“Because she doesn’t know,” Lyktos whispered.
“Do you know?” I asked. “Have you sacrificed to the Porpoise?”
“I’ve been initiated,” Lyktos confided. “I can’t tell you about it. Why don’t you ask to be initiated?”
“Isn’t the Dolphin Temple a heretical cult?” my father asked.
“Yes,” Lyktos’s father agreed brightly, “but the new king does not object to heresy. Some suggest that he is an initiate himself.”
There was a pause as the slaves cleared away the bowls of green turtle soup. I waited until they had served the roast kid with quince and currants before I suggested, “Perhaps I could be initiated?”
My parents beamed at me. My father saw my offer as a path to increased profits; my mother probably viewed it as a step to higher social status. Neither gave a thought as to what the initiation ritual might involve. I might have volunteered to be castrated or sodomized, but they could think of nothing but their own ambitions. Not that I was worried: Lyktos still had his balls. I had seen them many times while we were swimming. I had no information regarding the condition of his asshole, but sodomy didn’t frighten me. Obviously, he had passed through the initiation without harm. If he could stand it, so could I.
“I will broach Androgeus’s candidacy to Nausitheus,” Lyktos’s mother proposed. “I’m confident that the Divinity of the Playing Porpoises will find Androgeus acceptable.” There was only the slightest trace of doubt in her voice.
“I’ll talk to the priest,” Lyktos offered later when he and I were alone in the lavatory where we had gone to piss. “My mother doesn’t have any real influence with Nausitheus. Dolphin Priests don’t think women are even human—but not a word of that to my mother.”
“Will I get accepted for initiation?” I suddenly felt a little nervous, fear of rejection mingling with the fear of the unknown.
Lyktos’s response was totally unexpected. He kissed me on the lips. I was startled, but I didn’t pull away. I found my tongue slipping into his mouth. It was my first romantic kiss, and with another boy, and my entire body felt as if it was on fire. Lyktos placed his hand behind my head, holding my mouth against his. When we broke apart, I found myself grinning like an idiot. Lyktos also looked preposterously happy. “Don’t worry about the initiation,” he advised. “You’re a shoo-in.”
Thoth had followed us, and the little fellow leaped up and down on the edge of one of our ornate terra-cotta bathtubs and chattered playfully. I picked him up, and he threw his long, hairy arms around my neck. Lyktos laughed at the affectionate monkey and stroked Thoth’s head. I wondered whether the time might come when Lyktos would stroke my head again.
Two days later, Lyktos approached me after a session with our tutor. “The priest would like to meet you, Androgeus,” he said. His gaze included Asterius and Phaeax. “All three of you.” That’s when I found out that my fellow students had also requested initiation into the Dolphin Temple.
We raced through the market stalls, past merchants hawking legumes, golden jewelry, cereals, art objects, vegetables, pottery, fruits, wine, family seals, and colorful cloth. We passed the oil mills and wine presses tended by happy slaves. On Crete, the burden of slavery is light—slaves are considered members of our families. A Cretan who ill-treated his workers would be a social outcast, and might come to the House of the Axe for judgment.
A hot wind was blowing as we crossed the hill. Gray donkeys carried baskets of fresh-cut flowers to market. We passed shepherd boys tending their flocks of sheep and goats and a dark grove of olives in the valley. We ran past lush vineyards and wineries tended by slaves, some wealthier than their owners. Our loincloths were stained with soot and sand by the time we reached the temple. The priest stood just outside the entrance. He was a towering man, almost five foot six, but dark-skinned, clean shaven, and curvy-shaped like the rest of us. His kilt was purple with white piping.
Lyktos introduced us. “We wish to be initiated, sir,” I said.
“You would serve the Porpoise God?” he asked.
“We would.”
“You would make due obeisance to the Deities of the Fishes, to Poseidon, and to the Phallic Dolphin?”
“Yes.”
“Then, enter.”
