The Black Pearl of Pharazion

by Cobalt Jade (cobaltjade@aol.com



Chapter 10: The Duke's Pleasure


Damp leaves brushed my skin as our procession entered the garden. We were lowered to pass through an arbor of little pink roses, each bloom a tiny mouth. Jasmine and iris, heliotrope, lilies...each exuded an overpowering scent. The petals were reminiscent of waxy flesh, velvet organsÉstrong in their sculpted presence, yet shy, feminine, created solely for pleasure. As I had been. 

I tensed as sounds of Duke's gathering came to us. I noted, too, that like a flower I might be plucked at any time, taken.

A delicious feeling, this.

Our bearers jogged us across a paved yard and through a set of doors that stood open to the night. Inside was bright laughter and the music of hand drums and pipes. We went into this place. A long table was set with exotic foods, lit by candles in crystal holders which broke the light into shards. The men and women who had been filling their plates turned to look at us. I could not move my head but cast my eyes down.

We were put to one side of this table in a row. Our bearers left us.

"What is this?" A deep mellifluous voice, full of command and power. Ah, the Duke no doubt.

"Gifts from the Queen, Duke Ushroez, to entertain you this night." Our litter master was as bland as ever.

"I asked for no gifts," the Duke said. I saw him move towards us, a tall, powerfully built man, his skin a dark gold that was almost bronze. He wore nubbly silk trousers tucked into his boots and a wide brocaded sash. His chest was bare but for a finely worked leather vest. I dared a glance up. He had a wide, intelligent face, the cheekbones broad and high, and a short, close beard. His mouth was wide and generous, marked by lines of humor, but he was not amused now. He was frowning. 

"Let them stay." A woman as dark as he put a hand on his arm. She wore a bright orange tiger lily in her hair. "What harm can it do? No obligation will come of this act. Look how they suffer, the poor creatures." She came over to us and crouched down by the nearest slave. She tousled his hair. Tears rolled down his face, his eyes full of silent pleas. His organ was quite hard and it did not need its collar and leash to make it point. She cooed at him, taken, and gave it a tender tweak. "Let us enjoy them, Ajmid."

The Duke made an indifferent gesture. "As you wish, Nadysha." He turned his back and did not look at us again. It was clear he did not want to accept bribery from the Queen. That told me a lot.

But he must look at us, or how could I tell him of the rebel's message?

Nadysha's attention was the signal for the other men and women to come over. To my horror they gave the rest of us the same treatment. Faces were stroked, organs teased. The slaves responded with helpless moans and sighs, leaning into the caresses like excited pets. The guests murmured and laughed as they commented on our behavior. I thought I could never do that, but when a smiling young lord slid his warm, smooth hands along my belly and into my sex I reacted the same way, my hips pushing forward without my consent. Tears on my face, and my lips parted in a gasp. 

We had met with approval. What now? Would we be overpowered, made to satisfy them?

But they only turned back to their food, their conversation. Not fair, not fair, I moaned under each breath. I rocked myself as unobtrusively as I could, trying to find relief. None came. How this whole treatment had worked on me. I had never felt so primed for sex before. How clever they were in this city of slaves, setting up stituations to slowly rouse their passion and draw it out, then keep it frustrated until it became a blazing conflagration.

From time to time a man or woman would come to refill their plate and stop to play with us, plucking a shivering nipple leash here, flicking a tumescent cock there. It was done gently, with humor and obvious enjoyment. There was to be no brutality such as I had seen from Shezrine.

The party went on. Though the Ushroez lived in virtual exile in their own city they had their own pleasure slaves to attend them, and it was agony watching them being fondled. Their attention too was claimed by carafes of wine and pipes filled with opium. Had the Duke changed his mind, forbidden his kinsmen to touch us? 

But there came a change in the rhythm of the gathering. The laughter became looser and I heard furniture being moved in the other room. Then the Ushroez came for us, removing us from the litters where we had steamed for so long. My nipple clamps were unsnapped, my arms untied. I was free, but I had no chance to stretch my cramped muscles, for I was lifted and thrown over a broad masculine shoulder and quickly borne into the next room. I saw a large space had been cleared in its center and laid with furs. An orgy, then. But I felt no fear or trepidation. You could say I was detached from the experience, or that I was resigned to it. But in truth I was just as excited as the guests were.

