Dragoon Hall: Curse or Cure?

"Yes. He was a farmer. An older man, nearly fifty, I think."

"How old were you?"

"Eighteen."

"Ah, yes, of course. Tell me about it—about him."

"I was in my last year at a residential prep school in Vermont. I was a virgin. As a program to promote the school in the rural area the school was located in, students were matched with local people for visits and work projects. I was sent to a farmer and his wife. We became quite friendly, especially the farmer and me. He fucked me in his corn field that first time and then he continued to fuck me in the fields for the next two years."

"And you enjoyed it?"

"I wanted it, yes. I ached for it. Not just to be fused with and used by a man. I ached for that farmer to cover me and be inside me. It was the most exciting two years of my life. Even after I went to college, I came back to be covered by him."

"And did you leave the relationship with regrets?"

"Only that he unexpectedly died. He was old. He had a heart condition before we met."

"So, there is no reason to feel guilt about it, is there?"

"No, I suppose not." And strangely, more of the burden faded away.

"It's natural. There are others who do it. I fuck Madan. You are going to fuck Madan. He wants it. He's told me he wants it from you. You are not alone. It happens. You are far younger than I am, and I have fucked you, and it was all good."

My hand had gone to his flank and then to the crease of the deeper wound on his leg. He winced.

"Sorry," I murmured. "How did you get this? Where have you and Madan come from? This cottage. What—?"

"The mutiny. I nearly didn't make it out of Lucknow alive," Thomas answered after a period of silence. "The Welsh Cavalry. The First Queen's Own Dragoon Guards. Madan was there. All of his family. Gone. I couldn't leave him there. He was an orderly, taking care of his assigned soldier—me. Of my needs. All of my needs. I couldn't leave him. I brought him back. My father and his father before that. My son and my son after that. All Crowders are in the church registry as caretakers of this estate. This cottage our home. There is nothing more to say. You wish to fuck Madan now?"

"Yes," I answered, simply, honestly, suddenly urgently. Free now. Free to do as my nature called me to do. Without guilt. Without regret.

"Must he be—?" I started to ask as Thomas bound Madan, face down on the bed, spread-eagled, his wrists bound to the corners of the headboard and his ankles loosely bound to the corners of the footboard. He left plenty of give in the ropes for me to raise Madan on his hands and knees and mount him from above.

"He prefers it this way," Thomas said. "He is not completely free of the feelings of guilt. He prefers being captive to it, having it taken from him, being accorded the feeling that he cannot prevent it. It's all in his mind. It is fascinating how our minds control and guide us as his does with him—as yours does with you unless you chose to master it; as it does with me too. He can free himself of the bonds easily. The bonds are more than just rope and physical control. Remember, no guilt or regret on your part. Fight the bonds that try to restrict you. Take Madan fully. Master him and use him. Give him everything. You want it and he does as well."

I heeded his advice as I climbed over the back of the small, berry-brown Hindu young man, wrapped an arm around his slim waist, lifting him up on all fours. He sighed as I pressed my face into the inner curve of his pert buttocks and tongued his hole, which responded by telescoping open to me. As I mounted and penetrated his ass, he cried out in Hindi, "Han. Han. Is tarah. Bhad men jao mujhe gahari." I turned my head and looked expectantly at Thomas. "He said 'Yes, Yes. Just like that. Fuck me deep,'" Thomas translated.

And I did just that. I went back to humping the young man, luxuriating in the supple smoothness of his brown skin, the flexibility of his small body, the sensation of his spongy channel walls surrendering to me, spreading for me, the muscles of the passage undulating over my shaft. I was thick and long, but nothing like Thomas was. But Madan had the youth and talent to expand or contract for a man internally, making the fuck tight, providing the sensation of deflowering the virgin. He emitted sighs and low moans as I stole the remnants of his youthful innocence from him, conquering his freshness, debauching his youth. His cry of "Han! Han!" as I released, seeding him deep, cut through the air. From off to the side, Thomas laughed.

I sat up beside the young man, running my hands over his body as he turned his eyes, swimming in my cum, to me, staring at me in awe, panting low. He sighed and moaned as I glided my hands over his curves and into his crevices, memorizing the silky feel of his small, supple body. At length, wanting to know that he wanted it—that he wanted me—I reached up and down and released his wrists and ankles. "If you want me again, commit to me," I said. And then, when Madan gave me a confused look, I turned to Thomas to translate.

