Floating World Bitten Peach Ch. 08

The merchant lost control, tearing at Pai's hair with one claw and wrapping his beefy legs around the youth's head, pulling him as close into his groin as possible—loving the full engorgement of his privates into that warm, vibrating chamber. His other claw was ripping at Pai's brocaded hanfu—robe. Wangtao broke off in his singing and poling ever so briefly as the ripping of the fabric harmonized with the merchant's exclamations of lust against the background of the tinkling instruments and voices gliding across the shimmering water from the other floating world pleasure barges.

Then Wangtao shrugged and dug his pole into the muck of the shallow lake's bed once more and propelled the barge toward the three arches of the gracefully upcurved Bridge of Sighs.

Overcome with desire for the impossibly winsome youth in the red brocade robe, the merchant reared up from the cushions and rolled over on top of Pai.

"Ching . . . pu. Ching . . . pu! Please, no!" Pai pled in his most pleading voice and struggled—purposely ever so weakly and ineffectively—as the merchant rolled between his spread legs, held the youth's wrists in one beefy fist above his head, plunged his other hand under Pai's buttocks, and dug his fingers into the youth's hole.

"Aeiii! No, please. Hen da, hen da. Too big," Pai moaned, further inflaming his client to prodigious power. Seemingly struggling against the merchant, Pai actually dug his heels into the cushions and raised his pelvis to just the right angle for entry. He had been taught to feign giving it up only by force, if this is what the client showed aroused him.

Feeling his power and skill and cleverness as a lover triangulate, the merchant took advantage of Pai's "mistake" at raising his hips to lodge his yang chu at Pai's opening. Pai writhed and groaned, pleading for mercy and yelping convincingly as the bulging head of the merchant's yang chu breached his anal ring. And it wasn't all for show. The merchant's yang chu made up in thickness now what it lacked in length.

Pai cried and panted as the tool worked inside his hole, tightened to the extent he could now do through the "presenting the virgin" channel muscle exercises Wangtao had taught him in the spring.

As it turned out, Shun was more right than the captain had been. Some clients in the kingdom of Chu did want a virgin. Pai's virginity had been paid for several times, and Shun's "escape" fund was building nicely. This peach could be bitten again and again.

By design and excellent training, the "ravaged" youth slowly metamorphosed into the won-over lover, and Pai laid back, arched his back, and raised his hips to the pounding of the transported merchant client's yang chu at his forbidden entrance, as he brought the merchant's lips and teeth to his quivering breast.

Keeping one eye on the client and the jinan, Wangtao poled and sang his signature tune to the sounds of the muffled sucking at Pai's breast and slapping of belly and thighs against belly and groin. Pai hummed along with Wangtao's tune and raised his eyes to the underbelly of the Bridge of Sigh's middle arch, as the pleasure barge moved under the bridge from the larger Tai Hu to the smaller Meihan Lake and the view of mud bricks opened up into the vast array of stars in the clear eastern China summer night sky.

Surely this was the last client of the night. Surely he and Wangtao could now retire to Wangtao's small room at the nanleshijia and it would be for Wangtao that Pai would be spreading his legs and raising his buttocks to receive the unrehearsed, unfeigned deep fucking from Wangtao's, the master poleman's, amazing yang chu that Pai lived for—the coupling that was still being talked of as training when both men, without saying it aloud, knew they were lovers.

* * * *

The spring of Pai's preparation by Wangtao, during which the youth fell fully under the spell of the handsome pleasure barge poleman, had turned into a cut sleeve perfection of summer on the shimmering Tai Hu Lake.

No matter what Pai had had to feign and endure with the evening clients on Wangtao's Floating World pleasure barge, throughout the warm summer, Wangtao took Pai to his bed when they returned to their room in the nanleshijia and plowed him deep and long, and with the ardor that made Pai understand that all that was transpiring in their life together was so that the two could be together as lovers—and that made Pai never even think of leaving Wangtao.

