For the next five days the princess was not permitted to leave the baron’s quarters. Nor was she permitted the dignity of clothing. When she wanted a drink it was from the bowl on the floor, and when she wanted to eat it was from the food bowl beside it. The baron did not return for her in all this time, nor did Saraveeta, and Allura imagined them together, enjoying each other and cohabitating like the traitorous vermin they were.
Allura was afraid that the servants would learn of her humiliating predicament, but interestingly enough the baron sent only his soldiers to bring her food and water. These men were largely indifferent to her naked charms, and if they wanted her they gave no indication. More than likely they were under orders not to touch her, but she did not care for them having the right to look at her, and covered herself with a blanket when any of them appeared.
Except for Tesotoro. She told herself she would use the man to her own ends, but there was little reason to suppose he would be on her side more than any of the others. She was not sure what it was about him that was different; perhaps the fact that his hair was blond like hers – a great rarity in the kingdom. Or maybe it was the gentleness of his hands as he had bound her – gentle, yet very, very arousing. He’d had her excited without any actual sexual advance.
When it was his shift to bring water and food she would take it, crawling to his feet. The others be damned; she would throw the bowls in their faces. Word got round and Tesotoro took ribbing about his little pet.
‘What’s your secret, Tesotoro, did you give her a little barbarian injection to tame her?’ she would hear them taunting. So he was a barbarian; that would explain the blond hair, though it did not explain how he’d come into the service of a noble of her civilized country. She would find this out, one way or another.
Apparently word got back to the baron about Tesotoro, and finally he came to her, exceedingly angry. ‘Did you spread it for him?’ he demanded, grabbing her by the back of her neck.
‘No,’ she wailed, ‘I swear it.’
He cuffed her. ‘You’re a lying cunt,’ he spat. ‘The rumors fly all over the castle. You sniff after him like a bitch in heat.’
‘It is nothing,’ she promised, tears in her eyes. ‘Nothing at all.’
He stared at her, scowling. ‘I will punish you for this. Regardless of what you did or did not do, an example must be set.’
‘But that isn’t fair,’ she protested, employing the phrase she so often found herself using to such little effect as of late.
He pushed her to her knees and thrust his cock between her lips. ‘I won’t be made a fool of, Allura,’ he vowed, the princess sucking obediently, grateful for the chance to appease him. ‘This will cost you dungeon time,’ he informed her gruffly. ‘Three days.’
Allura sucked more eagerly in an effort to change his mind, but as he ejaculated in the back of her throat, compelling her to swallow his copious issue, he remained steadfast. ‘It won’t be pleasant but you’ll survive it, just like Saraveeta.’
‘Is that what this is,’ she asked when she’d swallowed his seed, ‘a shoddy way to win revenge on behalf of your new slut? Maybe you should have married her and not me.’
The baron frowned, but instead of being angry he seemed amused. ‘Do I detect a note of jealousy?’
‘You detect contempt, Montreico, which is all you deserve.’
The baron tucked away his deflated penis. ‘Rodolfo will escort you to your new quarters, my dear,’ he said mildly. ‘Do give my regards to the rats and the spiders.’
‘I hate you with all my heart!’ she cried. ‘I despise you more than you will ever know!’
‘Oh well,’ he shrugged, ‘I suppose I’ll have to live with that, won’t I?’
He left her alone to wait for Rodolfo, the man looking stiff and somber as he came to fetch her. ‘I’ll have to shackle you.’ He held out the heavy chain, clutched in his fists.
‘Rodolfo, take pity on me,’ she pleaded, lowering her face to his feet, her golden hair draped over his boots.
‘Princess, do not make a spectacle of yourself.’
‘But this is only between us.’ She looked up at him. ‘I know what you feel for me. I can see it in your eyes. Why should we not share a life together?’
‘Give me your wrists,’ he ordered.
She held them up. ‘Rodolfo, I do have feelings for you.’
‘As you do for Tesotoro and whoever else happens to be holding your leash at the time.’
Allura blushed. He was accusing her of being a slut or a treacherous user or men. She wished she understood how it all worked; both were true, and neither were. ‘But Rodolfo,’ she decided to appeal to his ambition, ‘do you not see the opportunities for a man like you? I’ve watched you. I know you chafe under the baron’s yoke. I can give you power beyond your wildest dreams.’
The shackles closed tightly and heavily on her wrists. ‘You will be quiet,’ the man instructed, ‘or face the consequences.’
‘You mean there is something worse than the dungeon?’ She laughed darkly. ‘I find that hard to believe.’
‘Arms in the air,’ he commanded. ‘On your feet.’ Allura stood, holding aloft her chained wrists. ‘There is always something worse.’ He produced an iron collar with a heavy padlock, and it weighed low on Allura’s shoulders as he snapped it shut.
‘I’m afraid,’ she whispered timorously as the metal locked.
‘Put your hands behind my head,’ Rodolfo commanded, ignoring her words, then he abruptly pulled her tight against him and kissed her, his tongue invading her mouth, and she had no choice but to stand there and let him have his way.
By the time he released her she was panting. ‘Rodolfo, don’t stop…’ she pleaded in hushed, breathless tones.
‘I cannot go on like this,’ he stated, his voice a low growl. ‘The temptation overwhelms me. That is why I must put this on you without delay.’ Allura beheld the iron belt, designed to fit about her naked middle, sealing off her sexual parts to any not privileged with the key. ‘By order of the baron you will wear this until freed from the dungeon. None will remove it but he, none will have you till he commands it.’
She swallowed nervously. ‘But what if I have to pee?’ she asked, the first foolish question that came to mind.
‘There is a grate in the front,’ he informed her. ‘You will urinate through it. This is for your own good, princess. You would be mightily abused in the dungeon without it.’
‘But… but won’t I still be vulnerable?’
‘Your ass and your mouth will not be guarded,’ he confirmed, and only now did the full implications of her sentence begin to sink in. Maybe she wouldn’t survive. Maybe she wasn’t strong enough to.
‘Rodolfo, please make love to me first,’ she begged shamelessly. ‘Let me go down there with the memory of your cock inside me.’
‘The belt,’ he said dismissively, ‘I must put it on. The baron holds the only key.’
‘Don’t lock me away,’ she rubbed her front against him, ‘not yet.’ She told herself it was all part of her stratagem, to keep herself free as long as possible, but there were needs in her soul, shameless needs, and if the baron could or would not fill them then she must look elsewhere.
‘Bitch!’ He pushed her, flinging her to the floor. ‘Why do you torment me?’
Allura had no shame. She was desperate. ‘Fuck me,’ she begged, but Rodolfo shook with rage, fists clenched. Never had she seen a man so divided against himself; a man so determined to fight his own desires. ‘Please,’ she instinctively sought and found the key word, ‘master.’ And she succeeded, the baron’s right-hand man falling on her as if indeed she were a slave.
‘I’ll fuck you straight to hell,’ he cursed, and she fought for air as the man’s erection impaled her smoothly and fully. She felt so small beneath him, so vulnerable.
Over and over he told her what a treacherous bitch she was, but he never once slowed his assault, Allura pounded into submission. She may have begged for it, but now it was being imposed and she tipped into the orgasm she craved. If only she could see tomorrow. If only she could feel again some sense of control over her own destiny.
‘Clean yourself,’ he commanded, rising from her and finding a rag. ‘Time is wasting.’ As best she could with shackled wrists and no water she wiped away the evidence of their union from between her thighs. ‘Legs apart,’ he ordered as he tugged her arms above her head again, and the belt creaked as he put it on her. It was snugger than she’d hoped, and in one way it gave her a feeling of safety and protection, but when the mechanism locked she shuddered with dread.
‘We have to do the ankles too,’ he said, kneeling at her feet, and Allura saw the ankle shackles had some chain between them, enough for her to shuffle along but no more.
‘Rodolfo,’ she asked softly, ‘will you come and visit me?’
‘I have many duties, princess. I can make no promises.’ His answer, cold and dispassionate, frightened her. Was he writing her off as too much trouble to be bothered with?
‘I wish to see Saraveeta,’ she said, ‘before I am taken below.’
‘That is not authorized, princess.’
‘Then make it so, unless you would like me to share with the baron what has just occurred between us.’
He cocked his head warily. ‘Blackmail?’ he mused. ‘I warn you, you are on unsafe ground.’
‘Rodolfo,’ she persisted, ‘grant my request and I shall drop the matter forever.’
He pursed his lips, thoughtful. ‘I shall take you at your word,’ he decided.
‘Thank you.’ He would never be more than a fool, she thought, the kind of man who would turn down the world on a platter for some intangible sense of honor.
Saraveeta came to her wearing a dress of red and a gold wrap around her shoulder and below one arm.
‘You look more and more like slave royalty every day,’ said Allura.
The girl touched her new collar, solid gold, a little defensively. ‘The baron is pleased to treat me this way. I have no say in the matter.’
‘Even when it comes to punishing me?’
‘I took my revenge already,’ said a much more subdued Saraveeta. ‘I bear you no more ill will. You may consider yourself forgiven.’
Allura was instantly suspicious. ‘What’s come over you?’ she demanded. ‘Is something going on between you and the baron?’
The girl remained expressionless, neither warm nor cold. ‘It’s nothing I could explain to someone like you, no offense. You called for me, Allura. I assume you have some purpose in mind?’
‘Do you mean am I going to plead for you to intervene with your new friend, or whatever he is, to keep me from the dungeon? No, anything but.’ Actually that was precisely her plan, but seeing the renewed fortunes of her old friend only made her the more determined to endure her own sufferings with pride. ‘I was simply going to ask you to get word to my uncle that I am doing well.’
‘And are you doing well, Allura?’
She held up her chains, jangling them. ‘Never better. This iron jewelry is ever so much more practical than gold, don’t you think?’
‘I think,’ Saraveeta replied grimly, ‘that you have been through too much since your arrival and that the baron has no business putting you in the dungeon.’
Now it was Allura’s turn to be surprised. ‘You would defend me after I had you thrown in a dungeon?’
‘We must all grow as people, Allura. If we keep on passing the same bad experiences back and forth we will never overcome hate.’ Saraveeta pulled a tiny vial from the folds of her dress. ‘This is a drug, Allura, it will dull the pain for a while and make the transition easier.’
The princess allowed Saraveeta to put it to her lips, and almost immediately she felt the effects. The room seemed more distant, her heart laboring in her chest.
‘Saraveeta…’ Allura slurred the name of her friend, ‘will you hug me now… and let me tell you… I’m sorry?’ Allura felt her consciousness slipping away; she heard voices, Saraveeta’s reassuring touch, saw faces blurred and colorful.
Two of the baron’s men carried her, one holding her legs, the other underneath her arms. She wondered if she was heavy for them with all her chains. Would they ache in the morning from the strain or did they do this sort of thing all the time? Strange the things that go through a person’s head in such bizarre circumstances.
‘It’s cold,’ Allura complained as they wound down the ancient, spiral stone steps to the threatening world below. ‘I’ll catch my death down here.’
The guards chuckled. ‘Ain’t much by the way of fancy fireplaces down here,’ said one, tall and thin like a reed.
‘Or good candlelight, neither,’ added the second, who seemed as squat as a teakettle with copper teeth.
Their shadows grew longer and more jagged, and at the bottom level the teakettle thrust her into the arms of the reed and took a burning torch from a bracket on the wall. ‘Hey, she’s too heavy for me alone,’ the reed complained.
Allura giggled, thinking it was funny to see them argue, because to her they looked like characters from some silly fairytale.
‘Let’s just get the shackles off and put her on all fours. She needs to get used to it.’
‘Good thinking.’ The reed opened the various locks, removed the iron bonds and began kicking her behind. ‘Get along, little doggie.’
The stone floor was damp and slimy, her palms slipped and she slumped on her front. ‘Whoops,’ she mumbled, wondering why her arms and legs wouldn’t work.
‘Hey, that’s the princess,’ the teakettle whistled with some alarm. ‘You want to get us impaled?’
‘She ain’t no princess down here.’ The reed kicked at her. ‘She’s dungeon meat like the rest. Anyway, what you think the baron sent her down here for?’
‘Good point,’ the kettle acknowledged. ‘The only thing I don’t get is why they sent her down drunk.’
‘They’re royalty. How should we know why they do what they do?’
‘Spoken like a true philosopher.’
Now they were both shoving their boots into her ribcage, trying to get her up to her knees. She itched beneath the iron belt, feeling the pressure of their feet.
‘Come on, dungeon trash,’ said the kettle.
‘Move it, slut,’ echoed the reed, and Allura did her best, although it finally took one of the men holding her hair like a leash to keep her straight. They continued down a long dank corridor to a heavy wooden door at the end. The stench was overpowering now and Allura nearly wretched. She could feel the drug wearing off already, and by the time the door was opened her senses were once again acute.
