Buck moved his head in Chastity’s hand, trying to catch a glimpse of the Red Lady out of the corner of his eye. She was still taking lady-like sips of her drink, and still watching him.
“So, what sorts of pleasures would be available to a man of clean disposition and full pockets?” Thomas asked carefully. The women grinned at each other, and Amelia set her mouth to Thomas’s ear and hissed into it. Thomas’s eyes widened farther and farther as she went on. Buck saw her bright pink tongue flick into Thomas’s ear as she finished.
“Well…that’s…quite the catalogue,” Thomas managed.
“Maybe we best get an early start.”
“I think so. Yes.”
Amelia took Thomas by the hand and pulled him off his barstool and out of the tent.
“Should we follow them?” Chastity asked.
“Um…no. I think I’ll… no, thank you,” Buck stammered, one eye on the woman across the bar.
Chastity huffed in annoyance and climbed off of him, done setting her charms out for a man who refused to appreciate them. She stalked off and Buck turned back to the woman across the bar as she drained the last of her drink. The Red Lady set the glass down on the bar and, without setting down a coin, and still without looking away, slid off her stool.
Buck mirrored her, then grabbed his tumbler of gin and downed it, hoping to find the courage to go over to her. She stood still, waiting until he finished, before turning and walking straight off into the crowd.
She wasn’t running. Buck was sure she wasn’t running. Her movements were too graceful, and he couldn’t see how she would be able to run in a dress that tight, but somehow, she moved through the crowd too fast for him to catch up to her. He kept losing sight of her between the fire eaters, sword swallowers, and palm readers. He wasn’t even running after her so much as trying to catch up to the last spot in the crowd where he had seen a flash of crimson.
Finally, out of breath, he found himself at the edge of the carnival. At The Row. He heard a loud guffaw from several tents down the line and saw the silhouette of what had to be Thomas and the two prostitutes from the pub, only just reaching their destination.
Buck looked down The Row, trying to figure out which tent The Red Lady might work in. They all looked the same in the dark, each a large, two-toned canvas tarp with a sign and maybe a couple of people out front, calling out to passersby.
“You look like you need a place to lie down, sweetheart!” A tall blond man, wearing only loose fitting white pants, shouted from the tent in front of him.
“Did you see a woman in a red dress run past here?” Buck called back.
“Haven’t been watching for the women,” the blond man answered.
Buck sighed and started down The Row, passing tent after tent until he came to the one at the end, which could only be hers.
It was smaller than all the others, built for one, rather than a half-dozen, and made entirely of red silk, finer than the cheap silk of the ship’s balloons. The tent walls rippled like water in the slight breeze.
Buck went to the flap and stopped, unsure if he should call out to her without knowing her name, or if he should just walk in.
A small white hand appeared to one side of the tent flap and pulled it aside. The masked woman stood, still and silent, with the red silk of the tent flap draped over her arm. She said nothing.
She did look like a demon now, with deep shadows carved into the ruches of her dress by the far off carnival lights, her mask rising over her head like devil’s horns. Buck hesitated under her stony gaze, and then, with a gulp, he stepped out of the light and into the black interior of the tent.
A spicy, sweet smell filled his lungs the instant he stepped inside. He wondered why he hadn’t been able to smell it from the outside, but continued in, shuffling carefully in the darkness. The woman walked behind him, the fabric of her dress making a soft sound as it moved over the ground.
“Who are you?” he asked. She didn’t answer. There was a light scraping noise and a match flared in the darkness, illuminating her face and throwing the edges of her mask into sharp relief. She lit a candle, shedding light on nothing more than a stretch of red silk and the corner of a table, then stepped forward and lit another candle, bringing a muddled shape of something standing on the table into view. She walked farther into the room, lighting another candle every few steps. Buck stood by the tent opening, heart throbbing as though he were still running. Bit by bit, the room came into view.
A rug was spread out over most of the bare ground, grass peeking around the edges of it. A large wooden box sat on top of it, occupying the entire middle of the tent. A small wooden vanity, with a large round mirror attached, stood against the back wall, directly across from the box. A few trunks were neatly arranged in a corner. The table with the statue of the woman on it, incense burning in front of it like it was an Eastern idol, was near the tent entrance.
The Red Lady stood across from Buck, eyes drilling into him just as they had at the pub.
“Tell me your name.” Her voice was soft, deep, and steady. It was like a river speaking.
“Buck.”
She tilted her head, the corners of her mouth tipping upward in contrast to the dripping points of her mask. “Tell me your real name.”
“Alaric,” Buck admitted. He hadn’t used it since that last day at the factory. Alaric was a clerk and a doormat. Buck had some status, even if it was only among criminals. He had gone out of his way to make sure none of his fellow pirates ever found out he wasn’t called Buck. Not that pirates bothered about a man’s real name.
The Red Lady’s expression returned to blank beneath the mask.
“What’s your name?” Alaric asked.
“I haven’t decided what you’ll call me yet.”
His heart beat picked up again, and a tremor started in his legs.
“Why did you follow me here, Alaric?”
He shrugged, not sure of the answer. “Well…this is The Row isn’t it?”
