Caralissa opened her eyes, to see if it was a shattered dream or some taste of afterlife, but instead she saw the shadow of Varik, wrenching the foul-smelling man away, his penetration having failed, been disallowed before it ever occurred.
‘But, my lord,’ the man wailed. ‘I never even got to touch her.’
‘Find a maiden,’ she heard Varik growl. ‘Leave this wench to me.’
Caralissa lay beneath the furs, her breath soft in the darkened air. Making herself as small as possible, she tried not to listen even as the men’s voices increased their hushed intensity.
Just outside Varik’s tent, where he’d carried her after rescuing her from the aftermath of the Dance, he was speaking now with his brother. It had been several hours now, and in that time Varik made love to her twice more. At least it felt like love, his hands firm and gentle, his taking of her marked with possessive concern and relentless attention to detail. She was glowing still as she huddled herself, making herself small, invisible. Yes, it felt like love.
There must be something to it, she thought, something more than barbarian custom alone or mere barbarian lust. Hadn’t he even given her an ointment, a healing cream brought long ago from the Forest of Night to ease her smarting legs and buttocks? Almost at once she’d felt the cord marks ease and shrink. A small thing, perhaps, but for a woman in her position, desperate for any sign of her future, for a vision of her true allies in a world of danger, it was a lifeline.
Varik was growing angry with his brother, this much she could discern. Senelek, by contrast, was maintaining his usual clipped style, his biting sarcasm. Straining her exposed ears, she sifted the air for their words.
‘Let them come to me themselves,’ Varik declared. ‘If they dare. Or is it that the complaints are yours alone?’
‘Truth has many voices, brother. It uses what messengers it will. Though more often than not it is more a curse than honour to be chosen as its mouthpiece.’
Varik exhaled noisily. ‘Why must you always speak like one of them, in riddles with such high sounding phrases? Is it not enough we must forever be conquering them and living in their lands?’
‘The city dwellers, you mean - the civilised ones? Perhaps you’ve forgotten my childhood, then, how I served as hostage among their kind in order to save our village?’
‘How could I ever forget, Senelek, when you remind me each and every day?’
‘A Rashal never tires of hearing of his obligations and his debts.’
‘A Rashal allows a man to pay those debts,’ Varik countered, ‘at a fair rate of interest.’
‘I will not debate you, Varik. There is no defeating you on any front, which is why you are chieftain instead of me. My humble lot in life is to serve you, and this compels me to issue you this warning: Lie with this Orencian slut much longer and you shall incite rebellion.’
‘And I warn you, Senelek: raise the point again to my face and you shall court treason.’
The space of several breaths passed before Senelek replied. ‘It is not your face you should concern yourself with, my brother,’ he said, his voice devoid of emotion. ‘But rather your back.’
A moment later Varik returned to her, having closed the tent with an angry flourish.
She clung to him in the blackness, seeking to ease his worries with her warm and willing body. ‘Tell me what I can do for you,’ she whispered, stroking his cheek with the tips of her fingers, ‘and I will do it. It would be my pleasure to best that brother of yours.’
Varik took her wrist and slid it behind her back, applying sufficient pressure to make her wince. ‘Have you been eavesdropping, Little Flame?’
‘No - I mean yes, but only a little.’
He slid his free hand down between her legs, to her waiting moistness. ‘This makes three offences, then,’ he declared, stroking her slit, commingling the sensation with that of the tension on her wrist. ‘The first being your continued insolent disrespect for the high priest, the second being your dishonesty with regard to the incident, the third being your invasion of our privacy. How am I to handle this - Orencian slut?’
Caralissa writhed against him. How unfair it was to be a woman; to be so easily put into one’s place and to be aroused in the process. ‘I - I should be punished,’ she confessed breathlessly.
Varik released her. ‘Show me how,’ he commanded, sitting upright.
With a whimper, her spurned sex stinging with need, Caralissa crawled across Varik’s lap. Crying out in frustration, her nether parts rubbing against his thighs, she put herself in a position to be spanked. It was a trifling punishment, a girl’s punishment.
