Chapter 5
Unendurable Pleasures
Professor Bastion Creature-Scott, Dithering Manor, Shambling Way, Oxford: Sir, in contemplating the actual strictures and privations encountered in Middle Eastern residence, I must observe that your tutorial instruction sorely neglected several critical hazards.
Item: Sweat. Hurry and bustle in a humid, tropical sea coast area produces copious perspiration along the lower body.
Such moisture adhering to the backside and upper legs has an abnormal propensity for freezing upon contact with large, inconveniently encountered ice masses. This may immobilize an individual attempting to extricate herself pom an awkward seat purchase upon said mass.
Attempts to free one's ice-bound person may result in hysterical weeping, occasioning further perspiration and consequently enhancing immobility.
Item: Olives. I find your eulogistic monograph, Olea Europaea, Saviour of the Once-Fertile Crescent, to be mysteriously incomplete.
This dietary- staple, when lodged in a warm, moist cranny or crevice, displays an alarming propensity to adhere to any frozen surface.
So cleaving to such a surface, it requires abnormal macular effort to dislodge-the more so when the muscle- group so employed has limited prior experience in tje intricacies of grip and cartage.
I find your revealing publication about the distasteful little fruit entirely without reference to this common problem.
Item: Ice. A careful inspection of faithful notes taken at your tutorials reveals one off-handed remark advising persons in the tropics to avoid an ice cube in one's cocktail lest undistilled water "keep you cocking your tail in the loo."
Not a damned word warned of the dangers of frost-biting your bum on desert ice floes . . .
Juliana composed the letter as she slurped and vacuum-mouthed an unsavory male member. Didn't these fellows ever wash their fellows, she wondered, or did the arrogant heathens depend on women to do that chore for them?
She nipped and tongued in her best British public school manner. Mayhap . . she popped down for a comprehensive lingual tour of the hairy-bagged cods. Kissy, kissy. Getting hot enough for you?
Her lips traveled up the potent prong. She heard the usual footfalls. The olive's return, just as she felt close to scoring a climax.
Ah, well, she had hopes for the other ready meatus as well. The randy giant looked so near to proving a gusher.
She stumbled to the ice cake and the much-traveled olive.
"At this sport, I believe, you are no novice." The white-clad eunuch bowed Lucretia Sue through a doorway.
Her naked skin glowed from a brief, but needed soak in hot, perfumed bath water. She no longer smelled like a lady wrestler as she stepped in from the prison corridor.
The room held soft-toned carpets and pillows, Deco-framed mirrors, and a prominent backless divan. Delicate, distant sounds of stream water rambled, with birds calling in the background.
She sniffed. The air smelled vaguely like the closeness under the polo carpet, without the heavy woolen mustiness.
"Odd scent."
"An essential oil rubbed on the light bulbs. It affords fragrance without tiresomely smoky incense sticks."
"Puree of Musk Ox?" she hazarded, tilting her head to view the hook in the ceiling. In one corner a silk cloth inadequately concealed some chromed harness and the edges of certain rubber novelties.
"The oil's trade name, I believe, is Essence of Hot Girl-secretions from the skin and certain specific membranes, extracted during protracted coitus."
"Dandy. Let's be candid, sugar babe. What's this Unendurable Pleasure Indefinitely Prolonged jazz? I thought they'd slapped a copyright on that when My First Two Thousand Years hit print."
"Your breadth of experience is ever pleasing." His smile seemed genuine, if still bittersweet. "Do you recall that line where Salome states 'My body is a dwelling for a multitude of beings'? So do you beguile in your endless diversity.
"Your next punishment was named in homage to George Sylvester Viereck and Paul Eldridge. The prolific Mr. Viereck may forgive the literary liberty in view of his range of knowledge, as displayed in his prison memoir, the ever-enlightening Men Into Beasts."
The eunuch removed his shapeless jacket. He hung it from a curving Art Deco hat tree. "It shall be my most exquisite pleasure to require your complete cooperation in certain uncommonly elongated carnal acts."
He draped his shirt from another peg. "This chastisement, may I remind, is for the seduction-"
"I suspected Prince Daoud was a mite less grateful for my efforts than his enthusiasm implied at the time." She tried to perch on the divan. The twinges in her battledored rump made it adviseable to stand.
"What I understood earlier, of buddy, is that you're . . . uh, hors de concours."
