James called round at three this afternoon and he suggested that we get things moving early next week. So I invited him to view the room I'd prepared especially for him and he followed me in. Even then I hadn't thought it right through and planned what happened next - it just seemed obvious and natural.

"I like the look of it," he said, admiring what I'd done. "No sharp edges!"

"I don't want you coming to any harm," I reassured. "I don't want you coming to anything." That was when I decided to go for it.

"Try the seat, if you wish. I've managed to work everything around your measurements but one or two minor adjustments might be needed."

Within a few seconds he was seated and trapped. Fully dressed in denim jeans, a cotton shirt, trainers. Restraints held down his fore-arms and ankle-snaps kept his legs in place. From behind the back of the chair I swung over the head mask within which was attached a soft rubber penis designed to silence and to comfort him in equal measure. He struggled frantically and cursed dramatically but none of his words were audible, muffled as they were by the gag. It worked like a dream.

So it has started and I am sure I have set both of us on an inexorable course. Even from the outset I feel as if I am as much the victim as he is, although he is the one tied up and at my mercy. I am, however, determined to maintain a strict scientific detachment for as long as possible and to treat the whole thing as a vital psychological experiment.

My name, incidentally, is Tomas. I live with my partner Richard and we share our home with our mutual friend Hari who is a Maori lad - dark-eyed, loyal, passionate and intense. I get the odd reply to a Personal Ad I posted several months ago for willing participants in private bondage games. Richard and I are in our late thirties and most of the interest seems to come from guys the same age or older. We rarely bother to follow through these contacts as they are more about teasing and anticipation rather than any actual achievement. Besides, Hari is only 18 and quite enough to handle, even shared between the two of us.

But then I met James, who is about 23 and very intelligent and keen and seems to have his head sorted out with regard to this sort of thing. From the start - about two weeks ago - he has remained insistent upon going ahead with a really hot bondage session and having no limits as to what I should consider inflicting upon him. He's made it very clear that being in a position of total powerlessness is an almost obsessive need and he wants no safeguards in advance - no passwords or anything - just the freedom to be completely under my control.

Naturally, my imagination started to go a little wild at this prospect and I soon began to wonder if I was getting into something I'd not be able to cope with rationally. I have, however, furnished a couple of small secret rooms with just about all that is needed. Neither Richard nor Hari nor anyone else - apart from James himself, now - know of these plans.

I have left him alone and retired next door to recover. I am typing this with one hell of a nervous shaky hand. I have never been so hard - it is quite an incredible feeling. Maybe once I've come I'll have had enough. But I doubt it somehow. Perhaps there is a truth waiting to be discovered at the heart of this fantasy, just as there is a pure illusion waiting at the centre of reality.

Sunday - late evening

There is a music track playing: some classical baroque pieces, very soothing. Underneath as a secondary set of sounds, very faint, subliminal, is a special mix of moans and screams - taken from videos mainly - of various men in the agonies and ecstasies of sexual excitement and torment. As time goes on these will become louder but for the moment they are undetectable.

I went back in and unbuttoned his shirt and exposed his belly, softly rubbing his nipples. He moaned gratefully at this. I shall try to note how the timbre of his moans of pleasure change over the following hours. These first seemed to say: OK, I'm here now; start it, I'll play along. I delicately kissed the area around his navel before dripping a dozen or so strands of hot molten wax on to him. He jolted his body and cried out momentarily but soon relaxed on realising what was happening. Maybe he was hard himself. I was again, certainly, and it was barely fifteen minutes since I'd shot my first load. I picked up two ice cubes, one for each hand, and rubbed them over his stomach. Another jolt. The first scream too, though very pleasurably uttered I felt, as if he too were testing his boundaries.

The seat he was in had been constructed very carefully: it could be reclined at several angles; it could be turned and revolved. Now it lay flat. The body that lay there was still largely covered and hidden by manacles and a mask but I knew how beautiful the flesh beneath would be. To the mess of wax and melted ice that lay across his belly I added a few dribbles of my own pre-cum. I was standing naked next to him, my hungry cock ready to burst for a second time. Which it soon did.

I raised the mask from his face and he spluttered a little, gasping for air and blinking in the semi-darkness.

"You're an evil bastard," he groaned, after a few more seconds. "My throat is parched - I need water. And when are you getting to MY dick, man?"

"Soon," I said. "Are you sure you want to continue? Do you want to agree a password now?"

"You know what I want," he growled. "This is too good to spoil, so just shut up and get on with the...OWW!!"

I'd struck him across the face with the back of my hand. My fingers tingled.

"Don't tell me what to do!" I calmly muttered close to his ear. "Now - last chance - do you want a password?"

"Fuck off!!" He almost spat the words. I was obviously dealing with someone who had something to prove to himself.

"I'm a devious little devil," I said, putting the upper part of the mask back over his face to cover his eyes. "I'll give you another chance later but just remember how devious I am. Meanwhile I'll mix you a drink."

I scooped the remains of the melted ice, wax and semen from his stomach and into a glass. Raising him to a seated position I released his left arm and handed him the drink.

