Kate and Julia: Slave Girls of the Raj (6 page)

Was it possible, Julia wondered, and her belly wriggled again at her surprising reaction to the thought.

“Wash your face, and you may dress now,” Jahngir told her.

He left the
zenana
then, but returned along with the mid-day meal, by which time Julia’s hair had been styled, her make-up reapplied, including the rouge to her nipples, and she was again wearing what passed for clothing amongst the girls. Along with the little, sleeveless jacket that left her breasts bared, she again wore the baggy, sheer muslin trousers with no seat in them. They were ridiculous, but Julia could understand how they might be interesting to a man.

“The gold looks well on you,” Jahngir told her with a gesture at the necklace, bracelets and armlets that Afia had made her put on.

“Thank you, Master,” Julia replied and felt a pleased little thrill at his obvious admiration. When they all sat down to eat she made sure she kept her back straight and her shoulders squared.

The worst heat of the afternoon passed with everyone relaxing on cushions or couches. No one seemed inclined to conversation or activity and Jahngir appeared to be asleep. He showed no interest in pleasure as he had on other occasions. Perhaps her performance had been enough to satisfy him for the time being, Julia thought, or more likely he was still tired from the physical work he had done that morning.

Though she lay as still and quiet as the others her mind was working feverishly. What had she done? She knew it was not the question she should be asking herself. The real issue was why she had done it. Because she had had no choice, she could argue. The results of refusing would have been far worse. But it was not the real reason.

Julia’s pulse quickened as she faced the truth. She had done it because she had wanted to. It seemed utterly unbelievable but it was also undeniable. Bashful, reticent, unassuming little Julia Thomas, who never did anything even remotely unconventional, had broken every rule she had been brought up to follow and willingly surrendered herself to a man.

And what a man! Julia wrestled with her surprise and with feelings both unfamiliar and confusing until her weariness and the heat and the quiet of the
zenana
lulled her into sleep.

Music woke her and she saw the sun was sinking towards the western mountain peaks. Laila and Reshmina stood in the carpeted space in front of the balcony, their backdrop a deep blue, cloudless sky. They were dressed identically, if dressed was an accurate description of their near-nudity. Each girl had a slim, gold chain around her hips from which hung a narrow strip of white silk about three fingers in width. Julia blinked. Their breasts were not quite bare. On each girl’s pointed peaks was a small, golden clip. Between the clips and attached to them at either end, several thin golden chains dangled, each a little longer than the one above it so that they hung in a series of semi-circles down towards the girl’s navels.

As Julia sat up amongst the cushions she saw Jahngir lounging on a couch facing the two girls. Their sensual loveliness and his obvious interest caused her a twinge of envy, immediately forgotten when he beckoned her and pointed to the cushions at his feet. A tingle of excitement ran over her skin as she knelt and he placed a hand on her shoulder and rubbed his thumb on the nape of her neck. A second later the other girls finished tuning their instruments and began to play.

Though the music sounded slightly discordant to Julia, she caught the soft beat of the little drum Helai was tapping. Immediately she was reminded of the nightclub and the two almost naked dancers she had watched wheeling and whirling their oiled bodies in the lights of the stage. Laila and Reshmina began to dance. Their skins also bore the sheen of oil and their bodies moved with the same graceful precision that had so fascinated Julia the first time she had seen it. The girls’ hips snaked and swayed in time with the music. The chains hanging from their nipples swung to and fro to the same cadence as the music, catching the sunlight as they turned this way and that with an elegance Julia could only admire and wish she could emulate.

As the tune speeded up so did the steps of the dance, and the girls’

movements became more abandoned. As she had in the nightclub, Julia felt the earthy, primitive sensuality they exuded as they postured and spun, thrusting out their hips and breasts, wriggling their buttocks or rising on tiptoe and revealing the finely delineated muscles of their brown-skinned calves and thighs. Her pulse quickened. There was something very appealing about it all that made her long to have the skill to do it herself.

