Cruel Enchantment

by Janine Ashbless

  ‘I’m going to be the Empress, Petrus,’ she explained kindly, squirming softly from side to side. ‘I am going to rule the Twenty Kingdoms, and then I am going to conquer the world. That’s why I need to be a sorceress. You understand, don’t you, Petrus? Nobody ever became great by being weak and gentle. I will have to fight for my throne. I know that. People will have to be killed. It does not matter. I am going to be the greatest queen that ever lived. And I will rule forever. I can do that, you know, with the right magic. And everyone will be happy, because everyone will love me.’

  She kneeled up slowly, water pouring from her high breasts and from the thigh-length black hair that cascaded down her narrow back. Where her hair ended and the water began, no one could have said.

  ‘You love me already, Petrus, do you not?’

  He did not reply or move, but his eyes were starving – so hungry that they would have devoured her down to the bones if they could. Ravenous and appalled. She stood and shook out her hair. He tried to lick his dry lips with even drier tongue.

  ‘You needed a drink, you said, Petrus,’ she reminded him. She raised one leg and placed her foot upon the side of the bath, then ran slender fingers through the wet black ringlets at her groin. ‘If you love me, I will let you drink.’

  She pissed into the bathwater, long and hard. Petrus’ eyes never left her – he hardly even blinked. When she had emptied herself, she took up the blue glass bowl which had held the flowers and stooped to fill it from the bath. She brought it to him. Part water, part flowers, part piss, she offered it up to his cracked and blackened lips like the Water of Life itself.

  He only hesitated for a moment before he drank. She watched his throat work with a sense of pure satisfaction.

  When he had emptied the bowl, she brought him more and he took that in great gulps too, slopping it down his throat and chest in his eagerness, washing away the last sticky traces of fruit. Only when he had drained the bowl a second time did he lean back against Anima’s metal breasts and stare at the roof, trying to regain control of his breathing. Jade put the bowl aside.

  ‘You have wet your clothes,’ she said, reaching for the waistband of his trousers.

  He had enough freedom of movement to get his hands down and grab hers, but the moment they touched her Anima’s grip transferred to his wrists, twisting them open then wrenching his arms up and apart.

  ‘Bitch!’ Petrus gasped. But he did not struggle as Jade unpicked the knot at his belt and slid the cloth past his hips down to his ankles. She kneeled slowly before him, her face on a level with his crotch and rapt with wonder.

  She had seen pictures of naked men in books that depicted every sexual position imaginable, and even heard the parts described in lurid detail by concubines and slaves, but she had never seen the phallus in the living flesh, nor smelled the sour musk of it. To her delight, his whole groin radiated a heat that she could feel on her face. From a wild thatch of hair, the cock arced up like a rainbow rising into the sky, the eye in the hooded head wet and weeping. It swayed like a palm-tree in a high wind and when she laid her hand upon it it bobbed and twitched in an ungainly manner. It felt surprisingly hot in her hand. Petrus moaned beneath her touch. She tightened her grip and felt the cock thicken and harden in response, spreading her clenched fingers.

  ‘No, Princess, I need to piss!’ Petrus begged through gritted teeth.

  Jade ignored him and pulled the thick member upright as if it were some dagger she were raising to strike. The hairless balls pendent beneath were fatter than she had imagined, the scrotum wrinkled as a walnut with a seam like a scar bisecting the two sacs. As she looked she saw the scrotal skin was crawling almost imperceptibly, the different parts puckering and relaxing in a secret dance. She drew back the foreskin and saw the glans glistening beneath, fat, angry-looking, almost purple in colour, the inverted ‘Y’ of the slit cupping a wedge of tightly-packed ridges.

  Petrus was writhing with frustration or discomfort, she could not tell which. She released his straining cock and stood to one side. ‘Piss, then,’ she said curiously.

  ‘Ah!’ Petrus gasped. ‘Gods, no, I can’t – I’m too hard, you lamia!’

  Jade smiled to herself. At once the two caryatids moved and in moments they had Petrus bound to the chandelier again. This time the chain was pulled tighter so that his arms were stretched right above his head. His erection stuck out from his body like the handle of a knife that had been driven into his guts.

