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If I were ever caught in the secret chambers, I would have been put to death.
But there was really very little chance of it. As a trusted advisor to the king, I was rarely questioned in my activities. And, being the elder and most learned vizier did have its privileges.
The knowledge of the secret passages was only known to five living men, after all, and none but I used them. They ran like a tunnel system through the rooms and halls of our grand palace – from the lofty heights of the four towers, to the deepest dregs of the inhuman dungeon. The sacred secret had been handed down through the generations to the highest priests, the most loyal guards, and the most trusted advisors to the royal family.
Perks of selfless devotion.
I was addicted to the maze of passages. Sometimes I simply wished to be left alone, other times I used them as short cuts, but my favorite use of the dark, hidden corridors was to watch those who thought they were alone. The secrets that dwelt in the palace walls were tantalizingly wicked.
Nearly fifty, I was an elder in my kingdom. To reach fifty years was a good length of life – to go beyond was a gift of the gods. And so, it was no surprise to our people when our beloved king died peacefully just after his seventy-eighth birthday.
Our king had been a virile, lusty man, and had taken his wives and concubines to his bed until the last nights of his full life. Nearly two-dozen princesses had sprung from his many unions, but only one son. The prince who was now king – still very much a boy.
Not a child, mind you. A young man. A rash, passionate youth. Beautiful and strong like his father, but inexperienced to the world. In need of counsel. In need of taming. But, like most his age, his thoughts dwelt mostly upon two things: war and the fairer sex.
So, in the first two years of my young king’s rein, I had seen our generals return with many spoils of victory. Riches of the conquered. Lavish gifts. Gold and spices and silks and jewels. Frivolous valuables, made boring by their endless parade.
And women. So many women. Young, supple feminine creatures of every shape and color. Exotic and sensual – frightened and defiant. And with each returning general, our young king smiled for the material treasures, but it was the newest additions to his concubines which never failed to dominate his interest.
Despite my age, my blood still ran hot for the right women. Whichever tantalizing vixens our king grew tired of went to the palace’s second harem. That was where the guards and advisors could find their female company, and where I myself still sent for a woman when I required one. Yet, in my long life, none had evoked a true fire in my soul. None had sent me to burning with the lusts I knew churned through other men. So, when the generals returned with their plunder, I held to the hope that an enchantress would appear to consume me.
I had, after all, seen lust in all its forms from secluded positions in the secret passages. I had watched men and women explore sex and all its many pleasures. I had seen love, rape, incest, desire, and loneliness. The entire spectrum of emotions that the human animal crashed through in need of contact with another soul. In my younger days, this forbidden, secret viewing often hardened my loins, and took me over into pleasure with the scenes I observed. But it was all the same now. Nothing new. Nothing different. No novelty in the carnal acts that whimpered from the shadows.
Until Mara was brought to the palace.
At first I had paid little attention to the general returning that hot summer afternoon. It was just another soldier returning from just another war with a bounty of new, yet boring and typical trinkets to present. Even the king himself was having difficulty paying attention. He was reclining on a pile of cushions, while three slaves of the first harem tended him. One girl massaged his royal feet, while another fed him delicacies with her long, tapered fingers. A third fanned him gently, cooling his brow in effort to thwart the muggy heat.
"Your Majesty, there is only one last thing to present you with," the heavyset general announced calmly. "I bring to you these last angels of the desert."
The king perked to some attention, but I was still doing my best to feign interest. Judging from the meager loot returned, this latest conquer hadn’t been a terribly wealthy realm. Some fine craftsmanship was obvious in their treasures, but no special charm to the booty.
And then Mara was shoved into the room, fighting her captors the whole way. And my breath caught in my lungs.
She was, by no means, alone. There were a dozen of them all together. Lovely, shimmering and ripe. Golden flesh revealed to the eye because of the tattered and tight, flowing drapes which barely shielded their nudity. Youth. Beauty. The gods had fashioned them with exquisite proficiency.
Still, even in that tide of unearthly beauty, one creature stood out, and I only saw Mara. Her pink lips were stretched over a thick length of rope – the raw twine exposing a hint of white teeth as it dug into her cheeks. Her hands were bound in front of her, but it was as though nothing could contain her magnificence, or her fury.
The other captives were frightened and unbound. They sobbed and bowed when ordered, cloistering together like terrified birds. But Mara had to be forced to her knees before the king. And when she looked up, there was wild hatred spewing forth in waves of defiance.
Such eyes. Green and black on the edges, fading to opaque pupils. I had never seen her like before. Amber hair, her mane was honey-stained by long hours in the sun, washed with a blush of copper. Those translucent eyes flashed in her uncannily stunning face, venom dripping from her long lashes. No general had ever returned with such a treasure, and the king rose quickly to his feet to examine his latest memento of warfare.
