“I won’t!”
“I will whip you until you do.”
They looked at each other and laughed. In the midst of all else their love set them apart, between them all things were joyous. The slave girl shrugged. She was suddenly excited. Why not find pleasure in the inevitable! Rannah’s compulsion would absolve her from guilt. “Very well, my Lady, I will whip Suzie. Is she to be tortured too?”
“You would like to torture her? She would be delightful.” Stacie found herself considering something that a month ago would have been pure fantasy. To have a naked girl writhing beneath her whip or her hand. What power! What omnipotence! Her loins flamed. She saw Suzie’s doe eyes pleading, she heard the screams . . ."I will have to do what you tell me, my Lady.”
“You are an outrageous humbug,” Rannah declaimed laughing. “You can hardly wait, so you place the guilt on me to keep your little conscience clear.” She was suddenly serious. “Would you like to whip me?”
“Oh Rannah! Don’t tease.”
“I am not teasing, You saved me from being whipped today. Saved me the shame of baring my body for the stripes before that black ape. I owe you much. Honestly, slave girl, I would be happy to be whipped by you.”
It was another vista, the opening of another door in Jedrah. Rannah’s voice was soft, her eyes aflame. With one seductive hand she was lightly tracing her finger tips across the hurt bottom that had been striped before their visitor such a little while before. For the slave girl it was an intensity of sensation before which she was powerless, her wounds multiplied the potency of her mistress’s touch, she shivered deliciously. “You mean it, don’t you!” she was breathless.
“Of course I mean it, silly. You shall tie me and strip me and whip me. It will be my gift to you.”
Intriguing! Whether it happened or not, both were savouring its contemplation: wicked little girls whispering. “When I have you tied I will run away,” Stacie said dreamily.
“That will be good! When Yousef drags you back and throws you at my feet you shall enjoy fifty with his kurbash.”
“I would die.”
“But happily, beloved.”
They laughed together and made love, Stacie’s whipped skin flaring her into new ecstasies as they rolled and hands sought and found. When they lay quiet again Stacie said quietly, “I’m going to do it. I’ll do both if you’ll let me . . . I’ll whip Suzie and I’ll whip you. I feel as though I’ve let you seduce me. You’ve made me want to do it.”
“You have always wanted to. I have simply made you look at yourself. Tell me: When I was whipping you, did you not long to have me tied as you were tied and the whip in your hand . . . ? come.”
“Yes,” Stacie grinned sheepishly. “But that was wanting revenge.”
“I think we all seek revenge,” Rannah mused slowly.
“Revenge for having been born a girl. Girls in Jedrah know so much of whips, the whips men hold and use on us. Why wouldn’t we dream . . . !”
“If you could choose, would you be a man?”
The mistress’s hand stroked a hard nipple, her little finger searing the curve of the breast with its lightest touch. “We are so inconsistent, we women: No, I would not be a man. They have only strength, who of them would ever know what you and I have now! To be a girl is worth ten thousand stripes upon our skin.”
“That’s about the number I can expect to collect in my life as a slave girl,”
Stacie snickered in happy melancholy.
“More! Far more, little slave girl. I promise.” Hungrily they feasted.
In the middle of the night Stacie felt her wrist handcuffed to the bed by hands made dilatory by love. It was a postscript to her day.
A new day does not always sustain the enthusiasms of the day before, trepidation infused erotic excitement, Stacie found herself shivering with both. She knew Rannah was immensely enjoying her anxiety.
But she was not the only one who trembled. In the middle of the floor of the familiar chamber Suzie stood naked, her hands tied behind her back, her feet still chained. She had the appearance of someone who had been waiting a long time. Stacie’s heart and conscience were smitten by the welcoming light that irradiated the girlish features when she beheld their entry. If only the poor child knew!
The feminine radiance slowly dimmed as Rannah broke the news. As though to modify its bleak message she untied the small hands so that their owner stood chafing her indented wrists as she absorbed the edict of Mohammad Yasin.
“But I’ve been punished! That awful thing they did to me yesterday. My behind’s still on fire.” Appealing eyes sought her visitor’s. “It’s so terribly unfair.”
Rannah grinned at her slave girl. “You see, Stacie. It is as I said, for women nothing is ever fair. We will always feel abused.”
Suzie was groping as Stacie had groped, she looked at the Lady Rannah pleadingly. “What does your father want done to me now?”
“He wants you whipped, properly.”
Suzie digested the statement. “Properly means terribly, doesn’t it?”
“Yes.”
“And . . . how . . . how many?”
“That is none of your concern.” Rannah’s voice asserted authority. Suzie twisted her nakedness unhappily. “Am I to be whipped in front of all those awful black men?”
“They are gone.” Rannah paused to gather her full enjoyment from the bomb she was about to drop. “It will be Stacie who whips you.”
Suzie ceased all motion. Her bafflement was obvious.
“Why? I’ve never hurt her?”
“Because it’s my wish. If her hand is laggard as mine was with you she shall herself receive two for one from me.”
Suzie flashed a protest of despair. “All this whipping! It’s so . . so hard to take . . . to understand. What good does it do!”
“It tells that you belong to Jedrah, that you had best forget the past.”
The scared and naked girl was unappeased. “But why me! There’s Wendy and Jane and . . . and you!” she looked at Stacie accusingly.
Rannah was amused. “If you fear discrimination I will have the other two brought here and tied and whipped as you are whipped. Would that make you happier?”
“No.”
“You have only to look at Stacie. Does she not bear enough marks to suit you?”
“I’m sorry. I’m just scared.”
With swift grace Rannah stripped and pirouetted. The kiss of the kurbash had left vivid weals and the evidence of broken skin. The marks were lividly beautiful but frightening. She stood naked and proud, displaying herself. Beside her the quivering white girl seemed slight and pitiful. “You will not ask why I bear these,” she ordered tersely. “Be thankful that I too know pain.”
We humans are strange in our seeking for balances and justifications. We need eternal reassurance that it is not us alone who an omnipotent and callous fate has chosen for its sport. Suzie brightened perceptibly at the visual evidence. As she watched Rannah resume her clothes her eyes held reverence, the kurbash wounds were worse than anything Stacie bore.
Suzie was contrite. “I’m sorry, I suppose I’m a sissy. But it’s all so . . . so impossible. I know you’re trying to help. I think what you’re saying that because a man’s business deal went wrong a girl has to be whipped and I’m the girl . . . ?”
“A girl in Jedrah,” Rannah approved. “You begin to understand you are a woman. Come, we will fasten you.”
Suzie was resigned. Sight of Yasin’s daughter’s striated nudity had told her more than a thousand words might have done. As though eager to make amends for a fault she had not committed she offered herself helpfully as her wrists were strapped to the bar and then lifted to stretch her taut. She flushed as she made her pitiful request. “Could I be gagged please? I’ll scream so terribly . . .”
“No, you may not be gagged, child.” Rannah was firm on the point. “The female sounds a girl makes beneath the whip please me, they are potently erotic. Yours are delightful. I may rape you when we are done.”