Crimes & Lovers

Chapter One In a land beyond time, in another world, in a country of castles and kingdoms, of slave queens and noble whores, a barefoot girl with the virtue of an angel stood shivering before an audience of thieves, and traders, gawking noblemen and their ladies, her future ripped asunder, irrevocably altered by a foolish whim. Torches blazed serving as fire-spewing heralds to the evil done in the counting house dungeon. The theatre had not yet begun this night, and the chaotic company chattered like magpies. Gossips whispered tales into the shocked ears of the unknowing. Gamblers laid their last illegal bets on outcomes, and under the table, money was exchanged that would not be taxed by Lord Nor’s magistrates. Under other tables, whores took c***s in their mouths for pleasure, while roving hands lifted the skirts of rich harlots and gentle ladies, their asses fondled in plain sight. Breasts were bared for the eyes of ogling men, n*****s were pinched and squealing women blushed to have their wares displayed so lewdly. Two, three, even four rounds of ale had been poured into tankards held by outstretched hands. And the drunkenness that followed only lifted the last shreds of decency in this teaming mass of uncivilized humanity. The master tradesman beat his gavel for nearly ten minutes before the barbarous assembly finally took their seats to gape at the spectacle about to be performed before them. And yet, none desired to miss this brutal ravagement. It was, after all, what they’d come to see. The laying waste of an innocent maid, a mere breath of spring, one of the earth’s fair flowers, just as she was about to bloom, was an act so repulsively vile, so cruelly treacherous, and yet so deliciously pleasing as to make it a ritual that warranted its repetition. For twenty years without exception, in the spring of the year, the rite launched the legal bartering season. Lord Nor blessed this act of graceless savagery to appease his restless masses after a bitter winter, even though he’d not attended the ceremony in several years. He was superstitious, and often feared these ravaged maids were strangely magical with the power to upset the steady waters of his kingdom. With that in mind, he was often away at war or hunting—those activities twin pleasures he pursued with as much relish as this throng in the counting house dungeon relished the moment about to explode before their eyes. The barefoot girl was already on stage. Her hands were chained behind her, her head held proudly high, though the fear in her eyes was alarming. She quaked beneath the thin frock that covered her slight form. With torches flaming behind her, the outline of her fair body could be seen in silhouette. Her breasts were yet slight, surprising perhaps, since she was of the right age, eighteen. Many previous girls were much more well-endowed than this one. Ah, but her body was delightfully curvaceous, her hips well-rounded, her waist slim and her n*****s were curiously large, the two generous buds poking through the sheer fabric of her attire. Her pale red hair was tangled in wild locks that dangled across her face. Though she tried to fling them back, tossing her head, she was hardly successful. But how that hair gleamed in the light of the flickering orange flames—as though a part of this innocent lamb was as savage as the company she faced. The pale scared eyes peering out from behind that hair looked panic struck. She stood frozen with fear, though her heart beating hotly in her chest. Perhaps she’d fought when she was captured. The spit and fire would be expected and enjoyed. Such moments bred all kinds of speculation. In the clamoring crowd with necks straining to get a better view, one pair of womanly eyes looked on, with both the lust of her fellows, and the sheepishness of the tender flower before her—thinking back in time. The master tradesman pounded the gavel again, irritated. This year’s assembly was especially rude. “Shall we give the maid a reprieve, or will you nasty folk hold your tongues,” he roared. There were a thousand shushes around the room, the agitation subsiding for a moment, though it would only be brief for the way it still brewed just underneath the surface of their collective quiet. The master snarled and then sneered, though it was unclear for whom that sneer was meant—the girl or the audience. “You have another, my fine folk,” he addressed the crowd, “plucked from the teaming streets, a babe, a mere child, a virtuous innocent. Shall we celebrate her purity?” The master posed the question seriously and the crowd murmured, stirred, but yet silent. “Or shall we rip her virtue from her and make her an offering to lust?” The crowd roared, hands pounded the tables and boots hit hard against the floor. It took another ten minutes of the master’s hard hitting gavel to calm them again. “So be it!” he roared as he smashed the heavy hammer into the block of wood. The crowd roared again, but quieted on its own as three men advanced on the fainting beauty from behind. One stood at each side, dressed only in trousers, their brawny muscles had been oiled and gleamed like the maid’s lustrous tresses. Their hair was loose, falling around their shoulders. Their faces had been freshly shaved. The third man stood behind her, with his bald head oiled and gleaming as dearly as