by Aran Ashe
'No. She must face the other way.'
Anya gasped. The voice was Travix's. She must be in the room. Anya tried to peer to the side but still she could not see her. The man grunted, pulled the girl's legs out from the loops again, lifted her round and reinserted them with her facing now away from Anya. The girl tried to keep her legs horizontal but the man pushed her forwards, lifted her and made her point her feet down. The leather loops - or collars, each about two inches wide - slipped up the backs of her legs and bedded at the tops of her thighs, against the base of her buttocks. The girl's toes, though stretching downwards, were still a good six inches above the floor. Her body and her legs shook as she tried to balance. Her hands reached up to grasp the chains, but much as she tried, she could not keep steady. The man retreated.
Travix appeared and Anya's heart began to thump. She still wore the velvet boots and the blue suit with the ruffled sleeves. Her coarse blonde hair was still tied back with a black ribbon. It seemed so stark a contrast to the free and silken snakelike tresses of the girl. Travix stood calmly now, beyond the girl and facing her, intent only on her. Slowly she unfastened the plaited twine, which fell away from the belly. Travix then examined this belt. 'You have acquired a new friend, I hear, kitling,' she said, rubbing the girl's belly with the flat of her palm. Anya moved her head back from the spy-hole; she felt a sudden chill of fear. The girl trembled but did not answer Travix. Her buttocks moved uncomfortably in the leather slings, which sank gradually deeper into the creases of her thighs. 'Ah - my kitling is impatient,' Travix said, then whispered something to the girl. The thighs opened and the toes now pointed out and down. Travix's right hand moved down but her left hand moved up to lift the blonde strands out of the way and lie against the girl's neck, against the thick and thumping vein. 'Open, my precious,' she said. 'Wider - for Travix. There ...' Travix's fingers had surely eased the small soft lips aside and slipped inside that body, for now the hips moved in the slings, the legs arched and the toes formed perfect points. And between the open thighs, Anya could see the wrist writhing gently as the buried fingers sought submission. 'Move ... move against my hand.' The girl moaned. Her buttocks began to tighten and relax. The fingers lay against the girl's throat, tasting her heartbeat. The hips careened, the arms strained and the legs, still arched, began to move together. 'No, do not close. Keep open. There ... Let it press against my thumb.' The girl's breath snagged. Travix emitted a soft deep grunt and Anya held her breath. 'Kitling ...' Travix whispered softly. The girl's head moved back. The hand still lay against her neck and she was panting, moaning. Travix, her wrist scarcely moving now, watched in fascination. The head lolled forwards and down.
She looked over the girl's bowed head and nodded to the man in the leather shirt. He held something which seemed a cross between a switch and a strap. It had a short handle but a thin and supple stem of tightly twisted cord which fanned out at the tip to a thick leaf of leather. Anya felt a wave of icy prickles across her belly and up the front of her body, turning her nipples hard. Between her legs, where the pouch gripped - where Travix had held her wet-sheathed sex and milked her like a cow - she felt a pulse which should have shamed her.
'Shh ...' whispered Travix again. The girl had become very tense. Travix did not move. She stood before the girl, looking calmly into her face, with one hand still at her neck, the other hidden in her belly. The scar was visible as a fine deep purple line on Travix's face. Against the cool paleness of Travix's cheeks, the colour of this scar seemed to have deepened. When the hips began to twist, slowly at first and then more definitely, the hand at the girl's throat moved down to play with her breasts then to join the hand that bedded in her belly. The two hands worked in unison. The girl began to moan and to push against them. Travix's wrist movements slowed. The girl's head arched back again and Travix nodded to the man. 'Quickly, she is near ...' He spread the bottom cheeks and held them. The girl gasped. Her legs angled diagonally down; her feet pointed as straight as if drawn out and pinned to the floor by invisible twine. 'Keep her open,' Travix told him. 'Smack her in the crease.' He used the leaf of leather, whipped upwards quickly. The first smack made her whimper. 'Shh, kitling, shhhh ...' murmured Travix. They waited until the trembles had subdued. Then he smacked again, downwards, directly in the centre of the crease. 'So slippery. Let me hold it ...' The girl was sobbing. 'There ...' Travix's wrist began to move and the sobbing turned to grunts. 'Now, keep very still. Again ...' The smack came, upwards. The girl bucked. 'Shh ...' Three fingers slipped through the girl's legs from the front to smear a shiny wet slick within the groove. Then Travix took her upper body, bent it forward and supported it with one hand under her arms and the other still between her legs, yet not moving. 'Now smack it wet,' she said. 'Keep smacking. No - keep it open. Smack it ...' The pad of leather cracked down upon the small wet mouth four times, then the girl's body turned rigid. She began to moan continuously.
