The Tower

by Jean Johnson

  Breasts tingling from the stream of air and the caress of petals, Myal blushed. His words did remind her of the ticket she had been given. She looked at it in her hand. “Oh—I’m a 53. What is your number?”

  Checking the slip of paper, Kerric nodded. “47. Tuck it into your top, so no one else can claim it.”

  She complied, cheeks warming a little as she slid the scrap of paper into her quilted armor undervest. Triple thumps of the drums interrupted them. The drummers struck their triple-beat again, and a third time, before beginning a new song, one that encouraged many of the others to get up and begin swaying, undulating, and hip-shaking. Myal found herself swaying and undulating; the music was a bit odd compared to back home, but just as infectious as she remembered from the old beach and village festivals of her youth.

  She swayed a bit more, smiling, then realized her sword was bouncing awkwardly on her hip. Leaning over, she murmured a question in Kerric’s ear. “Do I need a weapon in this room?”

  He shook his head quickly. Then grinned and rose on his toes, until she leaned over so he could speak in her ear, too. Kerric poked a thumb at his chest as he did so. “Nah, I’m the one with the only sword you’ll need.”

  A blush stained her cheeks. It was followed by a chuckle. “Yes, but you said you couldn’t swing it in this one.”

  “True. Not if we want the right door opened,” he muttered back. Shifting away from her, he pulled off his belt, draping it over the backpack he had set by the door. Holding out his hand, he nodded at her waist. Myal hesitated, her adventurer’s instincts warring with her trust in his claims for a moment. Unbuckling the sword belt, she passed over. Kerric set it on top of her pack, then caught her hand and drew her onto the main floor area, urging her into joining the dancers.

  This wasn’t the normal sort of dancing. No lines, no rings, no patterns or any sort of formality to it. This was just a modest sea of bodies moving as the thrumming, wailing, syncopated thumping of the instruments impelled them to move. Most brushed against their nearest partner. Someone tried to step up behind her to undulate his torso against her back. At the first hint of a startled, irritated frown, Kerric scooped his arm around her waist and spun her away. Catching her hand, he pulled her back into him, thumping their bodies together a little.

  That placed his face at the perfect height for a grin and a brief, sensual nuzzle along the neckline of her top. Myal shivered. Let other women keep taller partners than themselves; the Master of the Tower was just the right height for her. She curled her hips in a slow figure eight, brushing up against him, teasing him with her belly and the tops of her thighs. He retaliated by ghosting his hands up and down her sides in skimming little brushes that made her wish he would touch a little firmer, a little longer with each ticklish pass.

  “Okay, everybody!” Senya called out, her voice a laughing, joy-filled accompaniment to the music. “It’s time to play Basilisk’s Delight!”

  The musicians brought the current song to a close and gave her their attention. So did the dancers, about half of them cheering and half of them groaning. Several headed for the tiered platforms to either side, finding cushions or a server with a platter of food and drink. Myal frowned and whispered to her companion as they did so. “I thought we were supposed to play Seven Minutes?”

  “It’s a party. We’ll play a number of games,” he reassured her, falling silent just as their “hostess” began to speak again.

  “This one’s a simple one, darlings,” the curvacous woman in green drawled. She swivelled her hips and undulated her arms. “We dance until the music stops—” Freezing in place, she smirked. “And whatever position you are in is the one you hold. If you wobble and drop,” she mimed staggering, then straightened, “you’re out of the game, and must go off the floor to await . . . a punishment.

  “That means, as there are . . . it looks like sixty dancers left, so we’ll play until thirty of you lose.” Smirking she turned and gestured to the musicians. “Play something vigorous!”

  Kerric caught her hand and tugged her into murmuring range. “You don’t want to be a loser; you’ll get tagged for a punishment—quick, dance!” he added as she stood there. “You don’t want to be tagged out for not dancing, too.”

  Quickly undulating, Myal danced. Mindful of the balance rule, she made sure she had herself well-positioned, resting her weight on one leg while she lifted the other onto its toes and swirled her hips forward, arms up and moving like slow flames. In front of her, Kerric rocked and twisted side-to-side, hands on his waist, hips thrusting to either side in syncopation with the music . . . which stopped. They both froze.

