by Aran Ashe
When Anya, frowning, gave up once again, Ikahiti laughed then reached to stroke the cord around Anya's belly, making Anya freeze in fear, then begin to tremble like a frightened fawn, for the cord had been fitted to her after her initiation and it passed down between her legs and was fastened through the ring that pierced her nubbin. Ikahiti moved slowly, studying Anya carefully while Anya continued to shake. To Anya, the feeling - any movement which stirred the metal ring inside the tender unhealed skin - was appalling. The cord seemed to pull through her no matter where it was touched, stirring too the memory of the cruelty of that piercing and making her cheeks turn very pale. But Ikahiti did not stop what she was doing; Anya's very faintness seemed to spur her on. It was as if Ikahiti, kind though she otherwise was, gained satisfaction - or at least a calmness - from touching Anya when she was afraid. With Anya's breathing very shallow now, she was turned on her side, in plain view of the women strolling past them across the beach, and Ikahiti, languishing above her, toyed with cord and ring and bead while Anya quavered on the verge of passing out. In that brief time, a conversation to all appearances between equal fiends had transformed into a tableau in which one woman, according to the vagaries of whim, would dominate and the other, scarcely conscious, would submit.
The cord, a single loop around Anya's waist and through the ring at her nubbin, had a sliding wooden bead attached to it. When the cord was first fitted, it was slipped through the gold ring and drawn up to make a pair of parallel strands. The ends of these strands were pushed through twin holes in the bead, which was next threaded all the way down until it touched the ring. Then the loose ends of the cord were fastened behind her, at her waist. When the bead was pushed up towards her waistline, the cord tightened, the ring was pulled upwards and the feeling made her squirm. The bead had not been adjusted in the two days since, but Ikahiti adjusted it now, with Anya on her side and without any warning. Her fingers lay against the cord, a fingertip toying with the bead while the lightly pulling feeling surged then ebbed away in Anya's nubbin and the ring, as it was lifted, softly pressed against the hood. Anya's mouth was open, but she did not breathe. The fingers tugged, the bead moved up and she felt a wave of nausea. Ikahiti's hand encompassed Anya's belly, pressing lightly against the cord and held her, rubbing gently, very slightly, until amidst the murmurs, the awful sickly feeling turned to a swelling arousal. She turned her on her back and kept her open-legged and kissed her while she held the cord - wrapped her fingers round it now - and Anya, belly bowed and nubbin ringed, could hardly breathe. She lay there with her swelling bud of pleasure tethered to this woman's hand, while the woman kissed her open-mouthed and she trembled in submission. It was a feeling that was both profound and delicious. Ikahiti turned Anya on her side again and tickled her nipples with a fine stream of sand. As her breathing gradually returned to normal, Anya's body glowed with an inner warmth as if velvet pleasure had seeped into her veins. It was the kind of feeling she experienced sometimes after her pleasure had come; but this time, the afterglow was there without the peak itself. In her belly was the echo of the trembling fear and in her throat, the honey-sweet aftertaste of submission.
Ikahiti's fingers, now tiring of the sand game, slipped and snaked about the sun-warmed nipples, plumping them up to firmness.
When at length Anya opened her eyes, she saw a captive man, his cockstem bobbing hard, being chased up the beach by a woman with a stick. This sight was still at that time strange to Anya. When she sat up, Ikahiti smiled, apparently amused by the disquiet as Anya watched the punishment, then she drew her down again and continued touching her skin.
