“Perhaps you’d better go.”
“No, darling, I’m going nowhere until I’ve had you.”
“Why are you doing this? We should be friends.”
She leans in with a full wet mouth and kisses me. I kiss back, opening my mouth wide feeling her tongue traipse about its sensitive depths. My cunt spasms.
“We are friends, fast friends,” she purrs, but stops the conversation, moving with greater force on me. I am breathless, finding my body yielding to the touch of a woman, something I haven’t felt in so long. And being denied any physical pleasure for these three days now, I forget myself and where I am.
Her hands are inside the front of my dress, on a breast, caressing the skin tenderly. Her lips run their way down from my mouth to my neck, to that exposed breast, to a nipple she takes in her mouth and squeezes with her lips until I pull back. But I can’t stay away from her. That second hand is under my skirt with fingers searching for my damp hole. She burrows avidly until I part my thighs and allow those fingers to slip inside where it’s steamy, the cavity opening for her hand, bidding her to enter. Queleah pulls out dragging me to my bed. I want to stop her, but I can tell by her snarling eyes that she will not let me up. And then, I’m hardly fighting her off. It will only take a minute I tell myself, just a minute to bring some ripe orgasm to its conclusion.
She pulls up my skirt as I lay back on the bed, and dives with her mouth going over what’s wet and tingling with need. When she backs off she rubs my clit roughly with several fingers, until I’m almost at my edge, then backs off to drive her hand beyond my vagina. I open wide for her, feeling myself expand to allow the bitch to have me with all of her hand. I hear my cries beyond myself. They must be rising noisily around the room but I don’t think of that because everything is blurring around me, the soft edges of the universe turn into a hazy fog. Her fist jars me deeply. Her mouth collides again and again with my clit and then I swim back inside my flesh, one vibrating spasm on top of the next until I fall exhaustedly limp.
“I knew you’d be this brassy, Teagan from the South,” I hear her voice come me to out of a languid stupor.
“And you’d have me return the favor?”
“Oh, not now, but you will …”
There’s pounding on the door and it opens wide by the hand of a hulking brute with a beard and a glower I assume to belong to the Provincial Lord.
“What the hell are you doing, bitch!” he roars at Queleah.
“Playing with Keven’s new toy,” she sasses him sweetly.
“You friggin’ harlot, get out of here!” he bellows.
Queleah amusedly grins ear to ear. Knowland doesn’t scare her. She does obey him though, rising from the bed sashaying toward her lover, while I realize that my skirt is still at my waist exposing my just-fucked pussy in all its laid out pink glory for the brute’s burrowing eyes to see. I snap my thighs closed, and hurriedly cover myself.
“Ya marrying a priest in two days, fair one,” he reminds me. He’s still scowling though I think I see a twinkling in the dark brown of his eyes.
“You’ll tell Keven,” I ask him timidly.
He nods. “Ah, yes, this one will be a fine one to report.” Turning, the man leaves my room, and me unsure whether to laugh or cry.
***
“I didn’t realize you had no shame.” He’s seething mad. We’re in his office, me staring at the official Brannoch priest behind the massive oaken desk, that some careful artisan embellished with carvings of roses around the legs and base. I study them carefully, afraid to look in my lover’s eyes.
“I’m sorry. It just shocked me.”
“Couldn’t be faithful for a few days?” I’ve never heard him as sarcastic as this.
“You feel I’ve betrayed you?”
“No. You’ve disappointed me.”
That hurts worse. I can see he wants to explode on me and I wish he would.
“Drag me into the purification chamber and whip me now.”
He shoots up from his desk and comes around the side so we’re standing eye to eye. His hand goes to my face. I’m sure he’d like to slap my cheek. “You’d better take this seriously, bitch. You marry me, you need to understand what it means. There are requirements and expectations.”
“I do understand,” I tell him, my voice failing me.
“Then act like it!” His nostrils flare brilliantly, and all I can think of is how I’d love him to screw me now against his desk. But that would be much too ballsy to ask. “I didn’t offer this to you before because I didn’t think it would work, and I’m probably crazy now to think it will.”
“She came to me, she fucked me.”
“And you couldn’t have said no?”
“She’s a very persuasive woman.”
“That she is.” His eyes are still looking at me through narrow slits, pouring all his wrath my way. “Don’t do it again, you either take this relationship of ours for what it is, or it all ends now.”
I’m startled.
“I am sorry.”
He shakes his head as though he really doesn’t believe me. “Don’t lie to me Teagan, you loved every minute of it.”
“But I am sorry I let it happen. I just …”
“Don’t!” He whisks around, angrily turning his back on me. “And go. I’ll see you later.”
“Keven …”
“Go!”
I can’t say another word.
Chapter Ten
“I wish I’d seen them, would have been a pretty sight,” Knowland tells me as he jovially pours another beer down his throat. “Your tart’s got quite a cunt.”
“I have a bad feeling about this,” I say.
“Marrying Teagan?”
“Yes, marrying Teagan.”