"An admirable euphemism." He removed his Western shoes. "Surely knowledgeable women of the Atlantic shores, in their frenetic sexual liberty, must be aware that a youth taken in adolescence and shriven of his primary sexual glands will lose neither ability nor concupiscence.
"Unlike one delivered of his masculine purse before puberty, I am not your epicene, obese human ox." He loosened and dropped his trousers.
Lawd, honey, I guess not! Lucretia Sue stared at the cobra-sure rise of his chopped and channeled phallus. Clean of foreskin and ballsac, the tawny prod displayed a fearful purity of design.
"Forgive a trite aphorism unworthy of your experience, but the mind remains the primary sexual organ. This truism governs stimulation among my kind," he chuckled acidly, "the steers among the cows.
"I may enjoy full sensation and the thousand satisfactions available during coitus-save one. The limitations prescribed by ejaculation do not concern me. The adrenal and some other glands produce male hormones sufficient to induce physical engagement. I am permitted greatly protracted exercise, as long as my mind and flesh retain their enthusiasm."
Lucretia Sue had the sinking realization that she had fallen to the eyebrows in the nasty and the awful. Might as well take the bull-sorry, the steer-by the tail and face the facts squarely.
She inhaled. "I have only one question. Do forgive my candor, as Ju' once remarked a million years back. You don't have to answer, but out of womanly curiosity, have you ever-I mean, did you ever . . . before the operation, that is-?"
His lips twitched. "You are the first person to inquire, of any so sentenced. I remained virgin of coital contacts with females-or with males, and, as must be specified in lonely lands, with any domestic animals.
"I had a strict religious upbringing. I did not engage in that passion of dreaming youths so erroneously ascribed to the leader Onan. I held myself spotless from self-corruption, As to any nocturnal emissions, I have no memory."
He stepped free of his trousers. A thoughtful and sardonic expression touched his face as he draped them on the Decotree. "My surgery in Damascus was performed by a woman physician.
"Ah, you appear startled. The female role is complex in our lands. Egypt and Syria-once united in republic-have educated, uncommon women in all professions, including medicine and law.
"This female physician found the charity to provide a first and last peak experience of ecstasy. She did so without asking, as I lay bewildered in my hospital bed. She employed only her naked hand, the same hand that, scrubbed and gloved less than an hour later, proceeded to . . ."
He made an eloquent gesture as his risen phallus stiffened.
Talk about your castrating Western bitches . . . Lucretia Sue comiserated. "Good training for your job with the local royalty, honey chile?" "You perceive the perversities of my employers correctly." His smile hinted at depths she knew she'd be plumbing very, very shortly. "We have ample opportunity and means to indulge in amusing invention."
She stood gamely on the balls of her feet. "I guess you intend to make this as unpleasant for me as possible. Do I suckle your honeydipper before you cornhole me-or after?"' She made a face. He appeared puzzled. "I do not speak American ... ah, I grasp the thread of your inquiry. Shall we not consider both?"
He reached and tweaked her right nipple with the nails of thumb and forefinger. Slowly, savoringly he brought her aching body rigid with sharp, fresh pain.
"Laggard! The slovenly one who has lost this race along with you procured climactic enjoyment for her second man a quarter hour hence! You have not even wet your lips with the first!"
Not so, Juliana wanted to remonstrate as the fussy little warder ranted. Her lips trailed slime from the pre-orgasmic syrupy oozings of both brigands. Her lips had lost their feeling from the constant, numbing attentions to both rugged shafts.
The men now stood side by side. The race had long since been lost. The triumphant fellatrix had been led away. The olive had been retired to stud duty-or wherever olives go.
The other loser had oralized her two targets to potent foamings. Not so Juliana. Only the thick, constant effusions from the two towering pricks had kept her lips and tongue from galling.
Her spirit had been chapped raw. Sisyphus had no more nightmarish a task. She shifted from one looming cock to the other to keep each erect and on the bubble. Neither seemed inclined to come.
"Wait, now! Perhaps this may spur the industry of your miserable mouth!"
She knew dully that hands dragged her to her feet. Ungentle men pinioned her arms and forced her, belly down, across the top of a misty ice block.
Christ, she hated that glacial burn! Her lips tried to cant upward, free of the ice.
Her legs were hauled into midair, throwing her weight onto breasts and tummy. A callous hand seized her hair. Her face was twisted around so that she could see as well as feel.
An olive branch lashed at her. She recognized it from all those insipid images of peaceful doves making war no more.
