by Aran Ashe
After a while, Leah became aware of shouting from the terrace above. Denni said: 'Come on, Leah. We're late for the boys at the top.' But before departure, Denni had a brief whispered conversation with two of the younger men. Leah felt sure it had been to arrange an assignation.
The late arrival of the beer station on the upper terrace was greeted with some good-natured jeering but, once again, Leah was impressed by the warmth and kindness of these men. Denni introduced her and again there were scathing comments about the Gangmaster. It gave Leah increasing concern as to what might happen if they were late getting back.
'There's plenty of time,' Denni said with a laugh. 'Besides, Beccanay would never tell on us. And there's something I want you to see.'
She took Leah by the hand, leading her away from the beer station to a small alcove in the rock face at the end of the terrace. The men had extended the natural roofing with canvas sheeting in order to fashion a shelter. It had a brightly lit brazier at each end and with the radiant heat from the adjacent furnace it was very warm indeed. There were tables, a few chairs and a hollowed-out area at the rear with several mattresses, all unoccupied. Denni picked up a torch from a heap and made Leah do the same. Then Denni lit her torch at the brazier. 'No – don't light yours yet,' she said, 'Come on,' and led her to the back of the shelter. There, in the broken shadows of the rough rock face, was a narrow defile. 'It's a cave they broke into when sinking footings for a furnace. It goes right into the hill and down under our feet. It's beautiful – magical,' Denni murmured, her eyes glittering.
Apprehensively, Leah allowed her friend to lead her down the uneven sloping floor, into a narrow blackness licked by the tongues of torchlight. The air was cool and still; the only sounds were the spitting of the torch, the scrape of clogs on rock, and Leah's tense breathing. The walls were smooth but the floor was broken. Then ahead Leah heard the hollow drip of water into pools, then a faint bubbling and trickling before the floor levelled and felt sandy and the cavern widened and the roof lifted high. 'Here – light your torch with mine,' Denni whispered, and when she did, Leah was filled with awe at the vision that opened out before her.
Beautiful curtains of smoothly sculpted coloured stone adorned the walls; shapes like icicles hung from the roof and dripped into a glass-clear pool of water. Everywhere were streaks of colour, from the blackest blue through azure to orange and blood-red. The rippling sheen of water on the walls made them appear soft and gelatinous; Leah touched them but they too were stone.
'Over here,' Denni said. On the banks of the far end of the pool stood a group of flagons, and a stone encrusted metal cup on a chain bolted to the floor. A stream of tiny bubbles was rising from the bottom of the pool, causing an upwelling of the still surface.
'Is it hot?' asked Leah.
'No – it's the spring. The bubbles are air or something. Feel it.'
'You first.'
Denni slotted her torch into one of several rings high in the wall then, crouching, scooped up a handful of the bubbling water and drank. 'Taste it, Leah. It's lovely.'
Leah had to agree: it was cold and deliciously fresh, slightly sweet yet with a very faint but pleasant bitterness, and the tiny bubbles seemed to keep forming around her tongue, as if the air was still escaping from the liquid. Leah cupped her palm and took another drink. 'Refreshing. Nice. It makes you want more.'
'Exactly. So, hang your torch up and get some.' Denni picked up the chained cup. 'When they broke into the cave, this was already here. The place must once have been a shrine.'
'To what?'
'To love and beauty,' Denni mused, gazing around her, then laughing at Leah's frown. Soon the two girls were drinking freely. Then Denni said: 'I keep a flagon of it hidden in the brew-house and another, disguised with perfume, under my bed.'
'Why hidden and disguised?'
'The Gangmaster forbids it – says it's bad water. But if it makes you feel good, how can that be bad?'
Leah was becoming apprehensive. 'What does Beccanay say?'
'He tried the water once and it certainly worked on him. I think he might use it in secret, now.'
'What do you mean – "worked"?'
'You know – with a man . . . It makes him fitter and stronger. I know some of the firemen use it.'
'The ones you were whispering to?'
'Why shouldn't a girl banter with a good-looking boy?' But Leah suspected there was more involved than talk. 'Didn't you think them handsome, Leah?' Leah admitted she did. 'Then you should see what the water does to them – especially Finn.' She then described him intimately.