I saw Lady Nadysha lay sprawled in a chair, one leg slung over the arm as the slave she had tweaked pumped his cock into her. Next to her two slave girls were held suspended by their arms and legs, one facing the ceiling, the other the carpet, and positioned so they could lick each other's sex, which they were only too eager to do. And behind me a dignified older lord was kissing a slave boy, a note of restraint in this sea of carnality.

But I could not look around for long, as my captor threw me on the cushions at the edge of carpet and drove into me. His fingers kneaded my nipples and the soreness passed beyond pain, into the shrillest of pleasures. It was the young lord who had been so taken with me. I gave him a good ride, and when the orgasm came my own cries sounded foreign to me.

For a few seconds I was alone. I looked for the Duke. But two laughing young women took their pleasure with me next. I was speared on the thin neck of a wine bottle as their hands pumped it back and forth, covered by their kisses. And I saw through slitted eyes that the slave pleasuring Lady Nadysha had been cored from behind by a tall young lord, the two of them now moving in unison. 

Suddenly, to my surpise, I was thrown over the lap of one of the girls and spanked with a slipper as the bottle continued its work, and a second orgasm washed over me shamelessly. 

Then I was lifted again and carried up a flight of stairs. Breathless, I opened my eyes against a leather vest trimmed with bold beadwork, beneath it a smooth masculine chest. The Duke! It could be no other, and here I dangled with my head at his waist. He took me down a dark hall and into a bedchamber. The bed had a canopy carved of four eagles with their wings outstretched, sheer white draperies depending from the claws, and the satin tassels that tied them dangled plumply from their posts.

But the Duke tore these aside and threw me on the bed, then removed his clothes with quick, powerful gestures. He was a well-built man, his dark organ a splendid sculpture as he came back to the bed. There was silent resentment in his eyes. He had been aroused by the night's orgy but I could tell he did not like using the slaves of the Queen for his pleasure. Perhaps he would take out his resentment on me. Well, I could change his mind about that. After all, I was no put-upon slave. I put my arms up, but he caught my wrists in one hand and held them pinioned above my head, and raped my mouth with a kiss.

He was so different than Shadow. With him there had been a communion of intellect, an equal spirit; with the Duke, I felt overwhelmed. He was elemental, a great storm I was tossed by. He removed the little clamp on my clit that had maddened me for so long, and I gave myself over to his thrusts: deep and gliding yet forceful. My hips rose and fell, adapting well to the rhythms of the storm. Annihilated at last, I cried out.

He rolled off me; there was to be no further commiseration. He reached for his clothes. As if I had been a filthy thing, a whore!

"Duke Ushroez," I commanded, "listen to me. I bear you a message, from Deneir Mejbadian, the rightful king of Obn Dhregni, and his brother Shadow."

He froze, his trousers halfway up his muscular, magnificent backside. So I had managed to discomport him. "Oh?" He turned. Candlelight played in his beard and his dark curly hair.

"Yes! I am no toy of the Queen. I am Lady Jozhande Tanimury, a swordmistress and a mercenary. I met up with the rebels in Hharang."

He was amused now. He was a humorous man, for all the brooding he evinced earlier. "Ah, I should have guessed at once you were a warrior. Your obvious muscularity, your reflexes. How easily you could have slain me in my passion." He shook his head, rueful. "A barbarian warrior-woman in disguise as a slave. It boggles the mind!"

"It was the only way I could see you, being as you are notoriously unsociable of late."

"Ah." He was still amused. There was a sparkle in his irony. "That is hardly my fault. And please, call me Ajmid, as we are on closer terms than titles of state allow. What is this message you have for me?"

I told him, and finished by expressing the doubts that had been brewing within me. "I realize I am a mercenary and not supposed to display an opinion about politics and the affairs of the mighty, but I confess I do not like this place. Slavery is not to my taste, and if Deneir intends to drive Shezrine and her allies out, I intend to aid them any way I can. On the other hand, if this Deneir, who I have not met though I find his brother most trustworthy, is cut from the same cloth as the current Queen, I would leave them both to scrap over this city like dogs over a bone, and be on my way."

"Hmm." He was thoughtful now. "You find our city repulsive?"

"Not exactly. In other lands I have heard much talk of this city, and most of it was positive. Now that I am here, however, it seems a very vile place." I told him what I had seen of Shezrine's behavior. 

