by Anya Howard
Mistress smoothed her shoulder. “Beautiful, isn’t it?”
Gillian was too delighted to respond. Her eyes drank in each facet of the clouds, relished every glint of parting sunlight.
“More than I recalled,” she whispered. If the Mistress heard she did not reply.
The next moment something streaked out of the encroaching night above their heads. It was a sphere of ornamental brasslike metal aglow with a fiery aura; it hovered for a millisecond above the dome before it sped across the sky and disappeared behind a wisp of claret clouds.
It had come and gone so fast that Gillian didn’t even know how it had startled her until the Mistress spoke, and the words sounded faint behind Gillian’s racing heartbeat.
“This is the aerial dome. And there, Gillian, awaits your master.”
Gillian followed her eyes across the room to a table positioned upon a dais. Queen Marianne sat there, with her slave youth naked and kneeling at her side. The queen was enchanting as ever, wearing a silver gown and a slender diamond tiara upon her brow. Two male Dhjinn E’nochs sat across from her, and at the far of the dais cushions were strewn. Two other harem girls reclined eating great dark cherries from a silver bowl. From the interior of the dome behind them all a circular length of veils was suspended. If there was anyone within these shades Gillian could not tell. But at the queen’s side, sitting straight and regal, was the one Gillian wanted to ignore, the Dhjinn abductor and their king. He had already noticed Gillian, and his intense regard weighted upon her.
Master of masters.
His invasive inner voice addled Gillian’s nerves. She was outraged that he still played his mind games on her. And yet, the mere sight of him eroded her rightful resentment. Resentment she’d thought unshakable. If it was possible for a being to be more beautiful than the king, she simply couldn’t envision it. Straight he sat, wearing a silk robe of royal blue. His luxurious silvery hair fell loose about his shoulders, and his face was as flawless as ever. His demeanor seemed much more mature to her than the last time she’d seen him, as if his vitality had been renewed, somehow, and was now both honed and raw with purpose.
The Mistress pressed her forward, and Gillian deliberately gazed at the floor as they walked. But as they passed the queen and approached the king, she remembered that she was expected to kneel and show him devotion and deference. The Mistress, however, did not give her time to even consider, for she pressed Gillian’s shoulders firmly until she sank to her knees before his cushion.
“Oh,” she heard Marianne say, “your naughty Nemian trophy! How splendid she looks tonight!”
The queen caressed her back so lightly that a shiver raced straight up to Gillian’s skull.
“Thank you, sister,” the king said. Out of the corner of an eye Gillian saw him take the leash from the Mistress. He wrapped the end about his hand and tugged on it gently so that the dildo ever so subtly compelled her to crawl closer to him. It was he who now stroked her back, and she was struck by the smoothness of his great fingers. She had almost forgotten these things; but now the evening in his chambers flooded back into her mind. She felt helpless, at his mercy, and terribly aware of how fragile a human being was compared to a Dhjinn E’noch. As the Mistress walked on to the other side of the table and sat down, panic swelled in Gillian’s chest. She knew she wasn’t supposed to hide her face, and yet she did, taking a moment’s comfort in the security of it.
The king’s fingertips lifted her chin, and with his other hand he moved her hair aside. She felt his lips press against her forehead.
“Rise up on your knees, and lift your eyes,” he said softly.
As she obeyed, she found not the fierce displeasure she expected, but a look she’d never seen on his face before. Thoughtful and almost tender it was, and the longer he gazed at her the more relaxed his countenance became. Then he took a tidbit from his plate and put it to her lips. Her trembling lips opened and she accepted it without protest. He fed her more fruits and bread flavored with saffron, and offered his own goblet, filled with a delicious spiced wine. Gillian fought to keep her unspoken feelings from shaping her thoughts. No shade of her resentment or grief for Bruce could she bear for the king to steal again, no hint of how just being close to him stirred her primal desires.
After a long while the king’s attention turned back to his guest, and pouring himself some fresh wine, made a toast in her honor. Gillian watched the others raise their goblets, and noticed the hard, undertone of red on the Mistress’s face. The look on her face reminded Gillian of someone trying to feign boredom. But her smile was candidly unenthusiastic.
