by Syra Bond
After they left Rufo's house, Caristia was kept separate from Innocenti and, although she saw her for the first few nights - when the rings in their collars were clipped into chains in a dark dungeon - she did not see her at the House of the Amorini again. To start with Caristia was made to serve at meals, but as Arria Sulla invited more guests to her lavish dinners Caristia was used increasingly as a source of pleasure. Often she was displayed naked - her pubic hair shaved on the instructions of her mistress, who said she would have none of her slaves any other way - her smooth skin gleaming with golden oil and white fragrant flowers in her blonde hair.
Sometimes she was dressed according to the theme of the evening or simply at the request of one of Arria Sulla's new friends. Once she was dressed as a nymph with gauzy fabric covering only her hips, and with small gold clips attached to her painted nipples. She had to drape herself backwards over the guests' knees and let them squeeze the clips tighter until she screamed. Once she was daubed in gold paint and made to perform in a play with dwarfs who took the parts of amorini and cupids. They tied her ankles to a rope and she was suspended from the ceiling while they licked the paint off. Once she was wrapped in sable fur and had to be hunted by the Nubians. When finally they captured her they pinned her down to the ground - spreading her wide by tying her wrists and ankles to stakes - before beating her with whips and riding crops. If at any time any of Arria Sulla's guests wanted to cane her or spank her she was always made available. Sometimes she would be taken over their knees, sometimes made to bend over a chair and sometimes tied up so tightly she could hardly breathe. Once she was tied to a fountain in the centre of the atrium and caned by all the guests, then after they had gone she was left there until the next evening when she received the same treatment. Once, because she had combed her mistress's hair badly, she was beaten with an oxhide thong in front of the guests by Arria Sulla's private slave flogger. On one occasion she had to attend one of the guest's wives who was herself spanked in front of everyone else because her husband objected to her sucking one of the male slave's cocks without asking his permission. Caristia was made to bend on all fours while the woman bent across her, then when the woman had been sufficiently punished they changed around and Caristia was spanked as well. Several guests to the house were priests at the Temple of Isis - what some of the other slaves called 'the brothel of Queen Isis' - and Arria Sulla fell into long conversations with them. In the end, under the spell of their winning arguments, she agreed to go to their place of worship.
Caristia followed Arria Sulla, borne high on the ornate chair by her Nubian slaves up the gradually sloping Road of the Tombs. It was getting dark but still very hot and the Nubians' oiled bodies were covered in glistening sweat. They passed a house with a large hanging balcony, then several brothels until finally, after passing Rufo's house and his slave quarters, they arrived at a brightly decorated temple enclosed by a high, lavishly painted boundary wall. The Temple of Isis had been built nearly a hundred years before for the worship of an Egyptian goddess, brought from the Nile by the armies of Marc Anthony, and co-opted, like so many other pagan gods from distant shores, into the complex mosaic of Roman worship. In the centre of the walled enclosure, approached by seven steps, the temple itself was an imposing stone building with a colonnaded entrance and a high-pitched roof. On the left of the open area in front of the steps - where most of the worshippers gathered - was a stone altar and above this, hanging from a large timber tripod, a closely braided rope with a pulley block at its end.
It was dark when they arrived and the walled enclosure was illuminated by fires which burned around its edges. Worshippers gathered in the enclosure and three men dressed in white and purple cloaks, each holding a gold chalice stood on the steps. Arria Sulla's Nubians cleared a path for her through the crowd and Caristia squeezed through in their wake, struggling to squirm between the tight-packed bodies of the chanting devotees, frightened in case she should get lost. She stood by the altar as Arria Sulla craned her neck to see what was going on.
Two pale-skinned young women, flanked by four Nubian boys, were being led out of the temple. Purple cloaks, held together at the women's throats by golden clasps, were draped over their shoulders. One was blonde and one dark-haired, but they were both blue-eyed and frail looking. The dark girl was made to stand at the top of the steps, where her arms were pulled around one of the columns and tied securely with rope. The other girl was turned around slowly by the Nubian boys, displaying her to the worshippers at the command of the priests as they sought the devotees' approval of her youth and purity. Her short blonde hair shone in the flickering light of the burning fires, and her smooth skin picked up the rosy glow of the flames as if she was surrounded by iridescent butterflies. Caristia pushed further forward between the chanting, tight-packed crowd but they were so crushed into the enclosure that she could not get any closer to the altar. She stood, squashed between several men, their hot bodies pressed against hers as she struggled to see.