Over the next few days, Anya witnessed many such incidents. There were many pale-skinned men about this village, far more than the four that Anya had known about from the start. They must have been taken from other boats, such as the one she had found buried in the sand, perhaps, to be held by these women as slaves. But the women had been very selective, for all the men were young and there were none of the ugly unkempt creatures that stood starkly even now in Anya's recollection of that contemptible pirate crew. The men here were made to fetch and carry and were frequently beaten with the flat wooden sticks, often for no reason that Anya could determine other than to keep them hard. Every time she had seen one of these men kneeling up and waiting, hands behind head and knees apart, while the woman measured the swing and destination of the stroke, his cockstem had been upstanding and the spanking had seemed only to make his condition burgeon. Anya wondered if this was because of the way the men were tied. Like Anya, most of them had a cord around the waist, but in the case of the men, this cord had been drawn down at the front and looped around the flesh between their thighs. Once, she had seen the woman tighten this loop in preparation for the spanking. To Anya's mind, it was this similarity - the presence of the cord around the waist and the association between such intimate cords and slavery - that most of all made her doubt that she was indeed free to come and go as she pleased. She was never left on her own; there was always someone nearby, working perhaps, gutting fish or shelling clams or weaving leaves, but nevertheless, keeping an eye on her.
The women appeared to use these captured men as they thought fit. Though Anya saw their treatment as nothing less than cruel, she soon gained the impression that to the women, the degradations imposed upon the men were simply allowable amusements. Frequently, when Ikahiti came to visit, she would have one of the men with her and it was always the same man. His skin, though paler than Ikahiti's, was very sun-bronzed. His hair was long and untidy, though his body was very clean. Anya found him attractive, but very docile. When she tried to speak to him in her own tongue, it was apparent that he understood her well, but his answers were vague and faltering and his accent was strange. She asked him how long he had been there.
'I ...' He looked very worriedly at Ikahiti. When she didn't speak, he continued. 'Many days ... Many. Our ship ...' his voice trailed away, as if it were a strain to talk and he was unsure. He kept looking sidelong at Ikahiti, who seemed very annoyed that he had even attempted to answer Anya and who glared across at her when she persisted.
'Days?' said Anya, admiring the uniform sun-bronze of his skin. 'But surely you have been here much longer? What land are you from?' Ikahiti muttered something sharply to the man and now he was afraid to speak at all. Anya became convinced that Ikahiti's vexation stemmed from the likelihood that she had understood not a single word of what had been said.
The man got up slowly, his eyes downcast, and began to walk away. Ikahiti, still annoyed, shouted something after him then watched him disappear into the trees. Anya, aware that she had been the cause of the upset, but feeling none the wiser after this exchange, had just settled down on the sand and was gazing out into the lagoon to watch the women diving from the boats when the man returned. Anya saw the expression on Ikahiti's face - no longer kind, or even simply annoyed, but harsh. Her chin jutted strongly. Anya turned and saw that the man carried a fruit. He offered it to Ikahiti, who took it. But Anya soon realised that though this was a peace offering of a sort, Ikahiti did not mean to eat it. The fruit was long and smoothly skinned and purple, and she meant to use it on the man. She had turned him round and made him kneel.
But it was the way the man behaved that amazed Anya. He showed no resistance. His forehead pressed against the sand. His stem, already partially erect, curved down between his thighs. Its pale bronzed skin looked marked and reddened on the underside, as if it had recently been abused, and the bag was tight against the base. Ikahiti unfastened the cord from his waist, but only to double it and form it into a slip loop which collared both stem and ballocks together. She drew the slip loop tight until he groaned and his back arched down and his buttocks lifted. Despite the pain, he had let her do this without attempting to get away. Ikahiti grunted and he now remained still, his sex and ballocks tightly tethered. Anya could see the double cord cutting so deeply into the flesh below the bag that it appeared almost as a painted double line across the surface o
f the skin. Ikahiti's fingertips now tested that line for smoothness before gliding gently over the pale coarse hairs on the smoothly up-curved flesh leading back into the groove, to reach the mouth, which looked contused and tender. Anya knew then that he must have suffered this treatment many times before. She looked at Ikahiti's face - an intentness, a kind of cold love burned there as she kept him in this position of subjection.