"Have care, majesty. We had to bind the cat. Her claws and bite have yet to be tempered," one of the general’s soldiers warned with a chuckling condescension.
"Prepare her for me," the king ordered the mistress of the first harem. "I shall tame her myself tonight," with a boastful smirk toward the soldier who had spoken, the king added, "I have my own way of taming cats."
Ah, yes, I had seen the king’s way of taming. He was a vulgar youth with no passion for women. No desire to eke out the mysteries of their curves and softness. The king knew lust and lust only. He took his pleasure – which could be great, and if the woman found her own pleasure along the way she was lucky to do so. He made no effort – took no joy in hearing the female animal moan from the depths of her own sensual thirsts.
He saw beauty in his new prisoner, certainly, and challenge, but he saw no treasure in her open rage. In her violent rebelliousness. The intelligence and feral wickedness in her expression left me without the ability to breathe, however. And, for the first time in my many years, I wanted a woman from just the sight of her.
Obsession, in my experience could take years to perfect, but I did very well in the course of barely a few hours. Slipping silently into the corridors, I watched five women of the harem drag Mara off, while the rest of the women herded the other new arrivals toward quarters.
At first, they unbound her. Mara spoke a dialect not very different from our own. So I could understand every word as she spat insults and curses at the women who tended her. The wildcat flailed her limbs, bit, scratched, wrestled, and made every attempt to flee. Five more harem women were ordered to the room by the mistress. And the preparation of Mara began.
She was stripped to nakedness, and the moment my eyes beheld that magnificence of form, I felt the blood surge through my belly, flowing with a stark, greedy hunger toward the stiffening that pulsated below. The girl was flawless. Smooth, taut, golden skin covered every silken inch of her. And curves to make a man dizzy in their perfection. Her elegant neck streamlined into proud shoulders. Her breasts sat high and firm. Round and ripe, bounteous and milky with large pink buds – hardened from either the friction or her fury. My mouth watered to nibble and suck at those breasts. My teeth ached to stroke those pouting nipples.
There was a woman imprisoning each of Mara’s arms as she bucked and strained against their hold. Two more held each of her legs. A fifth woman began to wash and massage Mara’s supple young form. Moist cloths cleaned the girl from forehead to toe. No inch of her was left unviolated. And when the washing was finished, two women began to rub her down with oils and perfumes. It went on so long that even the wild prisoner realized she had to preserve some semblance of her strength. Halting her fighting, Mara simply met each of her captors with a hateful glare. The look seemed to promise retribution.
The other concubines were not intimidated. They teased Mara’s delicious body. Cruelly tugging on her tender nipples, pulling her hair, slapping her creamy belly and thighs until they glowed pink.
Jealousy. They envied her tenacious spirit and beauty. I myself envied the other women their task. I longed to be the one rubbing musky scented oils into her golden flesh. Instead, my hand had drifted down into my robes as I massaged my aching erection.
Mara endured them. Her sharp eyes seemed to note every humiliation and count each unkindness. She was not going to deplete her energy fighting. She was simply going to remember. My own body trembled from the sight of her...vulnerable and yet unvanquished. The merciless women taunted her and teased her – but Mara refused to give them a moment of satisfaction. Her eyes remained alert, aware, but calm. A brooding calm. A lethal silence.
Then her translucent gaze rose. Green and black, those eyes. And she turned that gaze of emerald and ebon fire directly at me – into me.
I jolted from the shock and my mind fumbled to appease my thundering heart. It was impossible for her to see me through the slats of wood that concealed the entrances to the secret passages. There was no way she could be looking at me!
Yet, she was. She was staring at me. Her eyes bore into mine, and just when I had convinced myself that the young hellcat had simply picked a place on the wall to focus her attention, she further shocked me by turning up the corners of her lips and giving the slightest indication of her head. A nod. And a wicked, dark smile.
My hand froze on my swollen cock. Old folktales sparked to memory. Fables and whispers. In my youth, I had been told the stories of the enchantresses of the desert. Oracles and mystics and women of unspeakable abilities. Her mysterious eyes deepened to jade pools and she nodded again, as though she had seen straight into my mind and was confirming my thoughts. The heat of her glare traveled down, until I knew she was looking at my throbbing loins, and she smiled another wicked, grim sneer.
The women tending her were now wrapping her in transparently thin silks, which molded to Mara’s damp, supple body like a hungry lover. Once again they teased her and insulted her, tugging on her pouting breasts through the cool fabric – pinching her tender, smooth flesh to bruising.
Ignoring her petty tormentors, Mara began to chant. A low, lovely voice. Ethereal and husky. The incarnation was like a song, and Mara closed those beautiful eyes to focus upon the potency of the charms she uttered.
The other women laughed and began to tease Mara’s body harder, but I felt a tingling in my arms. Slowly, I was pulled forward until my hands were brought out before me and placed against the wall. It was not a power I was defenseless against. I could pull my arms to my side if I wished. But, if I let them hang loosely, they would drift up of their own accord and brace against the heavy stone wall. Exhilarated by her demonstration, I let my arms rise and fall several times. Amazed, amused, curious.
