FEW OF THE inhabitants took heed of the stranger riding through the dirt-dry streets: the eve of the market saw many travellers. But there were glances of appreciation for his young concubine, who clung behind him, riding bare-back and astride.

When they reached the little square the horse went straight to the wooden trough beside the well and the stranger dismounted. The horse drank. The girl stayed on his back and stared about. Her pale and delicate flesh drew more onlookers into the bright sunshine – even some of the masters taking bare-breasted girls to the stables paused to stare. There were no obvious marks of sexual punishment on this new girl’s skin. Her master appeared young, perhaps inexperienced in knowing how to deal with a slave. Thoughts of barter seeded the minds of these watchers. Her breasts were small. All she wore was a shirt. A little ruby-studded touchable gold chain glinted between her bare girlish thighs. Some of the watchers stood on tiptoes to achieve a sweeter view.

The shirt, a man’s shirt, skimpily buttoned, parted just above her deep umbilicus, a black, smooth well in the whiteness of a naked, hairless belly whose lips were full, as if from coaxing. Perhaps her young master was not after all so lax in attending to her flesh. Her naked sex lips pouted provocatively and were linked by the little chain.

By now an interested group had gathered by the well. The stranger singled out the grizzled wise-man, stood before him and said:

‘Sir, my name is Josef Stenner. I pass in peace across your lands.’

The old man signalled to one of the others, who drew water from the well. ‘Drink, friend.’

The stranger took the overflowing ladle but gave it first to the girl. Then he drank. He wiped the dripping liquid from his lips. Someone in the crowd gasped and pointed.

‘He wears the Talisur!’

The old man showed no emotion until he took the stranger’s hand and with trembling fingers touched the mystic ring. Then he sighed deeply and shook his head. ‘Our village is well-graced, my lord.’ He bowed slowly.

‘I crave no special favour, and beg that you treat me only as an honest traveller. But you can help me.’

‘Only say the means.’

‘I seek a man – a Tormunite lord named Malory.’ The onlookers stared blankly. ‘His party must have passed this way two or three days ago. He had soldiers with him, and a girl.’ Still there was no reaction: such sights were commonplace. ‘Someone must have seen them passing through?’

Amid the vacant glances the old man shook his head. ‘I know of no Malory, my lord. No soldiers have been here – save the drivers.’ He stared up.

‘Then there is a market here?’

‘In the next town, it is but a few minutes’ ride.’ He nodded down the road then stared up at the semi-naked girl on the horse. ‘Think not ill of me for saying this, but she is comely. And there is a spark of generous hunger in her gaze. At the market – Talisur or no – there will be those who scheme to spirit her from your arms by any means. Therefore keep her on a near-tether and sojourn in that town no longer than you must.’

* * *

Josef watched Leah murmuring and moving in her slumber. He had stripped the warm shirt from her back, up over her head, and had bound it securely round her wrists to leave her body naked and her hands imprisoned so she could not touch herself. He had fastened a soft leather thong around her narrow waist and pressed his middle finger gently, deeply into her umbilicus. Her little nipples had come erect in expectation. Then he had threaded a length of rough sisal rope from behind, up between her legs, under her sexual chain, intimately between her virgin sex lips and close against the mouth of her bottom. Slowly drawing the rope upwards, deep between the small, round, buttock cheeks and tight between the pink lips, he had finally secured it back and front to the waist-thong. These last few nights he had done this to her before putting her to bed. Tonight her anticipation had been stronger. When he had turned her face-down and pressed his palm into the small of her back, steadily pushing her belly firmly into the bed while drawing her rope tight, he had felt a shudder ripple through her body from front to back and travel up his arm. Leah had twisted round, her small face thrust between her fastened arms, and hungrily she had kissed him, sucked his lip and tried to reach down to kiss his naked penis.

Her body was beautiful and sexual. The evening light now caressed it as it moved against the sheet. What was she dreaming about?

Josef thought of what had happened that afternoon after she had bathed in the warm, slow river – how she had stepped lightly, nakedly, over the dry, flat stones, her fine, gold sexual-chain glistening and tinkling between her smooth, denuded thighs. Clothed only in this chain she had stood before him and stared expectantly up into his eyes, the eyes of her new master, a master she had chosen. It seemed to make no difference to her that he sought another, and that this was the purpose of his mission. As far as Leah was concerned, she was his charge, and he was obligated to observe the Tormunite rule – to punish her, to cherish her, and to train her to his preferences. Josef had not yet grown fully accustomed to sexual ownership but with Leah he was learning quickly.

