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Cover Design: Selena Kitt
Bitten Peach © 2008 habu
eXcessica publishing
All rights reserved
Bitten Peach
By habu
Table of Contents
Preface . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
Yes, Master . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
Dragon Dance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
Bitten Peach . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30
Cut Sleeves Sigh . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43
Tea of the Full Moon . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61
Clouds and Rain . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 69
Bitter Fruit . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 88
Trapped . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 104
Hong Kong Canyon Connection . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 119
Beautiful Bondage . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 125
Ritual of Honor . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 146
Male-on-male sex did not just suddenly blossom forth from the dying embers of the Victorian Age. In Western tradition it has been around for at least as long as “all of the men” of the doomed biblical city of Sodom demanded the delivery of Lot’s male house guests into their hands for a round of debauchery. In the East—China and Japan—it may have been a reality of much greater proportions than anyone can imagine for even longer. For centuries, however, the lifestyle and the male prostitution it spawned was buried in a litany of delicate euphemisms. What we now call the Red Light District in Western understanding was known as the Floating World for both men and women practitioners in ancient China—and, indeed, still is up to today. The sex act was depicted as making “clouds and rain.” And male prostitution was discussed behind lacquered screens and fans in such evocative imagery terms as “bitten peach” and “cut sleeve.”
A young man who had been taken into prostitution became a “bitten peach,” and the act of having transformed his status was referred to as having a “cut sleeve.” The origin of “bitten peach” is thought to harken back to the musings of the sixth-century bc poet and “favorite” of the Chinese emperor Ling, who referred to the act just consummated as a “passion of a half-eaten peach” upon being offered an especially delicious peach by his patron. The term “cut sleeve” attributed to a young sexual conquest is thought to have been inspired by the Chinese Emperor Ai, who ruled for only a few years on either side of the birth of Christ. The thoughtful emperor apparently cut the sleeve of his own fabulously expensive robe, trapped under the sleeping figure of his lover, Dong Xian, as he left a post-coital embrace rather than wake and therefore disturb the sleeping boy.
Bitten Peach is an eleven-story anthology attempting to capture the essence of the deliciously euphemistic Oriental world of men making love to other men. It is arranged in a chronological sequence covering a 2,200-year period; Chinese-setting stories are intermixed with Japanese-setting stories until the two are intertwined at the end with a story from Okinawa, an island in which Chinese and Japanese cultures have merged over several centuries of not always blissful coupling. These are stories that go beyond the random act of sexual release between men. They offer more complex and context-richer studies of gathering age-old themes, exotic settings, and all-so-human characters up into the Floating World of the Orient in which men give themselves to other men—some more freely than others—for something in return, whether it is for money, position, power, survival, honor, service, devotion—or, not all that rarely, really, in unconditional love.
The anger and determination of Qin Shih Huang was almost palpable as he unleashed his cavalry, war chariots, and bronze and iron weapons—all battlefield levelers that his enemies had never before encountered—on the rebel town of Anyi. Within hours of receiving the message that the Lord of Anyi would not send tribute and yield in the season of homage, Qin Shih Huang, his loyal servant and chamberlain, Li Yuan, riding three strides to his rear, galloped out of Xian at the head of his cavalry and war chariots. That the forces of Anyi put up a stout defense at the imperial army’s crossing of the Huang Ho, the Yellow River, only added to Qin Shih Huang’s indignation and anger.
The Chou of Anyi would need to be taught a lesson that none of the other vassals to Qin Shih Huang’s building empire would forget for the ages.
Once across the Huang Ho, and sweeping the army of Anyi aside like a spring insect, the forces of Qin Shih Huang descended on the city of Anyi, attacking from four directions, the foot infantry from the southwest, double-horsed chariots from the northwest and southeast, and Qin at the head of his vaunted cavalry from the northeast, where Chou Xin Yi had planned a retreat, if that proved necessary, into the hills of Shanxi.