  Movement heralded failure on the carpet-covered floor. Senya tsked. “You know the rules! Off you go to await your punishment.”

  A few embarrassed giggles, a couple of groans, and about five players moved off to the side. She clapped her hands and the musicians began playing again, the tune still lively, still fascinating enough to dance. When it stopped again . . . nobody staggered or wobbled. Senya restarted the music with a flip of her hand, stalking through the scattered dancers, her dark eyes flicking here and there. She tapped two on the shoulder and poked her thumb, indicating they had lost for not dancing enthusiastically enough, given the way the man and the woman slumped and scurried off to the sidelines, but did not yet sit.

  When the music stopped again, this time four were caught off guard and had to move out. The music picked up its tempo, forcing Kerric to snap his hips and Myal to wiggled hers. A sheen of sweat built up on Myal’s skin as she concentrated. More fumbled and were removed. Kerric glowed as well in the candlelight, a few beads trickling as he worked his body in time to the melody and the rhythm, taking care to move fast but with every shift keep himself balanced.

  A couple more were tapped out for not being enthusiastic enough, but most of the rest staggered. When it looked like thirty had dropped out, Senya held up her hands. The hostess made a show of counting on her fingers as she strolled through the remaining dancers . . . and strolled right up to Myal. She poked the tall woman in her tattoo-inked belly. “You’re out, too.”

  “Why?” Myal asked, puzzled. She hadn’t moved from her stance, back arched, arms out to either side, hips caught mid-thrust. Her muscles trembled from the strain of holding the position, but she didn’t wobble. “I’m perfectly balanced.”

  “You’re too tall. And we have only twenty-nine out. You!” she ordered, looking at Kerric. “Punish her. The rest of you, grab a loser and drag them to the cushions!”

  TWELVE

  Bodies scattered at the flip of her hand, free to move. Kerric wrapped his fingers around Myal’s wrist and tugged her toward a particularly broad, fat scarlet cushion. Myal’s face burned, and she muttered under her breath. “Too tall? I ought to too tall her right in the face!”

  “Shhh, love,” Kerric soothed her. He stroked his thumb along the inside of her wrist, tickling her skin to distract her ire. “Remember the end-goal . . .”

  Subsiding, Myal waited next to him and the cushion he had selected, as did the others. When the last giggling “loser” had been “dragged” by her grinning partner to an unoccupied spot, Senya turned in a slow circle and smirked.

  “The winners will now spank the losers thirty times on the body-part of their choice with their open, flat palm. Points will be given for both location originality and impact . . . but you are not allowed to seriously injure the loser. Head, throat, and scrotum are forbidden. All else is fair game. Take a few moments to decide what you’re going to do, and to get into position,” Senya instructed the participants. “Failure to comply will only bring down a worse punishment.”

  Myal blushed brightly, eyes wide. A spanking? She hadn’t been spanked in ages, and to be spanked now just because of a silly party game . . . ! A yelp escaped her as she found herself tugged sharply downward. Catching her balance, Myal followed Kerric down onto the cushion. Unfortunately, he got to sit on his rump, while she got tugged over his thighs.

&n
bsp; “I’m afraid I’m a bit of a traditionalist,” Kerric murmured, glad his partner wasn’t taking a swing at him for this. Rubbing his hand over her rump and thighs, he added, “This will be the area I strike.”

  He honestly didn’t know how Myal felt about being spanked, but they had to play along. This was the Seraglio. There were consequences for not playing along. That was the trap; if they didn’t play all the way through to winning Seven Minutes In Heaven, the right door wouldn’t open, the wrong ones would unlock, and these lighthearted games would turn increasingly dark and dangerous.

  Face burning at the thought of being spanked in front of all these people—even if her mind knew they were simply magical illusions wrought by the Tower—Myal struggled against the instinct to rise up and protest. She was a grown woman, she was in charge of her own life, she hadn’t done anything wrong . . . but the feel of his fingers gliding over her cloth-covered backside and down to her thighs wasn’t frightening. More like exciting, particularly when, on the return trip up toward her waist, he pushed up her padded skirt, baring the legless undershorts covering her mound and most of her rump.