"What the hell!!" he spat a mouthful of the mixture out, back on to his belly and jeans.

"Not to your taste? I'd drink it up in one nice little swallow if I were you - there's a nice cold beer to follow if you do. Otherwise - sorry, the bar's closed!"

And bless him, he did. One quick shot back and the glass was drained. I opened a screw-top bottle and poured a full glass of the ice-cold beverage.

"I'll leave it on the side table just to your right while I go for a pee," I told him. "Help yourself."

From the doorway I watched as he reached over with his left hand and groped carefully to locate the table and the glass. With extreme caution he carried the slippery beaker to his lips and I left the room.

Three seconds later there was an enormous yell of rage and then a smash of glass against a wall.

Once he'd got one arm free it was a simple job for him to unclasp the other and then to free his legs. On my return from the toilet, therefore, he was leaning against the far wall with his arms folded, shirt neatly tucked in and looking daggers at me.

"I know, I know!" I stopped him from interrupting me with a quickly raised hand. "Come through into next door and I'll explain. Or just leave now, if you wish." I gestured to the open door. "Your choice. For the moment."

"I thought you were supposed to get my rocks off. That's what I wanted. This is just plain stupid." He sighed with half resignation, half hopefulness. "Just make it quick because I feel like packing it in. I shouldn't be here anyway, not tonight: I've got work tomorrow."

When we walked into the room next door he found a table laid ready for a dinner for two. I handed him a real glass of cool beer - "No trick - go on, enjoy!" - and took a quick sip myself to prove it. Softer light music was playing. Romantic lighting. The warm re-assuring scent of bread mingled with spices from the meal cooking in the oven in the corner.

The daggers had disappeared. A wide smile filled his face then turned to a sudden frown.

"Look, Tomas, you know I'm not gay. I mean that and I think you know I mean it. It's not a game I'm playing to pretend that I'm not gay but I am really. I do want the sex with you but ...Well, I'm not sure I fancy this seduction scene."

"Relax and sit down," I re-assured him. "All I want to do is explain a few things and make one hundred percent sure that you want to submit to me. That's all. Forget St Valentine's Day - that's pure coincidence."

He sat and drank some beer. I fetched the food over and we began to eat. About halfway through the meal I got to the point. I looked straight into his eyes.

"Listen, James, the simple truth is that I desperately want to tease and torture you and turn-on your mind and body so badly that your brain has the equivalent of a total melt-down. I mean that. I want to have you writhing in your bonds and babbling, whimpering, begging, screaming, crying and moaning uncontrollably all at the same time because you're so desperate to cum...."

He looked away from me, squirmed in his chair and groaned slightly.

"And I know you want that too."

"Too right. Too damn right," he murmured.

The tune now playing was That Old Black Magic. Down and down I go, round and round I go.

"All I need to know is - is it still no limits? No password? No escape?"

He put down his fork and looked directly at me. I knew we were both rock hard. So did he.

"No boundaries, no nothing - I'm all yours - just get to the basics a bit quicker, that's all. Get my pants off. You know!" he laughed. "I trust you. I want you to take me wherever."

"What if I don't know, though?" I asked, genuinely. "What if I get us both into something I can't handle?"

"Like drinking piss? Hell - why not? It's just that it was a surprise and a new experience." He paused. "But on reflection - it's quite a horny memory!"

I would give him one last chance.

"What if I just got completely carried away and ended up hurting you by accident?"

He frowned, but more in thought than in fear.

"Accidents happen."

Then he said: "Look, Tom, I've thought this through too. I want to feel scared and humiliated. I want so I'll get angry. So I'll scream. So I'll smash glasses against a wall. But...I want that and..." - he punctuated the next three words with a jab of his finger - "I...mean...that." He drained the last drops of beer from his glass. "I'm a runaway, remember. In here, I've stopped running."

"I enjoyed hitting you," I added. This had to be the last question. "What if I want to do it again?"

"Pain. Fear. Expanded limits. My mind expanded. My body stretched..." - He paused and then he stood up and unzipped his denims to display his proud erection nestled within his briefs - "...and all within your power. No limits, for either of us!"

He walked back into the other room and left me rubbing my groin in anticipation.

"Tomas!" he shouted a few seconds later, "I've got both my legs and one arm fastened - I need you to finish me off..."

I went in and secured the other arm restraint, lowered the seat to its fully reclined position and placed a pillow under his head. I patted him gently on the bulge that was now safely tucked within his pants and kissed him on the forehead. The classical music tape was playing softly but one or two erotic groans were already audible in the background. The tape was set to play for another two hours and would increase in sexual intensity by each minute.

I turned the lights to barely lit and left the room. He didn't speak though he could have done: the mask was unattached. Perhaps he thought I was coming straight back.

I locked everything behind me and went up to my bedroom. Richard was undressed and reading in bed. Hari was watching TV.

"Either of you in the mood?" I queried, slipping naked between the sheets.

Monday - morning

I awoke early with a raging hard-on after a particularly restless night. I slipped out of bed to wash and dress as quickly as possible, anxious to get things really moving today and to show him what kind of business I meant.