Inside the vaulted, stone-walled chamber she saw various tortured prisoners, all female. One, in a torn peasant dress, hung on an X-shaped cross, her ankles and wrists tightly bound. Both breasts were bared and welted with the marks of a heavy whip. Her eyes followed the newcomers but she appeared too terrified to speak.
In another corner a small woman crouched naked in a cage. She was clutching a crust of bread, green with mold, tearing off occasional crumbs with her teeth. Her short black hair was matted, and a heavy iron collar was around her throat, attached to a chain that was fixed to the wall outside the cage. She crouched on straw that stank of urine.
Another woman was bound over a barrel, her buttocks red and twitching, as if from a recent beating. She was quite large, with a head of red curls that lay disheveled in the soiled straw upon the stone floor of the cell.
‘What’s this then?’ the grizzly, bearded dungeon keeper asked as the soldiers presented the naked blonde. The shabbily dressed, claw-fingered hunchback of a man barely looked up from his work, which involved clamping nasty iron jaws onto the breasts of a naked, gagged girl. She looked to be eighteen or so, and was tied down on a wooden table.
‘No less a person than the baron’s new wife,’ said the reed, who no longer looked quite so bizarre, now that the drug had worn off. ‘And the crown princess to boot.’
‘Boil my balls in oil,’ the dungeon keeper grumbled. ‘Can’t that whelp handle his own woman problems? Can’t he see I’m up to my eyeballs down here?’
‘Apparently she’s tougher than she looks,’ said the teakettle, who now resembled nothing more than a squat guard with an overbite.
‘Is that right?’ the keeper asked Allura directly, the fingers of one hand deep in the pussy of the suffering girl, making her moan amidst her tears. ‘You a difficult little cunt to manage? Reckon so,’ he answered himself. ‘Never met a highborn bitch that wasn’t. So what’s she down for, the works?’
‘Everything but the pussy,’ the reed confirmed. ‘And you’ve got three days to do it in.’
‘No pussy, you say?’ the keeper grumbled. ‘So how am I supposed to do my job if I can’t get in her workings good and proper?’
‘Ass and mouth are open.’
‘I should hope so,’ the keeper snorted. ‘Can’t tell me to break a bitch and not have those to work with.’
‘Where you want her, then?’
‘String her up over yonder. And crank those chains for me while you’re at it. Get her swinging for me, if you don’t mind.’
The two guards dragged Allura to a set of chains hanging from the ceiling at eye level. Clasping one shut on each wrist, they worked the crank on the wall gradually lifting her to tiptoes and finally off her feet entirely.
‘A lovely sight.’ The teakettle gave her a push, letting her swing.
‘Anything else?’ asked the reed, sounding a little anxious to get out of the ominous place and back to the light of day and fresh air.
‘We’ll leave you to it then,’ said the kettle, looking equally keen to get out of the dungeon.
‘No…’ Allura cried, but to no avail as the two guards, tall and short, slammed the heavy wooden door behind them.
‘Hush,’ the keeper ordered, ‘or I’ll gag you.’
‘Please, master,’ gasped the pale young woman with the iron jaws on her breasts, ‘I’ll tell you all you want to know. I had three accomplices. One worked at the inn and the other two—’
The man brutally shoved a gag in her mouth. ‘Demon’s balls,’ he grumbled, ‘now I remember why I shut you up before. You talk too much.’
She shook her head, sobbing; begging frantically with her eyes, but the loathsome man had eyes only for her pain, and the way it made her youthful body contort and writhe.
‘Confound my desiccated old cock,’ he grumbled, and Allura watched him masturbate, his eyes bulging and his jaw tightening, using the suffering of the girl on the table as an aphrodisiac.
‘You, royal cunt,’ he growled at Allura, ‘tell me something to make me harder.’ She stared, openmouthed. ‘Do it,’ he threatened, ‘or I’ll bite these little beauties clean off.’ He had his gnarled fingers on the screws of the jaws.
‘But what shall I tell you?’ she cried. ‘I have no idea what you want to hear.’
‘Tell me what you’re willing to do to keep me from skewering your nipples with needles.’
Allura hung helplessly, clenching and unclenching her fists. ‘You cannot do that to me,’ she challenged. ‘Don’t you know who I am?’
‘Sure I do,’ he said glibly. ‘You’re a three-day fix it job. No access to the cunt. Lydia, any reason I can’t skewer nipples on a three day job?’
The woman on the cross, with the whipped breasts, gazed with blank eyes. ‘No, master.’
The man chuckled gleefully as he pulled out a long set of tongs. ‘I’m waiting, princess. Time to talk and save your little sister here.’ He lifted the device over the pussy of the tortured girl, one handle in each of his craggy hands.
‘I-I would do anything you said,’ Allura blurted. ‘Anything at all.’
‘Too vague.’ He squeezed the pincers shut on the tiny pink nub between the girl’s thighs, making her jerk against her bonds. ‘Isn’t she a work of art?’ he sighed. ‘The way her body responds to pain is quite something.’ He moved the pincers from place to place, over her labia and back to her clitoris, and with fine manipulations he won from her an emphatic spasm.
‘I would give you pleasure,’ offered the princess, presenting the first thing that came to her mind to divert the man. ‘Wouldn’t you like that?’
‘Be still my beating heart.’ The sarcasm was not lost, nor was the sudden arching of the girl’s back and the way she turned to Allura with pleading eyes.
‘Wait, I’ll do more,’ Allura blurted. ‘I’ll do anything you want me too.’
The loathsome brute seemed intrigued by this offer, dropped the tongs and shuffled over to her.
‘What’s the matter,’ he croaked as she cringed away from him, his bloodshot eyes boring into her, his breath fetid, ‘can’t handle a real man?’
‘Please, just let me go,’ she begged. ‘I can get you anything you want.’
‘Why would I want anything?’ he scoffed. ‘I’m living and working in paradise.’ The dungeon keeper pinched her nipples, alternating pain with an odd, shameful pleasure.
‘D-don’t touch me,’ she groaned.
‘Oh, giving orders, are we?’ He smacked her face, leaving an instant, blotchy handprint on her cheek. ‘You’re forgetting, I give the orders down here. Apologize to me, your better.’
‘I’m… sorry,’ she whispered.
‘Sorry, master,’ he corrected. ‘Down here I’m your master.’
‘Yes, I’m sorry master.’
‘I’m the lord of this particular manor, and you’re nothing more than a slut, the lowliest of bitches.’
‘Yes, master, I’m a slut and a lowly bitch.’
He smacked her other cheek. ‘Not lowly; lowliest.’
‘Sorry,’ she corrected pitifully. ‘Please don’t be angry with me.’
‘Oh, I don’t want to be angry,’ he mocked. ‘I lose sleep worrying that I might be too angry with you dears, but what can we do?’ He scratched his stubbly jaw exaggeratedly, as though trying to solve a problematic puzzle. ‘Aha, I know…’
The dungeon keeper limped away to a dingy corner, rummaged around for a few moments, and then returned with a fearsome, coiled whip, and Allura shivered at the ominous presence of it.
‘This whip is made for use on animals,’ he informed her, somewhat unnecessarily. ‘Are you an animal, slut?’
Allura feared a trick question. ‘I-I don’t know, master.’
‘Then I shall have to educate you, shall I not?’ he drawled, brushing the leather coils over her treacherously hard nipples. ‘A whip like this doesn’t just punish a female,’ he went on, Allura barely hearing his goading ramblings, ‘it fucks her.’
Allura accepted the handle pressed to her lips, and without being told she parted them and he pushed it deep, her jaw aching as her mouth filled with pungent leather. Frightening herself with her obedience she sucked, wanting the feel of it all the way to the back of her throat, the smell and taste of leather filling her nostrils and her mouth, mingling sickeningly with the dungeon keeper’s odor and the stench of the foreboding dungeon, and the constant pull of the cuffs on her wrists, pulling her body so vulnerably taut as she hung there.
‘How about it?’ He removed the saliva coated handle from between her lips. ‘Ready to be whipped?’
She had no way to resist; no reserves of strength, no option left except to accept. ‘Y-yes, master,’ she whispered meekly, and he cackled smugly, shuffling behind her. She was braced but not truly ready, knowing something terrible was coming, but unprepared for quite how terrible.
At first he merely ran the coils up and down her back, and expecting so much worse she was caught off guard, frightened of being lured into a false sense of security.
‘You’ve a fine backside,’ he praised lewdly. ‘That’s how a young filly ought to be, with an ass ripe for whipping.’
The odious wretch pulled back his wiry arm, and Allura heard the whip dragging back on the dirty stone floor and grimly braced herself.
Her screams filled the small chamber as the lash bit into her back and she twisted and writhed in her bonds.
The scrawny arm reared back again and delivered another cruel lash, cutting through her senses, sending her emotions soaring.
‘How many,’ he taunted. ‘How many marks for the lady today? Ten, my fair slut, or did I hear twenty?’
‘None, master, please…’
‘Nine?’ he teased. ‘Did you say nine?’
Three times more, in a lattice style across her back and buttocks, he worked his hellish strokes, welts in red and blue, the colors of torture, working the froth of sadistic ecstasy.
‘And they say a humble servant such as myself can’t enjoy his work,’ he mused, the sole audience for his own distorted humor. ‘Ah, for a mirror,’ he sighed admiring his handiwork.
‘Am I well marked, dungeon keeper?’ Allura whispered. ‘I trust you did your work well?’
‘I know my art,’ he said.
‘You must describe it to me. I want to know as well as feel… please, do not keep me waiting.’
‘Fine lines, well placed,’ he told her. ‘A slut’s marking, crisscrossing your back.’
‘Are there bruises,’ she pressed, ‘and welts? I have to know it all.’
‘They are a thing of beauty,’ he confirmed, ‘and will leave you marked a fair long while.’
‘And any who sees me,’ she followed the dark reasoning, ‘will know what happened to me. They’ll know I was here, a punished dungeon slut. What an irony this is. Do you know how many I have sent to dungeons like this? Do you think we are any different, you and me?’
‘I’d say being on one side of the whip or the other makes plenty of difference.’
‘My slaves lived in terror of me,’ she reflected, lost in her reverie. ‘They knew from the time I was a little girl that there was a coldness in my eyes.’
‘Indicating what?’ He was licking the sweat from her back, but she barely seemed to notice his lurid attention.
‘Indicating my penchant for preying on the weak.’
‘Ah,’ he chuckled, ‘as I do.’
‘Punish me for it,’ she pleaded.
‘Are you daring me or mocking me?’ The dungeon keeper released her from her bonds. ‘Whichever, you are madder than I,’ he concluded, dragging her across the floor, ‘so some time in the hold is what you need to regain your senses.’
The hold lay behind a heavy door of iron through which shone no light. There were no windows, no openings of any kind.
‘Have fun, my sweet,’ said the dungeon keeper, slamming shut the foreboding door, locking her inside, condemned to solitary darkness, and there she was left to dwell on the defeat of the baron, how she would survive this hell and emerge, stronger, his worst nightmare.
Allura spoke to no one of her time in the dungeon. The last thing she did before her release was to look the dungeon keeper in the eye and spit upon him, but it seemed a strangely endearing gesture, done with an oddly chilling smile that he seemed to appreciate.
‘Until we meet again,’ he drawled, wiping the insult from his face, touching it to his thin, colorless lips.
‘That will not be upon this earth,’ she replied.
‘In hell, then,’ he chuckled.
The dress the baron provided for Allura was of yellow silk, trimmed in white lace. It was a perfect fit, hugging her trim waist and shapely bosom, exposing her tantalizing, shadowy cleavage. She would drive the hateful man mad with desire, the prospect of which delightedly her greatly, for she was determined that he would never receive pleasure from her again.
Rodolfo arrived to escort her down to the great hall, and the look of chagrin on his face was all the encouragement she needed to damn him to his face. ‘I am surprised you have the audacity to continue breathing the air of this world, Rodolfo, being a man of no honor,’ she said. ‘Are you so afraid of death as to deny the mercy that might come from the gods as a result of a cleansing suicide?’
He attempted to hide his deep disgrace. ‘I seek to follow my orders, that is my place in life.’
‘Orders?’ she scoffed. ‘And from whom do you take them? Your evil baron or the demon seed that rules your heart?’
He took her arm, leading her downstairs. ‘Once you spoke to me of a common alliance, princess,’ he said conspiratorially. ‘I would talk of it again. The truth is I think of you every night. I dream of you.’
‘Do you love me?’
‘I do, yes.’
‘Very well, await my orders,’ she told him, smiling triumphantly within as he left her at the entrance to the great hall.
Allura held her head high as she walked across the marble floor. It had been an emotional day, a topsy-turvy day; from the depths of despair she’d been restored to her former status, at least by virtue of clothing. But where did she stand? Who was the baron to her? Did he love her, hate her, or both? Would he punish her? One battle upon another, the man seeming to back down only to attack again with even more vigor.
And now he was sitting upon his high chair, looking every bit as arrogant as the day she’d first seen him lounging on her father’s throne. She could not help but think of herself upon the floor, groveling for the apple peel with her lips.