Led by the three priests in robes, the blonde-haired girl was guided by the boys down the steps of the temple. The crowd parted as the priests moved through them, carving a path from the steps to the altar and crushing the crowd even tighter together. Caristia felt the men's bodies squashed even closer, pushing her, not only because of the pressure of the crowd, but through a desire to touch her, to feel her, to squeeze closely against her. She felt their hot breath on her face and neck and, when the crowd surged forward to fill the space behind the short procession, she felt two hands encircling her breasts.
The young woman was led to the altar and stood at one end. Her blonde hair glistened as the clasp at her neck was unclipped and the purple cloak removed from her shoulders. She stood naked and still with her hands by her sides as if she were frozen at attention. She was slim with small breasts and narrow boyish hips, and her face was pale and expressionless. Her pubic hair had been shaved and the crack of her cunt was clearly defined as a sharp pink slit. The priests held their chalices high, offering them to their mistress Isis, then in unison they turned and nodded their heads to the attendant boys. The hands around Caristia's breasts tightened their grip as the boys, supporting the girl under her buttocks, shoulders and calves, lifted her bodily and raised her above the altar. She was so slim that stretched out between them her hips stood up sharply above the shallow dip of her stomach, which led smoothly to the raised mound that sheltered her youthful crack. The hands tightened more around Caristia's breasts as fingers and thumbs began pinching her hardening nipples.
The boys laid the girl down on the cold stone altar. Caristia raised herself up on her toes to look over someone's shoulder and, as she lifted herself she felt a hand between her legs from behind, one of the priests stood by the side of the girl and lowered the ornate chalice, then chanting a prayer he tipped it and ran its contents - golden olive oil - across her breasts. It shone like liquid fire as it ran from the lip of the cup, then changed its form and flowed down in a golden stream of fluid silk as it folded around the girl's nipples and breasts. She parted her lips slightly as if inhaling the scent of the heavenly sap, and as Caristia saw her gasp slightly she felt her own wetness of her swelling cunt. The worshippers went quiet as the priest massaged the oil into the girl's skin, and Caristia watched spellbound as the girl's nipples hardened and rose into two prominent erect peaks. The hand between Caristia's legs turned so that the palm was held just below the hot flesh of her cunt.
When the priest had rubbed the oil all over the girl's breasts he stepped back and the second one took his place. Again he held his chalice high then, chanting prayers, he lowered it and began emptying the contents over the girl. Again golden oil flowed, this time running across the girl's navel, into the hollow of her stomach, then as it gathered in a warm golden pool, flowing around the base of her stomach and into the tight crack of her sex. The priest rubbed the oil in, using the flat of his hands to embrocate the girl's body, covering again her breasts and teasing her hard nipples, then smo
othing it over her stomach until finally spreading it carefully into her cunt. He ran his fingers along the glistening slit, opening it enough to expose the darker pink of its inner flesh, and then he let his hands move down, massaging the insides of her thighs, her legs and her feet with the syrupy lotion. As he stepped back Caristia felt the hand between her legs rising towards the flesh of her own cunt, then as the second priest made way for the third, the hand pressed flatly against her engorging labia.