  She walked behind him to examine the view from that angle. The broad expanse of his back tapered down to hard buttocks totally unlike anything she had seen; not the rounded globular softness of a woman’s arse but two sharply defined muscles like great clenched fists. She laid a hand on one of the cheeks and almost flinched to feel it so rock-hard. The skin of his rump and legs were rough with nearly-invisible hairs, but a small swirl of them like a fingerprint could be seen at the top of his arse-crack. Jade raked her gilded nails across one buttock, admiring the little pink lines evoked.

  A shiver crawled visibly up his spine.

  She crouched again in a drift of her own wet hair to examine the contours of his legs, the rigid planes of his thighs like planks of wood. She laid her face against his hard thigh and stared at his rampant erection.

  ‘Piss,’ she commanded.

  ‘I can’t,’ he groaned.

  Standing, she pressed herself against him from behind and wrapped her arms around his waist. ‘Piss,’ she said, pushing the heels of both hands in at the base of his belly.

  Petrus cried out. Then he let go and pissed like a horse on to the costly floor.

  By the time he had finished, two long tears of humiliation were running down his face and there was little left of his tumescent erection. Jade picked up her robe and walked to the door. Just before she left the room she turned and said – for his benefit, not that of the caryatids, ‘Clean up. Clean him. Let him lie down to sleep. When he wakes, chain him up again.’ Then she departed.

  On the second day, Jade trained her monkey to bring her peaches from the top branches of the palace orchard. She learned from a different tutor of the wisdom of the High Prophet Imbaun, both his public sayings and his secret writings, and it made her laugh. She watched the execution of a minor court official who had been caught reselling the imperial supplies of grain. She copied the faint lettering inscribed on the interior of the silver ring and spent a little time trying to decipher them, although she was careful not to pronounce any word. She did not think about Petrus.

  She came back to him in the cool of the evening, dressed in a belted robe of scarlet silk embroidered with azaleas. Anima followed her in bearing a tray of food and drink. He was chained in the kneeling position once more, and lifted his head to glare at her sullenly.

  ‘Drink this,’ she said, pouring him a glass of wine thinned with iced pomegranate juice. He drained the cup twice, though with some show of reluctance.

  ‘Are you hungry?’ she said. ‘You must be. It is at least two days since you have had anything to eat.’

  ‘Don’t bother,’ Petrus growled.

  ‘Now now, I want you to keep your strength up,’ she chided him as she broke white bread in her hands and dipped a piece in a bowl of golden olive oil. ‘I am trying to look after you.’

  He tried to laugh but it came out as a resigned croak. ‘Listen, bitch, I know you’re going to kill me. Do it quickly. Get it over with.’

  ‘I am not going to kill you,’ she smiled.

  ‘I don’t want to play your games, little girl. I am not here to be the toy of some couzie with a scorpion for a heart. Fuck you.’

  ‘Oh, no, Petrus,’ she murmured. ‘You do not understand. I have no intention of killing you. I have plans for you. I need you to be big and strong. Go on, eat up. You must be starving.’

  She stroked the hair back from his forehead and he groaned. She loved that. The mixture of frustrated anger and despair made her blood race. He was so strong, yet so helpless. She held the mors
el of bread to his lips and he took it from her, his face a mask of pain. She fed him gently by hand, stroking all the time his temples and jaw and neck. When he had finished the small loaf of bread she offered him grapes, green as poison, feeding them fastidiously one at a time between his scarred lips. He submitted to her touch for the sake of the food.

  Then Jade broke open the piece of honeycomb on the tray and ran her fingers through it until they dripped with the sweet sticky stuff. She held out her honeyed hand to Petrus and he opened his lips to her, sucking her slender fingers into his hot, wet mouth, probing up hard between the digits with his tongue to chase the last fugitive dribbles of sweetness. When she withdrew her fingers, he stifled a whimper and tried to reach for them, straining against his fetters.

  His cock was thickening already.

  Jade loosed the belt of her robe and let it swing open to reveal her delicate frame, her small breasts. Her copper-coloured nipples were soft but, when she broke more honeycomb and smeared it lasciviously over her breasts, they hardened at once to little peaks. Sticky droplets of honey dripped slowly from her bubs on to the golden skin of her thighs. She took more honey in both hands and worked it across her belly and flanks, rubbing it into the curls of hair at her groin until they glistened. Petrus’ eyes were shining like those of the damned; he could not restrain his reaching lips or his rising cock.