The queen reached over and touched Gillian’s choker.
“I almost regret you are so fond of this one,” Marianne said to the king. “My dear husband doesn’t have too many blond courtesans. Maybe if I brought this one home, he’d acknowledge that I do notice his existence.”
The other male Dhjinns laughed, but the king said soberly, “You should sell his courtesans, my dearest, and then he’d have no doubt!”
Gillian felt the Mistress’s regard, and when she glanced over, the woman gave her a reproachful look. Her stomach quivered with dread. The king didn’t seem to notice as she inched behind his shoulder enough to evade the Mistress’s eyes.
“And she won’t be blond for long,” spoke one of the other males, “my brother will have her to wed soon enough, you know.”
Gillian was confused by the statement, and forgot even the Mistress as Marianne replied, “Oh yes, the crown of the Chosen One. I forgot. What a pity, I love her natural shade!”
The king made an amused sound, and turning, stroked Gillian’s hair. “It is beautiful,” he said matter-of-factly. “But I am old-fashioned in some ways.”
Gillian was startled when Marianne leaned over. The queen reached a hand between her captive thighs and touched her pubic hair. Gillian’s vulnerable nether mouth quivered under her petting fingers.
“And this, too?”
“Yes,” answered the king. Gillian fought back the vision of him shaving her.
“Red hair is the mark of a beloved queen,” the Mistress said dryly, “at least among our nobles, who cherish their women.”
Gillian shuddered with relief. But the Mistress’s dig was not lost on her, and she saw Queen Marianne’s wounded frown.
One of the males lifted his goblet again. “Friendship,” he said quickly, “may it always be thus between our king and his lovely Marianne.”
As goblets clinked, Gillian saw the Mistress’s eyes drift again about the room. Gillian wondered about her obvious antipathy toward the queen. Yet Gillian’s curiosity dimmed quickly enough, for her sex tingled more acutely than ever, and the anal dildo only worsened the passion that possessed her. Again and again she found herself looking at the king, admiring him with blatant lust.
But soon he ignored her entirely. Of course, she dared not move from her humbled position because the Mistress was so near. But her body ached for his touch, his regard, as much as she despised him for it. Her labia swelled cruelly, and her thighs were damp and sticky; yet there was nothing she could do but kneel here and wait for him to notice her. She was ashamed for this need, the potent animal lust that seized her despite her love for Bruce.
At length the dancing girls left the floor and one of the musicians commenced to play a strange instrument that produced a sound very like sitar music. Soon he was accompanied by others playing pan pipes and tambourines. Some of the other guests advanced to the floor in couples. The dance was sensual, the steps slow and graceful. The music made Gillian’s desire more potent. As the king rose from his cushion and asked Queen Marianne to dance, Gillian felt a great twinge of envy.
She couldn’t bear to watch them, and as her head turned, saw the pained look on the face of Marianne’s slave, who was kneeling with his palms pressed to the floor. The candlelight from the table gleamed against his lithe, sinewy limbs. She could see the pink welts across his back and thighs, and little bruises of passion
upon his throat and chest. For the first time Gillian noticed the leather collar buckled taut around the base of his cock. The organ was fully erect, and Gillian realized that the collar was designed to keep it so. His eyes were cemented to the king and queen and glinted with unshed tears. Gillian might have found this kind of despair unnatural for a man, if she didn’t suspect his honest passion for the queen.
There is no shame in that kind of devotion, she thought. “I’ll never see Bruce again,” she lamented, so quietly she hardly heard her voice beneath the tempestuous music.
Gillian looked timidly again to the dancers, and tried to focus on Queen Marianne’s graceful movements. She danced with an indefinable exuberance, which in its complex beauty outshone the fire-elemental Dhjinn E’nochs. How refined the queen remained even as her body undulated in time to the pagan rhythm. She was a bastion of stability beside the king.
When they returned and sat back down at the table, Marianne cupped her slave’s hands between her palms and kissed him. His immediate relief rippled like water through his tense muscles. The queen glided a hand down between his thighs. She squeezed the tip of his cock, so that a few drops of fluid dribbled out over her thumb. A deep, shameless moan came from him.