The third priest nodded to the boys and they lifted the girl again. Golden drops of oil dripped from her body, as if she were a sculpture of ice thawing in the heat of the flickering fires. They turned her over and laid her face down on the altar. The priest held his cup above her pert buttocks and, as the others had done, ceremoniously tipped the oil over the shallow lip. It ran first in a trickle, dribbling on the highest points on the delectable curves of her bottom and then, as he tipped the cup further, in a fuller, velvety flow that poured eagerly down both slopes, upwards into the small of her back and down onto the tops of her thighs. It gathered in the tight valley that lay between the cheeks of her upturned buttocks, then as if unable to resist the sweet flesh of her cunt, it sought out the inviting divide that lay squeezed between them. The priest massaged it in, running his fingers in circles across the girl's back and the backs of her thighs before smearing it over her buttocks, at first singly and then together. He probed his fingers deep between the crack so that he rubbed satiny balm around her dark anus, and then the soft flesh that was the raised edge of her cunt. As he nodded again to the boys the flat hand between Caristia's legs pressed up harder against her flesh, pinching and squeezing until she felt a shiver of pain.
Caristia licked her dry lips as one of the boys placed a long cane into the priest's hand. The fingers that squeezed her increased their pressure, catching the tip of her clitoris - already uncovered and erect - and sending a wave of heat throughout her whole body. The priest waved the cane above his head and whipped it from side to side in the flickering red light of the flames. Its tip was thin but even when he flicked it threateningly with his wrist it barely bent. The crowd of devotees quietened until Caristia could hear only the swishing of the cane as it whipped from side to side. She listened to it cutting the air with a menacing hiss and opening her legs, lowered herself onto the probing hand and let its fingers penetrate her.
The priest nodded again to the boys, who took up position at each corner of the altar. Two of them bound hide thongs around the girl's wrists while the other two held her ankles shoulder width apart and bound an ebony bar between them. They pulled the trailing ends of the thongs down the side of the altar and tied them into bronze pegs that were fixed to the sides. The girl's oily body shone in the shimmering light, her pert buttocks the golden apex of her glistening beauty. The two boys at the top end of the altar lifted her head and opened her mouth. Caristia saw how wide her eyes were and, in their fixed stare, she sensed her fear. The boys presented the girl's open mouth to a leather ball with thongs attached to each side, and after struggling to get it between her lips and behind her teeth they secured the thongs around the back of her neck. The two boys then drew a black leather hood over her face and they all stepped back.
Caristia moaned as the fingers probed her, then she felt a hand on her back and she was pushed forward, bending her at the hips until her bottom stuck out. She could still see the girl on the altar, but now it was more difficult. She stared at the motionless figure, bound, gagged and hooded, as the fingers delved deeper inside her wet cunt, and a hand lifted the hem of her short tunic and smoothed its palm across her bare bottom. The priest stood back and laid the cane across his victim's upturned buttocks. A sliver of oil covered its lower half and, when he raised it high above his head, droplets of the golden juice sprinkled from it like a shower of flickering gems. There was complete quiet as he held the cane high, waiting for the right moment. That perfect moment of action when he saw the girl's hard nipples rise higher as she breathed in slightly. When he saw the hood over her face suck in against her nose, or when he saw the glistening skin of her bottom twitch with a phantom pain brought on by anticipation of the real pain to come.
Caristia waited as well; the only thing that moved was the hand on her bottom. She pressed against it, hoping it would lift away, hoping it would copy the cane the priest held above the girl, hoping the crowding worshippers around her would clear away sufficiently for the hand to swing fully at her waiting cheeks.
Everyone around the altar gasped when the cane came down, it was so forceful, so penetrating. But when it struck the girl's bottom, when the swishing rod made contact with her flesh, she did not twist in agony, or writhe beneath its burning stroke. She was fixed too tightly to move, tied down too securely to lift herself to it or attempt to wriggle away. Only the side of the mask over her head showed that she gasped - her mouth plugged as it was by the leather ball - through the flared nostrils of her nose. The hand was not on Caristia's bottom any longer, but the blow had not arrived, it had not smacked her waiting skin, and she writhed back against the fingers in her cunt, frustrated by the abandonment, disappointed by the lack of much needed pain. She dropped forward, hoping to bring down the smack she yearned for and she lifted her bottom higher, opening the cheeks, exposing herself more. Still the fingers probed her, still they squeezed her soft outer flesh, and still they pinched ever more harshly on the throbbing hardness of her engorged clitoris. But still she could only wish for the palm of the hand to come down on her buttocks and she felt herself dribbling with a desperate, unsatisfied desire.
