2 comments/  40502 views/  9 favorites

Seraglio

By: mizlizzy



Prince Mustapha's Palace didn't look like much from the street, merely a large building with high plastered walls pierced only by the gate and a few high windows protected by fretwork lattice. The building was more recently whitewashed than its neighbors and the wooden trim painted brilliant cobalt, but there was nothing to hint it held a modern Seraglio. 

A real harem, something that has fascinated the western imagination since the Age of Discovery; stocked with women, servants, and artwork all dedicated to the pleasure of a single powerful man. I had been sent to penetrate this mystery. 

The servant who answered the door spoke no English, bowing me through into a reception area. After the blazing sun of the street it took a moment for my eyes to adjust to the dim light and rich colors and patterns. I didn't see the tall man waiting there until he spoke.

"May I assist you, madam?" His voice was deep, his accent clipped and British. I knew that the prince was Oxford educated, but in spite of a deep tan this man had fair hair and light eyes. He wore the long, loose kurta and shalwar of the area with an air, making the pajama-like garments seem elegant. He moved like a dancer.

"I hope so," I said. "My name is Russet Thompson. I have an appointment with Sir Adrian Calendar on behalf of Ultima Resorts."

"I'm Adrian Calendar, Prince Mustapha's personal secretary," he said, bowing over my hand. "Pardon my surprise. I must have misread Darius' note. I was expecting 'Russell' Thompson."

"I'm sorry for any confusion, Sir Adrian."

"Just Adrian, please," he said. "Won't you have a seat?" The room was set up as a divan, long benches strewn with gorgeous carpets and elegant cushions around three sides. The center held low brass tables several hookahs, the serpentine water pipes of the eastern world. Adrian clapped his hands and ordered the servant to bring tea. 

"So Darius sent a woman to tour the harem?" he continued. "How very piquant and how very like him. It will be my pleasure to show you the amenities, Miss Thompson. " 

"Russet." I'd wondered a little about that myself. The East is still very definitely a man's world, even in the more cosmopolitan cities. And since Prince Mustapha maintained a seraglio, I was assuming that he held old fashioned views in spite of his rumored youth.

"Charmed. Tell me, have worked for Darius long?"

"About five years." The servant brought a brass pot and tiny matching cups, pouring steaming mint tea. We sipped.

"And are you a dominatrix?" Adrian asked. I nearly choked.

"We call them 'facilitators,'" I corrected. "No, I'm Darius' chief designer and decorator. I handle the 'concept' areas of the resort. Darius is considering a harem theme for the new pavilion at Ultima."

"Still, rather an unusual job for a young lady." His smile was bland.

"It's a challenging job and a profitable one," I said a little sharply. "Ultima Resort is in the business of fulfilling people's fantasies in elegant surroundings. And some people might think that being Harem Master is an unusual job, as well. Isn't that post usually held by a eunuch?"

"Happily for me, the qualifications have changed a bit in modern times," Adrian replied, setting his cup down. "But you must be impatient to see the Seraglio. Shall we?"

I got to my feet and followed him down a short hall which terminated in a tall, wrought iron gate. "Let's cut across the harem garden, it's by far the shortest route."

Adrian unlocked it and we stepped out into a large center courtyard. The sun was filtered through a lattice of flowing vines around the outer walkways, but the center lay in full sun and was a riot of tropical blossoms and tinkling fountains. The courtyard was spacious enough to host an ornamental pond with a bridge and an island crowned by a fanciful fretwork gazebo. In a bright corner, a young woman sunned herself in the nude, oblivious to the fact that a gardener was misting water over the cobbles a few yards away. 

In spite of my crack about eunuchs—which I'd regretted as soon as I'd made it—I was surprised to see an attractive young man near the Prince's concubines, and Adrian interpreted my expression correctly.

"No, he's not actually a eunuch, either, my dear," he said, a slight note of malice in his voice. "The attendants are mostly gay and also accept stringent conditions of employment—ones that seem to accord well with their tastes." Raising his voice, he called, "Hassan?"

Hassan laid down his hose and walked over. The boy was slender, dark and doe-eyed, clad only in sandals and baggy white trousers that rode low over lean hips. Adrian spoke again and the boy dropped his drawers far enough for me to see a male chastity belt. A metal cage lined with sharp looking teeth confined his penis. It fit loosely around his flaccid member, but an erection would make it quite uncomfortable. 

Adrian thanked the boy, who smiled shyly, pulled up his trousers, and went back to sprinkling the paving. The sunbathing girl never even looked up.

"In case you were wondering, the belt is open in the back," Adrian said, pulling my attention back. 'But I believe it makes urination interesting."

"I can see that it would," I murmured, hoping I wasn't blushing. I'd seen such equipment at the resort, of course. I've even designed some, but I've never encountered it in real life, particularly as displayed by a supercilious Brit. Damn Darius, anyway, for getting me into this! And, naturally, I couldn't help wondering if the same conditions applied to Adrian…

My guide led the way around part of the courtyard and in through a larger gate, one which stood open. Inside was a vast sitting room furnished in the eastern style with large cushions of velvet and richly patterned silk strewn across thick carpet. The carpets were lustrous silk, laid over each other haphazardly and many layers deep in places. Scattered among the cushions were various amusements; books, cards, items of clothing and even jewelry.

I glanced down at an open book. It contained a thin trickle of elegant Arabic script and colored engravings of the sort coyly called 'curious' in rare book catalogs. I couldn't read it, but needed no translation. Very elegant and possibly a genuine antique, the visible plate showed a ménage a trois between two Hindu gentlemen of the Mogul period and a lady wearing jewels and little else. 

Adrian motioned me on and I followed, or tried to. I'd dressed modestly—long sleeves and long skirt—as befit a visitor to a largely Muslim country, but had foolishly worn high strappy sandals, thinking they'd be cool. The uneven layer of carpets caught the narrow heel of my sandal and I nearly turned an ankle.

"Perhaps you'd better dispense with your shoes, delightful as they are," Adrian suggested. "The floors are quite clean and we rarely wear anything but slippers indoors."

It seemed a somewhat improper suggestion, though highly practical. And it was quite true that Adrian wore soft leather slippers of the Persian style. I hesitated, and then under his watchful gaze, I toed my shoes off.

"Allow me," he murmured gallantly, scooping up my shoes. He continued the tour with my spike-heeled sandals dangling negligently. Though still covered from neck to ankles, I felt oddly exposed as I stepped from the silky rugs onto the cool terrazzo in my bare feet.

One long wall was hung with gauzy curtains. Adrian drew one back, revealing a large alcove containing an enormous feather bed, covered and draped in satins and fine linen. Numerous pillows were heaped at the head of the bed, and a carved ivory dildo lay abandoned amidst the tangled silks. It was double-ended and quite large. I stared.

"So sorry. His Highness is quite virile, but the girls do amuse themselves sometimes," Adrian said, very close to my ear. "And each other, of course."

I flinched, but he'd already stepped away and was continuing the tour. "Each girl has her own private chamber, and seven of the chambers are occupied at present. The Prince has a suite of rooms here in the seraglio, as well as his State Apartments in the Palace. Sorry it's so dim, but his Highness likes the authentic touch. There are electric lights for the cleaning staff, but for the most part the harem is lit with candles and torches."

I'd noticed the candles, of course. Huge twisted freestanding candleholders almost as tall as I, as well as wall brackets holding pure wax candles as thick as my calf. The wrought iron was in strong contrast to the polished marble and luxurious textiles. There were also oil lamps, small ones on the inlaid tables that looked for all the world like Aladdin's lamp and large multi-wicked lamps that swung from long ceiling chains. 

"Private rooms, but not private baths?" I asked lightly. Private rooms only if you considered a silk curtain privacy, I thought. Still, it would make a wonderful design for an orgy room—a large area for the uninhibited and alcoves for the shy. Lit from within, the alcoves would show moving shadows of the lovers inside while doing nothing to muffle their cries. Lovely. Darius would adore it.

"No private baths in the harem, but the hammam is one of our jewels. We're quite proud of it," Adrian said. "The actual, er, facilities are quite basic, but the baths are very special. Are you familiar with eastern plumbing, or lack thereof, Russet?"

"Do you mean squat toilets?" I asked, trying for a blasé tone. "I'm staying in a western hotel, thank goodness, but this isn't my first trip to the Orient." Squat toilets can be quite elegant, but in their simplest form are merely a hole in the floor.

"Very good for the alimentary canal, they tell me," Adrian said. "Lines everything up for proper elimination. Good, then you won't be offended if we take a short-cut through the loo."

"I'm sure Darius expects me to see as much as the Prince is willing to allow," I said firmly.

"Excellent." He led me through a curtained doorway into a long room containing both a row of the standard eastern toilets—though these holes were cut into veined black marble and had floor mounted flush pedals—as well as some very western bidets and a long mirrored vanity. There was also a large stall shower fitted with jets from every conceivable angle and another feature which I assumed was also a shower. 

This was a large shallow bowel let into the floor near one wall. Not deep enough even for a sitz bath, it had an open drain in the center and a sort of fountain to one side. The fountain was a black marble post with a small spigot that poured a narrow jet of water with just enough force to make it arc into the bowl. The gentle splashing would certainly encourage a shy bladder, I thought.

And I'd need the encouragement, though this communal arrangement didn't seem to discourage Asian as much as it did Americans. Still, this design had possibilities for the voyeur and exhibitionist contingents. And overall, it was striking. The wall directly behind the toilets held a mosaic of scantily clad dancing girls serving at a banquet that made my fingers itch for a camera. 

"Did Darius discuss photography with His Highness? I can make sketches, of course, but I'd love to take some photos as well."

"I don't know, but I'm certain we can work something out."

We passed through another curtained doorway at the far end of the room into a space that literally took my breath away. A high domed ceiling pierced at the top with elegant arabesques let shafts of light down to glitter on the water of an enormous pool. It was tiled in deep azure with lines of intricate pattern around the rim and in the center of the rectangular shape. Little wisps of vapor rose from the surface.

"Do you have the full set of pools?' I asked, already making notes. A room like this would cost the earth, but it would be more than worth it.

"Yes, just like the great hammams and the jolly old Romans," Adrian said. "The round pool at the far end is the caldarium, the hot bath. This is the tepidarium, the warm bath, and the last one is the frigidarium, the cold plunge. We have a full steam bath as well." 

Benches for lounging and massage ringed the pools, and the air was redolent of scented oil; sandalwood, jasmine, and musk. A large brass tripod held a brazier filled with coals and a thick plume of incense rose to swirl though the shafts of light. A gentle lapping sound from water seemed only a part of the scene until I realized that two young women occupied the pool. I'd been so taken by the architecture that I'd completely overlooked the occupants.

One was Middle Eastern, with long black hair that swirled around in the water like a dark cloud. Latte colored skin and dark slanted eyes made a lovely contrast to the sparkling water around her. The other was much darker—African, I thought—though Egypt has many citizens of African descent. Her tight curls were cut very close to her scalp, admirably setting off a long slender neck and delicate bone structure. Both swam to the side of pool and stared up at us, breasts buoyant in the water.

"Allow me to introduce Akee and Atla, two of the ladies of the harem," Adrian said, giving a slight bow toward the duo in the pool. 

I couldn't very well shake hands so I settled for a cordial nod. "How do you do?"

The Egyptian-looking woman murmured something and swam languidly away. The black woman looked me up and down and addressed a sly comment to Adrian in what sounded like a dialect of French. 

"Ah, ah!" Adrian chided. "Speak English and watch your mouth, Akee. You don't know who may be listening. This lady is a guest of your master. Apologize."

Akee pouted a full lower lip. "Sorree, Mem."

Apparently that wasn't enough for Adrian. He spoke to her sharply and she hesitated then held up her hands, wrists crossed. Adrian bent and grasped them, pulling her from the water in one easy movement. He must be much stronger than he looks, I thought. 

The crossed wrists turned her as she came up and she ended sitting on the lip of the pool. From there she rose to her feet, revealing herself to be quite tall, several inches taller than I. She bowed to me and extended a wet, pink-palmed hand. 

"Pardonne-moi, sil vous plais," she said, eyes downcast.

At a loss, I took her hand and said, "Of course."

She bowed again and stalked away like a cheetah. Though slim almost to the point of thinness, she had a lovely body. Her breasts were small but high and almost impossibly pointed, and she had the high round, rump of an athlete. Drops of water glistened on her dusky skin.

"What was that about?" I asked, surreptitiously wiping a wet hand on my skirt.

"Insolence, my dear, for which I apologize," Adrian said ruefully. "She asked if you were a new amah—a charwoman." 

I blushed, conscious of my dowdy clothing. But while this city was not one of those where a woman in western dress might expect to get stoned, or even accosted, Darius had been specific about maintaining a low profile on the streets. Still, I felt at a disadvantage in such elegant surroundings, though I'd yet to encounter a woman wearing any clothing at all.

Adrian smiled. "Ignore her. Akee is His Highness' current favorite. I'm afraid her status is inclined to make her a bit cheeky at times. I reminded her that her bum cheeks can be made to answer for her cattiness."

