by Syra Bond
Caristia was giddy by the time the cage hit the pulley block and was brought abruptly to a halt. She knew it had stopped but her dizziness meant the torches spun around her as if they were being carried around the temple enclosure by runners. She hung above the altar, staring down with her head fixed in the hole at the front of the cage and her bottom exposed at the back. She tried to move but the weight of her body against the opening around her neck and the way her arms had been tied made it impossible. She felt something against her buttocks, a touch of something thin like the long nail of a lover. It was a cane. As it was drawn across her skin she felt it touch the exposed flesh of her sex, which was squashed between the inviting indentation where the tops of her thighs met the lower part of her upturned buttocks. The cane was lifted, repositioned and pulled across her skin again, and this time it tugged slightly on the soft flesh of her labia. It was the lightest touch, but it was enough to lift the flesh slightly and expose the merest glimpse of the inner pinkness, and the glancing coolness that it brought, the sensation of her opening flesh, heralded a sliver of moistness to the freshly exposed surface.
The altar was still spinning below her face when the cane bit for the first time. She knew what was going to happen when it was lifted away from her skin, she knew it would come back hard, but when it landed on her bottom she was not prepared for the pain it brought. It was so sharp, so intense, that for the first few moments after it struck she did nothing. Her senses were mesmerized, then as the cutting pain penetrated she felt the full effect of its piercing impact. Her whole body tightened, her knees pressed harder against the side bars, her back lifted against the top and her buttocks tightened, but nothing absorbed the pain. She screwed up her face, tightening her eyes, but her confinement held in the pain and allowed her no relief. She did not feel the cane lifted away; the stinging shock remained even when it did not touch her, but when it came down again she felt its impact. The sting cut into her labia, burning, setting them on fire, but as she tightened against it again and prepared for the next she knew that when it landed her flesh would be more receptive to it, more punished by it.
Each blow increased the pain and with each strike her labia swelled, exposed for more punishment. She looked down at the altar and as the speed of the cane built to a crescendo, she felt her orgasm bursting within her captive body. A convulsing climax tore through her, forcing her even tighter against the bars, shaking her imprisoned body at its core and when finally, like an erupting volcano it exploded within her, she screamed in a blubbering shriek that filled the temple enclosure and continued until she had no breath left to feed it.
The cage was pulled forward at an angle on the rope and held there so that her face was above the centre of the altar. Her ears filled with the beating of her heart and she panted as excitement ran through her in ripples of confused exhilaration. She felt hands on her bottom, opening her cheeks wide, then she felt something against her anus, something cool and unforgiving. A rod, made from rolled leather and covered with closely napped suede, was attached with leather thongs to the rear bar of the cage and its rounded end placed against her exposed anus. The shaft was heavily ribbed, as thick as the thickest cock and half as long again. She felt her anus tighten as the leather rod's blunt end pushed against the tight muscular ring. For a moment the cage slipped slightly backwards and she felt the increased pressure as the tip began to prise open her anus, but just as it was penetrating her and her mouth dropped open, the cage was pulled back again and the pressure was relieved.
One of the priests mounted the altar and stood with his hips immediately in front of her face. His embroidered gold robe flowed loosely around him and flashed with the redness of the flickering torches. He opened the front and showed his naked, shaved body. His skin was oiled and glistened as if covered with a layer of precious metal. His cock hung loosely between his heavy balls and, when he cradled them, it bent over the front edge of his hand. Caristia gaped at him as he lifted his flaccid cock towards her and placed its bulbous end against her wet lips. She allowed it inside, feeling its heat, letting the glans rest on her tongue. She closed her lips around it and felt the pliable shaft beating with expectation. She sucked it and felt the hardening surface swelling. She sucked again, holding the shaft firmly in her encircling lips, and felt it lengthening as the glans enlarged and pressed further back on her tongue. She licked its underside and felt the veins beneath the silky skin throbbing, and as she moved her tongue around the rim of the glans she felt it push past and touch the back of her throat. It made her gag and she pulled back, slipping her mouth back along the shaft towards its end. The moment she pulled back she felt the pressure of the leather rod against her anus and realised the cage was no longer supported at an angle on the rope by anything other than her grasp on the priest's cock. Frantically she sucked it, drawing herself along its length until again it rested against the back of her throat and the pressure on her anus was eased.