‘Wife, come and sit beside me,’ he called, beckoning languidly with one hand, and she did so, perching uncomfortably on the seat beside his.
‘You look lovely, my dear,’ he drooled, kissing her hand, but she said nothing as she surveyed the finely dressed people gathered in the hall, men and women from the highest born houses.
‘What is the purpose of all this, Montreico?’ she eventually asked.
‘Tonight you become queen,’ he informed her. ‘It is your uncle we await. He has agreed to give us his blessing, and the nobles in turn will clear the way to granting you queen.’
‘With you naturally positioned as the power behind the throne,’ she added dryly
‘Cynicism does not suit you,’ he sniggered.
‘Evil plotting, however, seems to suit you just fine,’ she countered, becoming more focused by the minute, the greed and malevolence of the man so obvious. But soon these traits would be his own downfall.
At that moment there was a commotion, some guards opening the great doors and entering the hall, their spears aggressively ready. A single courtier was ushered in, the man dressed in purple with a feathered cap. He stopped midway between the dais and the door and cleared his throat with ceremonial, if not theatrical aplomb.
‘The Grand Duke Fortragian,’ he announced, and the grand duke, who seemed rather annoyed by the fuss, strode directly past him. The baron stood and stepped down, preparing to greet him at the end of the red carpet. Allura remained seated, by virtue of her office.
‘Fortragian,’ the baron followed his bow with a hearty clasp of the older man’s hand, ‘you do us a great honor.’
‘You gave me little choice, Montreico,’ he grumbled. ‘Really, a man of my age and position should hardly be summoned on a moment’s notice. What could possibly be so urgent? And furthermore, what of these rumors at court concerning your treatment of the princess, and your lack of piety to the gods? If this is some attempt to legitimate a false position on your part—’
‘Not at all.’ The baron looked calm enough, but Allura was sure he was bluffing. If there were some groundswell against him it would only be a matter of time before the peers acted, or the body of high priests.
Yet the dukes and barons were assembled, and many of the high priests as well, so what trick did Montreico have up his sleeve?
‘In fact, Fortragian, I am prepared to not only defend my position but to raise it to one of complete and sacred unassailability,’ the baron said confidently. ‘And to this end I offer a witness; one whose word exceeds that of all the priests, whose legitimacy surpasses that of all the nobles put together. Need I spell it out any further?’
‘I have no taste for guessing games, Montreico,’ said the old man harshly. ‘Produce your evidence and your witness now or I shall take my leave, having considered this journey a waste of time.’
‘Very well, I shall,’ the baron continued smoothly. ‘Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you the Intentionary Priestess, the Sublime Ekalianuma, Tertia the Fifteenth.’
A collective gasp was drawn from those assembled.
‘Montreico, what are you babbling about?’ demanded the grand duke.
‘It is true, she is here and she will auger on my behalf.’
‘No intentionary priestess has left the Ekalia Temple for centuries, baron. What you speak is impossible.’
‘All things are possible, grand duke,’ spoke a conceitedly melodic voice. ‘It is merely that we do not know the ingredients to call them into being.’
‘Mother Seer,’ croaked the old man, who had just seen something to widen even his jaded old eyes.
‘Be at ease,’ she touched his elbow. ‘All shall be well.’
Allura wondered what that meant, or indeed why a figure of such utter recluse and sacred value in their land would come to the castle of a mere baron and for such a completely non-religious purpose.
‘The Great Mother Seer has come to testify and give her blessing to this ascension to the throne of Princess Allura, with myself as husband, as well as protector and guardian of the realm,’ the baron announced.
So that was it. He planned to name himself de facto king. But surely the priestess would not support such a thing.
‘I shall speak what I have come to speak,’ the holy woman confirmed. ‘No more, no less.’
‘May I ask, great lady, that you turn to face the assembly?’ The baron could hardly control the gloating in his voice. ‘I believe they all need to hear this.’ The odious man was about to get everything he wanted, and without drawing a drop of blood in conflict.
The priestess, whose hooded white robe covered her slender frame entirely from neck to toe, turned and lifted her arms to the stunned assembly. Not one dared speak a word; few scarcely could believe the evidence of their own senses. It was indeed an event, a presence most unprecedented.
‘People before me, and those not before me, to all who hear these words spoken and those who do not, to those above and below, fore and aft the grave, hear this auger,’ the woman declared in the obfuscating terms of a religious leader. ‘A warning do I give unto this house and to this land. A curse do I expose.’
Now it was the baron’s turn for a shock. ‘Priestess, what is this you are saying?’ he demanded. ‘This is not as we discussed!’
It was Rodolfo who restrained him as he attempted to seize her. ‘Sir, have you lost your mind?’ he warned. ‘It is damnation to lay hands upon the priestess!’
‘Let the priestess speak,’ commanded the grand duke. ‘We shall be to the bottom of this outrage at last.’
‘She,’ the priestess wheeled about to face the seated Allura, ‘is not the true issue of the king. She is abomination and she must never sit upon the throne.’
At once swords were drawn, by the grand duke’s men and by the baron’s alike. Cries could be heard throughout the hall and sounds of protest. Allura herself put a hand to her breast as though stabbed. It was not possible. The priestess was speaking a lie, a most vile and destructive falsehood.
‘Silence!’ commanded Fortragian, recovering for the moment the mettle of his youth. ‘Any who disrupts this assembly shall perish by my own hand! Holy priestess, we humbly bid you, explain yourself.’
‘She is not the daughter of the former king,’ the priestess repeated. ‘A second time I say this, and now a third. She is imposter set in place of the true heir. Place her over your lands as queen, place upon her head the crown and you shall be cursed unto the end of time.’
‘But this cannot be!’ the baron cried. ‘Priestess, you already said to me it would be an issue of this house – my house – that would one day be king, the legitimate and rightful ruler! How can this be if I have married an imposter? Are you saying now I have bedded this whore Allura for nothing? You have deceived me!’
Fortragian’s dagger pressed to the baron’s throat. ‘Speak one more word concerning my niece, Montreico, and I swear I’ll slay you or die in the effort.’
The baron made no effort to disarm the elderly duke. His eyes were on the woman in the white robe and his fists were clenched. ‘Speak,’ he said to the priestess, his voice taking upon itself a tone Allura knew well and feared. It was the same tone that preceded her own worst punishments at his hands. ‘Make this right, great lady, while it is still possible.’
‘All I have said then and now is consistent,’ said the priestess, unperturbed. ‘An issue of this house shall be king. But you shall not be its father, nor she its mother.’
‘But I am baron,’ he snarled, pointing to the shields upon the wall. ‘My crest. My castle. My authority.’
‘This one,’ the priestess pointed to the shocked Rodolfo, ‘shall succeed you as baron. And he shall wed the true princess.’
‘What true princess?’ Fortragian cried. ‘I understand nothing of what you speak.’
‘Behold the rightful issue; the blood royale.’ The priestess raised a finger, sacred and fortuitous, and all waited with bated breath as her eyes scanned the room and she pointed, finally, to a humble slave kneeling at the side of the court, in a row of others, the property of the baron. ‘Her. She is the true daughter of the king.’
It was Allura who reacted first. ‘Saraveeta!’ she cried. ‘But how?’
‘The king long ago reversed your identities,’ the priestess began to explain, ‘upon your birth, Allura, just three months behind that of your dearest friend. Under pain of death he compelled Saraveeta’s family to accept his own daughter while he took you to be his.’
‘You are mad,’ Allura hissed. ‘My father would never do such a thing!’
‘The king was many things, but not mad. He followed the will of she who preceded me. The former priestess knew a usurper would come, one who would wed the royal heir and seek to claim the throne falsely for himself… and that man is him.’
Now it was the baron being pointed out.
‘This is babble,’ he declared furiously. ‘This woman is the princess, and she is my wife.’
‘Let go of me,’ cried Allura as Montreico seized her arm.
‘The king knew there was only one way to save his daughter and to save the kingdom,’ the priestess continued calmly, as if nothing were occurring around her. ‘And that way was to raise his daughter in obscurity.’
The bite of Montreico’s grip brought Allura’s thoughts into focus. This logic was exactly the sort her father – if he was still her father – would use. And wouldn’t this fit with what he had always told her about not loving anyone when a sovereign? But why then had he told her that she was part of him, and how could he have behaved as he did, showering love and affection on her all those years to the exclusion of his real progeny? One thing this did explain, though, was why Saraveeta always beat her in everything in their youth.
‘Lies!’ Montreico bellowed. ‘Lies! Lies!’
‘We shall enquire further,’ said the grand duke. ‘Bring both Allura and Saraveeta to a private chamber and we’ll examine them both.’
Montreico bundled aside Allura and leapt for Saraveeta. ‘There will be no enquiries,’ he growled, seizing her from behind, holding his blade to the slave’s throat. ‘Henceforth you all take my orders.’
‘Baron, what brand of insanity is this?’ demanded Fortragian.
‘Call it an insurance policy. Rodolfo, fetch me the other slut as well.’
Rodolfo, looking more than a little uncomfortable, but obeying nonetheless, snatched Allura’s wrist and manhandled her to the baron, where drawing his sword, Montreico pointed it at the blonde girl’s throat. ‘There, now I am covered both ways. Disobey me and I kill both.’
‘The gods curse you for this, Montreico!’ Fortragian barked.
‘Silence, old man,’ he snarled back. ‘Rodolfo, clap him in irons.’
The grand duke’s guards gathered around him protectively, ready to lay down their lives.
‘Best have them drop their weapons,’ warned the baron. ‘They are outnumbered and you of all people should know I am not bluffing.’
‘Do it,’ ordered the grand duke to his men. ‘Lay down your weapons.’
‘Now take them all,’ commanded the baron, once the arms were discarded on the floor. ‘Put them in the dungeon, except for the old fool. He’ll stay and watch. And seal the hall; no one escapes. Secure the carriages and horses of all assembled.’
The hall was quickly ringed with troops, and more were pouring in through the doors, and like a noose about their collective necks, swords and spears encircled the lords and ladies.
‘I shall have all weapons,’ he called out. ‘You are all my guests as before, only now you shall obey me as king. For that is what I am, as soon as this bitch of a priestess recants. Rodolfo, put these sluts upon the dais, tie them to the chairs, and give me archers. I want archers at every corner of this hall. Anyone who disrupts the proceedings here is to be eliminated at once.’
‘Montreico, you can’t do this,’ said Allura, the man’s chest against her back, but Saraveeta took her hand, clenching it tightly.
‘Let it be,’ she whispered. ‘All will be well.’
Allura turned to her, the young woman so calm. Did she know she was the true princess? Could she have known all along, at least subconsciously?
‘Shut up both of you,’ Montreico growled. ‘Don’t give me an excuse to cut out both your tongues.’
‘You’re a dead man,’ Saraveeta vowed at Montreico, as Rodolfo led them to the chairs. ‘There will be no escape for you.’
The baron nearly ran her through there and then, but held himself back, and raising his sword instead he addressed the assembly. ‘Ladies and gentlemen, you are truly fortunate tonight, for not only will you witness a coronation, you will also behold an augury taken under torture in order that we might expose the lies of this so-called priestess.’
‘This is blasphemy!’ cried Fortragian. ‘No man may harm the high priestess! You will lay a curse of blackness a thousand years deep on this land.’
‘If I torture a priestess, yes,’ agreed the madly grinning, wild-eyed baron, ‘but not if I torture a slave. Slave testimony, including auguries, must be taken under torture. This is holy law, is it not?’
‘It is, but the holy priestess is not, and cannot ever be made a slave. The very idea is blasphemy.’
All eyes watched and followed as Montreico, sword and dagger still in hand, walked deliberately towards the white-robed woman, who in all the fracas had not moved an inch. Nor did she flinch as the baron ran the side of his glinting blade lightly down her robed arm. ‘Right again, duke, but there is nothing that says a priestess cannot ask to be a slave. What do you think, great lady, could a female as high as you be induced to want to change her station so drastically? I know the legends, that your kind are the most beautiful of women and that you hide a passion deeper than any underground river of fire.’
The priestess said nothing.
‘Montreico, you must stop,’ Fortragian appealed, his voice cracking.
‘Gag him,’ ordered the baron. ‘And put him in a chair next to the sluts. I want him to have a good view of the festivities.’
The grand duke looked more distressed than Allura had ever seen him, and she feared he would have a seizure. How cruel was the baron, insane with power and utterly without regard for human life? And it seemed he held all the cards, too, the high priestess, the duke, and the true princess – whichever of them that might be – all in his clutches.
‘I’ll protect you,’ whispered Rodolfo as he tied the old man next to her.
‘You’ve done a great job so far,’ Allura could not help but observe.
‘Priestess,’ Montreico declared for the benefit of all, ‘before we begin I give you this opportunity to spare yourself. Declare yourself my slave now, openly, and I promise you will not face the tortures I have planned.’ The baron was met with stubborn silence. ‘Again,’ he said, ‘I ask you to capitulate. Priestess though you may be, you are a woman and your body will betray you. You bring this upon yourself,’ he warned, but the priestess remained as she was. ‘Very well, this is on your head.’
