Ancient in Greece Ch. 01

I think this is my new boilerplate for my stories in Jan 2023. Before I publish, I do everything I can to ensure they are of the quality this site deserves. I've been trying to find editors and getting nowhere for years. All I really need is proof-readers. A stray comma, a missing word or when I switch tenses without realising it. I've far more stories unpublished in need of proof-reading than published. So if you read the story and find errors, please contact me. I have stories going back 7 years waiting to be published, and it's hard to keep writing if I know I'll never share them. That's why I'm submitting another tranche of stories rather than let them moulder unseen.

Ancient in Greece, but not a ruin. Ch. 01

"Professor Plumb?" A young woman's voice startled me from my daydreaming as I prepared my small fishing boat to sail.

Looking up to see a woman standing on the edge of the promenade, a few feet about me. Slim with shoulder-length brown hair and wearing a skimpy bikini and a small sarong around her hip. Her overly pink skin told me as much as her accent. She was English and freshly arrived on my Greek island. I almost chuckled to myself that I'd been here less than 2 years and already I'd gone mostly native.

She removed her oversized sunglasses and smiled at me, and I felt a familiar stirring of my memory.

"It's me, Abigail. I was in your class 2 years ago."

"Oh, hi. But call me Henry. I'm not a professor anymore."

Now I had a name and a reference. I had a vague memory of her in my history class. But after 25 years of teaching, many of the faces ran together, and I forgot them, even the pretty ones, and she was attractive. I returned the smile, as I no longer had to worry about the political correctness of considering a student's physical attributes.

Not that I had a problem in that area. But the number of presentations about sexual harassment was one reason I'd retired early. It made even the mildest of professors feel like predatory fiends. But that was only one of many reasons to end my academic career early.

Both my father and his father died suddenly, just before turning 60. While I had no expectations of the same, I'd always eaten sensibly and exercised. It had coloured my career plan. I planned to retire at 55, but accepted that 56 was close enough, and I wanted to supplement my pension before I left.

Being an ancient Roman and Greek civilization scholar. I read ancient Latin and Greek. 5 years ago I'd been asked to take part in a project to translate a huge cache of Roman slave auction records. As with almost all property, those are the records that are collected and kept. Most of the translations were to be done by students from across the world. My job was to supervise and correct translations, along with other professors from other universities.

I'd found a record of an auction from northern Italy of a slave with a very odd name. At first I put it down as the Roman equivalent of a typo. When I found a second record of the same name, from another auction 2 years later. At a location a little further south, I pondered if it was a proper name.

I asked around the department, and my colleague, whose specialty was the Vikings, commented that it could be a Romanisation of a Norse or Scandinavian name. That was fairly common, as people struggled with uncommon words. Now I accepted the name. I took a stab in the dark and searched what records I could from Constantinople.

By pure chance, I found a record of a Norse trader who had been imprisoned and enslaved over debts. Although, the records looked a little suspicious as the family name of the complainant was the same as the magistrate's and smelled off. But it was enough to pique my interest, enough to post a request on the system. Asking for anyone to notify me of any other records of the person and a rough time period.

Over a period of 17 years, he kept popping up, each time he moved further south and spent 1 to 2 years with each master. Which led me to believe he was unusual. The prices he was sold for suggested he had skills rather than being sold as a difficult slave.

As he neared the toe of Italy, he vanished and I thought I'd lost my trail. Until a Greek colleague contacted me saying he'd found a record of the name in records from a Greek island. Not from slave records, but on a bowl which purported to praise a slave who had been a family's children's tutor, who had died defending them from assassination.

It was enough to get me to travel to Greece to investigate further. One child saved by the slave became an important trader and politician. In his records it said how he owed everything to his slave tutor, who was also his family bodyguard. He had sacrificed himself to protect the children from the political rivals of his father.

Knowing that my slave was a tutor explained why he was sold on after educating his master's children. And why his prices got higher rather than lower as he aged. At that time, travelling all the way to Constantinople to trade would require both physical strength and resolve. As well as the intelligence, to master other languages and understand how to navigate there.

