Chapter 13
In the first days after their departure, we didn't get much work out of the members of our little group. Everyone walked around listlessly, sad, morose, decidedly unhappy. Nobody was sorry to lose Pietro, but we felt the loss of Marella most bitterly. We had come to think of her as our queen, and also to love her. And we were, of course, worried about her because she had seemed so tired and pale during the past month or so.
But we survived those dead days and, within two weeks, we were almost back to normal. That's a kind of a lie--we didn't go back to normal because there was no way back. We were lucky in one respect. Pietro left the dildoes and the whips in Marella's footlocker where they had been kept all along. The footlocker had been built by two of our craftsmen and Pietro had brought the whips and dildos one and two at a time during the first weeks of his stay in our commune with Marella. It was impossible to take them all with them on the motorcycle, so we had them to remind us of Marella, and to use in our orgies.
No, we could never return to our old "normal" ways again. We were hooked on Pietro's way, on Marella's way, on the old Sicilian count's way. And we loved it.
The Saturday night after Pietro and Marella had left, we did nothing, though. We sat around the Great-house staring at each other and wondering, each in his own way, just where the two Sicilians had gone. Very little happened that night, even though some of the guys went to the little cottage and brought over Marella's footlocker with the whips and dildos. We didn't even open it.
It was the middle of the following week before there was even any sexual activity in the commune. It started as an impromptu thing down in the orchard when Lila, who was pretty horny for a girl, slipped out of her clothes as we all worked in the hot sun cutting weeds and briars out of the orchard. She went right on working, naked, and built up a grand sweat. We kept watching her as her naked body got wetter and wetter from sweat. Her high young breasts with the bright pink nipples swayed and bobbled in the sun and the rest of us started to get pretty much aroused.
"Jesus Christ, Lila," Mark finally said, "put your goddamn clothes on before I run my dinkus up your whatzis."
"Do it, do it," she chortled. "I'll even bend over for you."
Several of us laughed, but it wasn't free and easy laughing--it was nervous, frustrated laughing. Mark regarded the defiant little girl from Kent State with some amusement--perplexed amusement--then shrugged his powerful shoulders.
"What the hell," he said. "If you can't beat 'em.. . . "
He stripped off his clothes. When he pulled down his trousers, his cock flipped hard and glistening into the sunlight and Lila let out a delighted squeal. She pounced on the shimmering cock and, before the rest of us could even find our buttons, she was on her knees with Mark's prick half buried in her hungry mouth.
We were all pretty much sex hungry by then--it had been a week and a half since we had indulged in any way at all. There hadn't even been the occasional quickies during the night, none that I knew of, anyway. I saw what was coming, as the others in the group peeled off clothing and I took immediate action.
"Charlie, Mike, how's about if you two guys run up to the Great-house aid fetch Marella's footlocker. We can use the tools in it."
"Right, chief," they said, taking off at a dead run. The guys had been calling me "chief" since Pietro had left. It was his favorite term and he always used it kind of derisively. The guys used it only to kid me and I didn't mind.
We were all naked and dancing around in the orchard like a bunch of monkeys when Charlie and Mike returned with the footlocker. They opened it and spilled the contents out on the ground and every-body scrambled for a whip or a dildo. I was looking around for Sofia because she was still my favorite and hadn't been the least bit jealous of my attentions to Marella, when a strange thing happened.
Big Wayne, from Purdue, and husky Allan, from Tennessee, grabbed me and hoisted me to their powerful shoulders. They started marching around the orchard with me and everybody began to chant; "Long live the king, long live the king."
Then Mark, from Dartmouth, and Doug, from Cornell, whisked Sofia to their shoulders and trailed around after us. Part of the group began to chant; "Long live the queen, long live the queen."
I was flabbergasted. In a way, it embarrassed me, but I loved it. I looked back at Sofia, riding naked on the shoulders of the two handsome boys, and she was obviously happy, too. She was laughing and her lovely high breasts were jiggling up and down like child's toys on springs. But there was nothing childlike about those beautiful big breasts, We were obviously no match for Pietro and Marella, but we were the next best thing to a king and queen (or count and countess) and so we enjoyed the new role 'thrust upon us. And we were more pleased when we reaped the first benefits of our office. They put us side by side on the wooden footlocker at one. end of the orchard and quickly formed a gauntlet line in front of us.
It was a new version of the game we had played that moonlit night with Pietro and Marella. Both of us were on the "throne" and the kids who ran the gauntlet paid homage to both of us in the usual way.