"Corporal punishment?"

"But of course. Weren't you aware that His Highness was one of the Resort's patrons? He has a number of interests in common with Darius. But harem discipline isn't strictly my bailiwick. I'm only a sort of uber-supervisor. Our Harem Mistress is Miryam. You'll want to meet her, of course?"

"Of course," I replied through suddenly dry lips. Ultima Resort caters to everything from genial wife-swapping to outright orgies, but there's no denying that Darius' personal tastes run to bondage and dominance. A lot of serious money comes from that source, as well. Suddenly this didn't seem as harmless as my upcoming tour of Gion, the geisha district. I suspected this assignment was designed, at least in part, to make me uncomfortable. A sly dig at my reputation as office "Ice Maiden.' I'd be damned if squeamishness would stop me. Besides the money riding on it, I didn't want to give he bastards the satisfaction—either of them.

"Lead on, McDuff," I said.

"And damned be he who first says, 'Hold, enough!'" Adrian agreed. We circled the warm pool and stopped before the first real door I'd seen since entering the harem proper. Quite door, too—made of stout wooden planks bound with heavy hinges and boasting a massive lock, the sort that takes a six inch key. Adrian didn't have anything of that sort on his person, but the door wasn't locked. He hesitated, door partly open, blocking my view. 

"Oh hullo, Miryam!" he said. "Are we interrupting?"

I couldn't hear the reply, but Adrian turned back to me. "A little matter of routine harem discipline. Nothing too serious, but it might be instructive. Nothing like the opportunity to see the Playroom in use, is there?"

With that, he opened the door wide and made a mocking bow, gesturing 'after you.'

I stepped through cautiously and found myself in a more intimate space than the halls we'd inspected, but still on a fairly grand scale. Unlike the public spaces, the walls were rough white plaster, and enough candles and torches burned to illuminate it thoroughly. There were racks and rings and whips on the walls, but this time the occupants rather than the room commanded my whole attention.

Directly in my line of sight, a standing woman was bent over from the waist, her arms held by two attendants garbed like the gardener I'd encountered. Her feet were flat on the floor and her buttocks already bore several welts. 

I couldn't see the victim's face but the woman holding the quirt was tall with a mass of dark curling hair and the profile of a hawk. Her skin was dark but her eyes were a strong light grey bracketed by fine lines, though she couldn't have been older than thirty. She wore ballooning harem pants of a fabric neither opaque nor sheer, but just gauzy enough to show glimpses of muscular leg. Her breasts were concealed by a short vest secured by about three inches of chains. The embroidered vest was so short that when she took a deep breath, it lifted enough to reveal the lower curves of her bosom. She looked at me from beneath dark, level brows before addressing Sir Adrian.

Adrian responded in a flow of sonorous Arabic during which I recognized my name and she replied. She gave me a severe smile and a brief bow, after which she delivered a final swat to her subject. The girl cried out and the attendants released her arms, allowing her to straighten and rub her bottom with both hands. One of the men immediately forced her to her knees.

"I've already introduced you to Miryam. She's a Tekke, one of the nomadic tribes of the Russian steppes. She was originally one of the girls, but she took to harem life and stayed on as a member of the staff. She understands some English, though she's shy about using it. We're a polyglot lot here—most of the staff and girls speak French or English as well as a little Arabic," Adrian explained. "Do you speak French?"

"A little," I replied. The girl kneeling on the floor let loose a burst of gutter French, of which I understood less than one word in ten. Quick as a snake, Miryam flicked her across the face with her quirt.

"Schoolgirl French, I'm afraid," I qualified, trying not to wince.

"Just as well, under the circumstance," Adrian said. "The maiden with the nasty mouth is Solange." 

Solange clutched her face and glared. She was of a type I would call quintessentially French: streaky medium blonde hair over dark brows and a pouting mouth somewhere between crude and sexy. She was chunky but not fat; close coupled, with generous breasts and solid hips.


Seraglio Ch. 02



(Synopsis: Russet Thompson is an architect and designer sent to spend several days touring the Harem of a eastern Pasha to get ideas for a new attraction at Ultima Resorts. Sir Adrian Calendar, the Prince's personal secretary, shows her around, including the Playroom, where one of the odalisques (harem girls) is being disciplined. Russet finds it both uncomfortable and exciting. The next day…) 

I slept much better than I expected. The bed was superb and I didn't stir until a maid tapped on my door in the morning. I was still trying to mumble an answer when she opened the door and sidled in with a heavy tray.

She was the female version of the dark-eyed boys, complete to the shy smile, though she was modestly gowned in an embroidered caftan. She helped me sit up, arranging pillows behind me and tenderly deposited a tray over my knees. The coffee was excellent, strong and thick with cream and sugar. The rest of the meal was up to the same standard, though strange to my western sensibilities; rolls still warm from the oven, dates, pungent goat cheese, and quartered oranges so ripe they were practically bursting from their skins. It was delicious.

I showered and did my hair in a French twist, striving for a buttoned up, professional image to offset my indiscretions of the night before. I winced away from remembering what I'd said and done. It would be nice to think that Adrian had slipped something into my wine, but it was probably just the effects of jetlag and too much champagne coming after a prolonged period of abstinence. 

I emerged from the bath to discover breakfast cleared, the bed made, and my clothing from the day before missing, spirited away by elves, or at least the Turkish version thereof.

I dressed in tailored trousers, a long sleeved silk shirt, and my flats, and was wondering what to do next when the same maid scratched at the door and ushered me out. She didn't seem to understand English, but led me to a pair of tall double doors, where she once again knocked deferentially before waving me through.

The room was a library or perhaps an office of sorts; all dark wood, leather-bound books, and gorgeous Persian carpets dominated by a large desk. Two very tall, pointed windows filled in with elegant tracery threw long pools of light across the dark tiles and brilliantly patterned rugs.

Adrian sat at the desk surrounded by heaps of papers and more than one empty coffee cup. When he rose to his feet and came towards me smiling, I saw that he still wore the remains of his dress suit. He'd abandoned the dinner jacket and tie, his crumpled white shirt was open at the throat and rolled to the elbow, exposing sinewy tan forearms, and his narrow feet were bare.

"Didn't you go to bed all?" I asked, staring.

"No, I napped for a bit but it took most of the night to assemble all this clobber," he said, taking my hands in his and pulling me forward for a kiss. So much for my resolution to go back to a formal footing.

"But what is all this?"

"My end of the bargain. I don't make promises often but when I do, I keep them. This stack is a list of all the things we use—spices, oils, incense, recipes, and the names and address of the firms who supply them. Also our rug merchant, our chandler, and our iron-monger, the clever laddie who makes our sconces, grills, gates, and also various ingenious devices of a sexual nature."

My eyes opened wide. Even if importing supplies was prohibitively expensive, having the recipes and being able to purchase originals for copy at home would be a treasure trove. 

"This pile," Adrian said, putting his hand on a stack that looked to consist of taped together pages of varying size, some of them enormous, "is photocopies of the original plans of the palace, dating back to the 17th century, and the blueprints of the remodel done by His Highness' esteemed father. There's also information about the hammam. It was updated then, and again about ten years ago, so there's all the business about the pools that you wanted.

"And this final tidbit," (a mere slip of paper) "permission from Prince Mustapha to photograph anything you want—buildings and rooms, of course, not people—and to publish the photos, if you wish."

"My God, it's like Christmas! You've done all my work for me. How can I ever thank you?" I knew how rare it was to have permission to photograph the inside of an occupied palace was, let alone an actual harem.

Adrian turned and hitched his hip up on the edge of the desk, putting himself between me and all that loot. "But I don't want thanked, sweet Russet, I want paid."

My heart sank. "I'll have to discuss it with Darius, of course. I don't know what he has budgeted for this." Inwardly I was seething. What of all his fine talk about the Prince being his friend? Now he wanted a kickback on it? And was the money going to Mustapha or was it going to him?

"Not money, darling. I told you I'd have a proposition for you that you couldn't refuse." He grinned at me, his mussed hair and general dishabille making him look boyish. "A barter."

"For sex?" I asked, blushing again. 

"Not at all," he said, his face falling into sterner lines. "I don't buy sex, and besides you were willing to sleep with me last night just for a giggle. When we make love—and I certainly plan that we shall—we'll do it for joy, for mutual pleasure. No, I have something else in mind. "

"Well, then what?"

"We'll take that step by step, but the first," he patted the first stack, "won't be too arduous. I want you to have the Seraglio experience, under my direction. For these, the lists of materials and suppliers, all you have to do is allow yourself to be pampered as though you were a concubine in the Sultan's harem."

There had to be a catch. I set my heels and stuck my chin out. "And just exactly what will that entail?" 

"A morning at the spa, eastern-style. Manicure, pedicure, massage, perhaps a henna rinse. Women pay a small fortune for the same services at home. Think about it, you could design a spa at the resort, using the same facilities that your clients will be romping through in the evening."

I felt an awful lot like Eve, when the serpent said, 'Hey, taste this," but he was right. It would be a tremendous draw. I could envision the ad copy now: 'Be Pampered Like A Sultan's Favorite.' I could do it anyway—fake it—just basing it on a traditional day-spa, with costumes. But what if it really was different? And think of the article I could write for our trade publication, about a real day in the Seraglio.

"What's in it for you? I asked bluntly.

"Seduction?" he suggested. "Control? A chance to expose you to something new and different. Why not expand your horizons?"

I thought about consulting Darius, but I knew he'd think I should be willing to sacrifice life, limb and sacred honor for the cause, let alone my dubious virtue. I preferred not to give him a chance to tell me so.

"Is that the kind of deal would you cut Russell?" 

"Russell?" 

"If I'd been male, as expected. Would you have wanted to expand his horizons, too?"

"Poor Russell would have gotten the ten-penny tour and turfed out as soon as I could manage it, darling."

So I had a chance to get more information than one of the male partners would, or at least that was what Adrian, the crafty devil, wanted me to think. Still, it sounded harmless enough. I settled down to serious negotiations.

"Tell me exactly what will happen."

"For that we'll need to do a fashion consult," Adrian said, abandoning his post in front of the heaps of documents. He went over to sit in the window seat with the morning sun behind him. "Will you take down your hair?

I'd put my hair up in a chignon as part of my 'business' persona. Now I reluctantly fished hairpins from it by feel. When I'd gotten most of them out, I shook my head sending it tumbling to slightly below my shoulders. 

"I don't want to dye it," I warned. I really am a redhead, and I'm a little vain of my hair.

"Henna isn't a chemical process—not like American hair dye, anyway. It coats the hair and gives texture and sheen. And it washes back out over time. The amahs are artists. Will you consider a rinse?" 

"Well, I guess so."

"Excellent. Any problems with a manicure and pedicure?"

"For free? You must be joking."

Adrian gave me a brilliant smile at that. "Ah, a way to your heart at last! Now, please take off your clothes."

"I beg your pardon!"

His eyebrow soared. "You'll have to do it eventually. I want to look at you to prescribe the rest of the treatment. I have a robe right here."

He did, too—a thick, plushy one, and I remembered suddenly that the Turks were responsible for the phrase 'Turkish towels.' And lots of other nice things, but…

"Last night you were willing to go to bed with me," Adrian reminded. "Now all I'm asking you to do is take your clothes off. Don't be Sabine about it, darling."

I cast a covetous look at the piles of materials and my hand crept to the neck of my shirt. Maybe offering him money would be better after all! 

"I had considered asking you to disrobe in the garden," he said, provocatively. "I'd adore seeing you out in the sun, but I thought you would prefer this."

I blinked at the thought of stripping off in the garden, but started to take my shirt off. Adrian leaned back and lit a cigarette, the smoke rising in thin wisps against the light streaming in from the window. When I pulled the shirt free of my trousers, I looked around for a place to put it. He held out a peremptory hand and I gave it to him. 

"Does the Prince know you're doing this?" I asked, stalling for time. Take off my bra next or my slacks?

"Not in so many words, no. A gentleman doesn't kiss and tell, and fortunately, neither do I. He's given me full discretion over how much of this information you get—things like this rather bore him, anyway—so our deal is strictly between us. Unless you tell, no one else need ever know."

I stepped out of my flats. "The staff and the girls will know."

"But they don't know why you're here. I've taken care over that. They don't even know your full name. As far as they're concerned, you are a guest of mine, with His Highness' approval. And before you ask, I have his approval to entertain a friend here with the full run of the facilities."

"So you've done this before?" I paused awkwardly in the process of slipping out of my slacks. "No, I haven't, but it is one of the perks." He held his hand out again and I reluctantly surrendered my trousers. 

I dithered again; bra or underpants? "You know, if you were a gentleman, you'd turn your back."

"If I were a gentleman, we wouldn't be having this discussion at all," he said with a lazy smile. "It's part of the deal, my darling. If you want the goodies, put up or shut up."

