by N. J Ross
A howl. Shrill and inhuman, charged with the hungry desperation of nature’s most fearsome hunter: the grey wolf. I froze, and for a moment thought that if I remained still, the threat might disappear. The sound had come from nearby, and I turned my head slowly to the left. Standing on top of a small hill not a hundred feet from me was a wolf. It was silent and still, and it had its trained on me. Then, from behind me, came an answering cry, even more feral and grotesque than then first. I felt my heart start to pound heavy in my chest, and sweat came quick to my brow. I’d never come face to face with one of these creatures before, and the coarse advice my mother had given me stuck in my mind like a knife: If you spy a wolf, save yourself an’ run, girl. Well ma, that might work if there’s just one wolf, but it didn’t help me with a pack bearing down on me.
When the wolves started running down the hills, streaking their way like silver fire towards me, I did the only thing I could: I grabbed the handle of the door in desperation, and plunged myself into the warmth of someone else’s home.
Chapter 10
The first thing I noticed in the little hut was how beautifully cosy it was. Although the sun had been shining outside, the heat of the Yorkshire sun was wan and thin compared to that of warmer climes. It was nice not to have to rub my hands together to ward off the prickling feelings that sometimes ran through them.
It was really quite comfortable in here. Although the hut had seemed small from the outside, inside it was roomy enough, with a large four-poster bed, the likes of which I had never seen. Across the bed was a huge stag’s fur. I imagined for a second the size of the beast which this rug must have come from. I imagined the hunt and the chase of the thing, how it must have fallen to a skilled musket or keen blade. Indeed, I could see the ragged wound where the shot must have found the stag’s heart. The bed had large pillows which, when I touched them, yielded softly to my touch. These were pillows of the finest quality duck down, surely. Not the kind of thing one would expect to find in the middle of a treacherous boggy marsh, indeed.
The fire was on its last embers, with a stack of seasoned logs resting at its right hand side. I could still hear the howl of the wolves outside, and I knew the creatures weren’t going anywhere for the time being. I had the crazy thought of catching a long log on the fire and running at the wretched beasts, brandishing the flaming wood in an effort to scare them off. But I knew that it was just desperation taking hold of my common sense, and that they’d tear my throat from my body as soon as I stepped foot outside the safety of the cabin. Aye, I was going to have to stay here awhile. I never thought that I’d be pining for the safety of boring old Malton, but here I was, in the wilderness, with only the howling of the wolves for company.
I threw another log on the fire, and watched in silent admiration as the bark of the wood caught aflame first, followed by the harder timber at its core. I luxuriated in the heat, and felt jealous that the little shack that I lived in was more wretched than the tiny little hut I’d found in the wilderness! There was a table in here, too, and two sturdy looking pine chairs. The place was like a palace compared to my usual lodgings, in fact. A sudden rumble in my stomach reminded me that now was about the time I’d normally be having my evening meal. I got up from in front of the fire, and started to look through a row of cabinets which were under the windowsill. Amazingly, I found fresh bread, cheese, and a couple of large potatoes, as well as salt and what looked to be a small bottle of some kind of alcohol, most likely wine.
I took a hunk of the bread and broke a corner of cheese before biting down on the hard loaf. The flavour wasn’t great, but it filled me up in no time. Although I was nervous that the owner of the hut mat come back, I thought it unlikely that he’d be back this evening, and if he did happen to, surely he’d understand my predicament, and take pity on me in my current vulnerable state. I took hold of the bottle of rich, dark liquid, and uncorked it. It was port! I could smell its rich, deep, fruit-like aroma assaulting my senses. I took a swig and felt the warm, sensation of the liquor encircle my heart and then my belly. It was fantastic, not like any of the grog I normally drank in the pub back home. It was usually only cooking wine that us servants could afford to drink at the end of each day. I took another sip, amazed by the intoxicating power of the brew, feeling already tipsy, my cheeks reddening with the alcohol’s potent fire.
I sat alone but warm in the hut for a while, enjoying the feeling of being warm and in luxurious surroundings. I’ve neglected to detail some of the items which decorated the walls, but suffice it to say that should I ever have need of a mighty boar’s head, mounted on a plinth, I’d know exactly where to come. I’d found it a little disconcerting to begin with, but soon, as I became more and more drunk, the deer’s had seemed like an old friend.
‘Oh, Johnnie,’ I said to the boar, ‘it’s just you and me, mate.’ The boar’s head was not even polite enough to smile at my good humour, but I carried on talking nonetheless. ‘You’ll look after me, eh, Johnnie? You’ll skewer those foul wolves on your proud tusks, won’t you?’
I could feel sleep start to take me, so I crawled underneath the deer’s hide, and dreamt of the moon.
Chapter 11
‘Well, well, well, what do we have here?’
I woke in a start and tried to pull the covers up to my chin. I couldn’t! There was something holding my arms tight, and when I looked down, I saw that I was held in place by leather cords, tied to the bedposts like a criminal. I looked up at the source of the sound, and saw, to my horror, that there was a man, sitting at the table.