the chests of the two men at her side. He wore a leather vest and leather britches with a laced codpiece, and boots polished to a shine. His dire expression was meant to capture the eyes of the audience. The girl gazed side to side, but she did not see the man behind her or his menacing grimace. Yet, she could feel his hands enclose her bound ones and hold them tightly. “She is your prize,” the master shouted, “how would you have her?” A thunderous clamor began, “Bare her breasts!” And the boots pounded the floor again as the throng cheered. “Whip her,” other voices shouted from the sidelines. “Strip her! Make her dance!” The whole room rocked wildly. Bets were placed on how long it would take to de-virginize this appointed damsel. While the bald man held the maiden’s hands, one of the men at her side, grabbed the bodice of her dress and ripped the garment to her waist, exposing the delicate breasts to the teaming air and the eyes of the entire theatre. Tears streamed down her flushed cheeks as she tried to look away. The bald man’s free hand massaged her breasts from behind. His lips descended to the crook of her neck and the barefoot girl shuddered. “The whip, the whip, the whip,” the crowd roared and one of the bare-chested brutes withdrew the dreadful implement from the belt around his waist. “Against the cross!” The crowd knew each act of this ghastly play, each scene, each line by heart. Hearing the crowd’s commands the three men complied. The bald man released the girl’s hands, and then turning her about, shoved her toward the two crossed beams of wood that had been pushed into the center of the make-shift dais. The three, binding her wrists to the ends of the cross, and her feet to the massive beams below, immobilized her. One of the long-haired pair would begin with the whip against her back. She was to be flogged with force—and finesse. For these spectacles it was not wise to deplete the maiden in the first minutes. She would have to last some time to satisfy this expectant crowd. And she’d have to fight, to scream, to suffer and then to be pleased. Not one step in the thrilling process could be missed or wasted. The flogging began gently, and the maid’s fair-skinned back jerked softly with each blow of the three-taloned leathers that hit the tender surface. As though teasing the audience that wanted the full force of the whip laid on, these first strikes were more like caressing love-play than invigorating cuts that would send shocks of pain through her body. Yet, as the leather played with her undulating shoulders, the cries for more force rose throughout the close confines and began a chant that the whip-wielding brute heeded. Laying on the talons with a crescendoing fervor, he made the barefoot girl shriek. Her cries, both sad and anguished seemed as loud as those of the hundred men and women in the theatre who demanded this beating. As the intensity mounted, so too did the lust of the audience. Seeing her striped back take on the color of a setting sun inspired more brutality, and then the next phase of the girl’s torture. “Bare her body!” “Thrash her ass!” “Her cunt, her cunt, her cunt!” Even the women in the audience screamed. The flogging ceased and the three men descended on the limp child, pulling her from the cross. The master tradesman rose to the podium again as the girl was brought around to face the crowd. She tugged at their confining hands, an angry spirit in her rising. The crowd went mad. “Let’s see her fight!” “Let her kick!” “Impale her ass!” The roar was deafening. From the second tier of spectators, a woman’s eyes swam with tears, even as she cheered with the others. Those around her jabbed her with their elbows and shouted in her ear about the assets of this poor young maid. She smiled and cried inside, at the same time her salty tears stung her eyes. The master tradesman banged his gavel once again, and once again the wild crowd subdued its incessant demands, heeding the man’s booming voice. “You have your offering gentle people. She stands before you the sacrifice of spring. There are dozens more slaves awaiting your inspection, would you not have compassion on this one, let her be free, auction this beauty with the others?” “No!” the shout rose in an instant. The gavel hammered again and the crowd squelched its cries. “Then you shall have her,” the master informed them. “Make her naked,” he said turning to the three who held the girl captive. “NO!” she shrieked. “Please.” Her wail was breathtaking and pitiable. She had no clue to the trial that awaited, and yet, she rightly feared the worst. “Let her plead,” some rabble rouser in the front row barked. “Let her beg us,” another chided with glee. The master turned to the barefoot girl and she looked at him with anger and sorrow both mixing with her tears. “Ah, master, please!” she whimpered so that hardly anyone could hear her, though the audience could see she was desperate. “Please.” The master looked on as the girl and crowd played two sides of a jarring song in a dissonant counterpoint. He was persuaded by both. Though he was not an inconsiderate man, he was more a man of expediency and self-interest. He took his eyes off the barefoot girl, and with a sneering glance to the crowd turned to her three attendants and gave the order. “Strip her naked!” The crowd went wild. Officials with