“It is.”
“And you’re a woman on the Row right?”
She didn’t reply. Alaric felt his face heating, a faint prickle starting in his cock despite it. This was worse than in China, when that beautiful girl pretended to react to his clumsy fumbling and then tried not to laugh when he paid her for an hour and only lasted a handful of minutes.
“Look, my ship’s just back from a long tour. I can pay you.”
“We’ll see,” the Lady said, a small smile quirking her lips up. “You’ve accompanied a prostitute before?”
“Of course.” He pointed at himself with a touch of bravado. “Pirate.”
The Red Lady let a silence land there, stretching out before him.
“Just once.”
“It didn’t go well.”
Now she was reading his mind. He should go, simply turn around, leave, and never see a prostitute again. Maybe she really was a demon. Maybe the mask was hiding the demon parts of her face.
His mind was trying to move his limbs, turn his feet, push him out the door, but his body was entranced. The tremor in his legs climbed up to his groin, making him very aware of the way the dim candle light moved across her rounded body.
“No.”
“Why didn’t it go well, Alaric?”
His mouth was starting to go dry. His hands were beginning to shake.
“She laughed at me,” he told her, dropping his eyes to the floor.
“Why?”
“Because I…I couldn’t, I didn’t…,” He stopped, gulped, wondered again what magic he had run across.
“Look at me when you speak, Alaric.”
He lifted his gaze up from the pattern of pomegranates running along the border of the red rug and met her shadowed eyes.
“I couldn’t.... I barely got inside her before….”
The Red Lady didn’t reply. Alaric suffered a terrible moment of fear she would throw him right back out of her tent and let him find a lower class prostitute who would welcome a
quick trick like him between the carnival crowd.
“Fortunately, that won’t be a problem here,” the Red Lady told him, a smile spreading over her red lips. “Undo your trousers, Alaric.”
His shaking hands moved to his fly, popping the buttons out of their button holes, having trouble as he traveled down. The Red Lady waited. Alaric finally bested the last button and tugged his trousers a little ways down his hips.
“Stop. I didn’t tell you to take them off, just to undo them. Do only what, and everything that I say, Alaric.”
He looked up at her, standing still and impassive on the other side of the tent, gleaming in the bloody light. The name he had dropped all those months ago burned his ears every time she used it. He reached down to pull his trousers back up but stopped.
“Very good,” the Red Lady purred. “You’ll do very well. I can see that already. Pull them back up.”
Alaric shuddered as his trousers brushed over his cock, already beginning to strain against them.
“Pull out your cock, Alaric.”
He slid his hand into his trousers, lifting his cock out of his open fly and letting it hang out, half-hard, for her to see.
She glanced over him, not appraisingly, just curiously. Alaric let his hands hang at his sides, beginning to worry about what she expected him to do.
“Stroke it slowly.”
Alaric’s breath hitched in his chest, and he reached between his legs and palmed his cock in a steady way that belied the blood pounding through his ears.
“Slower.”
The Red Lady moved from her position in the corner to the vanity. She perched on the vanity chair and crossed her ankles, watching him with polite interest, as though he were giving a toast at some sort of society function she hadn’t really wanted to attend. Alaric stood in front of her, put off by her eyes on him as he pulled at himself with the sluggish movement she had demanded from his hand.
It was like coiling rope. Between the gin and the agonizing lack of speed, he wasn’t sure he could get hard from this. And for some reason he couldn’t name, he was afraid to disappoint her.
“Now faster,” she said.
A small whimper escaped him as he obeyed, running his hand over his cock like he would in the head of the ship when the rest of the crew was occupied with some task, and he could be afforded a little bit of time. It grew heavier in his hand.
“Look up at me, not down at your hand.”
He hadn’t realized his eyes had moved down, that he had been anxiously watching his own movements, like someone just beginning to learn a dance.
As he touched himself, The Red Lady’s eyes finally drifted from his face over his body, running over his lank and dirty hair, his grimy face, his rough shirt, his pumping arm, and, lastly, his exposed cock.
“Are you hard, Alaric?”
“Mmhmm,” he huffed, still stroking, that treacherous churning in his balls already starting.
“Faster.”
He gasped, his hand charging down his length almost of its own accord. His breathing grew ragged. The smell of rose and clove coated his palate and his own panting, the only sound in the room, rang in his ears. He bit his lip, and moaned as he felt his cock twitch in his hand.
“Stop.”
He tore his hand away from his throbbing member and let his arms swing from his sides as his chest heaved. His hands twitched, desperate to return and bring himself to completion, but he clenched them into fists.
The Red Lady stood. She walked toward him with slow, measured steps that his own quaking legs couldn’t possibly have mimicked. She came within arm’s length of him, close enough to grab hold of him and pull him over the brink, but stepped to the side and walked past him, to the statue’s table. Alaric turned a little ways around and realized he hadn’t been told to. The smoky smell of incense became stronger.
Looking around the tent, no longer fixated on the woman inside it, Alaric suddenly realized there was no bed. What kind of prostitute had a silk tent, but no bed?
“Now take your boots off,” she said from behind him, still in her steady tone.