I used that factual information and wrote a book from the slave's perspective. While most of the events were made up, my expertise in the period meant I could provide a detailed description of daily life. The food and conditions, the clothing and practises. Enough to bring it to life. In a similar vein to the Shardlake series of books by CJ Sansom. Novels based on historic events.

I found a publisher who gushed over the book but wished I had more. So I offered to split the book into three parts. The first of how he became a trader, ending with his enslavement. The second covering his slavery until he was sold to a Greek. And the last covering his time on the Greek islands until his death. Admittedly, my accuracy of the first book was a little doubtful in places. The others, including the Greek political infighting, were as accurate as anyone could determine.

Making sure the first book was not to be published until after I retired. To ensure the university could not try to get their claws into the royalties. As I'm not a person who cares much about material things and I'd never married, I decided to spend at least 6 months on a Greek island. Sit back, catch up on the books I'd never read, and eat olives whilst sipping ouzo.

I blinked as I came back to the present to hear Abigail saying that she nearly didn't recognise me. Hardly surprising, as I was a three-piece suit professor when I knew her, and now I was in baggy shorts and flip-flops. Tanned and with sun bleached hair. Without realising it, I'd been staring at her chest whilst my mind ran off to my books again.

"So, why are you here?" She asked.

"Fishing." I replied, gesturing to the boat and grinning at the useless answer.

A voice called her name, and we looked over at the bus stop 50 feet away. A crowd of people her age and all together were climbing on the bus. One girl was gesturing for Abigail to hurry.

"I'll catch up." Abigail called back. "I've met an old friend." She called and pointed at me.

'Friend' might be a bit of a stretch, but I was always friendly with my students. Especially those that made an effort.

"Where are they going?" I asked,

She told me of the beach further down the coast and I explained that the next bus there wasn't for another hour. Her face fell, and she looked at the bus as it pulled off.

"I could sail you around there. We could probably make it by the time the bus gets there. Depending on traffic."

Abigail grinned and swung her backpack down to me. I put it on the desk and looked up and saw her mistake. She had a foot out to step on to the gunwale, but had neglected the bobbing of the boat. As her foot expected to encounter the boat, it bobbed down and away. She toppled over and fell towards me.

My hands shot out to catch her and they caught her ribs, but slipped up as she collapsed onto the deck. As she steadied herself, I was alarmed to see one of my thumbs had slipped under her bikini top, pulled it aside. My palm was holding her small but perfectly formed breasts. I snatched my hands away as she looked down.

But she was grinning as she looked up at me and casually pulled her bikini back into place.

"Sorry about that."

"It's ok, a small price to pay not losing my front teeth on the desk of your boat. Wait until I tell Bernadette that Plumb groped my tits."

"It was an accident." I replied.

"Still, she'll be so jealous. You remember her, right?"

I nodded. Some students stood out from the others. Some for them for their academic interest in history, but depressingly others for their lack of interest, or interest only in other things. Bernadette was one of the latter and her interest seemed more inclined to bedding as many of my colleagues as she could.

After stowing her back pack away, I started the engine and called out to my neighbouring sailor. In my near perfect Greek, I told him where I was going and when I was likely to get back. George looked over and grinned as he saw Abigail in her bikini and made a rude comment about what I planned to do with the girl.

I shook my head and laughed, cast off and pushed the bow from the promenade wall. Setting the motor to chug away, Abigail asked me what the other guy had said. I gave her a sanitised version of what he said and she smirked, then whistled towards George. When he looked over, she pulled her bikini top up to flash her tits at him. He looked surprised, then gave her a thumbs up.

She laughed and turned to me before covering herself up. Then sat on the side of the boat as the chop made it harder for her to keep her balance. Showing off slightly, I stood as I guided the boat towards our destination.

During the journey, I explained how when I'd arrived; I found a room in a boarding house on the edge of town. After a few weeks, I fell into a conversation with an elderly fisherman, who had been the owner of my boat. He was shocked that an obvious foreigner spoke his language so well. I explained my history and why I was there. He thought it was amusing that a history teacher would move to a place of living history.