‘Now tell me,’ he demanded, making her wait, her sex wet over his skin, her buttocks twitching enticingly. ‘Tell me what I am to do to you.’
‘I’ve been naughty,’ Caralissa trembled, her voice barely audible. ‘I need to be spanked. I beg for you to spank me.’
His palm sat heavily on her buttocks. ‘And what about your pleasure? Should I allow you to climax tonight?’
Caralissa clenched her small fists, knowing he intended this night to bring her to new depths of shame. ‘Not at first,’ she wheedled. ‘But after I am punished enough, when I am very sorry, and if I beg and if I am pleasing, with my mouth and my sex, maybe yes, you should let me.’
Varik struck her with the palm of his hand, drawing a low gasp. ‘No, Caralissa, not at all. There will be no climax for you tonight. I shall keep you at a fever pitch; I shall use and tease and torture you till I am bored and then I will sleep. In the morning, when I awaken, I will send you and you will fetch water for me and make me breakfast, which you will serve on your knees. You will do all these things to remind you to behave more pleasingly in the future. Is this acceptable to you?’
‘Aaah,’ she cried as he snaked a finger in and out of her. ‘Yes, yes, I’ll do as you say.’
‘And another thing,’ he added, his hand having impacted upon her pert behind a second time. ‘If I do decide to keep you, it shall be because I desire it; your will is of no import.’
‘I hate what you do to me,’ Caralissa moaned as he touched her yet again. ‘I hate it! Do you hear me?’
‘Your body says otherwise,’ Varik countered, taking his sticky finger and putting it to her mouth.
Caralissa rubbed her breasts helplessly against the furs as she tasted her own juices, her tongue and lips obediently paying homage to Varik’s finger. It was going to be a long night, she decided as he spanked her yet again. A very long night indeed.
Chapter Four
As the first rays of dawn rose over the camp, Caralissa was a shattered mass of need. Her pride surrendered, reduced to grovelling and begging for even the most incidental of touches, she lay at Varik’s feet, his great toe inserted reverently in her mouth as she sought to earn for herself the right to lie once more across his lap, to rub herself lewdly against his knee, to have his hand swatting her mercilessly. Anything, anything at all to fill the terrible emptiness, the burning need to be used.
‘I grow weary,’ Varik said, rolling over to his side, his manhood having drained itself a total of three times in Caralissa’s mouth. ‘Do not disturb me further.’
Caralissa moaned in self-pity. He was going to leave her this way, in a state of utter desperation, unsatisfied. Which is exactly where the night began. It was more of his infernal training, his conditioning of her responses through gradual transference, inducing her to respond evermore passionately and desperately to a series of increasingly mild and innocuous sensations.
Longingly, she looked at him. It was out and out penetration she aspired to, the plunging of his ever-throbbing manhood into her overeager womanhood. She knew this was folly though, a pretentious dream, something infinitely more pleasurable than she, a slave, deserved. She had no right to intercourse with him. It was not her place to choose when he might have her, but his alone, and tonight
it was only her mouth he had sought, not her hungry nether opening.
‘Please,’ she begged in his ear, trying to entice him with her lips and tongue, suggesting to him the possibilities of her own ravishing, ‘have mercy on me. My body burns. If you will not have me, will you not give me to one of your men? I will accept whomever you choose; I will crawl, I will make no complaint. Let me be whipped, even. I don’t care.’
Taking a deep breath, Varik began to snore.
Caralissa moved to her haunches. Arrogant dog! He was so utterly certain of her captivity that he’d gone to sleep, having made no effort to bind or restrict her in any way. Desperately she looked down at her swollen nipples, her sex seeping with the juices of her submission.
Did she dare to touch herself?
Hands trembling she reached for her nipples. No! She couldn’t do it. Not without permission. She could wake him, but he would be more likely to punish her than grant her request.