staffs moved before the dais to block an onslaught of zealots from charging forward. The girl shook with fear. “Take your seats!” the master ordered the crowd with the gavel hammering the block. “Or I shall have her removed!” Quiet reigned for a time, the audience reduced to hushed and passionate whispers as they watched with anticipation. While the two long-haired attendants held the struggling girl’s body by her arms, the bald-headed man stepped around her and placed his hand at the waist of her dress. Then with a fierce tug, he ripped the cloth into shreds, leaving it to settle at her feet, as he exposed her nether regions for the eyes of the audience. More tears streamed down her face. She trembled, tried wearily to jerk away, but knew her fate was written. Her perspiring thighs quaked while the curls of her pubis took on a lovely rose-brown hue, glistening with female dew, leaving some to believe she was aroused. The bald man stepped to one side of her and sunk to his knees so that most of the audience could see the full disclosing. After prying open her thighs with his hands, he parted the pubis so the pink skin and bud of her c******s could be seen by those in the first several rows. The girl blushed, but not so anyone would notice, save perhaps the woman in the second tier, who could read the young beauty’s expression as though it were her own. “Rip her free!” the crowd began to chant. “Let the blood spill!” “Give her to us!” They were driving for the end, perhaps too quickly, but that was to be expected. It had been a hard winter in Nor’s kingdom, and his minions needed relief. They needed the spectacle of this sacrifice and perhaps even more they needed what would happen in the hours afterwards when the auction of slaves would proceed. The good master tradesman knew them well, he knew that the timing must be precisely right. He knew the time for plucking this flower from the bed of virginity was now. And he gave them their most desired wish. “Pass lots and take her to the stone!” he announced. Then he swept from the podium and waited in the wings while the ravagement proceeded. The girl struggled with every ounce of strength she had, trying to wrest herself from the grasp of the two long-haired men. Yet, their strength was too much for her and they pulled her to the stone bench in the center of the dais. While she struggled, the bald man made the rounds of the room with an earthen vessel filled with stone tiles. Each man in the room drew a tile from inside until three had pulled out the marked stones that gave them the right to plunder this girl’s virtue. With the girl laid back on the cruel granite bed, her thighs were spread wide by her two attendants and her hands clutched tightly overhead, secured in the fist of the bald-headed man. Prepared for the violation, the three lucky men descended on her. As the first stepped forward, he stood some moments looking into the girl’s frightened eyes. Banging his erection against her pubis, he watched as her eyes filled with tears, but he was too aroused to be moved to sympathy. “Please no,” she murmured softly, but he could not hear her for the noise of the crowd cheering him on. Then, too overcome by lust to draw out the moment any longer, he plunged his erection deep into her unspoiled v****a, and the crowd thundered to hear her anguished cry rise as if it was going heavenward. The girl thrashed about in anger and lust. The pain present, but not foremost in her thoughts, she seemed on a strange precipice between revolt and sensuous joy. Her body deceived her. And even her cries were not the screams of a maiden being tortured. The longer the hefty c**k pummeled her insides, the more she seemed to relinquish to the incessant probing. Her attacker held off his climax for some time, which only added to the amazing spectacle of raped victim and the rapist finding some common ground within her body. Though she might have spat on him when he withdrew from her and moved to her face, she licked the depleted stalk almost lovingly. Her next assailant was poised for her mouth as well, coming forward almost before the first was finished. Mounting the granite slab, he straddled her chest so his organ could be taken by her open mouth. He drove it deeply, forcing his way inside beyond her moaning cries and her attempt to gag and spit him out. He implored her to give him entrance, to suck the hot rod with lips and fondle it with her tongue. Though she resisted to the end, he was not displeased with her, and she not as disgusted as any witness would think. The more she got used to the taste of a manhood in her mouth, the more this too was less vile. When the climax finally came and he spilled his seed about her face, she looked at him without contempt, unconsciously licking her lips of his residue. She was lost to herself, vacant and depleted, wary and yielding, yet strangely satisfied. The woman in the second tier recognized the look because she could recall the feeling in herself. With the third man descending on the withering maiden, the crowd began its rumbling again. Cries for the final justice resounded off the walls. It was time to complete this ritual and time to move on. The agitation in the room grew strong. The master tradesman was tempted to return to his gavel, but he remained on the sidelines watching the proceedings