The leafy switch licked viperishly into her bare soles. Her belly froze to the iceberg. She couldn't even writhe as the branch welted her feet.
Again! Again! Again! The red rush of pain throbbed through her whole body. Again! Again! Again!
Once more nightmare receded, reality crowding in to clear her fellatio-blurred brain. Each angry slash etched her soul as well as her skin.
Once again it was School.
Uncompromising fingers peeled her from the clinging ice. Her nipples stang, as if raw. The men marched her on screamingly anguished feet. They threw her on her knees before a darkly rearing male sceptre.
Perhaps the sight of a whipping did it, perhaps the violence of her renewed attack. The sullen prick sputtered and spat into life within moments.
Her choking gullet knew its maiden baptism by the salten stream of a male orgasm. She gargled the porridgy stuff. Her head snapped back, but not far enough. Gouts boiled along her teeth and tongue.
When the mighty engine paused, the men dragged her on skinned knees to the other upstanding member. Her soiled mouth closed on the head, repeating its degrading labor.
Within two minutes, pulsing cream climaxed down her gagging throat. She reared away, only to catch spermy splashes in her eyes and nose.
She lapped the painful cup of abasement as fully and truly as she had at Messaline Straightways' flogging hand ... or in Aramilla Ponsonby's enslaving bed. She faced her humiliation with perfect clarity of mind, agony of body, and defilement of spirit.
She lived as she had not done since Miss Maelstrom's. And she knew it.
Over a dozen mellow golden needles lay on the deep blue velvet liner of a flat silver case. The eunuch chose one carefully.
"The Chinese have remarkably advanced upon the older, Tibetan system of acupuncture, utilizing currents of natural energy within the body." His fingers ran along Lucretia Sue's flank.
She hung in space. Jonathan Edwards' sermon about sinners in the hands of an angry God came to her mind through his image of a spider dangling over a flame candle.
A chain from the ceiling hook supported a too-tight leather cinch about her middle. A lighter set of links ran tautly from the small of her back to her ankles, arched above her buttocks. Her legs remained cramped and doubled, though her arms fell free.
The eunuch deftly inserted a gold needle where her buttock met her thigh. For a wonder, she found it didn't hurt. He slid a second into her flesh on the opposite side.
"Tantric mysticism may be seen as overly relying upon sexual symbolism." He stroked her upper gluteal hummocks. He pierced her so close to the bony tip of her spine that she winced, though she only felt a cool rush, as of water through her loins, as the needles entered her.
"Yet, Tantra deals with archaic forces, ancient to the times when great beasts prowled the earth guided by central nervous systems more sophisticated than the rudimentary brains within their skulls."
He touched her shoulders, probing the tense body armor of her muscles. He found spots and slid sharp golds lengths into her flesh four times. She began to be aware of a curious warmth suffusing her bent body, as if a volcano-warm stream flowed directly through her blood and bones.
"The ear is much misunderstood in Western physiology." He guided two slender shafts into each shell. "Complex lines of energy involving the brain can be tapped, and the whole system affected-so."
His fingers spread her labia. Her clitoris rose as sudden sexual voltage electrified her nerves. Crouching he made a single, transverse insertion.
A pressure built relentlessly within her, seething from the base of her spine.
"Crude clips on the nipples and netherlips can achieve a similar effect. Your Atlantic coast S&M parlors specialize in such. For a passionate woman, though, whose energies merely need direction, not coarse stimulation ..."
"Truly unendurable pleasure?" She felt even her lips warm with peculiar tingling sensations. The soft tissues of her body responded, swelling. "Indefinitely--?"
"A woman can attain numberless orgasms--or, precisely, to the limit of her cardiovascular endurance-if her erotic energies but concentrate themselves. A man--" He snapped the silver case shut. "But I suffer no gross physiological limitations as do the unaltered.
"I have always found Jakes Barnes situation in The Sun Also Rises to be an artificial one, a projection of Western neurosis. In the East even a penis-less man may make full use of so hearty a nymphomaniac as Lady Ashley."
"Oh."
Not by chance, but by the Providence which guides the stars in their courses, Juliana stared at that moment at a stout ceiling hook. Her feet hurt so badly she could scarcely stand. Yet she'd rather march on gravel-bed roads than partake of that hook's hospitality.
The warders' punishment room avoided institutional severity. Mosaiced walls showed a geometric Tree of Life along one surface, a rippling floral design on the others. The floor had been set with tiny tiles to duplicate a carpet's intricate patterns.