We hit it off, and he invited me to a bar just for the locals. Alex was in his 70s and I pointed out that his boat had hardly changed in 2,000 years. Only the diesel engine instead of a sail, but the fishing methods for squid and such remained almost unchanged.

Because it was obvious I wasn't just a tourist, the others in the bar accepted me and I'd pop in every other day. Then I was ambushed by a reporter from a local newspaper when she discovered I was a 'famous' author. Especially as my first two books had been published in Greek and were eagerly awaiting the last part.

I'd avoided publicity with my books at home, as I'd already left the country. So I reluctantly gave an interview, and she was as shocked as the others that I spoke the language so fluently, without a Greek family connection.

I'd not expected that my next trip to the bar would find my article pinned up at the end of the bar with my photo bold as brass. The owner's wife tentatively asked for me to sign her copy of the 2nd book. Which was amusing, as she was rather a hard nut the rest of the time.

Towards the end of the summer, Alex offered to take me out on his boat and teach me the art of squid fishing. It was relaxing sitting in the boat off the coast of the island, sitting in companionable silence with Alex, waiting for the squid to become our supper. I was loath to return to the UK. But I'd promised to visit my sister and my nieces and nephews for Christmas. Plus, I'd agreed to give 10 lectures around the country.

I expected it to be about my history papers I'd written over the years. But they morphed into talking about my books and how I'd come up with them. Spending most of the hour-long lecture talking about my detective work left the audiences demanding to know when the last book would be published. I'd assumed it already had, but the publishers had spaced them out a little to maximise sales of each book.

When I returned to Greece, I was shocked to find Alex in the hospital after falling ill. His children had moved to Athens for work many years ago, so I spent time as his only visitor. He told me he had to retire and wondered if I wanted to buy his boat. As I was a rich author, I'd not haggle. I laughed but agreed to do it.

In return, he helped me find a new place to live. Close to the harbour was a stone building with a heavy door and no window. Which had once been a fishing net store, but as boats got bigger, it was inadequate. Somebody added a bathroom extension and fitted a kitchen so it could be used by the fishermen as a social club in bad weather.

However, the wives had it shut down when their husband returned home drunk on days they could not fish. So it had been turned into a basic bedsit and Alex arranged for me to rent it for next to nothing. It was less than 100 yards from the boat and I could keep my eye on it easily.

We rounded the headland to see Abigail's destination beach coming into view, and I had a sinking feeling as I saw the breakers along the waterline.

"That's going to be a problem." I commented and pointed to the white water. "I'd need to point the bow into the breakers to get through them, but I can't afford to risk getting the propeller pushed back into the sand."

"It's ok, I can't lower myself into the water and wade ashore." She replied.

"The water is deeper than you think."

"Oh, and I've got my phone and stuff in my bag. Otherwise I'd be happy to swim it." She commented.

I gave her the tiller and opened the hatch to reveal my supplies. There were several large heavy duty clear plastic bags. With double zip lock style waterproof seals. In one was my survival gear and in another were a couple of books I'd read while waiting for my catch. Emptying out the books, I put her pack in the bag and she slipped off her sarong.

As I zipped it up, it was hard not to notice just how much of her arse was on display in the skimpy outfit. With the slight indentation of her slit through the thin material. Part of me wanted to be on the beach when she came out of the water.

I sealed the bag and gave it a squeeze to ensure it was sealed properly and handed her the bag. There was a cord with a wrist look on it to allow a swimmer to swim without worrying about the bag getting in the way. Abigail gave me a kiss and a hug, and I felt a twinge in my groin as she pressed her stomach against mine.

Then she moved to the bow and gracefully dove into the water. I watched until I saw her emerge from the water and wave back to me, before turning the boat and heading out to fish.

The next morning, I arrived at my boat and saw a note on the hatch held in place by a rock. George saw me coming and made a gesture of a curvy woman leaving me the note and gave me a wink. I had to admit my encounter with my former student had made my week. I'd had hints of offers for female company from local ladies from their mid-forties until almost seventy, but I'd turned them all down.