But as she held it tightly between her lips she felt it hardening more, and with each pulsating throb it lengthened so that, unless she took it in deeper, it allowed the cage to fall back and the end of the rod to penetrate her anus. She sucked the priest's cock, gripping it with her lips as it thickened and lengthened, and still she dropped back against the unforgiving rod of leather. She felt her anus opening to it, encircling it tightly as it pushed against her and she sucked harder. She held it there for as long as she could, keeping the rod only at the entrance to her rectum, but suddenly she let the priest's cock slip back, gripping behind the flange of his glans with her tight lips. The cage fell back instantly and the rigid rod entered her deeply, filling her, stuffing her with its length and bulk. Quickly she sucked the cock in again and the rod in her rectum came out, but only slightly, only enough to feel a couple of its heavy ribs squeezing past the muscular ring that held it. She sucked desperately on the cock, but as it poured its hot semen into her she could not keep it in. When she released it again she could not even keep the helmet between her lips, and the rod buried its full length past her stretched anus as the cock ejaculated across her face.
The priest stepped aside and another took his place. Caristia managed to suck his cock in deeply and the rod slowly pulled out, rib by rib, until it was only just inside her bottom, but she could not keep it out for long. Each swallow, each suck, each tightening of her cheeks made her slide along the length of the leather implement, allowing it to ease itself slightly out. But each pause, each tightening pull of her flesh against the velvety leather made her ache for her own climax, made her body throb for a blissful conclusion. She did not have to wait many moments beyond the first longing. She felt it building inside her constrained body, at first unable to burst free then, when it started and she could not move with it, could not liberate it with a convulsion, a jerk, a frantic display of abandon, she simply let the cock in her mouth go free. As her face was again covered in hot semen, the penetration in her rectum was full and complete and the flames of her orgasm burned throughout her whole unmoving body.
They pulled the rod from her, easing it out over each of its ribs, then released the shackles from the bars and drew her out of the cage. She did not want to come out at first and twisted her head so she was jammed tightly, but they held the flesh of her labia, pinching it and gripped her hips, and poked her breasts with sticks until finally she was free. The priest in the gold robe sat on a carved throne by the altar and ordered the men to lift her and place her across his knee. She felt her nipples between their fingers as they did, and although they were already firm and prominent she felt them throbbing as they hardened even more under the rough handling. The shackles on her wrists hung down heavily, her arms felt stiff from being bent back over the bars of the cage and when, finally, she was held face down above his knees, she sighed with the anticipation of relief. He opened his robe so that she lay against his naked flesh and, as she was draped across the tops of his thighs, bent at the hips with her feet just touching the ground, she felt the heat of
his cock against her narrow waist.
'Now bless her with the pain of your hand, priest!' shouted Arria Sulla as she stood closely in front of Caristia's head. 'I want to see her buttocks glowing with your consecration.'
Caristia looked up and saw that Arria Sulla's dress was undone down the front and her naked body beneath was fully exposed. Caristia watched her hand run down her flat stomach, then as it slowed, she watched her mistress's fingers probe between her trimmed pubic hair. She parted it and with two fingers opened the soft folds of her cunt, then she circled the clitoris and teased it out. As Caristia watched her mistress's exposed slit so closely, she felt a building heat in the swollen flesh of her own sex. It was as if her mistress was massaging her, as if she was exciting her throbbing clitoris.
The priest circled his hand across Caristia's bottom, dragging his finger around, tracing her buttocks then running a fingertip between the valley that separated them. He opened her legs slightly, pressing lightly between the tops of her thighs until the shape of her shaved sex was revealed. He ran his finger along its centre and her outer labia parted in a moist pink line of expectant, satiny softness.