Lost to her own passions she made one last attempt to bargain for his attention with her body, seeking to arouse him in his sleep with her lips, her soft hair, her eager breasts. Perhaps in his dreams he might unwittingly reach for her. Sliding her belly across him she gained access to his sleeping member. Hungrily she took him once more in her mouth. An ordinary man would never stiffen again so soon, but Varik was anything but ordinary. He tasted sweet and powerful. Full of hope she lowered her lips down the length of the shaft, taking him deep.
If only he would awaken and touch her one more time - his finger grazing her earlobe, the back of his thumb brushing across an agonised nipple, making her whimper and beg like a pet. All this he’d done to her already this night, this and much more. And the most awe-inspiring thing was that he accomplished his cruel domination without even putting her body beneath his driving manhood. It was this she needed above all else, even more than the air she breathed, though she knew this act of conquest would likely do her in altogether.
Tears in her eyes, moaning to herself, she felt the spasms in her forbidden sex, glistening and needful. As the warrior’s snores increased she yearned to touch herself, to bring even the imperfect relief of masturbation. And yet those lips and that slick opening were no longer hers. It was Varik who owned her body, owned her pleasure, even her very right to feel.
‘Leave me be,’ he warned at last, pulling her off by means of her sweat-soaked hair. Her head throbbing, forced back to the dirt at his feet, she tried desperately to think of something other than sex. It was then that she recalled her forgotten hunger, the pangs of which returned with a vengeance.
Crawling back to Varik’s ear, being careful not to allow too great a friction between her thighs lest she steal an orgasm for herself, she tried her luck at breakfast.
‘I am hungry,’ she whispered, barely catching herself before she called him ‘master’. ‘Please, Varik, I am hungry.’
‘Fetch water, girl,’ he grumbled, swatting her nuzzling lips from his earlobe as though she were some annoying insect. ‘You will eat later.’
On shaky legs Caralissa rose, doing her best to walk to the inverted spear, over which Varik’s shirts were hung.
‘No covering for you today,’ she heard him say over her shoulder.
Her heart stilled in her chest for the briefest of seconds. Wheeling about on her bare heels, arching her back she confronted him, her hazy slavish feelings vanishing like mist. ‘What did you say?’
Varik rolled onto his stomach, showing her nothing but his shoulder blades and sloping back above the coverings. ‘You will go to the stream as you are,’ he said, his voice largely muffled by the furs. ‘I would have my warriors behold the beauty of my prize.’
Caralissa’s knees were close to buckling. Shame washed over her, and with it a rush of heat and desire. She swallowed hard, her dry throat aching. He considered her beautiful. He considered her a prize.
‘There are thousands of men out there,’ she reminded him, trying to keep her voice steady. ‘Do you think it wise to send me out like this?’
‘It would be death to touch the chieftain’s property without his permission,’ Varik noted, his face still buried.
She inclined her chin proudly, defiantly. ‘I am no man’s property, fetch your own water,’ she declared, picking up the jug from the doorway and tossing it across the dirt to a place some inches from his half exposed body.
Varik did not budge. For agonising seconds she waited, her body trembling from unquenched desire mingled with mounting trepidation. As usual he was allowing her to resist, but how and when he responded, putting her back in her place, was up to him.
‘If it is covering you wish,’ he said, opening one eye lazily to behold the jug, ‘then I can offer you some. A lovely shade of red, in fact, the sort appropriate for disobedient girls.’
Caralissa’s cheeks flushed the very colour Varik was invoking. The reference to punishment, to marking her with his hand, or perhaps even the switch - that horrible little device which made her wet and weak just to think of it - was all too clear. How dare he? The man was a despicable beast, a blasphemer to the goddess. Fine, she would do what he wanted, but heaven would make him pay.
‘No decent human being would ever speak so to a queen,’ she said, even as she stormed over and scooped up the jug. ‘Do you think me a common slut that you can bully - disrespecting my womanhood, threatening to beat me? Do you think the goddess won’t punish you for such things?’