Travix acted quickly. She had the man hold the girl horizontally. She took from the table a pouch, wrapped the thong around the girl's waist and fitted the pouch between her legs. She worked efficiently and dispassionately, while the man held the body face down and the girl emitted sobbing moans. The straps of the pouch were drawn tight. Travix then stood behind the girl and between her legs. She held up something small, elongate and white, before it disappeared between the girl's legs and into the pouch. Travix's wrist - the wrist that held this white thing by the end - moved very slowly. The girl's moaning gave way to gasps and the wrist moved slower and slower until it hardly moved at all. Then suddenly, the girl's legs kicked; her belly bucked, yet the man held her. 'Shh ... Too soon. Keep her still,' said Travix. 'Play with her nipples; wet them; milk her.' Anya shuddered. As the man pulled the wetted nipples on the breasts that dangled down, Travix's wrist gently twisted and the belly bucked again. 'Lift her up; her belly must not move. The key must take her slowly.' Travix stepped back. She no longer held the white thing. The girl, still moaning, was lifted upright. Her arms were quickly fastened up to the chains. Her legs were doubled up and her ankles trussed behind her to the loops. Her body rolled slightly forwards, leaving her belly arched. Clearly seen between her legs now was the pouch. Projecting down from it and twitching, was the tip of the small white thing that was bedded inside. Travix stepped round the girl and stood in front. She lifted the hair aside again. Her fingertips pressed against the neck. Her other hand pressed against the rounded belly and the small white projection moved. 'Shhh ...' said Travix, against the murmurs. Between the legs now, the finger and thumb were holding the pouch and squeezing. Then moving back, they closed around the white projection. The wrist movement was very slight, a scarcely perceptible roll, but the girl's breathing came deeper, louder, turning to gasps and little screams until she cried out through her teeth and the trussed and doubled knees jerked open thrice as if the belly would keep pumping pressure into the pouch that the white thing snagged within and would release that sweet entanglement by bursting. The cry of tortured pleasure came again; the body spasmed. But Travix's wrist continued to twist the small white instrument back and forth inside the pouch at the same slow precise rate until the knees no longer tried to kick, until the belly ceased to shudder, until the whole tight body turned limp.
The slim white object reappeared. Travix carefully wiped it on the silk strand tresses then left the room. The man lifted the girl from the loops and placed her on the bed.
Anya felt hot; she was sweating. Between her legs, her sex was weeping. The pouch was soaking wet. The pressure of her swelling there had forced the seepage through. She turned on to her back. The long chain lay pressed against her buttocks. Suddenly, the door opened and light flooded in. Travix swept in closely after it and before Anya could turn away, Travix was upon her, kneeling on the bed. Immediately, she noticed the shaft of light from the next room, but she smiled. 'And did you enjoy our little display?' She must have been aware all along that Anya had been watching. Anya, her heart in her throat, turned her head a
way. 'No? But let us see.' Travix separated Anya's knees. 'Oh yes, yes indeed ...' she murmured. She touched the hard wet pouch and gently squeezed until it slipped. Anya gasped, for the pleasure was sweet. Travix turned Anya's chin and stared into her eyes. 'But are you ready, Princess? For this is why I have come to you, why I arranged that little game - to prepare your body.' Anya could not breathe. The fingers came to rest against her neck. Anya could feel her pulse bursting. 'Oh yes, you are ready.'