“You love her.”
“God, yes.”
He shrugs. Apparently that should say enough. He jaws on a rib bone, cleaning his fingers with his lips and takes another swig of his brew. “I’d say you get the confession and purification over with in the morning, marry her in the afternoon and put her in your bed where she belongs and be done with it.”
“Just that easy.”
“That’s what I’d do.”
“And why aren’t you marrying Queleah?”
He snickers. “I guess it’s my rebellion. I have the right to do what I please, and the tart’s just not the marrying kind.”
I have to agree.
Chapter Eleven
I’ve had my clothes stripped from me and replaced by a muslin shift that barely reaches my knees. The garment’s strange. The material is so thin it clings to my body, though it was perhaps made to be modest. A stand-up collar fits tightly around my neck. There are long sleeves, and the cut is full, though it is open down the front, a fact that is not readily apparent when I walk, though I find the possibility of it showing my “wares” oddly erotic. I wonder what priest thought this was appropriate attire for a penitent woman? I don’t think I’m suppose to feel the way I do.
Once I begin my walk through the hall to the confessional, my mood changes, like a dozen generations of Utopian women suddenly loom before me. I listen to see if I can hear the cries of these women as the purification proceeds. The closer I get to the confessional the more I think of Keven, the more I shiver in fright. He may be my lover, but he is now my priest, and I’m obliged to confess my “sins” to him—everything. This is going to take a long while.
When I knock at the door, I hear him tell me to enter. The last time I was in this small chamber I seduced him. Though now, the thought of that dance disgusts me. And it was just days ago. I seemed to have turned myself into a Utopian woman overnight and I go before this priest feeling rightfully humble, contrite and embarrassed to be making the admissions I’m making today. I think Keven’s disappointment over the sex with Queleah has changed me more than anything. I can’t afford to be reckless and unthinking in this world, there are rules.
He looks at me calmly as I enter, and the anger he pou
red out on me last night has seemed to vanish. He doesn’t smile and his austere expression makes me quake. The robe of ivory and green softens his expression, but there’s still a decorum backed by several hundred years of tradition.
“Kneel, Teagan, and kiss the ground.”
I find kneeling easier than looking at him, kissing the ground in humility quite simple for a submissive lover honoring her master.
“Now let me see you.”
I rise enough to stare into his eyes, and instantly feel unnerved by the chilling look in that vast and beautiful blue.
“You have a confession, Teagan?
“I do, Father.”
“Explain yourself.”
I take a deep breath.
“I am from the South, Father, where sex is not a sin, but the one behavior that is pursued for enjoyment. Yet here, what I have done is worthy of your most profound judgment.” These odd words falling from my lips so easily make we wonder where they come from. I continue. “My first lovers were long before I turned eighteen. There were two, though my mother kept me sheltered from more. She had known some abuse from men and wanted to spare me. I left home when I was eighteen, a lot of girls do there—simply because their parents no longer have anything of substance to share with their children. I became skilled working with printing presses and weaving machines. In both of my first jobs there were men that expected me to sleep with them if I planned to keep my job. That is how that world works. My first sexual acts consisted of my open thighs, and a man’s cock in my belly.” I say all this as we stare blankly at each other. My narrative appears to have no affect on him, at least for now.
“When I began working for a smaller printing house, I fell in love with the owner’s son. We were passionate lovers and with him I experienced pleasure with sex, a good deal of pleasure. He was sometimes rough with me, though not brutal—then strangely I found myself enjoying his rough play. He would pin my arms to the bed and not let me up. With him staring down at me darkly my body found its heaven in him. I might have stayed with him for a long time, but he was killed by a moving vehicle that crushed his spine.” I haven't thought of Leon in so long, I am almost in tears as I speak. But I hold them back. Keven holds back too, comments, thoughts, even the movement of his eyes. I imagine he is being a good priest. “I stayed with the printing house for another year, and during that time I had several lovers. I think I was looking for love again, but I chose unlikely men, letting them use me the way they wanted to and then leave me with little—sometimes not even an orgasm.
“When Cabot walked into the printing house, I was ready for a change and the man took me with him. He said he saw a need in me that he could fill. With Cabot I discovered enjoyment in my masochistic desires, how I love being bound, my ass beaten, my breasts clamped. He chained me like a slave. I often wore a collar, and I was several times confined to a cage like a crazed dog—though I wasn’t crazed but satisfied being humiliated. Cabot was a rude and unfeeling man, and though I didn’t love him, I did fear him and lust for him. That is until one day I woke feeling differently. All he did was disgust me, and after planning an escape—my plans took several weeks to realize—I fled his influence and landed with an artist who, unlike Cabot, was quite kind.”
I can’t tell if my lover/priest judges me, or is perhaps aroused. I’m not stupid enough to stare at his crotch, though that is my desire.
“Is that all, Teagan?” he asks.