Varik seized her ankle, preventing her intended exit, which she meant to be both haughty and blustering.
‘Ow!’ she exclaimed, not hurt so much as shocked by his sudden grip, strong as steel.
‘Do not offer curses,’ he said, his emotions clouded, unreadable. ‘Or I shall have you branded by the iron, that the gods will never again hear your prayers.’
Caralissa felt the blood drain from her face. It was a well-known fact that the gods and goddesses ignored as a practice the entreaties of branded slaves. ‘I understand,’ she stammered. ‘Please forgive me.’
He released her. ‘Bring my water, girl. And quickly.’
‘Yes, my lord,’ she heard herself say, scampering away as though she were his slave.
It was another of his tricks, of course, manipulating her emotions, redrawing the lines between them, lowering her standards so that she’d gone from legitimately protesting her right to clothing and fair treatment to running obediently to do his will, as though it were a privilege to do menial tasks for the man as his naked errand girl.
The fresh sun was warm upon her tender, aroused body. She was painfully aware of the swell and jiggle of her breasts, and of the sway of her hips. She’d not gone about naked since she was a child, and that was under the safe eyes of her nannies. Caralissa was far from a child now. She was a woman, bothered and in heat, a prisoner in a camp filled with sexually starved warriors. Her heart pounded as the eyes began to follow her. Though no one pursued her, she could tell by the sudden silence, the predatory glances that they desired her, all of them.
She clutched the water jug. She was Varik’s property. As demeaning as this fact was, she held to the label as strongly as to his water jug. It was that ownership which was saving her now, an invisible truth which alone prevented her from what she was sure would have otherwise been mass rape at these men’s hands. Trying hard not to arouse them unnecessarily with her exposed flesh, she made her way quickly and efficiently to the stream.
It was eerie, the complete change from their manner of the day before. All along the path warriors stepped back, their muscled bodies a powerful lesson in discipline, controlled power. She did her best to avoid eye contact. At her current level of need she did not trust herself to keep from falling at their feet and begging them to do what they so obviously wanted to in the first place. Was it the sight of her, flush from a night of unquenched arousal that made her so irresistible? Could they smell her need, like a bitch in heat,
silently begging the attention of every available male? Or was it what Senelek hinted at - that Varik’s ongoing possession of her was becoming a source of rage and jealousy in the men? She could never resist them, she knew that. Any one of them could overpower her, attaining her easy sexual surrender. It shamed her deeply and yet it aroused her too, to know that she could be made to give herself to any one of them with a mere glance or a snap of fingers.
Would that make Varik jealous? Her mind moved yet again, towards the madness of thinking herself in love with the cruel chieftain. No, she could not think such thoughts. Varik was a sworn enemy, one whom she must now personally repay with torture and death, lest her own reputation as a sovereign, her own place as a queen be lost forever. After she was ransomed, that was when she would plot her revenge. As soon as she was free and the warlord’s back was turned, she would concoct a plan for his demise.
If he let her go, that is. A secret thrill passed through her at the thought that he might not. What if he cared for her too much to free her? Could it be he loved her, even? Yes, he’d been harsh with her, denied her pleasures, subjected her to his hand and to the whistling, stinging switch, but did that not merely reinforce the strength of his desires, his need to control and conquer her completely? He’d warned off Senelek, been prepared to violate the trust of his own men, violate even the very customs of the tribe. What more proof could anyone need that he felt things for her? And the way he disallowed her use by the cord men, too, that was also proof, was it not?
‘Greetings,’ came a voice, sinister and crisp. ‘Majesty.’
A hand clasped her arm. Caralissa looked up from her reverie and gasped. It was the black armoured soldier from the day before, the one who’d blocked her path and whom she later identified as one of Senelek’s so-called warrior priests.
‘I must fetch water,’ she told him. ‘For Lord Varik.’
The soldier gave her a slanted smile. ‘Lord Senelek has your water,’ he said, reaching out to cup her breast.
Caralissa's Conquest Page 8