'Get on with it!' shouted Arria Sulla, half closing her eyes and biting her lip to try and hold on to her excitement as she ran her fingers deeper into her wetness.
The priest's circling hand drew away from Caristia's bottom and there was a momentary pause, a silent gap of nothingness, as though the universe was hesitating on the brink of something unknown. Everything was silent and Caristia's mind, although seeing Arria Sulla's moist flesh in front of her eyes, plugged the gap with images of freedom, of sunlight, of Drusus, then as the lull was interrupted the fantasies disappeared and her head was filled with the blazing fires of pain.
His hand spanked hard, not stopping after it had struck but continuing until her buttocks had absorbed all its momentum. Arria Sulla leant back and squeezed her fingers around her clitoris, as if the blow on Caristia's bottom had filled her with energy, with an expectation that could only be discharged by her own pulsating flesh. It rose to her touch, a hardened nipple of joy, poking between the glistening spread of her moist labia. Caristia wanted to lick and touch, to taste, to suck. The priest's hand came down again, harder, and Caristia threw her head back in agony. Arria Sulla opened her legs more and pushed her hips forward, Caristia's nostrils filling with the musky scent of her mistress, and she inhaled deeply as the priest's hand came down again.
Arria Sulla moved closer to her suffering slave, opening her legs wide, spreading her lower lips, pressing her hips forward so that the soft flesh squeezed between her fingers, and the erect clitoris touched Caristia's lips. Caristia opened her mouth and let her tongue reach out. She tasted the moisture, and like the scent of rain on a summer's day, it filled her body with its soft fragrance. Another spanking blow made her gasp but she did not move her face; she was like a bee drinking nectar and she opened her mouth wider and let her tongue reach inside the moist petals. She tasted the inner wetness, stronger against her probing tongue. Then when the hand struck again on her stinging buttocks she sucked, drinking in the wetness, allowing it to run on her tongue and trickle down her parched throat.
Caristia craned her neck back as Arria Sulla bent forward, resting her hands in the small of Caristia's back and abandoning her cunt to her slave's ravenous mouth. Caristia lapped at it, pressing her nose against her mistress's clitoris, inhaling its fragrance, absorbing its moisture as she delved her tongue as deep into the silky flesh as she could. Arria Sulla watched the hand beating her slave's bottom, she scrutinised the increasing redness covering the pale skin, then as her cunt sent shockwaves into her hips and up into her chest, she dropped her face forward between Caristia's buttocks and drove her tongue into the girl's anus. Caristia gasped, the sudden cessation of the spanking and her mistress's wriggling tongue shocking her, filling her and setting her on fire. She lifted her buttocks to get all she could, opening them wide, allowing Arria Sulla's tongue to go deep, but as the tip probed she felt her orgasm overcoming her. She tightened and the tension pulled her back. She could barely reach Arria Sulla's cunt any more but it did not matter. All she could feel was her mistress's tongue, its searching tip and the heat and the fire of passion as her orgasm, like a storm of flames, ran through her shaking body.
Caristia crouched, exhausted on the cold mosaic floor. She sat up slowly, putting her weight alternately on each buttock to try and ease the pain which still stung her. She stretched out her legs to alleviate their stiffness, leant back against a massive column and dropped her hands onto her thighs. Drusus, barely visible in the shadows where he had been hiding, reached around the column and touched her shoulder. She could tell it was him straight away, but still she jumped.
'Caristia,' he whispered urgently, 'I will not let you suffer any more. We will escape together. I have heard that south of here, across an ocean, there is a vast desert where Arabs hold their women in great esteem and would take us in and treat us like themselves. We would no longer be slaves. Caristia! We would be free.'
'When, my sweet,' she said shakily. 'When can we go?'
'Now!' he said emphatically as he took her arm, pulled her to her feet and dragged her behind the column.
'But what about Innocenti?' she said, looking at the girl still trussed up, hanging from the metal rail with the wooden bar jammed between her teeth. 'We cannot leave her like that.'
