Flesh Gambit (2 page)

He leaned forward and rested his weight across the woman’s back as the tingling shiver washed over him and his balls drew up tight between his thick thighs. He forced himself to stand and stepped quickly back, withdrawing from the coven-whore’s grip in one fast pull.

She moaned in protest and collapsed to her knees with Khat’s seed spilling out of her. She fought to catch her breath, and her hands began to work at the hard nipples of her breasts as her body refused to shut down from her fever pitch. Khat stepped over to the slave girl. She looked up at him from her submissive position on the low couch. The wet head of his waning erection hung barely a foot away from her pretty face.

“Get that cloth,” he grunted. “Get the cloth and clean that bitch off me.”

The slave girl sprang to obey. With small hands, the girl used the soft fold of linen to wipe the last traces of dampness from Khat. Her hand held his penis and lifted it as her other worked quickly to blot up the wet. She could feel the beat of the big man’s heart through the throb of a thick vein running down the length of his manhood.

Khat looked over his shoulder with a lazy motion. He saw the coven-whore rolled up into a fetal position on the cushions, both of her hands cupped between her legs. She panted like a dog as she fought to still the racing of her heart.

“Did you get what you need?” Khat demanded.

The coven-whore nodded, obviously still too out of breath to articulate an answer.

“Good. Now you can damn well give me what I need.”

Outside the cabin, the faces of Khat’s crew were stiff with resentment.

Alyssa let the silk robe slip from her shoulders and drop into a puddle at her feet. Naked, she crossed the smooth flagstone of her tower chamber to the window. She pushed open the veranda doors and stepped out onto the little balcony. On the horizon the bloody crescent of the sun slipped away, leaving long shadows with its final rays.

Down in the market-temple of Gomorrah, she could hear the priests beating the slaves.

She smelt the sea on the breeze and heard it crash against the cliffs far below. The chill wind tightened her nipples until they grew taught and pointed sharply. It made her think of what was coming, and she suppressed a shiver.

She turned and entered the bedchamber. On the floor a circled pentacle had been drawn to precise dimensions. In the center of it, Alyssa lowered herself to her knees and parted her smooth thighs.

Across the room from her, the grimoire sat open to the summoning spell her miraculous dreams had shown her. She had meticulously memorized the incantation, for if the augur were to work, her state of arousal would be such that reading would prove impossible.

Slowly she hung her head and let her long, honey-colored hair spill across the swelling jut of her breasts, now so they fairly throbbed at the touch. Barely a woman, Alyssa’s body was lithe, nubile, and virgin.

Her hand, small and delicate, slid slowly across the flat stretch of her stomach. Her tongue began to twist and writhe as she whispered the strange, liquid syllables. The mantra was short and meant to be repeated with lyrical cadence. The words were ancient, their meaning even older. They were supplication, enticement, entreaty, and promise.

Her hand found the junction of her legs, and goose bumps rippled across her inner thighs. She moved her fingers into the dewy slit and felt lightning bolts of warmth penetrate inside her. What was damp now ran wet.

Her tongue thickened as her young body responded to her ministrations. The words she uttered came out huskier and almost slurred, as if she were drunk. She rolled her head back and let her hair trail down her back. She could scent herself now over the smell of the sea. It was a raw musk and clung in her nose, arousing her all the more.

Her words came faster. Her fingers found the swollen part of herself and began to work it in tiny circles. She heard herself gasp and forced the moans to come out as words of the invocation. From between her legs the liquid nectar part of her need spilled onto the floor in dewy drops. If her eyes had been open, then they would have seen the shimmering wave of green energy arch up like heat lightening.

Now the spell had become a single word, a powerful sound repeated over and over. It was a name and, through the ethereal folds of the mortal coil, the name was heard.

The naked slave girl looked up at Khat, eyes wide with terror.

A ball-gag was stuffed in her mouth and tied around her head. Her hands were bound with complicated knots behind her back, her legs tied in such a way at knee and ankle that she could not straighten them and rise from her kneeling position.

Khat reached down and grabbed hold of the girl by one narrow shoulder. He toppled her and left her face-down in a position of devout genuflection, her womanhood exposed and thrust up into the thickly humid air.