  She took that one step that brought her within his reach and his mouth closed hungrily on her right breast. Jade gasped as warmth rushed through her from spine to scalp, and she grasped his head between her hands. He began to suckle desperately, licking and mouthing her virginal breasts as if he were clinging that way to life. His tongue was everywhere on her little tits, under and over and between them, whipping her nipples, lapping across her breastbone, scouring her stomach with hungry kisses. He worked his way down her body, stooping awkwardly to her crotch, mumbling at her honeyed bush. Jade tilted her pelvis up towards his mouth and he thrust at her soft pubic mound, reaching for the sweet slit that was just beyond his reach with a tongue that must have been almost tearing itself out at the root. The rough stubble of his chin raised welts across her untouched thighs. He groaned and gobbled and strained against the fetters until the bronze bit into his wrists and the muscles stood out on his shoulders, but he could not quite reach his goal. Jade staggered, weak at the legs. She was wet now, her sex hot and swollen, the slipperiness between her thighs nothing to do with honey.

  She grabbed his head and tilted his face up to look at her, stilling him. His chin was pressed against her belly.

  ‘Petrus,’ she hissed. ‘Do you love me, my slave?’

  And still, eyes hooding, he pulled away from her, though his cock stood like an obelisk, a monument to the bone-breaking, entrail-tearing tyranny of his lust.

  She sloughed the silken robe and stood naked in front of him. ‘You are the first man to see me, Petrus,’ she told him. ‘Can you believe that? The first man I have ever touched. The first ever allowed to touch me.’

  He laughed in disbelief. She stooped to bite his lips softly. They tasted of honey. He writhed under her, hot and afraid.

  ‘I am telling the truth.’ She posed for him, running her hands up her filthied body and lifting her breasts in crushing, clawing fingers. ‘I am an imperial princess. I have never seen a man. I am not allowed near them. Never had a hard, salty prick pushing between my legs. Protected. Cosseted. Indulged. Nothing to relieve my curiosity. I have made do for years with tickling and dreams and frigging. Even Animus –’ she jerked her head derisively at the caryatid ‘– cannot do for me what the filthiest street-sweeper can do for the lowest slut in the bakery. He was carved to look like he had a member, but it is a fake, a blob of metal; it cannot rise to the occasion. Do you know how I feel, Petrus? I am burning with curiosity. I want to know what it is like. I want to find out what a man can do. I am sick of ignorance. If I am to be Empress, then I have to know everything. You are my instrument, Petrus.’ She giggled, her body quivering all over.

  ‘I will fuck you till you scream, you bitch,’ he promised.

  ‘No.’ Jade froze, her hands in her midnight hair, her flushed breasts tilted high, her sapphire eyes aglow. ‘You will not fuck me, you filthy gutter-crawling thief. You common little piece of shit. You will not fuck me. You will beg me to fuck you.’

  And Petrus could not reply. Into the silence of the room, from across the city rooftops, there drifted the faint sound of the priests calling the people to prayer at the Temple of All Gods But One.

  Jade grew straight and proud and cool once more. ‘Let me show you,’ she said. ‘Let me show you, Petrus, how I pleasure myself. Would you like to see that? Because I can keep you chained forever, unable to touch yourself. I can make you watch me grind myself into exhaustion, if I like. Would you like to see me play with myself, Petrus?’

  He said nothing, but his eyes burned and his cock surged like a chained dog.

  ‘I like to use a candle,’ she said, surveying the ranks of fragrant incandescent columns that filled every ledge and holder in the room. ‘At first it had to be a narrow, smooth taper. But now I like something a little more substantial. Like this.’

  She chose a waxen column and carried it over, still burning, to Petrus. The candle was nearly as thick as his turgid cock and had been moulded with a pattern of flowers, as would enhance a lady’s bedchamber. Since it had been only recently lit for the first time, the head was still domed and convex, the wick rising from a tiny pool of molten wax.