Dropping his weapons to the floor he seized the hood of her robe, and tugging it down he tore at her clothes, the assault combining with a crack of lightning that filled the hall. Allura could feel the tearing inside her, and then there was an ominous, deafening rumble of thunder, the very hall seeming to shake with its ferocity. Allura clutched the arms of the chair for fear of being shaken from it, staring at the light pouring from within the shredded robe of the priestess, as if the baron had torn open a sack of iridescent grain, or unleashed a whelming flood of moon water. People were screaming, falling to the floor. She turned her head from the overabundance of the terrible light and it was then she saw Saraveeta gazing at it, with that combination of infinite fascination and holy knowing belonging to a small child.
Who was Saraveeta, or what was she? Even a princess, if that’s what she was, ought to be shocked by what was happening.
‘By the arms of Zuranos,’ shouted a man, beholding the glaring light, ‘it’s an apparition!’
‘The angel of death!’ cried a woman.
‘We’re doomed,’ moaned another, as Allura looked back to the priestess. The robe was liquid on the floor and something stood there – something shimmering. She thought she saw a snake and then a terrible black skeleton covered in dust. She felt the ash of it on her tongue; it was so real. But then in the blink of an eye it all changed again.
‘There, you see!’ called the baron in triumph, his underlying fear more than a little evident. ‘This is what she is underneath. All else you saw was sorcerer’s tricks. This is real.’
Before them stood a young woman with luxuriant red hair and the body of a goddess. She was splendidly naked, a jewel in her belly button. Her skin was creamy white and smooth, and begged to be touched.
‘A naked female, nothing more,’ said the baron. ‘And we know what to do with one of them, don’t we boys?’
The guards remained motionless and silent. There was not one in the chamber who did not rest uneasy with what Montreico was doing.
‘What, are you still afraid?’ he scoffed. ‘Cowards. Behold how a real man deals with such a situation.’ Retrieving his sword he passed it below her ear, lifting her lustrous red hair. ‘You and I are going to be well acquainted, priestess.’
The woman looked in his eyes, the pale blue of her own reflecting the darkness of his.
‘Remove your sandals,’ commanded the baron, and with great poise she obeyed. ‘Now you are barefoot before me,’ he observed, ‘and naked. My power over you is absolute.’
‘So it would seem,’ said the woman, her voice soft and seductive, and Allura felt a stirring in her tummy; the woman oozed sex and the thought of this evil man dominating her was driving her wild.
‘Behold,’ the baron pointed out, ‘she has obeyed me; she has not disputed my power.’
‘But you are armed,’ the priestess observed. ‘Do you need a sword to dominate me?’
‘Only this one,’ he leered, crudely clutching his crotch.
‘Am I to be fucked, then?’ she asked, such a blunt word clashing with her demure beauty, and then she inclined her head elegantly to lick the flat of his sword, melting him with a smoldering stare as she caressed the blade with her tongue. For a woman utterly distant a moment before she had become surprisingly passionate, and the baron seemed uneasy by her brazenness.
‘Enough of that,’ he snapped. ‘You will kneel before me, you treacherous bitch.’
The priestess lowered herself with flawless grace, and unbidden her face lowered to the baron’s boots, where she bestowed kisses to the leather footwear.
‘You were not ordered to do that,’ said he peevishly.
‘Force of habit,’ she said, looking up, her sultry expression enough to stiffen the cock of any man. ‘This is how I serve my lord.’
‘What lord?’ he snapped. ‘You said you’re a virgin.’
‘Not a human lord, but my divine lord, Zuranos.’
‘What are you talking about, woman?’
‘The Heavenly Father Zuranos possesses me. I am consecrated to him. He owns me and takes from me all forms of service.’
‘But the gods have no bodies.’
‘They can take form. Avatars, Zuranos’ favorite, is that of the man-bull. In this guise I serve him often.’
The baron was frowning. ‘The gods are legends,’ he said. ‘They are ideas, stories.’ Clearly the man was banking on the idea, given his current acts of blasphemy.
‘Not to his slave girls, at least; for us he is very real.’
‘Stop that. I gave no such instructions.’
The priestess was kneeling, opening his breeches. ‘You were correct,’ she said, ignoring his objections. ‘I do respond to mastery. To Zuranos I am a mere pet. I whimper at his feet and beg his favor. When he attaches his leash to my throat I am often so overcome I must seek his immediate permission so as to release the pent-up orgasm. But now I am to be yours, for you are king and more wise than any – mortal or immortal.’
Sweat was collecting on the baron’s forehead, and for the first time he seemed to be realizing the trouble he had let himself in for. ‘You’re lying,’ he snapped. ‘No god has ever laid a hand on you because they don’t exist. Only humans, and they are deceitful and amorous enough to fill all the storybooks and journals of the world.’
‘Zuranos likes to whip my breasts with his tongue,’ she presented her porcelain-white orbs, capped with cherry nipples. ‘Would you like to try? His is three feet long and burns like sulfur – when he comes to me as a snake, that is. As a bull-man it takes three of my acolytes to lick his balls, and the other priestesses serve him, but I alone bear his wrath. When he appears to us, wounded in pride or smarting from some battle with his siblings, it is I who must crawl to him, naked on my belly. He will whip me to within an inch of my life and then restore me so he can begin all over.’
‘Fortragian,’ the baron wheeled on him, ‘do you hear these words? Now who is blaspheming? This bitch speaks of abominations between her and the father of heaven.’
‘It is no abomination to serve the gods; their pleasure is supreme, that of Zuranos above all others,’ she declared.
‘But what of Hechira, Mother of the Gods?’ Asked Saraveeta, on her feet, her face lit as if she already knew the answer.
‘Ah, yes,’ the priestess nodded approvingly as she opened the baron’s breeches and took out his stiff cock, ‘good question. The wife of Zuranos, whose jealousies for her wayward husband fuel the fires of the sun itself – yes, she comes to us as well. She rips the clothes from my body as this one did and she sniffs me over. Her nostrils smell through the repairs he does upon me. Hechira knows his odor, the scent of leather and of torture.
‘Whenever she catches me out as her husband’s victim I am attacked all over by her. She would tear me limb from limb and has done so already more than once. I’d have stayed that way if not for Zuranos’ healing interventions. Fortunately he will not let me die, not until my replacement is chosen. Till then I remain his sex toy, ever at the ready to submit.’
Saraveeta was panting. ‘Can’t you feel it? Can’t you taste it in the air? It’s like breathing pure sex!’
Allura could feel very little, but when Saraveeta pulled her to her feet and gave her a deep kiss she began to understand a little. For whatever reason this high priestess was tapping into the libido of the females in the room. Combining them, making of them an offering to the great stone idol of the temple, the erect penis of Zuranos.
Allura moaned and pushed hard against her lover. All around the hall women attacked their male escorts or any others they could find.
‘Enough!’ shouted the baron. ‘I will tolerate no more. Rodolfo, bring those two princess whores,’ he pointed at Allura and Saraveeta, ‘and follow me to the dungeon. It’s time we taught this little priestess here a real lesson.’
‘Should we not leave them to the dungeon keeper?’ asked Rodolfo, with some trepidation.
‘No, you sniveling worm, we’ll handle these bitches ourselves, the old-fashioned way. That is unless you’re too frightened of their female witchcraft?’
‘No sir,’ said he, ‘I have no fear.’
The baron grabbed the red locks of the priestess and hauled her to her feet. ‘We shall see, Rodolfo, all too soon, who is a true man and who is not.’
Allura’s sense of foreboding was acute, the threat of the dungeon filling her with dread.
The three females were roughly manhandled below and taken directly to the dungeon keeper’s macabre cell, where he kept his favorite implements. The old man was absent for the moment, so the baron ordered the priestess hung immediately from the shackles in the center of the gloomy room.
A few minutes later the dungeon keeper arrived and more torches were lit. He made a thorough examination of his new resident, saying not a word to Montreico until he was done. ‘Well you’ve let me in for it this time, haven’t you?’ he grumbled.
‘Relax, you’ve nothing to fear,’ Montreico drawled. ‘This is just another little bitch for us to beat into submission.’
‘Ever seen the likes of this before?’ the wizened man croaked hoarsely, and the baron approached the body of the hanging female; that splendid pale creature with flaming red hair, a priestess who until yesterday had never been outside the temple in her entire life, but the fact that she was now suspended on tiptoes, wrists in shackles in the dungeon of a baron, seemed to mark little distress in her countenance.
Holding the torch close to her bottom, the baron examined the tiny mark between the cleft of her cheeks. Allura, who knelt nearby in the filthy straw along with Saraveeta, had a perfectly clear view. It was a circle, with three wings projecting from the center – the mark of the sky god, the father of the heavens. ‘It’s a tattoo, so what?’ he challenged.
‘No tattoo artist I know can do this.’ The keeper smacked her buttocks, instantly turning the skin red, then the mark turned a bright gold, reflecting as though the woman had some light inside her shining through.
‘Don’t bother me with trifles,’ the baron said impatiently. ‘Just give me the whip.’
‘Baron, you are about to whip the property of a god,’ the keeper warned, but the baron snatched the long whip that Allura knew so well from the man’s clawed fingers. ‘She is in my dungeon, which makes her my property. And you two,’ he pointed to Allura and Saraveeta, ‘you are next, so take heed.’
The baron moved behind the priestess and unfurled the threatening whip. He seemed as skilled with it as the dungeon keeper, if not more so, and leaning his body into the swing the first slash landed cleanly, the flawless flesh of the priestess bruising and reddening at once, like an angry claw had torn down her back.
‘Now you will tell the truth,’ declared Montreico as he lashed her over and over, her ass and back and thighs. ‘You are nothing, do you hear me? A whipped slave is all you are, so confess it!’
The woman’s breathing had grown ragged and tight and she rolled back her head, her expression one of concentration, and she looked at Allura as if she were going into some kind of trance.
‘Confess, damn you!’ he roared, but no amount of whipping seemed to matter.
‘This will not work!’ shouted the dungeon keeper. ‘With every lash you only beg greater disaster to befall us all!’
‘I will not be questioned. I will not be disobeyed.’ The baron tossed the whip aside. ‘I will find another way.’
Releasing the woman from her bonds he laid her on her back. ‘Let’s see if we can do something about this virginity, shall we?’
She had no strength to resist him, and pulling apart her legs he penetrated her brutally with one shunt of his hips. He hadn’t even bothered to remove his breeches.
‘She’s good and wet,’ he reported, ‘just like any other slut. There’s your horrible witch,’ he mocked the others. ‘I’ll bet she’s fucked a dozen priests and temple servants if she’s fucked one. Haven’t you? Go on; keep your eyes closed, little bitch. Dream of your fake Zuranos and his huge balls and three foot tongue.’
‘Father of heaven,’ the dungeon keeper fell to his knees, ‘forgive him. He knows not what he says. He is an ignorant, dunderheaded whelp, and has been so all his life. Would that my mother and I had fed him to the wolves as the auger advised.’
‘Shut up, father,’ snarled the baron, ‘or I shall have you impaled.’
‘So you are the true baron!’ Allura exclaimed to the twisted old man.
‘I was, but I got tired of all the responsibility,’ he answered. ‘I like it much better down here. Unfortunately I didn’t have anyone else to turn things over to but this incompetent son of mine.’
‘Go to the demons, all of you,’ grunted Montreico as he spilt his seed into the priestess’ womb, his buttocks clenched and quivering.
The priestess was lying inert. She hadn’t opened her eyes the whole time and Allura was scared she was dead. Apparently Montreico was too, because he was trying to rouse her.
‘Look at me, bitch, acknowledge your new master.’
The priestess stirred slightly and her eyes opened, as she reached for the baron’s throat. Allura thought the grasp would be feeble, but as she squeezed Montreico began to gasp for air. ‘No,’ the priestess countered, employing a voice not her own, ‘you look at me.’
Her eyes were red as fire, the voice a low growl, sharpened by raw cruelty. Her body shimmered and Allura saw the priestess now as she had in the great hall when first the baron stripped her naked. Montreico was trying to pull himself free but she was holding him fast. Cries of distress came from the back of his throat, scarcely human, indecipherable in their fear and panic. Allura shielded her eyes against the visions, the accumulated pain being unleashed upon the man; the compounded suffering that had taken place in the dungeon, year after year, a huge psychic ball that the baron must now swallow.
Allura almost felt pity for him. He had his good side, and she had felt strongly for him at one time. But there were lines no mortal was allowed to cross. The shuddering of his body continued. Arcs of blue light passed between his cock and her invaded sex. He was being sucked dry of life, flames devouring his flesh. When at last the light faded there was nothing left upon the body of the priestess but shadowy wafts of smoke. Baron Montreico was no more.