It wasn't that I was entirely uninterested, but in a small town like mine, everyone knew everyone else's business. If I bedded one, it was likely that it would lead to more than just casual sex. I'd seen enough failed marriages to want to go there myself, but as I got older, I missed the company as much as I missed sex.

The last woman I'd been with was Astrid, a former colleague, shortly before I retired. We'd flirted playfully while we worked together but never took it further until the night of her leaving the party. She had a new, more senior job in another university, but asked me if she could see me in my office during her goodbye drinks.

She was almost ten years my junior and tall and busty, from a Scandinavian family. The moment we entered my office, she locked the door and told me she wasn't about to go without at least giving me a blow job. She was always blunt about things, and I rested against the edge of my desk as she unzipped me and pulled my cock free.

Kneeling, she sucked me hard, then stood and hiked up her skirt, pulled off her underwear and rested her elbows on my desk. Parting her legs to see a meaty and inviting pussy, I moved behind her and tested her entrance. Not waiting for me, she thrust back and sheathed me inside her pussy in a moment. Reminding me we had little time, so to fuck her hard and fast.

I managed to lift her bra over her tits and get my hands on them at last, and pulling her nipples set her over the edge. She spun around and dropped to her knees again until she sucked my load from my balls with expert ease. She sorted out her clothing, but left her panties in my top drawer before returning to her party.

It was over too quickly for my liking, but it had been memorable and I still masturbated from time to time over the memory. The memory of that time stirred as I remembered the nearly naked Abigail yesterday. Even though I knew I was being stupid, I wondered what it would have been like to be intimate with Abigail.

When I read the note, it invited me to come to her villa that evening at 6:30. Some of the other people she was there with wanted to meet me. So, that evening I put some olives and fresh bread into a string bag. Along with some ouzo and a bottle of local wine, then took my moped up to her villa on the outskirts of town.

Nobody answered the door, and I headed around the side of the house to find a small deck with a smaller pool full of people. A couple of young women lay on towels wearing next to nothing. One of the young men tossing a ball in the pool saw me and stopped, causing Abigail to turn and see me. She scrambled out of the pool and I was treated to the unlined bikini as she hurried towards me.

The water must have been cool as her nipples stood proud, and her bikini bottoms stood in danger of slipping off her hips. She threw her arms out as if to hug me until she realised she was soaking and didn't want to get me wet. To be honest, I'd not have complained about the chance to feel her body against mine.

She introduced me to the others, but I didn't remember all the names. One of the other girls had been my student. I recalled that she was Petra. One of the young men had read my books and was interested in meeting a published author. I was offered one of the few chairs and only as I sat did I feel my age. It was like they thought I was old and feeble.

I chatted with a few of them as the others went inside to get ready for their night out. Abigail vanished for a few minutes and returned in a light blouse and a flouncy black above the knee skirt, with roman sandals. I handed over the olives and bread, while the guy grabbed some glasses to sample the ouzo. It was rough and fiery, but I'd gotten used to it over my time on the island.

Within half an hour, it was just me and Abigail and she asked when the last part of my trilogy was to be published. I told her it would be by the time she got home, but I had my authors' copies already and I could drop one off tomorrow. As the others reappeared from the house when a minibus arrived. Abigail told them she was going to my place to pick up a book, and she'd catch up with them later.

Fortunately, the motorcycle helmet laws in Greece were rather lax. As she sat side-saddle on the carrier shelf behind me. One hand around my waist, and dangerously close to my crotch, as I wound my way back to my place. When we got there, her hair was all over the place and she laughed as she used her fingers to calm it down.

"Do you mind if we grab a drink first?" She asked.

"Sure, but I thought you wanted to catch up with your friends?"

"Actually, I could do with a bit of a break from them. The house is supposed to sleep 10, but someone suggested we could sneak in another 2. But it's tight with 10. One guy is getting a little handsy with the girls and offering to share his bed, if you know what I mean. So I'll give them a few hours without me. Besides, I want to see where you drink. I'm sure it's not some tacky tourist bar."