  Breathing a little fast, she reminded herself there was a purpose to this game, licked her lips, and nodded. “I trust you.”

  Kerric slid his fingers up the inside of her thigh, high enough that the edge of his index finger brushed against her cloth-covered mound. “I will do my best not to betray that trust,” he promised as steadily as he could. It wasn’t easy; the moist heat radiating from her flesh made his groin ache and harden with the need to explore it. Fingers, lips, other flesh . . . He didn’t dare go that far. They had to play the game. “I will still have to spank you.”

  “. . . Understood,” she murmured. Mindful of Senya’s conditions about uniqueness of location and the strength of each hit, she swallowed and added bravely, “I can take some pretty strong blows, you know.”

  Fingers squeezing and jiggling one buttock, Kerric grinned. “With this much cushion? I should think so.”

  “Oh!” She started to rise up to confront him for daring to suggest that her rump was fa—

  “Everyone ready? Too bad!” the hostess called out, amusement lacing her tone. “Thirty spankings, and you have two minutes to deliver them. Begin!”

  The musicians began playing a lively little tune Myal recognized as being exactly two minutes long; she had heard it several times before in certain other gauntlet runs, usually the comedic ones, but hadn’t expected to hear it here. Thirty spanks in two minutes . . .

  The local Aians divide their minutes into sixty seconds—important for timing events in the gauntlet runs—which means he’ll have to make an average of one strike every four seconds. Which he will . . . he’s not striking? Why isn’t he—AIIEE! The yelp escaped her as his hand smacked into her rump, sheltered at this point only by a single layer of cloth, and not by the quilted skirt that went under her armor. That was a harder blow than she had anticipated, given the gentle way his palm had stroked her nether-curves a moment ago. Craning her neck, Myal struggled to peer up at him—and flinched as he smacked her again.

  To her surprise, he looked like he was the one suffering. Biting his lower lip, he cupped the buttock he had whacked, then smacked it a third time, meeting her gaze. “Ah . . . you might want to help me keep count. That was three. We don’t want to go over or under thirty.”

  “Right . . .” Facing the broad cushion again, Myal expected another strike, which would have made four. She got six stingingly fast swats instead, divided evenly between her two nether-cheeks. “Sssev—er, nine!” she counted.

  “Focus, Myal,” Kerric chastised her. He slid his hand over her rump a few times, soothing away the sting, then tugged and pushed at her knees, parting her legs. Once they were wide enough to work, he spanked her left inner thigh four times, then slapped the right side another four.

  “Thirteen—seventeen,” she managed. The left patch stung more than the right, but that was the angle working against him. Her muscles quivered and her legs squirmed when he tickled his fingertips over all that sensitive, sensitized skin. “Kerric, this . . . this is . . .”

  “Are you enjoying it?” he asked quietly, brushing his thumbnail up against her cloth-covered folds. She licked her lips, not responding fast enough. He slapped her rump hard enough to make her yelp, then teased her through her undergarment once more. “I asked you a question.”

  “Eighteen,” she panted. “And . . . yes?” Her head spun. Myal hadn’t ever really associated pain and pleasure in the same way, but there was something about how her flesh throbbed after each blow that . . . that transferred it straight to her loins.

  Mindful of their dwindling time, Kerric fondled her just a little bit more before stating, “Because you took so long to respond, I am going to apply the next few blows to your sweet little nether-lips. Now part your legs wide.”

  Blushing, aroused beyond sense given the circumstance, Myal shuffled her knees as wide as she could, given her position. The first few slaps made her hiss and tense in anticipation, but he started with gentle blows. Started being the key word. Each one increased in its intensity, until by the eighth one, the smack of his fingers into her crotch was louder than the other swattings happening around the room.

