Kate and Julia: Slave Girls of the Raj (13 page)

As Julia watched their unbridled coupling, she felt the pangs of jealousy that had pained her heart only once before. Why did he take Afia so avidly yet deny the same pleasure to her? What had she said or done, or not done, to make him refuse her fulfilment that day they had lain on the steps of the bath? Afia bucked wildly and gave a high-pitched cry of delighted abandon. Seconds later, Jahngir jerked frantically, crushing his belly to her buttocks as he revealed his own pleasure with a long, guttural growl. Hot and quivering and with the scent of excited womanhood filling the air around her, Julia felt only the frustration of her own unsatisfied desires, made worse when Jahngir raised Afia upright and kissed her lips.

“That was lovely, my lord,” she panted softly.

“Go and dress,” he told her, and grabbed Julia’s wrist. “I’m not done with you yet,” he said, pulling her to the stone bench where he had flung his robe.

Afia looked back from the entrance, and Julia saw her anxiety as their eyes met briefly before the girl disappeared. Jahngir sat on the bench and pushed her to her knees.

“This is something else you’ll do in future. Your master may take more than one girl at a time. You’ve seen what I’ve just done. Let’s see if you’ve properly learned obedience yet.” He pointed to his groin, leaned back on the bench and arched an eyebrow at her.

She must not hesitate, Julia told herself, and reached for his slack manhood. It was shiny and sticky on her fingers as she lifted it and bowed her head to her task. She licked it first. It tasted of mingled moistness and also, disconcertingly, of soap, but she refused to be put off.

Neither was she deterred by the knowledge of where it had been only moments ago. She still desperately wanted it to fill her and so she used all the skills she had learned to bring it back to life. Shortly, she sat back with a satisfying feeling of accomplishment as it reared arrogantly upright once more. Julia looked hopefully at Jahngir’s brooding face. His expression remained stony but he gave a grudging nod.

“Good. Finally you seem ready to obey in the way a slave girl should.”

“I am ready, Master,” she said, not only pleased but also emboldened by his words. She cupped the undersides of her breasts with her hands, lifting them to offer the hard cones of her nipples to him. He did not reach for them, but Julia saw a glitter in his eyes and the tip of his tongue slide over his lower lip. “I am ready,” she repeated, spreading her thighs and leaning back to expose the full length of the lips between them and the firmness of her feminine bud at their apex. “I am willing too, Master. See?” Heart swelling with hope and longing and love, she let go of her breasts and ran a hand down her belly. Still smiling, though her stomach fluttered wildly, she reached her fingers to her flesh and spread them and it apart.

Jahngir was breathing faster, and Julia saw his thickness twitch as he looked at what she was displaying to him. Her eyes met his in a silent plea filled with all of her love. Still the hard planes of his face did not soften.

“What has happened to the shy English girl and her outraged modesty?” he asked.

“I have no modesty where you are concerned. I want only for you to… to….” She groped for the word Afia had used. “To honour me as you do the other girls.”

“No!” He shook his head and looked even more forbidding.

Julia felt a stab of pain through her breast at the curt refusal. She turned in a half circle and lifted her bottom. “Then use me here as you did Afia. Please, let me serve you properly like your other concubines do.”

“You are not my concubine,” Jahngir said. “You must remain unused until you are sold and securely in the possession of your new master.”

“But why must I wait?” Julia groaned, turning to face him. “I’ve guessed the truth, my lord.” A thrill ran through her at using the title. “I know who my new master will be. It’s you! It was you all along!”

The Pathan’s eyebrows rose. “Girl, you are right that I will buy you.”

Julia’s heart leapt with joy. A thin, pained-looking smile appeared on Jahngir’s lips.

“But I’m not buying you for myself. You are a gift for my brother, the Prince.”

She stared at him open-mouthed. Her joy vanished.

“Is the tea not to your liking, Mrs. Winter?”

Penny gave a start. When the Prince had begun discussing with Courtney his arrangements for the day the
khillat
was to be distributed, her attention had gone to the soreness in her ravaged, aching bottom, which had barely begun to recover. She looked up. Raham Dil, Prince of Jargahal looked back with his plump face bearing an expression of concern. Or was it annoyance, she wondered.

