by Aran Ashe
Leah was propped against the pillow. She looked dreamy-eyed, her pupils dilated. Her skin was flushed; the red rash from the horsehair had flared again on her lip and breast, as if it had now become her body's reaction to pleasure. Merek took her lovely small body in his arms; she put her soft warm lips against his neck and Merek felt his erection stirring. A girl who has just experienced fulfilling pleasure is beautiful, just to hold in your arms and kiss. He took her lovely stiff breasts in his fingers.
'Did he kiss them?'
Leah nodded and closed her languid eyes. Merek opened his shirt and clasped her in his arms, her naked breasts against his bared chest. His fingertips explored every bump in her narrow backbone. Leah reached up and kissed him on the mouth, taunting him gently, slipping her little tongue inside. He could taste the residual sweet-salt aromatic savour of her lover's issue, yet he could not pull away from Leah's kiss, which was so loving and sensual and knowing. She knew she had made him erect: her fingers sought the proof. 'Lie down,' he told her. He put his fingers gently between her legs and watched her eyes. Touching a girl so intimately while you study her eyes is a unique pleasure; your eyes make love to her; your fingers worship her precious places – the swollenness, the soft warmth, the feather edges, the little punctures with their tiny raised edges, the moist fragments of her chain, its links sealed by her lover's fluid. His fingertips found the open end of her prepuce; her breathing faltered as he rucked that limp thin softness gently back, exposing the clitoris through a film of slippery semen. He slid a fingertip inside her vagina – through the lover's liquid issue, kept warm by her body – and Leah gasped and reached again to kiss him, her arms round his neck. His finger was inside her, against the soft, frilled, visceral, pulsing flesh, slippery with her lover's come; the hard pearl of her clitoris was under his thumb. He laid her gently down on the bed. She had not climaxed through this touching. Arousal was still burning her lovely body. He slid his finger out and Leah immediately reached down to suck it.
'Bring my pleasure, master,' she pleaded. She spread her legs. 'Kiss it, please?'
'It is not done, for a master to kiss a girl in the place where another man has been.' The aroma on her tongue was one thing; her sex was thick with issue.
'Some masters do,' Leah whispered wistfully. She closed her lovely eyes and drew her arms above her head, exposing her underarms. She knew he loved to kiss them and she shuddered when his lips touched there. When the tip of his tongue drew liquid lines up the complex saltiness, her belly shivered and her legs spread wider.
Then the wanton weight of Leah's last words bore down remorselessly on Merek's possessive heart. 'You say that other masters do it? Then let us seek a volunteer – perhaps from the tavern.' Leah paled and her gaze fell away. He stared at her in silence. But all the while his wrath was mounting. Finally it burst – not hotly but in calculated coldness. 'Stretch your arms back.' He tied her wrists to the head of the bed then got up and said quietly, resentfully: 'I ought to whip you first.' And with the poisoned barb of that comment embedded in Leah's heart, Merek swiftly left the cabin.
In his haste he stumbled headlong into a figure concealed by the shadow at the top of the stairway, knocking the man sideways. For an instant Merek took him for the stranger, returning to bargain for Leah, then recognition struck home. He summarily grasped the intruder by the arm and neck, then kicked his feet from under him.
9
Two Masters
Merek manhandled the intruder down the stairway and back into the cabin where his frightened slave lay tethered on the bed.
'Ean!' Leah gasped as the young groom was thrown down at her feet.
Merek was intent solely upon his slave's reaction. Her astonishment was unmistakably laced with concern for the young man. Had her arms been free her instinct would have been to reach for him; Merek could see this quite plainly.
'What are you doing here?' Merek demanded of him. 'Was our last encounter not a sufficient lesson?' He took a step closer to the crouching interloper; the desire to kick him was compelling.
'No! No, master, please.'
It came like a slap across Merek's face. Leah had intervened again, exactly as in the lodge. With his anger threatening to choke him he screamed at the interloper: 'Answer me, damn you!'
