. Unless reinforced the memories would fade from the boy's mind, the lessons of that night soon forgotten. They would need to be constantly repeated, the boy's memory refreshed by those traditional instruments of juvenile instruction, the lash and the rod.

"Take this,," Toby ordered holding the meat tin out to Nicky, "both hands."

"You hungry?" he asked as he scraped left-overs from the dirty dinner plates into the tin.

Nicky until he was asked the question had not realised how hungry he was. He had been too frightened, too bullied, too harried from one thing to another to realise how famished he was. But now, asked the question, he realised how very hungry he was. He felt weak and light headed, his tummy ached for food, the sight and smell of the cold scraps of vegetables with some fragments of fatty meat being piled into the tin he was holding made him feel still more hungry.

"Yes Mister Toby," he said and felt the saliva dribble down his chin.

"I can see you are," Toby said laughing heartlessly, "well make the most of this it will be the best and biggest meal you'll have for a bit. You're a lucky little slut getting fed on kitchen scraps. It won't last."

"There you are," he said slapping a spoonful of cold parsley sauce on top of the heap of boiled vegetables and and broken meats, "I want to be off in an hour and there's plenty for you to do before then. Take that out into the scullery and get it into you. You've got ten minutes. Anything that's left after that goes in the waste bin."

Nicky hesitated looking about himself uncertainly. He wondered what he should do about a knife and fork but remembered that Mister Toby had said boys like him were not allowed to eat at table. He decided it was probably wiser to do without. He squatted down on the floor in a corner of the scullery and began to eat. He was very hungry and he eagerly attacked the jumble of left over vegetables mixed with fragments of fatty ham, and congealed parsley sauce heaped on the dirty meat tin. Once started he ate quickly. Mister Toby had said he had ten minutes to fill his tummy and he didn't want to leave any food uneaten.

Toby settled himself on a stool by the sink. A slight smile played round his lips as he watched the naked boy crouched at his feet stuffing the unappetising mixture into his mouth. The boy he thought was learning and learning fast.

"Five minutes," he said quietly.

The tin was almost empty now. All that remained to eat was the congealed fat covering its base. Nicky was still desperately hungry. He tried to scrape the fat up with his fingers but he found it was slow work. It was obvious he wouldn't have to leave most of it uneaten unless he found some other way of getting at it. His mind was dominated by the aching void in his stomach. Modesty, pride, self respect all were forgotten in his desperate need to fill his belly. He settled down on his knees and stuck his face into the tin licking greedily at its sides and base. Under his vigorous attack the tin rattled and slid on the floor as he sought out with his tongue the last fragments of food.

"Three minutes."

Toby stuck out a foot to stop the tin sliding away from the boy. He sat, a faint smile on his face, looking down at the boy crouched at his feet his raised bottom, blotched with bruising and ribbed with welts, wriggling energetically as he licked at the tin. It amused Toby how quickly and completely Nicky had been stripped of the inhibitions imposed by twenty first century Western Civilisation even on the young and how rapidly he had reverted to the animal.

"One minute."

Nicky redoubled the vigour of his licking. He was clearly intent on getting every last morsel of food that he could.

"Come on times up."

The brat continued to lick at the tin with undiminished energy. Toby levered himself off his stool and kicked at the tin sending it scuttering across the tiled floor away from the boy.

Nicky gave a yelp of surprise as the tin flew across the scullery floor. Wide eyed and startled he turned to look up at Toby who grabbed him by his arm and pulled him roughly to his feet.

"Fetch that tin here," Toby said quietly.

"Give it to me."

Toby took the tin in both hands.

"Stand up straight and keep your hands down by your sides," he ordered quietly.

Nicky obeyed trembling. He knew he was going to be hit and he knew there was not hing he could do about it. He stood cowering waiting for the blow as the seconds dragged by.

His nerve cracked and he began to cry quietly.

"Mister Toby Sir. Please I'm sorry Sir. Please don't hit me again Sir. I'll try to do better Sir. I promise," he whined.