  “How many was that?” Kerric asked, pausing not just to ask, but to give himself a moment to calm down. His fingers throbbed, yes, but his manhood strained against the fabric of his loincloth and the quilted armor-shorts sheltering her belly from his thighs. He wanted to strip off the fabric separating his fingers from the liquid heat dampening the material, to inhale her musky perfume not just from the air, but directly from the source.

  Her reply dragged his mind back to their task. “Eight. Ah . . . a total of twenty-six,” Myal managed.

  “Good girl,” he praised, and spanked each inner thigh once, stingingly loud . . . and then twice more at their crux, as hard as he dared.

  “Thirty!” she gasped, hips rolling to ease the throbbing tingle. Her breath caught in her throat at the feel of his fingers sliding between her nether-cheeks. Biting her lip, she tried to muffle her moan, but the way he cupped her mound only made things worse. Pain was there, yes, but the tender way he touched her transformed the pain, making her flesh incredibly sensitive. Without conscious thought, she arched her back, lifting her pelvis up into his touch.

  The music came to an end, signaling that their two minutes were done. Reluctantly, Kerric removed his fingers.

  Senya inhaled deeply, as if she could smell the rising lust in the air. Kerric wasn’t the only one who had combined pleasure with punishment for his or her partner. Sighing—purring, rather—she smirked. “Good job, everyone.”

  A swirling flick of the hostess’ hand and a spin of her body flung rippling lights out through the air. They landed on all thirty “losers” and separated. Myal craned her neck, following the lights. Transparent green circles appeared on Myal’s rump. They tingled a little, too, almost as if someone had applied mint to her skin. Her partner shuddered; a glance at his face showed him sitting there with his eyes closed, his cheeks red.

  “What is it?” she whispered.

  Senya answered for him, announcing it to the entire hall. “Of course,” she drawled, “it wouldn’t be at all fair to the losers to take all the punishment and receive no reward . . . so now the winners must apologize for each and every spanking they gave . . . by kissing the spots they spanked. You have two minutes to ‘apologize’ properly.”

  A snap of her fingers ordered the musicians back into play. Myal froze for a moment, absorbing the implications, then quickly scrambled off Kerric’s lap so that he could move into position. Except he didn’t move. Shifting onto all fours beside him, mindful of the marks glowing on her skin, Myal nudged her partner and hissed, “Move—you’re wasting time!”

  “I am in a Netherhell . . .” Kerric muttered. Eyes rolling upward, he struggled for self-control, wasting a few more precious seconds.

  When he felt he coul
d control himself, he twisted onto his knees behind her, grateful she had moved far enough forward that he, too, knelt on the nearly bed-sized cushion. Bed . . . don’t think about beds. Don’t lose it, he silently ordered. It was hard—he was hard—but he gripped her hips and lowered his head to her rump. One kiss . . . two. Three, four five . . . Her cloth-covered rump was one thing, but when he got to the target-circles on her thighs, that was another. Musk and heat, delicate-soft skin.

  Groaning, he kissed her fervently, chasing down each of the bright green glows not to count them down and remove them, but because they were exactly where he wanted to press his lips. They didn’t fade immediately, either; apparently the force of the blow used required a certain length of time to dismiss the targeting marks. They could be removed in any order, but they had to be thoroughly removed, and that took time.

  He almost didn’t make it. Not just from the ache in his groin, the muscle-shaking urge to just strip down her last defense and plunge into her—the others were merely illusions, it wasn’t technically in public—but because that last sharp-stinging smack took a long time to dissolve. He was forced to use his tongue, just managing to banish the mark a bare second before the drummers thumped out the last two beats.

  Still kneeling before him, Myal had dropped her face into the cushion. At some point, she had bit at the velvet in order to stifle not only her moans, but the urge to push back into his face, to reach down between her thighs, tug the damp crotch aside, and let him kiss the real thing. She had no clue if he had managed to kiss away all the marks by the time the music ended, and the Mendhite did not care. His lips marked her flesh as surely as any tattoo.

  When the melody stopped, she was left with a burning need for more. Struggling against the urge to push back into his now absent lips, she kept her teeth locked on the scarlet velvet, until the party hostess spoke up once more.