Outer Island

by Lizbeth Dusseau

  ***

  “You play a ruthless sport,” Degas said to his customer, as Armand pulled away from the violated ass.

  “I had a worthy mount,” Armand replied.

  “So, you’d think,” Degas returned. “I believe you know this whore of mine, one of my finest, she is. In great demand. She’s so good at her work because she loves it. Don’t you?” He prodded the whore at his side with a baton so she’d respond.

  “Hummmmmm… .” came the fading answer of an exhausted harlot

  “You love this?” Degas repeated.

  “I do,” she answered clearly, as she felt the hood that embraced her head, popped free, her dark streaming hair floating about her upside down face.

  “Your wife,” Degas said to Armand, as he unlocked the bonds that held her hands behind her.

  “Delila …” Armand spoke to her out of his recovering oblivion.

  The freed prisoner rose from the bar, her body quaking from blood moving too fast through her, and her mind suddenly in convulsions at the sight of the two men before her—the one with the dark smile, and the other one, not so dark, who displayed gentleness in his eye. Shaking off the tremors that might make her collapse against them, she replied with horrified eyes, and bolted for the door, making her way out of the leather rooms as quickly as her shaking legs could carry her away, crying, “No! No! No!”

  There was a scuffle of sorts in the dark. Someone had blown nearly all the candles out. Armand tried to go after his wife, but valets were there to restrain his movement with three pairs of firm hands holding him back.

  “You can’t enter there,” Degas said.

  “I will,” Armand vowed.

  “Perhaps she’s thrown you off,” he suggested.

  “You will take me to her,” Armand demanded. “She is my wife.”

  “There are no marital agreements on my Island. I honor none of that. She’s my whore and nothing more.”

  “He’ll come with me!” Lexia’s voice rang out above the chaotic voices in the leather room, as she suddenly grabbed for Armand’s arm and pulled him with her through a door at the opposite end of the room from the one through which Delila had disappeared.

  He was whisked through hallways and corridors, where he could still hear screams and the panting of sexual endings all around him, playing like background music with a hard driving beat. Armand was stunned by the sudden quiet and cool of a pristine hallway, and the sumptuous picture of gentleness in the room where he was led.

  He stood for some minutes gazing on his wife, as she sat slumped in the midst of a hundred cushions on a Lexia’s generous bed.

  “I sensed it was you,” he finally spoke, as he remained at the door.

  “Please go away from me,” she implored him. Tears that had quit were rising again seeing his bewildered face.

  “I won’t,” he said.

  “You can’t stay,” she said, rising on the bed to face him directly. “It’s dangerous of you to have your identity noticed this way. Don’t you know that?”

  “That’s too bad. I came for you.”

  “Came for me? How’s that possible?”

  “Some things happen without your realizing why.”

  “That’s a convenient explanation. But you reveled in me as a customer to a whore. That is what I’ve become, a harlot, the worst among humanity for my shame.” She astonished herself naming her own crime so freely.

  “I cannot condemn what I love myself, Delila,” Armand replied. “Why I came to this place was not clear to me. I had offers before. Good god, I’ve known of its existence for years. But I know now, you drew me here this time. I didn’t want to admit it, but my sixth sense told me you were victim to this place.”

  “I don’t consider myself a victim,” Delila said despondently shaking her head. “You can’t understand this. I could live here forever and happily screw. That is what I should do. You need to divorce me. Leave this place, forget that you ever saw me here. Call me dead, because I am dead to the world.” There was both sorrow and haughtiness speaking to him.

  “Never!” Armand said, walking to her side, peering down at her so he might see her downcast and stubborn countenance.

  “After what you’ve seen here?” She looked up at him with such innocence.

  “After what I’ve done? How could I judge you at all?”

  “It’s your privilege.”

  “But I can’t.” He reached for her, just to be gentle, just to stroke her tear-swollen face. She shook off his attempt. “We’ve made a mockery of our pasts,” he said. “I don’t know why all this has happened, but we are faced with a new reality, Delila. You’re time is nearly up, you can leave here and we’ll start again.”

  “That’s impossible! We can’t go back. I will not live in New Victoria. Her eyes flashed her conviction clearly. “You certainly cannot live here!”

  “Ah! But, love, there are places.” He placed his hand gently on her shoulder to feel her trembling form do its best to hold on to the small ounce of pride remaining. He wouldn’t let her shake him away this time.

  “Places where?”

  “I know some things from my imprisonment. The Nether realms beyond New Victoria are vast. They are not all desolate “from the regions of hell” as we’ve been led to believe. If we get off this Island together, I know ways beyond the borders.”

  “You’re teasing me, Armand,” she said shaking her head. It was still too much to believe that this established part of New Victoria, of the proper life, her own husband, had suddenly marched into her other world and confronted her with a change so ridiculous it was utterly foolish even to speak of it. “This isn’t even real. Just go away. I don’t know why you’re here.” She pushed him off, and backed away on Lexia’s bed.

  “Because, he loves you, you senseless brat!” Lexia’s voice made her jolt. The woman breached their conversation, flying into the room with her waggling skirts rising like dust about her feet. “Quit your whining. I told you, you’d triumph. You won’t make me a liar. Now get these clothes on.” She jerked Delila off her bed, and began removing the leather pieces that remained, replacing them with normal clothes, simple things, a shirt and pair of khaki trousers.

  “What are you doing?” Delila blared, looking at both Armand and Lexia confused. Her mind too vacant to think.