And the ceiling had a hook.
Juliana could recognize a classic Chinese basket depending from the hook. Dear Richard had taken her to a celebrated Soho review, Naughty Harem Harlots in Bondage.
She had laughed. The erotic tableaux had been ludicrous, but stimulating. Although she'd politely-at that time-spumed his requests for oral enticements as they retired that evening, she'd emulated the deliberate rhythms of a bangled nautch girl as they'd froliced in their bedroom.
Now she stood in a room whose ceiling had a hook and a Chinese basket.
"I shall explain the mechanism."
"I understand the apparatus," she informed this warder, a fat, contemptuous creature with an absurd broad-brimmed white hat.
"Ah, I forget, an expert in matters unsuitable for a lady's knowledge." He selected a judicial cat of nine tails from a wall rack. Silver crescents gleamed at the tips of knotted gut lashes.
"The sentence is 120 strokes."
Juliana studied the terribly, terribly long whip. She knew the Chinese basket displayed thighs, buttocks, and muff to freest advantage.
She screamed.
Two guards stepped in to quell any struggle. She gave them none. She let herself be led as limply as any blancmange.
Life is pain, the public school axiom pounded in her temples, life is pain.
"Our girls excel -- they can ride the flames as courageously as dear Wagner's Brunnhilde." Miss Maelstrom had conjured that galloping image at the graduation exercises.
"Any silly can buck up in pleasant circumstances. Remember the nobility and grace of our monarch Charles on the scaffold. Remember the calling of Empire and the duties to our Commonwealth."
As they strapped her into the harness, Juliana closed her eyes and thought of England.
Richard Mellroot and the CIA man tiptoed in. They had exchanged their leather shoes for felt slippers, silent as kitten's paws on the tile floor.
Juliana hung in a harnessed ball, her back lowermost, her inverted head away from them. Her buttocks projected temptingly. The velvet grove gaped between flushed thighs.
A winsome moue, Richard realized for the ten-thousandth time. Love stirred at him.
The executioner winked broadly as he exchanged the penal-grade cat for a five-thonged French martinet. Juliana could not see the switch. Soft Russian leather lashes terminated in jaunty crimson tassels sporting tiny knots of spun silk.
Two dozen licks from a five-thonged whip sounded more impressive as 120 strokes, Richard mused.
The martinet blurred in the air as the Arab swung. He had strength as well as lard. Five slender vipers struck her well-projected hillocks.
Juliana rocked in her harness. Guards steadied it, keeping her bottom aligned.
The arm uncoiled again. The fat wrist gave that final flip which spread the singing lashes. Her flesh juddered. The whip rills flushed an impassioned scarlet as they thickened.
After six lively cuts, the Arab took care to let the tips finish hard between the inverted rounds. He flogged the single right cheek thrice. The flaring knotted tassles just missed her pale, open labia. Hard pips rose darkly along the inner buttock slopes.
He treated the left side equally. Her muscles leaped in tightly controlled spasms. Once more, Richard admired that discipline she could display in absolute adversity- though nothing less brought it out.
The martinet lashed her broadly displayed thighs. The silken skin showed signs of rough usage. The consul guessed the Olive Race had somehow peeled a bit of her dainty hide. The knotted silk drummed in, leaving indigo streaks along surfaces his fingers knew so well.
The flogger shifted aim. The thongs clawed along the whole length of one buttock, then the other. Richard held his breath. His ears caught a strained girl-soft weeping, his wife's first whimper since the punishment began.
The executioner swung for the middle with a heavy arm. The hissing leather sailed fully into the parted love grove. Lips yawned; the pip-welted buttocks slopes recoiled. Juliana bleated nasally.
The man took his time. They watched the jellyfish writhings of her stung center. As she seemed to crest the pinnacle of fullest pain, he struck sharply.
The leather scored between her cheeks, blistering the puckered anus. Silk knots kissed those flushed lips brutally.
Juliana wailed, a lost soul impaled by flames.
Richard had lost count. The Arab surprised him by folding the martinet and bowing. Both consul and CIA man applauded his work with silent hand pats.
He bowed his appreciation as they tiptoed out. Wei, mournful cries followed them.
Lucretia Sue dangled in the air, she felt she was some great sky goddess reaching from infinity down to earth. Explosive, coupling energies darted along her arms, arced from her breasts, discharged lightning-like from her cunt.