It was unusual for a nanleshijia to permit a jinan—a nanleshijia prostitute—to be so coupled with a pleasure house employee, but, being convinced that Pai was so in love with Wangtao that it was only this love that kept him satisfied in the pleasure house where his services increasingly were being sought, the zhaoguzhe, Shun, tolerated the arrangement. At the same time, he often felt sad, believing that Pai's love would someday crumble and destroy him.

Eventually, the coolness of the autumn was upon the lakes. Pai now shivered inside his torn red brocade robe when clients were fumbling within its folds to touch what they believed was a ripe peach's flesh, and an unexpected breeze fluttered across the water. And coolness came upon Wangtao too. They didn't make love every morning upon returning from the lake as they originally had, and the rhythm of the life they were settling into was not one of red-hot ardor, but more one of domestication, habit . . . and a bit of dullness.

And increasingly it was some other man who was plunging his yang chu inside Pai's undulating channel, as the popularity of the sweet young jinan increased.

Wangtao was consulting with Shun about procuring his next jinan for sale to the nanleshijia, or, rather Shun was saying that another jinan need be procured and Wangtao was not showing enthusiasm. It seemed, Shun thought, that Wangtao had grown as complacent with his husbanding of Pai as Pai was of being coupled with Wangtao.

But the civilian side of the pleasure house on Tai Hu Lake was increasing in demand, and Shun would like to close out the military side when he could as he could not bear to know about the rough demands the soldiers made on the captives the captain supplied with his raids on the Kingdom of Wu.

Pai sometimes overheard bits and pieces of these discussions, but he was innocent to Wangtao's zhaodaojen business in this regard. He did not know—or he had let himself forget—that he was only one in a succession of jinan Wangtao had procured and trained. He assumed that Wangtao loved him as he loved Wangtao.

Pai's first thought that he was losing Wangtao came the late autumn afternoon he had been sent out to do marketing and had come right back to the nanleshijia because he had forgotten to take the money—the chi'en—that he needed.

When he drew close to the nanleshijia, he saw Wangtao out on the lake dock below the pavilions of the pleasure house. He was talking with a young man—certainly younger than Pai was. They had their heads together, and the young man was holding a length of the most beautiful scarlet brocade Pai had ever seen.

A chill raced down Pai's spine, and he instantly remembered a conversation he had had with Wangtao shortly after they had come to Tai Hu Lake.

"You came to Tai Hu to your own pleasure barge and to acceptance in the Floating World here, master," Pai had murmured one morning as Wangtao held him still from behind, all in stillness except for Wangtao's masterful yang chu working in and out of Pai's love hole.

"Shih. Shih. Yes, I did," Wangtao said through teeth working their way across Pai's shoulder.

"It does not seem easy to gain position in the Floating World," Pai had whispered.

"Pu yao, No, it's not," Wangtao answered, as he moved his lips from Pai's shoulder and nuzzled his face up into Pai's arm pit, while the youth raised his arm and emitted a low moan at the effect of Wangtao's tongue and teeth on his sensitive flesh there. "I have been a pleasure boatman for many years."

"And you must have had many youths such as me entertaining the men's yang chu's then," Pai had murmured, not believing it, but wanting to hear it denied.

"Shih, Many. But none as fine as you, of course." Wangtao had moved his mouth to the youth's nipple and was sucking it hard between his teeth.

"Aeiii," Pai groaned. He was mortified that Wangtao hadn't pledged he was the only one. And now he couldn't fight his curiosity. "And the youth before me. How long was he with you?"

"Alas, only one full turning of the seasons," Wangtao had said with a low growl. "But enough. I want you to practice coming together. Clients pay more for coming together." And with that, Wangtao had fisted Pai's yang chu and started to pump it as hard as he could while diving deep inside the youth with his yang chu. And Pai was forced to abandon his questioning at that point and concentrate on coming together as commanded.

