by Felix Baron
Asp, at the peak of one swing, gave me a saucy grin, as if to tell me that she had even more in her repertoire. I set my feet more firmly and further apart. On her next descent, Asp twisted so that she faced me all the way. Each time she went down, she half-turned at her waist. With her gyrations adding to the delightful torture she was inflicting on my cock, my need became urgent.
I put my hand, palm out, against my lower belly. My thumb’s ball found the hard button of her clitoris. Now, not only was my shaft churning her sheath, but every movement she made frigged her clit.
Asp’s face tensed. Her writhing became frenzied. Her abdomen rippled, within as well as without. Her eyes rolled upwards.
She screeched, convulsed and went limp. I was ready. My hands took her hips and flipped her entire body upwards so that she smacked against my chest. Holding her thus, I jerked up into her thrice, and let loose the floodgates of my desire.
When I’d done, I set her down on a pile of furs, tenderly, feeling a confusion of benevolent emotions towards her. Surely there is no greater compliment a woman can pay a man than by swooning from the climax he gives her.
Twenty-three
IT WAS AN hour or a little more past dawn as best I could judge. It had warmed enough that I was comfortable sitting naked on our tailgate, eating a pomegranate and spitting the pips in the general direction of Zema, who was riding rear-guard. Sometime in the night we’d entered a valley that sloped upwards between two steep hills. The air was redolent with crushed thyme. Had I not been thirsty as dust and somewhat odorous myself, and had I not been engaged in a perilous mission, life would have been quite pleasant.
Our water ewers had run dry three days before. We’d been served scant rations for drinking and none for washing. There’d been no rice. Asp’s Gladstone had yielded several coils of kielbasa but we’d made no great inroads into the spicy sausage because of our thirst. Our only other provision remaining was a small pot of pale grey Beluga caviar from Maria’s hamper. It was safe until we had ample water to wash it down with, and ideally some points of toast to spread it on.
It’d been two and a half days since our last romp.
Someone hailed Zema from further up our caravan. She spurred past us. I spat a seed after her.
A great drop of water splashed on to my left instep. I looked up. There were clouds gathering and they weren’t the unnatural grey-brown sand-laden monsters I’d seen in the desert. Another fat drop fell on my knee. There was a flash that lit up the horizon but the rumbling thunder took several seconds to reach me. I called out, ‘Girls! Come quickly. I think it’s going to rain.’
Asp shed her skimpy improvised toga and plumped down beside me. Maria and Fatima soon joined us but by the time the Egyptian’s shapely rump hit the cedar planks, the rain had become a torrent that blew a full yard into our carriage. It was like sitting under a glorious waterfall. We leaned back on stiff arms, gazing skyward, mouths agape. Raindrop pellets pounded our bodies and filled our dry mouths. We all three gulped until our bellies were replete. We sat up to sluice off our skins with our cupped hands. I could feel the pores of my skin unclog and rinse clean.
The caravan came to a halt, no doubt so that precious water could be collected.
Asp, companionably, reached over to help me cleanse my privates. Inspired by my instant erection, no doubt, she leaned across to suck fresh rainwater from my cock’s dome. I lay back, content to let her.
Maria, also inspired, fell back beside me and raised one foot to rest against our carriage’s wall, leaving her other leg dangling towards the ground. With her thighs so spread, the rain beat an insistent tattoo on her cunny. Her bottom shifted, adjusting her angle. She parted herself with her fingers. ‘Girls,’ she exclaimed, ‘try this. The rain on my clit – divine!’
I translated for Asp, to my own loss. She deserted my cock and lay back, legs Veed towards the sky. All three of my lovely companions wriggled and squealed but despite the force of the flood, none seemed able to reach a climax. I thought about their cunnies, now rain-rinsed to pristine cleanliness and doubtless aching with need. What man would be so churlish as to ignore the plight of such as these?
