THE PRIZE (10 page)

The tally had mounted into double figures and the line of punished slaves was becoming more ragged as they twisted and tugged at their bonds and shackles.

Ayesha’s eye was caught by the girl nearest her, the guard in front of her was about to deliver yet another uppercut lash and with growing excitement, Ayesha watched her pelvis tilt forwards, offering the soft-lipped slit of her sex for the heavy leathers and when they slapped home she watched the girl’s head tilt back and her pelvis make short sharp forward thrusts. She knew quite well what she was witnessing and all up and down the line it was happening. The noises were now throaty moans and gasps and urgent panting as the slaves waited feverishly for the slow count to bring the next lash which would take them soaring into the regions of blinding pleasure. Her eyes flicked to the watching girls who were still keeping the score and suddenly Ayesha realised why the trainer had ordered hands to be placed on heads. That way he could see at a glance where they were. The girls were counting but with even more fidgeting than the whipped ones, she could see fingers clenching in frustration and as the slow count hit thirty, she licked her puffy and swollen lips to savour the taste of woman on them and one hand began to trail down across her stomach.

“Don’t even think of it!” the trainer whispered in her ear before
announcing
the final ten lashes were to be taken from behind and they were to be laid on hard. There was a collective sigh from the frantic onlookers as the guards went behind the girls, took a firm hold on their hair and waited for the count to start.

The yard became quite noisy as the count was called. The men were swinging the whips with real intent now and Ayesha felt her vagina clench and spasm as she watched the lashes lick up the blatantly open vulvas and across the soft stomachs, imagining the pounding the clitoris would be taking. Hoarse cries came from the girls, their knees began to buckle but the guards held them up and delivered lash after lash with cold efficiency while their charges twisted and wriggled and shrieked.

“Ten!” came the final count.

The whips smacked home one last time and fell silent. The guards released their holds and returned to stand in front of the punished girls. Immediately each man’s hands went to the fly of his shorts and Ayesha saw a mouth-watering display of erect cock pulled out. All six girls had collapsed to their knees and Ayesha could see the thigh muscles straining to clench
- anything to try and assuage the need between their legs. But once they caught sight of their flagellators’ cocks straining towards their faces, the gleaming domes already shining with pre-ejaculate, they leaned forwards and accommodated the men in the only orifice they could provide; the soft and ardent little caves of their mouths.

Ayesha gazed, hypnotised by the raw eroticism of the scene being played out. Six well
-
thrashed girls knelt before their guards and passionately indulged in one of the most submissive acts a woman could perform for a man.

As their hands remained locked behind their necks they had to use their mouths to their fullest effect and Ayesha watched as they ducked their heads then withdrew, the saliva-shiny shafts slipping slowly out from between soft lips. Then they tilted their heads and licked slowly up and down, putting out their tongues and flicking at the sensitive underside of the helm. The rest of the squad was squirming and hopping from foot to foot in frustration.

“In a few weeks you’ll be just the same. You’ll be living just for the next flogging and the next fuck. Look at the sluts!” The trainer’s voice was insidious in Ayesha’s ear but she realised that she was more turned on than she had realised. She almost joined the squad in audible whimpering when, one by one, the guards grabbed the girls’ heads and began to thrust their hips at the faces. Ayesha could see the nearest girls’ throats working as they struggled to take down the thickly spurting emissions. Unconsciously she licked her lips and heard the trainer chuckle softly.

The rest of the day was a carefully stoked cauldron of pure sexual energy, controlled by the trainer. The whipped girls were given no more than a few seconds’ respite
before
they were expected to go back into training combats. Ayesha was tethered against the wall once more and allowed time to recover but as the sky began to darken she was led back into the fort by a different entrance and was put into what the trainer called simply, The Dark.

Chapter 12

No one had ever bothered to try and find out how old the passages were but once Peter Lang had seen them he had immediately spotted their potential. Delving even deeper into the mountains than the fort did itself, the ancient stone corridors passed sometimes beneath the floors of some of the rooms at the back of the fort and sometimes they meandered directly back into the mountains.

“No one knows who built them or why. No one’s ever fully explored them, so if I were you I’d stay right where you are,” Peter concluded as he prepared to leave Ayesha, his voice echoed far away into the dark labyrinth. She was trembling visibly, her magnificent - and now heavily striated - breasts shook as her breathing became ragged with panic. Beneath the hood which enclosed just the upper part of her face, her tongue flicked out to moisten her dry lips. Her hands were clipped behind her back and a belt was buckled tightly about her elbows to stop her from getting her arms in front of her by sitting down and sliding her arms underneath her. Despite the hammering she had taken from the other girls she had fought her guards furiously when she had seen the hood and the raised grille in the floor of the cellar she had been led to but once prepared she had been led quietly down the steps and now just she and he stood on the shore of an ocean of subterranean darkness.

“Please,” she whimpered, her face blindly swinging. “Don’t leave me. I....I can’t see!”

