Bound & Bound – the Curse and the Captives – - 24. Chapter 24: Ecstasy

Chapter 24: Ecstasy

Even to Junayd's generally positive take on the world around him, Ahmed was in a glorious mood.

They swung their picks and scraped with their shovels in the enclosed, stymied and increasingly dim confines of their well shaft, but his soldier seemed to do his work today with easy aplomb.

The young dervish leaned on his shovel handle for a moment. His hand wiped sweat from his brow, and he too began to allow the high spirits of Ahmed's demeanour to overtake him.

A smile enlivened his face as he recalled waking up last night to some odd sensations. For one, he felt his Kapikulu's sturdy frame embrace him from behind once Ahmed had climbed into bed. And then, as usual, he relished in silent delight the feel of the strong man's hands slipping around his body. Junayd pretended to be asleep, as he usually did, but last night, it was all different.

Ahmed's bare skin was aglow. Junayd had to feel for himself, so his hand reached up to stroke the soldier's forearm. It smelled of some exotic and warm spice.

"Did I wake you?" Ahmed asked.

Junayd rolled within Ahmed's arms. Their faces were only the width of a hand apart in the moon-streaked darkness. "Yes, and what happened to you?"

"What do you mean?"

"I mean," Junayd picked up Ahmed's hand and raked it gently under his nose. "You smell like spices and flowers."

Through the soft enveloping glow of night, Junayd witnessed Ahmed blink in suppressed longing.

"Dervish, I was called upon to serve an unpleasant task, but the good news is, tomorrow night, you and I may enjoy my reward."

"And what 'reward' is that, Kapikulu?"

Ahmed fully grinned and slowly shook his head. "Oh, no. I want you to anticipate it as keenly as a stubbornly-kept secret." His joy evaporated and his smile turned to deadly conviction. "Do that for me, Junayd. Live in anticipation, please."

Junayd's hand went up to stoke Ahmed's cheek, he was emboldened by the sheltering dark to try it. He said softly, "I'm all about esoteric secrets, so I'll do that for you, soldier."

Within the younger man's heart he wished the dark would increase, intensify in that moment so that Ahmed's head could lower to his. So that in that shadowed warmth, the lips of the two men could meet as equals.

To the dervish's surprise, Ahmed patted Junayd's cheek two times with a jocular roughness, and turned over with "Good night" on his lips.

Junayd couldn't sleep after that, but once he heard Ahmed's breaths rhythm off into gentle snores, he raised himself up on one elbow and kissed the sleeping man; kissed him like he always did, in secret.

He then nestled his head on the older man's chest, where the embracing warmth of Ahmed's arm came up to hold him. Then, settled once again, Junayd had fallen into a blissful and dreamless sleep.

"What?" Ahmed stood leaning on his pick, laughing at Junayd. The Herculean skin of the man glowed from head to toe with a radiant sheen.

"Nothing," the dervish intoned impishly, and started filling the waiting basket attached to a rope from above.

Ahmed asked with profound seriousness, "Dervish, I know I have asked you before, but do you think God will punish me for having been a soldier?"

"For following orders?"

"For having allowed myself to kill as a vocation. Will he punish me for the lives I have taken? Although, some of my worst acts were done for good reasons."

Junayd inspected the knitted brows of his comrade in bondage, and had a feeling the man had just made an allusion to the sudden nullification of their former taskmaster as a threat to himself. "Ahmed, God knows your heart better than you do yourself. He already understands your motivations better than I, or anyone else ever can, so why live in fear? The Holy Quran tells us: 'The rightful due of a misdeed is an equivalent one to put it right. For if anyone absolves and restores things to proper order, his reward will be with God. Certainly the Lord has no love for wrongdoers.'"

Ahmed inhaled deeply, and went back to work. He did so to Junayd's eyes with a newfound relief and sense of hope.

"Kapikulu," he started in a fresh and brighter tone. "Did you ever spend much time in the countryside?" A shovelful of broken shale cracked like ice as it slid into the basket.