“It is excellent, Your Highness, but also a little hot,” she lied. The tea had an odd aftertaste she did not find to her liking.

“It will have cooled by now,” Courtney said. “Drink it down, Penny and you can have another.” He drank deeply of his own and smacked his lips. Disliking the sarcastic smile he gave, Penny eyed him suspiciously over the rim of her own cup as she drained it. She forced a smile for the Prince who nodded his satisfaction.

“Excellent idea, Courtney
Saaquib
. More tea,” he said enthusiastically, and his chubby jowls and double chin wobbled as he clapped his hands. The petite, slender slave girl kneeling beside his chair jumped to her feet and reached for the teapot on the low table before them. Penny had been uneasily glancing at her since she and Courtney had been shown into the opulent surroundings of the apartment where Raham Dil held his tea parties. Naked but for a thin jewelled belt around her hips and a strip of white silk no wider than a hair-ribbon to hide her sex, the slave was a disturbing reminder of the fate facing Julia and Kate and the reason for her meeting with the Prince.

His large, pudgy paw shot out with surprising speed and smacked hard on the girl’s narrow bottom. She jerked upright with a yelp and clutched it. “How many times must I tell you? The English always put the milk in first,” he snapped. “Please excuse her Mrs. Winter. She is unschooled in such niceties.”

Penny inclined her head and wished she dared light a cigarette.

The man’s politeness was becoming unnerving. Almost every encounter with men she had had since returning to India had resulted in her stripping off her clothes and having to endure the most humiliating indignities. She had good reason to suspect this one would end no differently. Alarmingly, she felt a little excited quiver, which heightened her awareness that beneath her white calico skirt and thin cotton blouse she wore no underwear. Courtney had forbidden it while she remained in his house. Nervous, Penny crossed her legs in an effort to suppress a second tickle, and then remembered the Prince’s culture disapproved of women doing such a thing and immediately uncrossed them.

“Careless girl,” the Prince said when the slave tilted the milk jug over Penny’s cup and only a trickle ran out. He continued in rapid Pashto.

After almost five years Penny’s was somewhat rusty, but she caught the gist of it, especially the word ‘whipping’ that brought a mew of dismay to the slave’s lips. Looking distinctly displeased, Raham picked up the little gold bell from the table and rang it vigorously until two girls hurried from a side door into the room.

Penny was astonished. Both were clearly slaves and wearing almost nothing except gold jewellery, but it was not their nudity that shocked her. One of the girls was white-skinned with hair as blonde as Julia’s and breasts that were even bigger but which, Penny could notice even amid her surprise, were less firm and upright than her own. Most astonishing, however, was that her belly was swollen enormously with a pregnancy that had to be close to reaching full-term. The Indian girl beside her was the same broad-hipped and heavy-breasted type, and though she showed no signs of pregnancy, her brownish-pink nipples were thick and distended and had two big drops of white fluid clinging to their tips. The Prince half-turned towards the slaves with the milk jug in his hand.

“Good Lord, it’s
pei
!” Penny blurted, using the Pashto word.

Raham Dil laughed. “It is indeed. Breast milk, Mrs. Winter. I never drink any other kind, and always fresh and warm from the tit.

Which would you like, brown or white?” His face split into a grin, and Penny heard Courtney chuckle throatily as she fought to regain her composure. No wonder the tea had tasted strange.

“I… I really have no preference, Highness,” she replied hoarsely.

“Some of both then,” he said, tapping a finger on the European girl’s bulging belly. Expressionless, she leaned forward, offering the big globes of her teats to her master. He circled the left one with two fingers and a thumb a little behind the nipple, held the jug underneath, and simultaneously squeezed and pulled on the hanging breast. There was a hollowness in Penny’s stomach as she queasily saw and heard the milk squirt from the thick nub and into the jug.

“This one has just started milking in the last couple of weeks,”

Raham said conversationally as he tugged and squeezed her fleshy teat.

“Of course, she’ll be good for two or three years now, before I have to decide whether to mate her again. Sometimes they disappoint me and dry up sooner but I have high hopes for her. It takes seven or eight girls to keep me supplied, depending on how much they produce.” He transferred the jug and his fat fingers to the right breast, and continued milking. Just like he would a goat, Penny thought. “I keep a little back for the milkmaids to drink themselves. I’m sure it improves their production.”