Peter went very close to her and put his arms round her, stroking her buttocks. Then he stepped back and let his hands trail round to her front and he ran his fingers through her thick pubic bush. Eager to extend any form of contact she parted her legs and let him explore the softness between them. Peter smiled as he did so. It was important that she associated the comfort of human contact with sexual contact. He caressed her breasts until she was moaning in encouragement.

And then he left her.

She whimpered and sobbed as she heard him run lightly up the steps, lower the grille and lock it. Peter waited until she had made her way, blindly feeling for the steps with her toes, up until she was crouched at the very top of the stairs, her head touching the grille. Softly he walked away, knowing that her imagination would populate the utter darkness around her with terrors far worse than anything he could inflict.

Exhaustion came to her rescue eventually and she slipped into deep sleep, her body was worn out and her nerves were shattered by hours of her ears continually straining to catch any skittering or slithering noises....or anything worse.

She woke to the sound of someone calling her name. She jerked upright and listened intently. The voice seemed to be some way off and was echoing. But at least it was real. Slowly and stiffly Ayesha shuffled down the stairs and stood at the bottom. The voice went on calling and she thought it was away to her left. Hesitantly and feeling ahead with her bare feet she began to creep towards the voice, horribly aware that she now had no idea at all of where she was.

One of the first things Peter had done when the Prince had invited him to become his trainer, was to sink small grilles in the floors of the rooms the ancient passages passed beneath. Now he had raised one and was lying down shouting for Ayesha. In the complete darkness of her hood and having been given just a glimpse of the labyrinth she was in, it would take her some time to pluck up the courage to leave her little perch at the top of the stairs, some thirty or forty yards away, and venture into the unknown, he knew that. But he also knew that she would come towards his voice, anything was better than being alone in the dark. Half an hour later she came into view, her head craning up to try and detect any clue about her surroundings and her feet nervously sliding ahead of her, an inch at a time. He smiled and reached down with one hand.

“Good girl! Come and eat!”

Ayesha sighed with relief as she heard the trainer’s voice nearly overhead and from under the lip of the hood she caught the scent of fresh bread. She tottered forwards until, joy of joys, she felt one of his hands stroke her cheek while his other offered her the bread, running
with
honey. To her heightened perceptions it was simply the most glorious of tastes and the humiliating aspect of feeding from the man’s hand never even crossed her mind. Deliberately she sucked on his fingers and ran her tongue lingeringly across the palm of his hand.

“Don’t leave me, please Sir!” she begged.

“Come closer, I want to feel your tits,” he ordered and eagerly she shuffled closer towards the voice, thrusting out her chest, determined to tempt him into taking her out of the darkness. His merest touch sent shivers of delight and gratitude racing through her as she tried to put behind her the memory of the long night of lonely torment. She felt him heft and play with her breasts, stroking his thumbs over the rubbery nipples which hardened immediately, then twisting and pulling at them. Ayesha bit back the cries she wanted to give, terrified of displeasing him. Even pain was deliverance of a sort.

But suddenly his hands were withdrawn and she heard a grille slam shut above her. She yelled and pleaded until she was hoarse but there was only silence and the suffocating darkness.

Peter stood over the grille and watched her eventually shuffle backwards until she felt the wall behind her and there she stopped, every sinew tensed.

He knew exactly how far he needed to push her before it was the right time to move her along to the next stage.

After three days Ayesha was reduced to a shambling ruin of her former beauty. Her hair was lank and her body was soiled, she sobbed and whimpered constantly as she blindly shuffled through the dark following the voice of her trainer to the next place and the next. He led her through waist deep water at one point, knowing how horrifying it would be for her to have to put one bare foot out after the other into the slimy depths. But at the other side of the flooded passage, where the floor rose again, he spent a little more time than normal feeding her. At this particular point the passage actually ran beside one of the deepest cellars and Peter had had a barred door installed. Ayesha pressed herself blatantly against the steel, squeezing her breasts through and urging him to touch them, do anything he wanted but he had to have mercy on her.

“But if I do take you out, you won’t like where I’d put you next,” he told her as he slipped a gloved hand between her thighs and watched as she immediately bucked her hips forwards.

“I would, Sir! I would. You could do anything you wanted to me.....!”

“But I can anyway.” He slid his fingers up into her vagina and began to swirl them. It was the first time he had penetrated her since she had been in the dark and she groaned in appreciation.

“Yes....I.....I...know but now I want you to do anything. I really mean it! Beat me! Fuck me! Anything!”

“I would want to spend a long time asking you questions,” he said and smiled as she stopped gyrating her hips in surprise. He carried on stimulating her however and she began to squelch. He wrinkled his nose in distaste at her smell, it was inevitable that they all stank by this stage, they all simply had to answer nature’s demands as best they could. Added to that she had just waded through several yards of stagnant water. “And have you beaten of course,” he added and smiled as she relaxed at the prospect of something familiar. She was nearly ready. When he left her that time she howled like a banshee for two hours solid and he knew that the following morning she would be ready.

He took her on a long walk before breakfast and when he finally let her catch him up he had her demonstrate how desperate she was for release and had her lie on her back, spread her legs and show him her cunt while she begged him to fuck it and then whip it and do anything that took his fancy.