It ended too soon as far as Julia was concerned, with a final loud tap of Helai’s drum and the two girls falling to their knees before their lord with their breasts lifted high by their arching backs and their thighs parting wide as they pulled aside their tiny strips of silk to reveal what lay gleaming and bare beneath them.

“You enjoyed that, I think,” Jahngir said to Julia after he had congratulated everyone on their performance.

“Yes, Master.” Her breathing, quickened by her excitement at the dance, did not slow as his thumb again stroked the back of her neck. “I wish I could dance like that.” A pang of guilt and embarrassment accompanied her admission.

“Do you? Well, it may be your master will allow you to be taught, if you please him.”

She looked up at him uncertainly, half-hoping and half-afraid that he would confirm her suspicion. “Please, who is to be my master?”

Jahngir Khan smiled. “All in good time, little
murgah
. Whoever it is, you must have the skills to satisfy him. You must concentrate on learning them first.”

Half relieved and half disappointed, Julia dared not press the matter. He did not speak to her again before the evening meal arrived, brought to the door by one of the kitchen girls. No one but the concubines and their lord were permitted to enter the
zenana
. Jahngir left soon after they had eaten.

The girls played backgammon and asked Julia if she knew any card games. When she described some they had not heard of, they insisted she teach them how to play. Except for its exotic location, her evening passed in much the same way it might have at home. But, of course, when the time came to go to bed it would be nothing like the same.

Julia became more and more restless. She felt nervous but also a sense of anticipation, which reawakened her shame and guilt and drove her tangled emotions into turmoil once again. Her nerves were already strung tight by the time the Pathan returned. He sat with the girls, discussing their music and dancing while the minutes dragged by and Julia’s pulse went faster and faster. She was almost glad when he rose and conducted her to her sleeping cubicle – almost, but not quite. Her stomach was turning somersaults as she lay on her mattress and he sat on its edge and laid a hand on the front of her thigh. Julia stiffened.

Jahngir chuckled softly. “I almost forgot. You have not yet been chained.” He made no move to do it. Quickly she raised her arms above her head in the hope he would secure her wrists, but he just smiled down at her. “You have very full lips,” he said. “They are very inviting.” Her mouth opened in a gasp as he leaned down, and then he was kissing her longer and harder than he had before, one hand toying with the fullness of her breast. Julia’s eyes closed of their own volition and her lips moved on his without her willing it. He tugged the lower one with both of his.

“Full and very sweet.”

Breathless, she stared up into his dark, simmering eyes. It was all she could do to stop her arms going around him and crushing him to her hard-nippled breasts. He trailed a finger between them and down her stomach to the little swells below it. Her hands sought the manacles on the wall and closed tightly around the two steel rings.

Jahngir laughed softly. “Very well, if it makes you happy.” He fastened the cuffs around her wrists.

At once she felt better. Paradoxically, it seemed that there was something liberating about being restrained. It freed Julia from her conscience. She no longer had to feel responsible when the Pathan’s fingers stroked the fleshy bump that had risen where her thighs met and tickled it until it swelled into a bud. She only had to enjoy it.

Like the dancing, it stopped too soon. With a soft sigh of frustration she opened her eyes. Jahngir stood up, the evidence of his own arousal tenting the front of his robe. It slipped from the silken folds, only inches from her face as he leaned forward and unfastened the shackle on Julia’s right wrist. Without conscious thought she ran her fingers over its velvety length.

He stepped back, smiling and shaking his head. “You’ve done enough for one day. Rest. Tomorrow we begin again.”

Stunned by what she had done Julia jerked her hand away, suddenly aware of the significance of it being free.

“So you can do more than just watch if you want to.” And with that he was gone.

Julia’s cheeks flamed. He knew she had been spying on him. He had deliberately chosen the cubicle next to hers when he had made love to the other girls, planned it to ensure she became ever more enmeshed in the lustful ways of the
zenana
. And it had worked. She remembered the feel of him filling her mouth. How could serving him thus have had such an effect on her? It was not as if it had filled her…. She shied from the thought and realized it had been the wrong image to conjure in her mind as she felt a long, delicious ripple of excitement.

