“Ouch!” I gasp. I reach down realizing that some of the beads have sharp ends, not cutting ones, but edges that smart when they prick the skin’s surface.
“Inventive, isn’t it,” she says.
Another heavier skirt fits at my waist. This one’s twice as full, the weight of it surprises me as it hangs heavily against my hips, and travels down as far as my calves below. A third layer goes around my neck, draping about my shoulders and breasts. The bodice fits tightly around my torso, the beads woven into a window pane mesh, so while it conforms to the shape of my body like a garment, the skin beneath is still exposed, including the dark aureoles of my nipples.
I’ve never worn anything so erotic in my life. I feel like some jungle queen; all I need is a scepter in my hand and gold slippers on my feet.
Moving is like making love to myself as the beads caress every crevice, every tantalized piece of flesh. Even my pussy feels the effects, where strands of beads tickle my clit, and from behind they get caught in the cleft of my ass. Without warning, every second or two, a sharp prick reminds me of the “thorns” on the inner skirt. How fitting that this mimics Tasia’s precious roses.
“You look stunning,” Peach says standing back.
She continues to play with my body as if I’m a bride. She weaves strands of beads in my hair that weight it down in the same erotic fashion that the dress weighs down my body. As I look into the mirror, she puts long earrings in my ears, which flow with the flow of the dress. I hardly know this woman staring back at me. Even the raw painted savage I was a day ago doesn’t match this person. I’m surprised that my pale skin looks so pleasant; the iridescent colors glow with a light that is similar to the soft tones of my flesh.
Everywhere Peach touches me, I’m aroused.
“Please let’s take it off. I want to be next to you.”
She kisses me lightly, her hands fondling their way past the beads, until they find my juicy cunt. It takes just seconds to turn my arousal into a soft lilting orgasm. She fingers me expertly, in ways that only Peach has found to satisfy me. She smiles as she sees the pleased look on my face.
This dress makes it awkward to do what I want with her; but she makes no move to strip me of it, so I push her down on the bed and climb between her legs, the skirt swaying, little thorns making me wince every time I move. Her cunt is as I remember it, the juices flow and she shimmies softly as her climax claims her. I know how much we’ve missed each other. There’s a familiarity about her that cannot be overcome completely with any new lover, no matter now strangely satisfying it appears. Not even Miriam has the intuition to make love to my body the way she does, or give in to my touch the way Peach does.
“After tonight, will we be together then?” I ask. I’ve slumped to the floor, where I gaze at her as she sits at the edge of Analise’s bed.
“I can’t promise that,” she says. “It’s really up to you.”
“I know what I’ll decide,” I tell her.
“Reserve your judgment, Cass, things happen swiftly here, you should know that.”
That is the one consistent thing about this place.
“Are you going with me to the beach?” I ask her.
“Not now, I’ll be there later.”
I feel crushed, our reunion has been too perfect to end so abruptly.
“You’re not finished with this place, not yet. And neither am I,” she reminds me.
“Sometime will you tell me what happened with you and Tasia?” I ask.
“Sure. Perhaps I’ll write you a story to publish side by side with yours.”
I laugh, because we both know she’s a horrible writer.
A tap at the door and someone enters.
“You’re needed downstairs now, Samantha,” Miriam says, striding to the bed, almost as if this is a reprimand.
“We got distracted,” Peach says.
“There’s no time for that. Go now.”
I see Peach is reluctant, but she gets up, tosses Tasia’s shawl over her arm, and moves toward the door saying goodbye to me with a little wave of her hand.
“And you, Cassidy,” Miriam says, “you need to go down to the beach; you can see we have a perfect day for the festivities. The night should be even better when the moon is full.”
“I don’t understand what’s happening here,” I say exasperated. She helps me to my feet, the dress feeling all the more weighty as I try to rise.