Entering the room as quietly as possible I found him asleep and it took no more than a couple of seconds to draw the mask over his head and slip the gag into his mouth. He spluttered and tried to speak to me, shaking his arms violently within their restraints. I could make out my name being spoken, the words `wait' and `stop', and then ignored it and just heard noise.

For the next fifteen minutes I simply massaged the area around his feet, kneading his calf muscles, stroking his legs, before untying his trainers and getting to work on his feet. I'd read a story the week before in which a spy was tortured on his feet with matches, feathers and rubber-bands and I wanted to try out some of the ideas.

Beginning with the ordeal by fire I lit a match and held it close to the heel of James's left foot. He wriggled a little and moved his foot away from the source of heat. Whichever direction he moved, I followed until the match was burnt out. Then to be fair and symmetrical I inflicted the same on his right foot. I repeated that process twice.

He has beautiful feet, it must be said. Long, tanned, handsome and smooth. I licked them in turn, from heel to toe. What sounds of anger emitting from his mask a short while ago were now contented murmurs. My tongue played around and over his feet and toes for several minutes and then I couldn't help but suck and nibble at each toe in turn. Lots more contentment. I reached a hand to his crotch and confirmed the existence of a rigid member.

He didn't seem to be too ticklish on his feet but I guessed I should test him all the same. The feathers danced around but nothing much happened, so they were quickly discarded. There would be other areas to test out later.

I sat back and pulled out a large rubber-band. Using it like a pea-shooter I stretched it back with my right hand, gripping the other end with my left and aiming straight at his in-step which I reckoned would be the most sensitive place. The band snapped and smacked dead centre and his foot jerked back.

It made a loud slapping noise when it made contact and James gave a muffled cry in agony from the stinging pain. I pulled back the band just under the toes of his right foot and let it go again. He screamed again. I considered how easy it was to enjoy being as sadistic as this as I began rapidly and incessantly stinging his feet at random spots, reveling in his agony. His left foot then received the same treatment. Then I rubbed oil into both feet for him, slipping my hands as far up his legs as the clamps would permit.

I had some work to do out of town, however, so time was pressing.

Releasing him without reason was all part of the fun. He would become unable to predict it and expect it to happen at random which would add to the excitement. He might even expect it as a matter of course if I released him at some point each day. One day, though, I knew that it would be much more stimulating to deny that release and delay it for....well, for quite a time.

"Grab a wash, get a bite to eat," I instructed him. "I need breakfast myself anyway. And afterwards, we'll try the post...."

He got up silently and went towards the door to wash and toilet. I wondered if he might now decide to pack it in and leave.

"...I'll need you to strip for that!"

The post was just that - a thick wooden post running from floor to ceiling - but comfortably padded all round and furnished with a selection of different sized straps to hold down the neck, the waist and individual arms and legs. He was smiling and eager and anticipating great pleasure - which he would receive. He virtually tied himself in again, which was getting to be a disturbing habit. The difference this time was that he remained silent, as he had been all through breakfast, saying nothing but shooting me dark, brooding, pleading looks.

The feather that had failed to thrill his feet now began to be worked along the shaft of his already erect penis, running around the sensitive glans area and flicking over the tip, tickling him violently. This time it really worked wonders! It capered over his testicles, explored between his legs, and teased between the buttocks as far as I could reach. But always it returned to the stiff, now leaking young cock.

His need for orgasm was compelling. I was fascinated by the whole process and extremely aroused myself. Focusing clearly, I worked especially on his penis. I didn't even consider flicking the feather elsewhere over his body, happy to just tickle and tease his rock-hard tool, watching it twitch and lurch as James involuntarily began the prolonged climb towards consummation. I began again at the base of the shaft and slowly - and so very, very carefully - worked up towards the tip. I was very tempted to reach out and kiss it with my lips, but suppressed the instinct knowing that it would be an altogether sweeter kiss if delayed. The soft feather fondled his cock with a kiss of silk - hardly in contact with it but every movement sending ecstatic charges through the young body. The scent of his washed body mingled with fresh sweat was also intoxicating. Gradually, millimetre by millimetre, the feather reached upwards towards the tender tip of James's penis, its cunningly slow advance calculated precisely to cause the eventual orgasm to be of the most heart-breaking intensity possible.

James's mouth was open, his eyes closed, and he was whimpering in pure sexual frustration. As the plume progressed along the shaft, getting nearer and nearer to the tip of his cock, and the pressure of the semen in his balls grew, he was now at the point where a single determined stroke on his cock would make him ejaculate at once. He was powerless to control it - either to make himself cum or to prevent his nearing the point of orgasm.

The feather was now well past half way up his cock and I made the soft tip play round and round the rigid pole. Pre-cum was dripping down from the end in long pearly strands. James was oblivious to them, however, lost as he was in his private world of ecstasy. His entire universe consisted of that feather and what it was doing to his aching, horny cock. In many respects, it was my universe too, entranced as I was by the same thing: the only difference was the amount of responsibility I held. He was out of it; I was in the midst of it and able to direct it either way.