Qin Shih Huang wanted to seize the seasoned men of the ruling family of Chou alive and thus had taken command of the rising hills that his spies within Anyi had told him the family of the Lord of Anyi would attempt to flee into if the battle went against them.
Qin had put out the order that Anyi was to be leveled and all within it put to the sword as a warning to any others thinking of holding out on Qin Shih Huang’s drive to unify the Chinese empire. But he had given strict orders that Chou Xin Yi and any sons not killed in battle were to be captured alive and delivered to him at the temple of the dragon atop Taiyuan Shan, the most sacred place of the Chou.
And so it was.
By design, Qin Shih had ridden out with the hostages being held to ensure the loyalty of every other vassal lord. He wanted them to see what happened to those who rebelled. As Qin Shi Huang cruelly spurred his battle stallion, panting and foaming at the mouth from five hours of fast gallop and three hours of close-in combat, up the slope toward the Taiyuan Shan temple, he turned and scowled at Li Yuan, who had fallen five strides behind him.
“Keep up, Lao Jen—old man—or . . .”
“Shih, Chu Jen—Yes, Master,” Li Yuan, cried out between blistered and trembling lips. Twenty years the young and strapping ruler’s senior, Li Yuan was beyond the days of the warrior. And yet, he had been in the thick of the battle, being everywhere he needed to be to ensure his lord and Chu Jen would not be blindsided in the thick of battle. He had covered his young master like a cloak of invincibility, as if the first sign of weakness would be the end for Li Yuan himself.
Li Yuan was panting and ragged of breath as they reached the summit. But he was only the required three strides behind his master—close enough to throw himself from his steed at the moment of realization that Qin Shih Huang wanted to dismount and to fling his body prostate, in the mud at the side of Qin Shih Huang’s stallion, in time to provide the necessary stepping stone for his master’s dismount.
Qin Shih Huang trampled heavily and with muddied hide-covered boots on his chamberlain’s back as he dismounted and strode into the temple, with Li Yuan scrambling to take up the required three paces in his wake, followed closely behind by the quivering hostages of the other lands Qin Shih Huang held in sway.
The cavalry outriders who had captured and brought Chou Xin Yi and his four surviving sons to the temple stood guard around the five cowering prisoners. They had been beaten, but, with the exception of Chou Xin Yi himself, who was bleeding profusely and whose right arm had almost been severed in battle, three of the four men of the House of Chou were alive enough. Chou Xin Yi stood, defiant alongside his eldest son, who glowered at Qin Shih Huang menacingly as the conqueror strode into the temple’s central chamber. The room they occupied was a stone vaulted-ceiling space adorned only by a vermillion-painted altar standing in the very center under an open sky light, which cast the rays of the noonday sun directly down on the Chou’s ceremonial sacred heart, it’s ancestral altar. Chou Xin Yi’s youngest surviving son, merely a boy, whimpered slightly, no doubt at the sounds of carnage and sight of the rising smoke from the doomed city of Anyi below the mountain slope, but his sobs subsided at a sharp look from his father’s eyes. The two middle sons clung to each other as they huddled on the floor, but the difference between them was noticeable, One son, a sword gash laying open a wound on his forehead, had his eyes closed and his face buried into the bosom of the other son, who, blood-covered but largely unmarked himself, looked out at the approaching Qin Shih Huang more in curiosity than anything else.
“Has the Lord of Anyi agreed to yield?” Qin Shih Huang bellowed. Everyone in the confines of the temple shuddered noticeably at the master’s declaration, even Chou Xin Yi. Barely into his manhood, Qin Shih Huang was a magnificent figure, perfectly formed, heavily muscled, astonishingly handsome, and carrying himself with grace and supreme confidence as the unifier of empires that he was becoming through his own determination and talent—and on the strength of his modern weaponry.
“Chu Jen . . .” the captain of the cavalry began in a voice edged with fear and dread. He could neither lie nor tell the truth. Chou Xin Yi had turned to stone in his recalcitrance. The cavalry officer knew that anything he said at this point was sure to bring down the wrath of his master.