Earth for her meant a lean muscled brown body, a face of onyx eyes and almost sneering lips that took her kisses as a heathen idol accepted tribute.
She almost slobbered as she shattered through another orgasm . . . her fifteenth, her fiftieth?
He'd moved the divan under her and taken his place. With her heels chained over her buttocks, she had little mobility below the cinch belt holding her to the ceiling.
He had penetrated her and rocked her body in slow rhythm, the genital friction building an impatient need. Her breasts brushed back and forth over his hard, hairless chest. His hands pivoted her steadily. She found herself caressing him, her very fingertips alive with erotic force.
She'd climaxed promptly . . . but ... the rocking had not stopped. The orgasm had been but a first plateau . . .a second came, a third . . .
She'd actually begged when he stopped moving her. "But you have arms, you can continue. You must continue."
His nails had tweaked both breasts viciously. She braced her palms and pushed, pivoting herself above him. The genital forces surged. His hands roamed her freely, stroking, pinching.
The lances of pain as he twisted her skin, or raked her flesh with calculating talons, only spurred the fury. She agitated herself to another explosive love-fit ... and yet another . . . Her mouth covered his cheeks and eyes with kisses. No matter that he tantalized her nipples or panther-muscled belly with his delicate, knowing hands; no matter that he ran swollen claw tracks down her inner thighs, or that his pincer-fingers savaged her buttocks as they wove up and down over his loins.
All sensations fueled pure, erotic fire. She lavished her lips on his throat, his chin. Her tongue met his and she cried in orgasmic bewilderment as his teeth closed on her love-dart, nipping and worrying like a predatory beast.
She rocked herself urgently on his untiring, piercing wand. Her hormones danced through her blood, her flesh seemed to dilate to fill the universe.
Un-en-DUR-able wild fire in-DE-fin-ite-ly pro-loooonn nnggggeeeedddd . . .
"Thirteen," Lucretia Sue's pulse beat in her throat as she spoke. Hard crimson numerals paraded on a midnight background. The clock streamed the seconds before her nose. . . 13:01 . . . 13:02 . . . 13:03 . . .
Her eyes blurred from trying to focus on the liquid-crystal numbers. Her temples throbbed, her anus distented achingly.
She crouched on a bristly rope mat, her lips canted like a bitch. The eunuch's iron gristle rammed her guts in unrelenting sodomy.
"Fourteen." She floated in a jelly of post-orgasmic sensation and throbbing pain ... 14:35 ... 14:36 .. . 14:37 ... the unvarying pace, the long sliding jabs, the raw violation of being buggered-buggered-buggered- His ungentlemanly weight lay on her back. His loins spanked at her bottom with each full, uncompromising piston-drive.
.. . 17:43 . . . 17:44 . . . she'd never realized the horror of being rump-scuttled by someone who couldn't come, who'd never shoot his wad and dismount, who wouldn't unplug himself until he chose . . . 17:58 . . . 17:59 . . .
"Ey-eighteen." Oh, oh. The hormonal broth in her blood after that epic cunt-fucking rose in tidal waves. Her Graffenberg Spot felt tickled by his colonic thrusts ... or those damned needles still did their work ... she felt another orgasm as a thundercloud, blinding her vision, crashing cannonballs in her skull . . .
"Ahhh . . . uhhhh . . . mmmmuuuuhhhh . . . nnngggaaa hhh!" She sweated and grunted down the rocky slide, a shoot-the-chutes over volcanic glass shards and broken basalt . . . 18:56 . . . 18:57 . . . 18:58 . . . 18:59 . ..
"N-n-ng-g-nnt-eeeeen!"
She squirmed her lips in bruised-animal wiggles. She couldn't control herself . . . nothing dented that unwavering plunging of his steel tool . . . nothing banked the damning fire of her body's response . . .
"T-t-w-aaaa-t-t-eeee!" 20:01 . . . 20:02 . . . cruel fingers worked on her right breast, a hot leaden lump. His knowing thumb found her needle-pierced nub, hard and alive.
"Ohno . . . ohno . . . ohno ..." Wet kisses and sharp, skin-breaking bites laved her nape and shoulders . . .
The digital seconds raced beyond her eyes. Her pulse beat them three to one ... He couldn't be human, she decided. Some demoniacal night gaunt had crept from the desert and assaulted her up the shit-chute ... she felt his soulless sand-spectre eyes driving into the back of her skull as his ramrod laced into her rear.
Pll-lleeaassee!! No m-m-MORE!