"Agar tum use apane andar hona chahata hoon, veh nahin chahata ki tum bandhe," Thomas said to the young man.

Madan turned his eyes to me. He maintained eye contact as he stripped the ropes off his wrists and ankles, laid back on the bed, spread and bent his legs, and opened his arms to me. When I pulled him into my chest, he didn't resist. He murmured "Han, han" again and "Bhad men jao mujhe fir." From the side, Thomas said, "He wants you to fuck him again." I raised and spread the young legs to me, as I moved my knees between his thighs, holding him in front of me, facing me, in my lap.

"Are nahin. Are Nahin!—Fuck me. Fuck me!" he cried out as, pressing the palm of my hand into the small of his back, I pulled his channel onto my cock again. He clung to my breast as I worked my way into him—panting, moaning, writhing, wanting, accepting, opening, surrendering, melting, bucking. Madan worked with me as I fucked him from heaven to hell and back. As I grasped his waist between my hands and started to pull him off and on my shaft, I let his torso fall back onto the bed, streaming onto the bed, him bunching up sheeting and stuffing it into his mouth to stifle his sobs and cries and writhing under me.

The first time I was making tentative love to him, treating him like he was spun glass. This time I fucked him. I reached into him deeper the second time than I had the first and fucked him more vigorously. As I sink deeper and deeper inside him, he opened up to my conquering cock more . . . and more . . . and more. Both of us crying out and bucking wildly against each other, we came together.

Sitting off to the side, watching us and stroking himself, Thomas came too. He laughed, came over to the bed, slapped me on the rump, and said, "Well done. The young man is yours now. And you are mine. More important, you are free."

Exhausted and half in delirium, I stumbled back to Dragoon Hall, alone, after I had lain with Thomas and Madan. The young Hindu man had returned to playing the Bansuri softly when I was done with him and Thomas had returned to the bed and fucked me again. It was only now as I moved away from the cottage and the music became softer with distance, that I realized that the tune he had played that drew me to the cottage was the same as the one Matt composed on my piano in Vermont the day he took his life.

I made it as far as the desk in the library at Dragoon Hall before collapsing into sleep. I woke later with a jerk and a burning question in my mind. Books from the library on the British colonial period were at hand on the desktop and I feverishly turned to one, checking references.

I found that The First Queens Own Dragoon Guards served in India in the middle nineteenth century. The regiment was nearly wiped out in Lucknow in the Indian Mutiny—in 1857. The regiment was retired then. There was no more recent scenario as Thomas had depicted it since that time. And Crowder. He had mentioned the Crowder men as long-time caretakers of Dragoon Hall. Hadn't it been Crowder that he'd said? David was a Crowder. Even as I said that out loud, I started to discern the similarities in physical appearance of the current caretaker David Crowder and of the grizzled soldier with the monster cock who had just covered me, Thomas—Thomas Crowder.

Feverishly, I rose from the desk at the library and nearly ran back up the driveway and into the woods to the stone cottage—or what was left of it. It looked deserted now in ways it hadn't looked when I was here before. It didn't look like anyone had been here in years. The slate roof had collapsed over one side of the larger room, and the cold stone chambers were bare of furniture—save a double bed in the bedroom, rub marks of what could be rope restraints discernible on the top rungs of the wooden head- and footboards. The exterior was nearly overgrown with foliage, turning the stone walls to the stone of the hillside.

I left confused and more than a bit groggy. But I no longer felt the burdens dragging on me of guilt and regret that I had brought with me to Dragoon Hall.

And when I returned to the desk in the manor's library, all thoughts except for those pouring out of me on the progress of my novel's plotline sloughed off my mind and I wrote feverishly—and productively and with inspiration—into the late afternoon and early evening.

* * * *

Looking up from the laptop, I realized that it was nearly dark in the library and I'd been squinting at the computer screen, using just the light coming back at me from the monitor. I also realized that I was ravenously hungry. I stood and went down to the basement kitchen, it dawning on me as I did so that I hadn't been grocery shopping yet. As I surmised on the way downstairs, there was nothing to be found in the kitchen to assuage my hunger. I got in the car and drove the treacherous, hedge-enclosed, winding, and narrow lane down to Newnham. I actually preferred driving the lane in the dark, as people would use their headlights than and I'd have the chance of notice that someone was coming at me on the one-lane road that wasn't given in the daylight.