The problem was that I did want the goodies, and moreover I wanted very much to hold my own in this contest of wills. And I didn't feel that taking off my clothes was giving it, oddly enough. It was chickening out that would make me the loser in this little contest. I put my hand to the front closure on my bra and, since he wouldn't turn his back, I turned mine. Even so, I was conscious of my naked breasts bobbing as I bent to take off my panties. When I turned back to him, it took a real effort not to adopt the classic pose of nudity surprised, but I managed. Barely.

"Gorgeous," he said, beckoning me closer. The expression on his face made me catch my breath—delight, approval, and enough desire to reassure my female ego. I have a decent figure but no woman is ever really happy about her body. In an actual mirror, our eyes go first to the flaws, but sometimes in the mirror of a man's lust we can let go and feel truly beautiful.

I moved several steps closer, into the patch of sunlight that lit the deep tones of the Persian carpet to brilliant jewels. I could feel the fine hairs on my arms lift as the warmth of the light gilded my skin. Adrian reached out a single finger and delicately traced the upper slope of my breast down to the nipple, which instantly sprang to attention. 

"And you are a natural redhead. How marvelous," he continued. "Left to myself, I wouldn't tamper with such a charming feature but I think for the purpose of our experiment, I want you bare."

"Plucked? I don't think so!" I did cover myself protectively at that. "I'm not into anything that kinky."

"You might surprise yourself," he said laughing. "I suspect you have kinks yet unplumbed—but, no, not plucked. Not unless you've been a bad girl. Solange wouldn't have gotten that treatment except that she's bone-idle. She didn't even have to do it herself, you know. You'll be shaved by an expert."

"And that would be you?" I asked skeptically. 

"Not at all. I doubt I'd be able to keep my face out of your lap long enough to accomplish it."

I wasn't certain that having somebody else do it was any improvement. "Not one of your pseudo-eunuchs, either."

"The bath amahs are female. Have you never shaved before?" he asked with honest curiosity. 

I shook my head. "Just trimmed for a swimsuit."

"Well, then you might find you like it. Lots of girls do."

I didn't think so, and I suppose it showed on my face. 

Adrian brushed my hand aside and tugged gently on the red-blonde curls in my crotch. "It grows back, you know—rather quickly!"

I was curious, actually, but didn't want to admit it. I've known other women who do shave—I've seen them at my health club, and at the Resort, of course. "So this is a condition of the deal?"

"I could say yes, you know," Adrian leaned back against the glass of the tall window again. "But let's leave it at this: I'd like you to try it. To please me and to please yourself. Surrender. Take a chance. As far as walking on the wild side goes, it's more of a stroll."

"Are you speaking from personal experience?" I asked.

"Yes, actually. Why not? Think of it as research."

"Odalisque for a day?"

"Precisely," he said, getting to his feet and holding the robe for me with as much ceremony as if it were a mink coat. I felt a little safer swathed in fluffy towing. Safe enough to ask what was on my mind.

"What is this about? All this gamesmanship?" 

"Well, there's the obvious. I fancy you, and I think you're not indifferent to me." He opened the door to the office and held it for me to precede him.

"But why me? You're surrounded by beautiful women and move in circles much more open to your sort of…amusements." 

"Yes, but even if they weren't off limits, you've got something they don't."

"What, other than twenty pounds and at least five years?"

"That's an advantage, believe me," Adrian said, once again using a key to unlock an iron grill—yet another door into the harem. "What they lack that you have is brains. I believe the most important sexual organ is the mind. It's a hell of a lot more challenging to seduce an intelligent woman, as well as more satisfying. Only a very young man or a man of limited imagination would choose a stupid woman, however beautiful, over a woman like you."

This seemed like a slightly sideways slap at his employer. It also seemed like it could easily be a con job.

"So you want me for my mind?" I said, trying for a light note.

"Yes," he said, apparently not trying for anything at all. "You're lovely and you're such a contradiction. You've worked for Darius for years and you're obviously familiar with the trappings and practices of elegant perversion. But you're a naïf as well as being a deeply sensual woman. It's delightful."

Though I tried to remind myself that flattery was probably this plausible rogue's stock in trade, I couldn't help feeling flattered. Whatever his designs on me, it was obvious he felt passionately about the joys of intellectual sex.

"So that's what turns you on?"

"Am I lecturing? Sorry, I get chatty when I'm tired, but, yes, that is what excites me," Adrian said. "If you tell a girl like Solange what to do, she simply does it. With you, I can see you thinking, imagining, and being shocked and tempted. It's much more exciting."

In the hammam, Adrian introduced me to the bath attendants, Rihana and Badra, both middle-aged women clad in plain white caftans with trousers under them. He spoke to them at length in Arabic, complete with gestures, and they nodded and smiled, shooting speculative looks at me. Badra, somewhat the younger of the two, had a trick of giggling behind her hand. When he finally finished, both ducked little bows.

"I'll see you in a few hours, darling," Adrian said. This surprised me more than a little. I hadn't realized he was going to desert me with two ladies who obviously spoke no English.

"And here I had you pegged as a voyeur," I joked. "Where will you be?"

"Oh, I am a voyeur, but I'll be sleeping. Much as it pains me to admit it, I'm knackered. That's the only reason I didn't throw you down on the rug in my office and have my wicked way with you."

I wondered at what point my blush-circuit would burn out, no time soon, apparently. Adrian grinned, flicked my cheek with a careless finger, and strode off.

I was soaked in a marble tub filled with very warm, opaque water made opalescent by swirling scented oils, while Rihana and Badra took pumice stones to my knees elbows and feet. Then Badra made a strong smelling green paste of powdered henna and worked it through my hair, piling it up and wrapping it in a linen cloth. Then I was lotioned up and shaved, not only my crotch and underarms, but everywhere else.

Rihana was very gentle and handled me so deftly and matter-of-factly that I was reminded that this was her profession. The two of them chatted softly across my prone body. Though I couldn't understand them, or they me, they made their wishes known, guiding me by little pushes and pats. It wasn't as embarrassing as I'd feared, though there was definitely a sensual component to the slow denuding of my nether lips. When Rihana finished, she smiled and leaned forward, blowing across the damp and newly exposed skin. When I shivered, she laughed delightedly—not at me, but inviting me to appreciate this new sensation.

Once suitably bare from the neck down, I was sluiced and painted all over with a substance that smelled like heaven but looked like a thin solution of white clay, and ushered into the steam room to bake on a marble bench. This was also rinsed off in the shower, along with the henna on my hair and I was shampooed and hot oil massaged into my hair. Another shampoo and a scalp massage that verged on painful left my head feeling violently alive.

My finger and toenails were trimmed, filed and buffed to a high gloss. Then I had a full body massage with yet more scented oil, this time smelling of apricots. Badra took off her head scarf and rolled the sleeves of her kameez up and used her hands, fingers, and even elbows. It was marvelous.

By then my hair had air dried, and Rihana brushed it out, stroke after hypnotic stroke, as Badra smudged kohl around my eyes. They argued amiably, apparently over rouge, but decided against it. At any rate it was put away unused.

They swathed me in a long, full burnoose of thin white silk. I wanted to make a bee-line to the tall mirrors on the far side of the hammam, but they prevented me with soft talk and softer laughter. Instead they steered me back through the halls and out to the grill, where one of the dark-eyed boys waited. 

He unlocked the gate and escorted me back to the double doors of Adrian's office, tapping softly. When Adrian called, "Ahalan," the boy pushed me gently into the room and slipped the burnoose from my shoulders despite my clutching hands. He dropped the silk in a billowing could behind me and firmly shut the doors.

Adrian didn't lift his head immediately. He continued writing merely saying, "Na'am?"




Seraglio Ch. 03



(Synopsis: Russet Thompson is an architect and designer sent to spend several days touring the Harem of an eastern Pasha to get ideas for a new attraction at Ultima Resorts. Sir Adrian Calendar, the Prince’s personal secretary, shows her around, and offers her a ‘deal.’ If she will agree to ‘experience’ the Seraglio, he’ll give her everything she needs to replicate the harem and hammam. Bathed, massaged, and shaven, she is seduced into mutual oral sex in Sir Adrian’s library, but instead of proceeding to intercourse, Adrian announces that they’re going out to the markets.)

“To the souks?” I repeated stupidly. I’d imagined we might make love, maybe not immediately, but soon. Maybe spend the day in bed. It took a moment to get my brain around the thought of going out to the markets instead.

“You’ve earned your lists, and I thought you’d like to see some of the goods in situ, as it were. Besides, I want to purchase some small gifts for you.” He tipped my face up and kissed me lightly. “A reward for doing so well. Thank you for shaving.” 

“Okay,” I said after a dazed moment. I shifted a little and the slender chains clashed. “Unlock these and I’ll get dressed.”

“No need. I’ve got you covered—quite literally!”

I had no idea what he meant, and a slight tremor of anticipation and dismay rippled through me. I didn’t have to wonder long. From behind the desk he fetched a voluminous bundle of black fabric. 

“What?” I stammered, but he only laid a finger over my lips.

“Shh, wait and see.”

“If you think for a minute I’m going anywhere dressed in chains, you’re out of your tiny little mind,” I told him, hoping I sounded more emphatic than I felt. Like an idiot, it had only just occurred to me that, having allowed him to chain me in the first place, there might not be much I could do to prevent him from doing whatever he wanted. 

“Don’t be ridiculous, darling,” he said cheerfully. “You’d start a riot.”

He took a triangular piece of fabric and tied it over my head like a babushka, with the edge low on my forehead. Then he gathered up the largest bundle, shaking it out into some sort of long cloak or caftan.

“What on earth?”

“It’s a burqa,” he explained. “Not the ‘take-away’ sort, but a full length khimar, a body veil.”

“Take away?”

“Um, you know, ‘girl in a bag?’” 

With a practiced gesture, he opened it and sort of flung it over me, muffling me completely in its folds until my head popped through the hooded neck. Then he helped me thread my hands out the half sleeves. 

It was a very odd sort of garment to my western mind. Very loose in the body, it had almost a dolman sleeve; wide near the body and narrowing from about the elbow down to a tightly fitted wrist. In fact the end of the sleeve required some further manipulation, because it was looped together so my thumb went through one part and my fingers through another. The wrist chains were trapped inside the tight part, lying along my forearm, then swinging free inside the tent-like body. The fabric was some sort of a silk and cotton blend, matte and light absorbing rather than shiny, but draping like crepe. 

Over my lower face, Adrian tied a veil made of two thicknesses of crepe gauze. It ran across the bridge of my nose, covering nose and mouth completely, and the strings were threaded up over my ears and tied under the head scarf in back. He drew the hood up and tied it by another set of strings under my chin beneath the veil, and I was concealed from head to foot. Only a two inch strip across my eyes, my fingertips, and the tips of my toes showed. 

Though voluminous, I had to admit it was graceful. I looked slim and straight and mysterious. And because the veil was gauze, I wasn’t suffocated, as I’d assumed seeing heavily veiled Moslem women during my travels. 

Adrian set out a pair of babouches, the soft, backless, Persian slippers. The uppers were of black velvet, embroidered with black silk, and the soles of supple black leather. I notice that the embroidery matched the black-on-black adornments at the hem of the burqa and veil, sober and suitably modest but still richly elegant.

“The finishing touch,” Adrian said, handing me a little round hat, like a pill-box with a very transparent black veil sewn to one side. I stepped to the mirror and began to put it on with the veil trailing down my back. Adrian laughed and took it from me, turning it the other way round, so the transparent veil fell over my eyes and lay in another layer over the niqab, or face veil. Then he flipped it back over the hat, rather like they do a bride for the kiss.

“There you go, the perfect chaste and modest Muslimah,” he said, smiling at his handiwork. “You’ll be glad of the eye veil outside—it functions rather like sunglasses. Now that I think of it, the whole thing will protect that lovely alabaster skin. Go ahead—walk about. Get used to it.”

I did, reluctantly at first, shuffling a little as I got the feel of the slippers. The folds of the khimar swirled around me luxuriously as I moved. I found I was very conscious of the slither of the fabric around my calves, over my thighs and across my sensitized nipples.

“What do you think?” Adrian asked.
“It’s very interesting,” I admitted. “More comfortable than I expected. But I’m still not going out like this.”

“Why ever not? We do it quite often as a treat when the girls get bored or restless. I’ve been out with His Highness and the whole boiling of them, all in burqa, and trailing half a dozen attendants. It’s done all the time you know.”

“Well, for one thing, I can hear the chains when I move!”

“Not to worry. Anyone who hears them will think you’re wearing bracelets and anklets. You’ve noticed that the ladies hereabouts wear their bank accounts on their arms? In fact, it’s an elegant Arabic form of flirtation: You see a woman dressed in the utmost concealment but hear the clash of bracelets and anklets, or even bells. It tells you she’s young and pretty under those robes—even if she’s not.”

“But-” I said, but I could feel myself weakening. I thought again of the articles I could write—probably anonymously, this time—and the scenarios I could design for the resort. And—oh, yes!—I wanted to do it for myself. To see the souks from the inside, like the concubine I was pretending to be… “Odalisque for a day?”  

“Exactly.”

“And if I decide I want to come back, you’ll bring me—no questions asked?”