I dropped off the tailgate into ankle-deep flowing water. How to choose which soft pink fountain to drink from? Before I could resolve my pleasant dilemma, my embarras de richesses, Asp joined me, making my decision unnecessary. She stooped to lap at Maria’s cunny, leaving me Fatima’s labyrinthine treasure. The downpour had become so intense that I was deafened and blinded to everything except the treat that was in the shelter of my bowed head. Rivulets of rainwater ran down the creases between her belly and her thighs, and a third coursed between the lips of her glistening quim. I sucked from where those three streamlets met, then followed the central trickle upwards. Dom Pérignon never produced so fine a vintage as I imbibed that day.
Asp reached across to stroke my shaft. My fingers found her cunny and then her clit. My girls had become naiads, free and innocent in their depravity. I fancied myself as Neptune, Lord of the Waters, Master of all water nymphs.
Maria and Fatima achieved their climaxes almost simultaneously. Asp and I vaulted back on board, she to squat over Maria’s face, I to mount Fatima. Rain pounding on my behind spurred me to ride her hard and fast. After all, she had already spent so I had no obligation to wait on her. As is often the case, however, my efforts reawakened her lust, so that when I was done, she was eager for more. With a grin, she reached for Asp, who had just toppled off Maria.
And so our relay continued. One of us might fall, exhausted, but not before passing Eros’ baton on to the next. It was not until darkness, and the temperature fell, that the final lap of our race was done. We dried off, covered ourselves in furs, and slept the sleep of the thoroughly sated.
I woke to shouts and curses. Our carriage swayed forward and fell back with a jolt. I rose, donned my scrap of cotton, and dropped from the rear. The blessed rain had stopped, leaving us with its curse. The ground beneath us had softened. Our wheels were a foot deep in oozing mud. The cries I’d heard were the sounds of Cossacks straining to push us free. Their tempers were foul. A Cossack will ride for a month and then fight for a week, all without food or rest, without a word of complaint. Give him common labour to perform and within the hour he’s ready to murder his own mother.
Melku was plodding back and forth, brandishing a long club, achieving nothing. Igor, muddied from toe to head, strained at one of our wheels. We had six. Five of them were manned, leaving the middle one on the left vacant. A whip cracked over the heads of our horses. I squatted behind the neglected wheel, got my fingers around a half-buried spoke and braced myself to heave.
Zema called the cadence. On her three, we all strained. My back was creaking when I felt movement.
‘Keep it up,’ Zema called. ‘It’s moving. Don’t lose it!’
I hunkered lower. My muscles tensed. We began to roll. A movement caught my eye. Melku’s club hit my left shoulder and the back of my skull at once. His second blow was swinging towards my face. I snatched for his wrist and threw myself sideways, under the carriage, out of the path of the following five-foot-tall iron-clad wheel. Melku, dragged after me, was less fortunate than I. His shins crunched under the rim. I looked upwards to watch the floor I’d slept and futtered on pass above me. When the carriage halted, I was sprawled behind it, in its ruts. Melku was close by me, screaming.
Zema strode back to us, shoulders bunched, fists tight.
‘He tried to kill Richard,’ Igor shouted. ‘He did it to himself. Richard did nothing.’
That wasn’t exactly true. It’d been no accident that I’d tugged Melku after me. It seemed diplomatic not to correct the Cossack.
Zema went to Melku and looked down on him. He sobbed, ‘Help me!’
She nodded and marched off, to return with the Cossack’s blunderbuss. When he saw her intent, Melku shielded his face with his arms and begged for mercy, but to no avail. His face and half his head were obliterated.
> I had no qualms about his dying or the way of it but it would have been better had it been at my hands, rather than at Zema’s. She might be plagued by regrets. I wouldn’t.
Twenty-four
THE SLOPE WAS gradual, but always climbing. At times, our path was constricted by a vertical cliff on one side and a drop of hundreds of feet, equally vertical, on the other. From time to time we passed solitary turf-roofed log huts and sometimes herds of scrawny goats. When we saw people, mostly they fled but there were those who welcomed us and fetched provisions. Half of our remaining Tatars left us. They were replaced by half a dozen squat toughs that might have been Gurkhas, though they ignored me when I addressed them in my broken Nepalese.
We ascended high enough that we could peer down on to clouds that looked like watered milk, pooled in the bowls of valleys. It snowed, but lightly. Great forests of fir trees shrank below us until they mimicked fields of grass.
