Many people find it quite shocking that my husband bought me. Oh, it is not as if Jzhat’lan women are not admired by the Beks. Our delicacy excites them, certainly. Like fine glass statuary, we are easily broken. The Jzhat’lan brothels on Post 3 are always full of Beki traders and mercenaries, and it is an uncommon Beki man who would not welcome a woman like me to his bed.
But as a wife? That is a different thing. I can never bear my husband’s child. I will never give him heirs.
My husband, my master, is soft-spoken, slow to anger. On those occasions when the gossips cease talking behind his back and confront him to his face, he merely smiles mildly. “My sister’s children can have my trading company when I am gone. I will, at least, have died a happy man.” Can you say that? hangs unspoken in the air.
I have other disadvantages as a wife, of course. Here on Mrw-Bek, I must sleep most of the day. Even slathered in lotions and shaded by heavy clothing, my fragile, pale skin would blister quickly under the twin suns. I am almost blind in the bright glare of midday. While my husband goes about his business, I doze amongst the piles of pillows in our bedroom, the draperies pulled tight, dreaming of the greyish-blue mists of Jzhat’lan. During the first long dusk, I bathe and scent myself for him. At first sunset I am out in the market, doing what few errands I don’t entrust to the staff. By second sunset I am home, kneeling on the cool tile, the windows open, the evening breezes blowing my curled and braided hair back from my face, my pupils wide and black. I have never not been waiting to serve him when he returned home.
He says he has nothing to complain of.
In the deep of night when he is sleeping, I slip from our cushions to read, to write, to valet his clothes, to walk the vast high-walled gardens, or view the disks of new trade goods he is considering. But on occasion the restlessness comes on me. With his permission I swathe myself in layers of tissue-thin silver cloth and slip through the silent night-time streets to a tavern in the merchant’s district. Behind my veils, I can do what Jzhat’lan women are born to do. I sing the drzaliin.
I am always back naked on the cushions ready to lick him awake at the glimmering of first sunrise. And those of his friends who have heard the drzaliin no longer question his wisdom.
I have spoken of the Jzhat’lan brothels on Post 3, but do not be misled. My husband did not find me in some brothel. No, my father was his senior trading partner on Jzhat’lan, brokering carpets and pharmaceutical botanicals, optical lasers, and the finest beadwork. My husband caught glimpses of me in my father’s house – pouring tea for my sisters, studying under the bower of vines in the side yard, passing shyly in the hall. Then one day he heard me laugh. He says it was that which bewitched him. He wanted to be the one to make me laugh. And whimper. And scream.
It’s not our way to sell women, but my father took the funds readily enough. He said he wouldn’t disrespect the customs of an honoured business associate. I think he almost believed that. To this day, when I pray at my little altar on the Days of Purification, I thank my ancestors that my father was not burdened with too many scruples.
The marriage ceremonies were done on Jzhat’lan while the contracts and documents had already been filed on Mrw-Bek. I was already my husband’s property when he took me through the portal to his home world. He had kindly timed it so we would arrive just before full darkness and as we stepped out of the arrival building into the street, I had to gasp at the strangeness. The buildings all low and wide and made of lustrous white stone, the air thick and just beginning to lose the day’s heat. And the people, oh, all the people, Beks, all of them at least a head taller than I, smooth sleek hair where I was hairless, chattering in Beki dialects that sounded to me like low growls.
I could feel the covert glances on me as well, some admiring, some merely curious, sizing up the rich brocades of my Jzhat’lan marriage robes, the elaborate twists and corkscrews and braids in my waist-length hair, the painted good-luck markings on my face. I clutched my new husband’s hand almost involuntarily, and he squeezed back in reassurance and wrapped one of my braids firmly around his other fist. He whispered to me in the trade language, his voice as seductive to me as mine had been to him. “I should have thought to bring a leash for you. But this will do for now.”
I shuddered slightly. And felt, for the first time, a very different, new emotion.
He had procured Jzhat’lan fruits and cheeses for me and sparkling pale green wines. And on my bridal night he fed them to me from his own hand, held the goblet to my lips himself as we reclined upon the pillows. All the while he spoke to me in that same honeyed voice, vowels thick as syrup, telling me what he would expect of me. “You will call me ‘my master’,” he said, using the Beki word. It meant nothing to me. I nodded and licked a droplet of wine from my lower lip.