Travix pushed Anya's feet as close up to her bottom as the short chain between her ankles would permit, then opened her thighs so wide her knees almost touched the straw. She made her curve her belly upwards, hard.
And now as Travix looked upon her in the lamplight, all that she could see were curves - curves of breast, crowned by tight black cherries; curve of belly, almond curve of shadow in the well; curving thigh muscles, open; re-entrant curves of creases; and the most delicious curve of all, a hard pod - shiny, slick with sweated seepage. She knelt between those thighs, upon the straw and took another curve - the small, carved precisely shaped and polished bone that in a sense was part of Niri's dowry. It had been acquired - together with Niri, several other trinkets, many golden promises and a chart - a week ago in part disposal for a merchant-master's life. Travix had discovered how to use it; Niri hadn't seemed to know, but Travix had quickly taught her. And now she would teach this girl. 'The key to your heart, my Princess ...' Travix whispered.
One end of the bone was shaped into a small pad that fitted perfectly between the finger and thumb. The other was carved and polished to a minute round arrowed tongue. The body of the bone was a smooth curve, like a bent twig but flatter in section than a twig would be.
Holding the instrument with the curve uppermost, the same way as the curve of the pod she would use it to investigate, she slipped the arrow into the entrance to the girl's sex by way of the narrow gap below the slippery pouch. She pushed until only the finger-pad was exposed. The belly tightened. The girl gasped as Travix applied a lifting pressure to the pad; in the tight confines of the leather pouch the narrow curve of bone hesitated, vied for space, then suddenly slipped up between the pressed-together lips. And now it burrowed like a small worm, just below the surface of the leather, slowly upwards, twisting very slightly as Travix's fingers worked it like a locksmith testing a key, until the small round arrowhead, in that gentle twisting, sought out, pressed against, then slipped beneath the hood to bed against the soft bone of the nubbin.
The girl groaned as her belly jerked. Travix released the key, which stayed rigidly in place, held by the tension of the bursting lips against the thin leather skin, while she shaped her palms and moved them very lightly over the surface of the belly, brushing the fine upstanding hairs, sensing the warmth of the skin, and instructing the girl to keep her thighs very widely open, to keep the tightness concentrated there, and to rock her thighs, thereby to impart the pressure of the small bone intruder in her pouch as a pulse-beat against her nub. 'There ... Arch your belly. Keep it tight,' she whispered and lightly touched the handle of the bone to instigate a moan. Then as the knees rocked up and down, Travix settled down to watch the pod tighten and relax, the outline of the bone show through, the belly turn hard, then harder, the creases show polished, then matt and the fringe of black and wetted curls beyond the pod soak very slowly out to subdue the tight red springy bristles with softness and with wet. And Travix wanted to take her ribbon out and let her hair cascade across that belly, to make it shudder and to nip her teeth around that hard black pod and make it burst warm oil into her mouth, then to slip her tongue into its broken sheath and press the small bone arrowhead against that nubbin to bring it on. Yet she could not, for the girl's pleasure must be delivered very slowly, by degrees.
But Travix helped her. She lay beside her, pushing the fingers of her right hand - steeped in honey from her sweet blonde kitling - deep into this girl's mouth, while stimulating the stub of the bone, then offering her lips to be kissed while her fingertips drank the wet upon the soft black curls. Then she wetted her middle finger - though it did not need it - and very slowly pushed it up the seeping well below the hard black pouch, and when the base of her finger touched the pad of the bone, the pressure was transmitted through the small round arrowhead to the nub, and even with the ankles chained the belly lifted from the straw. Travix turned the small key very gently and pushed it deeper beneath the hood, twisting until the shudders came again. Then she unfastened the girl, turned her on her front and, guiding the key very deftly, with the cheeks of the girl's buttocks spread and a fingertip within, brought her to the point again. She stayed with her throughout the evening, removing the key, kissing her breasts, her lips and her belly then reinserting, slowly and precisely twisting, holding her on the point of pleasure, then touching the hard round belly, the shiny creases, stretching the skin back, tightening the pod, then sometimes taking out the key and beginning again, sometimes pressing on, lightly twisting it, bone to bone against the rigid nubbin, until the pleasure came. She wanted the girl to experience that kind of pleasure - pleasure against which she was defenceless, pleasure concentrated entirely within the confines of the hard tight pouch and extracted by the smooth intruder - many times that night. And even when the girl was exhausted, Travix would continue, lying beside her, taking control, pressing the bone, feeling the arrowhead through the pouch and against the tip of her finger, and eventually it would happen again - the longer that it seemed to take, the stronger it came - with Travix sometimes sucking the nipples, sometimes sucking the tongue, sometimes being forced to pin those knees down hard to stop them lifting from the straw.