‘My son,’ cried the dungeon keeper, ‘where has he gone?’
‘Where he belongs,’ said Saraveeta, rising to her feet.
Allura ran to the priestess. The woman lay as if dead, her wrists twisted over her head, her legs still wide like a rag doll.
‘There is nothing you can do for her, Allura; there is nothing any of you can do,’ said Saraveeta.
Allura watched as her old friend knelt over the inert redhead. Gently she caressed the priestess’ cheek and brushed the hair from her face. ‘Isn’t she lovely?’ Saraveeta whispered.
‘Yes,’ agreed Allura.
‘One last kiss,’ declared Saraveeta, ‘and it will be done.’
‘What will be done?’ demanded Allura, tired of not knowing. ‘What is happening? Are you really the princess? Have the gods spoken this to you?’
‘The gods speak to all of us, Allura, if we listen.’
‘I hear nothing. I never have.’
‘It’s all right, neither did I until I first laid eyes upon this dear woman. Now it all makes sense.’
‘What does? Explain, Saraveeta.’
‘Later. First the kiss; the kiss of sweet sleep, long deserved.’
‘Yes,’ murmured the red-haired priestess, her ruby lips dry and cracked.
Saraveeta wet her own and leaned closer, her sleek dark hair falling over the other female’s face and mixing with her hair of copper. The touch of their lips was so sweet and desire filled, Allura felt the pull in her own body, their passion radiating outward, wiping over the princess like a warm wave, a blanket to cover her consciousness, a dream in physical form, wanting inside her, between her thighs and in her mind to bestow a gift unspeakable.
She could hardly keep her eyes open, and the next thing she knew Saraveeta was above her, lifting her into her arms. ‘The priestess,’ Allura whispered.
‘She is dead,’ smiled Saraveeta, ‘and I have taken her place.’
A thousand questions raced through Allura’s mind, but she was in no position to ask even one. ‘Hold me,’ she said to her friend. ‘Hold me tight.’
The Grand Duke Fortragian entered the hall to the sound of trumpets. It was much as the time before save that the old baron was now gone. In his place, to greet him, was the former baron, the onetime keeper of the dungeon, muchly scrubbed and richly garbed, though still unshaven.
‘Baron Alexo,’ the grand duke clasped his hand, the grip of both men strong and vigorous, ‘we had assumed you dead.’
‘I preferred it that way; as you know the pressures of nobility can become a bit overwhelming at times.’
‘Of course.’ He turned to Allura who was dressed in white, her hair coiled upon her head. She wore the crown of a princess, though more than likely she would be yielding it in just a few moments. ‘My niece, you are more lovely than ever.’
‘Thank you, uncle.’ She curtsied humbly, mindful that she was already more slave than free.
‘The great lady shall attend us presently?’ the grand duke asked. They referred, of course, not to the old priestess but to the new one, she who had been Saraveeta, mere mortal, mere slave.
‘Indeed.’ The old baron frowned. ‘As you know, we are here by her command. I myself had no wish to leave my dark home.’
‘Yes, Alexo, I do marvel at that, how a man can grow accustomed to the absence of light, to the dampness and to the perpetual misery.’
‘It was at times a bit bothersome,’ he confessed, ‘but where else than in a dungeon – that most delicious place of captivity and isolation – can one exercise such full and perfect power over a female? They are such marvelous creatures to be explored, my friend, so resilient and strong and yet so vulnerable. One may break them again and again finding ever lower levels of degradation. Their suffering redeemed me. I was blessed to feel and know their pain, and to bathe in their tears. This one’s included.’
Allura lowered her eyes at the man’s reference to her three days in his charge. It shamed her to hear such talk in front of her uncle, but the say was no longer hers. It had already been established that she was not the real princess. The augers had been taken three times, each time pointing to Saraveeta. On top of this a slave had been found, a servant of Saraveeta’s family from many years ago who had confirmed the entire story, down to the last detail.
The queen had died giving birth to Saraveeta. The switch was made in dead of night, with much weeping on the part of Allura’s natural parents, but under pain of sword they were forbidden to reveal the secret to anyone. Over the years they came to love their new child just as well, though it pained them no end to see Saraveeta so mistreated by the false princess. This was, Allura suspected, in part the reason they had left the kingdom, leaving behind no inheritance.
Which meant that Allura had nothing for her legacy but her own crime of harlotry – harlotry to a man who could no longer redeem her. Slavery was her only option, and being a slut, according to her uncle – who continued to call her niece only out of kindness – had cost her the right to an honorable death, the other possible sentence. Already the former princess would have been on some auction block, save that Saraveeta had ordered her appearance in this place, in the company of the ladies and lords of the realm.
‘Yes, I understand; Montreico sentenced her to time in the dungeon,’ said the grand duke, as though she were not in the room.
‘Though my miserable killjoy of a son sent her down with the iron belt,’ the old man lamented. ‘Still, we had fun, didn’t we?’
Allura nodded, unable to speak.
‘When this is over,’ the old baron whispered in her ear, ‘I am going to feed my cock deep into your mouth.’
She felt the familiar flood between her legs, even as the grand duke excused himself to go and speak with another of his old friends. ‘I fear he heard you,’ lamented Allura.
The baron pinched her buttock, with all the practiced cruelty of a veteran torturer. ‘What of it? You won’t have any secrets for long. And don’t think you’ll hide that pretty cunt this time. I intend to thoroughly invade it.’
She tried to squirm away from the grip of the man, a full two inches shorter than her and thinner by twenty pounds. Where was her power now, her ability to egg him on and outdo his sadism with her own masochism? ‘Please, baron, not here.’
‘It’s harder up here, isn’t it? When you have a name and station.’ He grabbed a nipple through her dress. ‘Hard when people know who you are. Downstairs a different part of us takes over. The beast part, but it links to something higher, too, doesn’t it? That’s what makes us humans the go betweens, halfway between animal and god.’
Allura winced. With desperate eyes she saw that all were seeing and pretending not to, her uncle included. Her rational mind told her all this must happen. She would be enslaved, for all to see, but still a part of her clung to her pride.
‘I want to hear you beg, Allura. Tell me you want it. Beg me to fuck you, right here on the floor.’
‘I… I do,’ she cried. ‘I beg to be fucked on the floor.’
He grinned, the years falling from his face. ‘And you will be… slave.’
Allura’s spine chilled at the words. Was he serious? Her discomfort made the man grin all the more. ‘And soon,’ he added for emphasis. ‘Very soon.’
The image of herself so subjugated and violated in front of all these highborn people would stick in her brain, flooding her consciousness even as the arrival of Saraveeta was announced. That she was the new intentionary priestess, the great mother seer, could not be argued by her entrance. She wore a gown of silver that made her face glow. Her hair was dressed up like the wings of a perfect raven born to fly only in the pure skies of the gods. Her eyes were lit with a power, far more than human.
There was no explaining the manner of her having been chosen for the job. It may have been ordained from the start of time or more recently engineered by the gods. The old high priestess had come here to save the kingdom from Montreico, perhaps knowing she would die in the process. Then again, maybe it was a kind of suicide or natural death intended to allow Saraveeta to take her place at this exact moment in time. To that end, Montreico himself may have been a pawn all along. The ways of the gods were truly mysterious, as were the ways and identities of their servants.
‘She is breathtaking,’ breathed Fortragian.
‘Let’s hope she’s less explosive than the last one,’ muttered the baron.
Fortragian and the other men bowed deeply at her approach, making the holy sign of obeisance upon their chests. Allura, as a slave, knelt at her feet, though this woman had been her bedmate only a few hours before, showing her such mutual delight as she had never thought possible between two human beings.
‘Baron, I thank you for your hospitality, your house is indeed grand,’ said the priestess, as though she had not already been living here with her former mistress.
‘And unfortunately you are making me see far more of it than I wish,’ he replied.
The priestess smiled, not at all put off by his impudence. ‘I assure you that was a temporary arrangement. We shall have you below ground before you know it.’
‘I could take that two ways, priestess.’
She laughed, not the laugh of Saraveeta of old, but a deep, rich timbre. She was clearly changing, minute by minute now. ‘You are an honest man, Alexo, and you have no fear within you. Do you know how rare that is? You are what the gods treasure most, above silver and even gold.’
‘I doubt old Zuranos would put anything above his wenches, but I appreciate the sentiment.’
‘Baron, may I be allowed to take the high place upon the dais?’ she enquired.
‘Be my guest,’ he bowed.
The priestess inclined her head, thanked him and strode to the place Montreico had so zealously, even insanely guarded.
‘I thank all of you,’ she said when comfortably seated. ‘You are all most gracious. I do apologize for the rather sensational nature of recent events, and for the suspense you must feel today. I promise all will make sense quickly. First, know that indeed I am the daughter of the king, hidden at birth to protect my life, the king acting under divine orders. There were those at the time who sought the life of the future priestess, hoping to end our line, but those persons long ago failed. So too has a more recent conspirator who hoped to use the person of the princess for his own ends.
‘This is all to great good, however, as a result of hiding me and switching me with another baby, there have arisen great confusions not easily remedied. Allura, my oldest and dearest friend, will you step forward.’
Allura rose to present herself before the priestess.
‘Allura, once princess and always my friend, you have my deepest sympathies for all that has befallen you. Had I known before I would have intervened for you. But I myself did not know who I was until the former priestess came and spoke to us in this very room. One look at her and I knew my true origins. Not only as a royal person, but as a future priestess myself. It became clear to me she was of my kind and that for whatever reason the gods had placed the next in line to her office in the birthing womb of a queen, destined to die in childbirth. The next high priestess after me may be a peasant, even a whore. We cannot say. The gods use us as they will, and the gods are always to be praised and feared. Still, as a mortal myself, Allura, I feel deeply for you.
‘More than this, I am pledged to rescue your station and restore to you what has been taken away. Grand Duke Fortragian, will you approach me?’
The man did so, offering a stiff military bow.
‘First to you, grand duke, I bring the thanks of the gods for the honorable, diligent and selfless exercise of office you have shown. The spirits of your ancestors are well pleased.’
He bowed again, clicking his heels crisply. ‘May I both live and die in service, great lady.’
‘Indeed, your place in the annals is assured and well deserved. In fact, I am of a mind to expand your station further and make you king.’
The duke’s face turned ashen. ‘But priestess, begging all forgiveness, I have no wish for this, nor am I equipped. I am far too old and I have no heirs.’
‘But you could marry, could you not? Perhaps to this young woman here, whom we now know is no blood of yours or the king’s. In this way the once Princess Allura will be what she should be: Queen Allura.’
‘But priestess,’ cried the duke, ‘she has been as a niece, even a daughter to me, it would never seem right to my eyes.’
‘But it is the will of the gods. It fulfills the prophecy left by the former priestess. An issue of this house is to be king. That issue will be the child of you and the baroness Allura.’
Allura knelt once more and put her forehead to the floor. ‘Great lady, my uncle is right, this cannot be moral,’ she protested, the sudden shock making her bold.
Saraveeta stood. ‘That which is moral is what the gods decree. Frankly, I had expected better of you all. Show a little more gratitude, if you please. You may consider this interview at an end. Baron Alexo, will you prepare my carriage. I will leave at once. Feel free to crawl back into any hole you wish after that. You have my full blessing.’
The priestess walked imperiously past him, not waiting for an answer as she exited the chamber.
Allura and Fortragian looked white as ghosts, but Alexo started to chuckle. ‘Maybe things aren’t so boring up here in the sunlight after all, eh? Sorry about not being able to fuck you, Allura, but it seems you’ve slipped the noose of slavery yet again. We’ll have to take a rain check. And Fortragian, all I can tell you is best find some eel root to keep that dick of yours hard – you’re going to need it to produce that litter of fine strapping sons.’
‘This can’t be,’ moaned Allura.
‘The gods are cruel.’ Fortragian clenched his fists. ‘The gods do as they will.’
‘No,’ Allura vowed, ‘this can’t be and I won’t let it.’
‘Find a way to stop it,’ snorted Alexo. ‘You’d as easily rope a cloud or piss yourself an ocean.’
The words hit Allura like a bolt of lightning. It was true; she could not stop it. But there was one who could. It was simple, beautiful, almost absurdly easy. ‘Thank you, yes,’ she replied, ‘I will.’
And with that she was running. Running from the audience hall of the baron to the small temple of stone wherein she’d been married; the temple wherein she’d lost her virginity. It was there she would pray and seek the direct intervention of Zuranos himself.
For if indeed the gods were the highest moral law as the new priestess said, then couldn’t they remake it as they willed? Especially if they had a good reason. And in Zuranos’ case that reason could and would be sex.
Bolting the door behind her, removing her shoes, she faced the altar. She must steel herself, step by step in her approach, and with each press of her bare feet upon the marble she uttered a fresh prayer.
‘Hear me, great lord. Accept me. Do not turn me away, for I am yours and yours alone.’