Day by day on their travels she had grown hungrier for pleasure, wanting him to draw it forth from her by elaborate and demanding means. She would recount to him the sexual things that had been done to her in the Abbey. And he would see the fervour in her lovely blue eyes as he held her naked white body close, cupping her sweet, chained, pink sex in his fingers till it yielded honey. These last few days she had repeatedly driven him to intense pleasure. But still she wanted to be shared with other men. ‘It will teach me how better to please my lord,’ Leah had said.

Such sharing was the norm amongst the Tormunites, but Josef had found it too difficult to permit. Here in the roadhouse public sharing was commonplace. When they arrived there had been two men on the stairs with a girl wearing only a thin wet top. While Josef carried Leah past the two men, Leah was staring at their wet erections. When they reached the room she had wanted to know why the girl’s breasts and the men’s sexes were so wet, and whether it was with the girl’s honey, or the men’s fluid. ‘She made them give good measure,’ she had murmured wistfully. Then, with her brow furrowed deeply, she had caressed Josef’s penis and closed her eyes, and he knew she was imagining and desiring those other men. But he would never want to let her come to harm.

She had slept fitfully, wanting Josef to hold her, making him cup her roped sex in his fingers from behind. Eventually she had fallen into a deeper sleep. She had made a little moisture which remained on his fingers until it dried in the warm air. He could hear noises in the street and eventually he went to the balcony.

His room was high on a corner and overlooked much of the town. In the distance he could see the marketplace. Closer by were several small inns and a larger building which was the house of pleasure. A platform had been constructed in the yard behind it and wooden spars and supporting frames were being added to it. People were beginning to congregate. There seemed to be a clear division in this town between the quiet natives and the brash Tormunite masters who used it as their base for trade. Diagonally opposite the roadhouse a girl with bared breasts was being held with her back to the wall. Her breasts stood very full and proud. Her masters had begun to loop a leather cord around them to bind them.

Josef turned and looked again at Leah, whose breasts were very small, and yet, he thought, she was beautiful indeed. Her dried sexual honey was smooth upon his fingers. She had turned on to her back, her fastened arms still stretched out above her head, her thighs slightly open, arousing delicious pangs of wanting in him as he looked at the thin love-chain stretched across the rope lodged between her spread sex lips. The chain, symbolically sealing her lips, was the sign of her virginity.

Her eyes, softly blue, half opened. She tried to reach for him. He unwound the shirt from her wrists. ‘What is my lord thinking?’ Leah whispered, stretching up, reaching her fingers around the back of his neck.

‘That, were I the air, how I would cling to your soft, sweet skin.’ He clasped her gently round her slender ribcage, lifted her completely from the bed and kissed under her arms, tasting sun-salt there despite her ablutions. Her little nipples brushed against him as he lowered her feet to the floor. Her head was level with his chest and her mischievous fingers were against his leg, seeking, wanting to know he was erect for her. She smiled in satisfaction, then gasped as his fingers intruded under her chain, around the rope, under it a little way, opening her very slightly, finger-tasting the salt-sexy glaze there, warmer than mulled wine. He eased her gently back to the bed. There he unfastened the rope, carefully lifted it away from the adhering hot flesh, and removed the rope completely. Then he opened her sex to the waning sunlight, stretching its beautiful bare lips, making of it a split pink chained fig with a polished bulb of erection at the tip. As Leah lay across the bed, head back and down, her perfect belly trembling open, Josef slowly masturbated this open fig. Each time a soft murmur started in her throat he pinched her nipples, which had become fuller over the last week though her breasts were still small. When she felt the Talisur ring touching just inside her body, gently probing her virginity, she began to shudder and tried to press the ring against her clitoris, seeking swift satiation with it. But Josef took charge of her aroused flesh. She was moaning as he replaced the rope with a thin strip of cloth between her legs, arranging it so it pouched her tightly, sealing the longing into her puffed-up sex. He secured the cloth pouch to the thin leather thong around her waist. Then he lifted her limp body from the bed, clothed her with her wrinkled shirt and took her downstairs.

As they came out into the busy street, Josef could feel the sexual tension in her body. He could feel it in the way she reacted to his hand against the small of her back, propelling her to a fate just beyond her control. And he almost felt that he was playing out the role of a true Tormunite lord, who might at any moment choose to stop her, draw her to the middle of the street and publicly whip her perfect buttocks while a stranger’s searching fingers, clutching her cloth pouch, slowly milked the delicious goodness from her.