The convenience stores were all closed. Cars were parked at The Buggerman pub, though, and lights were on in its windows. Entering the pub, I discerned immediately why it was called The Buggerman, and, inwardly, I laughed, happy with the thought that it was a lighthearted feeling I was getting, with no burden of guilt whatsoever. Happy that my first impulse wasn't to withdraw from the pub, trying not to accept that I belonged here.

The Buggerman obviously was a gay male venue. All of the patrons were men and many of them were openly showing affection—some graphically and blatantly—toward each other. There were a few empty tables, and a beefy man—the bouncer?—beckoned me to an empty one near the front window. I sat, facing the room and ordered a ploughman's lunch from a mincing waiter who gave me a big, come-hither smile, and then I looked around. David Crowder was sitting near the back of the room, at a table. His eyes were on me, and there was a slight smile on his lips. My eyes went from him to a staircase leading up to the upper levels, where the young Hindu man I had seen in his family's convenience store the day before was coming down the stairs in front of another man, whose beefy body towered over the diminutive South Asian youth. The man had a possessive hand on the young man's waist and it was quite clear, in a place like this, what the two had been doing above stairs. The man left the pub and the young Hindu man sat at David's table. Both of them looked over to me and watched me eat my meal.

It struck me that this South Asian youth had an uncanny resemblance to Madan, who either I had fucked in the flesh that afternoon or was a very vivid gift from Doctor Quinn's nerve medicine. The resemblance was close enough that I'm afraid the balance was tipping toward the pills.

When I was done and before I could leave, the young man came over to my table, smiled at me, and said, "You are Mr. Peterson, aren't you?"

"Yes," I said, looking up into his smiling face, lost in the beauty of him. David came over then and slid into the bench I was sitting on beside me. His hand went to my leg, above my knee. I didn't try to move away from him. Two days earlier, I probably would have, but after last night I was comfortable with myself—no guilt, no reluctance. I also realized that the resemblance between David Crowder and Thomas as close enough that my daydreaming had tried to tell me I coveted the attentions of the caretaker of Dragoon Hall. He looked not as old and gnarled to me tonight as I remembered him being when we encountered each other before. He looked muscular and capable. He looked much like I remembered of the farmer who had initiated me sixteen years earlier.

"You have come into the pub," Crowder said. "Did you know what kind of pub this was?"

"I do now," I answered.

"And you have stayed."

"Yes, I have stayed. And you come here, knowing what kind of place this is." There was no reason to be coy with this.

"Yes, I do. I did consider you might be a gay lad when I first laid eyes on you."

"I'm not a lad," I said, and we both laughed.

"It isn't just something you dream of? You lay with men?" he asked. I was quite aware of the grip he had on my thigh.

"Yes, I lay with men," I answered. I had absorbed Thomas's point. I wouldn't bother to deny it anymore.

"I did mark that you have a handsome body when I spied you this morning. You lay under men? Sometimes older men?"

"Yes."

"And young men?"

"I lay young men," I answered, giving him a direct look. No reason not to reveal it all.

"But older men? Men as old as I am? What do you do for them?"

"I lay down for older men, if they're well equipment and can stay with it."

"And, you? Are you well equipped, Mr. Peterson?" His hand went to my basket. I made no move to move away from that either. He could feel that I was hard. There was no hiding that—even if, now, I wanted to. I turned and looked into his eyes. I knew and he knew too. The banter was just striking the deal. I don't know how he knew I would accept him. But that no longer mattered. He knew and so did I. "Yes, yes, you are," he said, looking satisfied.

He took one of my hands with his free hand and placed it on his crotch. He was hard—and hung. I didn't remove my hand when he pulled his away. I traced the contours of his dick through the material of his baggy trousers. He was as many inches as I could want, and he was proving he could get it hard.

"I am Ajoy," the young Hindu man, standing by the table, said, and I looked into his face. David's fingers pressed in, fishing for, grasping, and squeezing one of my balls through the material of my trousers and briefs. I winced but did nothing to stop him. He would be a rough lover. "The first time will be for free," Ajoy continued. He dropped a condom packet on the top of the table.