“My master,” I tried to repeat and the word caught in my throat.
He smiled. Or bared his teeth.
I have asked him on occasion, in the years between then and now, whether he knew. Whether, even before he had asked my father for me, he had seen something in my face, heard something in my voice, that made him sure I was unlike most Jzhat’lan women. “I wish I could say yes,” he had answered, rubbing his soft-furred face across the taut flesh of my belly, pricking that flesh with his incisors, raising little red welts. “It would seem more noble were I to say I recognized that I could give you what you needed, what a Jzhat’lan male would likely not.” Tiny bites on the inside of my thigh. Then soft laughter. “And it would be a lie. You were beautiful. You had a Jzhat’lan woman’s voice. I knew you would moan exquisitely both when I beat you and when I pleasured you. That was enough.” A sharper bite, enough to draw blood, and the sound he wanted to hear escaping from my lips. “I wanted to own you.”
He owned me from the time the papers were signed, but on my bridal night he took possession just little by little. After I had nibbled the fruits from his hand, after the wine cups were empty, he gave me my wedding gifts. My tutors had tried, half-heartedly, to teach me some Beki customs once my father – and I – had consented to the marriage. As my new master placed the pile of boxes wrapped in delicate metallic tissue in front of me, I remembered Lady Vutlael stammering, playing with her hair, looking out past the courtyard gates as she murmured something about “traditional marriage present . . . jewellery, and, um, other things.” As I began tearing open the tissue at my husband’s behest, my face grew gradually more flushed and other parts of me warmed, and I realized with amusement why the Lady had been so uncomfortable and so vague.
The first box contained a beautiful rope of many fine platinum chains twisted into one heavy cable. Just long enough to lock around my throat. My husband purred as he clicked the clasp closed and fingered the ring attached to the lock.
“Where the leash attaches.”
Jewellery, indeed.
The second and third packages contained whips. Each was made of a long strap of fine leather split into two pointy tongues and attached to an intricately carved wooden handle. One, however, was heavy and slightly stiff and studded with just the tiniest knobs of metal; the other made of the softest hide imaginable. “Another custom,” he said. “One to punish you, one to give you pleasure.” My tutors had neglected to mention any Beki sexual practices. I cannot even begin to imagine what expression was on my face, but my husband continued in the same calm, seductive voice.
“I could never use a regular Beki instrument on you, of course. Even a Beki pleasure-whip would injure you, and just a few strokes with a punishment one would flay the flesh from your bones. I had these made to order.” Another ambiguous smile. “The craftsman enjoyed the challenge, I think. Finding the right material for a disciplinary tool that might leave you screaming and sobbing and very well marked, but without damaging your delicate body. As for the other tool – ” He made a slightly dismissive motion, but even then I could see the wickedness gleaming in his eyes. “Who even knows if you will respond as a Beki woman does?”
I ran my finger over the carving on one of the handles, just for an excuse to avert my eyes. It was in Beki script. I couldn’t read a word of it. Later, I found it was customary to inscribe both the couple’s names and a proverb on each whip. The punishment whip would generally contain some adage about a woman’s need for a firm hand, the pleasure instrument one about the wisdom of keeping a woman well-satisfied. Much later, when I had become fluent in my husband’s tongue, I read our names on those whip handles. And the phrase he had chosen for both.
I will not deny.
I learned the touch of that pleasure whip on my wedding night. I learned . . . so many things. My body was like a neighbouring country, one I had heard so much about, yet never visited.
He reclined me back against the cushions first, his hands firm and gentle as he guided my shoulders down. The discarded wrappings from my gifts crackled as we moved against them and the spicy bite of the scented candles above us tickled my nose. My new collar was heavy against the hollow of my throat.
He murmured, a low purr in my ear, using a Beki word which means, alternately, “toy” or “wife” or “property”. The tone was clear, if not the meaning. My loins felt heavier than the fine chunk of metal about my neck. As he began to unbraid and untwist my hair, my lips parted. I wanted to call him by the title he’d taught me. I couldn’t speak.