“No questions, no reproaches,” he said, kissing my hand. “I swear it. I think you’ll enjoy it but if you have to, think of it as a step on the way to the next bit of our bargain.”

“What do you mean?”

“You’ve earned your lists and things and this is meant as a fieldtrip, but it could also be the start of the next negotiation. For, oh, the plans of the old Palace, for instance?”

Temptation hardened into resolve. “Deal,” I said, and stuck out my hand.

He took my hand but also leaned forward and kissed me through the face veil. “Brilliant!”

I stood, wondering what I’d let myself in for, as Adrian went to the doors and called out, giving instructions to the attendant lurking outside. That gave me a moment of embarrassment—I’d been more than a little noisy during our encounter. I discovered another virtue of the veil, as it concealed my blushes.

As Adrian escorted me back through the warren of hallways, he gave me instructions. “We’ll have two servants with us, to carry our clobber and watch for pickpockets and such. I’ll lead, and you walk behind me, or at my side. I shan’t touch you at least in public, once we reach the souks. The attendants will follow us. Our market is rather gorgeous, literally unchanged since the Middle Ages, but you’ll see. You can talk to me, but speak softly. I’ll be listening.”

We’d reached the front doors by then—the doors through which I’d entered the Palace only twenty-four short hours ago—and he looked through the grill. “The car should be here in a moment,” he said. “Thank you, Russet.”

“For?”

“For trusting me to show you this.”

The car pulled up at that moment—not a taxi, but a long, white limousine, obviously another of the ‘perks.’ A dark-skinned and hawk-profiled driver sat at the wheel, complete with caftan and head cloth. Two of the dark-eyed boys shared the passenger seat, clad in white cotton kurta suits. Adrian handed me into the back and took his place beside me. 

We didn’t drive far, but I was grateful for the ride and the air-conditioning. Inside the cool of thick, mud-brick walls, it was easy to forget how fierce the sub-Saharan sun really was. When we parked, I made no demur as Adrian pulled the eye veil down over my face.

I could understand why we parked where we did. The courtyards and alleys of the souk lay at the foot of the ancient walls of the city and were much too narrow for an automobile. In fact, we had to heed the cries of “Barek!” and step into the shops in order to make way for donkeys carrying panniers of goods.

The market was laid out with more order than was apparent at first. There were different little markets for different kinds of good; saddlers in the leather-worker’s souk, the street of the potters, the rug sellers, and so on. I followed Adrian as instructed, the boys trailing behind, as we went first to the spice market.

I saw women in every range of dress from overtly western jeans and tee-shirts, through kameez, salwar, and headscarf, and caftans to full hijab concealment. The ‘girl in a bag’ as Adrian called it, consisted of a long pleated garment of cotton or silk affixed to a fitted cap, with an embroidered grill area for the woman to look through. Most of them were white or blue, but I saw one that was blazing orange silk. I also saw a tribal woman in beautifully embroidered robes who wore a yashmak, a short leather veil that covered her forehead and mouth like a mask ornamented with coins and narrow woven trim.

Each time I saw another woman clad as I was, I had two thoughts: first pure vanity—that few of them wore robes as elegant as mine; and second, to wonder if any of them were naked underneath, harem girls on holiday. 

In hijab, and particularly closely chaperoned by Adrian and two stalwart servants, I was effectively invisible, meriting only a glance from passers-by. Like dark glasses, the eye veil freed me to stare boldly at others but no one could see me, my expression, the direction of my glance, anything about me other than my height and general form. As a custom oppressive to women, it was oddly liberating.        

The spice market lay in a large courtyard, and consisted of tiny shops, mere alcoves built into wall of the fort itself, shaded by sagging striped awnings. The goods themselves were displayed both inside and outside the stalls. Baskets held roots and seeds; vanilla beans, sweating sweetness into the air, star anise, fat hands of galangal and ginger, and roots and seeds of less obvious use. Clay pots displayed heaps of ground spices as brilliant as powdered artist’s pigments; heaps of curry, turmeric, cinnamon and henna. Green, gold, mustard, and ochre, almost unbearably colorful, between displays of peppercorns in black, white, green and pink. And the scent was intoxicating. 

The stall Adrian led us to wasn’t any different from the others to my untutored eye, though the proprietor immediately emerged from the dim interior to greet him. Clad in a caftan and striped turban, he bowed and  addressed Adrian in a flood of Arabic. Adrian and I were escorted inside and given glasses of the ubiquitous mint tea, while the boys squatted outside the shop smoking. 

The interior of the stall was crowded with baskets and stitched up burlaps sacks, but I was made comfortable on a stool as the men dickered and bargained. In the far back, a woman ground spice on a stone metate and the merchant’s assistant scurried back and forth, bringing gourd scoops of different things for Adrian’s approval.

I couldn’t quite figure out how to drink my tea through a veil, so I left it sitting on the little brass table, and hoped that wasn’t too rude. The slack bits of my chains, though invisible to eye, lay pooled in my lap and it was hard to ignore the slip and slide of the of the cool iron against my bare pubes, so I tried to hold still.  

The climax of their bargaining came with the production of a small silver bowl of wizened threads of plant material, which they both regarded with great seriousness. After a prolonged negotiation, an amount equivalent to a few teaspoons was ceremoniously weighed out, deposited in a stoppered glass jar, rather than a bag or twist of paper, and money changed hands. The glass jar went into Adrian’s capacious pocket and the rest into a sack that he handed to one of the boys.

As the blessing of the merchant followed us, I asked in a whisper, “What was that all about?

“Sorry, darling. That was my one serious errand. One of the servants could have bought the rest, and usually do, but Cook wanted saffron for the End-of-Ramadan-Blowout. Hundreds of dollars’ worth, believe me or not,” he said grinning. “It’s not fair to put that kind of temptation in one’s fellow creature’s path. It’s one of my regular duties. I don’t mind, because I love the souks.”

“They’re wonderful,” I said. “Where are we going next?”

“To the Jeweler’s Court for your present. I’m afraid we have to pass the meat market on the way. I’m sorry, I should have bought you a pomander ball. It reeks a bit.”

“I don’t need a gift, though I’d love to see the jewelry,” I said. “I admit I was reluctant at first, but this is great. I’d never realized how much different the markets are, if they don’t know you’re a foreigner.” 

“But you do deserve a gift. Don’t you realize how exciting this is for me?”

“But why? You obviously come here all the time—the merchants know you.”

“To have you here, following along behind me, and know that you’re wearing my chains and virtually naked? How can you ask?” 

“But I’m not naked, I’m covered from head to foot!” I said firmly. The feet in question were actually kind of dusty, the toes of my slippers covered in the fine silt of spice, sand, and heaven knew what from the souk cobbles. I’d been conscious of my lack of undergarments, of course, but mostly to be grateful—the sun was ferocious, and I’d have been sweltering. The khimar was actually fairly cool, letting air circulate over my skin—even a bit drafty at moments. I could even forget the chains sliding over my body for minutes at a time. Til now.

Adrian stopped dead in his tracks and looked back at me. “If you believe that, I’ve been failing your education badly. Follow me.”

He took off again at a faster pace, and I trotted along behind him, the boys on our heels. We turned a corner and the stench smote me like a blow.

“Dear God, where are we?” I asked.

“The flesh market. I warned you, but it’s the fastest route to the Jeweler’s Court, and besides, it’s nearly deserted at this time of day.”

“I can see why,” I said, putting a hand to the veil covering my nose. This part of the market was nearly deserted, only a few, obviously poor shoppers lingered.

“It’s not so bad in the morning, but it gets ripe this time of day—no refrigeration. Ah, yes! This will do nicely.”

 Adrian turned a corner into an alley even tinier than any we’d traversed so far. Narrow but dark, it reeked not only of the pervasive decay of the butcher’s souk, but of urine and other pungent but less identifiable things. Except for two bolted doors, presumably leading to the closed stalls on either side, it was a dead end.

“What are we doing here?” I asked.

Instead of answering, he snapped a command at the attendants in Arabic. They took up position at the end of the alley, facing out into the market. I flipped my eye veil back over the hat so I could look from them to Adrian in the sudden dimness. “What’s going on?”

“A zen moment, my darling. A satori, a little lesson in awareness.” He pushed me back against the side of the alley and stooped, catching the hem of my burqa in his hands and pulled it up to my throat, exposing me from my feet to my collarbones in one motion. He used the length of fabric in his fists to pinion my throat to the dusty mud-bricks and thrust his thigh between my legs, forcing me to straddle him.

“Are you naked, sweet Russet?” he asked, his lips inches from mine beneath the veil.

I was then. The anchored parts of my robe covered only from elbow to wrist on the sides. My head and face were concealed, but my whole body down to the slippers was bare in the stinking alley. Though the attendants stood shoulder to shoulder, any passer-by could have seen me.

“Yes,” I gasped.
At that he let one hand go, though his other arm still pinned me to the wall and held my burqa to my throat. He flipped my face veil up, covering my eyes so I couldn’t see, exposing my mouth to the attack of his lips and tongue. His free hand went to my breast, pinching hard, and then to my naked pussy, stroking and pinching, sliding between suddenly slippery labia to stroke into me to my core. I moaned around his tongue, into his mouth, and was glad he muffled my cries as he finger-fucked me in the filthy alley.

Now blinded, I felt even more helpless and his assault seemed to go on forever, though it could only have lasted a few moments. When he stepped back abruptly and let my burqa fall, my whole body was throbbing with newly incited and unfulfilled lust.

“You said you wouldn’t touch me in public,” I accused, fumbling the veil back down so I could see him. 

“So I did,” Adrian admitted, helping adjust it. “I didn’t realize you’d present such a powerful temptation. And would you really call this public?”

“Yes!”

“Do you want to go back to the Palace?”

I hesitated. “Nooo…” I said, reluctantly, “but promise you won’t do that again?”

“I promise the next time will be within doors,” he said and winked. “Turn round.”

“How about not at all?” I asked, as he dusted the back of my robe, spending longer than I thought was necessary on my bottom.

“Oh, I don’t think I could do that. I told you, I don’t make promises I can’t keep. Besides, you enjoyed it. I suspect one of your unplumbed kinks is a touch of exhibitionism.”

I opened my mouth to argue. Not about enjoying it—fat chance of that—but about the exhibitionism—when it occurred to me there might actually be a little touch of truth to it. I had agreed to his game of favor for favor, and to come out into the market in garments that could be compromising in the extreme. 

And a case could be made for all artists being exhibitionists, I suppose. Many of us literally exhibit our work and all of us enjoy praise for it. As an architect and designer, I don’t sign my work or go to gallery openings, but a building is a bigger statement than a canvas or a sculpture, too. Might I have a secret—or not so secret—desire for attention that was now manifesting sexually? Had I been waiting for an opportunity, wanting to be forced into more overt expression?

Those not entirely comfortable thoughts kept me quiet enough for the most exacting Muslim standards as we left the flesh market behind.

The Jeweler’s Court was entirely different, literally glittering in the afternoon sun, sparkling with gold and silver and polished brass. Glowing enamels and gems of every quality abounded, from obvious glass through cloudy cabochons to quite gorgeous lapis, carnelian, and turquoise. I came to halt in front of a stall displaying bangle-bracelets by the yard on rods. Some were gold, some were silver, and many had sharp edged designs cut into them that made them explode like stars in the sunlight.

“Do you like them?” Adrian asked, amused.

“I’m thinking about starting an Arabian Nights bank account,” I admitted. “I wish I had my purse.”

“I know where there are better,” he said, “but first, I have an idea for a compromise.”




Seraglio Ch. 03



Adrian’s idea of a compromise was unsettling, but I followed him into the stall of a bowing silver merchant. Lovely but dirty rugs lay underfoot and I was once again shown to a seat, this time on a camel saddle. The boys again squatted outside as the merchant brought out trays of silver rings. To my surprise, Adrian hunkered down and slid my slippers off and fitted me with a pair of toe rings, while the merchant politely averted his gaze. 

“Rings on her fingers and bells on her toes,” Adrian murmured. “Though here we do it opposite—rings on your toes and zills—belly-dance chimes—for your fingers.”

Once shod again, I surreptitiously flexed my toes as the silver merchant brought out more trays of chandelier-style earrings of various sizes and lengths. After some deliberation, Adrian selected two pair, one larger than the other. The smaller consisted of a knob about a quarter inch around covered in small bumps, like a flower or a star-burst. From it hung a jump-ring and from that a circle of twisted silver wire, big enough to fit my ring finger. The second pair was identical, except the top roundel was closer to half inch and the rest of the scale was proportionate.

They were charming, though larger than any earrings I’d ever worn, and I didn’t speak until Adrian lifted them and I saw they had a spring clasp on the back, like clip earrings. 

“My ears are pierced,” I whispered.

“I know, darling,” he whispered back. “These aren’t for your ears.”

He bargained with the merchant and I sat there in delighted and horrified silence. Money changed hands and the merchant stood and held back the drape to his back premises with a bow and a flourish. Adrian hoisted me to my feet with that deceptive ease and steered me behind the drape.