"And I will use a condom too, if you want me too," David murmured.

How did they know I would so readily accept topping Ajoy and being topped by David? Did it really matter that they knew? I knew we would arrange it that way.

I fucked Ajoy in a small room under the gables of the pub that was barely large enough to hold the double bed and a chair in the corner in which David Crowder sat and watched us fuck.

I fucked the Hindu youth with abandon, an enthusiasm he returned. I gathered him under me, his arms wrapped around my torso, his fingers pressed into my shoulder blades, and his heels rubbing my calves, as I mined his channel deep, sensing his initially tight passage opening to me, the muscles of his channel walls undulating over my hard cock, pulling me into the core of him, where I fucked and fucked and fucked him as his head lolled to the side, his tongue hanging out, and his eyes watching David Crowder masturbating himself off in the corner of the room.

Ajoy came for me, releasing his flow up my belly and then turning us so that he was on top of me, draped over my body, facing the ceiling, and raising and lowering his small, slim, berry-brown body on mine until I too had filled the bulb of my condom deep up inside his channel.

He rolled off me then and exchanged positions with David, who gathered me up, cradled under his massive body, in his arms. I hooked my knees on his hips and wrapped my arms around his head as his mouth went to my nipples and he entered, entered, entered me with a thick, hard, long cock and began to pump.

* * * *

I woke in the morning in the attic bedroom of Dragoon Hall, where Ajoy had insisted we come the night before rather than my own bedroom. "I want it to be our special place," he had murmured before we'd entered the small bedroom under the eaves and I had gathered him under me, mounted his slim hips, penetrated him, and fucked him again.

But when he said "our special place," he was being more inclusive than I was thinking, because when I woke in the morning, it was to David on top of me, deep inside me, and stroking, stroking, stroking rather than me on top of Ajoy.

David tensed, jerked, and, as I cried out, "Oh, fuck. Shit. Fuckin' shit you're huge. Yes, Fuck, yes!" as he ejaculated, creaming me deep. With a sigh he rolled off to the side of me, continuing to hold me in his arms. I hadn't told him he had to use a condom, and he hadn't.

"Not bad for an old man," he murmured. "Right?"

"Fuck, you're good," I whispered, still panting. Letting all of my sensations go to pleasure. Not wanting anything to dispel this sense of full satisfaction—inside Ajoy and now David inside me. Fending off all questions of how we could have gotten here. "You're a master," I said.

"Not too much of that," David said. "Mustn't stir the ghosts. As I told you, this is where a Racine buggered his stable boy and was offed by the young man's brother."

I heard the strains of a tune being played on the piano two stories below, in the living room. It again was the same tune Matt had been playing the day he died—but I forced thoughts of that into the back of my mind. I was moving beyond that. I wanted to move beyond that.

"Who? What?" I murmured.

"That's Ajoy down there. He fancies himself a budding composer."

"How old?"

"He's eighteen," David answered.

"Of course."

David was playing his fingers on my belly, tracing little circles. They went lower. I moaned as he took possession of me and began to stroke. His lips went to mine and we kissed. Then he moved his lips down my throat, lingering at my nipples and again at my navel and then he was going lower, taking me inside his mouth, sucking and teething and licking until, with a cry and a jerk, I came. He rolled on top of me again, gathering me into his arms again, sliding inside me again. Fucking me again—thick, long, masterful. I went with older men rather than ones near my age, because older men had more experience—and some of them were thick and long and could still keep it up.

"Who is Thomas Crowder?" I asked when we were stretched out beside each other afterward.

"Who? I don't know him." He was hesitant, though, looking a bit concerned. My impression was that he very well knew who Thomas Crowder was.

"The man living in the cottage down the drive and in the woods."

"There's no man living in that cottage," David answered. "That cottage was the caretaker's house, but it fell into disarray some time ago. I live in Newnham now. No one lives there. It's derelict."

"But the Crowders have been caretakers of Dragoon Hall for generations, haven't they?"

"Where did you hear that? But of course they have. Back into the seventeenth century. There were Crowders in service here before the current house was built. Before it got its name. The stable boy and manservant of the Racine legend. They were Crowders, both. Who is this Thomas Crowder you speak of, though?"