‘I come back in the middle of the night to find an uncouth wench in my bed and a gang of lupine horrors at my door. Could there be a connection between the two occurences, I thought to myself…?’
I’d never seen a man like him before. If anything, I’d have said that he had more in common with the wolves which had chased me into this shack than with any other human being I’d beheld in my life. His hair was long and thick, matted and coarse, with twigs and leaves and what looked like mud worked into it, giving it a rough, layered appearance, like that of a beast. Not what you’d expect from a white man of the genteel English countryside! He had a beard, a thick dark brown mass of wiry hair which sprouted from a rugged, hard face. His eyes looked crazed, like two saucers of milk, and the tiny dark pupil at the centre of each of them was surrounded by a warm hazel colour. The strange thing was, he spoke with the proud, cruel voice of a lord! He had a commanding ring to his voice.
His clothes must have been grand and expensive, at one point. His jacket was well cut and gave him a look of odd, stately grandeur, but it was grim and faded and covered in mud and marks of the wild. His trousers too were absolutely foul, streaked with stains and other marks upon them. But truly, once, his outfit would not have looked out of place at a palace, or stately home. He even had a pair of clearly expensive brogues on his feet. Their leather would have once been shiny and bright, now dull, and scuffed to oblivion.
‘Don’t… don’t hurt me, please,’ I said. I tried again to fight against my bonds, but found that I was securely fastened in place.
‘Hurt you? You must think me mad, and a brute to boot. I haven’t seen a woman in months, no… years. Why would I want to hurt you? To come home to one so beautiful as well, among all this stinking marshland. Such an exotic, beautiful, dark-skinned creature. It’s like I came home to my very own black rose, peeping up through the manure and the reeking peet. Why would I want to cut a rose’s stem, when I could just carefully pluck it?’
He stood up and I saw that he held a small, sharp dagger in his hand. Its blade was slick with blood. He must have slaughtered the wolves outside. Who was this wild, well-spoken man? And was he going to kill me too?
He wiped the blood from his blade on his jacket, and when it was clean, he slid the knife into his waist-band, so that its handle was on display.
‘I don’t know, sir, it’s just, you’ve got me strapped to this bed...’ I stammered.
He chuckled to himself in a deep, cruel way.
‘Yes, that’s true enough, I have got you strapped to my bed. Unfortunately my dear,’ he said, and looked at me with a rakish expression, ‘the way I see it, you broke into my home, ate my food, drank my port and slept in my bed. Now, as far as I can see it, that either makes you a criminal,’ and then he looked at me with a wicked, lustful, piercing gaze, ‘or my wife.’ That’s when I noticed something beneath his waist, prodding the fabric of his trousers upward like a rod of steel. ‘And whichever you are, you need to be punished.’
Chapter 12
He sat again at his chair leaning back, the master of his domain. I felt so vulnerable like this, and the feeling of being strapped to a white man’s bed, in his home, as he watched me struggle, fair brought juice to the place between my legs. Why I felt so aroused, I do not know! The thought of being bound by a white man had never turned me on before… in fact, it had always made me mad with rage!
I was bent forward by my straps, so that my arse poked out behind me, and I was strapped high to the bedposts in front of me by my hands. He could do anything he wanted with me. No one knew I was here, and it felt to me for a moment that I had crossed into some other, wild world, with just the wolves and this monster for company. And I found that I liked the way it felt, and I liked the way this monster looked at me, his black rose.
‘Do you not recognise me,’ said the man, giving me an odd look, turning his head slightly to the side so that I could see his profile. That’s when it hit me. I did know his face. It was the nose. From this new angle he presented to me, there was something extremely distinct about it, something which I couldn’t quite put my finger on.
‘No my lord, I’m afraid that I don’t…’ I said, still wriggling slightly in my bonds.
‘Well never mind. It hardly matters whether or not you know who I am for what I’m about to do with you,’ he said. I felt sure now that I could see something growing under his trousers. It was thick and long and desperate to get out . If only I could turn my head a little more, I’d be able to see it fully…
‘So how long do you plan to keep me trussed up for like this, like a common criminal?’ I said, trying to show a little defiance in the face of this man’s authority.
‘I’m not quite sure, you see, when I initially bound you, I’d not really worked out what my plan would be. At first I was merely thinking of tying you up then ravishing you on that bed.’ I felt a rush of blood to both my face, and to the little space between my legs which I sometimes touched when I was alone. No man had ever seen that space, let alone ravished it. My mother had warned me away from boys, particularly the white boys from the fort.
‘Ravish me?’ I said, panting now, terrified and aflame with desire.
‘Well, that was my first thought. But I decided that ravishing you wasn’t quite enough of a punishment for the crime of breaking and entering, as well as bringing those wolves to my door. You also owe me for saving you from those wolves as well, young lady.’
‘You didn’t save me from the wolves, that was…’ I started.
‘Oh I didn’t? You’d have been just fine without this hut I suppose, which I built and furnished with my two bare hands?’