Reaching the great stone slab she fell to her knees. For a long time she felt and heard nothing. It had always been this way for her. She had often wondered at temple services, watching others, if they had real experiences or if they merely pretended for the sake of being pious. She was wasting her time, surely, just as she had as a child when she’d come to pray for some particular thing or other she wanted.
‘I never ignored your prayers. It is simply that they were unworthy. You prayed for no one but yourself and you’d already given more than you needed.’
Allura gasped. ‘Who said that?’
‘Who do you think?’
She leaped to her feet and looked about. She saw no one. ‘Is it one of the priests?’
The voice laughed. ‘I have no need of those old fools to speak for me. I prefer my priestesses. Ever so much more delicious to possess, don’t you think?’
She knew now who this was, though it did not seem possible, not in reality. ‘Father Zuranos, you are real.’
‘Am I?’ The god sounded amused. ‘It is good to know this. I’m ever so grateful to hear it from the lips of such a fair maiden.’
‘I meant no disrespect.’
‘Actually it was blasphemy, but don’t worry. I rather enjoy hearing my name in vain, contrary to what the priests say about me. Makes me feel all the more alive. You know really, your baron was more a man after my own heart than any of my so-called holy men.’
‘Lord, I do not seek to understand your ways, only to make my entreaty. My cause is just.’
‘By the blade of Sythos,’ he boomed, his voice suddenly taking on the timbre of a thunderstorm. ‘And what do you know of justice, you whelp of a girl?’
Allura fell instinctively to her knees, cowering. The room was filled with light and there appeared before her a silver-bearded man in a loincloth, his body robust and strong, like a squire of fifty who is accustomed to hard labor. He wore about his head a laurel wreath, one of his traditional symbols of power. Allura was overwhelmed at the sight of him; he was so beautiful and utterly desirable as a man. At the same time she was filled with terror, for this was the king of the gods, the spinner of planets. In his eyes she could see it all, the depthless blue of the sea, the faraway light of the bluest star.
‘Now this is a fine form.’ He flexed his biceps as though the body were a mere suit he was trying on. ‘Rather too long since I’ve used it, I think.’
Zuranos took a step forward, relishing every little motion, and as he approached Allura she shuffled back on her knees.
‘Child,’ he chided, ‘why do you fear me? Am I not the father of you and all your kind? Do I not love you all?’
Allura thought of what the priestess had said about him taking the form of a bull-man, or a snake with a three-foot tongue for whipping. ‘Yes, Lord Zuranos, we are grateful to you and we praise your holy name.’
‘Nonsense,’ he scoffed. ‘You are a race of hypocrites and opportunists. I made you in my own image, I should know. And don’t think for a minute I’m pleased by flattery. It bores me to tears.’
‘It seems that the priests have misled us,’ Allura noted.
‘That’s their job. Without a bit of guilt and fear all would do as they pleased and there’d be no end to the messes I’d have to fix.’ He lifted her chin between thumb and forefinger, his touch warming her belly and tickling her nipples instantly. ‘My, but you are a little beauty, aren’t you? It never fails to amaze me how you creatures are put together, so sweetly, and so differently from your male counterparts.’
His aura was more than she could bear, and her original purpose now mixed with new needs; complicated, female needs. ‘I seek to please you, Lord Zuranos.’
He arched a brow, sending a dark chill down her spine. ‘Indeed? Brave words, don’t you think?’
It was true. Allura had no idea what she was saying, and her only hope was to plead for mercy. ‘Lord Zuranos, I come on behalf of my kingdom… the priestess has decreed to us that—’
‘I know all about that.’ He put a finger to her lips. ‘You have been ordained to sire a child by Fortragian, to take him as husband, yet you refuse, thereby defying my will.’
The finger stilled her lips. It was as an instrument of discipline which, well wielded, seemed capable of bringing her much agony. Desperately she beheld him, continuing her plea with eyes alone.
‘Fear not, little one, I care not if you thwart me, or hate me even. The question is what will you bargain with?’ The divine finger circled her lips, making her draw short breaths. The tingle and the heat were making her limbs heavy with desire, and at his merest utterance she would open herself to him fully.
‘My lord I offer myself,’ she rasped, the words pouring from her like wine into a glass.
He toyed with her golden locks. ‘If you mean your body, it is not yours to give. I am your creator. I possess you as I will.’
He brushed the rim of her ear, sending spasms all the way down to the lips of her sex. ‘Yes…’ she shuddered, ‘you possess.’
‘You know, my beauty, that if I enter you, you will be changed.’
‘I understand,’ she breathed.
‘No you do not, but you will learn.’
‘Yes, my lord.’
‘It is not only your body but your mind I will take.’
She did not doubt it. She did not doubt he would delve deep into her subconscious, even into her dreams.
‘Close your eyes, sweet Allura. Close them tight.’ With both hands clasping hers, the god drew her to her feet. His size dwarfed her, as did his bodily power. Beckoning her onto tiptoes he bestowed a kiss, hot as a brand, full and deep, reworking already her identity to his mold.
She did not dare open her eyes against his will. As she stood, encircled in his embrace – a grip strong enough to hold the earth together or shatter a mountain – she felt the overwhelming tenderness of a flower petal, beckoning her into deepest sleep. Waking sleep, standing sleep, something ever so much deeper than anything manageable by mortals on their own.
The kiss seemed to last a thousand years. She was flying, watching her own body below as she soared overhead. The god was a bird, holding her in its clutches, ferrying her across the river dividing the land of men and that of gods. It was a sky river as well as a watery one, and they climbed and climbed and climbed until at last they were at the top of creation.
It was there that the bird let go of her and sent her crashing down through the miles of sky, down through the layers of reality. Down to her death.
‘Careful, don’t damage it; that’d be the fourth today,’ grumbled an accented voice, something worthy of a lower class miner or ditch digger.
‘Well there wouldn’t be that many damaged if you’d leave me to my business,’ complained a second voice.
Allura realized what these men were doing was extracting souls from a river, and hers was the one they were discussing. A net of some kind bore up underneath her – though she had no physical form – and she was lifted to the surface. The water was brackish, and even without a nose she knew it stank.
‘Well, have you gotten it yet?’ called a new voice, impatiently, and Allura’s bare soul cringed to recognize it as Baron Montreico.
‘Yes, master, we’ve got it right here.’
‘Fetch it, then, and we’ll fit it with a body.’
She didn’t exactly feel it when they moved her, although she was aware of being on dry land.
‘We’ve got some nice ones today, guv’nor,’ quipped yet another new voice. ‘Nice and newly patched together.’
‘I want a prostitute,’ he said. ‘A big breasted slut with a slack cunt; we’ll humiliate her from the get go.’
‘I’ve just the ticket,’ he chortled. ‘Right this way.’
The voices grew a bit garbled, but she heard the baron say, ‘No, don’t bother with the stitching, just stuff it in.’
And right away Allura could open eyes again and grip her chest, which was indeed mammoth, with huge breasts, the nipples pierced with gold rings. She had a slight swell to her belly and her pussy was much looser, no doubt due to all the men who’d been inside her. Licking her lips she felt heavy paint upon them. Whoever this was, she’d died with her make-up on.
‘How fetching you look, my bride.’
Allura turned her new head and saw the baron. He was much himself, save for the burns across his face and chest from his deathly encounter with the goddess.
‘We saw you vaporized,’ she said, though the point seemed moot under the circumstances.
‘Bodies are preserved here from the exact moment of death, notwithstanding subsequent decay or destruction. Ordinarily people take back their own, but I thought it would be amusing to offer you a little change.’
Allura looked into the mirror he was holding. She was looking at a prematurely aged tramp, a well fucked young bitch who had likely died in some back alley of what looked to be asphyxiation, judging by the circles around her throat. ‘I am not supposed to be here.’ She touched her throat, feeling the deep red grooves.
‘Nobody ever is, sweetheart, but you get used to it. And cheer up, at least now we’ll have each other.’ He handed her a collar, affixed to a leash. ‘Put this on and we’ll get you acquainted with your new home.’
She put the leather circle around her throat, the situation still strangely surreal. ‘Am I dreaming?’ she wondered aloud.
‘Only if you want to consider the whole of your life a dream.’ Montreico yanked the leash. ‘Come, bitch, let’s take you for a walk.’
Allura stumbled behind, along the raised wooden dock on which stood many naked people, or rather unoccupied bodies. At the bottom of the steps was a thin layer of warm mud.
She took a second to look up. The air was reddish brown and had a distinct odor of sulfur. The sun hung low in the sky, but it was black in color and gave off no light. Whatever it was illuminating this strange landscape of distant craggy mountains, blood-red clouds and greeny-blue mud, it was coming from somewhere else.
He continued pulling her along. It was foggy now and soon the mud opened into a road with grass on either side, thick and purple. The trenched roadway, barely a yard wide, was ankle deep with a disgusting black substance and Allura had no idea why anyone would use it as opposed to the grass.
‘You’ll go on all fours from this point on.’ The baron yanked down on the leash and Allura collapsed on hands and knees. The mud squished between her fingers and toes. From down here it was more green than black, and she could detect no odor.
‘How does it feel, princess, being led like a dog in hell? That’s what you are, you know, a slut dog for all eternity. And I get to watch over you. Once a day I’ll fuck you and make you rue the day you were ever conceived – alive or dead.’
‘Baron, I did nothing to deserve hell,’ she lamented, scurrying as best she could.
‘Not true. You defied the god. Anyway, what does it matter? We all come here. The lot of us humans. It’s a closely guarded secret, as you can imagine.’
The road led them through a town, simple wooden homes on either side, the unusual thing being that the occupants were being attacked, each within their own walls by horned, goat-like creatures with sharp teeth.
The baron stopped them in front of a barn-like structure. ‘Here we are,’ he said. ‘This is where it will happen every day, for all eternity. To begin with you must try to escape.’
‘Montreico,’ she implored, ‘I’ve no wish to play your games.’
The baron pulled a leather riding crop from his belt. ‘You’ve no choice, my dear. Now escape, damn you.’
He lashed out with the whip, slicing her back. Allura cowered but he kept closing in, so at last she did as he’d told her and rose to her feet, and she was halfway down the street when the large dog-like animal downed her. It pinned her to her back and continued to stare down at her, large globs of drool dribbling onto her face and breasts.
‘This is a tessral, its body is wolf and its soul is that of a madman. Mostly when we play this game it will catch you. Sometimes it will fuck you, other times I will kill it and fuck you myself – such as now, for example.’
The baron drew his sword and ran the beast through, whereupon it yelped and ran away, presumably to die.
‘On your belly, my little slut. Back to the barn with you, and you’ll receive an extra heavy thrashing for trying to escape.’
Allura choked on the mud. Now it stank and its color was red from the rabid wolf-creature’s blood. The same creature she would encounter every day for the rest of eternity, sometimes merely to be gored, other times to be violated.
There was a crowd around the barn when they arrived; pot-bellied men, holding their severed cocks in their hands, old woman with four or five breasts apiece and various human legged creatures with the heads of other beings.
‘This one isn’t for you.’ The baron shooed them away. ‘Not today.’
Once inside he opened his breeches, and out spilled a penis at least a foot long. ‘Like it?’ he grinned. ‘One of the fringe benefits of afterlife.’
Allura watched as he took down the saddle, bridle and bit, placing them on the hay-covered floor.
‘That’s for after. For now, stick out your tits and we’ll start with them.’ He wielded the whip and Allura instinctively covered her large breasts, an action that only served to make the baron angry. ‘You shouldn’t have done that. Now I’ll have to use the rats.’
He whistled, calling a pair of snow-white rodents with pink noses and long white teeth. They were smaller than she’d expected, more like mice.
‘The beautiful thing about this,’ said the baron, pulling Allura by the hair and tying it to a rope hanging from the ceiling, ‘is that whatever damage they do is erased by sundown.’
Allura was on tiptoes, feeling like a human bell as she hung from her own hair. ‘Hands down,’ he warned, ‘or I’ll cut them off.’ She couldn’t avoid flailing as he raised the rats to her vulnerable breasts.
‘Oh, for hell’s sake,’ he muttered. ‘You’re making this so complicated.’ He uttered some sort of incantation and at once a spider appeared behind her, one large enough to pin back her arms using a pair of its legs.
‘Now for a little narcotic,’ he encouraged the terrible spider, and it sunk huge teeth into her neck and she felt a hot liquid being injected.
‘That’s a poison. A special one. It will paralyze you and lock you into a state of perpetual orgasm. Unfortunately, it also amplifies pain.’
The giant spider made a hissing noise as it finished its business, while the baron attached the rats to her nipples, and quite efficiently they clamped on as he let them dangle.
‘Don’t look down,’ said the baron, introducing yet another element of terror, but Allura did and now there was no barn floor beneath her, only a cascading pit, a cradle of fire, the cauldron of the universe. From various cliffs and crags on the way down hung human souls, shadows of gray with clawed fingers slipping, clinging for life.