Later I would see the irony in my voice failing me.
Unsheathing a claw, he drew a finger down the front of my marriage robes, neatly slitting them open. He parted the clothes from my body, held me down against the cushions, and began to touch me. He was an experienced man, my new husband. He knew a woman’s body, even a Jzhat’lan woman’s body, all the pleasure spots, all my secret places. With ruthless efficiency, he rubbed and kissed and licked them.
I began to moan and squirm. Then struggle outright. The urge to sing the drzaliin was strong, yet instinct bade me hold my tongue. His restraining hand was not cruel. It was firm. Gentle. Unyielding. His tongue and fingers kept up their onslaught. I closed my eyes then and let my body melt into the cushions as I gave myself over to the pleasure.
The stroking turned to pinches, scratches, the kisses to the most mild of bites. I was almost keening then, the slight pain intensifying my arousal. I clutched at his body, twining my fingers in the softness of his pelt, wanting something I had no knowledge of. He lifted his head from the inside of my arm. His hands stopped their motion. “Turn over,” he said then, in the trade language, his voice even thicker. Turn over, a throaty command, and I obeyed, pure instinct once more.
Imagine, I might have told my sisters. Imagine, me, responding to the voice of a man.
I was shaking as he lifted the pleasure whip, tucked it against his body. My keening trailed off into a low steady moan. He slipped an arm under my hips, raising me, and shoved a bolster beneath me to bend my body slightly. Goose bumps formed on my skin, yet I was hot all over.
His hand was in my hair. “Slave . . . wife,” he murmured, again in the trade language. “. . . mine.” The words seemed to come sluggishly, from far away. I know now, of course, that he longed to speak Beki. There are words in his native tongue without precise equivalent in any other language.
He grabbed my head up. “Please,” I whimpered. “Please.”
I didn’t know what I was begging for.
He shoved my head back down into the cushions. The whip smacked across my thigh. I screamed.
I smile now to think of it – screaming at a lash from that soft, velvety leather, screaming at a lash that was more a kiss than a blow. But my nerve-endings were awash in sensation, confused, and I screamed more from shock than pain.
My husband crouched beside me, laid the pleasure whip gently down on the plane of my back, and shushed me. “Don’t be afraid,” he said softly, one hand firmly in my hair again, the other once more tweaking a pleasure spot with casual adeptness. “Punishment should frighten you.” The tweaking fingers grew busier and he leaned to brush his mouth against my hair. “But this isn’t punishment . . . it’s pleasure.”
I was moaning, almost keening, again when he took the pleasuring hand away. Something dropped in my belly and I felt a great emptiness, a yearning. Somewhere in some corner of my mind even then was the knowledge that I could sing the drzaliin, but the wish to do so, to this man, to my master, was obliterated. “Please,” I repeated instead, and this time I had a small inkling of what I was asking for.
He lifted the whip from its resting place on my back then and started peppering my thighs and buttocks with soft, quick, stinging lashes, heating every inch of skin.
Later he told me how wondrous it was, beating a Jzhat’lan woman for the first time, watching the colour come up on my pale, smooth flesh. And the noise I was making, a continuous musical wailing, passion tinged with suffering, was the most beautiful sound he’d ever heard. He was, he said, almost overcome with the exquisiteness of his pleasure. It was all he could do not to try to enter me right then.
He didn’t, of course. He was far too large to use my body sexually without weeks and weeks of patient dilation and further weeks of harrowing training for me. Instead he kept whipping until my flanks were a perfectly uniform shade of dusky red and the sounds that were coming from my throat were ones I had never made before. Then he tossed aside the pleasure whip and manipulated my most pleasurable spot of all, until my body convulsed and I let out another scream.
As I trembled in his arms afterwards he whispered a mix of Beki endearments and compliments in the trade language. I was so beautiful, so pliant, so sexual. He was so pleased with me. I would be such a good slave, a wife to be proud of. As my breathing slowed to normal, he brushed his mouth along my hair again, buried his face in it, chuckling quietly. “Now I know,” he murmured, “that you do respond to the whip as a Beki woman does.”