The king had joined some conversation with his male guests, content to stroke Gillian’s hair idly. Gillian’s sex had become a well of heated desire. She could hardly keep her hips still for want of rubbing her thighs or rocking her hips in some shameful manner. She dared not look at the king and kept her furtive eyes on the queen and her slave.
She saw Marianne drain the remainder of wine from her cup. The lovely woman was smiling lushly now at her love-starved slave. And at length Marianne stood up and went to the circle of veils. She pulled a drape of them aside, and Gillian saw the bed of cushions piled within. At Queen Marianne’s nod the youth crawled quickly from the table through the little passageway. He knelt beside the cushions with his hands behind his back. As Marianne let the drape fall back into place, Gillian’s eyes narrowed. She watched the shadowy image of the queen lower down upon the cushions. The queen adjusted one of them behind her head so that it was raised, then motioned with a finger for her slave to approach. Eagerly he did so and reverently kissed her slippers.
At Marianne’s whispered command, the young slave crawled forward and kneeled on his haunches at her side. She ordered him to keep his hands behind him, and reached out and grasped his cock. Her hand moved slowly up and down the length of the collared organ. When he moaned again she cautioned him to be quiet. The pinnacle of the organ bloomed a vivid scarlet under Marianne’s continued ministrations and his face turned as ruddy. His mouth fell open and his breathing grew urgent and desperate.
Gillian expected to see the hot seed spill over the queen’s tormenting hand, but before that happened, Marianne released him. She slid the hem of her gown upward, slowly revealing every curve of her shapely legs. She wore no hose tonight, Gillian saw, and the skin was creamy; her thighs ample and flawless. Marianne’s hand now dipped between these lovely pillars, and her hips moved ever so gracefully as she stroked herself.
“Your mouth,” she ordered softly, “love me with that divine mouth—and perhaps the whipping I give you later shan’t be so ardent!”
The youth’s mouth glistened as he nodded, and he got down again and crawled over the cushions between her legs. Onto his belly he dropped, and carefully spread her knees. Gillian heard his wet kisses upon Marianne’s secret flesh. The queen stroked his hair wildly while her cheeks suffused with color and her hips swayed up and down to meet his attentive mouth.
Gillian hardly heard her own jealous moan until the king abruptly snatched the length of her hair. She let out a mortified shriek. He pulled her to him, clamping a hand about her mouth. Her whole body went numb as he pulled her close. Yet, even half-paralyzed with fear, her aching desire was only exacerbated in his restraining arms.
“Ogling is ill-mannered, my dear,” he said in such a way she couldn’t tell if he was angry or not. His breath singed the side of her throat for a moment or two, then suddenly he let go of her mouth and spun her about on her knees. His arms laced about her waist. Pulling her close, he kissed her. His pungent sweetness took away her breath. How sorely her body craved him now. She felt like a crumbling vessel of sand in his arms.
All the same, she rued this overwhelming lust. She envied the slave with Queen Marianne. The queen was humane as well as sensual. These characteristics were wedded upon her very being, attributes that Gillian respected. Her lust-possessed body felt a twinge of grief to know that once this night was over she might never see Marianne again.
With that thought she felt the king’s arms stiffen and his lips grow cool. He released her body and grasped the ends of her hair tightly. She raised her eyes timidly, and knew by the stony regard she met that he had perceived her feelings only too clearly.
A moment later she heard the Mistress speak anxiously, “I should get your betrothed to bed now, brother. She needs to recuperate from the trials faced these last days, and let to slumber for a night or two without stimulation. It will help her become one with the lessons learned in the Disciplinary.”
He studied Gillian a moment longer. But she could see that despite his jealousy he was trying to stay rational. His expression softened a bit, and he touched the ends of her hair now to his cheek.
“Yes,” he replied thoughtfully. “Make sure she rests for two days, and then bring her back to me.”
As the Mistress said good night to the other guests, the king embraced Gillian roughly. He kissed her, and the virile taste of him and the firmness of his lips weakened her. In a delirium of acute, mindless desire she watched as he handed the leash over to the Mistress.