Long before the lights went out Julia had assuaged her overwhelming need with her free hand as quietly as she could. By the time the room went dark and familiar, excited sounds began coming from the next cubicle, she was lying with the warm, comforting glow of her climax’s aftermath in her belly. Oddly, she felt calm and clear-headed after her fulfilment, her earlier confusion dispelled and her thoughts distinct.

She had begun by fearing Jahngir Khan, hating him for wanting to enslave her, and for the humiliation of his assaults and degrading punishments. She still resented him and was still afraid but she could not deny, however much she would have liked to, that she found him far more attractive than was good for her. There was no ignoring his masculinity and masterful presence, or how they affected her. Julia shivered. How on earth could she admit she was attracted to a man, even to herself? It was completely out of character.

A low, impassioned moan came from close by. Reshmina was with him. Julia had heard the girl speaking to him in her native tongue minutes earlier. She turned her back on the glow of lamplight shining through the pierced screen separating her from them. A strange and unfamiliar feeling filled her but she knew what it was. For the first time in her life, Julia was jealous.

*

Jahngir Khan woke Julia early. Though it was light, the sun was still hidden behind the eastern mountains as he led her to the bathhouse.

Once again she found herself alone with him, both of them bared and immersed to the thighs in water. Without needing to be told, Julia began sponging his broad-shouldered figure, acutely sensitive to the heavy sway of her breasts and how their points kept brushing his skin. She was aware too of the big, brown-skinned length hanging between his thighs and that it was unlikely to remain that way for long. To her embarrassment but not her surprise, her sex quivered. She was surprised by the question Jahngir asked.

“Why did you come to India?”

Haltingly, Julia explained that she had needed a job and had replied to Mrs. Winter’s newspaper advert for a lady’s travelling companion. “It was only at the interview I discovered I was expected to travel all the way to India.”

“Yet you have travelled here, ill-prepared though I think you were for such a journey. You’ve never done anything like it before, have you?”

Julia shook her head.

“You don’t seem the type who is eager to visit distant lands,”

Jahngir said.

She had told herself that a hundred times but felt a twinge of resentment when the Pathan said it.

“I wasn’t enthusiastic about going to England to study,” he continued, “but my father insisted I do it. Was it perhaps your parents who persuaded you?”

“Oh, no! Quite the opposite.” Though in a way he was right. “I came to get away from them,” Julia admitted.

“You do not honour your parents?” His eyebrow arched in surprise, but it was the rising and thickening of his manhood that seized Julia’s attention.

“Of course I do,” she said thickly. “It… it’s complicated.”

He sat on the bath steps, heedless of his effect on her. “Explain.”

She dragged her gaze from his groin. “It was the Wall Street Crash. Have you heard of it?”

“The whole world has heard of it. Even in our remote little corner we were not entirely unaffected. Your parents suffered?”

“My father’s business failed. He got another job, but he and my mother can’t forget what they had before. For two years I’ve had to listen to them harking back to how things used to be. Then they somehow came up with the idea that I could get them back everything they had lost.”

“You? That hardly seems likely.”

Julia’s cheeks heated with a blush. “I know I’m not clever or educated like you but I don’t think I’m completely stupid.” Her sharp retort surprised her and from the look on his face, Jahngir Khan as well.

He smiled. “So there is a spark in you, little
murgah
. I thought one so passionate could not be without at least a little fire. And I do not think you stupid. Continue.”

“They wanted me to find a rich husband.” Julia sighed. “They even made a list of possible candidates. I tried to tell them I didn’t want to do it but they never take any notice of what I say. They never have.

They couldn’t understand that everyone could see very well what they were doing and we were becoming a laughing stock. It was getting more and more embarrassing. God knows I wasn’t very confident before they started parading me around like a prize cow.” She stopped, out of breath and wishing she had not told him any of it.