It seemed that our initiation was to commence on the spot. That surprised me, for I assumed that elaborate rituals, fasting, bathing, purging, and weeks of prayer must occur before the actual ceremony. I soon learned that the Dolphin Divinity was a happy-go-lucky god who did not go in for time-wasting formalities. He demanded absolute submission to immediate gratification. “Orgasm Now” was his motto.
The priest, Nausitheus, explained how the arousal of the masculine organ, with its subsequent orgasm and ejaculation, were the gifts of the Porpoise or Dolphin god. That was the mystery of the rite, the secret that no noninitiate, and most certainly no woman, must ever know. He bade us turn, and looking back through the door, we saw that the phallic porpoises resembled erect penises. It must have been an ocular deception, but the statues appeared to be spurting their fluids into the air. The sight quickened my heart and stiffened my cock in my loincloth.
“Now, you will join the outer circle of the great rite,” Nausitheus commanded. He summoned two temple boys, about our own ages, who had dedicated themselves fully to the god. Scamander and Teucer seemed jolly fellows, and they were eager to assist Asterius, Phaeax, and me in performing the ritual. Of course, Lyktos, already an initiate, was also showing us the way.
Lyktos, Scamander, and Teucer led Asterius, Phaeax, and me through the great room and behind the altar. There stood a smaller room concealed by a curtain of purple cloth. The boys had us remove everything: loincloths, our sandals that laced to our knees, and our ornaments. Scamander and Teucer stripped alongside us, though they had far less to remove. Then Scamander dropped to his knees and revealed a narrow tunnel sloping downward. Constructed from thick stones cut fine and closely fitted, the tunnel was just high enough to navigate on our hands and knees.
Crawling behind Scamander, I felt my friends behind me. Once the tip of my nose brushed the crack of Scamander’s ass, which made him giggle irreverently. After a long crawl, we emerged into a circular room high enough for a tall man to stand comfortably. Shafts brought fresh air to us and flaming torches illuminated the scene. The walls around the circle were frescoed with explicit scenes of masturbation. I looked at one grouping of six boys, sitting in a circle. Each boy was fondling the erect penis of the boy next to him, and some of the cocks were already spurting.
“Welcome to the Masturbaria,” Teucer said.
Asterius, Phaeax, and I had no doubt regarding what the boys expected us to do there. I, for one, was thrilled, and I could see from their torchlit faces that Asterius and Phaeax were equally eager.
We six boys stood in a circle. “Place your hand upon your penis, and rub it while I offer the prayer of the Dolphin Heresy,” Teucer commanded. Grinning, we gripped our cocks and masturbated slowly while we listened to the charge.
“Oh, Divinity of the Playing Porpoises. We stroke our cocks with holy purpose. In your honor, we will take extreme pleasure from our hands and phalluses until we fill the air with spurts of our sacred juice.”
Before that day, masturbation was an act I had performed in secret, alone, and never mentioned. Touching my hard dick in a circle of boys was a little frightening, but tremendously liberating. The approval of the god only made it more exciting.
An amphora sat on the stone floor in the center of our circle. Scamander dipped his hand into the vessel and emerged with a palm cupping oil. He poured some oil into my palm, and repeated the ritual with each of my friends. Scamander commanded, “Do exactly as I do.”
Curling his fingers around his cock, Scamander lubricated the shaft, stroking its length, including his generous foreskin. After several strokes, his stretched skin was slick. As we mimicked his actions ardently, my cock trembled as though beckoning me to milk it. Still, I could not beat it, as I desired to do. I had to follow the actions of the group, as led by Scamander and Teucer.
The sexual tension grew until I thought I must erupt. Just when I thought I could wait no longer, Scamander formed a ring around the base of his dick with his right thumb and forefinger. He slid the ring up his shaft and when the ring reached the foreskin, he formed a parallel ring with his left and worked it up. Teucer duplicated Scamander’s stroke. Both boys returned their right hands to the base of their cocks and repeated the process. Their fingers stroked up, never down.