Qin Shih Huang saved him the indignity. The cavalry captain was a good soldier. Qin Shih Huang could not spare him.
“No matter,” he said with a sneer. “Once disloyal is one time too many. The Lord of Anyi is no more. I must have a new lord. One of the sons must do. But which one? And all must know of his suzerainty to me.” At the mouthing of the word “all,” Qin Shih Huang let his gaze cover all of those gathered, ensuring that the “representatives” of the other vassal lords were fully aware of the gravity and symbolism of what was about to happen.
Qin Shih Huang snapped his finger, and his faithful drudge, Li Yuan, bent almost double and eyes firmly planted on the ground, stepped up into Qin Shih Huang’s peripheral vision. “Yes, Master?”
“You know what I require.”
“Yes, Master,” Li Yuan responded. “Not the eldest; he is as unmalleable as the father. He would rebel again as soon as we recrossed the Huang Ho. And not the youngest; he belongs with the women.” At this, a gasp escaped the gathering of hostages standing at the edge of the temple behind Qin Shih Huang. All knew that the women of the House of Chou had already been dispatched.
“Of the two remaining,” Li Yuan continued in a hesitant voice, “one will die anyway of that festering wound. The remaining one looks out at the world with curiosity, even in present circumstances. He may be trainable.”
“Ah, you have chosen wisely, I think, Lao Jen. So it will be.”
While speaking, Qin Shih Huang unbuckled his belt and let his belt and sword fall—into the hands of Li Yuan, who dove for it, lest it hit the ground, although he had to sink to his knees to prevent it from doing so.
“Captain, the handsome one. The one with the curious eye. The ceremony of reclaimed suzerainty of the fallen enemy. Now!”
The captain motioned to the two heftiest of his men guarding the captives, who pulled the third son up and away from his wounded brother. As they stripped the struggling captive, the remaining guards manhandled the father and eldest son into submission, holding them firmly but facing the altar.
At the captain’s command, the two cavalrymen, one at each arm of the young prince of Chou, pulled his naked body around to the side of the altar facing Qin Shih Huang and held him down, facing away from Qin Shih Huang, belly flat on altar and face turned to his still-struggling and cursing elder brother and father.
Qin Shih Huang let his battle robe fall open to reveal his magnificent body and perhaps the longest and thickest hardened phallus in the realm. As he approached the hind quarters of the young prince of Chou, two other cavalrymen sprang forth to spread the young man’s legs and to pull his buttocks cheeks away to reveal a pulsating rosebud of an anus.
With a cry of triumph and uttering the sacred creeds of the House of Qin, Qin Shih Huang strode up to and between the Chou prince’s spread legs, positioned his bulging cock cap at the young man’s hole with a steady hand, and then thrust hard and deep inside him.
The young prince of Chou cried out in pain and violation and writhed, chest heaving and panting, face contorted in the taking, while Qin Shih Huang thrust in deep, searching motions inside him, seeking the resting of his heavy, quivering balls on top of his younger conquest’s.
As Qin Shih Huang stroked, symbolically forging his renewed mastery over the House of Chou as well as enjoying himself immensely, the young prince slowly fell under the master taker’s spell as well—so that before long, not long before he gave up his own seed against the vermillion flanks of the sacred Chou family altar, the young prince was crying out for more and moving with the taking rather than against it.
If anything, this infuriated and demoralized the elder men of the House of Chou more than if their younger member had been cut up into quarters on the altar. They knew the rituals of the House of Qin. They knew that the new Lord of Anyi had now been chosen and, having been brought under the control of Qin Shih Huang in both body and soul, would be trained to rule a rebuilt Anyi to his dictate. And, to the shame of the House of Chou, they now could see that he would do so willingly and as the catamite of the evil emperor-to-be.
It was almost in relief and preference that, after Qin Shih Huang had spilled his possessing seed deep inside the new lord of Anyi, that Chou Xin Li and his remaining sons were led out, through the ranks of the pale and sweating hostages, onto the steps of the temple, overlooking the dying city below them, to meet their public appointment with the avenging sword.