“But will you then take your place out on the training ground and serve me there as well?”

The wildly gyrating hips stopped for a second as the import of the question sank in.

“Yes, Sir. Please teach me how to fight! I want to serve you. Just don’t ever leave me again!”

Tears pooled inside the hood and Ayesha could smell her own reek as she sat hunched in despair. After how deeply she had caved in, still he had left her. What more did he want? If he would just give her the chance to clean up she would show him how good she could be! For the first time she gave in to tears properly, not the sobs of despair or panic. These were of complete disappointment. She had failed to make him stay with her. For the first time in her life a man had walked away from the pleasures her body could afford him. But just as she reached the deepest depth of despair she heard the bolts on a door slide across, there were footsteps and suddenly hands pulling her to her feet. Best of all her trainer’s voice came from directly in front of her.

“You’ll regret begging me to whip you,” it said.

She felt hands begin to undo the buckles of the cursed hood and smiled in pure gratitude.

She found out the next morning that she was due for her ‘catechism’.

She spent the night in a cell after she had been allowed a long shower.
Her only chain was from her collar to the wall and she had taken full advantage of having her hands free at last and had fallen asleep only after three frantic orgasms, with her hands rubbing between her legs hard and fast.

When she awoke next the light had been turned on and she had time to assess her new surroundings. They were not entirely comforting. Her chain was long enough to allow her to use a small bathroom which opened off the cell itself but all she had to sleep on was straw. It was scratchy and rough so as soon as she woke she stood and took stock of the large, stone walled room. In the centre was a simple whipping post with a ring at the top of the sombre black wood for her restraints to be clipped to. Beyond that was a frame with rings at all four corners and beyond that was a set of stocks, but Ayesha was puzzled by it, the board at the top had only two holes and they looked too big for wrists. She had no time for speculation though as the door crashed open and her trainer entered accompanied by a guard.

“Kneel!” he ordered curtly.

She did so without a second’s hesitation and allowed her wrists to be clipped together behind her, then she fed from his hand again before her first day of catechism began. It followed a routine that Ayesha was to become all too familiar with. To start with two more girls were brought to the cell and chained to one wall. She learned that these were the ‘relief’ slaves and their function soon became clear. She herself was led to the whipping post that first morning, her hands were raised and her wrists fastened above her. She let her forehead rest against the cool wood as she listened to the guard, whistling softly between his teeth, slip his whip from his belt and begin to swish it through the air to warm up for the beating he was about to deliver. She swallowed nervously, suddenly the passion with which she had begged to be whipped in order to escape from the dark of the hood, returned to haunt her. But then the trainer himself came to stand in front of her and stroke the side of one breast.

“As you are whipped I will ask you questions. You may scream before you answer if you wish but do answer me honestly - it really will be better for you.”

Ayesha felt a strange lurching sensation in her stomach as she registered the dismissive cruelty of his words but at least he was here with her and she wasn’t wandering, lost in utter darkness. She settled herself to endure whatever she had to and gritted her teeth as she heard the whip swish through the air behind her, on its way to deliver the first lash.

The door slammed behind the men and left Ayesha alone, curled up on her straw, her collar once more chained and padlocked to the wall. The cell continued to echo to her sounds for a long time. Her breath rasped in her scorched throat as she sobbed and whimpered and the pitiless stones threw the noises back at her. It had been worse than anything she could have imagined. The guard wielding the whip had been relentless beyond belief, he had maintained a rhythm which took no account of her desperate efforts to talk to her inquisitor. Somehow she had had to keep answers coming to the endless torrent of questions, even as she howled and twisted under the steady beat of the leather strap across her back, shoulders, buttocks and even her breasts and stomach when she had had no choice but to twist fully around. And the questions! The trainer had wanted to know her earliest memories, had wanted a blow by blow account of her childhood and strangely the agony of the whip had spurred her on to ruthless honesty. The sheer remorseless intensity of the flogging had robbed her of any room in which to construct lies and so she had blurted out how she had begun stealing and fencing in the backstreets of Beirut. How she had traded her virginity for a cushy life as the kept pet of an old rich man and how she had swindled him.

When she had reached a point where speech had failed her, the other slaves’ purpose had become clear. The sight of Ayesha’s body under the whip had inflamed both men’s lust and although she had reached a point where she could take no more, the men could certainly continue to dish it out. She had been tossed back onto the straw to recover while the other two girls were put to the post, lashed and then taken. A third guard had entered with refreshments for the flagellators and once they had eaten and drunk, Ayesha again being fed a few morsels from her trainer’s hand, the catechism had continued.

At the end of the first day, Ayesha realised that her ears were ringing from the hours of the cell having been filled with the sounds of punishment. The hiss and the loud, meaty slaps of the leather on flesh, the yelps, sighs and groans of herself and her fellow slaves. Even as they orgasmed they had made the chamber ring to their cries. Ayesha had envied them and had even found some excitement in watching them beaten and enjoyed but had been unable to orgasm herself.