“You look lovely,” she exclaims. “There’s nothing inexplicable going on here. Your imagination is running away with you again. This is a place of freedom, nothing more than a place to explore your vivid fantasies. Don’t make it out to be more than that. Let yourself enjoy these summer days. It’s never going to be like this again.” She fiddles with the dress, making sure each layer is exactly as it should be. Her soft hands and mellow voice soothe me, though not as much as Peach’s. I wonder though, at this fussing over me; it leaves me worried.
“There’s more to this than you’re telling me. I feel as if I’m getting only half of the story.”
“I don’t know the rest of your story, Cassidy, but I know that there’s no point in hiding from yourself. I told you that before. Now, you look ready for the night!” she says, turning me around, and pushing me almost proudly to the door.
I exit the house and walk towards the beach alone on the impetus Miriam gives me, and with the single thought that this episode in my life is nearly over. Peach and I will be going home soon, and even the thought of LA is not so vile to me now.
To my amazement, the scene at the beach instantly captivates me. It’s obvious that this is a special celebration, a feast of women expressing themselves in ways that are rare in the crazy world we live in. Where the women have been wearing unusual garments all week, there’s a very primitive elegance in the costumes now, and a clear sign that this will be an extraordinary night. Not nearly dark yet, there are at least a dozen women arranging an elaborate feast. Luau style tables are laid out in a semi-circle. They’re already laden with fresh fruit and vegetables, kept cool on ice. There’s an open pit barbecue with chicken cooking, and fish ready to be grilled when the time arrives. An oriental woman adjusts a steamer to cook a large dish of white rice over the open fire.
The women move in a productive union, busying themselves with preparations that evoke a sensuous quality to the very air around us. Ocean breezes ruffle skirts and make napkins fly, but there’s nothing that disturbs the sense of tranquil peace that pervades this private stretch of ocean.
I help two smiling, humming women adjust five foot torches deep into the sand. They’ve made a ring of them outside the circle where we’ll sit for the spectacle.
I feel part of this, and well removed at the same time, thinking that Miriam’s advice to relax and enjoy is likely wise.
When I finish with the torches, I swish Tasia’s beaded skirt down the beach to a rocky cove. I still feel the little twinges at my thighs where the thorns of her dress attack me, though by now they’ve become gentle friends, reminders that as sweet as the gathering may appear, there’s a darker side to this night that I’m sure will take place.
I find the cave at the end of the beach is not vacant as I’d hoped. A little private reverie was all I sought, but instead I’m faced with three women, two of them assaulting a younger woman with a scourge as the woman writhes against a rock. I watch transfixed, as if this is a pornographic movie taking place for my benefit, or some hallucination that Miriam has concocted as a reminder. Oddly, this is the first incidence of S&M that I’ve known to take place amongst these women. I realize how I’ve put myself in a world apart from them, when in fact, they all may be as wildly savage as I’ve been with Analise, and Tasia has been with Peach.
Their play arouses me, reminding me of a dull ache deep inside my belly, something I noticed days ago, that has only gotten worse each hour. I’ve presumed my need was Peach, but I begin to believe that my presumption was wrong.
I’ll face it when it comes, I
think to myself. I can’t rush these things, it will all happen in good time.
When I rejoin the other women, I feel their smiles inside me. I’m swept up in their lighthearted mood. This fest seems little more than an extravagant picnic. It feels as if I’m coming out of a strange dream, returning to the real world. These women seem so normal to me.
I note that Analise is not here. I half expected her waif-like form to be writhing before the fire tonight. Tasia is also absent. Peach and Miriam arrive together with smiles on, as if they are now lovers.
The sun is beginning to sink low into the sky and the feast is about to start. As the sun sets, the bonfire rises, lighting the sky with another kind of hue, that’s more reminiscent of the way I feel about this place… the darker side rising, looming amid the smoke and flames.
The dancing begins and then the rites of initiation. I know nothing of this except it seems to be a welcoming rite, where each bare-chested woman participating has some handmade necklace blessed by Miriam or some other female mentor and placed proudly about her neck. The participants dance as I have seen them dance before, but rather than some free for all as I’ve witnessed on other nights, there’s more pageantry about this one. I find watching remarkable, as the dark beauty of the hour rises all around, and each woman accepts it as a cherished part of her substantial nature.