The lash of another orgasm shredded her nerves.
"T-t-ha-ha-unty-unty-" Her aching lips dribbled nonsense. The hot coal numerals branded her eyes. Upraised shingle-thin slats bit edge-on into her shins. She knelt on the agonizing platform, her wrists chained to her ankles. A ball of servility, her tongue and lips served the eunuch's pleasure.
She kissed the thing that had buggered her. God knew what kept it so fiercely upright. She sucked her own muck grimly, only opening wider as his serpentine prick probed for the back of her throat.
Her tongue felt the heated pulse of the great green vein rising along the sleek length.
That's it, she realized, spite. Pure cussedness could hold a hard-on longer than lust.
And yet . . . his patting hand touched her neck, her distorted cheek . . . something still strove within her, something centered amid those betrayed vitals that hovered over the bitterly painful slats . . .
Incredulous, she gagged and sniveled through her six hundred and sixty-sixth climax, her vagina clutching at the empty air.
Almost gibbering, a spraddle-legged Lucretia Sue stumbled naked behind the eunuch. Her six-foot rawhide body had softened to pulp.
He walked steadily in his white trousers and shirt. Dark glasses masked his eyes. He seemed carven from some deep-colored root.
The sun pounded at her numbed, pinch-blue flesh. They crossed the ground from the prison to the public flogging triangle. He had extracted the golden needles. Nothing remained in her body but a slimed memory of utter violation.
A crowd watched, white robes adding to the glare of bone-white sand, baking stone, and ash-hot prison walls. She ducked her head, carrot-bright hair slapping at her sore breasts.
An urgent hiss from the eunuch drew her face up.
A classic English whipping bench lay before the triangle, all blond oak and sun-scarred velvet. It rose in a hump at the center, the better to present a bottom for the twigs. Miss Maelstrom had used the cousin of that bench for the public, Great Hall birchings.
A tall fellow stood with arms as corded as Arnold the Barbarian's. A slight, stooped figure with rat-tailed facial hair stirred at something in an enameled bucket.
As she approached, Lucretia Sue saw the shallow trough of stinking, pickled rods. She swayed a moment, grabbing at the triangle for support. Its sizzling wood held upright.
Christ, how she'd hated the birch! 180 strokes . . . the most she'd had from Miss M had been a smoking three dozen for introducing seven-card stud to after-hours recreation.
"You will recline." The eunuch's lips curved under his shades. "I believe you know the drill."
"Kick a girl when she's down, will you?" she muttered.
The sun already had the worn velvet padding flinchingly hot. She stretched across it, feeling the life return to her bruises. Her lips curved at her zenith. Leather manacles secured wrists and ankles to the bench's four comers.
Lucretia Sue winced as she lay her cheek on the sun-fevered velvet. She tried resting her head on her stretched arm.
The heavy-muscled flogger drew a rod, forty inches of imported birch wood. The five withes had absorbed liquid, gaining weight and resiliency. Wire bound the handle and wove in a lattice-pattern up each switch. The steel flung the sun's fire at her.
"First dozen," the eunuch announced crisply. "Thirty-second intervals. Both buttocks, from the left. Open wide, Miss Merydith." She bit on the preferred gag. Something thick, a salt-tasting fish glue, filled her mouth. She couldn't spit and had to swallow.
She'd thought no agony, no indignity could reach her soul after that unflagging forced fucking. She'd been wrong. She hated the birch. All right. So? Lay on, ibn Duff, and screwed be he who first cries "Hold, enough!"
She heard the maddening zzzzzziisshh.
A blow rocked her flesh. The wooden frame creaked. Then the shock hit like Mrs. Quince's favorite iced-water enema. Her buttocks leaped.
Muscles she'd believed numbed by abuse tried to flee apart. She squeezed her eyes. Pain dug its cloven hooves into her rump.
"One." The eunuch enunciated distantly. The birch withes savaged the air. Wire-bound wood carved into rising weals. . . . hated, hated, hated the birch! "Two."
"She cuts well, better than Ju'," Richard appraised. The third swipe fell cleanly. "Too many women clench on the stroke. It's like watching someone beat wet laundry. She's tense, but her bottom still has that full bounce of character."
"Yeah." The CIA man studied as the next lick spread the switches along the lower curves. "The tail motion follows through right into the shoulders. You can see the nipples, sort of like dancing."
"Or more private recreation."
"Fine as wine, this girl." Chauvinistic pride made the American hope his countrywoman would bear up as nicely Juliana.