At the marketplace many pairs of eyes were distracted by Leah. The low sunlight gave way to torchlight and the glow from the cooking hearths. Droves of people moved slowly past the stalls while the scent of herbs, yeasty bread and roasting meat laced the air.

‘Apothecary!’

‘Honey-roast pheasant!’

‘Harness! Tackle!’

‘Trinkets for the damsel’s hair!’ The beaming girl swathed in necklaces pushed up to Josef, proffering an armful of brooches. Josef chose for Leah a pink pearl grip. He slipped it into her hair then ushered her down a side street towards the sound of drums. When the scene opened before them, Josef stood behind Leah, holding her gently by the shoulders. She was trembling. ‘Who are they?’ she whispered. ‘Why are they chained so?’

They were nude girls fastened to a single long copper chain. They had evidently been chosen for the beauty of their figures and their breasts. The guards were preventing idle onlookers from entering the enclosure.

Josef simply held up the hand bearing the Talisur ring and the sentinel buckled into subservience. ‘What mission are you charged with?’ Josef asked him.

‘A consignment for Menirg, my lord.’

The name meant nothing to Josef, but he was unwilling to reveal his ignorance by enquiry. ‘May we inspect them?’

‘Of course.’ The sentinel’s gaze fell on Leah, whose shirt was open and whose cloth pouch had ridden up, clasping high between her legs.

From inside the building came the distinctive sounds of spanking. As the chained girls outside froze, the sentinel explained that a second team was in the building and was being punished for a clique of elders of the town, who preferred to keep their sexual predilections private from the masses. Leah clung to Josef as he took her inside.

Their entry stirred little notice from the elders, though it coincided with a lull in the punishment. There were about a dozen chained slave girls. All had been depilated according to the Tormunite custom, so as to leave the sex bare to the viewer. Some faced forward and others faced the wall, their buttocks reddened, their legs outspread. The elders were comparing them in vulgar tones which heightened Leah’s trepidation. A blonde girl wearing only a footman’s open brass-buttoned bright-blue jacket and boots had been administering the punishment with a leather belt, and had presumably dictated which way each girl should face to receive it. One girl at the end of the line was crouched on a stool.

The blonde girl did not seem to belong with either the soldiers or the elders. She now refastened the leather belt around her bright-blue jacket at the waist, but left her breasts still visible. Each girl had a large, gold, circular, hinged clasp inserted through a fresh piercing in one of her labia, usually the right one. The clasp fastened her sex to the copper chain. A tiny lock across the jaws of the clasp could be opened by a simple key carried by the guards. The blonde girl took the key and moved slowly down the line, passing breasts of breathtaking fullness and tight, trembling buttocks striped with weals.

Josef moved Leah gradually closer as the sexual inspection proceeded. The elders, seemingly keen for her to watch, made way. Josef grasped the thong at the back of her waist and gently drew it tighter, making Leah’s chained sex bulge against its cloth as he walked her through the cluster of men.

The blonde girl had stopped in front of one girl. She now inhaled the warmth rising from the naked slave-body which looked little younger than herself. There were red marks inside the frightened white thighs which straddled the copper chain. It passed high up between the girl’s legs, behind one buttock and across the front of the other thigh. Her gold labial clasp was pushed upwards by the locked links of the chain, forcing her sex slightly open on one side, creating a sweet distortion in the lip, as if an invisible fingertip were lodged there and the lip were gently sucking it. Josef wondered how much sexual arousal she had undergone. Was her gold clasp hot when the blonde girl touched it? As it was being unlocked it seemed the movement transmitted to the partly open sex induced a tiny tremble in the slave girl’s belly. The chain fell away and the blonde girl now ordered her to stand in the middle of the floor with her gold clasp dangling open, a glittering bait. Then one of the soldiers lifted the slave into a sitting position on the table while the blonde girl stared at her, silently demanding access, her expression an eerie blend of desire and chill.

Josef glanced at Leah, who gazed transfixed as the girl on the table obediently and tearfully opened herself with her fingers. There was neither murmur nor movement from the elders. The chained slaves watched with half averted eyes.