Then Mara’s tone changed, and I felt a new tingling in my loins.
I gasped silently, as Mara’s voice grew throaty and feral. Each of her whispers I felt on my body like a physical touch. With my hands now firmly against the wall, I stood in trembling shock as fingers slid up and down the length of my naked prick. I looked down, seeing nothing but the swelling of my thickening sex, yet I felt fingers. An undeniable caress.
Closing my eyes, I couldn’t help but thrust my hips in rhythm with the phantom touch. My head lulled backwards, and the stroke turned from the brush of fingers, to wet heat. A tightness constricted around my length. It squeezed me, suckled me. A mouth. A specter mouth...hot...wet...and oh so tight.
I began to fuck empty space. Thrusting forward wildly as my blood shot like quicksilver through my veins. No pleasure had ever compared to this. I pushed my hips harder. Biting my lips to hold in the animal grunting that emanated from my throat. I felt the first wave of satisfaction edge toward ecstasy, felt the familiar tightening, which told me I was close to expelling my seed...
A loud slap echoed through the room.
The spell broke.
My entire body wracked with the sudden stab of physical protest the instant the sensations violently stopped. My hands fumbled down, pumping at my own arousal as I hurriedly jerked and massaged – coaxing my taunted cock to deliver the milk of my seed. When it finally shot forward, sullying the wall in a fountain of concentrated spurts, I sagged back. The release was bittersweet. There had been no pleasure in the climax, only relief. Whatever sweet delight she had lavished upon me had disappeared before the end, and there was only emptiness left in the aftermath of her ghostly caress. I had never been so unsatisfied.
Glancing up, I found Mara staring back at me. Her green eyes were mocking. She was the captive, but I was the one who the women had punished, without knowing it.
The slap had broken her concentration. The mistress of the first harem had struck my temptress. The dominating woman was still stood over Mara’s prone form, ordering her to be silent as they finished preparing her for the king. A bright red handprint radiated heat on Mara’s cheek as a scrap of fabric was stuffed into her lovely mouth, and her hands were bound with a strip of the same cloth.
I had never hated so violently and suddenly as I hated the mistress of the concubines at that moment. My entire body quaked with rage.
I can show you more, if you free me.
Her voice echoed through my head, as clear and soft as a nightingale’s lament. It should have been a shock – to hear an inner voice other than my own, but it her intrusion was strangely welcome and comforting. Her incantations did not need verbal components. And I knew, with the injection of that single plea into my own soul, that I was losing myself to this exotic creature – that her intellect was intended to mate with mine. For the first time in my long life, I ached for another.
I cannot. You are intended for my king. I answered silently with my own thoughts.
She began to utter hostilities again, only this time, the threats and insults were not hurled from her gagged lips, but with her sorceress’ mind. No matter her powers or her pride, I could hear her fear – her intimidated terror. Then, she seemed to find her control again, and attempted to sway me to another temptation.
Deny him. Take me from here, and I shall be yours.
It was a virgin’s desperate prayer. As close as this magnificent woman would ever come to begging, and even my loyal soul knew a moment of hesitation. My heart thundered. I had never wanted anything as much as I wanted this woman. And, had there been a chance – even the slightest hope of taking possession of her and fleeing without facing certain death for both of us – I would most undoubtedly have committed treason with all a sinner’s glee.
If I take you from here, they will come after us. You will still be his possession, only more brutally punished and I will be put to death. Delay is not escape.
The logic of my words wounded her. She had been clinging to the hope that something...someone would deliver her from this fate. But it would not be. She was intended for my young king, and she knew it as certainly as she knew the limits of her own powers.
Her mind didn’t speak again, and I watched as some of the fight drained from her perfumed body. They had prodded and poked at her to provoke her form – preening and tinting her golden body with a rosy flush for the king’s pleasure, but Mara’s eyes were distant. Vacant. Grave.
The scent of my own sex was heavy in the secluded passageway. I closed my robes and leaned back. She had drawn me over into lust with her eyes, but my heart was in mortal danger from the entreaties of her mind. I had laid up nights asking the gods for a woman such as this. And now that she lay before me, trembling just beyond the grasp of my fingertips, I was helpless but to sit back and watch another man claim her.
The fates were whores.
I had always guessed that truth, but knew it as a certainty then. They had answered my prayers and condemned me with the granting. Whores.
"It is time to take her to the king’s chamber."
I was jolted out of my musing by the mistress of the concubines, and glanced up in time to see Mara being drug from the room. The vindictive consorts tripped and pushed at her. Now that Mara’s fangs were no longer bared, they were free to inflict their cheap cruelties.
The fates, it appeared, were not the only whores of the world.
On to Page II
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