If it was a slight that, after Li Yuan had prostrated himself beside Qin Shih Huang’s awaiting stallion again, the new Lord of Anyi, sore but sporting a lopsided grin, was placed on a horse only one stride behind the master and two in front of Li Yuan, the old man made no sign of it.
Later that night, in the tent of the master of Qin on the banks of the Huang Ho, Li Yuan stood in attendance of Qin Shih Huang’s every whim in the shadows as the new Lord of Anyi, in diaphanous leggings and burnished bared torso, danced to the tune of the lute and thin, pitch-perfect voice of the singsong girls. The young man was well made. Lithe but well-muscled. He obviously was clever and good with sword play, having survived the battle unscathed, and he evidenced this with the sensuousness of his movement to the music.
Li Yuan had to stand there and watch as the heir to the house of Chou danced closer and closer to Qin Shih Huang, who was propped up on pillows in the light of the lamps at the four corners of the central area of the tent marked by the maroon carpet intricately woven in the golds and blues of the House of Qin. Qin Shih Huang was draped in a robe of gold thread, but he was reclining on the pillows and his robe had fallen open, revealing a sword of prodigious length and width curving up from his belly and bobbing with the rhythm of the young man’s dance. There was no doubt that he found his young captive enticing.
And for his part, the new Lord of Anyi was entranced. He had been taken with the master sword once, his first sheathing, and he could not take his eyes off it as he danced. He could not wait to be pierced with it again and again.
The young man was on his knees on the lush carpet now, between Qin Shih Huang’s spread legs, his torso undulating, but dipping ever lower. Until at last his lips were at the bobbing bulb of Qin Shih Huang’s manhood—and opening over the bulb, and taking it inside his mouth, and sucking it close.
Qin Shih Huang looked up into the shadows at where he knew Li Yuan stood in ever-ready service. He snapped his fingers and said, “Only you.”
“Yes, Master,” Li Yuan responded. Then he turned in either direction, motioning the vigilant, yet studiously blind guards and the singsong girls out of the tent. They immediately left in graceful silence.
Li Yuan remained, watching, as the young prince heated up the master, making him moan and sigh at the young captive’s attentions in a way that none but Li Yuan was permitted to observe or hear. No hint of weakness would be permitted.
At length, Qin Shih Huang pulled the young lord’s face from his cock and reached down at his belly and ripped away the diaphanous material. He then lifted the young man—not any younger than Qin Shih Huang himself, really, but not nearly as strong and massive—and set him firmly and cruelly down on his club of a cock. The young lord cried out in pain as he had done before, only once before having been taken and not prepared in any way, but writhe as he unwilling did—as he clearly wanted to be taken again—he was able to give no answer to Qin Shih Huang merely raising him and lowering him ever farther down the blade of the piercing sword with strong hands gripping his waist.
Qin Shih Huang fucked on forever—long after the young lord had spouted his own seed up Qin Shih Huang’s hard, muscled belly.
Nearly exhausted, the young lord whimpered in thanksgiving when Qin Shih Huang lifted him off his bludgeon and let him fall over to the side. The young man started to slither away, across the rug, but he should have known that Qin Shih Huang was only toying with him; the master’s cock was as hard and thick and long as it ever had been.
The young lord squeaked in shock and fear and trembling, as Qin Shih Huang came up on his knees and grabbed the young man around the waist again and held him there, belly to carpet, as Qin Shih Huang encased the young lord’s thighs between his knees and thrust down inside him again and rode him and rode him and rode him.
The new Lord of Anyi was completely conquered and nearly comatose when Qin Shih Huang at last cried out in his own ejaculation and was finished with him. The ruler snapped his fingers, and Li Yuan lifted the nearly unconscious and whimpering young man in his arms and carried him to the entrance of the tent. He muttered instructions to the guards outside, who carried the young man away, and then drew back inside the tent and pulled down and firmly tied off the flap covering the entrance.