"Nine."
Lucretia Sue simmered, her backside glowing coals. The flaying birch tips had bitten her right flank to the blood, she knew.
More snot-thick ooze bubbled from the felt gag as her jaw spasmed from the tenth stroke. She coughed in wracking rebellion. Goo shot from her nose.
Her sinuses burned. She gulped air from the corners of her mouth.
The eleventh cut welted her thighs. The twelfth thickened the marks.
"A pause while we restore some areas." The eunuch sounded respectful. "We must also change the rod."
Lucretia Sue had no care. Her eyes puffed, her body pulsed in raw, wet agony. She barely felt the slap of the medicinal brush along her right buttock. Then the styptic fires raged along her nerves.
Jee-SUS! Her nails clawed varnish from the bench wood She reared and spat out the tooth-shredded gag.
"Would you say that a birching is more lively thai fucking a eunuch?" He picked up the mined felt. "A pity. A great effort went into flavoring that for you."
She coughed and wheezed as her rump reached new levels of pain.
Fingers rocked her jaw up, holding it open. A steel choke pear jockeyed between her teeth. "Here; no stallion spunk, but it will provide easier breathing."
He released the catch. Squat springs forced the relentless pear open. Her mouth yawned obscenely. At least she could suck in air freely.
"Second dozen, in diagonal sixes, from the right and then the left, over the full bottom."
The bircher stood beyond her waist. He hewed at the lowermost welts crossing her left cheek. Her gluteal muscles jammed furiously. Tears trailed along her distented lips.
She made the bench squeak and shudder at the next few cuts. Her salt-clouded eyes saw the rod being shaken before her. Three switches hung cracked in their wiry lacing. The flogger chattered in Arabic.
"He says you've a crupper of purest Carrara marble. He salutes you. No woman will ever be the same for him."
The exultant executioner took up a third birch. He finished the X he'd begun across her tormented hinds. She whinnied through the pear gag.
More corrosive ointment slathered her raw hide. Her head roared as the stuff burned and blighted her nerve endings.
"Eight to the upper legs. You will, perhaps, feel the weave on any trousers you choose to wear in the next few weeks."
The bircher spoke rapidly to the eunuch, who chittered back at him. "In honor of your fortitude, he'll apply the strokes in volleys to each thigh, rather than alternately."
Honor . . . ? Lucretia Sue felt saliva run from her strained mouth, cooling her hot face where it rested on the hotter bench.
The five thwacking limbs skinned her right below the sulcus. The next scorching swipes marched along her twisting left leg to the knee.
Then a sustained quartet hissed down her other thigh. The unguent daubed her abraded skin like molten lead.
"That leaves four, I imagine." Richard had tried to keep track. The severe wealage showed burgundy shot with purple ridging. Sun glinted off the greasy mass coating the worse grazes.
"One guess where they'll land," the CIA man commented.
"Four strokes, whipped in."
The eunuch touched the scalding hillocks. The marks felt stone-hard. Deftly, his thumbs separated the heavy cheeks. The sun bathed orifices he knew in delicious memory. The sore anus puffed comically.
He nodded to the executioner.
A fresh, fourth birch sang sharply against the inner buttock slopes. Tips nipped the stunned rectal vent. "One."
He could barely hold the raging muscles apart. His blood raced as the next cut whipped that tender, thoroughly reamed valley. He felt her powerful reaction down to his bones. "Two."
The switches licked further, stinging the full-lipped cunt. He lost his grip for a moment. The hindquarters slapped noisily together, seizing the birch and churning it like mill wheels.
He fought to separate the warring cheeks. "Three."
The bircher had the verge free. The eunuch held the buttocks firmly apart. For an instant he glanced at the crowd, catching the faces of the Englishman and the American.
He saw wonder, joy, and horror writ large upon their countenances. The final stroke flashed in.
The young eunuch could hear her grunt and rave. His hands caressed the tossing bottom, their fury filling him. The executioner raised his rod in salute and bowed to the woman.
The rat-mustached medical assistant made his final, deep swab with his burning brush. The eunuch released her with regret.
Lucretia Sue writhed on the bench, still spirited as i gaffed sail fish.
"Grace under pressure," he murmured delightedly. "Perhaps I shall reread this Hemingway with greater attention."
"Your wardrobe, lady consul."
Indeed it was. Juliana's entire array of outfits lay on the floor of the spacious room. Evening gowns, social suits, play pretties;-all carpeted the windowless chamber.