"You know I am a man who likes the seashore; I could spend hours walking on the warm sands and forgetting my troubles by just watching the sun sink into the waters to the west. But, you mean 'countryside' as in being around flowers and trees, and such?"

"Yes. That's exactly what I mean. Sometimes when I was a child, my sister and I would be packed off to the farm where my mother's sister lived with her husband."

Another round of shale slipping into the basket joined the pings of Ahmed's pick cutting into the stone floor they stood on.

"What would you do there?" Ahmed sounded dismissive. "I mean, walk through cow and horse shit, and then what?"

"You truly want to hear, soldier?"

"Yes, dervish – tell me."

Junayd scooped up broken rock with a sharp metallic sound. He paused it in the air to speak. "In the autumn, the fields would be awash in crocus. Do you know what colour crocus are?"

The shale slipped nosily on top of the rest.

"Crocus…they're yellow."

Junayd laughed in a good-natured chide, "They are purple, soldier, and then after the harvest of saffron is done, I would walk the fields and let my eyes drift up to the blue of heaven and give thanks."

The basket was full, so Junayd tugged twice on the rope. It began its slow ascent.

Ahmed took a break. He set the pick leaning on the wall, which was where he placed a shoulder too.

"What else, dervish?"

"That time of year, the countryside would be golden, and I would run through the fields and have the odd sensation that the pounding coming up through the soles of my feet was like the rushing gusts of winds trailing by my ears, and like the throbbing of my beating heart."

"Freedom, Junayd. Is that what you are talking about?"

"Yes, Ahmed. That, but more. At such connections, there seemed no difference between the striking of my foot upon the earth, the air streaming by my ears, and the rush of blood through my body. They were the same – not only from the same source, but one and the same thing."

"God?"

Junayd felt himself inhale sharply. He could not help it. He had always had doubts that his soldier companion could be able to understand Junayd, but even if the professional swordsman could not experience the ecstasy for himself, at least there was a part of him that could conceive of it as existing for others.

"Yes, Kapikulu. That was the moment, and the place, when I felt the overwhelming joy that God means us to find in our ordinary activities."

Expecting more dismissive and awkward displays – say, a hand going to the back of his head – Ahmed surprised the dervish by simply nodding in slow deliberation.

"I…I," he stammered. "Never thought of it like that."

"All right, soldier. Just know in your heart that it's possible – it is possible to see the face of God. There, Kapikulu, now you know my most deep and esoteric secret. The one only the initiated few are let to see."

Ahmed smirked slightly, and readjusted his weight leaning on the pick handle.

"All right, dervish. I won't tell anyone who revealed it to me, except maybe to God, when I see him."

"That won't be for a long time, soldier."

"Insha'Allah."[1] Ahmed's eyes rose. Junayd could almost read his companion's thoughts as he watched the man's gaze scan every rock point and recess rising up the shaft walls. Ahmed's thoughts were along the line of wishing for release, and to be lifted up and out of this pit of their captivity.

Junayd too looked up. At the height of twenty men standing on each others' shoulders, the oculus of light and blue patch of heaven seemed impossibly far away, but nevertheless, he carried a piece of it in his heart, and he wished Ahmed would be free to partake of it. Maybe he would yet do that, and allow himself some happiness; allow himself some joy before it was too late.

˚˚˚˚˚

Ahmed felt like a kid again. Specifically like a little boy counting down the moments before sundown and the end of Ramadan. The festival's close signalled the start of a great feast and that merrymaking could begin.

It was the expectation of rapture that Ahmed felt standing next to Junayd in Lady Maria's chamber.

Good to her word, the bath was prepared as last night, the bucket of soapy water stood by, and so too did the small dish of clove oil. The guard had just undone their hands and left them.

"What is this?" Junayd asked in amazed hushedness.

"This is where I was last night. Now, let me bathe you."

Ahmed slipped his fingers through Junayd's and led him towards the pool of rose-petaled water.

At the column steps, he paused. He raised Junayd's arms up, and drew off the younger man's tunic. He lay it down, and then as he partially stooped, he pulled down the dervish's loincloth. It too he set on the floor, and was surprised upon his rising again to feel Junayd's fingers tugging at his own clothes.