Ikahiti touched that mouth very tenderly at first, then nipped it. When he murmured, she kept nipping it until he acquiesced. But even that nipping had made the cock stand harder. Then she took a thick ring fashioned from bone. It looked too large to fit upon a finger. She slipped it over the end of his cock and managed to push it past the rim, but it would go no further and he began murmuring more urgently. She pulled the ring off again and placed it in her mouth. It came out shiny with spittle. After forcing his legs apart and drawing the cockstem down and back until it almost touched the sand, she pushed the ring over the cap then used the fingers of two hands to push it back until the skin was forced back with it and the ring formed a tight immovable constriction at the widest part. Then she made him spread his cheeks apart while she gradually introduced the fruit into his bottom. Women moving across the beach stopped to watch and to comment on its progress. While Ikahiti held the fruit in one hand, the fingers of the other worked him. The cock pointed down; Ikahiti's finger and thumb closed around the plum and the cap immediately below the ring; the fingers curled to seal the plum tip in a cup and milk it until the first shudder came. Ikahiti then slowed her wrist movement, but kept pushing the fruit inside him until most of it was buried. Then she shouted, 'Tika!' and he became very still and tight. She let go of him completely.
Anya looked at the throbbing purple stem so wickedly constricted by the ring. There was that same calm intentness in Ikahiti's face as she knelt beside him, waiting. Involuntary spasms moved the end of the fruit between the cheeks. In time, they slowed. Ikahiti sat back on her heels and sighed. There was now a look of satisfaction on her face - as of a job well done, a training of her slave advanced. 'Chiri,' she said to him and immediately, he turned, still crouching and laid his head on her lap. Ikahiti stroked him, touched the fruit and the ring about his stem. She smiled when his body again became still and tense. He was fighting against the pressure which must have been welling deep inside him. Ikahiti continued to touch, closing her hand by alternation around the stem below the ring and then above it until Ikahiti's palm became slick with oily weepings.
'Niri ...?' whimpered the man and Anya's cheeks, already red on his behalf, glowed even hotter.
'Tika,' whispered Ikahiti, then took out her knife and pressed the smooth round wooden handle very firmly across the place where the cockstem fed into the ballocks. 'Tika,' said Ikahiti very softly, 'tika,' while he groaned. But the smooth round wooden handle pressed, rotating slightly, and the pleasure was provoked: the fruit bobbed rapidly; narrow streams of very thin milt pulsed through the ring constriction to disappear quickly into the heat of the sand. 'Tika - shirula,' said Ikahiti and at that second word, he tried to bury his face against her belly. Ikahiti reprimanded him and turned his face away, but Anya saw again that Ikahiti smiled. She began to understand then that there must be a peculiar bond between these two; it seemed that Ikahiti would force these degradations on her man, who would freely acquiesce, but Ikahiti would accept no pleasure from him in return. It was as if even the suggestion that he might have desired her and wanted to touch her was sufficient. To Anya, it seemed peculiarly one-sided and not based on love at all. But Ikahiti laid her man down on the sand, carefully and lovingly removed the fruit that had bedded within him and sat above him stroking his back and belly for a long while afterwards.
During this time, Anya became less and less certain of what she had witnessed - was it a punishment the man had suffered or a peculiar act of love? She wondered if Ikahiti and the other women ever took pleasure directly with the men or preferred to take their pleasure only by abusing them. As Anya lay there in the sun, with the warm air washing over her belly, constrained beneath the delicious cord which held her flesh erect, she realised that the customs of this island were very strange indeed.
Whereas Anya had these last few days been very unsure of Ikahiti - what she really wanted from Anya - she had found solace with Miriri. She took comfort from her warmth, for Miriri pampered Anya almost as if she were a child. On that first evening, after Anya's flesh had been so cruelly pierced, Miriri had cradled Anya in the softness of her arms - for Miriri was a big woman, big in heart as well as big in body - and had rocked her till she cried herself to sleep. When Anya had awoken later, she found herself, still enfolded in those arms, looking up into Miriri's face and basking in the tender warmth of her deep brown eyes. Miriri reminded Anya very much of the woman who had looked after her in the castle and had shielded her from the pain and shame of all those cruel hurts. But now she had received a hurt more wickedly cutting than any she had received in the castle: now she was permanently scarred. But this woman seemed to understand her anguish. She placed Anya on a bed prepared from the softest leaves, then covered her with a skin and sat beside her through the rest of the night, stroking her hair and smoothing her fingers over the hot flushed cheeks until long after Anya had fallen asleep.