The gold clasp through the girl’s labium was of a thick gauge. At the point of insertion the flesh of the lip had been forced out all around it to leave a stretched, raised rim. The blonde girl had clearly identified this as a focus of sexual pain because her fingers went straight there and squeezed the stretching. With the first definite gasp she took hold of the clasp itself and drew the lip widely aside and upwards, to expose the clitoris but not to touch it. Then she again squeezed the focus of sexual pain in the piercing. She moved to one side so all could see precisely where her victim was being squeezed. It was as if she wanted to instruct her audience in how to make the slave girl gasp. The girl cast pleading looks about her. Amid the gasps the blonde girl’s eyes slowly challenged the room. The slave girl did not know what to do with herself. Her breathing became uneven as the blonde twisted the now-yielding sex lip by its clasp and rubbed the exposed clitoris directly but very gently.

Josef could feel Leah’s trembling. He slipped his fingers between her legs, holding her pouch, which was moistly hot and tight because her lips were so swollen. He could feel the fine chain links through the cloth. And he could feel the proud flesh around her clitoris.

The blonde again took off her leather belt and clipped its buckle to the girl’s gold clasp. The weight of the belt hung down between the girl’s legs and over the edge of the table, drawing the tortured labium down and making the clitoris stand a little askew for the blonde to play with. The touching was keener now, not gentle, and the tip of the belt was swaying just above the floor. Its steadily strengthening movements were fed by the heightening arousal of the girl. On instruction from her mistress her knees were now bent and her heels were on the edge of the table. Her naked sex was thrusting out over the edge to meet the rough pleasure of the rasping fingers. Then the blonde grasped the leather hanging between the girl’s legs and stroked it, as if it were a heavy dangling phallus. The girl reacted as if the phallus were hers; fluid began seeping down it.

The blonde called for assistance. With the leather drawn tight, the groaning girl sank slowly back. One of the elders moved round the table and the girl suckled him. Another reached across and held the spare nipple pinched tightly between his fingers.

The girl was inexperienced, it seemed to Josef. Her responses were strong because they were probably coming for the first time. Her mouth was open; her head was rolling from side to side. Her slim legs were shivering, her feet standing up on their toes on the table, to permit this sweet violation as the tongue of the belt was now being inserted. Josef’s fingers could feel Leah’s mounting sexual excitement oozing through her cloth, which now clung to her like a second skin.

The blonde had furled the end of the belt to make a tube which she was very slowly inserting not into the sex but into the anus, pushing firmly as the anus progressively opened in small, chaste, shy gulps and one by one the eyelets in the tube of leather disappeared.

Leah kept pushing back against Josef. She must have known even before touching him that he was in erection. She stood on tiptoes and opened her buttocks: she wanted him to push his fingers or his penis under her cloth and touch her anal skin.

Just as he stretched the cloth aside, the girl on the table gasped loudly: the leather belt had gone into her as far it could and her throbbing clitoris protruded like a bulb. The blonde in blue now began to draw the instrument of stimulation out just as slowly and steadily as she had pushed it in. The eyelets popped out one by one. Each emergence seemed to cause a little echoing pulse of retraction in Leah’s anal skin, which Josef had been very gently caressing with two fingers. The girl’s clitoris bulbed throughout the withdrawal.

The elders, their penises poking, began to crowd closer to her, blocking the view completely. Leah whispered: ‘Shall she have to drink their yield?’ Again Josef thought about Leah’s envy of the girl with two suitors on the stairs.

Josef drew Leah by the thong and led her to a quiet corner.

‘Feed me, master,’ Leah whispered, touching the hardness of his penis through his clothes. And she surely knew that he was already leaking. Her sweet mouth was open suggestively, wide enough to take the thickest penis. She started to kneel in front of him but he stopped her. He rolled up his sleeves, that his bare arms might embrace her nakedness. He found something deeply satisfying about playing with her when she was already aroused almost to the point of no return. Her lips were warm and searching; her underarms were moist and hot against his bare forearms; her little breasts were trembling. She was at the stage of receptiveness where he might easily have put her to one of the prurient elders for pleasure, and her flesh and mouth might gladly have received it. Josef gently teased her, scratching her bulging pouch until her honeyed lubricant welled through the cloth and ran under his fingernails.