He stood and let the younger man lift off his tunic. Junayd knelt and slowly drew down the soldier's undergarment. There was no hiding the growing stiffness in his member at Junayd's touch.

Ahmed interlaced fingers below Junayd's armpits and had him stand again.

He led the young man to the shallow basin depressed in the floor. "Stand there, and I will clean you," Ahmed said with a voice beginning to choke with emotion.

The professional soldier dipped his hand in the soapy water and found the sponge. All of a sudden the fragrant environment hit him. The roses, yes, the spicy heat of the oil set in a bowl by the soap, but also the manly scent of Junayd filled his nose, and overwhelmed his feelings of connection to the young man. The scent of his companion was as familiar and as much a part of him as his own.

His hands lifted the inundated sponge carefully up to Junayd's chest. He let the excess of water drape over the dervish's shoulders, and thrilled to see Junayd's eyes loll back in pleasure as the warm soothing caress of liquid kissed his youthful skin.

He rubbed the sudsy sponge over Junayd's chest, his arms, his shoulders and neck.

Junayd's hands, as if they were making love, came out to stroke Ahmed's upper body, his chest, and the nape of his neck.

Ahmed stood. He replenished his sponge, and came close to Junayd; so close their chests touched.

Slowly, the soldier laid Junayd's head on his shoulder, and sponged the young man's back. He let bare fingers caress the supple smoothness he felt at the small of Junayd's back, and stroked his backside with the sponge.

Junayd's mouth vibrated as he turned and pressed his lips to the side of Ahmed's flesh.

Ahmed crouched slightly to lean out a bit, and brought his hands around to Junayd's front. He worked cleansing foam over Junayd's pubic region, and then grabbed Junayd's phallus and scrotum, tight to the shaft. With the other hand he brought the sponge to bear on all parts of it.

Ahmed felt thrilled as Junayd's moaning reverberated in deeper thrusting pangs of breaths onto his neck, and felt the young man's member spring to life under his grasp.

As gently as he could, Ahmed said, "Now, to rinse you off." The professional soldier was somewhat shocked to hear just how desperately pleased the sound of his subservient voice sounded to him.

He stepped back, dropped the sponge in the pail, and lifted a bucket of warm and clean water.

"Raise your arms," he told Junayd.

Once he did, Ahmed slowly, lovingly, drizzled water over every feature of Junayd's beautifully smooth body – it was the scintillation of water he had seen many times in the daylight with the young man's smile from behind it, but now, through some magic, it was the entire form of the glorious man he now had before him.

At the end, he set the bucket down, and used both hands to draw Junayd's lower arm to him. He did this in the same motion of kneeling before the dervish. The younger man's hands came to Ahmed's shoulders.

Holding Junayd's gaze, Ahmed stroked the young man's cock and kissed the tip of it.

"Ahmed…" Junayd protested.

"No, dervish," he said as he lovingly drew long strokes along its shaft. "I want to. Don’t you see..? I am able to follow your rule – no sex without love. I hope you feel the same about me." He parted his mouth slightly, and the head glided past his lips.

Junayd's fingers flexed as a moan of pleasure echoed around the room and got muffled as it flowed over the surface of the water like an act of creation.

Ahmed opened his mouth fully and slid his lips the entire length of Junayd's shaft.

Junayd's hands moved to the side of Ahmed's head, and as the slipping rhythm of sucking down-stroke and releasing upstroke mounted, Junayd held onto Ahmed's ears. The sound of the dervish's grip was wonderful to Ahmed; it was like a breeze blowing through sand dunes at the beach on a summer's evening.

His hands reached and caressed Junayd's nipples. The result was a slight weakening in the young man's knees. Ahmed loved that feeling too, this incredible feeling that Junayd was leaning on him for support.

The tug on Ahmed's ears became insistent. Junayd wanted him to stand, so leaving one hand to continue the stroking his lips could not, he rose within Junayd's strong embrace.

Junayd's touch sought out and found Ahmed's erection. He too stroked him.