It was great. I sat beside my beloved Sofia and we both spread our legs wide to receive our "subjects." They started through the line and Mark, from Dart-mouth, came first. The others laid it on heavy with the whips and Mark didn't run very fast. He was a mass of welts when he reached us and the whips were already cracking for the next runner.
Mark fell to his knees in front of Sofia and plunged his happy face into her even happier cunt. I could hear his tongue and lips slurping as he gammed her for the three-count. Sofia had her hands around his head, holding him tightly to her pussy. She released him with great reluctance. Then, Mark crawled quickly between my legs and took my cock in both his big football hands.
I shuddered under his touch and watched as his mouth, wet from Sofia's pussy, came near my erect and throbbing penis. His wet lips touched the head and I felt a surge of the old remembered lust rush up through me like the tide in Miami. He kissed the tip, licked away the bead of semen, then plunged almost all of my cock deep into his mouth. He sucked hard and his tongue laved my shaft and I heard him counting, unintelligibly, one and two and three and.. . .
Then he was gone and I took Sofia's hand in mine and looked up the line to see pretty little Lila, from Kent State, dashing toward us under the raining blows of many whips. Something inside me chuckled contentedly. We were getting back to what we now considered normal.
They really put it to Lila with the whips. She squealed and then screamed as she ran the gauntlet and got a sizable share of agony for her troubles. But she was happy and laughing when she reached us and fell to the ground between Sofia's legs. I saw several welts on her back and saw that one of them had broken open. Several tiny drops of blood had formed on her back and I felt a pang of ecstasy looking at that blood. I wanted to rub my dick in it and then shove the blood-soaked dick into her ass.
But we had to play the game according to the rules, or nearly so. I sat patiently while she sucked on Sofia's cunt and then shifted over to take my penis into her mouth. She was so excited, she missed my cockhead the first time down and her lips kissed my balls. Then, she found the mark and I grabbed her luxurious hair and held on tightly as she sucked me for the three-Count.
One after another they came. I was near climax when they traded whips and the whippers became the runners. There was a short break in the action then and I closed my eyes and tried to think of unpleasant, non-lustful things that would help to prolong my ecstasy and stave off orgasm. When I closed my eyes, though, I could see Marella the way she looked that night in the moonlight or that afternoon in the hot sun up on the hill and I damned near shot off in the grass of the orchard.
I opened my eyes again and here came lovely Carla, her big breasts swaying and her body tingling and smarting under the blows of the whip. She also had a big dildo strapped around her hips, but I could still see her great thatch of pubic hair behind the rubber bulb. The sight was enervating and I felt my cock and loins throb and ache with desire.
When they had all paid homage to their rulers (Sofia and me) , Mark came up with a grand idea as an added attraction. He suggested that Sofia and I, as the new king and queen of the Jilkes Monarchy, run the gauntlet together and then finish off with a grand fuck on top of Marella's footlocker. We welcomed the idea with relish.
We lined up together at the far end of the orchard and looked down the long lines of whips at the empty footlocker. I put my arm around Sofia and covered her breasts with it--for some reason, I didn't want to see her breasts get marred with whiplashes, although the sight and feel of bloody breasts was sexually attractive to me.
"I'm scared," she said, trembling beside me.
I moved my hip against her soft hip and rubbed gently.
"Look at my prick," I said.
She looked down at the hot staff and touched it with one hand. Her fingers closed around it and she jerked it slowly back and forth.
"Just keep thinking about that," I said. "After we go through three times, you'll have that cock stuck in every orifice you own."
She shuddered and let out a long, happy sigh. The whips began to crack impatiently, and I said to Sofia; "See you after the orgy."
"Right, chief," she said, grinning.
We walked slowly toward the line, then broke into a run. We ran side by side, cowering against each other as the leather thongs fell on us from both sides. A nasty lash caught me on the back of the neck and the tip of the whip bit into my chest, just below the right nipple. It stung like sixty and I almost yelled, but held my voice. It wouldn't do for the king to yell like a common klutz. But it was all right to run, I figured.
Sofia got the worst of the beating that time through. When we came to the end, I had only about a half dozen stinging lashes to concern me, but her whole body, including her left breast, had welts. No blood, though. At the end, we stopped and stood beside the footlocker panting. I was preparing to run back for another trip through the line when I had a. brilliant idea.
I grabbed Sofia and threw her to the ground. I leaped on top of her supply body with my head poised just above her flowing snatch, my cock above her face.
"Suck to the count of three," I said. "It's part of the routine."
She needed no encouragement.
While I parted the lips of her pussy and prepared to dip my tongue into that dark pit, Sofia already had the swollen knob of my cock between her lips and was licking the semen from the single eye. Then, as my tongue darted down between the walls of her snatch, she slid my cock far into her throat.