The Duke seemed thoughtful when I had done. He sat on the bed next to me, his skin a golden blaze against the whiteness. "Lady Tanimury, when the Mejdabians ruled this city was very different. We were a peaceful people then. Our main export was our culture and its unique pleasures of the body and spirit. People came from all over the Great Rift to taste of it. We were rich and lazy. We did not work much, and what work we did was a pleasure. We had the finest inns and eathouses, gardens, palaces, concupisceriums. No sexual act was forbidden or looked down upon. Our temples sang praises to Tontaxir, pleasure-slave of the gods, with bells and tamborines struck to celebrate the copulations.

"Before the Caramaithzes we had pleasure slaves, true, but they always volunteered to serve. In some families it was almost a tradition. The city rewarded them with gold when their time of service was up from the revenues that had been generated from their auction. A great spectacle, my grandfather said. The proud youth vying with each other, trying to outshine the other young men and women to fetch the greatest price. Shezrine has taken that custom and perverted it, the same way she has perverted the nature of our love-play. What you saw her do to that poor girl was an obscenity. Our rites are designed to open the heart, reveal its secrets, not destroy it. After such an experience a slave may ruined. Some would enjoy it, no doubt, but there are many it would scar for life.

"Shezrine is a monster. I would do anything I could to destroy her and her allies. But she is a sorceress, and a clever and powerful one. Her reign may continue for years, or it may end tomorrow by an assassin's arrow. She is unpopular, but all fear her. They have reason to. You saw what she did to that girl. She can do the same to any noble or any citizen."

"Can Marnessa be rescued from that fate?" I asked sincerely.

He pursed his lips. "It is difficult, but not impossible. If she was sold last night you can ask the staff at the auction block. There are many slaves who suffer that fate, however, and they may not remember. "

"I must do something!" I protested.

"Well, being as she bore the mark of the palace, it is likely she sold for a high price. A concupiscerium may have bought her to add to its staff. My dear, if you intend to save her you may have a difficult time. She may not want to be rescued."

"How could she wish to remain like that?" I thought of her as she was, jelly-tits trembling to please, without the uniqueness of character even the most bland of us have.

"She has been conditioned for sexual use now and will pine if removed from that way of life. In time, when her youth fades, she will be set to other tasks. But pleasure slaves, I must tell you, are notoriously unsuited for other kinds of work. They are capricious; they are unindustrious and emotional and make trouble. For many the shock of not being used sexually is greater than the one of constant use. I'm afraid most are sent out to the fields to be the lowliest of laborers, under the worst of conditions. Or they are sacrificed to Shezrine's demons."

It sounded like a horrible fate. "I assume the old Dhregnians did not take up that practice?"

"They did not. As I said, a slave's term of service was limited, no more than five years at the most. And pleasure were all they were used for. We certainly did not have them sweeping the dung from the streets! Except as a disciplinary measure of course...if they seemed to want it. I myself keep slaves because it would cause talk if I didn't, but I do not like to receive the Queen's creatures because I know how warped they are. And thenÑ" he lowered his voiceÑ "some say Shezrine herself disguises herself as a slave at times, and from it gains much knowledge of the doings in her city. I find this hard to believe, but safeguard myself nonetheless."

"It is no hearsay," I said, and told him what Aradra had witnessed.

"So our Queen is not only a pervert, but a perverted pervert!" He laughed with irony. "I should have thought it. Her father, who was a sorceror himself, had none of those ambiguities. Some say under his rule the city was better run. But Shezrine seems to be lax in her domestic upkeep. Nevertheless, she is more ambitious, as by how you have witnessed her naked tributes marched through the gates. Soon I fear she will form alliances with the cities that lie deeper in the Rift. We have an excess of slaves, and she may soon be exporting them the same way we once did our erotic books and statues."

"What were the pleasures of the city like, Ajmid, before the Caramaithzes came?'

"Ah, they were sublime." He looked like he was tasting a delicious fruit. "You have had only the merest glimpse of the games we play."

I was envous suddenly, horribly envious, and hungry again. "Would you show me one of those games?" I said.

"If you wish." How splendid he was, the dark beard, the silky skin that was almost an ashy rose on his nipples and cock. "Understand, as you were on the litter, you may be bound and helpless. But no harm will come to you. It will enhance the act of love, rather than be substitute for it."

Why did I feel so afraid now, with his gentle reassurnaces, then I did facing the procession of the litter and the dark confusion of the orgy? But I did, even though he meant me no harm. He spoke to me like a child, quelling my fear, and gave some light spicy wine that had been left in a cool bucket of water by the door. 