“Cassidy.” I hear Miriam call my name. Above the music, laughter and the steady beat of drums, she calls to me.
When I rise to greet her by the fire, she has no necklace for me.
“You’ve already taken your identity from Anastasia’s wardrobe. And so it should be, since you’re her chosen this year.”
“Me?” I whisper.
“Yes you,” she assures me kindly, stroking my arm.
“But Peach?”
“You’re her chosen, Cassidy, you have been since you arrived here, you should have sensed it by now.”
I’m skeptical, but compliant. Such a strange twist of fate.
“Go to her now, and remain with her tonight, while the rest of us celebrate you on the beach.”
I’m swept away by her calmness. The heat of the fire, the women’s song and Peach and Miriam standing side by side, I’m hypnotized into complying with this outrageous scheme.
Miriam removes the heavy beaded skirt, so what remains around my loins is the scant thorn skirt that rests gracefully on my hips. Pushing the thongs aside for a moment, she hangs a charm from my ring of roses. It’s a heavy weight on my labia that brushes my cunt as I move. The beads about my neck remain, though the earrings are stripped away. A woman on either side of me ties a band at either wrist and I’m led away from the beach back to the house.
Half tethered like a slave, half presented as some princess, the women take me up the cliff stairs, through the garden into the back patio door that leads directly to Tasia’s suite of rooms. We enter the sitting room where I saw Peach crouch submissively to Tasia that first night of her enslavement. We enter through a different door, however, so it’s difficult to recognize right off exactly where I am. We cross to the other side of the room and one woman knocks.
A muffled reply, and the knocking woman opens the door. The two women leave me just beyond the doorway and back off.
“Wait,” Tasia says. She’s sitting in a prim rocker, gazing at me expressionless. “Tie her arms behind her,” she says. And without a second’s hesitation, my arms are pulled behind my back, and bent so that I hold my elbows in my hands. My forearms are laced firmly together by the ends of the straps, so I can’t move them. The women leave when they’re finished.
“Don’t worry, my dear, you won’t be like this for long, but I rather like looking at you this way.” She stares at my chest as my hard nipples poke through the beaded mesh binding. “You’re very charming in my garments; they almost look as if they were made for you. Have you noticed the thorns?”
“Yes,” I reply.
“And how do they feel, tell me, I always find them a most delicious travail?”
“They remind that things are not so sweet at this place. Not that I shouldn’t remember that every moment, but today has been so soothing I might have forgotten otherwise.”
She nods her head, an appreciative grin on her face. Her cat, Mordred, sits calmly on her lap. She strokes him with her jeweled fingers, the gemstones gleam almost as ominously as the cat’s eyes.
“I have two reasons to abuse you, Cassidy, I think you should be aware of both before I begin.”
“Abuse me? I didn’t think you had any reason at all.”
“Then why did you come, surely you knew when you accepted my beads that you were giving yourself to me.”
“I thought nothing of the sort, I rather think of wearing these as stealing something away from you.”
“How interesting.”
“You stole Peach,” I remind her.
“Samantha Clarisse came to me willingly, you know that; but perhaps your criminal nature runs deeper than you know.”
“Really?”
“You stole Analise from me, and I intend to avenge that.”
“She came to me willingly,” I mimic her words.
There’s the same flash of sadness in her eyes that I witnessed this morning in the cellar.
“So my daughter did,” she says with resignation.
“Your daughter?” I exclaim surprised.
“Yes, my daughter, you didn’t see the resemblance? She’s the flesh of my loins, a mother’s fair progeny. Yes, my dear Cassidy, she’s my flesh born child. Straight out of this womb.” She presses her hand to her belly, as if I’ve wounded her there.