'I had a dream about her . . .,' came the tremulous reply. 'And I had to know that she was not harmed – that her master had not punished her too severely for my transgression.' The younger man turned to look at Leah and she looked back with tears in her eyes. Merek's heart sank like a stone, for he saw in this young man's actions a misguided bravery that might once have been his own.
'As you see, she is not harmed,' he answered defensively.
'I see cords binding her wrists, my lord.'
'She is not harmed in the way you insinuate,' Merek whispered weakly. Yet he felt compelled to sit on the bed beside his slave, sliding his arm under her shoulders to raise her closer. To her supreme credit Leah turned to her master and offered her lips, which he took in a soft prolonged kiss, into which her tears now trickled their tender loving blessing.
'Don't send him away, master,' Leah whispered.
'I love her,' Ean broke in.
'No – don't say that,' Leah chastised him – but far too gently. Merek was watching her eyes, which now lay upon the younger man. Eyes cannot pretend to lie as bluntly as words. 'I am my master's slave,' she added faintly, turning to look pleadingly at Merek. He had no choice.
'I am short of a steersman. Perhaps the young man could assist . . .,' he offered without enthusiasm.
'Yes – oh, yes!' Leah cried and tried to snuggle against him. Then Merek saw the sparkle of victory in the younger man's eyes and knew he had been trapped. Even as his slave lay beside him, warm and loving, the coldness of jealousy gnawed at Merek, deep inside. He kept picturing the scene of debauchery he had interrupted at the lodge. He kept mulling over Leah's latest spiteful jibe: 'Some masters do . . .' Well, perhaps he now had the kind of volunteer he had thought to find in the tavern. What better test of putative love could there be?
'Then that's settled,' said Merek, standing up. 'And your first duty, master steersman, lies in this very cabin. I want my slave sucked clean; if she comes, you will be rewarded in kind.'
Leah shook her head and kept shaking it. 'No – don't ask him to do that, not when –'
'Not after your own master has refused the savour of a stranger's issue? Surely a true lover would not deny her, however perverse her craving?'
The young man interrupted softly: 'My lord, do not press the point. With one so beautiful and precious I should look upon it as a supreme privilege.' With that he took Leah's tethered wrist and kissed it. As if oblivious of Merek's presence he then kissed her fully on the mouth and Leah shared the enthusiasm of that kiss.
Merek, reduced by his own obstinacy to being the voyeur again, was rewarded only with excruciating torture. Still, his final pronouncement, though softly spoken, remained laced with venom: 'Take as long as you like but get her clean.'
Yet he felt compelled to remain in the cabin throughout. His jealous desire had robbed him of choice; he had to be there, in readiness to take her tethered torso in his arms and put his lips to hers at the moment of her climax – in order not to lose her.
Her burgeoning arousal made her look repeatedly at her master, searching his eyes for approval. How could he rebuff her? Merek quietly returned to the bed and Leah reached to kiss him, even as her young lover's head lay cradled between her thighs, tonguing her, probing her, teasingly kissing.
Merek reclined alongside Leah, bestowing small brushing kisses upon her arms and face – especially her lovely eyebrows and her nose and those luscious lips, which stayed parted. His kissing returned repeatedly to the beautiful swelling on her upper lip, which darkened and thickened as her climax neared. He could feel her tremulous breathing upon his cheek; then those breaths turned to gasps, and her head began twisting from side to side, as if trying to throw off the pleasur
e, or perhaps to delay it. Merek slid his arms under her shoulders and lifted her head and torso from the bed, stretching her tethered arms even as she was being sucked so deeply and earnestly between the legs. And all the while she was coming in beautiful, wrenching throes, such as only a love-slave can experience.
The instrument of Leah's deliverance having earned his promised reward, Merek watched him take it with gusto, his knees about her tethered arms, her head raised upon the pillow, his turgid flesh seeking her throat. All Ean's former tenderness seemed swept aside by desirous passion and base instinct. Therefore Merek now took responsibility for Leah's pleasure. He crouched between her legs, holding that bulging slippery pearl of arousal through its thin prepuce of skin. When Ean's climax came, Merek felt the pearl of Leah's erection tugging at his fingertips – her body's lewd empathy with her lover's pumping. The pumping continued yet no semen issued from her lips; she swallowed it all and still sucked. Above her tethers, her fingers clutched the air, and between her legs, the pearl of her clitoris kept tugging Merek's fingertips as if her whole body craved to milk every last drop of her lover's semen.