The nude Englishwoman's arms had been secured wrist-to-elbow. Hands propelled her in. Her bare feet wandered over her clothes. Mental torment and physical need wracked her.
"You shall choose your outfit for the plane journey." Dark eyes laughed at her distress. "Do not hurry. You still have two hours. You may choose carefully."
The door shut, leaving her alone.
A heated dose of mineral oil boiled within her. A nasty clyster had pumped it into her intestines. It had been a full day since that ghastly episode at the earthenware crock.
She'd lain in her pain and eaten, eaten. The prison governor had ordered her supplied with sweetmeats for her comfort-amply supplied.
That morning, a solicitous male nurse had compelled her to down three heaping spoons of a treacly emetic.
Her colon felt the invasion from both ends. It began to work as she skipped over the clothing.
Her left leg grew numb as she hopped (something about gut pressure on an artery, she knew vaguely). She yearned to be free . . . but . . .
She almost wept to see her lovely things spread about. She tried to kick a free space. Damn! Some slyboots had tacked all her clothes to the floor.
Juliana's innards turned tyrant. She danced around the room in horror.
"You smell like a crescent house in the hot sun, honey chile." Lucretia Sue had a pale, shadowy look. She walked beside the Englishwoman down the sun-scalded tarmac, toward the passenger jet. The airport lacked the great city amenities. An old-fashioned portable ramp butted against the door of a moderately sized plane.
"I take it earth tones are in style for we penitants." The American had an almost waddling gait. She wore her Levis and loose man's shirt again.
Juliana wanted to peel naked and trample her incredibly soiled suit. She wanted to run to the jet's lavatory and hide forever.
"I heard you got it badly." She tried to speak calmly. They hadn't seen each other until this moment. "Will you be able to sit?"
"Sugar, never again without a tremor of dread." Lucretia Sue gasped and twisted. "Ooooo . . . almost."
Juliana grabbed her arm and helped her along. The spasm looked painfully familiar. "A clystering?"
"My least favorite castrato graced me with a full syringeload of--" She gave a wan grin. The steward on the ramp ahead waved and shouted, trying to hurry them.
"Christ," the redhead whispered. "I should have guessed those li'l devils would make sure we'd have to buckle in just as soon as we hit the plane."
Juliana helped her lurch toward the ramp. Her disgrace ripe upon her, the Englishwoman's morbid interest roused.
"What did he use? Soap suds? Turpentine?" She recalled her own ill treatment and shuddered. "Lava?"
They bounded up the ramp and through the hatchway "Take your seats! No smoking! We must take off!"
The steward's face wrinkled as he pointed them toward the first class section. Other heads showed. Other passengers gabbled impatiently.
"My friend is ill--" Juliana began.
"I need the John."
"No time! We're under orders to clear in three minutes." The steward raced them down to seats.
Lucretia Sue had a weak and tipsy smile as she buckled her seat belt. "Bastards. What'd they use, you ask, sugar plum."
She closed her eyes. "God, that seat hurts my fanny- and shut up, Ju'. I'm skinned like a rabbit down there." The airplane rolled forward.
"Oh." Lucretia Sue sat tensely. "My ol' eunuch buddy shot my full pint of Jack Daniels Number 7 elixir up my unwilling guts. What else?"
Her knuckles whitened on the seatarms. "He mayhavt done me a favor at that. I've got a buzz that I couldn't get otherwise on this Prohibition-Era Islamic airline."
Two minutes into the air, Juliana sniffed. Something penetrated the earthy miasma rising from her clothes. As the plane climbed, her eyes went to her friend, who slumped in her jeans and shirt.
"So that's what a distillery smells like, Trews."
The American gave a sigh of paroxysmal relief.
Far below and behind, Richard Mellroot shook his new friend's hand. "Hope to see more of you, old chap."
The CIA man released his grip and waved as he headed for a light, single-engine Gypsy Moth.
Richard inhaled the hot, barely stirring air so richly scented with sea and desert. He knew the mysterious contentment a white man can find in a home strange to his forefathers.
The fields of bright grass and ancient trees, the while washed villages with their Edwardian brickpiles, the tang of malt vinegar rising from still-sizzling fish and chips . . . all seemed distant to him now, as if a dream.
He stared at the departing speck, the airliner holding his wife on the hop to Damascus, thence to Rome and to London.
He mused on the phantom of England, the England within.