Toby lifted the tin over his head, paused for a few seconds and then slammed it down two handed on the top of Nicky's head. The boy staggered and clapped his hands to the top of his head and then collapsed on the floor, driven down onto his knees by the force of the blow.

"Come on Nicky get up now."

Toby bent gripping the boy by one thin arm and dragged him back on to his feet.

"If you don't want to be hit you must learn to do as your told. Not at once. Not at some future time that may suite you but straight away, immediately. Do you think you will remember that.?"

"Oh please Mister Toby, I will Sir, I promise I will."

"We'll just make quite sure shall we.?" Mister Toby said good humouredly and smashed the tin down on the crown of Nicky's fair head.

"The lesson if I may say so Nicky," Mister Toby continued in the same quiet measured tones, "is a simple one; do as you are told if you don't want to get hit. I would have thought even a stupid little sod like you could grasp something as simple as that.."

Turning away from the whimpering boy Toby picked the washing up cloth out of the sink. He ran the hot water tap over it and than rang it out.

"Right," he said, "look up and keep still."

"God you're a grubby little brute," Toby remarked laughing as he sponged the congealed food from round Nicky's mouth and chin.

"Now wash up, dry and then stack neatly all the dirty plates and cutlery and the rest of it. You have an hour to complete the job while I get myself packed."

Toby turned the boy towards the sink and sent him on his way with an open handed slap on his bare bottom.

"You're a lucky little slut," Toby remarked as he mowed towards the door, "you've got the chance to show me that you are a hard working conscientious brat grateful for being given the chance to make yourself useful. And be warned Nicky I will put up with a great deal but there is one fault I will not tolerate in a boy and that is ingratitude.

Nicky looked round the kitchen sizing up the job in front of him as the sound of Mr Toby footsteps receded up the stairs. Nicky had helped his Mother washing up from time to time but not as frequently as perhaps he should, so he could make a pretty fair estimate of the magnitude of the job in hand and the time it would take him. Plates, cutlery and the cooking utensils involved in preparing and serving a three course dinner for five not to mention the champagne glasses constituted a formidable task but it should he thought be possible to get it done in the hour if he got on with it.

He was very tired, his head ached and the room seemed to swim about him but still in a muddled confused sort of way he tried to make sense of what had happened to him. He had been so harried and driven up to then, beaten and shouted at, that he had no chance to think. His descent from spoilt twenty-first century teen -boy with a strong sense of entitlement and privilege to naked brat had been so rapid and violent that he had been swept headlong down into a maelstrom of blows and humiliation allowed no time to do anything else but to absorb the abuse inflicted on him.

Now though left alone to get on with the washing up, with Mister Toby out of the way somewhere upstairs he had a chance to think, that is if only his head would stop aching and the floor would stop shifting under his feet. He tried to think back over the events of the last twelve hours to try to understand what had happened to him and why. Why had his mother rejected him, sold him to Uncle Toby and why had Uncle Toby who had been up to then a generally benevolent if somewhat remote presence changed so much. What had made him suddenly so cruel and violent and, very occasionally so exciting to be with. Nicky remembered the feel of the man's hands caressing his naked body and his tongue thrusting down into his throat.

In a muddled, lost sort of way Nicky tried to sort out in his mind why these things had happened and whether things could be restored to their old comfortable condition and if so how. He remembered how they had all, Mum, his sister Leslie and Mum's stupid boyfriend Rupert, had ganged up to complain about him, to tell Uncle Toby how lazy and mean and stupid he was. Well he did know he had been a bit mean to Mum from time to time, taking advantage of her, sliding off leaving her to do his chores, cheeking her, arguing with her, trying to bully her into buying Grand Auto 5 and so on. He didn't think he been too bad, not worse than the general run of boy's in his class anyway, but he supposed he must have or just done something terrible without knowing. Thinking about it he was convinced that it must have been something like that because Mum would never have rejected him the way she had unless he had done something really bad. He wondered if it was something so bad that Mum would never ever forgive him. That's all he wanted he told himself, to be forgiven and taken back into the family.

