Pleasure Island [The Chronicles of Lidir] (22 page)

Anya looked at the throbbing purple stem so wickedly constricted by the ring. There was that same calm intentness in Ikahiti's face as she knelt beside him, waiting. Involuntary spasms moved the end of the fruit between the cheeks. In time, they slowed. Ikahiti sat back on her heels and sighed. There was now a look of satisfaction on her face - as of a job well done, a training of her slave advanced. 'Chiri,' she said to him and immediately, he turned, still crouching and laid his head on her lap. Ikahiti stroked him, touched the fruit and the ring about his stem. She smiled when his body again became still and tense. He was fighting against the pressure which must have been welling deep inside him. Ikahiti continued to touch, closing her hand by alternation around the stem below the ring and then above it until Ikahiti's palm became slick with oily weepings.

'Niri ...?' whimpered the man and Anya's cheeks, already red on his behalf, glowed even hotter.

'Tika,' whispered Ikahiti, then took out her knife and pressed the smooth round wooden handle very firmly across the place where the cockstem fed into the ballocks. 'Tika,' said Ikahiti very softly, 'tika,' while he groaned. But the smooth round wooden handle pressed, rotating slightly, and the pleasure was provoked: the fruit bobbed rapidly; narrow streams of very thin milt pulsed through the ring constriction to disappear quickly into the heat of the sand. 'Tika - shirula,' said Ikahiti and at that second word, he tried to bury his face against her belly. Ikahiti reprimanded him and turned his face away, but Anya saw again that Ikahiti smiled. She began to understand then that there must be a peculiar bond between these two; it seemed that Ikahiti would force these degradations on her man, who would freely acquiesce, but Ikahiti would accept no pleasure from him in return. It was as if even the suggestion that he might have desired her and wanted to touch her was sufficient. To Anya, it seemed peculiarly one-sided and not based on love at all. But Ikahiti laid her man down on the sand, carefully and lovingly removed the fruit that had bedded within him and sat above him stroking his back and belly for a long while afterwards.

During this time, Anya became less and less certain of what she had witnessed - was it a punishment the man had suffered or a peculiar act of love? She wondered if Ikahiti and the other women ever took pleasure directly with the men or preferred to take their pleasure only by abusing them. As Anya lay there in the sun, with the warm air washing over her belly, constrained beneath the delicious cord which held her flesh erect, she realised that the customs of this island were very strange indeed.

Whereas Anya had these last few days been very unsure of Ikahiti - what she really wanted from Anya - she had found solace with Miriri. She took comfort from her warmth, for Miriri pampered Anya almost as if she were a child. On that first evening, after Anya's flesh had been so cruelly pierced, Miriri had cradled Anya in the softness of her arms - for Miriri was a big woman, big in heart as well as big in body - and had rocked her till she cried herself to sleep. When Anya had awoken later, she found herself, still enfolded in those arms, looking up into Miriri's face and basking in the tender warmth of her deep brown eyes. Miriri reminded Anya very much of the woman who had looked after her in the castle and had shielded her from the pain and shame of all those cruel hurts. But now she had received a hurt more wickedly cutting than any she had received in the castle: now she was permanently scarred. But this woman seemed to understand her anguish. She placed Anya on a bed prepared from the softest leaves, then covered her with a skin and sat beside her through the rest of the night, stroking her hair and smoothing her fingers over the hot flushed cheeks until long after Anya had fallen asleep.

Each subsequent night, before Anya was put to bed, Miriri would hold her in her arms and rock her before the examination was performed. That closeness stilled but did not fully take away Anya's apprehension. Miriri would glance at Anya, then briefly stroke a thick soft fingertip against her lips, to indicate that she should not murmur, and Anya would feel the slow surge of fear deep in her belly as her shoulders were laid upon the leaves but her hips lay cupped in the pillow-soft bowl of Miriri's lap while her thighs were gently opened. Miriri would look upon that flesh, blue-black, moist and puffy from sympathy with the speared and tortured pip, a tiny pink pearl still nestled within its living oyster, yet threaded on a loop of gold. She would loosen the wooden bead and the cord would slacken and lie in gentle curves upon the red curls of the belly, which would be squirming before she even touched it. She would open the lips, which would try to retreat. With the tips of her thumbs she would lift the hood. The fine gold ring, large enough to slip over the tip of a finger, would fall back under the hood and Anya would murmur - not with the pain, but with the more awful, more intimate feeling that this small rotation bestowed, for the gold thread would be turning deep inside her healing flesh. Where it entered, to each side, would be two tiny flecks of blackened red. Miriri would catch these under the pointed tip of her fingernail and gently pull, then purse her lips and blow a very thin stream of air. The flecks would blow away. On the first two nights, the blood welled again to fill the two tiny craters round the gold but on the third night, the flesh stayed open and pink. Thereafter, Miriri applied a healing lotion then carefully fed the ring through its sleeve of pink while the open thighs before her gently shook. The first time Miriri attempted this, Anya was sick on the floor. Subsequently, though her cheeks would always turn deathly pale, she was able to bear the horror of this feeling - the sliding through her flesh - as long as it did not continue for very long.