I don’t know how to handle this revelation with any kind of grace. Never had I expected that Analise was Tasia’s daughter. I’m especially surprised that I hadn’t guessed it, but there is no resemblance that I can find between the ethereal sprite of a girl and the demonic Tasia—except for their ability to manipulate. I wonder if she tells me the truth.
She sees my surprise since I can’t hide it. “I didn’t think she’d tell you. Better to let you think that she’s a veteran in the sexual games we play here. You could say this was her coming out party, her debutante ball.” There’s a flash of anger in her, anger at Analise. “She’s behaved like a total whore, bed-hopping, clamoring for attention. Like most children, she was trying to rebel against me. She probably told you I feed her bread and water and chain her to the bed in the attic.”
“No, she only told me that you spanked her.”
Tasia chuckles. “I’ve never laid a hand on her, though I’m sure in her mind she thinks she’s been terribly abused.”
“I find it hard to believe that you haven’t punished her harshly,” I say, thinking of the brutal whipping that morning.
“Yes, there was today. I gave in to her longings just as you did. You played my role with her when I could not. Isn’t that interesting? I guess that makes us alike,” she suggests.
“Alike? You’re dreaming, bitch!”
“Ha! Who fucks her with a fist up her ass? Who, with more than masterful determination, violated her virgin loins? You wonder why I want revenge?”
She sounds like an angry mother, and who would blame her? I think she cackles like an old hen—like “Dorothy’s witch”. All she needs is a long pointy nose. Yet even I know that half of my malice for her is misplaced. My evaluation of her physical appearance is also skewed, for on another occasion I might find her haunting beauty mesmerizing.
“But, Cassidy, my dear, despite my maternal conflicts regarding you and Analise, I have an even better reason to have you bound before me.”
“What is that?” I ask.
“It’s what you want,” she says simply.
“I don’t believe you,” I reply.
She laughs. “Of course you do, you’re just avoiding the truth. Tell me, what is it that you want from me? Why do you take my beads, and assume my identity on the beach, and end up here with your arms bound? What do you want?”
“I want nothing,” I tell her, with as much conviction as I can possibly muster.
“Would that either of us believe that,” she says. She gets up from her chair, and strolls about the room, lighting candles, putting a match to more incense, which weaves strange smoky trails about the room, clouding clear perception.
She stands in front of me, with her eyes glimmering darkly into mine. Then she begins to disrobe, first dropping her skirt to the floor, revealing dark muscled thighs and legs much more shapely than I imagined. She removes her blouse, and except for chains about her waist and around her neck, she’s completely naked. Her body is glorious. Two enormous breasts lay passively against her chest. I wait for her to move to see them sway. Her waist is slim and her hips bloom wide and full. Unmarked thighs come together where a soft bush of trimmed curls cover just the upper triangle of her sex. Bare labia lips show below, where she’s shaved them clean. And right at the same spot where Peach had me pierced, where Analise is pierced, there’s a glistening gold ring, of roses, I think.
I know she’s nearly forty, if not older, but the eroticism and vitality of her body vibrates as if she were her daughter’s twenty-two years.
Unlike Analise, she’s as full as harvest wine’s full bodied flavor, as fiery as if she were a bride of hell, and as substantial as the rich plowed earth of springtime.
“What do you want from me?” she repeats.
I’m speechless, but as clear in thought as I’ve been for some time, all traces of anger, jealousy and revenge have fled, though I’m still not certain that there are not some last vestiges of those passions at work in the dark woman before me.
“I want from you, whatever you want from me,” I finally say. It’s yielding. It’s total surrender. Would she beat me, fuck me, enslave me to her, I will agree to anything she designs, without a prayer for release.
She pulls me to my feet, standing close to my thrust out breasts. She’s like a demon from the underworld teasing me, as she rubs her swelling bosom against my own. She pins me with her eyes as she moves against me. Her nails scratch my arms and shoulders lightly. I sense that she’ll suddenly take her talons and run them cruelly down my torso, but for the moment, she’s gentle.
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