Each subsequent night, before Anya was put to bed, Miriri would hold her in her arms and rock her before the examination was performed. That closeness stilled but did not fully take away Anya's apprehension. Miriri would glance at Anya, then briefly stroke a thick soft fingertip against her lips, to indicate that she should not murmur, and Anya would feel the slow surge of fear deep in her belly as her shoulders were laid upon the leaves but her hips lay cupped in the pillow-soft bowl of Miriri's lap while her thighs were gently opened. Miriri would look upon that flesh, blue-black, moist and puffy from sympathy with the speared and tortured pip, a tiny pink pearl still nestled within its living oyster, yet threaded on a loop of gold. She would loosen the wooden bead and the cord would slacken and lie in gentle curves upon the red curls of the belly, which would be squirming before she even touched it. She would open the lips, which would try to retreat. With the tips of her thumbs she would lift the hood. The fine gold ring, large enough to slip over the tip of a finger, would fall back under the hood and Anya would murmur - not with the pain, but with the more awful, more intimate feeling that this small rotation bestowed, for the gold thread would be turning deep inside her healing flesh. Where it entered, to each side, would be two tiny flecks of blackened red. Miriri would catch these under the pointed tip of her fingernail and gently pull, then purse her lips and blow a very thin stream of air. The flecks would blow away. On the first two nights, the blood welled again to fill the two tiny craters round the gold but on the third night, the flesh stayed open and pink. Thereafter, Miriri applied a healing lotion then carefully fed the ring through its sleeve of pink while the open thighs before her gently shook. The first time Miriri attempted this, Anya was sick on the floor. Subsequently, though her cheeks would always turn deathly pale, she was able to bear the horror of this feeling - the sliding through her flesh - as long as it did not continue for very long.
When she had finished, Miriri would push the bead up Anya's belly to tighten the cord until the ring impressed across the hood again, and with that pressure, Anya would begin to feel aroused. The awful sensation would be forgotten, only to be replaced by a need which had not been fulfilled for many days now. Each application of the lotion, each renewed pressure there, made the need more compelling.
On the fourth evening, when the treatment was finished and Miriri held Anya in her arms and Miriri's warm aroma - like milknut - descended all about her and Miriri's very thick nipple lay pressed to Anya's cheek, Anya wanted to ask Miriri to bring her pleasure on. She knew what to say - for she had heard the man say it that afternoon, when, despite herself, she had been so aroused to witness his pleasuring in that way - but she was afraid to say it, to ask outright. Anya pressed her cheek
against the nipple and turned her cheek so the thick dark rubbery warmth tickled her ear then, rubbing back again, brushed against her lips. Miriri murmured. Anya wet her lips and pushed them about that teat and sucked, then felt afraid at her boldness. The nipple slipped out wet across her cheek. Miriri lifted it and pushed it in again. Beneath her, Anya felt the woman's belly shiver as she sucked. She took the nipple very fully, pressed it to the roof of her mouth and nipped below it with her tongue. The nipple swelled up harder. Miriri's hand brushed Anya's belly and began to play with her curls. Anya, her heart in her throat, opened her thighs. She felt the woman's hand beneath her back, lifting her hips, lifting her bottom in the air. She heard the hand move in the bowl of lotion. She trembled, sucked the breast more strongly, lifted up her thighs. And now she felt the lotion being worked inside her, the fingers stroking deep inside the lips, soothing, coating them and penetrating ever deeper, making her feel more aroused. Her lower back was lifted and supported by one broad hand while the other stroked the lotion deep inside, making her fleshpot grip those slipping fingers. Then when the fingers slipped out quickly and touched her nubbin once, squeezing so the flesh tip bit against the gold ring, her pleasure came, with her bottom in the air, her mouth sealed tight about the nipple and the fingertips re-entered her against the strength of her contraction. After that, Miriri washed her and put her to bed. She slept soundly until she heard a noise in the night and was aware that the lamp still flickered.