Ahmed spied the oil. He bent down and brought it up. Then he removed Junayd's hand from his member, and stiffened two fingers of the young man for him. He dipped them to the knuckle in the clove oil.

To the somewhat puzzled look on Junayd's face, Ahmed only said, "Shoosh."

The soldier rotated slightly and guided Junayd's fingertips to his back portal.

Junayd could not hide his surprise. "Are you sure..?"

"Junayd, I've never been more sure of anything in my life. I've never wanted anything like I want you, so please…please, Junayd."

Ahmed guided the younger man's fingers to enter him.

A sigh escaped him, and the soldier's eyes closed in extreme pleasure; his dick pressed flat against Junayd's belly flared and deposited a clear drop as manifest witness to his delight.

Feeling that, Junayd worked the oil in and out with gentle perseverance; each time twisting it slightly and going farther in.

This made Ahmed turn full around and bend over for the young man to get full access. Junayd went for a second round of oil, and worked that in good and deep; a third finger got involved.

Ahmed groaned uncontrollably, and with the probing and gentle twists from Junayd, thought he might spontaneously orgasm.

The soldier got down on his hands and knees. In a moment he felt Junayd follow. The young man's dick was riding the top of his ass crack when he felt a drizzle of the oil anoint the tip of Junayd's manhood.

Junayd leaned back slightly to position head to portal, and then, slowly, leaned forward.

To Ahmed, the sensation was like the effort of relaxing, and when he did, Junayd slid into him with painless ease.

As Junayd continued to meld his shaft with Ahmed's interior, an incredible feeling of wholeness enveloped Ahmed's being. Yes, it was best described, he thought, to the notion of being full.

Junayd began to pull out in a long, slow, maddening stroke, and if Ahmed thought he enjoyed the penetration, the act of feeling the withdrawal made him clutch at the marble floor in panting ecstasy.

His dervish re-sunk into him, and a satisfying rhythm to their lovemaking soon emerged.

With each new down-stroke, Junayd became more adamant and found greater depths within Ahmed's soul.

Junayd spread the soldier's cheeks and grabbed on tight while he pounded him.

Ahmed, for his part, felt his own shaft threatening to convulse in wild release, and behind his tightly shut eyes, he inexplicably saw a field of sunshine and low-growing purple flowers.

"Oh God, I love you, Junayd," escaped his lips as a choppy series of breaths.

Junayd's full weight settled on Ahmed's back. The crook of the young man's arm worked its way under Ahmed's throat. He applied pressure on the next down stroke and lifted the side of Ahmed's face to be level with his own.

Ahmed heard the man he loved whisper in a general growl, "You want me to cum in you?"

"Oh God – yes."

"You want it?"

"Please…"

Junayd kissed Ahmed. The sensation of Junayd's youthful moustache on Ahmed's mature facial hair was incredible. The young man's facial hair was scratchy and suddenly Ahmed knew it was also a wonderful conveyer of Junayd's scent into his mouth and nostrils. The dervish's open lips and tongue ravaged Ahmed's mouth, and even after his head lay on the cool marble because it was too weighty to support anymore, the young man's lips, tongue and deeply passionate breaths molested his ear and made the soldier tingle all over his body as one instantaneous thrill. The older man's breath escaped him as a lingering gasp suspended in time and place; a breath like God's that brought light into creation – Ahmed had a crazy notion, that God's moment of joy in bringing the universe into being was an act of love. His echoing pleasure from that moment is the only pleasure we are allowed to tap into.

Helplessly, totally beyond all ability to concede to denial, Ahmed let himself go and ejaculated mightily.

He felt his grip-release, grip-release, pulsate on and around Junayd's member. It was an incredibly unifying feeling, and within another moment, Junayd's hand turned Ahmed's face and lips to his own. The young man's heavenly scent and youthful moustache mingled with Ahmed's own. His lover shot the hot breath of a barely controlled yell down Ahmed's throat, and the soldier's passage felt the young man's member kicking inside of him like a mule. Time after time, again and again, the dervish's breaths were keeping the rhythm of his member. Ahmed was being seeded by the man he loved, and the soldier had never been more content nor ever felt more fulfilled in his entire life.