‘One minute here can feel like a million years, Allura.’ He stroked her forehead. ‘How long has it been already? Your body looked the same when they brought it here, but I swear I’ve been away from you long enough for you to have aged a hundred years.’
There was sadness in his eyes and self-pity, an emotion she now understood to be the lifeblood of this place. ‘You will never keep me, baron,’ she vowed.
His lips curled into an arrogant smile. ‘Oh, won’t I?’
Once, twice she blinked in her excruciating pain, and now it was he who was the tessral, the madman cloaked as a dog. With a snarl in place of intelligible speech it leaped upon her, thrusting her back against the wall. Teeth, cock and claws sunk in and it fucked her, the sexual death clutch, designed to kill a victim in seconds.
Allura screamed and then she was a scream herself. Then again she rose within the sound and felt herself lifted aloft on some kind of wind – a wind that should not be.
A reprieve that should not be.
‘Why should I let you past me?’ said the sentinel at the gate, and Allura beheld the creature of black obsidian, half bird, and half lion, winged and clawed, its eyes plucked from an ancient king and dipped in liquid emerald.
Where was she? Was she alive again, or could it be the baron had lied to her about there being only one place for the souls of the dead?
‘Because,’ said the fleeing Allura, back in her own body, golden hair streaming behind her, ‘I can pay my passage.’
She did not know how she knew to say that. It was like in a dream, when speech comes to you of its own accord, knitted by laws of reason that do not hold when awake.
She also knew her time was short. At her heels nipped and snarled the tessral. She’d been given this opportunity, one time only and she must not waste it.
The sentinel held the creature at bay with an ominous point of its claws. ‘With what coinage will you pay?’
‘The universal coin,’ she replied, ‘of female to male.’
She floated to him, hands at her sides. The penis of the sentinel was enormous and as she approached it grew and grew, bigger than her own body, and instead of ingesting it as she’d intended, she found herself absorbed into the hole at the end. The sentinel sighed with the sensation. It must have been a very long time for him. Luxuriating herself in the soft pink expanse of his tube, she did the miraculous work of pleasuring him from within.
‘You can’t get away with this,’ the baron was calling from outside the tunnel.
But it was too late for him. The sentinel’s heart was beating; his flesh was pulsing around her, enveloping Allura in male desire and male satisfaction. The testosterone filled her lungs. Her every pore was bathed in its sensual powers. She responded in kind, locking her body into a fetal position, out of which she was going to squeeze her own orgasm, in time with his.
‘Yes, yes,’ came the voice of the sentinel, encouraging her, and Allura needed no more prompting. Clutching her breasts and sex she rocked her pelvis, bringing just the right friction to trip her clitoris.
They both went off together, sliding down a precipice, like a mud fall at spring, down into a green valley, unoccupied and pastorally perfect. Allura felt herself spasming as they rolled over and over until finally she was on her back, in a field full of wild flowers representing every color of the rainbow. She was young again, barely eighteen, in a dress of light blue cotton. Porfino was above her, wanting to make love.
‘It will feel so good,’ he encouraged, trying to push up her dress.
‘But this is wrong,’ she said. ‘If we get caught it will be my ruin.’
‘What have I to lose?’ he teased. ‘You’ll only have to marry me and I’ll be king.’
‘Not king,’ she corrected. ‘Only a prince.’
‘Give me your hands,’ said Porfino, and she held them out for tying.
‘Now put them above your head.’
Again she did as he said, putting her bound and crossed wrists in a position of complete surrender.
‘There, now you are my slave.’
Young Allura giggled. ‘Don’t talk like that, Porfino.’
‘Why not, if I want to?’
‘Because it’s naughty, that’s why.’
‘But slavery is natural, for women, at any rate.’ He fondled her golden hair, loose and free. ‘I shall name you Goldie,’ he decided, ‘and you may thank your master for giving you a name.’
Her voice was thick with desire as she said, ‘Thank you, master.’
Never had the real Porfino been so manly and never had anyone so quickly taken her in hand. This was another dream; that explained it.
‘Your name is a gift, slave, I may take it away at will.’
‘Yes, master.’
His fingers ran over her breasts. ‘I own these.’
‘Yes,’ she agreed, ‘master.’
‘And I own this.’ His hand crept under the dress, between her thighs. ‘Spread your legs wider, Goldie, give your master access to his cunt.’
Allura moaned as he dominated her perfectly, and ruthlessly.
‘Come, Goldie, come like a little slut on my hand.’
The dirty, demeaning talk and the pressure on her clit sent her into convulsions. She couldn’t hold it back even if she wanted to.
‘Now lick.’ He held his come-soaked fingers to her mouth when she had ridden the tide of her bliss, and Allura lapped meekly, even her tongue exhausted.
‘Good girl,’ Porfino praised. ‘I think you’ve earned some time with my cock now. What do you think?’
‘Yes please, master,’ she whispered, and Porfino – or whoever he really was – pulled down his loose breeches and mounted her face. She smelled deeply his balls, and then took the gift of his penis, pushed home between her lips.
‘Take it all, Goldie, or it’ll be the strap for your ass.’
Obediently she deep-throated the young man, sucking him determinedly.
‘You’re a natural cocksucker,’ he observed, her head bobbing up and down. ‘You should be made to perform in the public square, taking on every erect cock, naked on your knees. Or how about leaning over in the stocks? Then they could have your mouth and cunt, and your ass, too. Would you like that?’
Allura clenched her fists. She couldn’t move her arms, and yet she needed so badly to cup her hand to her cunt and bring herself relief from the torrential heat of his words.
‘I’m sure you would,’ he answered for the cock-gagged slave. ‘You’re exactly the kind of slut to get off on something so disgusting.’
Porfino’s rhythm grew faster and faster. His eyes were ablaze and she braced herself for his release, the contents of his turgid cock spurting into the back of her throat. But clearly he intended more – more abuse for her, more pleasure for him.
Climbing off her, disengaging from her hot mouth, he ordered Allura onto all fours, naked in the field like an animal. He made her hand over her dress and the rest of her clothes, taunting her that perhaps she would get them back, or perhaps not.
‘How does it feel, Goldie,’ he wanted to know, ‘to be naked and helpless before a man? Crawl,’ he encouraged. ‘Let me see your slave ass move.’
Allura padded on all fours, the tall grass brushing her cheeks. Tiny insects darted about her face and flitted over her back, but she could not remove them – she could not get up.
‘If I wished I could leave you like this,’ he mused, ‘and you would have to find your way home. Someone would find you on the road, I suppose, and take you… home, that is.’ There was no mistaking the pun; clearly there was another way she could be taken and that way would be sexually.
‘We are going to end your virginity, Goldie. Are you wet for me?’
Allura knew that while the other questions were rhetorical, this was the one she must answer. ‘Yes, my master, I am wet.’
‘You will take me in a single thrust, like a good slut.’
‘I will try, master.’
Porfino broadsided her ass with the side of his boot, sending her sprawling. ‘You will do more than try, now get up slave girl.’
She resumed her position, a bit shaky, spitting grass from her lips.
‘Now, will you be a good slut and take your master’s cock in one thrust?’
‘Yes, master, I will take your cock as you say.’
‘On your elbows, slave girl. Head to the ground, ass in the air.’
Allura assumed the exquisitely vulnerable position, her cheek pressed to the grass.
‘You have a very good ass, Goldie. It is difficult to say if I’d rather beat it or fuck it.’ Porfino ran a hand across her, then inside her, obscenely. ‘What do you think?’
‘Master must do as master wills,’ she reasoned.
‘True enough, Goldie.’ He dangled a finger over her clitoris, and then pulled it back, delivering a hard smack. ‘Pain,’ he said, ‘and pleasure.’
Allura moaned, the barrier in her mind somewhat unclear. Thrice more he repeated the lesson till her senses were thoroughly confused. She was thrusting out her ass, craving the impact of his hand and cringing at the mild touch of his finger on her sex lips.
‘Even your sensations,’ Porfino concluded, ‘are not your own.’
‘Yes, master.’ Her voice was a rising pant, lifting into the clear blue, make-believe sky.
‘Shall I mount you now?’
‘Oh, master, Goldie begs to be used.’
He rubbed her bottom then spanked her harshly. ‘If I enter you, it will be in one thrust, and you will perform with perfection.’
‘I will please you, master. I am your slut.’
‘You may not come without permission,’ he warned, his cock at the lips of her sex.
‘No, master, I will not.’ She shook her head determinedly. ‘I will only obey, I will take your cock and I will please you.’
‘Of course you will,’ he condescended, ‘you are my pet.’
The pet Allura groaned from the bottom of her soul as he fulfilled, at long last, his promise to breach her, his threat and declaration to end her virginity and begin the concrete expression of her slavery.
‘Is that enjoyable?’ he asked.
‘Yes master, yes.’ A thousand times yes, but still the question nagged. Who was he and where was she? Had she made it back across the river, through the gates out of the regions of hell, or was this some new bizarre torture? Had she really and truly lost her life? And where had Zuranos gone? He’d tricked her, it seemed, abandoned her, but why? Did he not want her for himself, at least for a little while before casting her away?
This much she knew: the cock fucking her was not Porfino’s, nor was the body. Not that she could keep hers from responding. A cock is a cock, especially when one’s virginity is being taken all over again and one is locked in a lovely fantasy of submission.
‘Remember, not before I say,’ he reminded.
Porfino’s hands were on her hips. She could feel his cock expanding and she knew it was time. Strange, she felt none of the virgin’s pain. The dream, it seemed, was flawed in its details.
‘You are a most difficult creature, you know that?’ the god complained. ‘I suppose you critique my sunsets as well?’
Allura turned her head. ‘Zuranos?’ she gasped, but when she looked it was the baron’s father, Alexo, fucking her.
‘I told you,’ the old man cackled, ‘I’d have my chance.’
‘No,’ she squealed, ‘I don’t want to play this game anymore. Do you hear me, Zuranos, or whoever is in charge? I don’t want to play.’
Alexo helped himself to her rectum. ‘Gods’ juices, that’s good,’ he grunted, sounding like a man about to expire. ‘So sweet and tight. I believe you’re even tighter than when you came to the dungeon.’
She tried to dislodge him from her, but he was not budging. Nor was he very likely to, now that he’d gotten hold of such a tasty little prize.
‘Zuranos!’ she cried. ‘Help me!’ At once the sky of pastoral blue began to darken, ominous clouds rolling. Without thunder or rain came streaks of silent lightning in deep orange, wizened fingers reaching between the earth and the heavens, and wherever it touched the grass or trees they were quietly consumed, everything in their path scorched to dust, but for the two of them.
In place of the old baron behind her and in her, however, she now saw the head of a snake, its body the thickness of a stout branch. She knew it at once to be Zuranos, and rising she began to run, Montreico’s words loud in her ears.
You will be run down, the same each day, for all eternity. It was like she’d never left the baron’s hellish city after all, but was still there dreaming of escape. But had that city been real, or was that yet another trick? Was the god setting her up all along?
Laughter in the wind, swirling about her, confirmed her worst suspicions. She’d been in the hands of Zuranos all along, the god playing every part, from the baron to the sentinel to old Alexo. All were avatars, spirit made flesh.
‘Good girl.’ The god picked her up in hands of cloud. ‘My sweet, sweet love.’
Allura felt the decay wash away, her soul cleansed of every experience he’d forced upon her. She was to be herself again, but first Zuranos would have her naked.
No flesh at all.
The god came to her in a room of white, his form that of a man garbed in gold, his hair of gold, his skin bronze, his eyes the color of burnished copper, his body chiseled, every muscle to perfection. He wore golden sandals and she was upon a bed of white, her skin as pure as alabaster. Golden cords held her limbs wide apart. She was helpless, and by her own will, too.
‘Good girl,’ repeated Zuranos in his new guise.
Allura looked into his eyes and recognized. ‘Tesotoro?’
The god laughed and crawled upon her, his cock rigid. Sinking deep, like a sword, paring her unclothed soul, he sealed the union, a knowing beyond the world of mortals.
Images flashed through her mind, her life in bits and flashes, like cords whipping round. She reached to touch them, the filaments of cracking light, the balls of glowing knowledge. So many possibilities…
‘Yes, my daughter,’ the god encouraged, slowly moving in and out of her. ‘The greater gift I give to you.’
Greater than what? She had no voice with which to ask.
‘I am coming,’ said Zuranos, and the world was born again. Old stitches pulled from the fabric, new ones added. The hand of Hechira, queen of gods, mixed with those of the king. A new cloth, its pattern leading all the way up to the life of a young princess.
Back, back in time she was swept, to a time before it all began.
Allura had been having a nightmare. Her father was being killed all over again before her eyes and a man was standing by, laughing. He called himself a baron and he had come to claim her soul – and her hand in marriage. Her great uncle had been powerless to stop it happening. For the wedding she’d been tied to a chair, a gag in her mouth. Saraveeta was forcing her down the aisle, whipping her all the way.