As the feather reached the base of the glans, a shudder ran through him. This was now pure torture - he so desperately needed to cum. He couldn't stop himself from pleading, "Oh Christ - please make me cum, Tomas, PLEASE!!"

"Oh, you shall cum, James - you shall cum," I promised.

"Oh, thank you, thank you," he almost sobbed with gratitude. I noted how little it had taken to get him to this point. The pleasure he was receiving from me was an immense weapon.

More and more often now his hips were escaping his control and his pelvic thrusts became powerful and more insistent. The feather was now working on the sensitive glans itself and he was beginning to tremble uncontrollably. I imagine that he could feel the onset of orgasm approaching and, as before, realising that he was incapable either of delaying it or forcing it to happen his mind must have observed and responded to every movement on his cock, willing me to deliver the final blow. I lingered on the cock-head for a long time, caressing, tormenting and tickling fiendishly.

I sensed that he was dangling on the very margin of orgasm. It would take little more than a sigh on the tip of his cock to push him over the edge and release all his pent-up sexual energy in one blast. I withdrew the feather, paused dramatically and then gently rubbed my moist fingers over the whole length of his straining cock. The moan that came from between his lips was worth everything I'd spent so far in time, money and effort: it was a moan of complete surrender, gratitude and acceptance of fate.

It was more than enough: the dam was about to burst. His hot spunk was ready to fire out in spurts that would probably have shot more than two feet across the room.

But I had to get to work! I had at least half-an-hour's drive across the city.

So I took my hand away, picked the feather from the floor and made to leave with it lying on the chair next to him.

"Huh!?" he groaned, realising I'd stopped. "What are you doing??"

"Oh, I'm sorry!" I said, turning back. "I need to do something. You don't mind, do you?"

I left the room to the sound of a series of vicious savage screams.

Monday - afternoon

He was still and silent when I returned from lunch.

"I'm going to give you the same treatment as earlier," I announced as naturally as I could, "With one or two variations. Are you OK with that?"

"Variations?" he asked.

"A couple, yes," I confirmed, "I'll skip the feet bit, for one. There's a few other things too but the main one you need to remember is that you'll get some time at the end with your own hand freed from the strap, if you need it."

There were neither questions nor complaints and so I set to work. This time I needed him gagged and blindfolded - that was the first job and soon done. Then I tied his arms in a different position so that they were above his head rather than at his side as before. I made one more adjustment to his right hand and then kissed him gently on the under-arm, on each nipple, on his neck, on the back of his legs - wherever it was soft and warm.

On my trip across town I'd stopped off at a hardware store for some tightly sprung clothes pegs. I began to attach these to his body, hanging them from his nipples, under-arms, neck, back of the legs, anywhere that the flesh was soft enough to hold them in place: anywhere that I'd just kissed him. I'd also got a selection of bulldog clips. These fastened more or less anywhere with a real tight pinch. By the time I'd got to putting them on him, there were real cries of pain coming from behind his gag.

The next variation was the camcorder, which I proceeded to set up so that it was focused directly on his groin area and set to record.

His cock was incredibly hard and it's perhaps time to describe it in a little more detail: it was well over six inches tall, its pink column soaring up out of the curly black hair of his naked crotch, terminating in a cleanly circumcised head now dripping tears of pre-cum. Without even making an intentional decision, I found myself advancing with my mouth.

I started with my tongue at the base of his cock, licking in long slow lazy swipes up its entire as though licking an ice-cream. I noticed his legs were quivering and tensing up. James was chock full of juice and it could not be long before he lost it, bearing in mind he'd been in my power for nearly 24 hours by now. My own groin was aching with a familiar desperate feeling.

I parted my lips to let them and my tongue enfold his cock-head and heard James moan. I was resting my hands on his thighs and as I slowly gobbled my way down his penis I felt his trembling increase. He tried to gasp out words between his moans but they were muted by the mouth-gag. I pulled back from his crotch again but continued to caress him manually, enjoying how my spittle made his head glisten when it twitched under my nuzzling fingers. The noise he was making now was more of a submissive groan. I let my fingers trail up to the wet cock-head and teased the sensitive area directly under his piss-slit and he jumped violently. I formed my fingers into a loose fist and stroked slowly but dexterously up and down his rod. Every time my hand got to the head of his cock I caressed the fleshy tip and made him groan again. His cries were almost screams, suggesting that the pleasure he was experiencing was distressingly unbearable.

The head of his cock was now very wet, covered with a mixture of my spit and his pre-cum, and I went back to concentrating on it, sliding my fingers up and down over the swollen red-purple flesh in a rhythm slow enough to create sensations of sexual agony. James squirmed madly, opening and closing his fingers spasmodically above his head. At this point I imagined how it might be if Richard or Hari were with me, perhaps working on James in another area or two...

Now I stepped up the pace of my stroking just a fraction, moving my mouth in close to fan his cock with my hot breath. I could see Hari on the other side of our victim, his face buried in the crack of James's ass; in my mind's eye Hari's tongue was becoming pointed and darting deep inside the private opening there. I moved my mouth even closer to where my fingers were tormenting his cock.