We crested the saddle that connected two mountains and came to a village that was built of square-cut stone blocks. Zema warned us to cover ourselves. I donned my loincloth and one of my crude togas. Fatima did similarly, but her garment was ankle-length. Maria had her severe black dress and Asp her trousers and tunics. Almost as soon as we were modestly clad, we were politely swarmed by a dozen round-faced children. We had no sweetmeats to offer them so I broke a piece of kielbasa off a coil for each one and was rewarded by beams and chatter I didn’t understand.
The horses were led away to stables. Three busy little fat women invaded our carriage with straw brooms, leather buckets and chamois cloths. They smiled and fussed and shooed us outside.
Zema greeted us with, ‘There is to be a feast in your honour, English.’ To my girls, she said, ‘There are men here. You will not touch them. If one of them touches you, I will disembowel him very slowly, using a blunt knife, understood?’
A fire was lit in the middle of a great circle of flat stones. We were given leather flasks of fermented Goji juice. One tahr, a short-legged wild mountain goat, was turning over the fire. Another animal was being butchered ready for the spit. Strings of onions and stacks of papadams were set close enough to the flames to scorch, that being the style of the local haute cuisine. Youths, both male and female, stamped a circular dance to the discordant music of horns and drums.
I found myself quite affected. It had been a long time since I’d attended a celebratory social event. Although I hadn’t realised it, I’d missed mingling with a throng of revellers. The core of it is much the same at a Mayfair ball, a Makah potlatch or a Himalayan Tiji Festival. It’s all booze and dancing, with the young men sizing up the girls, trying to guess which ones will spread their legs if plied with a sufficiency of strong drink.
Remembering the night of our vodka party, I kept a close eye on Fatima. She, like the other two, was a model of decorum. All three of my girls were scrutinised by youths but with more worship in their eyes than lust.
When we were replete and the fire had died down enough for foolhardy boys to leap through the flames, we returned to our carriage. Zema had posted a pair of Cossack guards that I felt we had no need of. After a little persuasion, they left to seek whatever Goji juice wine was left over.
Come dawn, the horses, clean and groomed, were harnessed and hitched. I saw Zema emerge from the largest hut, leading two diminutive cloaked figures. A pair of Cossacks helped the newcomers into our carriage. Zema made the introductions. Jia Li was Chinese, pig-tailed, lovely and elegant in black satin pyjamas and wooden-soled shoes. Asuka was Japanese, in full geisha regalia of chrysanthemum-embroidered white silk kimono, obi, white face with painted-on features, with elaborately coiffed black hair pinned by thick wooden needles. Both girls spoke fluent French. No doubt that was a qualification for whatever duties they all were intended for. Asp didn’t speak the language but perhaps her special physical abilities outweighed that disadvantage. I was offended that French had been chosen over English for our lingua Franca, but that is the rule rather than an exception. One day, I am sure, English will take French’s place as the tongue of diplomacy and international scholarship, as French has usurped Latin’s.
I bowed to our new guests and pulled Zema aside. ‘Are these young ladies of the same erotic nature as Maria, Fatima and Asp?’ I asked, sotto voce.
‘Each in her own way, yes.’
‘I am to cope with five such greedy creatures?’
Zema laughed, deep and guttural. ‘Surely five pretty little harlots won’t intimidate you, English. You have a reputation that, until now, you have lived up to.’
‘But five?’
‘I’ve been assured that you are man enough for five, and many more. There are great expectations of you. Don’t fail the one who has set such store by your masculine prowess, English. She doesn’t take disappointment well.’
That was interesting. So, whoever was behind the plot, ‘The Child’ was female, was she?
It was flattering that I was considered ‘man enough’ to satisfy five young ladies who were all possessed of incontinent animal passions. What worried me was Zema’s ‘and many more’. We were not yet arrived at our destination. Our carriage was large enough to accommodate a dozen or so nubile young beauties, at a pinch. What if we collected more en route? My question was, had I the stamina and the will to service such an exotic and demanding stable of frisky fillies?