Penny winced. With a glance at the level in the jug, the Prince motioned the European girl away and the Indian slave took her place.

Her teats were even larger and her milk ran freely from her elongated nipples as she bent over. Without being told, she pinched the one not above the jug with her fingers to stop its flow while Raham milked her other breast.

Penny squirmed her complaining backside on her seat. It seemed such an intimate and personal thing that she felt embarrassed to witness it, not for herself so much as for the girls being milked. Was Raham Dil a kind master, she wondered. Were any masters kind to their slave girls?

His name meant ‘Mercy Heart’ but she had a feeling he was unlikely to live up to it. He was gross. His hair was heavily oiled and slicked back from his high forehead. Beneath his fat face, his neck seemed to have vanished into the corpulent bulk of his body. An immense paunch strained the buttons of his richly embroidered
chapaan
around its middle and what looked like breasts bulged beneath it. Penny quickly lowered her critical gaze as he turned back to the table with the milk jug brim-full.

“Perhaps you could spare enough
pei
to allow Mrs. Winter to appreciate its flavour to the full, Highness,” Courtney suggested before he could pour any into Penny’s cup. She caught her breath as the Prince’s expression turned suddenly frosty, and she tried to keep her own studiedly neutral.

“Well, maybe a little to show her the quality of my milkmaids,” he said grudgingly. “But only a small glass, mind.”

To Penny’s dismay, the petite slave quickly brought one and Raham filled it half way and set it before her. The men sat back and drank their tea, watching her expectantly. With a dagger look at Courtney, she raised the glass to her lips. Little opaque bubbles floated on the milk’s surface. It could not possibly taste as foul as the disgusting, slimy semen she had been forced to swallow, the Englishwoman told herself, and she took a hasty sip. Her stomach churned as she made herself swallow, but the stuff’s flavour was not the cause; simply the knowledge of where it had come from. To Penny, it seemed unnatural and rather perverse to be drinking the product of another woman’s body.

It was warm and recognisably milk, but not like that of a cow, or like anything else she had ever tasted, but she could not have called it exactly unpleasant. Penny saw Raham eagerly awaiting her opinion as she replaced the glass on the table.

“Excellent, Your Highness. A unique and most distinctive flavour,” Penny said, unashamedly dissembling, and ignoring the grin Courtney gave her. When the Prince beamed happily, she risked a request. “I wonder, may I smoke?”

“Excuse me. I forgot it is a habit among white women as well as men.” He flipped open a gold box on the table and slid it across to her.

The cigarette was Virginia rather than the Turkish she preferred, but Penny lit it gratefully and dragged the tobacco smoke deep into her lungs.

Sunk amidst his pudgy face, the Prince’s eyes widened as they watched her breasts rise and fall. Another disturbing tremor teased through her at his obvious interest, and again she could not understand how the attention of such a horrid creature could provoke even the smallest spark of excitement in her.

“I am told we have met before, Mrs. Winter,” he said, “though, alas, I cannot recall the occasion.”

“It was only once, briefly, Highness. My late husband commanded the garrison here for a short time before it was withdrawn. Perhaps you remember him, Captain Thomas Winter?”

“That was several years ago, but I believe I do. I’m surprised I have forgotten you though. I would have expected to recall a
mem-sahib
with a pair of tits as remarkable as yours.”

Oh, Lord, here it comes, Penny thought with her belly going tight.

“My wazir tells me they are not in milk, however,” Raham continued. “Is that correct, Mrs. Winter?”

“I…” She caught Courtney’s warning look and stifled her urge to tell the Prince to go to hell. “They are not, Highness,” she confirmed.

He sighed. “A great pity. But I’m sure you would still like to see my milking parlour, wouldn’t you?” Raham hauled his obese carcass out of his sturdy, gold and ivory decorated chair before she had a chance to reply. What choice did she have, anyway, Penny thought grimly as her heart began beating faster. She rose to her feet. “Oh, finish your milk first,” he said.

Resignedly, Penny accepted she was not going to escape that either, and, ignoring the flutters in her belly, gulped the breast-milk down, consoling herself that it did taste a lot better than semen. As the Prince showed her to the same door through which the slave girls had entered, she realized all three were following, and Courtney too.