“Yes, my master,” I murmured back. The words rolled smoothly from my mouth.
I was not my father’s eldest daughter, but I was his most responsible, and I came to my new husband’s house with an expectation. If there were obligations to my husband, my master, I would of course fulfil them. If there were commitments, I would honour them. I would be as I had always been. Dutiful. Conscientious.
As the first weeks and months of my marriage unfolded, my husband undertook to shatter that expectation. I would not obey out of mere duty. I would not follow the mere letter of the law. He wanted something different. Something more.
He spent the long evenings and well into the nights of those early months lavishing his attention on me. Slowly and patiently, he taught me his language and his customs. Taught me to serve him, to care for his needs and provide for his pleasures. Talked to me about his days, the business, the news of the city. Asked me endless questions about Jzhat’lan, about my family, myself. Worked on my dilation, and then the arduous process of training me to take something as large as his member into me, giving reassurance but never mercy as I wept and pleaded in my agony. Walked with me in the gardens and, on occasion when I was restless, snapped on my leash and took me out into the streets, the public parks, once even to see the pale orangish ocean. Laughed with me. Brought me to ecstasy in ways I didn’t know existed. Held me in his arms when the homesickness poisoned me. Learned to know me. Began to love me.
He stayed up far too late in those days, got far too little rest – though I couldn’t, at the time, recognize the signs of exhaustion in his slightly dulled hair or heavy lids. It was well worth it, he tells me now. By the time of my first storm season on Mrw-Bek, he had begun to see what he wished to see. I was beginning to be bound to him by something stronger than law, obligation, or chains. That he would have my obedience was a given. Slowly he was capturing my devotion.
Devotion is, of course, something that might well be tested.
You might think my “opening” proved to be a test for me, but in truth, somewhere in the final phases of my dilation or the beginnings of my training, the whole process became easier for me. I still cried tears of pain as I was stretched and plugged. There was no denying it hurt. But at some point, my fear of the pain had been superseded by my wish to please him.
I no longer begged mercy when he told me to fetch the instruments. I brought them quickly and without complaint, positioned myself however he ordered, spread my legs wider or bent myself more as was his whim. Sometimes, when I saw he meant to advance to the next longest or thickest instrument, tears would start running down my cheeks before he actually forced it into me, before he began to move it in hard, rhythmic thrusts, but I no longer wanted him to spare me. Every painful session was a step closer to my being able to please him completely.
I sometimes contemplated the final instrument in the set with horror and longing. It was as large as his member and as cruelly barbed. When I was opened enough to take that into my body, when I could bear to have him work me with it for more than a few moments at a time, then I would be ready for him to use as any Beki man might use his wife. That night was fast approaching. My belly tightened as my pleasure spots tingled, thinking about it.
“It will hurt you, my property,” he whispered when he saw the direction of my gaze. “And I’ll enjoy that.”
“I know, my master,” I whispered back, desirous.
No, it was not my opening that tested my devotion. It was something else altogether
My mother died when I was just a small child, and my two elder sisters were only several years my senior, too young to serve as surrogates. It fell mostly to my female tutors to teach me of the drzaliin, of my powers and responsibilities as a Jzhat’lan woman. The Lady Vutlael, she who was later so squeamish about Beki customs and sexuality, was dry and factual about our own. “The drzaliin is the power of your voice to entrance and enrapture a male. The man who hears you sing it will, for a time, wish for nothing more than to do your bidding. The pleasure he feels from it will be so overwhelming, it will be stronger than even his wish to copulate.”
I had a thousand questions the first time she addressed the matter, but she gave me no time to ask them. Instead she went on lecturing about my moral obligations not to misuse the drzaliin – to use it only for the mutual pleasure of my mate and myself – and then started in on evolutionary theory. How our pregnancies are so long and copulation was so dangerous to our unborn in the days before technology, scientists thought the drzaliin had developed as a way to keep our mates bonded to us. I’m sure it was very fascinating, but I was a young girl, interested in more practical, immediate matters.
“Lady,” I said finally, tugging on her sleeve to forestall more lecturing, “how will I know how to do it? How will I know when to do it?”