Alaric bent to do so, hissing as his cock bobbed between his legs. He unlaced one, then the other and pulled them off.
“Socks.”
He pulled them away as well, dropping them onto his boots.
“Trousers.”
He gratefully tugged them off, tossing them onto the pile.
“Waistcoat.”
Gone.
Alaric shivered in his loose linen shirt, goose bumps creeping up his bare legs. The Red Lady stepped back in front of him, tipping her head thoughtfully.
“I don’t know. I may like the shirt.”
“Are you going to touch me?” Alaric asked in a small, breathy voice.
The Red Lady smiled and reached out with her finger extended. She brought it up to his face, stopping a hair’s width short of touching his chin, and crooked it. Alaric followed her as she took a few steps backward, skirts swishing, and mirrored her when she turned.
“Sit.”
He did, gasping at how cold the varnished wood was on his balls despite the warmth of the night. He looked up at her, her breasts eclipsing the exposed part of her face at this angle so he could only see her mask spreading out from her silk encased bosom. She was close enough for him to reach out and touch, but he didn’t dare.
“You’re doing very well,” she told him. “I’m impressed. But not so impressed that you’ve earned my touch. Spread your legs and stroke yourself again. Slowly. We’re starting over.”
Alaric reverted to the painfully lethargic stroking again, every run of his hand over his begging cock sending cold shivers up his spine, none of them fast enough to push him over the edge. Somehow, her small acknowledgement of approval made up for it.
“You are allowed to ask questions.”
“What’s your name?” Alaric asked, trying to distract himself from the way the candle light flickered over her bosom as she breathed and the way his hand was torturing him.
She laughed and turned away. Alaric hissed at the feeling of the train of her dress running over his foot. She resumed her seat at the vanity, so they were eye to eye.
“Interesting. You ask the difficult questions first. What you’ll call me won’t be my name.”
“Should I name you?”
“Of course not.”
Chastised, Alaric’s cheeks flushed. His hand trailed over the red, weeping head of his cock. This pace was only keeping him hard for her, not bringing him any satisfaction, but there was nothing he could do. It was as though she had him by puppet strings.
“Stop.”
Alaric whimpered as he released his cock again. He grabbed his elbows in his hands to keep from continuing to palm himself, suddenly aware of how hunched over it made him.
“Take off your shirt.”
He pulled his hands from his elbows reluctantly and tugged his shirt over his head, his back stiffening when the hem brushed over his unfulfilled cock.
“From now on, when I tell you to stop you’ll put your hands on your knees.”
Alaric dropped his hands onto his knees with an audible slap of skin on skin and kneaded his fingernails into his thighs, trying to pull his mind from the sensations running through his cock.
“You are lovely, flushed and desperate like this.”
“You are beautiful,” Alaric panted.
“Faster.”
Alaric gritted his teeth together so hard his jaw popped as he pulled his hand over himself again and again. His vision flickered like the candle light every time his hand traveled over the precome slicked head of his cock and his panting turned to a quiet keen. A hushed begging noise from the back of his throat that filled the tent.
“Slow.”
He moaned in frustration. She smiled.
“Mmm… absolutely lovely. Should I keep you like this? Keep you close like this for the rest of the night?”
“No. Please,” Alaric moaned.
&nbs
p; “Faster,” she said carelessly. “Do you want to come, Alaric?”
He nodded his head furiously, lacking the breath to answer. He wasn’t going to have a choice soon, he thought.
“Stop.”
He yelped this time, unable to keep himself from one last slide of his fist over his cock before he grabbed his knees so tightly he was balling up skin in his palms.
“This is the last choice you’ll have, Alaric. If you leave now, you can walk out into the carnival, take your heavy pockets to any whore in The Row and be serviced and forgotten. You can stumble out into the yard and take back control of your hands and your cock and cry out while you come in the grass.” Alaric continued to stare at his white knuckles on his reddening knees. “But if you come here, you choose to follow my lead, hand over your control to me, and let me show you things you’ll never experience without me.”
“The price?” Alaric gasped, amazed with himself for even thinking of his pockets when his whole world was threatening to narrow down to the pounding of his heartbeat in the head of his cock.
“You.”
Alaric didn’t know what that meant. His cock screamed at him to do whatever it took to find release. His mind didn’t have a chance to fight.
“Yes,” he groaned. “Let me…let me….”
“Stand up.”
He pulled himself up on shaking legs. The Red Lady stood as well, keeping her eyes locked on his. She walked tauntingly toward him, and again passed him. She returned to the table with the statue of the woman on it and beckoned him over with a finger. He hurried to her, his heavy cock bouncing between his legs. She moved behind him, leaving him face to face with the statue’s blank face, full breasts, round hips, and almost obscene vulva.
“Touch yourself,” she whispered, her breath hot on the back of his neck.
He took himself in hand, not waiting for another order, squeezing hard as he ran his hands over himself again and again and again.
“Come for me.”
Alaric’s cock surged in his hand. A moan broke from his lips as a jet of milky white come shot out of him onto the statue’s feet, then another onto the table underneath him, and finally a last, weaker pulse, dribbling down his shaft.
The Promise of Silk Page 2