'Then quickly,' he said, aware of the procession of worshippers coming closer and aware of the light of their torches exposing them to the danger of discovery.
Caristia strained up, but could not reach the leather thongs that held Innocenti on the metal bar. Drusus lifted her, holding her waist, and she managed to unbind Innocenti's wrists. The girl fell limply into her arms, as if she was asleep, unable to move, as if she had lost her will to carry on. She looked up at Caristia and a faint smile crossed her pale lips.
'Innocenti! Innocenti! Wake up. We can escape. Innocenti!' But Caristia's appeals were lost as the worshippers saw her and pulled the half conscious girl out of her grasp.
Innocenti's expression, only slowly waking to the possibility of freedom, suddenly dropped. The look of anticipation was stolen from her as she closed her eyes, submitted to the darkness that foreshadowed what would now befall her. She dropped to the floor and a heavy ring was clipped to her collar and a shackle to her wrist. Caristia stared down at her, crumpled and lying on her side, her hands flat together, tucked beneath her head as if in prayer. The curve of her narrow hips ran in a sweeping valley to the summit of her shoulders, then descended again to the elegant slope of her neck, its line broken only by the encircling collar. One knee covered the other and her legs were slightly bent so that the shape of her bottom was fully exposed. At the base of her flat stomach, where the darkness of shadow took over, there was nothing to be seen of her perfectly shaped sex, but the phantom image of it, hidden in shade, was as exciting to Caristia's eyes as the sight of it itself.
Drusus reached out to Caristia, hoping there was still time, that they could still avoid capture, but it was too late; attempting to rescue Innocenti had been their downfall. Caristia shrank back against the enveloping crowd but Drusus was held and pulled before an enraged Fronto.
'Take my ungrateful slave to the Gymnasium,' he shouted as he dispensed his summary justice. 'Put him in chains and leave him for tomorrow's sun. Give him no water and let him burn.'
Caristia stared after him as he was dragged away. He glanced back, his face filled with anguish, but he should not have turned and was whipped across the back by one of Fronto's more obedient slaves, and made to march forward to his punishment. As he disappeared, flinching under the pain of the merciless whip, he took with him any hope Caristia had left.
Chapter 11
Shame in the streets of Pompeii
There was no point in calling after Drusus; they pulled him away too quickly and by the time Caristia had realised what was happening she had been chained by the neck and d
ragged out of the Temple of Isis. When they hauled her under the high arched entrance of the House of the Gladiators her sweating, naked body was covered in dust and grime. She was thrown down on the sandy ground and, as she looked up through dirt-encrusted eyes, she saw the muscular legs of Sparton standing before her.
She stared upwards, following the tight bindings of leather that encircled his calves and knees, then up the bronzed thickness of his thighs until, finally, she saw the tight material that enveloped his heavy genitals and finished pulled up high onto his waist. He held out his foot it in front of her face. 'Kiss it before you rise, slave,' he said arrogantly.
Caristia flicked out her tongue and ran its tip along the top of his foot. She inhaled the strong scent of leather that rose from his dusty sandals. Her tongue dried as she licked his skin and he kicked her away impatiently.
'Do not be too rough with her Sparton,' said Arria Sulla. 'We do not want to diminish her charms.' She straddled Caristia, putting one foot either side of her naked waist, then bending and circling her fingers around Caristia's buttocks. 'Rather, I think, something which warms this beautiful bottom will both punish and prepare her better for what is in store.'
Caristia crawled back towards Sparton's foot, eager to please him, frightened by the surroundings and the menace in Arria Sulla's words.
'She is a pretty thing, madam. Too pretty for the ring, I fancy.' Caristia ran her tongue along the tops of his bare toes, tasting the salt between them and picking up the dust onto her lips. 'And, I think, too eager to satisfy her own pleasures.' He cocked his head to the side, smiled at the gladiators who stood around, and spoke mockingly. 'Look, she has not stood up. Already she forgets the instructions of her new master. Madam, this grovelling slave certainly needs discipline.'