  ‘Would you like to watch me use this?’ Jade breathed. ‘You must be brave.’ And she tilted the candle over his chest. Hot wax dribbled down on to his nipples, causing him to flinch and shudder – but he refused to cry out. Jade purred with pleasure and brushed the congealed dribbles from his reddened skin. Then she snuffed out the flame by pressing the wick to the sweat-sheened skin over his solar plexus.

  Still he barely flinched.

  ‘Now,’ she whispered, smoothing the wick down into the soft wax of the candle tip. She rubbed the lumpy shaft against Petrus’ own teasingly, but not for long. Just enough for him to feel its rigidity.

  There was a single piece of furniture in the bathchamber, a carved rosewood bench close by where Jade would sometimes sit while Anima dried her feet. She went over to it now and perched on the edge, her legs spread so that Petrus could get a clear view. Gazing directly at him, she rubbed the still-warm tip of the candle against her plump pink sex lips, using the unyielding object to probe between them and open herself up. The candle sank rapidly into the hot depths that awaited it. She began to draw it in and out, rubbing the thick ridges of the decorative moulding against her inner folds. The pleasure of the physical sensation was indescribably enhanced by the sight of Petrus with his whole agonised attention glued to the inches of thick wax disappearing into, and reappearing from, her stretched pussy. She let herself whimper with pleasure. She could see the sweat gleaming all over him, his cock jerking with frustration. With her free hand, she groped at her own right breast, but she could not divide her attention for long. As the stabs of pleasure grew ever more demanding within her, she raised one foot on to the bench and lay back, both hands reaching down between her legs to grip the candle base and pump it harder and deeper into her wet hole. Petrus gave a strangled, inarticulate cry.

  Then she came, her voice drowning his.

  When she sat up she was flushed and smiling, but as poised as ever. She pulled out the tool of her self-gratification and brought it over for Petrus to inspect. The tip was filmed with milky fluid. His nostrils flared at the scent of her juices.

  ‘Hungry still?’ she invited.

  His throat worked. He licked the candle dry as if it were some great white phallus he was trying to pleasure. His cock was the colour of rosewood, so flushed with blood it was. She laughed softly under her breath, then dipped the candle tip into the little bowl of olive oil. Stepping behind him, she reached between his hard arse-cheeks and located the tight and wrinkled ho
le of his anus.

  ‘No!’ Petrus whimpered.

  ‘If I can take it, surely you can?’ Jade said reasonably, but she did not wait for any consent before pushing the slippery tip into the muscular orifice. ‘Relax, Petrus. The more you fight it, the more it will hurt.’ And inch by quivering inch, twisting it, turning it, working it in and out against the flexing, clenching grip of his arsehole, she pushed the thick wax dildo a hand’s depth into the shuddering body of her victim.

  ‘There there,’ she soothed as she worked. ‘Gently now. Open up. Take it further, my lovely Petrus.’

  He thrust out his head, mouth open. He panted, shrieked and moaned, all pretence of dignity and restraint lost, but his hard-on did not die. Jade reached round to spank it with her free hand.

  ‘Ah!’ cried Petrus. ‘Please – you bitch, you cunt, you monster – touch me. Stop it. Touch me. Stop. Oh, shit. Please, Princess. I can’t. You’re killing me. You bitch. Please!’

  ‘You want me to fuck you?’ she murmured into his shoulder, stirring the rod in his arse like a pestle in a mortar.

  ‘Yes, yes, yes, anything, please –’ was the gobbled reply. ‘Fuck me. Fuck me!’

  In a blink of an eye, the caryatids sprang to his side, breaking the chains that held his wrists. They dragged him over to the wooden bench and spread him out upon it face-up, his arse jutting out over one end with the candle still projecting from between the cheeks. Anima crouched beneath him and gripped his feet against its hips, gazing up sightlessly between his spread thighs, his balls hanging nearly in its face. Animus stretched his arms out over his head and held him. Nothing was left but for Jade to straddle him in the centre, bracing herself upon his chest as she lowered her pelvis to meet his. He felt hot and clammy under her hands, and his face was twisted in an agony of fear that she would not fulfil her promise. As she leaned over him her hair fell about their shoulders like night.