The slave girl whimpered, but Khat ignored her. The Four Gods decreed the role of humanity, while each individual struggled blindly to follow the path preordained for them. Khat had no concept of emancipation philosophy. If today’s gamble failed, he knew he would find himself in just such a position as he now forced on the girl.

Khat backed away from the jungle glade and melted into the thicket around the tiny clearing. He crouched down beside the coven-whore where she hid under the eaves of a hardwood tree.

The woman was naked as the slave except for sturdy sandals. Her body hair had been shorn so that her skin from head to toe was smooth and bare. A circlet of arcane etchings had been set in tattoos around her skull.

“She will do?” Khat asked.

The coven-whore nodded. “It is her cycle-time, the Ibis will smell her call from across the forest.”

Khat pulled bolas from a pouch on his harness. “Are you sure it wouldn’t be easier to enchant the creature?”

The female beside him hissed her impatience. “I have told you, corsair, if your spell is to be cast the, essence must be taken, but not by
geas
. I can cloud the creature’s eyes, but that is all.”

Everything depended on the geas, a binding spell of mystical strength.

Khat eyed the bound girl who lay face-down, ass-up in the clearing. He made a fist the size of a young ham, and his knuckles cracked. He didn’t bother to reply to the witch’s insulting tone. He pulled a small green pill from his harness belt and chewed it.

On the journey to the wetlands in his sunship, Khat had rebuffed the woman’s repeated advances and she had been sulking ever since. The coven-whores were known for their ferocity in sex and their peculiar kinks. They were also known for stealing a man’s soul through his balls.

The pair, corsair and witch, hunched in the shadows waiting. Sweat rolled freely from them, turning their skin greasy. Khat began to envy the woman her lack of body hair and unfettered nudity. The girl had begun to cry out in the meadow, and Khat knew it would not be much longer.

Their shadows moved and Khat guessed two hours passed. Once, a jungle cat, no doubt smelling the slave girl, approached the clearing. The witch’s enchantment was meant only for the Ibis, and the creature shied away when it noticed the hulking form of Khat crouched beneath the tree.

Khat lifted a wineskin filled with water treated with certain herbs that held properties which induced feeling of vitality and euphoria. He drank, swallowing several times until he felt the witch stiffen at his side. Slowly he lowered the wineskin and watched the Ibis creep into the glade.

The creature was humanoid and covered in short, milky white fur. The hands ended in talon-tipped fingers and the feet in cloven hooves. Above eyes of albino pink two long, straight horns of ochre bone thrust up, adding over a foot of height to the tall beast.

The creature’s eyes narrowed as it smelled the slave girl. Its nose twitched in greedy anticipation, and it stalked forward. From the tangled thatch of achromic fur at the demi-human’s crotch the long pink spiral of its erection emerged.

The girl began screaming around the ball-gag when the weight of the Ibis’ hands fell across her naked buttocks. Excited, the Ibis scrambled around her legs, trying to mount her.

Khat rose, making ready his bolas. The witch’s hand found his leg in warning as the Ibis suddenly turned its head toward the place of their illusion. Khat froze, every muscle tensed. He waited, forcing himself to still. If the faun-thing spooked, the corsair knew he’d never catch it in a chase.

The Ibis sniffed the humid air, but his nose was filled with rich copper tang of the girl’s menstrual blood. The witch crouched beside Khat, her lips quivering as she whispered her incantation.

Satisfied, the Ibis snorted and turned back toward the bound girl. It grabbed the girl’s hips and aimed the pink shaft of its erection toward her exposed sex. The wild thing seemed to quiver with the strength of its need.

Khat lifted the bolas, two weighted balls on either end of nearly five feet of strong hemp-rope. He snapped his arm and started spinning the hunting tool. In three tight revolutions Khat had them up to speed, and he stepped forward, shattering the witch’s glamour.

The Ibis looked up in sudden fear, and Khat released the bolas. The Ibis struggled to rise off its knees. It came up and twisted to run just as the bolas caught it. The rope trapped its arms tight to its robust torso and wound the demi-human up.

The two weighted ends thudded into the creature’s chest and back with brutal force and drove the thing to the ground. Khat moved fast across the clearing, the thick muscles of his legs exploding him forward with relentless power.