When she had finished, Miriri would push the bead up Anya's belly to tighten the cord until the ring impressed across the hood again, and with that pressure, Anya would begin to feel aroused. The awful sensation would be forgotten, only to be replaced by a need which had not been fulfilled for many days now. Each application of the lotion, each renewed pressure there, made the need more compelling.

On the fourth evening, when the treatment was finished and Miriri held Anya in her arms and Miriri's warm aroma - like milknut - descended all about her and Miriri's very thick nipple lay pressed to Anya's cheek, Anya wanted to ask Miriri to bring her pleasure on. She knew what to say - for she had heard the man say it that afternoon, when, despite herself, she had been so aroused to witness his pleasuring in that way - but she was afraid to say it, to ask outright. Anya pressed her cheek against the nipple and turned her cheek so the thick dark rubbery warmth tickled her ear then, rubbing back again, brushed against her lips. Miriri murmured. Anya wet her lips and pushed them about that teat and sucked, then felt afraid at her boldness. The nipple slipped out wet across her cheek. Miriri lifted it and pushed it in again. Beneath her, Anya felt the woman's belly shiver as she sucked. She took the nipple very fully, pressed it to the roof of her mouth and nipped below it with her tongue. The nipple swelled up harder. Miriri's hand brushed Anya's belly and began to play with her curls. Anya, her heart in her throat, opened her thighs. She felt the woman's hand beneath her back, lifting her hips, lifting her bottom in the air. She heard the hand move in the bowl of lotion. She trembled, sucked the breast more strongly, lifted up her thighs. And now she felt the lotion being worked inside her, the fingers stroking deep inside the lips, soothing, coating them and penetrating ever deeper, making her feel more aroused. Her lower back was lifted and supported by one broad hand while the other stroked the lotion deep inside, making her fleshpot grip those slipping fingers. Then when the fingers slipped out quickly and touched her nubbin once, squeezing so the flesh tip bit against the gold ring, her pleasure came, with her bottom in the air, her mouth sealed tight about the nipple and the fingertips re-entered her against the strength of her contraction. After that, Miriri washed her and put her to bed. She slept soundly until she heard a noise in the night and was aware that the lamp still flickered.