The curtain fell and I kept backing away, until my butt met the solid barrier of the jeweler’s table. He put a hand to the front of my robe and began to raise it. “We’re inside.”

“Curtains!” I objected breathlessly. “Not doors!” 

“Close enough.” He tweaked my nipples to attention and fastened the smaller clips on them. They were heavy enough to pull the nipple over a little, so the round shield showed almost flat and the ring dangled below the curve of my breast. “Hold your robe up.”

God help me, I did. I held the burqa as he fastened the larger pair to my bare pussy lips, the rings swinging below. The clips weren’t very tight, just enough to hold firm. Not as tight as nipple clamps—or at least as nipple clamps looked, since I didn’t really know. But tight enough to feel them, little secret pinches after my robe settled back around my ankles, and the rings were heavy enough to move slightly as I moved, tugging and pulling at sensitive flesh.

“They’ll show-”

“The nipple rings?” Adrian asked. “No, the niqab, the face veil is long enough to hide them. Try walking.”

I took a step or two and stopped. “The others—they…rub.”

“They’re supposed to. This way I don’t have to touch you, but you’ll be reminded that you’re naked every moment.”

He was right. He’d position the pussy clamps so they rode one on either side of my clitoris. I could feel them at every step. The sensation was exciting and the idea was even more so, almost unbearably exciting. I might have—would have—objected, but he seized my wrist and drew me out through the stall and into the open market. To remove them then, I’d have to grope at my breasts and crotch in the middle of the crowd. 

But as I trotted along behind Adrian—he moved quickly, damn him—the rings at my nipples caught ever so slightly on the inside of my robe, pulling, and the pussy clamps dangled and swung, pinching my labia, riding my clit, and sliding between my thighs. They seemed weightier with every step, an exquisite torment.

I found myself wishing they’d work loose and drop off, until I considered the consequences of having one fall to the cobbles beneath me. A lost earring in the souk wouldn’t amount to much, I’m sure, but at that moment I was convince that everyone would know what it was and where it came from. And Adrian just kept walking faster.

When we finally stopped, I was limp with relief. And that lasted just long enough to take good look at the merchandise in the stall, which was lovely enough to take my mind off my present difficulties. Unlike the bracelets I’d admired earlier these weren’t merely enamel over copper or brass, but real cloisonné; intricate designs of highly stylized flowers in glowing jewel tone glass, enclosed by thin brass wire. Others were done in the same style but instead of enamel, tiny shapes cut from gemstone were set in patterns instead. 

They were displayed in sets, first plain bangles in what looked like real gold, flanked by enameled ones in patterned red on gold, then a solid red then several cloisonné in a predominantly red tone, then reversed at the other end, forming a cuff about six inches long. It reminded me of the field and borders of an oriental rug.  Not only red, either, but blue sets featuring lapis, green of malachite, lovely soft Persian turquoise, and a fabulous set of amber and bone on silver. 

“Wow,” I said, inadequately.

“Gorgeous, aren’t they?” Adrian asked. “Barbaric and elegant, all at the same time, and just the thing to set off that little black dress. Which color to you fancy?”

“Lord, I don’t know,” I said. I really didn’t—they were overwhelming in profusion—but I’d already realized that these couldn’t possibly be as inexpensive as the others I’d seen. Not even in the souk, with that kind of materials and workmanship.

Adrian didn’t seem to have any such concerns, though. “I’d fancy you in the turquoise, I think, or the amber would be gorgeous with your coloring. Or the red, to honor your name, Russet. ‘For her price shall be far above rubies.’”

“Rubies? Really, is that what the stones are?”

“Well, rubies and garnets,” he admitted. “Don’t look so impressed, they’re only chips and bits, and not good rubies!”

“Still—” I objected, “I can’t possibly accept a gift like that.”

“I don’t see why not. I rather fancy the turquoise, and they’re more expensive than the ruby. The word turquoise comes from Turkey, you know. That’s why we have the Turquoise Coast.”

“I simply can’t.”

“Of course you can. It’s a souvenir of your stint as an odalisque, darling and you must—an odalisque hasn’t the option to refuse an order from her master, you know.” Adrian’s lips, slightly thin and somewhat cruel-looking in repose, were devastating curled in a faint smile. “Or shall I borrow Nassir’s back room to persuade you?”

I drew in a sharp breath and he raised a brow. “No? I thought not.” 

He snapped his fingers and pointed to the red bracelets, and the bargaining commenced. At one point, they went into the back premises, leaving me in the front of the shop to my mingled relief and dismay, but soon returned. The merchant neatly threaded a length of cord around the scarlet bangles and slid them from the rod, knotting it to hold them together. They went into a sack, along with another, larger parcel which was handed off to the boys and we took our leave.

After that we visited the rug merchants, and then the street of fabric sellers. There a woman flung lengths of paisley wool, cashmere, and brocade over heaps of fabric bolts, to display them. She had wild tussah silk and chiffon gauze as transparent and supple as water. I could only understand what Adrian translated, but it didn’t matter. Before we left, I felt as though I should be bleeding from the eyes, just from the colors and patterns; total artistic intoxication. It was well into the afternoon, too, and blazingly hot—something that had escaped my notice ‘til then.    

“Time for a break,” Adrian announced. “I know of a matiam, a café, near here. Let’s have a drink and something to eat.”

That sounded like heaven and I followed him willingly, trying not to roll my hips too much as I once again became conscious of the pull and pinch at my nipples and labia.

Adrian led me through a narrow passage and into a cool mud-brick café, filled with small tables of older men smoking hookahs, drinking coffee or tea, and playing what looked like a lot like dominoes. We didn’t stop there, though, but were led into a hall with private dining chambers off it. These were a sort of mini-divan, built in benches with carpets over them, around three sides of a low table. I took my seat gratefully and waited while Adrian talked to the proprietor.

“I’ve ordered mushroom soup with yogurt, lamb kebob over a pilaf of rice and lentils, and salep, unless you’d prefer Turkish coffee or mint tea. They do a wonderful salad here, but I don’t want to risk your digestion—I’m fully acclimated, but I’d hate you to get traveler’s grippe. And once the food comes, you can take off your veil to eat.”

“Thank goodness,” I said. “I can’t even figure out how to drink in this get-up.”

“Sorry, darling. Just reach under the veil and make a bit if room and then aim for your mouth—though eating and drinking in public are considered salacious, if you’re truly devout.”

“What about when devotion loses out to thirst?”

“That’s what I’ve been telling you—just nip under the veil and take a swig.”

The food came then, the waiter placing bowls of pilaf overlaid by the skewers of succulent lamb with onions and peppers, as well as a plate of baklava and an eggnog-looking drink. I’d always thought of baklava being Greek, but Adrian assured me they’d got the recipe from the Turks. 

The pilaf and kebobs were delicious, though the seasonings were unfamiliar. Cinnamon and orange peel on meat isn’t usual to western taste though it’s very good. The intense sweetness of the baklava offset the spice of the main dishes very nicely. 

The salep was another matter. The texture was like a thin custard, served warm, and obviously made in a base of sweetened milk, it was dusted with cinnamon. The aftertaste wasn’t unpleasant, but wasn’t like anything I’d ever had.

“It’s made from the root of an orchid, like vanilla,” Adrian told me. “Orchis mascula, so-called because the roots look like testicles. It’s supposed to be an aphrodisiac, and it’s very popular.

“Aphrodisiac, isn’t that overkill?” I said laughing.
“Yes, but it’s that or tea and coffee. I’d love to order you a cool drink, but you can’t be sure the lemonade or iced tea is made with boiled water—or the ice, for that matter. Lemonade and iced tea were invented in the orient, but they’ll have to wait until we get back to the Palace.”

“Lovely as this is, I’m starting to look forward to getting back. I guess I’m not used to the heat, but I’m getting tired,” I admitted.

“I’d hoped to talk you into one more call today,” Adrian said, smiling. “Are you really too tired?”
 Actually, the meal and the rest in this cool, shaded place had done a lot to revive rest my eyes and ears, and revive me physically. “I’m just overwhelmed by all the choices, I guess. What did you have in mind?”

“This is what I had in mind as our trade for the seraglio plans. If you’ll consent, I’d like to take you to the girl market.”

“Girl market? You mean, like a slave market?” I stared at Adrian and he looked back impassively.

“Well, not anymore—His Highness has forbidden real slave trafficking. These days, Hadad is a go-between, mostly a marriage broker and arranges contracts of concubinage. He also acts as an employment agency for female servants. There’s no National Employment hereabouts, at least not for women.”

It seemed absurd that he could actually expect me to go along with anything so outré, but Adrian was just calmly waiting for my answer as though he’d proposed something as ordinary as a trip to the museum. In spite of my better judgment, I found myself asking, “Why?”



Seraglio Ch. 04



(Synopsis: Russet Thompson is an architect and designer sent to spend several days touring the Harem of an eastern Pasha to get ideas for a new attraction at Ultima Resorts. Sir Adrian Calendar, the Prince’s personal secretary, shows her around, and offers her a ‘deal.’ Having seduced her into mutual oral sex, Adrian talks Russet into going to the souks (markets) clad in the traditional khimir (burqa) and veils, beneath which she is naked except for chains and nipple and pussy clamps. After touring the souks in a state of growing arousal, they take lunch in a private room at a café and Adrian explains that he wants her to meet a ‘girl dealer.’

Chapter Four

Go to the house of a procurer voluntarily? Visions of being sold into white slavery flashed chaotically through my mind. The man must be crazy.

“What kind of fool do you think I am?” I demanded, and then winced. That was far too close to the straight line of the old joke, the punch line being, ‘We’ve already determined that, now were haggling over the price.’ There was way too much truth in that for my comfort. Fortunately, Adrian didn’t seem know the joke, or at least was smart enough not to take the bait.

“I don’t think you’re a fool at all, darling. An innocent maybe, but definitely not a fool. What you are is a very sexy, very sensual woman who’s been too shy to explore her nature.”

“Shy!” I was as offended as if he’d accused me of some perversion. Probably more so, under the circumstances. “Hey, I’m the one who designed a dildo chandelier eight feet across for our Dungeon!”

“Did you really? How marvelous. I must be sure to see it the next time His Highness visits the Resort. Did you break it in?”

“No, of course not!”

“You disappoint me. Do you have a dildo of your own? A vibrator?”

“Yes,” I said defiantly. I did, too, though it had been a gag gift from some co-workers in the fabrication shop—a gag they thought was much funnier than I did.

“I’m not trying to offend you, sweet Russet, just learn more about you. Let’s try this from a different tack. What’s the kinkiest thing you’ve ever done?”

“Why?” I demanded suspiciously.

He smiled. “Remember what I said about sex being ultimately cerebral? Let’s play Scheherazade for a moment and tell stories. Did you know quite a few of the original tales of the Thousand and One Nights were naughty?”

“Ali Baba and the forty thieves?”

“Not the ones from the children’s anthologies, though they cleaned some of those up, too. There are quite a few more, sixteen volumes worth, in fact. So tell me story, a true story,” he coaxed, putting a hand on my knee. “What’s the kinkiest thing you’ve every done?” 

“You ought to know that already,” I said, blushing. “I did it with you earlier today.”

“No, really?” Adrian began hitching the hem of my robe up my shin. “You poor deprived darling. And what else.”

“Well, what we’re doing now.’

“Umm, yes but going out in public without your knickers isn’t all that scandalous.” Adrian worked his hand up under my robe to above my knee.

“Stop,” I hissed, trying to push his roaming fingers away, or at least prevent them from moving higher. “What if somebody comes in?’

“They won’t,” he assured me. “Not without announcing themselves. That’s the point of a private room.”

“So you can molest your lunch guests?”

“”No, so that a lady can eat without a veil,” Adrian said, working his hand high enough to catch the dangling ring of one of the pussy clamps with his fingertip. “Molesting you is just a side benefit.”

He tugged on the ring and I gasped and squirmed, pushing ineffectually at his hand.

“Besides,” he added, “your lap is below the table. Even if the waiter came in, he wouldn’t suspect anything if you sit still.”

“Sit still? How am I supposed to do that if you—Oh, Adrian, no!” His long fingers slid between the clips and found my clitoris. 

“Well, you could try to distract me,” he suggested. “Tell me a story. Other than give amazing head to a semi-stranger and get rimmed in return, what’s the kinkiest thing you’ve done?”

“Honestly, I don’t have anything to tell you. I’ve had lovers, we’ve had sex, but nothing more.” I felt oddly ashamed to have to admit it and wondered if I should have invented something.

“Working where you do?”

“I don’t date people I work with, or for.”

“Very wise, but your lovers? I know you’ve never done anal, but what about dominance games? Have you ever been spanked? Tied up? Held down? Never been with a woman or more than one man? Never had sex in an aero-plane, or a public place?” 

I shook my head ‘no,’ and ‘no,’ and ‘no’ again. “I’m afraid I’m hopelessly vanilla.” 

“Not vanilla, darling, crème caramel, at least.” He slid a long finger into me. “Though my opinion of American men has never been lower.”

“I don’t think it’s them, I think it’s me,” I said, lifting from the seat a little.

