Total pages in book: 76
Estimated words: 68525 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 343(@200wpm)___ 274(@250wpm)___ 228(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 68525 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 343(@200wpm)___ 274(@250wpm)___ 228(@300wpm)
Technically, the law provided for compensation for this taking, should the noble be exonerated of whatever suspicion had led to their detention. The law specified, however, that the actual servants taken would not themselves be returned even in that case. Any servant alienated from an arrested noble belonged to the emperor from that point forward.
It might not amount to an actual death sentence for Chalondra, but if I were indeed detained, she would undoubtedly find herself given to the secret police. Deep in the bowels of the imperial palace, she would undergo a brutal sexual initiation at their hands, whipped with merciless severity on the slightest pretext, whether she complied or not.
Thoughts of the tender initiation I had planned for her, the application of loving discipline when necessary to help her find her submission, the unimagined pleasures to which I would force her until she begged for her defloration… they didn’t vanish completely. I rather wished they had, so that I could concentrate more completely on the ideas that had taken the rest of my focus. Escape with a Kamnian concubine was going to require a great deal of care if we were to have the slightest chance of getting away safely.
I stepped outside my study and saw that Franla waited there, on the bench in the hallway. She rose as I emerged, ready I felt certain to give me a final report on Chalondra’s training before I went in to my new pleasure girl. I cursed inwardly for a moment. I had expected her to depart for her duties in another house.
“My Lord?” she inquired, clearly taking in my troubled expression.
I had only a split second to decide whether I could trust her. It seemed clear that here at the end there would be ample opportunities for superior servants to gain advantage through betrayal, but her help could on the other hand prove invaluable. I made the decision on pure instinct.
“Franla,” I said softly, “please come with me. The empire is about to fall, and we’re going to escape with Chalondra.”
Chalondra
The minutes went by not like hours—more like eons, during every second of which I had to remember to keep breathing. The first few of those eons I spent on my feet, standing close to the bedpost with my hands clasped together, looking nervously over my left shoulder at the doors that had swung closed behind Mistress Franla.
If I stood close enough to the post, I could rest my elbows alongside my ribs, so that I didn’t have to support my arms with the failing strength of my shoulders, or let my wrists hang from the cuffs. But that posture, almost touching the ancient, ornate wood of the bed’s structure, made me much more conscious of my body than I wanted to be. Every time I shifted my weight from foot to foot, simply to keep my toes from going numb, I felt myself brush up against the bedpost, down there.
It took me several eons to realize that it was something strange about the geometry of the bed itself that caused that distracting, unwelcome friction: the post had a sort of knob, a protrusion that looked a little lighter in color, and thus perhaps rather more worn than the rest of the dark wood. As soon as I had noticed it, I found that my body had an irresistible urge not to step back and away from the distraction but instead to get closer to it. To rub myself—the front of the lacy panties, the place where they covered the neediest part of my pussy—against the knob.
I understood, with a flush of heat all over my body, that the knob did not represent some vital part of the bed’s construction, or some whim of its designer—unless the designer happened to have been a noble who foresaw bringing bonded concubines into the finished structure. Or, rather, binding pleasure girls to its posts.
The knob could only be there, on the bedpost, to permit a girl to rub her pussy against it.
The idea, flashing into my head, came along with a mental image of the girl, the blue-haired girl dressed only in tiny white panties, who stood up against the post now. I shook my head, trying to clear it, and I noticed that the picture in my mind’s eye existed there, in my master’s bedchamber: there was a mirror on the wall, to my right, reflecting back to my eyes the lewd spectacle.
I bit my lip, and I watched, and I moved my hips because I had to see. I whimpered with the need that shot through my limbs as I pressed my clit against the smooth curve of the ancient wood.
Breathing raggedly, I tried again. I put my hands out a little, and I took hold of the post, realizing with a start that carved into its heavy shaft were the outlines of two hands, just about the size of mine: the barons of Gravamir had provided the girl bound to the bed with a place to hold on as she shamed herself the way I had just begun to do.