Afterwards, with Ean despatched to the steersman's quarters, came the chance that the bond between master and slave might yet be mended. Leah's mouth was redolent with the scent of his rival's semen yet Merek kissed it. He ran his fingers slowly up her belly and sucked her teats. He did not think her pleasure had actually come a second time, during his holding of her knob, and he ached with desire for her. But all he did was unfasten her and begin to put her to bed. Then she asked about protection.
'You mean, regarding what that stranger did to you earlier? But surely it was you who gave him the glad eye on the wharf? It was you who chose to let him come inside you.' Again, the gratuitous, spiteful tirade had spilled out uncontrolled. Merek shut his eyes, despising himself.
'I know this, my lord,' Leah answered quietly. 'I needed the pleasure of proper penetration – face to face, in love, as my lord was once wont to do. Something inside me yearned for this pleasure again.' She fell silent for a moment. 'And when it came, it felt good,' she murmured looking at him with those lovely eyes. 'And you are my master and my lord; so now I seek your help to make me safe.' She opened her hands in supplication. Merek, reproached and chastened, bowed and kissed her fingertips.
She watched him preparing the clyster. He put her on her side, as much from his desire to hold her as from any prophylactic requirement; she needed only to have the unguent left inside a little while for any traces of the male emission to be rendered harmless. He first anointed her vagina with a small quantity of the liquid. She murmured when the metal barrel went inside; she was so small between the legs that the nose of the instrument was discernable as a bump in her lower belly. He made her hold her prepuce back on the pretext of working the protective liquor beneath it, which he did very gently with the tip of his finger while he stroked her nipple-tips until her breathing changed and her belly seemed to strain or tremble, with the instrument half protruding. Then he pushed the plunger a little and watched her anus tighten. He stopped fingertipping her clitoris. 'No – keep holding your hood back for me, Leah.' Then he pushed the plunger firmly home and her anus remained in spasm and every part of her body shook. He left the spent instrument in her, lying upon her thigh, while he ran his fingers over each shaking, lovely part, returning again and again to that round belly and those quaking breasts, but not touching the clitoris, which quivered in stabbing pulses that reverberated through her taut belly to his stroking fingers.
Merek undressed and lay with Leah. His flesh ached; all the trapped seminal fluid was swelling the inner gland to bursting. His erection leaked silk wherever it touched Leah. She took pleasure from the contact, evidently well aware of what he was feeling. She touched him gently, the brushings seemingly accidental but intensely stimulating. Merek took her in his arms, her head to his chest, his balls against her naked belly, with the clyster still inside her. She fell asleep with her fingers lightly clasped about the head of his penis. He was still burning with desire. But that contact – her breasts against his torso, her delicate fingers clasping the tip of his penis – was without equal. He dozed and dreamt of penetrating her bottom while the clyster was flooding her sex and when he awoke, her softly pulsing fingers were sticky with his come.
She tried to feed it to him, then when he refused she fed it to herself. His tongue followed because he so needed to kiss her, this beautiful sexual creature, with her swollen upper lip and her constricted, puffy-nippled breasts, and that delicious pubic nudity that rendered her unique.
The next few days were the happiest of times for Leah. She took pleasure in being the female of the household to her two men; she was pleased to cook and care for them in their separate places; and she liked to talk with Ean, who listened with a quiet compassion and seemed to want to understand her point of view. She remained contentedly deferential to Merek in ways of the flesh, aware that his jealousy was never far at bay. She might kiss Ean tenderly at each meeting and parting but there was no repetition of that night in the cabin; Merek never mentioned it again. Yet it was plain that his desire for her was spurred on by the presence of the younger man, for throughout this time, Leah never suffered the want of satiation and her master always proved himself a considerate lover. She did not realise, until it was too late, the effect of this arrangement on Ean.