We lost count.
It didn't matter. We rolled on the ground, unable to get up for a second and third run through the lines of whips. To hell with the game. It was great sport, we knew, and additional lashings would heighten our pleasure in the final act, but we hadn't been steeped in a tradition of erotica--and we were already so goddamn hot we couldn't keep up appearances.
The others saw that we were not going to make two more runs through the lines and they formed a wide circle around us. If we wouldn't run the gaunt, let, they'd bring the blasted gauntlet to us.
While we rolled on the ground, sucking each other off, our loyal "subjects" danced around and lashed us playfully with the whips. I caught the first blow on my buttocks and it made me flinch and ram my cock deeper into Sofia's mouth. She gasped and choked, but she made no effort to push me away. As a matter-of-fact, she took an additional inch of my long, arching shaft into her mouth and the tip nestled comfortably and sensuously deep in her air passage. Her teeth were biting into my flesh about halfway down my shaft.
And then the affair began to get interesting.
Big Charlie, from City College of New York, dropped his whip (or turned it over to somebody stronger) and fell to the ground beside our rolling, sucking bodies. He lifted us both from the ground and worked his body under us. I saw his cock just beneath my face and he was working it well up between Sofia's buttocks. Then, I saw his hairy thighs strain and knew that he had found her anus. She let out a little gasp and bit harder on my cock and I saw his cock sliding past my eyes, far up into her body.
As Charlie began a slow fucking motion, I felt somebody on top of me and then a pair of soft hands parted my buttocks; A large, cold, hard object prodded at my anus and I looked up to see pretty Lila straddling me, a large dildo hanging from around her hips and propped against my ass.
"I'm going to fuck the king," she said gleefully. "I'm going to hump the king."
And she began.
While the big dildo was tearing away at my non-virgin hole, I felt a renewal of the whip blows. They fell indiscriminately, hitting all of us. The wicked whip with the pieces of lead caught me alongside the rib cage and I felt the tiny stings of the plus signs and knew that I was marked with a new royal tattoo. I heard other cries of delight and anguish and knew that others were being beaten and being fucked or sucked.
It appeared that the Jilkes Monarchy was quite capable of holding an orgy on its own, without supervision from the Sicilian experts. We were becoming our own experts now.
However, even with my cock buried in Sofia's throat and my face buried in her pussy and a dildo worn by pretty Lila was assaulting me from behind and whips were raining encouraging blows on my hot body, some-thing seemed to be missing.
God, was it possible that Marella, in all her full and beautiful glory, had ruined me for full pleasure with anyone else? I couldn't believe that and so I put her completely out of my mind. Or, almost completely.
I felt an additional weight on me from above and I swiveled my neck to see what it was. Two more members of our group had joined the fray on the ground. Dan, from Boston College, was on top of Lila, shoving his cock into her ass, and Beth, from Columbia was sitting astride Sofia so that Lila could eat her cunt while she back-fucked me with the dildo. We were a growing concern. And the whips kept raining on the lot of us. And we kept growing.
We soon became top heavy and fell over in a great, giggling, laughing heap. But nobody lost contact and, in this sideways position, we were open game for additional members to join the locked orgy. Somebody--I think it was Ken, from Florida--managed to get behind Charlie, who had been on the bottom and was now on the outside, and shove his cock up Char-lie's ass. This still left Charlie's mouth available and Marga, from Ohio State, straddled his head and Charlie began to slurp loudly as he ate her flowing cunt.
The chain grew. Toodles stood beside us in front of Marga and shoved his cock deep into her throat; and then Mike, from Michigan, spread Toodles' buttocks with his big hands and began tooling his hard cock up the blonde boy's anus. The gang got so large that I figured another one would start up beside us, but the desire to be all one was too great. People kept linking onto our group until all twenty-six of us were hooked up sexually on the grass and weeds of the orchard.
Those who couldn't find a hole or a mouth found a hand and that hand was eager to comply by jerking rapidly on the proffered cock or fingering the available cunt. I didn't see half of what went on, but I know that everybody was involved because the whips stopped hitting me. I tried to concentrate on Sofia's convulsing cunt, but there were other pleasures to enjoy. I found that the dildo in my ass, wielded by the lightweight but energetic little Lila, was a considerable delight. Sofia's mouth seemed to enlarge and contract, just like a cunt, and I could feel her nose nestled in my pubic hair. I was all the way down her throat, all seven inches of hard, throbbing, aching prick.