'Have you . . . you know – with the firemen, with Finn . . . ?' Leah asked.
Denni took another sip of the water and smiled decadently. 'It works on girls too.'
'On you?'
'You too, I'll wager. Let me look.'
'No!'
But Denni smothered her protests with gently insistent kisses. 'Let me look, I say,' she whispered softly in Leah's ear. The gentle kissing – in her neck, now – and the soft, seductive breathing against her ear melted the little resistance that Leah felt. In truth, Leah found it acutely arousing to have the girl unfasten her trousers in the hush of this secret place. All her senses were on tiptoe as the naked coolness touched her belly in the flickering torchlight. The anticipation of those delicate, slender, expert fingers stirred feelings of lewdness far more than all the talk of potent waters. Yet even as those fingers touched, seeking gently to open her at the front, and her trembling legs bowed wide to oblige, the faintly bitter aftertaste of that water lingered as a pleasant dryness that fuelled the desire to continue to drink.
'It's here and it's coming on hard, poking its little head up,' Denni whispered. She pulled the trousers from Leah's ankles and carefully replaced her clogs. Then she reached back, filled the chained cup with water and placed it on the floor between Leah's feet. Leah heard her dipping her fingers in.
'Oh, no,' she whispered but she wanted it and the anticipation was delicious.
'Oh, yes,' Denni crooned as Leah gasped and the icy cold fingers touched and pushed the fleshy hood back and the icy wet drips drenched Leah's knob. 'Oh, yes – see, it's not even shrinking from the cold, it's coming harder.' Leah could feel it, swelling, drawing all the blood from its surround until the thinned skin of her hood had retreated and tightened to a noose that only caused the knob to swell harder. Even when Denni withdrew her fingers, Leah could feel it still standing proud. 'Here, crouch and let it drink.' She filled the cup to the brim.
'Oh, no . . . please . . .,' Leah whispered weakly but again, even as Denni made her crouch to take it, Leah wanted it this way. She wanted to be made to do these sexual things while she was so aroused. Very slowly Denni offered up the brimming cup between Leah's legs. The jewelled chain tinkled, then Leah shuddered as her knob and labia were suddenly plunged into the freezing prickling water and the involuntary contraction drew the rush of tiny bubbles up inside. Denni kept lifting the cup until it overflowed and all of Leah's sex was submerged, the rim of the cup pressing into the sensitive place at the very top of each thigh. Denni kissed Leah again while Leah crouched with knees akimbo and Denni kept the cup tightly in place as Leah's sex slowly drowned in the icy water. Then Denni slipped her fingers over the front lip of the cup to massage Leah's knob very gently. She started to milk it. 'Pee,' she murmured lewdly. 'Pee into the water; make the cup overflow and I shall drink it.' Leah shook her head, gasping while Denni's depraved fingertips pried a little further within to stimulate the secret aperture where the pee comes out. She tried to push the tip of her little finger into it and the peculiar pleasure-pressure made Leah moan.
Denni made her stand. 'Turn round.' Leah faced the smoothly fluted cavern wall with its sheen of running water. She felt Denni's fingers slipping up between her legs from behind, slipping up into her sex and pushing her swollen knob out until it touched the freezing wall. The water drizzled over it, tickling, making fizzy bubbles where it touched the skin, stirring the
need to come. Gently Denni pressed and Leah's knees locked. Gasping, she collapsed, arms outstretched against the wall. Then Denni's other hand came round to the front, gently cleaving the labia open, carefully feeling for the pee-hole, pressing the tiny mouth. 'Do it,' she whispered into Leah's ear. Leah tried but, though she wanted to be lewd, it would not come. 'I can feel the little mouth pushing out,' Denni murmured. 'It has a tiny rim, nice to touch, nice to tap – can you feel the tapping; is it good?' Then Leah moaned and a kind of pleasure came – stiltedly, not deeply, for she was frightened of losing control and peeing while the pleasure was coming; yet the feeling of being touched exactly there was deeply sexual. It felt as if a narrow stiff rod of flesh had been inserted up her pee-hole, for the finger-tapping at its tip reverberated all the way up inside her. The tapping gently diminished and Denni's fingers slid away. She turned Leah round. Leah's saturated shirt-front clung against her nipples, which Denni fingered through the cloth. 'Keep your legs open for me. You need to drink some more, so you won't be able to hold it from me. Then I need to watch and feel while it comes out. Understood?'