"Lie still." he whispered. He moved off the bed, went into one of the other rooms I couldn't see. He came back with an armful of cloth, long strips of sheer white silk. 

"What is that? What are youÑ"

He stopped my words with a tender kiss. "Only silk, my black diamond; feel it with your hands. What a lovely contrast it will make against your skin. You will be a little silkworm my dear, and dance most fetchingly for me."

"AjmidÑ" I protested, but I did nothing. My arm lifted, fell. What kind of power did he have over me? 

"Sit on the edge of the bed. Press your legs close tightly together." Feeling drugged, drunk, I did. The pressure increased the heat in my sex, and I felt the moisture grow. He begin at my feet. He wrapped them separately in the silk, then bound them together tightly. He worked his way up my legs. It was tight, but not uncomfortable. He had me stand and told me to press my arms against my sides. He continued his work up my thighs to my waist, sealing my arms to my torso and leaving my sex bare. Each pull of the silk made the wrappings tighter. He crossed the strip over my breasts to leave them naked. 

When he finished I was cocooned toes to chin, totally rigid and totally helpless, with the sexual parts of me were mercilessly exposed. The sensation was astonishing. There was no pain, no pinching, just the soft pressure of the silk casing. 

Ajmid lifted me and placed me on the bed. His eyes were shining. "What a picture you are. Like a chocolate candy in its wrapper. A most delectable confection."

"And am I to be unwrapped now?" I said, alert for tricks.

"No, that is not the point. The point is to surrender to what you feel, the immobility and helplessness of your position. You are little silkworm in its cocoon, trying to burst free so it can become a butterfly. Struggle, if you would. Feel the luxury of it. Move your back, your neck and legs."

I could no longer resist testing the bonds. They were only silk after all, not rope or chain or thongs of leather, all of which I had been bound with before in more life-threatening and less salubrious circumstances, and all of which I had escaped from. To my surprise I was held quite firmly. I twisted my spine on the satin cover of the bed, discovering I could hardly bend my knees or lift my legs. My body thrashed from side to side, my hips thrust up, I tossed my head. No change. My flesh only seemed to swell, the wrappings contract. I thought of nothing but freedom, but freedom was the last thing I wanted. A delightful panic washed over me. 

But there was no real danger here. Only Ajmid. He playfully blocked me as I writhed, teasing me between the legs with a long peacock feather. "That's it. Dance, my little silkworm. You can't escape from me."

"Ajmid!" I demanded between clenched teeth, "I insist you let me go. Ajmid! Are you listening!" The tickling was maddening. Looking down, I saw I had made a wet stain on the silk at the juncture of my thighs.

He made a tching noise with his lips. "Ah-ah-ah. This is part of the game, my dear. And now I will make it even better." And he quickly stuffed the leftover silk in my mouth, gagging me quickly with the last strip. He tied it behind my head. "No more of those distracting cries. You may yet screech and scream, but it will be nicely muffled, and all the more poignant for it. Now let loose with your lungs, give a loud full cry."

I did, and it came out as a muffled squeal. "I am abandoned," I thought, and it gave me the incentive to lose myself in a paroxysm of movement as he batted me with the feather, then commenced to tease me with his strong golden brown fingers. Oh, the skill he had. I was too tightly bound for his cock to enter but his fingers could, and I could not get away no matter how vigorously I tossed. The pleasure built until I thought I would explode. The bedframe creaked and the straw mattress shuddered with the dull thuds of my kicks and thrashes. I thought I couldn't stand any more of this, I couldn't...I was flying with the gods now, or suffering with the damned, it didn't matter which. Nothing mattered except that it should build to its inevitable climax, and I would find relief, relief, relief...

The orgasm came in bright wheels of light, the shocks rippling through my body, making my bound limbs tingle. I went rigid, then limp. The bonds caressed me as I shuddered through the aftershocks. I sighed. The world was at peace for the moment.

"You see?" Ajmid said quietly.

I see, I thought. One would not have to be a slave here to take the pleasures of a slave in private. He kissed my forehead tenderly and drew me against his broad, muscular chest. "You shall stay with me for the night. Do you wish to sleep like that?"

Oh, what an obvious question. I shook my head yes.

"All right, my butterfly." He laughed and extinguished the lamp.