For the next four days, on Travix's orders, Anya had to scrub the decks. In all that time, she never saw her Prince's ship. Each morning, Travix would find some pretext to have her smacked. One of the men would do it. Travix would hold her sheathed-together sex lips while the backs of her thighs were smacked. When her duties were done, she would be returned to that small room with nothing but a lamp for company. And for many hours, at night she guessed, even that was taken away. Other than to work, she was taken out only to witness the punishments and pleasures of the other women at the mast, across Kasger's table or at the pole. Usually Travix would be there to supervise, to touch Anya and to stimulate her flesh in various ways, until the torment became unbearable. When Travix was not there, Anya would be fettered, pouched and made to sit astride a chair and watch. Afterwards, she would be returned to her cell with nothing to occupy her mind other than the cruel pleasures she had witnessed and the all-encompassing wanting in her belly.
Sometimes, in the cell, she would be chained, at other times left free to sit on the small bed with her head in her hands, sobbing. And at those times when her heart was heaviest, when despair would well inside, a knock would come at her door - a knock, it seemed so strange - then the heavy bolt would slide back and a small round smiling face crowned by a thick stray curl would appear. It would be Ratchitt. He would bring her food - not the stale bread, gruel and pickled cabbage served to the crew, but titbits from the captain's table - perhaps a leg of chicken, strange sweet yellow fruits with very sticky juice, or sometimes raisins, nuts and apple cake, or honeycomb and cheese. And for a short time she would set aside her sadness and her plight.
Ratchitt would sit quietly on the end of the bed and wait until Anya had finished. Whenever Anya looked at him, Ratchitt would always look away. He never attempted to touch her. He never seemed to say anything, even when the last of the food had gone and Anya lifted the tray from her lap and thanked him. He would smile, then nervously twist the dark brown curl, then take the tray and go.
On the evening of the fourth day, she took her time with the food, offering him some, though he refused, and tried to get him talking.
'You have many chickens to look after?' she asked him.
He looked surprised. 'Not many hens now - just seventeen, and two cocks. We've eaten most of them.' Then his eyes lit up. 'But I can get you eggs - would
you like some?'
'Mm,' Anya said, then raised her eyebrows. 'If it won't get you into trouble?' He shook his head and smiled. Anya hesitated, then asked: 'But how long will your chickens last?'
He pursed his lips. 'When they're down to six, I have to keep them for the captain. But they say we might make landfall soon.'
'Landfall? Where?'
'Don't know. Some new place. They never tell me. Something to do with the girl, though - the one that Travix keeps in her cabin.'
'Niri?'
Ratchitt nodded.
'She's very beautiful ...'
'Not as lovely as you, ma'am,' he whispered, then glanced away.
'Ratchitt - what will happen to me?'
He looked at her with sad, gentle eyes, opened his mouth to speak, then Kasger walked in. 'Haven't you finished yet?' Ratchitt quickly collected up the things, glanced once at Anya, smiled sadly and left.
On the morning of the fifth day, Anya saw her Prince's ship. Even before that, she knew it was there. Travix and the captain stood together on the deck above her with a chart, scanning the horizon then turning, looking back and pointing. Soon afterwards, the ship changed tack. It was as if they were not entirely sure of their bearings and at the same time, worried about still being followed. Then Travix spotted Anya looking at them. Too late, Anya buried her head in her work.