Leah closed her eyes in abdication. The profound need to embrace submission welled in her throat; a knot of deliciously sexual nausea tightened within her belly. She felt Denni undoing the buttons of her shirt and drawing the flaps open. Then Denni reached and touched, not the breasts, but the knot of Leah's belly, standing out as if a fist were thrusting from inside it. Again, a feeling like an orgasm came, though Denni was not touching her knob or even her pee-hole. 'The water's working,' Denni whispered. 'Now, some more – as much as you can drink. And keep your legs open so I can see and feel.'
The water dripped from the cup and ran in trickles between Leah's breasts. Denni encouraged the trickles by tipping the cup too far; when the flow reached Leah's sex, Denni's fingers intercepted it and wetly, gently kept her open, touching, pressing there, keeping the feelings lewd and strong.
Then Leah heard a noise quite different from the cavern sounds of running water – the echo of footsteps. 'What's that?' She turned her head in terror towards the approaching light.
'No – stay still. Don't try to cover up. They won't hurt you. I asked them to meet us.'
'Who?'
'Those two boys – Finn and Arno. See.' And, clad only in their loincloths, they emerged from the passageway. As Denni went forward to greet them with kisses, Leah drew back against the wall, buttoning her shirt quickly. The shock of discovery had killed all arousal and now all she felt was embarrassed fear. Denni was very forthright, especially with Finn, the taller of the two. Already, while she was whispering to him, her fingers that had just now been inside Leah were stroking his face and lips. And he was looking at Leah, who suddenly realised that Denni was deliberately planting Leah's musk on the young man's lips. Neither man had approached Leah, though Arno too was looking at her. She kept still against the wall, her thighs tightly together to conceal her naked sex – more yet, to conceal her swollen clitoris, that beacon of lewdness which, despite the shock, had not gone down even a little. But the grip of her thighs only made the pulse in her groin more distinct: she felt it throbbing in her erection.
Denni was feeding the men water from the spring; concentrating her attention on Finn, the more handsome of the two. Arno hung his torch close to Leah. She turned her head half away but she could still see Denni with Finn. Denni's hand was under his loincloth while he was drinking. Then, smiling wickedly at Leah, she drew it aside. Leah looked away but too late, for the image of Finn's thick erection burgeoning in the girl's hand was already locked in her mind. That mind, in its present state of disarray, in those few brief moments, did unwanted, dread and beautiful things with that erection to keep it coming on. Then she felt Arno's hand tentatively touching her clenched fist.
He made no other advance than to seek to hold her hand until Leah, her gaze involuntarily drawn back to the scene of the other two, finally acquiesced. She found reassurance and warmth in the strength of that unassuming hand. She secretly glanced at the man she had deemed the less attractive of the two, and found him the more attractive in manner. With a shiver, she saw a deep scar, like a burn, down his side, as if he had been branded with a hot iron bar. Then she realised that the hand she was holding was damaged; all the fingers except the index had lost the first joint. Automatically Leah closed both her hands about this damaged one, squeezing it protectively. Arno smiled at her and she drew closer.
Denni, on her knees, had Finn standing at the edge of the pool, where she was alternately bathing then sucking his erection. He was reaching down, touching her between the legs. Then Denni gasped and shuddered with the head of his penis still in her mouth. Leah felt that shudder too and the sensation communicated through to Arno's hand. 'Do you want to drink?' he whispered gently to her and Leah nodded, though she had already drunk aplenty. But desire was returning and desire dispels caution. When she drank from the cup he held, she kept kissing those damaged fingers; she wanted to kiss his scar.
'You drink too,' she said, openly touching his scar. And when he finished his cupful, she said: 'More. Keep drinking.' She wanted him filled with desire, a desire to be expended on her – perhaps within her. She shivered at that thought and, bowing forward, gently kissed his scar and felt the beautiful tension of arousal in his belly.
