A gust of laughter greeted his words.
The eyes of the Countess were still able to give a feeble reflection of their earlier glitter although by now she was hurt and exhausted and thoroughly humiliated.
Cesare looked at her as his strong teeth pulled at the chicken flesh. Would any of her subordinates have expected quite such a physical beauty? When she lashed them with her tongue would they have pictured those glossy, firm breasts, high and perky with their small impudent nipples? When she scowled and barked an order would they have thought of that tight waist with its rather sinewy, muscular stomach? When she ordered men to the dungeons and had them hanged from battlements would they have thought of those soft, feminine buttocks, that bottom which asked for caresses? When she rode through the town to order a massacre of reprisal, supervising its execution, would they have considered those warm thighs and those fleshy hips with the moss of pale hair and the heavy overlap of flesh between those white, tapering columns? She was really a beauty. She could have taken her place in an elegant court as one of its prime beauties at any time, except that her attitude had decided that lines of severity were to be drawn between her brows, that her mouth was to be hardened into grimness and her eyes, which could blaze and spark like any insulted courtesan's, should grow to contain the disgust for her fellow creatures which gleamed constantly in them.
They had watched her writhe on the rack? and it had to be admitted she had borne her punishment like a martyr. They had humiliated her, her eyes wide with horror had revealed just how much, with their mauling of her breasts and the supple contours of her naked body. But Cesare had reserved her principal humiliation for himself. He had yet personally to repay her for the near loss of his life on the drawbridge and also he was impressed with her looks and hauteur.
He grinned as his lieutenant took the leg of fowl he was munching and with a quick movement thrust it up between her straddled thighs into her cunt. The Countess gasped and swore. The lips of her vagina opened and then closed over the knobby, half-chewed meat.
“You wouldn't think a chicken would have enough guts to do that to a Countess,” his lieutenant jested, and there were fresh guffaws from the spectators. The man moved the fleshy bone around in her for a few seconds and then, tiring of the game?or perhaps being made too hot by it?withdrew the leg and flung it across to a corner of the room.
“Well seasoned,” called another. “Why didn't you eat it.”
“By the look of her Ladyship it might have poisoned me.”
Cesare swung himself off the couch and crossed to the rack. He stared at the inert body spread-eagled across it. The Countess glared back at him. All she wanted was a dagger, her eyes seemed to say, and he'd regret these humiliating tortures and liberties to which he'd subjected her.
Cesare lowered his eyes over her body. He could see the small blue veins on her white breasts and on the taut flesh where her thighs ran into her hips. He reached out his hand and stroked it softly over her breast, gently savoring the butteriness of the firm skin beneath his fingers. He could feel his lust rising in confined warmth at his loins. His eyes glittered and he looked up at hers again and saw something like fear in them for the first time.
“Leave us,” he commanded.
His men ceased their jesting immediately and began to gather their belongings prior to departure.
“Later, perhaps, we too may pay her out for her treachery to you, Sire,” murmured his principal lieutenant as they passed the rack on their way to the steep stone steps that led up the wall to the dungeon exit.
“Did you not know it was an offense to have any kind of intercourse with a corpse?” Cesare asked.
His lieutenant roared with laughter, laughter which was taken up by the others and followed them up the steps and beyond the citadel, leaving only a wan glinting echo of itself in Cesare's ears.
“They tell me, Madam,” he said softly, “that you have had three husbands. I wonder were they afraid of you?such a woman as could hang from the battlements two of her most respected citizens in the face of a besieging army.”
Her eyes blazed at him and she made no reply.
“Difficult to think those husbands were ever permitted to mount you,” he mused on, “but I'm told you have some fine sons safely out of harm's way. Were you afraid I might take them and train them for my army?”
Caterina Sforza-Riario moved her lips in a grimace of fury and loathing. Her voice was soft and a little strained and hoarse.
“Your army,” she mocked. “Your rabble, a horde of barbarians like their leader, an upstart drunk with power.”
Cesare almost raised his hand to strike her, but instead, with unerring instinct to humiliate her further, he stroked her breast instead and pinched her nipple between his thumb and forefinger.
“Were those husbands of yours allowed to see the body they entered?” he went on. “Or were they allowed only shamefacedly to slip their pricks up under your skirts and do their best to produce children for their lord and mistress?”
“They were weak and wretched?but each was a better man than you,” she spat.
Cesare sighed and let his fingers slide down over her muscular belly to dabble in the hair around her crotch.
“Madam, your desire to be brave seems to have injured your reasoning capacity.”
“Take your hands off me you vile beast,” she flared.
For answer Cesare bent and kissed a nipple and his fingers slipped into her crotch and penetrated her vagina which he tickled, grinning into her eyes.
She turned her face away from him. He saw a light muscle twitching in her cheek.
“And your body was so meant for spending days and nights in the throbbing heat of bed,” he went on, knowing that his words and attitude were making her desperate with fury and humiliation. “You have such a moist and ready cunt. I do believe you'd like to tryst with every man in my army.”
“Beast… swine…”
The words were faded echoes of her recent outburst. She was exhausted, physically and psychologically.
Cesare gloated over her helpless body. Now, he felt just like it. But a mere fuck wouldn't be sufficiently humiliating for her. He could feel his penis, large, hot and pushing to escape. With an image of soft, juicy entry into her and the relief it would bring to his lusting loins, he began to unstrap her legs.
She turned her face back to him, her eyes questioning.
Her legs flapped freely in a few seconds. She seemed to have lost the use of them. He untied her wrists which were stretched out above her head and she slid down over the wheel and crumpled to the floor, her eyes open and alive, but her weakened body refusing to obey her.
On the cold stone floor, she tried to move and stand up, but her ankles were stiff and dead, her arms numb, so she lay there where she'd slid, moving her hands weakly to restore the circulation.
For a few minutes, Cesare allowed her a little respite. He wanted her to recover so that nothing was lost on her. Then, when she was able, rather stiffly, to move her limbs and sit up, he pulled her to her feet, letting her stand a moment to get used to the pressure. She leaned on him, helpless to pull herself away. He breathed heavily with the touch of her flesh along him and moved her over toward the rack again.
She began to struggle weakly and with little gasps of pain as she realized that he was going to attach her once more to that instrument of torture, but, especially in her enfeebled state, she was no match for him and he pressed her face forward against the wheel while he tied her hands to it high above her head once again.
Her body moved fleshily against him as she tried to escape and he felt the spongy warmth of her buttocks squeezing against his organ as he pressed into her to hold her fast.
With her wrists firmly attached, he moved and caught one of her ankles, drawing it up around the side of the great wheel to attach it to the hub. She lost balance with the other foot and sagged down to the floor, held up only by her wrists as the wheel swung around with her weight.