I plunged my mouth around his twitching cock and unleashed my ruthless tongue upon it. James gave a primeval yell as his thighs stiffened into twin columns of marble, and I knew he was as close to climax as I dared go.

I pulled away and began to release his gag and mask. Once that was free I had a split second to finish untying his right hand.

"I'm whacked, James," I confessed. "You'll have to finish the job yourself, I'm afraid. Never mind, I'll keep my promise. Is a minute long enough?"

He made sounds to indicate that one minute would be fine. I let the strap free from its buckle and his hand shot straight down to his crotch.

What he and I both knew was that he was wearing something tied to his right hand: he thought it was a large mitten-type glove and must have reckoned that even that would help him reach orgasm if played properly.

What he discovered only now was that it was actually an old boxing glove.

And, yes, it might have worked and he knew it and began to rub at his swollen cock with the palm of the glove.

"Fifty seconds," I informed him.

He found the rubbing was ineffective and began to hit himself right on the end of his penis with the glove.

"Forty seconds."

"I need more time - please, Tomas, just another minute, please!!" He was hitting as furiously as he dared. There was a chance he'd make it.

"Thirty seconds."

I was now busy with the camcorder, rewinding the tape and getting ready to play it back through the TV monitor about three yards away.

"Twenty seconds."

He was rubbing again, as best as he could manage. Maybe another ten seconds, maybe another minute.

"Ten seconds."

"No! Tomas! Please! Listen - just another minute, that's all. Just another minute. PLEASE!!!"

There is an eternity in a minute, especially in a last minute, but this was not to be it.

"Time's up. Sorry." I grabbed his arm with both hands and struggled to re-fasten it back into its bond. "Never mind, there'll be another chance soon enough."

"PLEASE - YOU CAN'T STOP NOW - LET ME CUM! FOR GOD'S SAKE LET ME CUM!!!" he screamed into my ear.

I set the video to play and got ready to leave the room for half-an-hour while he had the opportunity to watch an action re-play of the match I'd just played against his cock - in full colour with sound. What more could a man want?

Monday - late evening

Erotic literature - both the reading of it and the writing of it - is eventually quite wearying and something of a blind alley. I am coming to realise that this documented account of my time spent with James is turning in that direction and am wondering what to do next. For example, I went back in to see him after the half-an-hour was up and continued the process: but how am I to best record it? As a factual description? As pure eroticism? As a psychological inquiry? Whom do I write for and whom do I alienate by writing in the wrong way? More interestingly, whom do I attract by the way in which I finally choose?

As a factual description, what happened next was very simple: I returned to the room fully clothed; I changed the video so that a vast filmed montage of cum-shots was played; then I sat down in an armchair at the side of the room and watched in silence, ignoring everything James said or shouted or screamed at me. Once the video had run its course - about an hour later - I switched the machine off and went to eat an evening meal. As eroticism, I would need to go into detail regarding the video and the hundred or so scenes of stimulated and spurted cocks that flickered across the screen; I would perhaps write about James' torment and tease that out still further, giving a rounded version of all that he said to me and of how his body responded; I would need to emphasize the pure vulnerability of this youth in my grasp but I would also have to indicate the clear desire he kept expressing to have the situation continue; perhaps I should even throw in an account of my own masturbation in the arm-chair - though that would have to be pure fiction, to be honest, as that was then the last thing I wanted.

The truth is that I am beginning to feel strangely depressed. A part of me wants to end this game with him; another wants it to continue indefinitely; another wants it to take a totally different course. Much of my unease comes from the knowledge that he is trapped by me, in my control, loving it and wanting it to go on - and I am reluctant to leave the game myself because it is so unlike anything I've ever been in before and maybe it might provide something truly amazing. So I suppose the psychological inquiry is inevitable. Anything else would not have my heart in it.

I wonder if I am falling in love with him: there is certainly an obsession that I have never known before; and I do so want him to feel the same about me....

Tuesday - early morning

I went in and freed him from the post. It was after midnight and he was spitting blood, metaphorically. One by one I removed the pegs and clips from his body and would have lovingly kissed each mark on his flesh. He wasn't too impressed generally, however, and I knew it would have been a half-hearted attempt on my part anyhow and probably unwise.

"Look! Don't leave me on my own for so long!!" he protested. "I don't mind the rest of the stuff you're doing, but don't leave me on my own - it's so ..pointless!!"

Pointless? Or maybe that's what really scared him - being left alone, losing the attention, getting bored.

"Do you want to pack it in?" I asked. I was ready to. I would have been pleased to, just at that moment.

"For fuck's sake, Tomas, that's not the question you should be asking!! You should be telling me I can't leave, if anything!!!" He was getting his annoyance with me out into the open. "I'm not the one in charge, remember. I don't want to miss this chance. Just think! Think!!" It was the familiar annoyance that came with being dependent on another human being.

With all his restraints loosened and still naked and stretching to get the circulation in his limbs going he looked quite beautiful and much more vulnerable than before, much more than when he was tied down even. I wanted to confess - there and then - about how I was starting to feel about him. Lust. Tenderness. Yearning.