Somebody came, prematurely I'm sure, and the spunk splattered on our bodies and dripped down, from one to the other. Warm semen dropped onto my side, mingling with the little plus signs from the whip and coursed across my stomach to land on Charlie who was down there bottom-fucking Sofia. The feel of it increased the tempo of my orgasm and I felt the bubbling, gurgling cauldrons of sex overflowing in my body.
And then I was coming and Sofia was taking it into her mouth. In that moment, Lila sensed what was happening and she squeezed the bulb of her dildo and ice cold spring water shot into my bowels. And, in that moment, Sofia's cunt seemed to explode against my mouth and I sucked harder and harder until I had her erect little clitoris pulled up between my lips. She came in a series of convulsions and then was quiet. We both were quiet while the gang around us moved toward climax like a giant animal with many arms, legs, torsos and sex organs.
Gradually, one by one, every member of the Jilkes Monarchy reached climax in the great heap of humanity, but nobody made a move to disentangle. We lay there on the grass in the middle of the orchard on a hot Wednesday afternoon and we were perhaps the happiest people on the face of the earth.
The only thing that could have made us happier would be to see the beautiful Sicilian Amazon, Marella, come walking down from the Great-house with her wide hips and great breasts swaying deliciously in the sunlight. But she didn't come.
We declared a holiday, put away our tools and went back to the Great-house. We had lifted all the hinged sides of the house and cool breezes from the mountains ran through the Great-house. We lounged on our cots and drank wine, chilled in our under-ground icehouse. With luck, we would be able to drink ourselves into another orgy that day. But I had underestimated the effects of the big orgy in the orchard.
We were far too tired and spent. We slept until dinner, sat talking quietly as brilliant stars filled the sky and then went back to bed to sleep peacefully and contentedly through the night.
The days to follow were idyllic. As August slipped into September and we began the harvest of certain crops which always mature early, we had gotten over the worst part of having lost Marella. She remained a sweet and yearning memory, one that we cherished and would never lose. The haunting heartsickness was gone and, even though we were convinced that something tragic had happened, we tried to think only of the good things about Marella. Nothing bad should ever happen to her. We remembered her regal bearing, her enigmatic smile, her lavish attentions to each of us as we made love to her, her quiet, angelic ways. She was a lot to remember.
Many times during that long month since Pietro and Marella had been gone, I had made love to Sofia or Lila or Carla or Beth--or one of the others and had actually pretended that I was making love to Marella. If they knew this, they'd kill me, but they'll never know it. I was never wholly successful anyway, but I kept trying.
In the middle of September, we were going strong with the harvest and had little time for orgies, or even casual sex. It had been an exceptionally good year and we had more crops than ever before. Our storage granaries rapidly filled up and I had to break loose a team of builders to construct two new storage sheds out of pine saplings. We were running far behind schedule and had to work Sundays, even though it was against our principles. They weren't religious principles. We merely felt that we should take one day off a week and, from long habit of having lived most of our lives in civilization, we decided that Sunday was the most natural day for resting.
The sun seems to know when its Sunday. On that day, it shines differently. Even the breezes are different and the trees bow and shiver in a different manner. Don't ask me why--just check nature next Sun-day and see if you don't agree that nature knows the day.
But that Sunday, on September 19, was a work day and we were busy hauling tomatoes up to the house for the girls to can and make tomato juice. The girls worked without clothes, wearing only blue denim aprons to keep from spilling hot tomatoes on their lovely skin. We were all hot from the sun and from lack of enough sex, but we didn't dare stop work now. We would lose a lot of food if we did.
But we did stop in the middle of the afternoon. It was for quite a different reason.
As I came up across the slope with Mark, from Dartmouth, carrying a two-bushel basket of tomatoes, I heard a distant buzz, much like a great bumble bee looking for a mate. The buzz grew into a hum and then into a small, distinct roar.
"What the hell can that be?" I asked.
Mark looked off down the valley and grinned. He pointed to a small plume of yellow dust marching rapidly along the distant road. His grin broke into a wide smile.
"Sonofabitch," he muttered. "It's Pietro's motorcycle. They're coming back."
A shout of joy went up in the commune. Every hand dropped its work and ran to the Great-house. We gathered on the slope facing the road and waited as the plume came closer and the roar became louder.
And then we saw the big motorcycle as it made its turn from the dirt road on the valley floor and started up our own narrow road, up the hill toward the Great-house. We squinted in the bright sunlight and tried to see who was on the motorcycle. When it came out of a copse of maples and pines, we all felt a great sinking depression.
Pietro was on the motorcycle, alone.