  “You need a way out, I can give you that, but you’ve got to hurry,” she said, buttoning the shirt for her castaway harlot, because she didn’t have the sense to button it herself. “Degas will give you no more than ten minutes to end your marriage, before he’s in here mocking you both. You have to get going. You know where to take her?” Lexia asked, turning to Armand.

  “Not specifically, but there are places.”

  “In the east?” she asked.

  He nodded.

  She smiled. “I know of them.”

  “Then you should come too,” Armand suggested.

  “No, I have my mission here. You go, and take care of her. Love her. Good god, she needs it. And be safe.”

  With guiding hands on both of them, Lexia led them through a secret door in her boudoir, and down unknown corridors, eventually into the fresh air, where she pointed toward the shoreline in the inky blackness of night.

  “Through the trees, and be quick. My boat captain will not stop if he doesn’t see you there.”

  Epilogue

  Several hundred miles east of New Victoria in a forested wilderness a gentle home built of rough-cut timber stands against the winds of winter with a fire in the hearth that burns the cold out. Delila and Armand found it before the cold hit hard, when there were golden leaves on the trees and the smell of autumn musk in the fragrant air. Delila was wishing for the scent of roses as they made their trek, but there was none.

  ***

  Armand: I wanted something in a Southern climate, where it would be warm all year long and we could bask in that warmth, but this had to be good enough. At least it was safe, and that was all that mattered. The people aroun
d us in this colony asked no questions of us. No one revealed their pasts; perhaps it was dangerous to do so. They were a sensuous people and I was glad of that. They made music, and song, and drank spirits and were openly robust in their physical affections. Even Delila, for all the men she’d known, was glad to entice a man now and again with charms she was too much the temptress not to use, even when it was hardly necessary.

  I watched her bloom with rosy cheeks—in both places at times, because she still desired the leather on her fair ass. But I watched her bloom mostly in spirit, as my own soared. Though I suspected that I’d be perpetually freeing myself from the judgmental reins that had controlled my thinking my life long. I kept forgetting that this wasn’t New Victoria, and there was no one peeking in our bed. Mostly though, I loved watching how Delila became the sensuous rose of our enclave, nurtured by the lack of restraint, sustained by deviant souls that had quit the other rougher colonies long ago to find what Delila and I sought—freedom from fears imposed by others on weak and believing minds. We’ve tried not to be weak, knowing what prices our world had paid for honest souls holding their tongues and restraining the truth they possessed.

  Delila: I looked on everyday as a gift in our wild home. Armand was perpetually telling me I was safe from New Victoria, though I always wondered if there might not be some straggler coming through our midst that would bring the wretchedness of that time back to me. Armand said I was giving New Victoria too much power in my thoughts, though I knew he struggled with the same thing too.

  But now, I think it’s wise of us to remember that other place, to honor New Victoria, so that we can remind our new world of passions lost, so that passions presently enjoyed might always be nurtured.

  ***

  “I thought we should remove the ring tonight,” Armand said to her as she was preparing their evening meal.

  “Remove it?” she asked him.

  “It’s been six months,” he said.

  Delila thought a moment. “But I don’t want it removed,” she replied.

  He smiled at her quizzically, thinking he knew her thoughts, but still not sure.

  “It was the first real acknowledgment of my soul’s truth,” she explained. “And it arouses me.” She pressed her hand to her groin that bore the ring.

  “It bears no resentment from the past?” Armand asked.

  “No. I would miss it if it was gone.”

  He grinned, as a devious twinkle in his dark eyes began to transmit the scheme brewing in his head. “Then perhaps I should place another one beside it,” he suggested, “to mark my territory.”

  She scrutinized him, his now bearded face and the eyes dark as coal—and sometimes as dark as the cold. She saw more and more of Degas in his bearing as the days commenced, though he never forgot the gentler Armand who cared for her tenderly. Thinking of his proposal made her forget their meal, her loins engaged and preparing for the evening’s battle.

  “Perhaps you should mark your territory,” she agreed with him. She could feel the heavy weight at her cunt grow heavier still in her imagination. She moved to his side and took his hand. “You can do it tonight,” she said smiling slyly. “Come now, and we’ll decide where your mark will pierce my flesh.”

  More Lizbeth Dusseau Alternative Fiction ….

  THE RED DOOR

  A bizarre journey awaits Lily Matisse beyond the red door. A simple flower seller at a street corner stand, she’s lured through this ancient gateway by a mysterious lover, Ravel. While in the midst of making love in his hideaway, she finds herself suddenly disappearing into worlds of sexual deviancy … where there are no taboos, where nothing remains sacred, where men subdue her and she must surrender. A primitive goddess in an orgy on the beach, a bawdy tavern wench serving a brutal master, a slut on trial for treason, and a princess doomed to be the pawn of an evil sorceress … are just some of the astonishing women she becomes.

  Lily’s unusual adventures include a feast of dominant/submissive sex play with bondage and discipline, harsh punishment, oral and anal sex, orgies, exhibitionism and female bisexuality—all mixing with delightful erotic escapades between the sheets of her many lovers’ beds.

  TETHERED

  The streetwise Franny wants to journey into the sexual darkness of bondage and discipline. Jack’s reluctant to take her. But the steamy sensuality between the two cannot be ignored, and neither can the power of their mutual desires. As they explore the frightening shadows of Franny’s sexual lust, they find a love they never expected. This “No Holds Barred” novel includes B&D, spanking, exhibitionism, anal sex and female bisexuality.

  Order from: (Free catalogue available)

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  P.O. Box 632, Richland, MI 49083, 877-629-0051

  email:orders@pinkflamingo.com

  website: http://www.pinkflamingo.com