"James?"

"Yes?"

I hesitated and it was very clear that I didn't know what to say and do.

"What!?" he snapped; annoyed, tired, grubby.

"I want you to wash in my shower. I'm going to watch you. If you touch your dick, that's it - you're out of here - it's finished!"

As he washed I wracked my brains for a bright idea. The things I'd got ready - the chair, the post, the videos, even the soundtracks which I'd spent hours editing - they all seemed...the word `pointless' seemed to apply to them, too. I just wanted to join him in the shower and hold him tight and look into his deep brown eyes and tell him.....

There was a bed in the room next door. I decided to use that. Then I changed my mind and thought the reclining chair would work better. Then I had another idea for the bed. Then I remembered that there were no ties or straps in that room (it was where I retreated for some privacy) and went back to thinking about the chair. Confusion was the keynote with panic creeping in close behind. All the time I kept watch through the clear glass screen into the shower as the soap lather slipped down his torso and legs. His hair was wet and shiny. I felt suddenly felt very angry at him. Angry that he was so young and so beautiful and so desperate for his wayward pleasures and about to slip through my fingers. Angry that he might be gone soon and wouldn't think of me again. Angry at being used and at being useless.

This curious mixture of anger - bred of fear - went straight to my libido and almost at once I felt quite refreshed, my specific desire for him transformed into a greater arousal. With it came a surge of animal love and a huge longing to please him, to satisfy his need for being mastered and for being freed from having to make any choice.

We sat down at the table together while he ate a simple supper of soup and bread. He wore my blue dressing gown.

"James," I said, finding my voice with confidence and clarity. "I think we should both get some sleep. You can have the bed next door provided you let me fit a special belt around your waist to stop you playing with yourself. Otherwise....."

I paused. (I was about to say "...it's back to the chair and tied up again," but didn't want to let him hear me give him that choice.)

"...there'll be real trouble."

"OK. I agree," he demurred. "What about my job, by the way? Did you contact them earlier today to say I'm ill or something?"

I knew he had temporary and poorly-paid employment at some sort of outdoor leisure complex. I hadn't contacted anyone to let them know he couldn't get there. But I had an answer.

"You work for me now, boy," I growled, half menace and half affection.

"Oh?" he smiled back. "That's nice."

Tuesday - evening

Let's just say that it has been a day full of interesting developments.

No. Let's not.

Let's spend time going over some of them in greater detail.

Let's linger. Let's get warm and close. Let's spend time with our hearts beating faster, our pulses racing a little. For while I am sure that some erotic encounters might be limited and limiting both in the actual act and in the re-telling of the act there can also be liberating elements present too.

I fixed a light healthy breakfast - wholemeal toast, fresh orange juice - for James and me and took it through to his bedroom. He was awake and reading the first chapter from a novel. Everything had a different feel, all of a sudden, and we both seemed to sense it. The game of pretense that has to exist between a master and slave had ended and a far deeper game was about to begin.

"I'm impressed by your taste in literature," he remarked, smiling directly at me.

Without having to ask him I knew that he'd slept well. His body language was of one relaxed and alert.

"What's that, then?" I queried, nodding at the book he'd chosen.

He held up the hardback folio edition of an obscure but interesting modern novel.

"If you're good today I may read you one or two excerpts, later," I offered.

He smiled again and closed the book, putting it down carefully at the side of the bed.

"I was able to pee with this on!" he admitted with pride, peeling back the sheet to reveal the belt around his waist.

"But it's murder if you get hard?" I asked.

"Yep!" And another smile.

It was time to create the mood for the rest of the day. I had decided to go for broke and take all the chances I dared within the next twenty-four hours or so. Kill or cure. All or nothing at all.

"Once you've finished breakfast we'll go next door, I'll take it off and give you a really good massage," I told him. "Today's the day, I think."

I started by gently fondling his testicles with my fingers. This soon got him hard. Whether from the actual physical contact upon this most private part of his body or from the anticipation of things to come I don't know, and the thought intrigued me. I then started playing gently with his cock. He was tied down again, face-up on the fully reclined chair, but no gag nor mask. He smelt musky, adorable. I decided that during the course of today I would find out what it was he'd run away from back in England.

"I'm just going to lubricate you a little," I explained.

I held the base of his cock and wrapped another gel-filled hand around the shaft and began stroking it up and down. The gel was slippery and it obviously amplified the sensations to his already deprived cock. I caressed it up and down from the base to the head. The feelings for me were extraordinary. I imagine they were for him also. This wasn't the real massage I had in mind but it would do as a start: a firm, warm cock-massage. His stiffness throbbed between my fingers. He began to wriggle in his bonds. I had tied down his legs and arms again, with arms outstretched above his head to reveal the soft tantalising pockets of arm-pits. I was exhilarated by the scent of his sweat, his body odor, the smell of his hair.

There was music playing again today but nothing I'd prepared specially. Just some of my own favourites, old romantic songs from old singers. There were no objections from James.