Li Yuan turned and moved toward the center of the tent. As he did so, he was untying the knot of his own robe. He let the robe fall open and fall away at his sides, revealing his own well-muscled, sinewy torso and a proud cock rising hard out from his center.
Qin Shih Huang was on his knees at the center of the carpet, facing Li Yuan.
“Are you pleased? Did I do well, Master,” Qin Shih Huang was murmuring.
“Well enough, but I think you have been enjoying the new Lord of Anyi too well. I think you need to be punished,” Li Yuan was standing taller now, his voice hard, more demanding. The teacher was now in his element. He had taught Qin Shih Huang well, but it was now time to remind him who the real master was.
“Yes, yes, Master. I need to be punished,” Qin Shih Huang whimpered. He slithered across the carpet on his knees to where Li Yuan was standing and took his teacher’s cock in both hands and fed it into his mouth. Li Yuan stood there, pelvis hunched forward, and pulled Qin Shih Huang’s hair and slapped his face with open palms while the young man pumped his cock in and out his mouth.
“The pallet. Now!” Li Yuan commanded.
“Yes, Master,” Qin Shih Huang answered in a whispered tone after taking his mouth off Li Yuan’s cock. He stumbled back to the side of the tent, in the shadows, where animal skins, layered thick on a low platform, lay between four sturdy lacquered-wood posts. Li Yuan tied the young rulers wrists off on the two posts at the head of the bed and lifted and spread his legs and tied them off high on the posts at the foot of the bed, forcing pillows under the small of his back to raise the young man’s buttocks to the level of Li Yuan’s pelvis.
Then, while alternating fucking Qin Shih Huang’s hole hard and roughly and slapping his buttocks red with hand and riding crop, the real master of the House of Qin gave orders to his young protégé for the conquests of the following day as the younger man moaned and groaned and asked for more and spilled his seed on the banks of the Huang Ho over and over again in the ecstasy of the mastering.
Dragon Dance
“Hold. Help me up, I . . .” Li was wheezing from the climb up the lower reaches of Paradise Mountain—Tien Tang Shan—with little faith that he could climb as far up the challenging path as the parting stones. He had reached out for the arm folds of Junjie’s scarlet-red silk robe, but the youth skittered away from him, farther up the rising stone path, anxious to reach his destination, focused on his own goal.
Li almost slipped and went down on the moist, moss-covered stepping stones, but his young servant, Zhong, was there right behind him and placed a strong hand under the arm of the man he called his revered teacher, and gently supported him while his master took another shuffling step of ascent.
“I have you, Hsien Sheng,” Zhong murmured. “I shall not let you fall.”
Off course Zhong wouldn’t let his master fall. That went without saying. In fact, most of what Zhong did for Li went without acknowledgment.
“Where . . . Where are you, Junjie?” Li cried out, looking frantically up the path, not wanting to lose sight for the one he loved deeply too soon. Tien Tang Shan and the monks of the Yung Yuan Hsi Lo monastery would be snatching Junjie from Li soon enough. Li wanted to savor these last precious moments with him.
“Are you coming, Lao Jen? Are you coming or not, Old Man,” Junjie called down from just beyond the bend up there in the densely packed pine forest they had entered. “If you can’t keep up, I will move on ahead. Can you see the monastery, Old Man? They told me it was covered in gold. He told me that it was worthy of my service.”
“I come as I am able, Junjie,” Li called out. “If I have not caught up, wait for me at the parting stones. I cannot go farther than that by monastery decree. But I must have a proper parting.” The last came out in almost a moan.
But there was no answer. Junjie had already gone ahead.
Li began to shudder, his whole world coming down around him. He looked up the mountain, trying to pick out the accursed monastery, but unable to do so through the tops of the pine trees and the swirling blanket of misty clouds sitting upon the summit of Tien Tang Shan. That evil company of men who had lured his beloved Junjie—well named, both handsome and an outstanding example of ripened youth—who had lured him with their honeyed words of how coddled and honored he’d be if he joined them at the Eternal Joy monastery.