The blonde girl had stood back, her blue jacket open, her leather belt now dangling from her hand. The first groans of pleasure were coming from the elders and Leah’s eyes peeped keenly round Josef’s elbow. He moved to one side so she could see the semen begin streaming. These men, though old, gave copiously. He knew that Leah loved to watch such scenes. Each splash upon the girl’s breast and neck made Leah’s bright eyes glitter. Leah’s lips spread again as if in suck upon a penis. Josef pulled her shirt over her head, up her arms and bound her wrists with it. With one hand he pinned them above her head and against the wall. Her little breasts now looked fatter; her belly bulged as her legs bowed open. He lifted her pouch to one side and she murmured as her sex protruded through the gap. Her eyes were fixed upon the scene but her sex responded to his fingers, now skin to skin with her. ‘Would you like me to put you to the elders like this?’ he whispered teasingly in her ear, ‘with this little bud out for them, so tight and near to bursting?’ And a fleeting stab of pleasure seemed to tremble through her thighs.

The girl, with a spurting penis in each hand, was drinking the leaping silver broth of passion. Other girls were now being penetrated while still chained together – a leg would be lifted and a rampant penis would push aside the gold clasp and slide in above the copper chain.

The wet, chained lips of Leah’s sex slipped hotly through Josef’s fingers. Her clitoris reacted to his teasings like the hypersensitive tip of an exposed bone which kept retreating back into its swollen fleshy hood. He pressed it in and twisted his fingertip gently back and forth against the tip, while on the table the girl’s face, neck and breasts were being drenched in semen. A clear, watery fluid was trickling down the girl’s arm from the wrist that was doing the masturbating. Leah was moaning; her legs were shaking. Josef’s fingertip allowed the sensitive tip of her clitoris to come out once more, only for him to press it into her again, tormenting it. Her oil ran down his finger and coated the Talisur ring. He whispered to her: ‘When we return to the roadhouse I shall hire two young men for you and you shall feed upon their semen.’ She groaned and tried to kiss him. He nudged the ring up against the hot place where his fingertip had been pressing, making intimate contact, mystic ring to sensitive clitoral tip, and suddenly her eyes rolled upwards and a jerk that felt electric went through her body. The climax seemed intensified because she was standing. She was trying to keep on tiptoes for it, trying to keep her clitoris barely touching, trembling, dancing against the ring. Her mouth was wide open, gulping the air that was impregnated so thickly with the scent of semen.

When the pleasure waves were finished Leah slumped forward against Josef. ‘Don’t stop,’ said a voice behind him. He turned sharply on the intruder only to find it was the uniformed blonde girl. ‘You must not stop,’ the girl persisted. ‘I sense that she is barely started.’ She was looking at him with an expression of mild playfulness. ‘My name is Roanen.’ She brushed casually against him but stared at Leah. ‘One could not help but notice her plight.’ Without seeking leave she now unwound the shirt from Leah’s wrists and, pressing it to her face, breathed in its scent. She ran her fingers down Leah’s cheek. ‘She likes men?’

‘She is a virgin,’ Josef warned.

‘I noticed her chain. But you like attentive men, my sweet?’ Leah’s eyes closed softly in assent and her cheek pressed against Roanen’s palm. The first pangs of possessiveness stabbed at Josef’s heart. He tried to fight these feelings. The girl was beautiful and sexual and Leah was aroused. She wanted these attentions.

‘Lift her for me,’ Roanen whispered. ‘Let me touch her love-chain.’ Josef cautiously lifted the trembling Leah and held her cloth to one side. He could feel her heart beating through her back. The slim hands went straight between her thighs, seeking out the points of puncture, squeezing each one tightly against its gold insert, rubbing it and drawing Leah fully open against the constriction of the chain, making her gasp. Her heart was bursting with excitement. ‘See,’ said Roanen, ‘how wide her lips are now parted, despite their chain, how open-mouthed and willing her cunt is, how pliant to the touch.’ Leah’s thighs were shivering. Roanen’s slim thumb went in a little way, a little way into Leah’s body, but it could not go too far. It came out again with a heavy drop of liquid at the tip. Roanen held it up as if it were precious essence. She glanced sidelong at Josef but spoke to Leah. ‘If your master will consent to leave you with me then your night is scarce begun.’ Leah was looking up at him pleadingly.

‘I must have her back in my room at the roadhouse by –’

‘Dawn,’ Roanen interrupted.

She raised her thumb to Leah’s open mouth. ‘Quick my sweet, for it is dripping.’ Leah’s small tongue peeped and stroked off the shiny sexual droplet as tenderly as if it were the pre-emission at the tip of a penis.