“No,” I shake my head too emphatically. “Monsieur was my artist lover. He would take pictures of me and then we’d make love once we were both aroused. And for a time he brought other men to have sex with me—there may have been a half dozen, perhaps more before he stopped. He too found ways to punish and brutalize my body with a lash or paddle. Yet, in his heart he was a gentle man and doing this seemed like evil to him, so he regretted what he did when he was finished. The guilt would consume him for days and he would be utterly kind to me. Then like a demon the appetite for sexual darkness would rise in him again and I’d find this fiend stalking me, tying me and whipping my body. I was scared and so I left him too. When I did, it was to wander north. I had no idea why I was drawn here, but the South seemed so tedious, and the farther north I traveled the winds changed and there was less grime in my hair, and I would stumble on streams, and pools of water than ran clear, where I could dive in naked and be washed clean, and afterwards, I could stare into the calm surfaces and see my hair glistening in the sun.” I pause. “I’m getting off purpose, aren’t I?”
“Just keep talking.”
“I came to a village, a place between worlds. There was little more than a tavern and a few houses by the ocean … as much as I was pleased by the Northern air and the Northern breezes and the sea and the sky and the feel of grassy meadows, I was restless being on such pristine land. I needed to do something to bring me back to normal, so I seduced a tradesman in the tavern. I’m not sure what frame of mind was natural for him, but he had little choice but to bed me when I teased him with my breasts, opening my dress so he could see inside. At first I thought he was arresting me, when he suddenly had his hand on my arm. He dragged me from the establishment and took me outside and into the woods. Stripping away my clothes, he flung me over a decaying tree trunk and raped my cunt and ass while I screamed deliciously. If I’d been worried that I’d lost my lust, I certainly found it that day. He left me in a heap, snarling as though he was condemning me for his hungry appetite. But I was smiling.
“After wandering farther north, I found this domain where Knowland is the Provincial Lord. Once I found a place I could work and my small house, I met a man on the beach that fell in love with me. That man was you.”
My tale ends just that abruptly. I can’t think of one more word to say. I can think of a thousand thoughts to confess, the black desires of my fantasies and how with all my men these desires worked their way into our lovemaking. But I know these details are inappropriate for the penitent woman to think about, let alone speak or repeat in the confessional. That decided, my list of aberrations is complete and I have no more to add.
The silence between us is awkward, more awkward still is the sexual energy between us billowing like the sails on a ship.
“What is not a sin in the South,” he begins to speak, “is treachery of the worst sort in this Northern world. Though I have combed the ancient texts to see what precedent there is for the confessions of a woman like yourself, I have found none. So, I can rule in any way I choose in this matter.” He clears his throat, and wriggles uncomfortably in his seat. “I have decided not to judge you on the matters of your behavior before you came here. What was fair there, you cannot be held accountable for.” I’m surprised, my eyes no doubt revealing their shock. “I am, however, decreeing a purification based on your behavior since you came to this domain. Your stories to the girl, Mariel, jeopardized the relationship with her intended husband.”
I’m ready to jump on him angrily for that accusation, but I bite my tongue. Though I’d rather him punish me for all the other things, we’ve already aired our feelings in the matter of Mariel and he is immovable. As vehemently as he states his case, I’m actually beginning to believe that I’ve corrupted this poor girl.
“And, for your infidelities to your intended husband with the harlot Queleah, you require purification. You will be bound, a lash applied to your nakedness for an indeterminate time, followed by the twenty-one cuts from a cane administered over your lashed skin. At the finish, you will be branded for harlotry.”
“What!” This last decree shocks me. The implications leave me stunned because I realize this is the most severe sentence he can rule.
“The brand is an insignia of the Northern realm to mark its most dangerous cynics … a warning for those that might be seduced by you.”
“You’ll place a permanent mark of my sin where?”
“The brand, my brand, will appear on the left flank of your ass. And on your right forearm, there will be a smaller insignia tattoo
ed as a warning.”
“But for what purpose is all this?” I ask pleadingly.
He looks at me so coldly, his eyes unwavering, though seeing my face so confused, feeling my heart beating hotly in my chest, he seems to slacken the hold he has on me with a kinder look.
“Teagan, this is the world you have entered. I cannot waver from what it dictates. I have discussed this with Knowland, consulted with the ancients, and determined that these measures are the only ones that will appease the people I serve.”
“And will they all inspect this brand you burn in me?”
“No,” he shakes his head. “But they can assume it’s there.”
“And why’s that?”
“Because all proven harlots are so marked in Utopia. Queleah is no different. This has nothing to do with our marriage. Eventually, if you’d stayed here for anytime, you would have been arrested and so marked or forced to leave—escorted to the southern border. The brand is intended to be a warning to our citizens of …” he struggles for words, “the natural state of your carnal desires. It is simply a precaution.”
“And everyone will see this mark on my arm and know there is a second on my ass?”
“That is generally understood.”
“How can you stand to marry a marked woman?” I wonder aloud.
He is silent, withdrawing into himself.
“If you want to change your mind?” he finally says.
“No. I can’t change my mind. I give myself up to this world for you.”
“You’re sure?”
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