“Then you definitely owe it to yourself to take full advantage of the situation. Have an adventure.”

“Being sold into prostitution is not an adventure!” I grabbed his wrist through the silk robe and clamped my thighs together, trying to hold him still, but he was too strong. All I succeeded in doing was to intensify the sensation.

“Russet, Russet, I couldn’t do that even if I wanted to. Darius would demand my head on a platter and His Highness would be happy to comply. And I 

don’t want to. I haven’t had you yet—this is all foreplay—so you may be very certain I won’t let anyone else have you!” Adrian insinuated a second finger into my pussy along side the first.

“Then why do you want me to do this?”

“For pleasure,” he said, his busy thumb never pausing.

“If I did—If I did, what would happen?” Adrian had an arm around my shoulder and my thighs opened to him of their own accord. I knew I shouldn’t encourage him, but the fantasy (and his skillful touch) was too seductive.

“I’ll tell him that I’ve taken you as a concubine and I want you appraised to make sure I’ve got my money’s worth,” he said with a dreamy smile. A third finger joined the two that were steadily widening my vagina. I could hear the wet sounds of it and that excited me even more.

“Appraised?” I asked faintly, my hips starting to buck.

“Examined and evaluated,” Adrian said, kissing along my jaw.

“Naked?”

“How else?” Adrian nuzzled the hood back and delicately frenched my ear, his tongue very pointed, wet and warm.

“Would he…touch me?”

“He has to, to examine you. Your mouth, your arse, your breasts, your quim..” He stroked into me harder, faster, deeper, as he spoke.

“And where—where will you be?”

“Watching,” Adrian said, and kissed me. “Is that the waiter I hear?”

I climaxed immediately, my drenched opening clenching around his fingers and long shudders shaking my body. 

There was no waiter, of course. The heavy curtain hung undisturbed and I knew I’d be angry with him for his shameless manipulation, but later—maybe much later. Then I felt devastated, totally limp, and didn’t even care that I sprawled gracelessly on the bench, legs spread wide and robes above my knees.

Adrian still held my pubis hard between his thumb and fingers, releasing me only when all the aftershocks and shivers ceased. After I was quiet he gave me a firmer pinch that made me moan, then withdrew his fingers slowly, and dropped my robe back down around my ankles, smoothing it over my knees.

“So you’ll do it?”

I caught his hand to my lips and kissed it. He slipped his finger into my mouth so that I tasted myself on his skin and my breath caught again, but I said, with real regret, “No, I can’t.”

I thought he’d be angry—feared he’d be angry—or maybe even hoped he’d be angry, but he wasn’t. His arched brows drew together in a frown, but he settled back, one shoulder against the wall, and groped in the pocket of his kurta suit. He pulled out a battered silver case of cigarettes and lit one.

“All right, why not?” he asked, holding the case out.

“I don’t smoke,” I said. “And I just can’t.”

“It excites you enough to get you off.”

“Yes, but excitement and reality are two different things. I’m excited but I’m afraid.” I saw the light in his eyes and the way his mouth moved, and hushed him before he could speak. “This isn’t like… the other.”

“I think it’s exactly like the other, if you mean letting me rim you,” he said, blowing out a long plume of smoke.

“No, because you can’t just push me into it.”

“I can, you know—if that’s what you want. I can order Ahmed and Talib to 

hustle you through the streets, if that’s what you need.”

“Oh, God! No.” Though he was right, dammit—the image did excite me.

“Well, that’s just as well,” he said. “It would cause a considerable scandal.”

“Adrian, darling—” I blushed, for though he’d been calling me ‘darling’ almost from the beginning, I’d not used any endearments in return. I was a little shocked to realize how natural it felt. “You might be able to talk me into it if I was drunk, but in cold blood—I just can’t.”

“Drinks are a little hard to organize on the spur of the moment, darling. This is a Muslim country, but—” He got to his feet and stuck his head through the drape, calling something in Arabic. In a few moments I heard something from the corridor. “Hold your veil to your face.”

I couldn’t find my veil but covered myself with a fold of my hood, as the waiter deposited a hookah on the table. Money changed hands and he bowed himself out, letting the drape fall behind him. The coals in the water pipe were already burning. Adrian opened the top and handed me the long tube and amber mouth piece. 

“I told you, Adrian, I don’t smoke…”

“This isn’t tobacco, darling,” he said, opening a little twist of parchment and holding what looked a small dark stone between his fingers. 

“What is it? Opium?”

“Of course not! It’s khif, my dear—hashish. Didn’t you ever smoke marijuana when you were at University?”

“Yes, but I didn’t like it much,” I admitted cautiously. “And that was a long time ago.”

“It probably wasn’t any good. This is the real McCoy, as you say.” He dropped the resin into the burn cup and closed the top of the hookah.

“I don’t think so,” I said, trying to hand the pipe back to him.

“Just a puff or two,” he suggested. “The poet Rumi wrote, ‘Allah has put into the form of hashish a power to deliver the taster from self-consciousness,’ and it’s quite true. A puff or two won’t turn you into a dope-fiend, you know, just relax you a little.”

A tiny wisp of smoke escaped the pipe and it certainly didn’t smell like the skunkweed my roommate had. It smelled mysterious, almost perfumed.

“Are you going to smoke, too?” I asked.

“No, I’m going to stay perfectly sober so I can take care of you and keep you safe,” he said, very seriously. He lifted the mouthpiece to my lips and they opened almost automatically. He must have me hypnotized, I thought. That can’t be good. Under his tutelage, I took a couple puffs and felt nothing but the urge to clear my throat.

“I don’t think it’s working,” I said.

“Perhaps not, but let’s walk about a bit more and see how you feel.”

He helped me adjust my veils and drapes and we took our leave of the café. The heat outside was really oppressive by then, so we walked very slowly. Adrian led me to the Street of potters and showed me the stall run by the grandson of the artist who’d made the tiles for the Palace hammam. The potter brought out tray after tray of lovely tiles, intricate designs in thick, glossy glazes, which I touched with reverent fingers.

After that, we walked a bit farther. We seemed to be on the edges of the souk when Adrian asked me how I felt. 

“A bit floaty,” I admitted. “I guess it’s working after all, though I don’t feel very high.”

“I don’t want you stoned, darling, just relaxed. Relaxed enough to 

visit my friend?”

“I don’t know about that!”

“Not even for the plans?”

“Is that for both sets, or just the old palace?” I asked.

Adrian looked down at me from the corner of his eye, lips curling in that sardonic half-smile I was beginning to love. “Hmmm, you’d have to be very, very good to get both sets.”

“I can do that.” 

“Can you obey as though you really are a slave, not speak unless you’re told to, and submit to a full appraisal?”

I drew a rather shaky breath. “Of course.”

“I’ll wager you can’t,” he said, laughing.

“Put your money where your mouth is,” I said, offended.

“I’d rather put my mouth where my money is, but you’re on! Shake?”

We shook hands solemnly, much to the amused consternation of the attendants. “So, where are we going?”

“Right here—that’s his house at the end of the street.”

I followed Adrian, mumbling about sneaky bastards under my breath. My steps began to lag a little as we approached the door and, sensing that, Adrian gripped me by the back of the neck, steering me firmly forward. 

“Don’t fret,” he said. “Pretend you’re a slave girl. You have no choice, so don’t worry about it.”

An elderly lady answered the door and ushered us in. She wore voluminous bloomers of green velvet, heavily embroidered with stylized flowers in gold, under a medium length tunic of diaphanous linen. Over the tunic belted a wide sash of striped silk fringed in gold. A short vest, covered with needlework and appliqué topped off her outfit. She wore no veil and her long, loose hair was improbably black, given that her face was deeply creased. Even so, her eyes were large and dark, alive in their nest of wrinkles, and her penciled brows were high arched and met over the bridge of her nose in the true antique ideal of beauty.

“This is Abal, whose name means ‘wild rose’,” Adrian said, bowing to the old lady. “She was a real odalisque, a harem slave, of the old Pasha’s. The odalisques ranked below concubines and wives, but were also chosen for their beauty. She’s rather famous and acts as Hadad’s chief assistant. ” 

I bobbed a little bow myself, and left my slippers where she indicated, once again following in bare feet. She showed us down a cool dim hallway and stood aside from a large, arched door.

I found myself on the threshold of a big, echoing room with intricately patterned tile on the walls and what looked like about a half acre of Turkish carpet on the marble floor. A ‘leewan,’ the typical raised platform strewn with pillows took up most of the far end. Benches stood below the wall niches around the room, and the center of the floor was dotted with a number of enormous ottomans; low, round benches upholstered in velvet and brocade, tufted with what looked like jewels. 

Before this trip, it had never occurred to me how many items of furniture came from the East; ottoman stools from the Ottoman Empire, divans and even sofas, both the concept and the name from Arabic. The Arab world was using carpets on the floor while Europe was still living with filthy rushes. So many of the things I associate with luxury and comfort; damask from Damascus, silk, cotton, cashmere, and brocade, all came originally from the Orient. 

Those dreamy, hash-fueled reflections blew away like smoke that inspired them when our host entered.

Of average height, Hadad was a fleshy man, dark-skinned and bearded. He wore a snowy white thob, the nightgown-like long kurta, under an open robe of heavy raw silk. He wore a small fez-like hat even indoors and many rings adorned his plump fingers.

“My good friend, Sir Adrian,” Hadad cried in a deep, booming voice. He salaamed, his sweeping gestures loosing a powerful scent of patchouli from his garments. “You honor my humble establishment.”

“It is you who honor us, Hadad Efendi,” Adrian said, returning his salaam and then shaking hands, western-style. “Your renown as a connoisseur of female charms is well-known. I wouldn’t dream of consulting anyone else.”

“You are too kind. And this is the demoiselle?”

“Hadad, may I present Russet? Russet, Hadad iben Fouad al-Muta.”

I didn’t know the proper form, so I made a little bow, and it seemed to be acceptable. Hadad snapped his fingers and Abal tottered up and unfastened my hood, standing nearly on tiptoe to do so. She bushed it back and removed the headcloth and face veil as well, and even fluffed my slightly damp and sweaty hair out before she stepped back.

I shook my hair back, enjoying the flow of cool air, and at the same time feeling remarkable exposed. I blushed and cast my eyes down as Hadad walked all the way around me as though I was a piece of statuary. 

“Charming,” Hadad murmured. “You permit? Open your mouth, my child.”

I looked to Adrian but he only nodded, smiling slightly. Helplessly, I complied and Hadad took my chin in his hand with the calm air of a man examining a horse for soundness. He peered in my ears and at my eyes, even lifting my hair from the back of neck. 

“Clear eyes, sweet breath, and good teeth,” he pronounced. He released my chin and gave me an approving pat on the cheek. “She’s Inglezi?”

“American.”

“American!” Hadad seemed surprised. “She is biddable?”

“Not very,” Adrian admitted. “She argues rather a lot, but she’s learning.”

Before I realized what he was doing, Adrian took hold of the back of my khimir and whipped it over my head, stripping me naked in one motion, though I caught at the sleeves as they pulled over my wrists. Worse than naked, really, with the chains that ran from the collar to my wrists and ankles and the jeweled clamps on my nipples and the lips of my bare pussy.

“I see you have begun her training,” Hadad said, “but we must make a proper appraisal.” 

He reached out and jerked the clips from my nipples by the dangling rings. I gasped, mostly startled, since it didn’t hurt all that much—until the blood began to rush back into the pinched flesh. I hissed at the pins-and-needles sensation.

When Hadad reached for the pussy clamps, I tried to back away but Adrian caught me by the upper arms and held me immobile. Hadad pulled the rings from my pussy lips more slowly; first out, so they drew my labia apart. He watched my face rather than my private parts until the clips slipped free and I jumped a little.

I wasn’t really struggling but Adrian tugged my arms back father, elbows towards each other, making me arch my back and thrust my breasts out. Convenient for Hadad, who massaged the dents from my nipples, tweaking them erect, and weighed my breasts in his hands, bouncing them a little as though testing ripe fruits.

I shivered as Hadad ran a hand down my ribs to my flank and flinched as he touched my genitals. Adrian bent me still farther backwards and nudged my bare feet apart with his foot, separating my legs. I struggled for balance, feeling the strain quiver in my thighs as Hadad parted my pussy lips, pinched my clit and slid a thick finger into my vagina.

“Her nether lips are plump, her pearl large and well-placed, and though she has been well-used, she is fresh and dewy,” Haddad commented. “Bend her.”

Adrian let my arms go and I straightened gratefully, but he immediately caught my wrist chains and hooked the cuffs to my collar. With my hands secured under my chin, he bent me forward and once again forced my feet apart. I struggled a little, protesting, and Adrian twisted up a fistful of my hair, forcing my head even lower until my ass was spread open, higher than my head.

Hadad stroked the inner curves of my bottom and I realized he was examining the suction bruises and love bites Adrian left earlier. I bit my lips and closed my eyes.

“She is good, that way?” Hadad asked.

“Untried, as yet,” Adrian said, “but promising.”

Hadad touched my anus and I squeaked. 