But even if Mum was prepared to take him back would Mister Toby let her? After all Mister Toby had paid good money for him and would he, supposed want to get his money's worth. But what was his money's worth? What did he buy him from his Mum for? And anyway how permanent a deal was it? Mister Toby had spoken of returning him to Mum at the end of his stay in Pembrokeshire so maybe it was only temporary but on the other hand he had also spoken about having him to stay with him on the Island as one of his house boys. And for that matter what did being one of Mister Toby's house boy's entail. The questions chased each other round his mind, multiplying by the second, bumping into each other, piling confusion on confusion, uncertainty on uncertainty.

One thing anyway was sure. All he wanted was his current nightmare to end and things restored to the comfortable cosy way they were before Mister Toby came to visit. Except he found himself doubting if even that was really certain.. He remembered with rising excitement the feel of Mister Toby's hands exploring his naked body, the man's lips pressed against his, his tongue darting snake like into his mouth. Even just being with Mister Toby naked and available for his use was strangely exciting.. It was clear that Mister Toby, rough and cruel though he might occasionally be, found him good to look at and even more exciting to handle. Simply knowing this was so was itself arousing. Yet even as Nicky's cock swelled and hardened under the impulse of these thoughts other conflicting memories crowded in; memories of fear and pain, heavy blows, sharp kicks, humiliation. But even these, cruel and frightening as they were, aroused him further stoking his confusion.

His mind in turmoil Nicky tried in vane to reconcile and make sense of his conflicting emotions. What would be best, he thought, was if it could be arranged that he could stay with his Mother with occasional visits to and from a gentler kinder Mister Toby. Perhaps this was possible. If he was obedient and tried really hard then maybe at the end of the holidays when Mr Toby went back to the island and his brown skinned house boys Mum would offer to take him back. But for that to happen he would have to show to Mr Toby and his Mum that he had learnt his lesson, was no longer the spoilt, wilful brat of the past, but had learnt the importance of humility and obedience.

Nicky recognised that that might be a long shot but it seemed he had no choice, no choice that is that left him with his mother – and Mister Toby and thinking about it he could see that both were important to him.

While he was working all this out Nicky continued working. Now he stopped and looked about him. Plates and cutlery were all washed and dried and neatly stacked on the kitchen table, The saucepans and other cooking utensils scraped and washed clean and put away in their proper places. He glanced up at the kitchen clock. He had finished with fifteen minutes to spare.

He could simply stay out of the way in the kitchen until the full hour was up. He couldn't see how Mister Toby would find out and he could certainly do with a rest, however short. His whole body was aching with fatigue.

On the other hand he could drag himself upstairs and to see what if anything he was to do next. That might please Mister Toby and put him in a good mood on the other hand it might simply be putting himself in harms way.

He did not hesitate. Being with Mister Toby was both very exciting and very frightening. That was an intoxicating mixture that drew him back up the stairs regardless of any rational calculation of advantage and disadvantage.

He reached the landing at the top of the stairs. The. door to Mister Toby's room was ajar. Nicky's mind raced, should he go straight in, should he knock and then go in, should he knock and wait to be invited in. He just didn't know. Whatever he did might be wrong or it might be right and He couldn't hang about on the landing for ever trying to make his mind up. Knocking was he supposed a sort of warning that he was there but did it matter a bit to Mister Toby if he was.

Taking a deep breath he pushed the just wide enough open so that he could get through it.

Mister Toby was lying on the bad fully clothed his head propped up on the piled pillows reading a book. As Nicky slid into the room through the open door the man looked up from his book silently fixing his cold expressionless eyes on his naked body.

Instinct took over. Nicky dropped to his knees. Mister Toby continued to stare at him silent and unmoving. Nicky bent forward and kissed the ground.

And then kneeling there his face pressed to the floor feeling Mister Toby's eyes fixed on his naked body he suddenly knew that he had done the right thing. The right thing so far as he personally was concerned, the right thing also so far as signalling to Mister Toby his obedience and respect.

NEXT PART