The corsair wore a harness and tightly folded loincloth in the heat. Khat’s body was grotesquely muscled and covered in swirling tattoos. Other than the bolas and a belt knife, he was unarmed, and so moved that much faster.

Arms bound tightly, the Ibis bleated in rage and fear. It twisted its head and tried to rise to its feet. Khat lowered his shoulder and drove into the struggling demi-human. Behind him the witch raced forward. The Ibis saw Khat leap and tried to twist its horns around.

Their bodies collided with the sound of a dull slap. Khat reached up with hands the size of shovel blades and grabbed the Ibis by its ochre horns. The corsair wrapped his legs around those of the Ibis and arched his powerful back, wrenching the Ibis by the horns until the creature’s head twisted painfully and locked to one side.

Frantic, the creature tried to buck its hips back into Khat to dislodge him, but the big corsair used each frantic thrash to solidify his immobilizing hold like a jungle snake smothering and crushing its desperate prey.

A shadow cut the glare of the equatorial sun from Khat’s eyes. He looked up and saw the witch drop to her knees beside the struggling fighters. Spittle flew from her lips as she uttered the incantation, frantic in her intensity. Sensing the power unfolding from the nude and hairless female, the Ibis ceased struggling in Khat’s grip and began to bleat in terror.

“Hurry!” Khat snarled. “Before its brothers hear it.”

“It is no longer aroused!” The witch hissed.

“Earn your money before we’re killed!”

The coven-whore wasted no more words in futile protest. Her head dropped like a headsman’s axe and her mouth found the struggling Ibis at its root. The creature relaxed under the witch’s manipulations, and Khat locked his ankles, trying to ignore the sounds of sucking, wet rhythm the witch used to force the Ibis’ excitement back.

Once the shuddering creature was aroused, the witch took the pink member in one steady hand and finished the creature off quickly. Khat felt nauseas as the Ibis stopped its bleating and merely began to quiver in his grip.

The coven-whore guided the Ibis expulsion onto her poultice where cloth and ground vegetation soaked up the thick seminal fluid. She jumped to her feet, carefully folding the poultice cloth in such a way as to ensure nothing escaped.

“It is done.”

Khat released one of the Ibis’ colored horns and drew his belt knife. He pressed the edge of the blade down against the creature’s throat. The demi-human stiffened in fear as Khat uncoiled from it.

Khat crouched over the Ibis, knife at its jugular. Slowly Khat rose and, slicing at the ropes, finally pulled the blade free. The faun-thing scrambled to its feet and ran off into the wetland. Sweat rolled down off Khat’s forehead and pooled in the empty socket of his left eye.

“We good?” He demanded.

The witch nodded as she carefully placed the poultice in a small haversack she’d secreted away in their hunting blind. Khat walked over to the slave-girl and began cutting her bounds.

“Let’s get back to the ship,” Khat said.

While Alyssa cast her invocation, the mistress
Infantana
of Gomorrah’s tallest spire enjoyed the fruits of power three floors below the praying girl. She stretched on her chair like a cat and caught the reflection of herself in the numerous mirrors she had set about the private room.

She liked what she saw reflected there, liked how it made her feel, aroused and self-satisfied. She wondered how that ass, Khat, could have thrown away their nights together. His sudden leaving made her angry and frustrated. She looked to her slaves.

“Pour,” the
Infantana
commanded.

A slave boy sprang to obey, but the blonde aristocrat stopped him with a gesture of her leather riding crop. Instantly the boy froze, and the serving girl beside him stepped away from the wall and scurried forward.

Tongue pressed against the full swell of her bottom lip, the
Infantana
watched the dusky-skinned slave fetch the decanter of chilled wine. Shut away from the sea breezes, the new ruler of Gomorrah’s wealthiest family wore the briefest of silks against the wetland heat. The silks were of deepest purple, the color of mourning, and made the vivid platinum of her pale hair shine in contrast.

Slowly the
Infantana
lifted the slender arm holding her cut crystal glass from the arm of her luxuriously padded and throne-like chair. She lifted it out toward the girl in a lazy gesture.