“Steady, old girl,” Adrian murmured. “Be good or Daddy will spank.” 

And I tried to obey until I felt Hadad prying my butt cheeks father apart. He wetted his fingers in my vaginal secretions and took me in the now familiar grip, but this time it was a stranger’s fingers in my pussy and his thick, stubby thumb that invaded my anus. I’d never had anything so large back there and I gave a muffled shriek as his thumb pushed through the initial resistance.




Seraglio Ch. 04



Immediately Adrian pushed my head even lower and a flurry of spanks fell on my exposed buttocks. Not a hand, but something flatter and not very hard either at first, but as the loud smacks continued they began to sting and I squirmed in spite of the impaling fingers and thumb. I felt my bottom burn and the muscles of my anus and vagina clenched and unclenched around the invading digits. I wriggled and panted and small moans escaped my tight-pressed lips.

It ceased as suddenly as it began. The spanks stopped, the fingers were withdrawn, Adrian straightened me up and unclipped my wrists. My face was flushed hotly, only partly from the bent position, and tears trembled in my lashes—tears caused more by embarrassment and a weird, wild exhilaration than by pain. 

Adrian stroked them away and kissed my lips before he led me over to a nearby ottoman. It was covered in maroon velvet so dark as to be almost black, and though silky to my hands, it prickled under my tender bottom. 

“Not that way, darling,” Adrian instructed. “All the way up. Kneel and sit back on your heels. Lovely, but open your knees wider, further apart. And don’t rub your arse, sweetheart; put your hands on your thighs. That’s it, back straight, head up, very good.”

When he was satisfied with my form Adrian turned to our host, who still held one of the embroidered leather-soled slippers, slapping it idly against his thigh. “Very well, Hadad—the moment of truth.”

Hadad stroked his beard and considered.

“First,” he said, ticking off points on his fat, bejeweled fingers, “it’s a pity she isn’t younger. She is past the first blush of youth. Second,” another finger, “she is not trained. Even when she obeys, there is resistance in the very frame of her. Her belly is tight, her hips clenched. She does not walk or move fluidly, though learning to dance may correct that.” A third finger joined the other two. “And last, she is Inglezi and may never understand the place which Allah, blessed be His Name, has ordained for her.”

Then Hadad laughed, a great rumbling belly laugh, and opened the fingers of both hands wide. “In spite of all this, she is a jewel, a red rose! Her skin is very fair but resilient, and colors well under a blow or pinch. Even her resistance is an incitement to a man who enjoys the challenge of bringing a woman to his hand. If you paid less than one hundred fifty thousand dollars American for a year’s contract, you made a very good bargain. With a few months’ training I would charge you twice that.”

Adrian’s face was impassive but he gave me a look that made me flush, because there was something smoldering in his cool grey eyes, something hot that sparked an answering flame in me. I caught my breath, and was distracted during the time he spent thanking Hadad. 

Abal helped my don my robes and veils, except for the clamps, which she helped me stow in a pocket I didn’t realize I had. She patted the pocket and gave me a conspiratorial smile, then trailed her master as he showed us out. 

I blinked in the sudden light of the open door as Adrian and Hadad shook hands and salaamed to each other again. To my surprise, the limo stood in the street.

“Don’t forget,” Hadad called. “Have her taught to dance. And remember the slipper—she likes that!”

“Do you like that?” Adrian asked softly as we climbed into the back of the car. 

“Did you?” I countered as I adjusted my position carefully. My butt was still warm and tender under my robes. Beneath the veil my cheeks were probably every bit as pink as my behind.

“Can you doubt it?” Adrian asked. Taking my hand he pressed it to his crotch and an impressive erection. I pulled my hand away, but the driver and attendants were looking straight ahead, ignoring us as they did when we spoke English. “Just you wait ‘til we get home, young lady!”



Seraglio Ch. 05



The drive back to the Palace didn’t take long, even creeping through the narrow streets around the souk. I held myself stiffly, fighting the sexual tension that simmered in my belly and still-warm bottom. Adrian, infuriating man, lounged in his corner watching me like a cat at a mouse hole. Once he even stroked himself through the thin silk of his loose drawers and I had to avert my eyes. When I glanced back, he was smiling.

By the time we pulled up in front of the Palace, I was at a low boil. The car pulled away with the attendants still inside and Adrian unlocked the gates with a flourish, bowing me through. I swept past the doorman and through the divan, into the hall.

“Where do you think you’re going, hey?” Adrian asked, catching me by the shoulder.

I looked quickly up and down the hall, not seeing anyone, and pushed him against the wall in answer. I ripped my face veil down, twined my arms around his neck, and drew his face to mine. His eyes widened in surprise, but he returned my kiss enthusiastically. Our tongues dueled and mated, our hands busily gripping and mauling. I rucked the back of his kurta up and slipped a hand down the back of his drawers, digging my fingers into his muscular butt, before he finally pulled away.

“Not here, you mad wench,” he said breathlessly.

“Where then?” I asked, kissing him again. “You have about thirty seconds to fuck me or die.” 

He groaned into my mouth. “Well, if you put that way—I don’t know about thirty seconds, but I’ll do my best!”

He scooped me off my feet and carried me through the halls. I’d realized earlier he was stronger than his build suggested, but was still astonished. The only reason he was short of breath was because I kept busy on his neck and available ear. At last he fumbled at a closed door, nearly dropped me in the process, and flung me up over his shoulder, butt in the air and veils dangling as he groped for the latch. 

I squeaked as he slung me back down, barely getting a glimpse of the room we entered. Only an impression that it was similar to Hadad’s salon, but on a smaller scale; a rectangular room in the eastern style, with a leewan—the all purpose combination bed and divan—occupying an alcove at the end. Adrian dumped me on that deeply padded surface. I struggled to my knees and reached out to pull his shalwar down. 

He stripped out of the kurta and finished shucking his drawers, kicking off his slippers, as he reached out to pull the Khimir over my head. Before we were both naked, he had a knee up on the leewan, and between my thighs. My chains clashed together as I reached for him.

He twisted away. “Just a sec—the keys are in my pocket…”

“Never mind,” I gasped. “Your time’s up! Come here.”

He fell on me, slim, wiry, and naked. His hands sought my breasts and his mouth took mine like a striking snake. He lay over me, pinning me down, his tongue stabbing into my mouth, his penis like an iron bar between my thighs. So close, but still not where I wanted it, needed it. 

“Please, please!” I writhed under him.

He tore his mouth from mine to suckle my breasts, first one then the other, as I squirmed under him mindlessly. Then he spread my thighs ruthlessly and fastened his mouth on my center until I bucked like a mad thing. Before I could climax, he rolled me onto my belly and slapped my ass sharply several times.

I shrieked and arched up, as the heat of the earlier paddling came roaring back. I wriggled, twisted, not to avoid the smacks but in an excess of sensation. Adrian seized my hips, jerking them up into position as he squeezed his knees between mine, forcing me to open to him on all fours.

I felt his rigid cock bumping against my bottom and remembered his talk of using me anally with a little thrill of fear. Then I felt the blunt end of his cock against my vulva as he nudged in a little, testing himself against me, then pushed into me in one long, hard thrust. 

I froze for that first shocking moment, when his cock seemed too big, too much. I felt stuffed, stretched, and tried to pull away a little to control the depth of his penetration. This he didn’t allow, his hands gripping my hips as he rocked into me. Then the little miracle happened, and my body adjusted. His cock still filled me completely, but I no long felt like I was splitting open.

Now instead of pulling away, I pushed back against him, and he pounded into me. I could hear as well feel Adrian’s hips and belly slapping against my bottom. His balls rubbed and bounced against my swollen, defenseless clit, and the head of his cock was touching things no one ever had on every stroke.

He reached under me to caress my free-hanging breasts, tweaking and pulling my nipples until I squealed. The chains, still linked to my collar, swung and jingled. All the sensations seemed to merge into one, and I teetered on the edge of the precipice, panting, “Please, please, please,” like a mantra.

I spread my knees even wider and arched my ass up into his stroke, then reached back through my legs and his to touch his jostling balls. Adrian gasped and speared me even deeper, then put his hand on my shoulders, pushing my face into the embroidered coverlet, arching my back down and my ass up. His free hand smacked my ass hard, and again, and I came like a freight-train, screaming into the bedclothes, and clutching fists-full of it as I throbbed and clenched around his cock.

Adrian convulsed then, head thrown back, but never stopped. He impaled me with every spurt, groaning on every stroke. Even as he curved over my body, bearing me down into the bedding until I lay flat, his hips moved in short involuntary strokes. 

I lay on my belly with Adrian sprawled over me, legs alongside mine and his cock still in me. He was heavy but I didn’t mind, even though my hair had fallen over my face and stuck to my sweaty cheeks. He drew his arms in and touched the outside curves of my flattened breasts, down to my waist, and I trembled. I felt the ghost of a laugh against my neck and shoulder before he took the weight of his upper body on his elbows.

“Sweet, sweet Russet,” he murmured, nuzzling the tresses from the back of my neck. He kissed my nape and bit it softly, until my pussy clenched around him again and I moaned.

Laughing, Adrian rolled onto his side, pulling me with him so that we stayed connected. The cool air felt like heaven on my slick belly and breasts, and when I tried to paw the hair off my face he helped, smoothing it back. His chest against my back and his hips cupped against my butt were sweaty, too, sticking and sliding as we spooned. 

“This wasn’t exactly what I had in mind,” he said, squeezing my breast and kissing my shoulder. “But thank you.”

“Oh, really?” I asked, pushing back into him for the pleasure of feeling his cock glide in the silky slick of his semen. Though softening, he was still firm enough to pump me a few times more, his hand over my vulva to hold me steady.

“Yes, really.” He pulled out then and rolled onto his back, drawing me towards him to lie in the curve of his shoulder. “I had it all planned out—I was going to send you to the hammam for a bathe and massage, and then we’d have dinner. Exotic food, excellent wine, an elegant seduction…”

“I would never have made it,” I said regretfully. “I’d have attacked you over the hors d'oeuvres.”

“That was the idea, really. I have oysters on the half shell, and was hoping to get you on the table and eat them from—”

“Stop!” I said, poking him in the ribs. “You horrible man!”

“Well, it’s better than champagne from your slipper,” he said, grinning. “I always thought that sounded rather nasty. No way to treat good wine.”

“Hard on the shoes, too,” I agreed “ and impossible with sandals. You’re not a romantic, obviously.”

“Oh, I am,” he said, “If one can be a sybarite and a romantic all at the same time. I have privileges in the hammam, and we still have to eat, so…”

“Maybe we’ll follow the program and see what comes up?”

“Precisely.”

We showered in Adrian’s apartment and went to the hammam, swathed in silk caftans, where we took a steam bath and lay side-by-side on marbles slabs for massage. When we were done I would have risen, but Riana motioned me back down and produced her razor.

‘Adrian!” I said, shocked. “Please tell her, no. Not tonight.”

“But why, darling?” he said, sitting up.

“Well, for one thing, she’ll be able to tell—I mean, I’m still swollen down there.”

Adrian grinned at me, his hair falling over his brow instead of being combed back as he usually wore it. It made him look younger and more boyish, mischievous in this case. He addressed Riana at some length and she answered him, giggling and flashing dark eyes at both of us. 

“She says it will make it easier if the ‘Gates of Paradise’ are firm. So, you see, you’ll get a better shave.”

“Oh!”

“Well, I had to explain why you were refusing her services, darling.”

“No, you didn’t, you bastard. You could have told her thanks but no thanks!”

“Now, now, there’s a certain amount of doubt as to whether I am the Old Man’s get, but I’m definitely not a bastard. They had banns and a big wedding, so Mummy would be narked. Besides,” he finished simply, “I’d love to watch.” 

I knew that voyeur crack would come home to roost. “But anyone could walk in.”

“No, they won’t. Miryam runs the girls out if I’m using the facilities since I can occasionally look at them, but they mustn’t look at me. I bathe in solitary splendor.”

“Oh,” I said, weakening. “That sounds lonely.”

“It is, actually. That’s why it’s such a lark to have someone to frolic with. Be a sport, darling, and let a poor Peeping Tom have his thrill.”

I suppose that after having a slaver-trader’s thumb up your butt, it isn’t much of a stretch. I lay back down and let Riana shave me, holding my breath as she did the trickier parts. 

And Adrian watched. He sat on his own marble slab with the towel draped decorously over his lap, but he watched with the same half-smile and air of calm absorption that he’d watched me suck his cock. His gaze was exciting enough that I blushed for that alone. When Riana put her cool thumb on my heated clitoris to push it aside, I shivered. It was all I could do to hold still. 

“Thank you, darling,” Adrian said, when she was finished. We went to the pool then, and he swam laps with more vigor than I would have thought possible while I paddled around in the tepid water. I didn’t have the energy to emulate him, so I admired the buoyant bobbing of my breasts and the astonishingly intimate touch of the water on my naked pussy and hairless limbs, wondering why anyone would ever consent to wearing clothes to swim. The water was like a secret and subtle lover’s caress.