I released the base of his penis and started feeling his chest and worked at getting his nipples hard with my finger-tips and - unable to resist - a few nibbles with my teeth. I ran a hand up and down his sides. He laughed and I continued roaming his chest and sides. His sides were extremely sensitive and I just started tickling him. He started bouncing up and down, trying to get away from my hands. I poured more of the gel into my hand and held the base of his cock again and went back to work. This time I took really long slow strokes up and down the shaft.

"Have you ever stroked yourself as slowly as this?" I questioned him.

"No, not this slow. This could kill me," he breathed.

"Good. I'm going to drain you. I want to see you shake and moan."

I then started to massage the taut purple tip of his penis with my thumb and two fingers. At this he wriggled in his bonds. I was intoxicated by the sense of power and the luscious combination of beauty and strength - literally at my finger-tips. I firmly held the base of his cock with my left hand and carried on fondling the wet head with my fingers. While I was doing that, I said: "Remember - your job is to cum. I won't be happy until you do!"

He was really squirming now. He couldn't escape. I really knew how to get him going, I congratulated myself, and I continued to work his glans, keeping him in ecstasy for a while. I paused to anoint his cock again. I held the base and started stroking him off slowly again. He was sweating. His chest glistened. He was moaning because he wanted to cum so bad. I was moaning for exactly the same reason.

"You look so good right now." I told him. "You are beautiful." I wanted to say loads more. "You probably want me to speed up a little, eh?"

He nodded yes.

"Well, I like to take things slow. I want to keep you on this level for a long, long time."

He was wet all over himself by now. He looked like he just came out from a bath. I wondered if he was trying to make himself cum. Was he was thinking about something that would push him over the edge? A girlfriend? Me? His own cock? The sexual high he was experiencing must certainly be very intense. My slow strokes kept urging him to cum but he wouldn't. It was as if he wanted to cum but was denying himself the relief. My skillful stroking kept him on the very edge. He was on this roller-coaster for a little while longer. All the time he was half-sobbing, half-groaning with tension and desire.

"Relax. You know what you have to do. You will cum. No matter how long it takes, you will cum."

I just kept stroking his dick up and down. I did not take any breaks. I would just pause once in a while to smear my hand with gel. By now I had my own cock out of my pants and was masturbating myself with my left hand. My right hand worked on him and felt his cock starting to swell up to the point of no return. He was in real sexual ecstasy. The roller-coaster ride was almost over. He was on top of the hill ready to come hurtling down at top speed.

I paused because the intensity had also hit me where it hurts.

Without warning I felt that I too was about to erupt like a volcano. I was so close and it would clearly be some orgasm. It would be over for me, at least. Over his chest. Over his belly. Over his cock and balls. I scooped up some of my pre-cum and rubbed his cock with it. His loud moans of sheer brute pleasure at imminent release filled the small room.

The temptation to bring him over the edge was too much. I wanted him to experience the full beauty of an incredible orgasm. I also wanted us to cum together, to connect so intimately at that vital moment. I stood up, leant over him and looked into his face. He returned my gaze directly, soul to soul, totally exposed. There was a tremendous silence and a sense of time standing still, as though the entire universe was waiting for a simple human decision to be made.

But I knew that this kind of relief couldn't be part of the package. I had to leave the scene. I had, in effect, to torture myself as much as him and to stop the whole thing right now. If not, I risked it all being finished anyhow and couldn't bear to face that possibility. I turned around and virtually ran out of the room, so that I would not have to hear him calling me, begging me, pleading for relief.

I closed the door of the bedroom and lay down exhausted, with my hands tight over my ears. If there was screaming, I was no longer sure where the screams were coming from.

I went back in to him after a few minutes. It proved to be a good move: it was quiet and peaceful and all of his desperation, like my own, had subsided.

Neither of us could speak.

On reflection, it was clear to me that we'd been at the very brink of something in much more than that one sexual sense. If I'd not gone back in when I did, if I'd stayed alone and left him on his own for very much longer, then whatever that very moment of my return to the room signified - the human bond of trust, the submission of the will, the acceptance of the unknown - would never have existed and a brick wall would have stood and remained between us.

I draped a thick warm towel over his torso and ruffled his hair before loosening the ties around his arms and legs. They wouldn't be needed again.

Then I went off to the shower.

As the warm water sprayed over my hair and ran down my back and shoulders I considered the blinding obviousness of it: that a lost soul seeking connection with another lost soul could only ever jump out of a universe of solitary loneliness and into a parallel one of solitary loneliness multiplied by two - a truly disastrous proposition yet fundamentally so tempting and so terrifyingly powerful. Such then was the futility of any traditional feelings of love I had for James.

James had a rock-hard erection from the moment we walked in and undressed and I knew that this afternoon it was time for something to get resolved. To begin with he stayed lying there on the bed, face-down, his up-turned buttocks offering their own erotic invitation to my hands, tongue and penis. I stretched out next to him on the sheets, attaching the blindfolds first to him and then to myself.

"I'd love you to enter me," I told him. "When the time's right and you're ready... and if you want to."

"I'm a married man," he muttered from his pillow, "Fucking's what I do best."