carefully, lest they become too tumultuous as they had several years ago when the victim did not survive the sacrifice. This crowd was, however, immediately deterred by the man with the marker. He was a roguish, blackguard from some territory beyond Illusia. His dress was peculiar, marked by a gold threaded cloak that covered most of his hefty form, and skin the color of freshly turned earth. There was just a fuzz of hair at his chin, while his head was as bald as the man that held the maiden’s hands. As he approached the barefoot girl, she whimpered seeing the blackest of eyes peering at her. “Give her to me,” he said with a power of command that her captors could not ignore. He’d removed his cloak, handing it to a young man that attended him. Reaching the girl’s loins he took her hips in his hands while her attendants freed her. Then with a gentleness uncommon at such rituals, he turned her about, drawing her knees under her. “You shall take her ass?” one long-haired man whispered to him. “So, I shall,” he agreed, though first he brought the girl’s nether crack to his face and ate of it as though he was eating exotic fruit, and drank of it as though it was fine wine. His tongue probed both orifices and the girl began panting and cooing. It no longer seemed to matter that this indignity was being witnessed by an attentive company that would never forget the look they saw on her face. The more she took this pleasure, the louder she cried. Her body bucked freely against his face. He had his fingers in her v****a and his tongue at her nether hole when she cried the loudest. Then, at the moment when her body wrenched wildly with orgasm, he pushed her down, grabbed hold of her sides and planted his erection beyond the mellowed sphincter, deep into her ass. He stretched her wide and made her full. But she rode him without the pain that might have marked this violation. Though she screamed in reply, only the woman in the second tier guessed the girl’s state of mind. Sharp pleasured spasms ripped wildly through the maid’s ass until the black man’s climax broke free as did her own. In the quiet minutes that followed the finale, the girl was left slumped against the cold granite alter. Her attendants hung close by, but did not touch her. The bald man that had held her wrists disappeared as did the first two men that had taken her v****a and mouth. The third man with his fancy cloak, slipped inside the gold and vermilion garment and walked toward the back door, uninterested in what was to follow. And then, the master tradesman reappeared. “She is your first slave, available for purchase,” he announced. The girl lay in a spent heap, internally pondering her last hour, while the master ran his fingers gently through her tangled hair as he spoke. “Hardly prime perhaps, but you saw that spark of fire in her eye, perhaps it can be raised again.” He spoke with little conviction. Rarely did a sacrificial lamb bring a good price. She was considered used goods, merchandise that had been so plundered as not to be a good buy for a slave or wife. She’d be replete with anger and self-righteous agony. Even if her loins were strong and her p***y warm, these deflowered creatures often turned into shrews and nags, disheartened malcontents or wilted violets with no soul remaining to wage a decent life. All the master wanted was a fitting price, some freeman to purchase her for whatever reason and get her off the dais. He had a whole storehouse of slaves to sell at auction before the night was over. It took some minutes for anyone to say a word. Most in the theatre were exhausted and breathless, needing some moments to recoup before the rest of the auction commenced. Most ignored this first sale. But there was one who was quite intent on the purchase, and moved forward anxiously. Because of her obvious position, when those around her saw this insistent woman pushing her way to the front, they parted out of respect. The dark-haired, brown-eyed beauty in the second tier, the one dressed in silk and ribbons, who wore a collar of gold and jewels against the whiteness of her bosom, finally emerged from the rough-clothed masses. Reaching the rail, she raised her hand. “Will ten ducats purchase her?” she asked boldly. “Ah, milady, there are others much more worthy of you.” “She is the one I want,” she returned, not unkindly, but quiet firmly. “Yes, milady,” he nodded. “Ten will do, I’m sure. Unless there are other bids?” He raised his head to the crowd behind her. Then looking back at the finely dressed noble lady, he nodded his head. “She is yours.” “Thank you,” she replied quite pleased. The barefoot maiden had a slave collar snapped around her neck, and was led from the room on a leash held by one of the lady’s attendants. This was certainly an odd way to begin a spring time auction, a woman of such nobility purchasing a slave of no account as this one. But then, few would make much of it, since they were anxious to get on with the proceedings. There was coin jiggling in their pockets, begging to be spent, and slaves behind the dais in their cages ready to be traded freely on this opening market day. Perhaps some in the theatre recalled that ritual years before, but most would never know why Lady Casia, Lord Nor’s wife, would want this once fair maiden, when she could have any slave in Illusia for her own.