She allowed herself a small dry smile. “You won’t need to be taught, girl. As you come to womanhood, hundreds of thousands of years of instinct will guide your sweet voice. As to when . . .” She paused. “When you are with your mate and, ah, amorous, you will sometimes feel the urge. Perhaps at other times as well. It is up to both of you how often you yield to it. If you are unmated . . .”Another long pause and a slight frown creasing her face. “A mature woman who goes too long without singing the drzaliin will begin to feel irritable and conflicted. For unmated women, there are other outlets.”
Apparently she felt that she had said too much, been somehow inappropriate, for she sat up straighter then and shook her head, almost. “Enough of this for now, girl. Get your astronomy and botany texts. Your father will be much displeased if you fall behind.”
That particular aspect of the subject had never been touched on again. Not even whilst she and Lady Truio were preparing me for my marriage. Why would it have been? I was going to be mated.
Of course, they failed to take into consideration that my marriage would be rather different from their own. I would be mated. I would be owned. I would be tested. There were things I might have benefited from knowing. Experience is, after all, the hardest teacher.
When the irritability came upon me, the nagging feeling of wrongness and unease, I failed to understand what it was. My husband noticed it, of course, but he too failed to glean the significance. Homesickness, feelings of confinement, even the oppressive humidity of the storm season . . . it could have been any of a thousand things which had put me out of sorts.
Even when I began to baulk at his orders, he wasn’t much concerned. Slaves usually rebelled, fought their own submission, at some point in their training. He would simply repeat the order in a cool, low voice and give me a look suggesting it might be unwise to make him speak a third time. His face would remain impassive as I forced myself to obey.
And eventually the feelings would pass, the crawling sense of confusion and peevishness would leave my belly as quickly as they came on and, lying on the cushions with him, I would want to say I’m sorry, my master, so sorry . . . I don’t know what is happening to me. But his hand would be in my hair, stroking, the slow thud of his heart beneath my face quieting me, and I never spoke.
We went on that way for several weeks, through the worst of the storm season. The winds would suddenly whip through, a few minutes of darkness and blinding rain, then back to the heavy, sullen, sticky air, unmoving and barely breathable. My moods were much the same, quickly upon me and quickly gone, but leaving unpleasantness in their wake.
One night my husband came home to find me, as he always did, kneeling on the tiles, prepared to greet him and to serve. I hadn’t bothered to braid any ornaments into my hair, nor had I perfumed myself. I bowed my forehead to the floor and recited the greeting he’d taught me with what might well have been a touch of sarcasm. As I raised my head, I saw he had noticed all these things, and I saw he was weighing whether they were worth a reprimand. I felt insanely pleased.
“You’ll want tea?” I asked in tones of supreme boredom as I stood to take his cloak. My voice grated in my own ears. He handed me the garment and I placed it – tossed it, almost – on its hook by the outer door, not troubling to shake it out or smooth its creases.
As I turned around, he was there, immediately in front of me. I gasped in surprise, and gasped again as he grabbed a fistful of my hair. “What I want is you back on your knees.”
So. I had done it. I had made him lose his patience finally. I felt even more insanely pleased. I bowed my head as I slipped back down to the floor, letting my hair cover my face and my smirk.
“Crawl to my chamber, slave.” I noted the word he used, not the affectionate one, not the one that connoted “my property” or “toy” but the one that meant, quite simply, “slave”. I deflated a bit. He was angry then, really, seriously angry, not just annoyed. I began to consider that perhaps, just perhaps, my little show of rebellion was childish and ill-advised.
“Crawl.” He nudged my flank with the side of his foot, and I did. Halfway to our bedchamber, my irritation came flooding back. Let him be angry with me. I didn’t care. I was angry, too. The fact that I couldn’t think of a single rational reason why I should be angry only served to make me seethe.
He stopped me just inside the bedchamber. “Stay there,” he said in a low, clipped growl. I understood enough Beki now that he rarely had to resort to the trade language. “I’ll be back.”