And Pai had forgotten what had been said . . . until now. It was already late autumn. Only the winter to go. He could not live without Wangtao. There was nothing in life without Wangtao. He certainly could not go back to Zigui after having lived near Danyang on Tai Hu Lake.

The next market day he did not forget the chi'en, but he came right back to the nanleshijia after he had walked away from it, already knowing the truth, but wanting to be proved wrong.

But he wasn't proved wrong. The other youth was there now, standing on the dock with a beaming Wangtao. Wearing a newly tailored robe from the beautiful scarlet brocade Pai had seen the previous market day. The handsome youth was turning this way and that way, and Wangtao was looking at him with approval—and, yes, Pai was convinced, with that look of speculation and desire that he had seen in Wangtao's eyes when they had first met in Zigui in what seemed so long ago and so far away.

* * * *

Pai stood at the highest point of the Bridge of Sighs between the Tai Hu and Meihan lakes on that first day of winter, still cool but with that touch of frost on the air promising the bleakness to come. He was staring down into the frigid lake water, holding his torn red brocade robe tightly around him, whispering not only of what had gloriously been but, in melancholy, also of what might have been—what he had dreamed would be. He had just returned from being taken roughly, cruelly by a client at the Danyang nanleshijia managed by Shun, the first time he had been given to one of the crude soldiers of Chu, who had ravished him mercilessly. Wangtao had not been there to protect or comfort him.

He was not angry—just regretful. If he had stayed in Zigui, life certainly would not have been any better. He had had his peach spring, perfectly ripe summer, and mellow autumn. He would not stand in the way of Wangtao. He had been a superb lover, and Pai loved him still. He would love Wangtao forever.

Pai looked down into the swirling water as it moved from the larger lake into the smaller one, the new water brushing the old water aside, pushing its way into the smaller lake. Life was ever thus. Pai leaned out farther over the stone railing, bending down toward the swirling, welcoming waters.

* * * *

"Pai, Pai," Wangtao was crying out over the water in the advancing twilight as he poled the pleasure barge out onto the large Tai Hu Lake. "Anyone seen my Pai?" he cried out to the other pleasure barges casting off with their first cushioned nesting of treasured clients for the evening.

"Shih, Wangtao hsien sheng," another poleman called out to his friend. "Just moments ago, over at the Bridge of Sighs."

"Hsieh, hsieh—thanks," Wangtao called back. "It's not like him not to be ready for the first castoff. And I wanted to show him what I had made for him."

"Gifts for a lover?" the friend bantered back, needling him gently. "I've heard you have an ever-stiff yang chu for that one. You know it isn't good business to fall for your cut sleeve."

"Fuck you," Wangtao called back, but in a tone that obviously was given in good humor. "This one is special. I am getting too old for this business. This one I take away with me. And look, see what I had made for him. His robe is old and torn; I've bought him this splendid new scarlet brocade robe. Cost me a month's taking. The tailor's son, who is the size of Pai, wore it to ensure the fit would be perfect, and I rewarded the youth for his help. But Pai is worth that and more to me. He is worth everything to me."

As they had bantered back and forth, they had been poling across the lake toward the Bridge of Sighs. And as Wangtao had carefully, lovingly folded his love gift and set it down on the cushions at the center of the pleasure barge, he looked across to the entry of the greater Tai Hu Lake into the lesser . . .

. . . and saw the familiar torn red brocade robe floating on the surface of the frigid Tai Hu Lake just below the Bridge of Sighs.

Shun sensed what had happened even before he looked down on Tai Hu Lake from the nanleshijia pavilion deck. He had heard the weeping of the man wafting on the breeze across the lake and had known that it was Wangtao. He stood and looked down upon the boat floating up to the dock, with Wangtao standing and embracing a dripping-wet bundle of red brocade to his chest.

Even having known where the story of Pai and Wangtao would end, Shun was overcome with sadness and turned and walked with weary steps to the strongbox in his room to contemplate whether it was time to flee from this cursed Kingdom of Chu.