“Keep a smooth motion,” Teucer advised. “Come near to the tip with one hand before you start up with your other.”
Even as I hastened to follow the boys’ movements, I couldn’t pull my eyes from their dicks. My companions were attempting the same finger slide, not without a little giggling. Asterius, Phaeax, and I felt deliriously strange to be performing so intimate an act with others. My face may have reddened slightly as I slid my fingers up my cock and pumped my foreskin two handed. A thrill shot through me. However strange and intimate the circle seemed to me then, I found group masturbation almost unbearably erotic.
I watched the other boys’ cocks and hands while I stroked my own in this curious way. Lifting my eyes to the wall frescoes, I observed that the unknown artist had depicted our game exactly. Staring at the picture enhanced the pleasurable sensations building in my cock, and not wishing to ejaculate too quickly, I lowered my eyes. Surprisingly, my gaze met Lyktos’s, and the memory of our kiss flooded into my brain. My lips recalled the sensation of his warm lips on mine, his hot tongue pushing into my mouth, my tongue meeting his, and my tongue slipping between his lips.
As those pleasant memories weakened my knees, Scamander called for our attention. “We will now change our stroke.” He interlocked his four fingers, overlapped his thumbs, and slid his cock through the hole. He closed his hands and slid them up and down.
I wobbled as I followed his action. The effect was pure bliss, but we could not continue this action long. It made us too weak in the legs. When we were all close to falling, Teucer nodded to Scamander.
“Let’s sit now,” Scamander said. Grateful and quivering, we sat in a circle, our hard cocks jutting between our legs, the stone floor slightly cool against our bare asses.
Using one hand, Teucer grasped his shaft firmly and lightly rubbed his thumb over his cock’s head. He didn’t move his hand; only his thumb circled his foreskin. His speed never varied, and the rest of us followed suit. Directly across from me Lyktos sat with an expression of feral bliss seaming his face as he stared lasciviously at my cock.
I felt like I would orgasm at any moment, but the rhythm was insufficient to force me over the threshold. I could only turn my thumb as raptures rippled through my cock, tingles that could not grow into delirious thrills.
Scamander switched us from the circular motion to a back and forward movement; Teucer shifted quickly, with Lyktos, Asterius, and Phaeax following. I didn’t have to think about it; my thumb followed suit. Each soft swish of my thumb caused my penis to quiver. My eyes were riveted upon Lyktos’s cock, in between stealing glances at Teucer’s, Asterius’s, Phaeax’s, and Scamander’s soaring members. Their dicks trembled at the torturous touch. I became aware of an intense ecstasy in my cockhead, which deepened as I swished my thumb. My dick hovered on the verge of orgasm, but still the movement was sufficient only to keep me on that precipice without tipping me over the brink.
Without warning, Scamander gripped his cock with a clench that looked like the one I’d always used in solitary masturbation. However, looks were deceiving—his stroke was light. He chased this series of slow strokes with a run of quick jerks. The effect of this grip was miraculous. I wanted to discharge, and I felt like I was about to discharge, but I couldn’t. The stroke produced a sensation that degenerated into slow torment.
“Would our newest initiate like to demonstrate a movement?” Scamander asked.
“Try this,” Lyktos challenged, rising to a squat. He pumped his cock with his right hand and rubbed his balls with his left.
Scamander ordered, “Do as Lyktos does, boys.”
My cock throbbed, but my thigh muscles were tearing. Lyktos pulled down on his balls as he rocked his ass to fuck his fist. We duplicated his motion. As I thrust into my hand, I knew I would explode soon. I swung my rump, driving my erection through my sturdy fist. When I pulled my cock back to thrust again, the tension sent spasms through my leg muscles. I was seconds away from those pelvic contractions that would fling semen from my penis. Pre-orgasmic tingles tore through my foreskin and burrowed deep into my cock’s head.