On the fifth day she happened to be sitting with Ean in their usual place at the stern and noticed that he seemed quieter and more thoughtful than normal. She got up and looked at the passing landscape. The waterway was curling its way through greenery and wooded hills.
'We seem to move so slowly, yet the scenery changes by the minute,' Leah said, trying to draw Ean into conversation.
'Like the clouds,' he mused. 'When you look at them on a calm day, they seem fixed, but a few minutes later their pattern is entirely changed.'
Leah glanced at him but could read nothing in his gaze. Then she saw ahead a blemish in the landscape, like a jagged diagonal notch cutting into the hillside from the valley floor to the skyline. 'Ean – what is it?' she whispered, pointing.
Ean locked the tiller and stood by her side. The lush green of the hill appeared sliced through to bare brown rock and deeper, where the brown turned to bright red. 'It's as if a giant sword has cut a wound and the hill is bleeding,' Leah murmured. 'What is it?' She put her arm around Ean's waist and felt him shiver, and at first she thought it was in awe at that remarkable scene. So when he didn't return the gesture or respond she moved closer, snuggling against him. Finally she had to ask again.
'It's iron,' he murmured distantly. 'They dig it from the ground here and all about for many miles. And beyond these hills are the furnaces where they melt it down – grim places. I came through there once. We shall pass them in a day or two.' Then he said abruptly: 'Leah, do you love me?'
The question stunned her. Surely he knew? Or perhaps he meant another kind of love – exclusive and possessive, a love that could exist only between a master and his slave. A master might cast his slave aside as failed and worthless but a loyal slave could never put aside her master.
'Merek is my master,' Leah whispered. 'I obey him and I love him.'
'That was not my question.' Ean gazed directly at her.
'Your question is weighted with a deeper meaning.'
'What deeper meaning can there be but love – a man and a woman, an equal bond?'
'Love between equals is forbidden.'
'If it is forbidden, then so be it.' Ean took her gently by the shoulders and enfolded her very lightly in his arms. He did not attempt to kiss her. The embrace lasted but a few seconds but Leah was left distraught inside. She stood immobile and silent – what words could she utter? Then she hurried away. A dreadful nausea gripped her, and she could hardly breathe.
'You're pale,' Merek later told her. 'Here.' He released the halter from her breasts and pressed his hand against her brow and her neck. 'Your skin feels cold.' He put h
er to bed in a separate cabin and brought her warm drinks throughout the afternoon. In the evening, once the boat was docked, he bathed her then returned her to her bed. He said he had to go out on business. 'I'll get Ean to look in on you,' he said rather awkwardly.
'No,' Leah whispered. 'I shan't need it. I have water and warmth. I shall sleep. Take Ean with you.'
Merek hesitated then nodded. 'Yes, why not?'
She heard the two of them leaving together and the relief surged through her like a wave. But it was short-lived: she lay in bed in the terrible silence, interrupted only by the occasional creaking of timbers, all the time thinking of the two men that she loved and did not want to drive a wedge between. Eventually she dozed and dreamt of Ean – his touching her, arousing her like on that first night, at the lodge, when he was learning the fervour of passion.
When Leah woke she was wet between the legs; her desire throbbed sweetly cruelly inside her. She lay bared from the waist, gently touching herself, taunting her clitoris, but denying deliverance, keeping her flesh on edge, punishing it with arousal without the prospect of completion. Such was the true Tormunite way; so the monks had taught her. Eventually the merest touching with a fingertip made her moan: she hung, balanced on that edge of provocation, her whole body dissolving in desire. Then she heard footsteps and voices – the men had returned. She waited with bated breath for her door to be opened; she vowed to remain exactly as she lay, her belly aroused and exposed. She wanted both men to see her like this and, with one mind, to desire her. The footsteps approached; Leah closed her eyes, held her breath and held it long, but nothing happened. The door did not open. She heard muffled sounds, more steps, then quietness. Surely her master at least would come in to see how she fared? But no one came. Leah waited an age then quietly slipped out of bed, wrapped the sheet around her, picked up the candle and crept to her door.