'If you're ready . . . ?' Denni said. Leah frowned.
Finn, holding a brimming flagon, said: 'Let's go up to the bath-oven.'
Arno put his arm round Leah's waist. 'Come on – I'll fill a flagon for us too.'
Finn took up a torch and led the way. He took them deeper into the cavern then, turning, entered a narrow gallery whose steepening floor gave way to steps cut into the rock, before becoming a spiral stairway cut into the sides of a near-vertical water-worn shaft. They emerged through a trapdoor into a furnace room, half sunk into the rock, partly roofed with timbers. It was open on one side to the night but still the radiant heat was intense. There was a heavy door on the other side, which Finn bolted. Then he ran back and bolted the trapdoor. 'Set the damper on the oven,' he cried.
Arno hurried from Leah's side, collected a long iron bar and slotted it into a giant lever on the side of the 'oven' – which was more like a furnace than any oven Leah had ever seen. Then he began dragging its doors shut with a hook. Denni explained that the oven warmed the bath-house on the hillside above. She set the torches into low slots in the rock wall. Then she lifted the flagons on to a rough-hewn table that had cups and other small implements, along with a small cache of bread, dried apples and cheese. Fleeces and straw lay on the floor.
It was obvious that Denni was well acquainted with this place, and the men had moved swiftly to seal the entrances and prevent disturbance. Clearly it had all been planned, yet Leah felt deeply excited by this prospect of a tryst. Denni was looking at her, her eyes glittering with lewd anticipation, her nostrils dilated by her deep breathing. Finn was peering out of the open side of the chamber, doubtless checking that the coast was clear. Leah looked again at Arno, still wrestling with the controls of the giant oven, his muscular body bathed in the red light. The air felt hot and dry, like the desert. Leah went to the table, poured a cup of water from one of the flagons and drank it off in one swift movement. Then, even as the bubbles were still tickling in her throat, she poured another. She felt giddy with elation.
Arno came back and quietly slipped his arms around her waist, under her shirt; they were hot and she could smell the musky scent from his exertions. She put the cup down and let her fingertips search out his scar. She shivered as they slid along the furrow, lined with the softest, smoothest skin but bounded by hard lumpy ridges at each side. Touching that damaged place gave a strange pleasure to her – an arousal that was as powerful as it was wrong. Her knob was swelling with blood and she opened her thighs to relieve the sexual pressure but as she continued to stroke that deep furrow in Arno's skin, her arousal simply deepened. She felt him tense and catch his breath and, suddenly self-conscious about w
hat she was doing, she withdrew her fingers.
'No, don't stop – that was nice,' he whispered. Leah knew that if she were to turn to face him now, her erection would be obvious. She picked up the cup and tried to carry on drinking, only to spill water down her shirt, which he slowly unbuttoned even as she was drinking. And so she was laid bare: her broken chain, which intrigued him, and her lack of pubic hair, which aroused him, and most of all her erection, which he said was beautiful. But it was her swollen-nippled breasts, wet and tight, upon which he concentrated first. While he sucked them gently, her fingertips returned to the perverse sensuality of that deep furrow in his side, until the finger-touching was not enough, and her lips and tongue yearned to kiss it. Head bowed, her lips touched the hard outer ridges and her tongue-tip slid along the smooth heart of the furrow. He was already holding her knob – 'like a little hard cherry,' he murmured – and her climax came immediately he squeezed it while trying to get his damaged fingertips all the way round it, as if to pluck it from her body or to burst it from its stone. That was what the pleasure felt like, but her knob was not burst at all; under the spell of the potent waters, it just kept on swelling.
She had tried to conceal her climax, holding her breath, trying to defer the swoon, taking his hands in hers, interlacing their fingers to prevent his continuing to touch between her legs. She was uncertain whether he had realised what he had brought about; she tried to distract him by kissing; her legs were trembling from the act of concealment. But the delicious swelling continued. She could feel the pressure now in the buried part inside her, still distending, and the tiny pores inside the inner lips of her sex secreting their oil, the gentle oil that helps the penis slip inside.