Peeping out from under her covers, Anya thought that she was dreaming. Miriri lay naked on her back. Her full and very heavy breasts lay pointed to the sides and a face lay pressed between them: lying atop her was the sailor who had been captured with Anya a few days ago. Miriri held his head tightly against her. But his body was not still, though he himself did not move it. Miriri's thighs lay open and her belly lifted him slowly, then suddenly dropped and the cycle then repeated. Each time he dropped against her, he let out a sobbing groan and Miriri gave a grunt of pleasure. The movement was rhythmic, the slow uplift as he drew breath deeply, followed by the sudden drop. The young man seemed powerless to stop it. Now the giant thighs locked about him and squeezed until his back was arched down by the pressure above his buttocks. And though he cried out loud for mercy, it seemed that Miriri would take her time. The thighs unlocked, the hands released his head, but only to move down over his back, then over his buttocks, spreading them and searching the tight unwilling opening within, probing until it yielded to two, then three thick fingers. Then the slow movement began again, the lift and then the drop, until the man was truly gasping on the verge of cruelly penetrated release. Miriri held him steadily - very still now - while the fingers worked within and her other hand investigated the contents of the bag beneath, lifting up each ballock individually and rubbing it until it slipped. The fingers withdrew and both hands slid beneath his hips and lifted. Miriri herself lay quite still. Anya could see the slick stem gleaming as it slipped from between the sucking thighs, then, controlled by the lifting action of Miriri's hands, slid back in again. And with a catch of breath, Anya saw that the man's flesh, the stem and dangling bag, were bare of any curls. How could it be, when he had been so thickly curled the other day? She watched it lift again, naked, smooth and shiny, then sink inside the woman's body. She heard the suddenly indrawn breath, deeply sobbing this time, as he was held in the air, unmoving, with only the cap of his stem being sucked by Miriri's fleshpot. Her thighs flexed more strongly and he whimpered. She squeezed again; he gasped. She pulled him out completely. 'Tika,' whispered Miriri very firmly. He swallowed, then shuddered as she held him in the air. 'Tika ...' She lowered him again. Her thick soft sex lips reached to take his tip and suck upon it while the tight and intermittent whimpers unfolded to a continuous mellow moan and Anya felt the peculiar feeling in her belly as she realised that, tortured and powerless though he was, the feeling that he moaned against was pleasure. The heels of the broad hands pressed against his belly to lift him, the large moist sex lips sucked; the fingertips reached to touch his bare bag as it dangled. His breath caught; Miriri pulled him out, too quickly, for the cockstem spurted once before he regained control. And now it pulsed above her gently, a thick drip poised at its very tip.

Carefully, Miriri lifted him down and placed him on his side. He faced towards Anya, who was trying to appear asleep as she watched through half-closed eyes. Miriri took the wetness that had escaped on to her belly and wiped it over his stem, which stood out horizontally, hard and bulging, angry red. She placed a pillow of leaves beneath his head, then lay behind him, keeping his thighs pressed together, which pushed his bare ballocks forward and seemed to force his cockstem further out. She lay for some while, just rubbing his belly gently, causing the stem to sway, then at intervals, sliding her fingers up and down the smoothness of his stem, for the miltings she had spread upon it had very soon dried and the skin had now acquired a silkiness. Then she rolled him over until his upper knee touched the floor. She angled this knee a little, reached between his legs, cupped the hanging bag in her fingers and stroked the back of it with her thumb. Whilst maintaining this tender action with her right hand, she lifted across the bowl of lotion, poured a little into the crease of his buttocks, which caused him to jerk with the shock - though not too far, for her fingers still cupped his bag - then her wetted fingers followed swiftly, slipping freely up inside him while his belly tensed, his back arched down and Miriri's right hand maintained the smoothing rhythm up and down the back of the bare skin bag. When Miriri turned him on his side and he faced Anya again, her fingers were still inside him, searching gently as his belly at intervals jerked and the heavy plum of his cockstem bobbed and sometimes throbbed as if it would spill. But Miriri's right hand, coming round to the front, closed again around his ballocks to squeeze at times and to slow these periodic bobbings of the stem. On rare occasions, she would release the bag and stroke the cockstem downwards, almost to the point of spillage, then wipe the leakage over it and grip the bag again, allowing his distributed milt to dry upon him while the fingertip explorations of her left hand continued deep within.

This it seemed was how this person, so tender, so gentle with Anya, preferred to seek amusement with her man, who somehow, in those few short days, had been conditioned into accepting that his pleasure should thus be measured and controlled. And having to stay awake throughout that night to witness this prolonged torment, awaiting its resolution, though such resolution never came, was the reason that in the morning, when she watched the man being ushered out with his cockstem still iron hard but extraordinarily silky, Anya felt simultaneously exhausted and aroused.

[11]

The Playground

There was a very marked air of excitement about the village next morning. There was no fishing or diving, none of the routine work seemed to be being done, and there were none of the slaves to be seen anywhere, yet everyone appeared to be very busy. Groups of women were decorating each other's bodies with intricate shell jewellery, with paints applied with the finger and inks which would be pricked into the skin using pointed fish bones, and they were fitting each other with headdresses made from the plumage of richly coloured birds. Miriri tried to explain to Anya. 'Achira!' she said, laughing, placing her hands at the sides of her head, pointing her fingers upwards and dancing with surprisingly delicate footfalls in a circle while her heavy breasts stretched rhythmically and elastically up and down. Then she took Anya's hand and led her down the beach. Again, Anya was struck by this woman's open-heartedness and she wondered if what she had witnessed last night could have been a dream.