The priest brought the cane down again and a spray of golden droplets showered from its flaying length. The stinging blow striped the girl's bottom, even beneath the absorbent covering of oil, and when he lifted it away everyone could see precisely where it had landed. He took it back and brought it down again, another stripe of red, another spray of glossy oil, and again, and again until he was thrashing her continually, striping her bottom, her thighs and her back. Each stroke left its mark, but never in the same place, always somewhere different than before, always somewhere fresh, somewhere not yet sensitized by the pain, somewhere not yet marked by the thrashing staff of fire.
Suddenly Caristia heard a loud smack. Before she felt it on her buttocks she heard it, then as she widened her eyes with delectable surprise, the smarting pain followed and she moaned loudly with joyful relief. She bent forward more, tightening her buttocks and presenting herself fully for the next, then when it came, when it smacked loudly against her still stinging skin, the palm of the hand caught not only the reddened skin of her bottom but her exposed cunt. She dribbled profusely as the biting pain shot through her, as the vigour of the blow ran riot throughout her body, but she did not wriggle away or squirm to escape; she needed the pain and lifted herself up for more.
As she watched the cane being passed to the next priest, who took up the beating of the bound girl, the hand continued to smack her bottom. She reached down to the floor, stretching herself before the punishing hand, sacrificing herself to it, delivering herself up to its discipline. She could not see the girl on the altar any more, and now she did not try to look up. She could hear the stinging blows raining down on the girl's still body and she could sense the penetrating pain they delivered. Now the swishing sound of the cane and the cracking contact with another new place on the girl's exposed skin was enough to fill her. Her head was crammed with it and her mind was ablaze with the pictures it conjured up. She bent further and licked the ground. The earth tasted so good and she buried her face into the soil, spreading her tongue onto it and feeling it sticking to her lips. Suddenly she stopped, aware of a silence, the hand no longer spanking her and the cane no longer striking the girl. Caristia lifted her face and, resting on her elbows, she listened. She knelt on all fours peering vainly between the sea of legs that surrounded her. She got up, wiping her face and licking her lips, and gazed between two men that stood in front of her, clawing their shoulders to get a
better look.
The blonde girl was left tied to the altar as the boys climbed back up the steps and released the dark-haired girl from the column. Her arms dropped by her side, she looked fatigued and hopeless, but the boys took hold of her straight away, first pushing her forward then lifting her, facing down, high above their heads. The crowd of worshippers dropped their heads as though they were praying - as if some offering had been made - then some men came forward with a heavy wooden cross joined into the shape of an 'X'. They fixed it at right angles to the altar, dropping the lower diagonals with a heavy thump into holes carved into the stone surface. The Nubian boys carried the girl down the steps, the hard nipples of her small breasts pointing downwards and her black hair dropping about the sides of her face. When they got to the cross they turned her upside down and placed her, face forward, against the freestanding structure. They splayed her legs wide and secured her ankles with leather thongs to the two diagonal uprights. They bound two more thongs around her thighs, halfway between her knees and her groin, then pulled a wide leather belt tight around her waist to hold her fast against the centre of the frame. She hung there for a while, her arms hanging loosely, her hands almost reaching the ground and her head lolling from side to side. One of the priests came forward and licked her naked cunt, drawing his tongue along the crack slowly from back to front, then while he stood back and gazed at the glistening valley of her flesh, the boys secured her arms to the lower diagonals, binding them securely at the wrists and upper arms.
Caristia stared between the girl's outspread legs as the boys massaged oil into her skin. It ran in golden droplets into the shallow hollows on the insides of her thighs that led to the exposed mounds on either side of her naked cunt. Caristia lifted herself up on the men's shoulders and could just see that some of the oil ran along the girl's sex, and the pinkness of her soft flesh gleamed with the redolent liquid. Some ran down between the crack of her bottom and down into the small of her back, between her shoulder blades then into the black hair, causing it to shimmer in the light of the fires. The oil dripped, and as it gathered in a small pool beneath her head it reflected back the redness of its light onto her shoulders and her upturned breasts.