Then we ate, clad in the luxurious towling robes. The oysters were marvelous, fresh and succulent, though my inhibitions had roused enough to keep the meal decorous at least in front of the servers. I couldn’t help thinking about Adrian’s threat to eat them from my body—from my pussy, since that was obviously what he’d meant—and blushed each time he slurped one from the shell. The rest of the meal, seafood from the port, was equally good; crisp fried fish, cold boiled shrimp, and spicy couscous.  

Before long we were back in Adrian’s rooms, and he pulled me out of my robe and down onto the bed again, kissing me long and deep. His knowledgeable hands trailed fire across flesh that should have been thoroughly sated. 

“Again?” I murmured.

Adrian raised his head from my breast. “You have the Lazarus touch, my pet. You could raise the dead. My cock is definitely coming back to life—or maybe it’s rigor mortis. It definitely died happy.”

Blasphemous but rather thrilling, I thought, and then I didn’t think at all for a long time. We made love very slowly, savoring each touch, kiss, and lick. Adrian put pillows under my head and shoulders so I could watch as he lay between my thighs and spread my pussy gently. He slid the hood back from the bud of my clitoris and delicately touched the tiny exposed head with the tip of his tongue, as I sighed and shivered.

My sighs had turned to moans before he lifted himself over me and positioned his penis at my eager entrance. 

“Watch,” he whispered, holding himself up on rigid arms so we could both watch the slow disappearance of his cock into my pussy. I could feel the muscles inside me clamping and flowering open, as if they could grip him and draw him in deep. He sighed himself, a long sigh that was almost a groan, but was still sternly in control as he began to toy with my sensitive tissues; two or three shallow strokes, only just penetrating me with the tip of his cock, then a slow deep stroke that brought him hard up against my clit.

Involuntarily, my body rose to his thrusts, trying to make the shallow strokes deeper, trying to urge him to quicken his maddeningly deliberate pace. 

“Ah, ah, ah.” Little pleading, panting cries on the shallow strokes and long moans on the deep thrust came from my throat, and I twisted beneath him trying for more, needing more. The tension built in my loins and belly, cresting higher and higher, as his rhythm slowly increased. I kissed and sucked at his neck, stroked his sides and gripped his muscular, flexing buttocks. 

Each thrust carried me higher, up into a stratosphere where it was difficult to breath, though I gasped for breath, up the pinnacle of a mountain that rose and rose, straight up now, until I burst like a roman candle, like freefall. No sooner did the first sensation begin to subside that another began. And another or maybe they were all one.

Adrian never faltered, all smooth, deep, driving strokes now, though his forehead was dewed with sweat and his face had the set expression of a distance runner, half ecstasy and half pain. He dropped from his extended arms down to his elbows, and then finally flat on me, his hands snaking under my bottom, lifting my hips to fit me more exactly him. 

His climax started somewhere deep inside him, with a groan that escalated into a rasping shout. I felt his balls draw up tight to his body and then he convulsed against me, racked by hard shudders that shook him like a flag in the wind. Every shudder drove him into me again, drove me on in seemingly endless climax.

After what seemed like forever, we’d both wound down to small shivering thrusts and counter-thrusts and soft moans as we fought for air. Adrian dropped his head into the hollow of my neck and I could feel him pant against my shoulder, feel the sweat of his face against my throat. He struggled back up onto his elbows, taking his weight off my chest, but his neck drooped from his shoulders as he kissed my face and throat. When he fastened on my mouth, we both puffed like bellows through our nostrils and I had to break the kiss to breath.

“Am I squashing you? Sorry, darling,” Adrian said. He rolled off me so suddenly that I clutched for him with arms and vulva—grasping for the weight and cock instantly gone. The cool air hit the portions of my body where sweat had glued us together like chilled wine. I rolled towards him, my mind admiring the graceful, sinewy line of his back and outstretched arm.

He was gorgeous, too—even without lust gilding my perceptions. When I‘d first seen him, I’d thought ‘dancer’ but Adrian was too tough and collected for the androgynous grace that implied. Adrian was an athlete—not the muscle-bound weightlifter type, but a runner or a swimmer—a sexual athlete, for sure.

He turned back to me with a silver goblet beaded in condensation and helped me sit up enough to drink The water was as pure and sweet as the soma of legend. I drained it in a few gulps. He refilled it from the pitcher and drank in turn, and I watched the motion of his throat, the cords of his neck, as he swallowed.

“More for you?” he asked.

I shook my head, subsiding back into the pillows and bolsters. He set aside the goblet and rolled back to kiss me again, a leisurely kiss, plundering my mouth as he’d plundered my vagina. His tongue mimicked the thrusts of his penis until I moaned again.

“That’s better,” he said, heavy lids half hiding his piercing eyes. “I didn’t even have enough spit left to kiss you properly. You’re a succubus. You’ve reduced me to a spitless, juiceless, dick-less egg.”

“Oh, really?” That inspired me with enough energy to scoot down, trailing kisses across his tight belly to his crotch. He caught his breath in a long inhalation as I nuzzled my face into his pubic hair, rubbing across his relaxed testicles and half-hard cock. He smelled of semen and of me, moist and slippery and warm. When I mouthed his flaccid penis it began to plump again, twitching in my mouth. 

“None of that, you insatiable wench! You’ll wear me down to a nubbin and them where will we be?” Gently but firmly, he detached me and drew me up to lie in his arms.

“I don’t think I could,” I murmured. “Wear you down to a nubbin, I mean. If I’m a succubus, then you’re an incubus. I’ve heard of fireworks before, but I thought that was something out of cheesy romance novels.”

“Your first multiple orgasm?”

I nodded.

“Du vrai? I’m honored.” Adrian kissed my brow. “But you had the capacity all along. Hadad valued you highly, but what he couldn’t see is your passion. No one will ever have to ginger you up, my sweet.”

“Ginger me up?”

“Get you going, get you hot.”

“Mmm…but why ginger?” I settled my head more comfortably into his shoulder. Adrian often said things, used figures of speech that I didn’t really understand, though I’d been able to gather their meaning from context. ‘Quim’ for instance, was pretty clear when he had his hand on my pussy.

“Ginger means spicing something up, I suppose, though it’s got a long dishonorable history. Rather lewd, though it’s passed into the common vocabulary—people use it without having any idea what they’re saying.”

“So it’s dirty?”

“Most definitely. It’s also called figging—to rhyme with ‘frigging’—and comes from horse-trading.”

“So, what does it mean?”

“Well, ginger is a spice—it comes from a root—and it’s hot in its original form, though most of us associate it with sweets, like gingerbread and ginger beer. Arab horse dealers used to peel a bit of the root and push it up a horse’s bum to make it step lively and hold its tail high.”

“Ouch. And they use that on people?” I asked.

“Oh, yes. In the days when the sun never set on the British Empire, it was applied to both horses and men. You’ve heard of the English disease, haven’t you?”

“What, the Pox?”

“No—or at least only the French called it the English Pox—We called it the French Pox, others called it the Spanish Pox or whatever—it always came from somewhere else. No, I’m talking about caning. Corporal punishment.”

“So spanking is the English disease?”

“Well, they caned in the schools, even in the universities, and kept it up in the military,” Adrian said. “Those naughty Victorians, so repressed in every way, had to put their energy into the things they knew—the things that were allowed to them. Anything close to the erogenous zones—caning, being buggered by the upper formers in schools, enemas because that was healthful. Actual sex was for duty not for pleasure.”

I squirmed a little. “So what did that have to do with figging?”

“Because they’d peel a stick of ginger and shove it up a man’s arse when they were going to cane him. Ginger is slow acting, it doesn’t feel like much at first, but it builds. When it starts to burn, to produce heat, the hapless subject will thrust out his arse and waggle it about. If you lay a stripe on him and he clenches his arse, it burns even more, so he sticks his arse out again for the next stripe. Victorian Papas learnt it in their service and brought it home for disciplining their young, or playing naughty games with women of a certain class.”




Seraglio Ch. 05



“Woo,” I said, wriggling a bit myself in sympathy. 

“Yes. Kept them from clenching their arse cheeks when getting whipped—though I’ve never understood why that was bad. I quite like the sight of clenching and jiggling bottoms, myself,” Arian said, running a hand over my butt which flexed involuntarily. “There’s something very nice about a well thrust out arse, too, of course.”

I blushed.

“And the Arabs had always known,” he continued, still rubbing my ass, “that you could use it in other places for women, not just in her arse, but up her cunny, on her clit. It’s done to liven up a girl who’s jaded, or to punish one who’s not trying to please. It has a powerful aphrodisiac effect on some people, too. But, as I said, you will never need it.” His arm tightened around me. “You, my darling are like mink with its tail on fire.”

I’ve always had the knee-jerk reaction to ‘cunt’ but ‘cunny’ in Adrian’s crisp English accent sounded friendlier, less offensive somehow, almost cozy. Though that was just a passing thought, since the idea of figging was making me squirm. “You speak of it as though you knew, or is that all academic?”

Adrian paused in the act of drawing the coverlet up over us and slanted a look at me. “It was last widely practised in my grand-papa’s day, darling, and I’m not quite an antique, but yes, I’ve seen it and even tried it myself.”

“Do you mean you did it to somebody or did somebody do it to you?” I blushed, not sure whether he’d answer that or not. Not sure whether I really wanted to know. 

Adrian watched me intently, but answered readily enough. “Both—I’m like the Elephant’s Child, I have insatiable curiosity. Besides, I’d never ask someone to do something I haven’t tried. Does that shock you?”

It did, a little. “So, what does it feel like?”

“Like my arse was on fire, inside and out,” he answered cheerfully. “I kept thinking that it was going to be too much, but it never quite was. It was as if the two sensations balanced each other. I’d get a whack across my bum and it stung, so I’d clench. The burst of heat distracted me from my arse, then the next smack took my mind off the burn. By the end I was scarlet in the face, sweating like a horse, and had a knob you could drive a nail with.”

“Knob as in erection?”

“Bang on, darling,” Adrian said, stroking my shoulder lightly. “Does the idea excite you, or is it just the idea of somebody taking the mickey out of me”

“No! I mean, it’s interesting, that’s all,” I said blushing. Actually both were true. It excited me and even more exciting was the thought that Adrian had done it. I wondered if he’d been tied up, or if he’d submitted voluntarily. I wondered who’d been on the other end of the cane and what happened afterwards. He was already watching me with predatory eyes, though, so I swallowed my questions. 

“So how did I do today?” I asked, not quite non sequitur, though I did hope it would distract him.

“God, do you have to ask? You’re fabulous, darling.”

“No, I mean at Hadad’s place. Was I very, very good?” 

“Oh,” he said, then, “Oh, you mean our deal? Well, you were good for a neophyte and good for an American, but not perfect. And you’ve been naughty since. I think I’ll have to punish you before I turn the plans over to you.”

“Punish me? But why?” I stammered, the heat starting to build in my belly and further down.

“You’ve lied to me twice, and when you first did—in the office—I told you if you lied to me again, I’d have to punish you…”

“But you spanked my- spanked me when we…well, before dinner,” I pointed out. “Doesn’t that count?”

“That was because Hadad thought you liked it, and he was right, wasn’t he?” he said watching me intently. “You do like it. And it turned you on when I told you about getting figged. I answered your questions honestly, but you lied. Not very fair, darling.”

“I’m sorry Adrian.”

“So you should be, and you’ll be sorrier still afterwards, though I promise you’ll enjoy it.” Adrian rolled aside for a moment and the light went out. “For the moment you’re under house arrest, confined to quarters.”

“Then I should go to my room,’ I whispered.

“Not your quarters, mine,” Adrian said. “Stay with me—sleep with me. Please.” He gathered me up close, spooning up behind me. His arm closed around me, falling across my body to grip my thigh, and his cock, though not erect, nudged the under-curve of my buttocks, a very potent reminder of where I was and with whom.

“But you’ll punish me anyway?”

“If you’ve been a bad girl, you need to be punished.”

“How?” I asked.

“We’ll talk about that in the morning.”

“Won’t you tell me?”

“Think of the anticipation as part of the punishment. It will be something…suitable.”

I did think of it, too, and wondered if I’d be able to rest though I did sleep eventually. Adrian gave himself to sleep like he gave himself to sex, totally. The heat from his body was incandescent as the night grew chill, and he drew me like a magnet. Though totally relaxed, he never seemed to lose track of me. If I rolled away in that vast bed, he gathered me back against him with a strong arm and a sleepy sigh.

I wasn’t used to sleeping with someone else, and roused a little whenever I moved or he did, in our nighttime pas de deux. My sleep was also troubled by hot and restless dreams. 

I dreamed that Hadad was examining me again, opening me with his fingers, but this time the vast echoing room was full of dark men in swirling robes. When the haggling was over, I would belong to one of them. I dreamed of Solange on the rack in the playroom then suddenly it was I who strained at the leather cuffs as Miryam bent over me. The dream shifted again and it was Adrian standing over me. 

He was going to do something…something I both wanted and feared. In my dream, I said, “Please.” But didn’t know if I meant ‘please don’t or ‘please do.’