I heard him exit the room, leaving the door ajar, brisk footsteps echoing in the hall. It sounded as if he were heading to the kitchens. Good, I thought, another nasty smirk on my face. Let him fix his own tea. Let him serve himself. Let him think me miserable, kneeling despondently here, grieving over his reprimand. I pulled myself up from my hands and knees, and plopped onto my bottom, shaking my hands out and stretching, telling myself I didn’t care about his orders.
The wind was picking up outside, seeping through the shutters I’d latched earlier and making them rattle. I lifted my face to it, welcoming the marginally cooler, fresher air, even as it tangled my hair. Perhaps, I thought sourly, perhaps my husband was so irritated he would go out for the evening. Perhaps he would leave me here, alone, thinking to punish me with his absence, and I would go out into the gardens and stand in the rain just to feel it soak my hair and cool my skin. Perhaps . . .
“I thought ‘stay there’ was a phrase you understood.”
I turned quickly to the sound of his voice. He had removed his own boots; his footfalls were silent as he padded towards me. In one fist were a handful of scraggly twigs and his eyes were colourless. “Hands and knees. Now.”
I slid back into position, angry and ashamed and angry with being ashamed. My lips parted. I wanted to make some scathing remark. I wanted to hurt him. He took absolutely no notice, just crossed to the platform where our cushions were and sat, that odd bundle of sticks in his lap.
“You’ve gone too far, you know,” he said. His voice was as colourless as his eyes, as cool and detached as I was angry. Apparently during his little walk to – where? – the little patch of garden beyond the kitchens? – he had composed himself. “Your behaviour has been insolent, provocative. Like an ill-mannered child.” He fingered that bunch of twigs in his lap. “You don’t deserve the dignity and the respect of being disciplined with your own punishment whip, like a woman. I’m going to spank you with this bundle of clatha switches instead.
My head snapped up and my mouth dropped open, unreasoning outrage colouring my cheeks. “Oh, no, you’re not,” I spat. Then I called him the vilest insult I could think of. In the Jzhat’lan tongue. He took my meaning anyway.
He didn’t react. We stayed that way, staring at each other, for long moments, the rattling of the shutters as the wind rose even higher the only sound in the room. Finally he motioned to me. “Come here, my property,” he said very quietly. “You needn’t crawl.”
Something broke inside of me. My anger drained away in that moment, replaced by the shame I’d been fighting. Tears started as I rose shakily and walked to him, head bowed. “I’m sorry, my master . . .”
He shook his head. “No. Not now. You’ll apologize after your thrashing.” His voice was not unkind. It had, in fact, lost some measure of its coldness.
He positioned me, not as he did for a pleasure whipping, comfortably bent over the bolsters, but draped over the side of the platform instead, my head and torso hanging down. He gripped one of my lower legs firmly to hold me in place, and tapped my upper thighs with the bundle of branches, apparently judging the angle of his stroke. Then the spanking started.
The switches were considered an appropriate, mild chastisement for an impudent Beki youth, but on my delicate flesh they had a more extreme impact. Each stroke burned and scratched my thighs, the skin soon fiery hot and covered with tiny, hardly bleeding cuts. On and on my husband spanked me, bringing the bundle of twigs down over and over, and only on my thighs, as I moaned and sobbed. No keening sexual cry. Just tears of humiliation and frank pain.
At some point I realized the rain had begun, and at some point, that it had ceased. Still the punishment continued. Every time my master stopped, every time he paused momentarily to rest his arm, I thought he was going to end the beating. And every time, the switches would snap down again and I would sob harder. A few times, a switch would break and he would halt the thrashing just long enough to remove it from the bundle. After a while, my tears were not just from pain and shame, but from hopelessness.
An hour must have passed before he finally ended the spanking. My face was as swelled from my tears as the backs of my legs were from the clatha branches. He helped me up off the platform and back onto my knees. My head swam momentarily from the change in position. “Make your obeisance,” he said.
I lowered my head to his feet, splayed my upper body against the tile. I raised my buttocks high. He hadn’t switched them at all and they felt strange next to my throbbing, swollen thighs. “I’m so sorry for my disrespect, my master. For my disobedience.”
“I know you are,” he said softly. “And you are forgiven.” He raised me up and held me to him. Then gently and thoroughly, he licked my face, cleansing it of my tears. When he was finished, he kissed the top of my head. “Now say what else is in your heart, my property.”