The Mistress gave the leash a little tug that brought Gillian to her feet. As they left the dais Gillian thought of Queen Marianne. As much as she wished to, she didn’t look back at the veils or the table. Her heart and body were raw with need, but which demanded the most she dared not wonder.
17
During the trip back to the harem court, Gillian could feel something was not quite normal with the Mistress. But she said nothing to Gillian at all, not even as she turned her back over to the care of the Master.
The others who had not returned from the banquet, or had remained behind, were already asleep in their narrow beds as the Master took Gillian to the bathroom and helped her to undress. Gillian was so tired. She was surprised to find that she felt little embarrassment for this particular male to see her naked. Very gently he deflated the phallus and removed it, and once she was undressed entirely, washed away the oil that had driven her mad all night.
As Gillian lay in bed, she thought of Marianne again. The thought of the queen leaving the king’s domain frightened her. With Marianne’s departure, Gillian might be forever lost in this world with its underground halls that led always to new and more forbidding doors.
And as she drifted to sleep she thought of the Mistress briefly, and pondered over what could have had prompted the dark woman to whisk her away from the king. The Mistress had obviously perceived that her brother could read Gillian’s troubled emotions. She had saved Gillian by subverting his wrath with her quick thinking. As much as Gillian feared her, she couldn’t help but be grateful for the woman’s gift for observation.
Later Gillian was awakened by the sense of someone kissing her throat. For a moment her drowsy conscious thought it was Bruce kneeling by the bed, and her heart leaped with joy. She turned over eagerly and her arms opened to his stalwart embrace. But it was a mouth flavored like anise and ambergris that enveloped her own and made her unspent passion burn hotter than ever. Hands, firm in the softest way, pressed her shoulders back down on the mattress.
“Sweetest Disciple,” the Mistress crooned in her ear. “I am your ally, never forget!”
Gillian was too astonished to speak. The Mistress pulled the blankets aside, and shy goose bumps spread across Gillian’s flesh. Her eyes began to make out t
he Mistress’s familiar features, and she lay silent as the Mistress stroked her belly, gliding a finger over her hips and again up her belly. Gillian could feel her inflamed juices dampen the mattress. In the darkness the Mistress couldn’t see her blush, and it was all Gillian could do to force her hips from making some inadvertent movement.
The Mistress rose to her feet then. As she crawled into the bed, Gillian saw that she was naked. Her hard nipples were black against her shadowed flesh. She kissed Gillian’s brow, and lifted Gillian’s hand and pressed it to one of the great dusky breasts. She smelled of honey and spice to Gillian, and her lips curved in a soft smile. With a hand she skimmed the surface of Gillian’s stomach. Her fingers delved into the thatch between her legs, and just the touch of her hot fingertips over her vulva made Gillian’s sex singe.
Gillian could feel the Mistress grow hotter, too, and the air was thick with her Dhjinn musk. When the Mistress kissed her, Gillian’s mouth was electrified. The woman’s lips were succulent, with a taste like the exotic fruit. And then she released her, and giving Gillian’s nose a fond little stroke, turned about on the mattress. She straddled Gillian’s middle and Gillian admired the sensuous length of her back and firm buttocks. The Mistress lay down then over Gillian, and with her fingers unburied her sex beneath the nest of curls between her thighs. She parted Gillian’s hidden folds and pressed her lips to the hood of Gillian’s clit. Her tongue roamed over the unveiled flesh, and this the Mistress kissed, too, sweetly, so lovingly. It had been long since Gillian had felt such tenderness. Warmth spread through her that soothed her soul as much as it excited her body.
Gillian clasped the firm thighs above her shoulders, and kissed the dark flesh. Above her face the Mistress’s arched pelvis moved back and forth in faint rhythm. Her long, crimson pussy glistened under its black pelt, and Gillian’s mouth watered to taste it. Shyly Gillian tugged the Mistress’s thighs, and to her relief the woman’s hips nestled down so that she could lick the beautiful nether mouth. She kissed the lips as the Mistress had kissed her own, and relished the taste as her tongue wandered over the heated folds and darted into the tight seam.
