one, and it didn't help that I was much younger than he was—and certainly very young to be the bureau chief—and that he was able to use his connections to fulfill all of the office's logistical needs. It irked me that I was living in his accommodations, both in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, and driving his car—but he was a god of fixit in the eyes of the headquarters offices, and they seemed delighted that he could streamline these arrangements.

The arrangements for the trip to the northern coastal city of Haifa four weeks after my arrival would have been the last straw if I didn't need to get there and set up so quickly to cover a series of marketplace bombings that were seen as the opening salvo in a whole new terrorist campaign in the region. I'd tried to call in hotel reservations myself, but everywhere I tried was booked. Panos swept in at that point, naturally, and informed me that he happened to have a seaside cabana on the beach just south of Haifa where I could stay. He went on to say that it would be best if he went up there with me, because he could get me a camera crew on the spot and knew some officials there who would get us into the action quickly.

This was my job and this was my first important assignment as Israel bureau chief, so I swallowed my irritation, and Panos and I raced up the coast in a taxi he owned that would help us slip in under the radar of terrorists and the Israeli military alike.

The cabana was not much more than a motel room with a bath and kitchenette on the land side and a main room with a double bed and sliding glass doors out onto a small terrace overlooking rocks descending sharply into the Mediterranean. Just a double bed, which I looked at in dismay when we entered the unit at sunset after a long drive up the coast.

Sensing my concern while he was opening the curtains to the glass doors out onto the terrace, Panos said. "The unit's for you. I have someplace else to stay. Go ahead and hit the shower, and I'll check around to make sure the air conditioning and other things are working and let myself out. I'll pick you up at 6:30 in the morning for breakfast before we drive into Haifa to meet your camera crew."

The shower sounded great, so I went directly into the bathroom and stripped off my clothes and showered under a lukewarm stream of water that wasn't really any worse than what I had in my more modern Herzliya house.

When I came out of the shower, with just a towel wrapped around my waist, I found the lighting in the room muted and a beautiful sunset spanning the horizon of the Mediterranean through the glass wall. I also found a naked Panos stretched out on the double bed, facing me, his face set in a grin.

My dick took a lurch under the towel that I'm sure Panos couldn't miss. He was beautiful. Beautiful as in mature, solidly built, hirsute, horse-hung beautiful. Not an Apollo, but definitely a Zeus. A bottle of lubricant was on the bedspread beside him, and he had lathered up his prodigious, engorging cock and was stroking himself slowly with a fist.

After a minute of shock, I built up all of the anger and authority I could muster and told him in a low,