He roared into the compound and we gathered around him. He shut off the motor and looked at us with big, sad eyes. He slowly took off his leather gloves and jacket and handed them to Lila, who took them eagerly and clutched them to her aproned breasts.
"Where's Marella?" I asked.
Pietro didn't answer. He stood there in the dust and looked at all of us, one after the other. Then, his big head bowed and he mumbled: "Come in the Great-house. I tell the story."
We followed him in and, after he had drunk a large goblet of cold wine, he told his story, in halting, broken English.
More than a year ago, Marella was told by her doctors that she had an incurable disease, with less than a year to live. Her one great wish, before dying, had been to enjoy all the sex she could possibly enjoy. She had missed the life in her father's castle in Sicily and wanted to indulge herself in a series of grand sex orgies with a large number of beautiful young people.
For months, Pietro had scoured the hills around Los Angeles and San Diego, looking for just such a group. He knew about all the commune's in those hills and he had decided communal life would be ideal for Marella to live out her final weeks.
He found the Jilkes Group, spent a few days with us and decided that Marella would like us--and that we would like her. Her final days would be happy days. The tight restrictions on our activities? That was because he wanted us to be fresh and vital for Marella when she was ready for an orgy. He didn't want us sexually spent and so he forbid us to have sex until he and Marella were ready for it.
Everything fell into place. We were convinced that Pietro's gruffness stemmed from his knowledge that Marella was dying. We forgave him on the spot, although he didn't know it.
And what of Marella?
When her time came, when the disease was reaching the terminal stage, he had taken her from the commune and had flown back to Sicily with her. She had died at the end of August in her own bed and had been buried in the tiny graveyard of the family castle, near her mother. Pietro had not been able to find release from his grief in Sicily and he had wandered about the country for a time. Finally, he decided he wanted to be in the place where Marella spent her last moments of happiness.
"You are good people," he said, his voice choking on tears. "I wish to be with you."
There wasn't a dry eye in the Great-house. We all felt the loss deeply and we all felt a great sorrow for Pietro who was obviously grieving much deeper than the rest of us. We welcomed him back with open arms and he smiled, for the first time, in gratitude.
That first day was splendid. Pietro pitched in to work and, by nightfall, he had advanced our work schedule by at least a week. By the end of a week, the new storage sheds were built and all the harvest that was ripe was harvested and stored away. Pietro worked like a beast, doing the work of ten husky men, and we were grateful for it. We had time now to relax, to indulge in our very favorite pastime.
When Sunday came, I told our group we would not work on that day. We would drink wine and we would get out the whips and dildos and indulge our-selves in a most glorious orgy.
That's when Pietro turned mean again. He strode into the Great-house while we were lifting our goblets for a toast to the coming orgy. He walked up to me and knocked the goblet out of my hand, spilling precious wine across the rough board floor.
"Nobody drinks unless I say so," he snarled.
"We were just getting ready to have an orgy," I explained. "We were going to invite you."
"Nobody invites Pietro, chief," he growled. "Pietro does the inviting. You. Come outside."
He was pointing at me and I knew what was coming. I went outside with him and he proceeded to beat the hell out of me. I kept getting up, like a dunce, and he kept knocking me flat. Finally, I wised up and stayed down. Pietro stood over me with his fists clenched and said; "I am the king of this commune. In time, I will' select the one I wish to be my queen. Until then, you will do only what I say. When I select a queen, you will pay her proper homage. Never forget my words, piasano, or you die."
I didn't forget them and we went back to our old ways of doing things. There were illicit episodes down in the orchard and up the hill, but Pietro put an end to these in early October. He caught Mark, from Dartmouth, and Marga, from Ohio State, in a wild fuck up in the little clearing where I had made love to Marella and he beat them senseless. Both of them.
This went on until the end of October and we all got so horny that, at night, all somebody had to do was say a dirty word out loud in the Great-house and we all got worked up that some of us had orgasms just hearing the word. We were ready to revolt again and we were already reviving our plans to chop Pietro up with our axes and knives when he did the unexpected.
It was a Saturday night and we were sitting around the Great-house longing for an orgy and for a good. cold glass of wine. Pietro came into the Great-house and stood looking around at us in the dim lamplight. It was a cool night and we had the pot-bellied stove roaring. Pietro stood in front of the stove with his hands behind him. He had on his high boots and black jacket.
"I select my queen now," he said without fanfare. "It is you."
He pointed at Sofia and Sofia let out a little scream of delight. She leaped from her cot and joined Pietro beside the stove.
"Tonight, we have orgy," Pietro said with a half snarl. "Bring wine. Bring the queen's footlocker. Enjoy."