I looked at him, confused, but in a moment I knew he was right. Things were not quite settled between us. I had apologized. He had forgiven me. I had taken my punishment. A child’s punishment.
The colour leached from my face as I realized what I was going to have to ask for. But he was correct. It was in my heart. I had to finish this. I took a deep, shaky breath and lowered my eyes. “Please . . .” I said. “My master, please . . . please finish my correction. Give me a woman’s punishment. Treat me as your slave, not as a child.”
He nodded, and trailed a hand down my cheek. “I will.” His voice was tender. “My property.”
He allowed me over the bolsters this time. I watched him, my head turned and my eyes half open, as he fetched the whip from the closet. The cruel metal studs shone in the dimmed lantern light and I shuddered. What had I asked for? How much more pain could I take?
He whispered a number to me. My face grew even paler, but I nodded, a small movement of my head, as if giving consent. The first stroke knocked the breath from me. The second made me scream. The third made me scream even louder.
My husband stopped after the sixth stroke, though we were nowhere near the number he had mentioned, and waited for my howls to stop. “Just because your thighs have already been welted,” he murmured, “doesn’t mean that I intend to spare them now.” Four strokes then, incredibly hard, the stiff, studded leather tongues of the whip cutting into my swollen skin. I clutched at the cushions and shrieked, my keening not as musical as when my husband used me, but even more heartfelt. I wanted this over. We weren’t close to being done. But I wanted it over. The hopelessness I’d felt before hadn’t returned. I felt, instead, panic.
He reverted to whipping my bottom and my lips parted. What came out was not a scream nor a sob, but the notes of the drzaliin. My face was turned to him. I saw his eyes glaze. I saw an expression of confusion and pleasure come over his face. He raised the whip halfheartedly. The drzaliin continued to pour from me. All I had to do was tell him to put the whip down . . . all I had to do was to say “Stop.”
I looked at him. Suddenly I understood it. Everything. I stopped singing and began to cry again, great racking sobs. He shook himself as if coming out of a dream and dropped the whip.
He lifted me from the bolsters and held me. “Tell me,” he whispered. “When you are ready, tell me.” I indulged myself with a only few more minutes of tears before regaining control.
“It’s the drzaliin, my master. I need to do it. My body needs it. That’s why I have been so . . . so wrong.” I lifted my eyes to him, pleading. “But not with you. You are my owner, my One. I don’t want to gain control of you. Not even to avoid a punishment.” I sucked in a big gasp of air. I was on the verge of tears again. “Especially not to avoid a punishment.”
He hugged me to him, murmuring reassurance and cursing himself. “I should have known,” he said. “It’s my responsibility. I should have known.” Then he laid me down on the cushions, gently, but not caring that I flinched as my lacerated flanks met fabric, and covered me in possessive kisses. “I’ve been a fool, my property, but I promise, I’ll rectify my errors.” He kissed me some more.
My devotion had been tested. And proved.
We didn’t finish my punishment whipping until the following night.
It took some time, much talk and research, letters back to Jzhat’lan and to one of the brothel owners on Post 3, but we learned to deal with my need. My husband found a tavern owner, a man discreet and trustworthy, who would let me perform for his customers when the need struck. He would even pay me in coin, as if I had need of such. I stayed heavily veiled, anonymous, safe, tucked into a corner of the stage. I would captivate a roomful of men, leave them stunned and panting. When they were in my power, I would gently suggest they drink some more wine and then go home and pleasure their own women.
One of those suggestions was to repay the tavern owner’s discretion. The other is just a little whim of my own.
It has worked well for all these years, this small arrangement, as have all the other facets of my life here on Mrw-Bek. I remain my master’s joyful property. Our love has grown through the years till we can no longer, either of us, imagine a life not bonded to each other.
I tease my husband quietly sometimes about the gift of prophecy he never knew he had. The phrase so beautifully engraved on my marriage presents, now engraved in our hearts. “I will not deny,” I whisper to him softly.
He cups my chin in his hand, purring. “I do not deny,” he whispers back.