My analogy led me to wonder what ‘use’ I was supposed to be put to? Was I to be put to stud, like some prize stallion? In prospect, many men would delight in such duties. In practice, they might find them onerous in the extreme. I spent the rest of the morning trotting behind our carriage. Its interior had lost some of its appeal.
My concerns proved premature. We were brought a great wooden platter of hot spiced strips of goat wrapped in warm chapattis. I helped a Cossack slide it into the back of our carriage and followed it, salivating in anticipation.
‘Where are the new girls?’ I asked Maria.
She nodded towards the draped curtain. ‘They’ve been in there all day.’
‘Doing what?’
‘Primping, as far as I can tell – or rather, the Chinese is primping the Japanese.’
I shrugged. ‘She looked fully primped when she arrived, to me.’ Towards the curtain wall, I called, ‘Our lunch has arrived. It’ll be best eaten while warm.’
Jia Li put her head around the curtain. ‘Please to wait for Miss Asuka.’
I nodded. Five or six minutes later, Asuka appeared, looking no different than when she’d arrived as far as I could tell. I reached for a chapatti.
‘Please no,’ Jia Li asked.
I drew back my hand, puzzled. Asuka bobbed a curtsey. Jia Li produced a pile of linen doilies. Both knelt beside the platter. Asuka took a chapatti between finger and thumb and set it diagonally across the doily that Jia Li held ready. They bowed their heads to each other. Asuka writhed elegantly to her feet, shuffled to me, knelt, and offered me my lunch on her extended palms. I thanked her. She returned to the platter to kneel once more. I lifted my chapatti to my lips, only to be stopped by Jia Li’s frown and shaking head. Perhaps our manners had become lax during our confinement. I set my food down and was rewarded by Jia Li’s smile and nod.
The process was repeated for Maria, Fatima, Asp, then Asuka served Jia Li and finally the geisha served herself. Our newcomers smiled, nodded and lifted their portions to their mouths, extending their little fingers like old maids at a tea party. Looking at me, they waited. I took a bite from mine. By then it was cold, but not as cold as the rest of the food would be before I was allowed to get to it.
I forced a smile. ‘Asuka, yours is a pretty name. Would you tell us what it means?’
She tittered and looked down. If she blushed, the white on her face hid it. ‘It means “Tomorrow’s Fragrance”,’ she whispered.
‘But you are as fragrant as cherry blossom today,’ I remarked. ‘How much sweeter could you be?’ The simple compliment seemed to throw her into utter confusion.
> I turned to Jia Li. ‘And what does your lovely name mean?’
Red-faced, she mumbled, ‘Very beautiful.’
‘Then your name was well-chosen.’ I got up and reached for the platter.
Jia Li wagged a finger at me. She and Asuka selected a fresh doily, taking a deuced long time about it, it seemed to me. A chapatti was chosen and bowed over before it was passed to me.
Fatima brushed her fingers together and eyed the platter.
I asked, ‘Another, Fatima?’
She nodded. Before Jia Li or Asuka could move, I snatched a chapatti up and handed it to Fatima, without benefit of either doily or ceremony. She sank her teeth into it, grinning straight at Asuka. Our two new girls stood, bowed, and shuffled backwards to retreat behind their curtain, leaving their chapattis half-eaten.
‘I think you hurt their feelings, Richard,’ Asp said, wryly.
‘That’s unfortunate,’ I said.
Fatima giggled around her mouthful and almost choked.
I took another chapatti and considered the situation. As a geisha, Asuka had no doubt been trained to turn every meal where a man was present into an elaborate and flirtatious ceremony. From what I knew, a geisha might entertain at one meal a day, no more. If serving tea was a three-hour ritual, that might be a fine entertainment to a Japanese man but in our current circumstances, sharing three meals a day, and every one with a masculine presence – me – such rigmarole would become intolerable.
Jia Li wasn’t a geisha but it seemed that, perhaps during the course of their journey, she’d fallen under Asuka’s domination. If we could break through Asuka’s rigid reserve, Jia Li would follow.
I had to assume that both were erotophiles. Under Asuka’s stiff formality and Jia Li’s timidity, they had to be seething with lust. If we could introduce the newcomers to some seemingly innocent fun and games, less innocent ones were bound to follow.