Awaking in a cold sweat Allura sat bolt upright. ‘Veeta!’ she cried. ‘I need you!’
The slave, who had been sleeping beside her on the floor, hurried to her side. ‘Mistress, what is happening?’
‘I had a horrible dream. Tell me, what happened yesterday?’
Veeta cocked her head. ‘Yesterday? Why, you had another suitor, a count named Raysar. From the east.’
‘Yes,’ she enthused, ‘it’s coming back to me. I thoroughly humiliated him. I told him to fuck you, didn’t I?’
The slave girl lowered her head, her black hair hanging about her face. ‘Yes, mistress.’
It really had all been just a dream.
‘So you are really still my slave?’
‘W-why wouldn’t I be, mistress?’ the girl asked nervously, guarded against some sort of a trick.
‘Pinch your nipples then, as hard as you can.’ She needed to test her powers, and naked Veeta squeezed obediently with thumb and forefinger, increasing the pressure until at last she winced, exhaling against the pain, but she did not stop until Allura allowed her to.
‘Oh, Veeta,’ she cried, ‘I’m so happy! You wouldn’t believe how terrible it was. A baron took me away and threw me in a dungeon, preferring you. Then the priestess herself came. Can you imagine it? There was a terrible battle and then you were the priestess. You said I had to marry my own uncle because he wasn’t really my uncle. You were the real princess too, and I had to pray to Zuranos for help, and then… oh, never mind, it wasn’t real. Go and draw a bath, Veeta, I want to cleanse myself of the memory.’
‘Yes, mistress, I will do so at once,’ the slave said obligingly, hurrying to do the princess’ bidding. What a pathetic little creature she was. To think she could ever have been the real princess.
Allura continued to gloat and enjoy her reprieve all morning, until at last she was notified of the day’s list of suitors. There were three; two being minor nobles with utterly boring names, but the third caught her attention.
‘The name is here, but no accounting of his status,’ she said, pondering the short list. ‘Who is this Tesotoro?’
The vizier cleared his throat. ‘He isn’t actually a noble, highness,’ he offered, somewhat sheepishly.
‘Who is he then?’
‘He is…’ the man hesitated uncomfortably, ‘a warrior. By his own account called to come here to seek you out. The grand duke had originally ordered him thrown out, but he comes under seal of the priestess.’
‘The priestess?’ Allura felt a strange chill. The priestess of the dream? And why did this name Tesotoro seem familiar? ‘Whose priestess?’ she asked cautiously.
‘The Great Mother Seer, of course,’ the man stated. ‘Who can refuse any who comes under her banner? Though obviously you can never marry a commoner.’
‘No, obviously, but I would see him, and see him first, before the others. Immediately, in fact. Send him to me.’
The vizier bowed. ‘As you wish, princess.’
‘I have seen you,’ said Allura, as soon as the man appeared.
The tall blond with broad, bronzed shoulders and sturdy frame, his hair braided down his back, regarded her. ‘Have you?’ he mused confidently. ‘I cannot imagine where.’
‘Would you believe I dreamed of you?’ she said, feeling strangely nervous. ‘Though you were different then. You worked for a baron, by the name of Montreico.’
‘I know of no Baron Montreico.’
She tried to place the accent. ‘You are not from our kingdom.’
‘I’m barbarian,’ he said proudly. ‘From a land where the hair of all is glorious yellow, like yours.’
Allura blushed. ‘My hair is not at issue; your intrusion here is.’
His hands were at his sword belt. He wore a shirt of mail and heavy leather trousers tucked into riding boots of dark brown calfskin. ‘This is no intrusion,’ he said simply. ‘I was sent by the god.’
‘Many claim divine inspiration for many purposes; why should I believe you?’ she asked skeptically.
The barbarian ignored the question, but looking about the room he asked, ‘Where is the girl, Saraveeta?’
Allura tensed. ‘How do you know of her?’
‘Why does that matter? I would see her, is all.’
Uncertainly the princess called for the slave, who was scrubbing her bathing quarters. She looked fetching, her skimpy brown rag of a dress soaked, her face smeared with cleansing powder.
‘Yes, mistress?’ She knelt at once, putting her head to Allura’s feet.
‘This one should not be a slave,’ said Tesotoro. ‘You have done her great injustice.’
Allura fumed. ‘How dare you judge me?’ she snapped. ‘Get out this instant or I shall have you thrown in the dungeons.’
‘Yes, that’s another specialty of yours,’ he said derisively.
‘You do not know me,’ she said defensively, quite fearful that he did. ‘And whoever has fed you these lies will hang from the gallows by morning.’
Tesotoro seemed quite unimpressed by the outburst. ‘You will free her,’ he said simply, ‘at once.’
‘I will do no such thing!’ She laughed contemptuously, but with little conviction. ‘In fact, I shall have your freedom too, just as I have hers.’
The warrior removed his gloves. ‘This is your last warning,’ he vowed.
‘What are you going to do,’ she scoffed, ‘strike me?’
‘Strike you as an enemy male, no, but I shall strike you as a spoilt female; over my knee.’
Allura retreated to her desk, grabbing an ivory letter opener. ‘Approach one step and I shall cut out your heart,’ she threatened. ‘Veeta, run and call for help.’
‘No,’ said Tesotoro to the girl, ‘stay where you are.’
Veeta looked back and forth, eyes flitting between her mistress and the new man. She seemed unsure whom to obey.
‘Do as I say, or I’ll have your head,’ Allura warned.
‘Saraveeta,’ Tesotoro countered calmly, ‘go to the bath chamber and wash yourself. Your serving days are over.’
Saraveeta hesitated a moment longer, took one last look at Allura, and scurried for the bathroom.
‘Bastard,’ the princess cursed, arcing a slap at his face, but the large man easily swayed back out of range and caught her swinging wrist in one brawny fist, instantly spinning her around and pinning her arm up behind her back.
‘You are badly in need of learning some respect,’ he informed her.
‘Perhaps,’ she panted, continuing to struggle, ‘but not from scum like you.’
With contemptuous ease the warrior pushed her across to the nearest chair, and sitting down he laid her across his lap, just as he’d promised. With a flip of her skirts he bared her underclothing, and with one hand pressing on her back he used the other to insolently caress her buttocks.
‘You will die for this!’ she cursed, but Tesotoro merely delivered a punishing blow, her rage instantly reduced to girlish protests.
‘That hurt, you animal!’ she complained. ‘You can’t do this to me!’
‘Oh, but I can and I will.’ Thrice more he smacked her, his seasoned palm cracking upon her soft behind. Allura moaned, wriggling against him, terrified that her reactions were turning sexual. This was a beautiful man and she wanted him inside her, all the more so for his masterful treatment of her. ‘Are you prepared to behave?’
‘No,’ she answered honestly.
‘Then we will continue,’ he said calmly, and Allura was spanked into submission; in a matter of minutes he had her begging to be able to obey him and do his will, even to free Saraveeta from slavery.
‘Get up,’ he told her at last, and the princess stood, legs shaking, her bottom throbbing and her cheeks glistening with tears. ‘That is how a female is handled,’ he told her. ‘Whether she be crown princess or a lowly whore, all respond alike to discipline. All need it, as well.’
Allura made no response.
‘Now, call Saraveeta,’ he ordered, and she did.
‘Do not kneel,’ said Tesotoro to the slave, his eyes moving sternly to Allura. ‘The princess has something to say to you.’
Allura lowered her eyes, feeling like a chastised child. ‘I was wrong to enslave you, Saraveeta,’ she said, so quietly the other two in the room barely heard her, ‘and I give you back your freedom.’
Saraveeta’s eyes widened in shock. ‘It is true,’ confirmed Tesotoro. ‘The princess has had a change of heart. She has seen the wickedness of her ways.’
‘Mistress?’ Saraveeta enquired, looking for final confirmation.
‘Get out of here, damn it,’ Allura snapped. ‘Do you want to gloat forever? Don’t you think this is hard enough for me already?’
‘Sorry mistress,’ the girl babbled excitedly, and then left hurriedly.
‘You are a spoilt little girl,’ Tesotoro said when they were alone. ‘But fortunately for you most men find that attractive to a point. Gives them more control in the end. And now,’ he rose to his feet, ‘I’ll be going.’
‘But you said you came for me.’ Suddenly Allura did not want him to go. ‘Isn’t that what you told my uncle?’
‘I merely said the god delivered me to see you.’ He shrugged. ‘And I have done that, for the purpose of freeing Saraveeta.’
‘Why?’ she asked. ‘What’s so special about her?’
‘She is to be the next priestess,’ said Tesotoro. ‘I am to escort her back to the temple, and there she will live the remainder of her days.’
Allura’s knees almost buckled. ‘The dream,’ she whispered.
‘The dream?’ he echoed. ‘What dream?’
‘Nothing,’ she shook her head, ‘it is nothing.’
The warrior left her without so much as a goodbye, and for a long time she stood there, trying to absorb what was happening. Pieces of her nightmare were coming true – the appearance of the blond barbarian, and the part about Saraveeta being elevated to the rank of priestess. Was there more in store for her?
Her thoughts turned to fleeing, but where would she go? She knew no one outside the castle. It was tempting to run to her uncle, but he was an old man and could no longer give her the protection she needed.
If only her father were alive. He would have handled things and none of this would have happened. There were the gods to pray to, but she had a growing suspicion that prayers had already gotten her in a good deal more trouble than she could handle. What if Zuranos were playing with her mind?
Tesotoro. She must go to him. He could explain things. He came from her dream, but he lived here and now. Besides, Allura was flushed and very aroused and she needed to know how a mere commoner could do that to her, and without showing any finesse or gentleness.
She found him in a guest room provided by the vizier. His plan was to rest for the day, taking Saraveeta back to the temple the next morning. He was in only his breeches, chest bared, lying upon the narrow bed. ‘Yes?’ he said impatiently, not having bothered to get up to answer her timid knock at the door.
‘Tesotoro,’ she demanded, ‘who are you really?’
He regarded her, unperturbed. ‘I am the first man to spank you. It has an effect, doesn’t it?’
‘Not a pleasant one,’ she sulked. ‘Especially not when the man in question has come to life from a dream.’
‘Yes,’ he admitted, ‘and I have dreamed of you, too.’
‘Y-you have?’ she gasped, her cheeks coloring.
‘Indeed, princess.’ His eyes smoldered. ‘I have dreamed of you naked in my bed, obeying my commands, serving my every whim.’
She swallowed hard. ‘That would be impossible.’
‘Not really,’ he shrugged. ‘I could break you in one night. It is only that I do not care to.’
‘And why is that?’ she probed, trying not to sound interested.
‘Because then I will have to marry you, and I don’t want the responsibilities of rule on my shoulders.’
Allura ran a hand softly over her tingling stomach. ‘You could always denounce me for harlotry, instead,’ she offered, her voice a breathless whisper.
‘I suppose I could,’ he considered, ‘but I doubt you would enjoy life with me much.’
‘Why not, Tesotoro?’
‘Because I am used to whores and slaves,’ he told her frankly. ‘I have no patience for ladies.’
‘Maybe I don’t want to be a lady.’ The princess lifted her dress over her head.
‘Beware,’ said Tesotoro, ‘you are only reacting to your spanking. Quite soon the passion will wear off and you will hate me.’
She pulled off her undergarments, baring herself. ‘But that moment is not now.’
‘You are a virgin,’ he stated.
‘Perhaps not for much longer.’
‘I might be tired,’ he teased.
‘Perhaps I can revive you,’ she countered mischievously.
‘Leave me.’ He rolled to one side, his back to her, but Allura crept onto the bed like a tigress.
‘Must I beg you?’ she asked, and he allowed her to briefly nibble his earlobe.
‘Woman, this is your last chance,’ he said.
‘Last chance at what?’ she asked playfully, and when her hand crept around to his crotch he finally moved into action.
‘All right,’ he grumbled, ‘you’ve asked for it now,’ and Allura quickly found herself beneath him, pressed beneath toned muscle and smooth skin, the scent of the male filling the air.
‘Will you be gentle?’ she asked softly.
‘I will be as a man. No more, no less.’ She sighed, melting beneath him. ‘I won’t let you go,’ he breathed against her throat. ‘Not after this.’
‘No,’ she clutched his shoulders, ‘please don’t.’
‘It will be forever.’
‘I’ll count on it,’ she hooked her legs around his firm buttocks, ‘I am yours.’
‘Consider yourself taken.’
Indeed, she did. Taken, and given, and redeemed. The only question that remained was where her dream had come from and what role the god had played.
‘Maybe this world is the dream,’ teased an inner voice, ‘and the other was real.’
‘Does it matter?’ she replied, as she and Tesotoro melted together.
‘No,’ said the voice of Zuranos, voice of creation and of every spirit and every possibility, ‘it does not… so long as I get my share of you.’
Allura shivered, thinking of the many nights ahead. With Tesotoro and the god both. In a way she was lucky; it wasn’t every woman who got to cheat on her husband with the lord of the universe.