Gently my fingers stroked James's sides and he squirmed a little as I worked my way round his body: down the insides and outsides of his legs; between his toes, across his soles; back up his legs; into his ribs and sides - all the while hitting his nerve centres bang on.

I felt him take my cock in his hand and begin to rub it slowly and gently. It was the first voluntary contact he had ever made against me and it sent me into such a spin of delight and expectation that I could bear only a few seconds, aware that I could cum very soon under such circumstances. I turned over into the softness of the sheets and mattress, moaning loudly. His hands receded.

I lay there silent and breathless, hugging the pillow to my chest. Waiting.

His hand moved to my buttocks. He stirred from his recumbent position. He climbed aboard. Now he had me.

"Good and proper?" he laughed. "Far from it, I'm afraid!"

He bit painfully into my neck with his bare teeth and I fought to pull away.

"No boundaries! No limits!" he reminded me. "No fucking limits!"

Pleasure is strictly finite and any attempt to extend its boundaries results in its transformation into pain. For this reason, the infliction of pleasure can never be so delightful to the aspiring mind as the infliction of pain. To give a finite quantity of pleasure is a merely human act; the infliction of the infinity we call pain is truly god-like and divine.

He was on the verge of coming. And this time I was powerless to stop him. He beat his cock desperately against and inside my body. How hard and how fast he tried! My own cock, aching for exactly the same kind of release, rubbed wildly against the sheets.

The orgasm would be the longest and most shatteringly intense either of us had ever experienced. It would go on and on. Thick, white wads of hot, sticky, savage spunk, encouraged and built up so carefully but so sadistically denied release, would gush out of our cocks like power jets from twin water canons.

We each gave a gasp and screamed and yelled as the very brink of the bottomless pit opened before us.

"Bondage or liberty, Tomas and James? The choice is yours!!"

As though an internal switch had been thrown somewhere within the furthest recesses of our minds, the searing bliss of the urgency to ejaculate just flipped right over into an indescribable rapture of identical intensity. At that moment, I am sure, something happened outside of normal time as if someone had paused the video on a filmed re-play of our love-making at this very instant before sexual release. We were totally physically aware and alert and felt the spunk throbbing within our testes, gathering all of its biological power, straining with an irresistible force against any remaining physical and psychological barriers.

Our breathing froze. It seemed as if our very hearts stopped. We must have felt each of these distinct and separate events clearly and sequentially and I clearly recall that every one of the muscles of our bodies locked tense as we each strained against the invisible straps which held us down. The sheer intensity of it was overwhelming. That part of our brain suddenly became the only part of our brain and we wanted to spend the rest of lives held down, together, helpless, tortured by these beautiful demons within our own minds. The moment stretched to breaking point and then - with a final shriek of unimaginable ecstasy - the moment broke and came forth.

"Liberty!" we shrieked, and pulled off the blindfolds, our two bodies disentangling from the grip of our frantic coupling. We turned and looked at each other in wonder.

Wave after wave after wave of something from the ocean depths was sweeping over and above and through our bodies and minds.

A physical ejaculation would have been about a huge surge of release and a gradual return to reality would have followed; there would have been a loss of sexual tension and a profound sense of arrival, of coming home; of coming, and of home; of being back where we had begun.

Neither James nor I wanted to be back where we had begun.

For him, that would have meant coming back to find yet another escape from the pain that had made him run away from England. His coming home would have been to that and he wanted to get as far away as he could. By running halfway across the globe he'd put a fair distance between himself and that problem. Except that once he got here, he found to his terror that he'd brought it all with him anyway. No wonder he wanted no password, no get-out clause. No release meant no return meant no responsibility meant no response.

For me, coming home meant coming home to the fact that James was using me far more than I was using him. Coming home meant feeling old and powerless and lonely.

For both of us, coming to climax would have meant coming to the realisation that we had to go through it all again and not with each other and that the illusion of freedom had ended.

But this was different. "THIS IS WHAT SEX IS ALL ABOUT, if you give it half a chance!" was being shouted to us from somewhere else.

We were still looking into each other's eyes. As I gazed deep into those dark brown pools within his clear, sensitive face I was aware of ripples spreading out in all directions - ripples of sadness as well as of joy; of surrender and triumph; of freedom, liberation and of vast space even within the tiny prison of my own self; of dying and growing and changing and resurrection - and I couldn't help smiling.

He smiled back, because he couldn't help it either.

Then the laughter began. Laughter to beat all the tickling and torture games rolled into one. Laughter at life, laughter at death, laughter at oneself, laughter at each other, laughter at sex, laughter at love, laughter at decay, laughter at old age, laughter at pain, laughter at pleasure, laughter at everything serious and pompous and official, laughter at poverty, laughter at anger, laughter at fear, laughter at fun.

Read those words again.

Read them a third time.

That's how it felt.

That's how it was.

That's about how long it lasted.

We held each other tightly, eyes now closed, cheek to cheek.

After a long time he spoke to me.

"Tomas?"

He waited.

"Can you lend me enough money to fly back to England?"

I must have been expecting something like this. My answer came easily.