‘Well I suppose…’
‘No. You’d be a pile of hot, bloody gore or some wolves bowel movement by now young lady, and you know it’s the truth,’ he said, a cruel curl in his lip. ‘But that’s not why you’re going to agree that I can do exactly what I want with you, oh no. Here’s the reason: You’re going to like it. I’m not just a wild man of this moor, young lady. I am a man of property, and a man of refinement. I know how to make a woman’s body scream with desire and throb with dark, erotic satisfaction. I know how to make that black cunt of yours weep with desire. My appetite is insatiable and I haven’t seen a woman like you in months. In fact, I haven’t seen a woman like you ever. I want to show you the kind of punishment a rich, white lord bestows upon his subjects and then, only after you beg me, I want to fuck you like a beast.’
I wanted it too. I know what my mother would have said, ‘grab it ‘tween yer fingers’. With a soft little look, I nodded at him. I felt the cup of my sex full to the brim with my juice, and I wanted him to drink from it. ‘My lord, come here and do with me what you will.’
Chapter 13
When he rose from his seat, I saw that I had not been imagining the lengthening of the meat between his legs. His trousers stuck out straight in front of him, deformed by his penis, which must have now be fully erect and huge beneath the expensive fabric. He took off his jacket and cast it to one side, and I saw that his body was that of a hunter or a blacksmith, seemingly carved from stone and cast in white human flesh. How I wanted to touch him, to see if he was real. I felt like I’d found my opposite; we formed a perfect contrast with one another.
He came up to the bed, with his trousers still on, and placed one of his rough hands on my leg, before running it up straight up, softly, over my quivering flesh. ‘Such beautiful dark skin,’ he said tenderly. I felt a rush of powerful lust pulse around my secure body, and when he flipped my skirts up and then pulled my undergarments down, I felt as though I was going to pass out due to the anticipation.
‘Now what I’m going to do, my dear, is administer some swift strokes to your behind. You should think yourself lucky that I don’t have my riding crop with me, for I would have relished the chance to mark your backside properly with that!’
A sudden fear took over me. He was going to beat me? That’s not what I’d wanted. But now that I thought about it, and he started to rub his hands over the naked flesh of my arse, I knew that I did want it.
‘Yes, sir,’ I whispered, flinching as he drew his hand up and back.
‘I need you to say “thank you Duke”, after every slap, you understand?’
Duke? He was obviously playing some twisted power game with me. He was the Duke and I was just his wretched black-skinned wench. I understood what was going on here. I nodded and waited for the first hit. Then, after what felt like an eternity of waiting, I felt his heavy hand come smacking down onto me. My mouth opened soundlessly and my eyes widened with the pain of the strike. Little needles of red-hot sensation spread out from his fingers across my flesh. I had not expected him to hit me so hard. Shocked, I remained silent.
‘Pardon me?’ said the man, ‘I didn’t quite hear that. We’ll have to start all over again, I’m afraid. What a dreadful shame.’ Then, without any warning, he lifted his hand again and brought it down with a hard, snapping thwack sound on my bottom, even harder than before. I felt my flesh pucker underneath him, as my body struggled to react to the pain it was experiencing. Quick, Faith, say something, I thought to myself.
‘Tha- thank you, Duke,’ I panted, trying hard to concentrate through the shock.
‘Oh, well done, dear. What a good girl. Well, it was my pleasure.’ As he said pleasure, he squeezed my cheek again, and I felt a little surge of warmth to the space between my legs. I moved a little, and knew that being strapped in like this was making me hot and delirious with pleasure. My thoughts were broken by another slap.
‘Thank you,’ I said, as my whole body shifted forward with the power of the smack. I closed my eyes and took the pain, as it radiated around my buttocks, and through my core, all the way round to my hungry little pussy which shivered underneath me, so close to his rough hands.
Again he beat me, and again I thanked him for it, and with each following strike it became easier to say thank you, even though the pain became more and more severe. I could feel the flesh of my bottom swelling and reddening with each slap as the ‘Duke’ marked me, made me his, punished me. ‘Thank you, thank you, thank you Duke,’ I said, and I knew that I was thanking him with sincerely, as now each slap had started to make my pussy began to beat with pleasure, with anticipation. I knew he was looking at me there, because with each strike now he was pinching my buttocks and pushing them up so that he cou
ld see that secret little place. I knew that I had started to glisten for him. Then, before I knew it, the ten slaps were up. He came round from behind me and moved onto the bed, bringing himself close to my body.
‘You took your punishment rather well, young lady’ he said, and I saw that it was his turn to pant now, his breathing had become ragged and deep, ‘I would have walked a thousand miles for a chance to kiss these lips,’ he trailed a finger over the soft, dark pinkness of my mouth, ‘but all I had to do was to come back home.’
He leaned in and placed his lips on mine, cupping my face with his coarse hands. I was amazed by how soft his kisses were, how hot his mouth was, how gingerly he caressed my cheeks. Then, I felt his tongue, warm and probing, asking to be let into my mouth, licking softly at my lips. I opened wide and let him into me, twisting my own tongue around his, dancing with him, slipping in and out of his mouth, claiming the territory of his insides as my own. Then, he bit lightly down onto my lower lip, and I felt a dart of pleasure tug at my pussy, as though he’d grabbed it himself.