“Here, lean on me, Hsien Sheng,” the servant Zhong whispered to him. “We can move faster if I take your weight upon me.”
And without a word, Li let Zhong put a strong arm under his and lift him and thus shuffle at a quicker and more steady pace up the ever-sharpening angle of ascent.
This was not meant to be, Li was agonizing as Zhong, resolute and steady on the slippery stepping stones, carried him up the steep path. Junjie had come to him young. Li had been training and cultivating him for several years, preparing the young man to be the perfect consort. Everything that Li possessed—which was considerable—had been dedicated to making Junjie his when he came of age. And now that he had done so, those brazen monks from the Yung Yuan Hsi Lo monastery had slithered down their mountain and taken it all away.
Nothing had been spared for Junjie. He had been given everything Li had to offer. But with just a few honeyed words from a strong, handsome monk in black brocade about how happy and revered Junjie would be in the golden temple on the mountain, Junjie’s head had been turned. From that point, Junjie didn’t even see Li when he looked his way. All he saw was all he had been promised if he gave himself to the monastery.
Li, supported in the strong arms of Zhong, reached the parting stones, a small stone terrace, surrounded by stone benches, bordered by lacy-leafed maple trees sighing in the breeze floating up from the base of the Tien Tang Shan. A stone path led up farther from here, straight up for a few feet and then taking a sharp turn to the right and disappearing behind closely planted pine trees. The mists of the early morning dipped down at this point to make a low ceiling to the small stone terrace. Beyond this point no one was sanctioned to go who was not initiated in—or about to be initiated into—the Eternal Joy monastery.
Li gave a little gasp of exhaustion and a low cry of consternation as Zhong settled him down on one of the stone benches. Junjie wasn’t here. There wasn’t even a hint of his scarlet robes disappearing up the path beyond the parting stones as the boundary terrace came into sight. He hadn’t waited, even to say farewell to his benefactor, the one who worshipped him, Li, the wealthy merchant prince of Kueilin. The headstrong Junjie had just forged ahead to his initiation into the monastery. After this Li would not see him for years, if ever.
Li sank down on the stone bench. Zhong crouched nearby, ready to lend any aid to his master that he was asked to provide. Li sobbed openly, unashamedly, letting all of his grief pour out of him. He had given Junjie everything, everything in preparation for the day when Junjie would come into his bed and become his. And Junjie had taken. He had wanted to be wanted and to look delectable and to dress expensively and immaculately—and he’d been coquettish with Li. He had never said that he had anything in mind other than what Li had in mind. When Li had stroked and kissed and fondled him, Junjie had let him do so. When Li had spoken of what they would do when Junjie was fully manned, Junjie had smiled indulgently.
And now Junjie was fully manned and he had answered the call of the Yung Yuan Hsi Lo monks at their very whisper of interest—and he could not even wait at the parting stones to say good-bye to the one who loved him so dearly and who had done so much for him.
Li’s blubbering was reduced to sighs punctuated with occasional sobs. His loyal servant Zhong crouched nearby, every fiber of his being focused on his master—the man whom he loved above all others and would serve faithfully no matter what was asked of him. The cold of the morning mists cut to Zhong’s bones—he wasn’t warmly robed as both Li and Junjie were—There was only one layer of thin cotton in his robe—but he remained there, poised, heedless of the cool breeze, ready to help his master in any way he was needed.
As Li grew silent, he heard it. The sound of lilting music, not just the breeze playing through the leaves of the pines and the lacey-leafed maples, but a haunting tune on some sort of flute. It was coming from farther up the mountainside, beyond the partying stone, the barrier mere mortals were not supposed to breach.
Li struggled to his feet and shuffled toward the pathway leading up from the parting stone terrace.
“What is it, Hsien Sheng?” Zhong asked in a low, throaty voice. “I hear music. Is that what you hear? Do you intend to mount the Tien Tang Shan farther. We are not permitted . . . oh, here, give me your arm. If you wish to climb farther, I was support you. I’ll take you wherever you want to go.”