EXOTIC MERCHANDISE
BEAUTY WAS lying down when she awoke, and she was so sleepy. She lay still, hardly able to open her eyes, and she could feel the heavy motion of the ship, a feeling she’d known only in her dreams when she was a girl in her father’s castle. In terror, she tried to rise, and suddenly a dark, olive-skinned face loomed over her.
She saw a pair of jet-black eyes, exquisitely almond-shaped, looking down at her out of a young flawless countenance. Long black curly hair framed the face, rendering it almost angelic. And she saw a finger bidding her urgently to be absolutely silent. It was a tall young boy who made this gesture, and he stood over her, dressed in a shining tunic of gold silk, girdled in silver at the waist, over long loose trousers of the same fabric.
He sat her up, his dark hands remarkably smooth against her own, and smiling, he nodded vigorously as she obeyed, stroking her hair and making effusive gestures to indicate he found her beautiful.
Beauty opened her mouth, but at once the lovely boy pressed his finger against her lips. His face showed great fear, as his eyebrows knit and he shook his head. Beauty was silent.
He drew a long comb from a pocket of his loose garments and combed her hair. And looking down drowsily, Beauty realized she had been washed and perfumed. Her head felt light. She was scented all over with some sweet spice. She knew the spice. And her skin was gleaming. A dark golden pigment had been oiled into her, and it contained the scent. The scent was cinnamon. How lovely, Beauty, thought. She could feel some coloring on her lips and it tasted like fresh berries. But she was so sleepy! She could hardly keep her eyes open.
And all about her in this dimly lighted room were sleeping Princes and Princesses. She saw Tristan! And with a sluggish surge of excitement she tried to move towards him. Her dark-skinned attendant restrained her with feline grace, his urgent gestures and facial expressions letting her know she must be very quiet and very good. With an exaggerated frown he wagged his finger. He glanced at the sleeping Prince Tristan, and then with the same exquisite tenderness, he stroked Beauty’s naked sex and patted it, nodding and smiling.
Beauty was too tired to do more than stare in wonder. All the slaves had been oiled and scented. They looked like golden sculptures on their satin beds.
The boy brushed Beauty’s hair with such care she did not feel the slightest pull or tangle. He cradled her face as if she were a very precious thing, and then he stroked her sex again in that same loving fashion, patting it, and this time awakening it as he beamed at Beauty, his thumb softly pressed to her lips again as if to say: “Be good, little one.”
But more angels had appeared. A half dozen lean olive-skinned young men who wore the same attentive smiles as they surrounded Beauty and, drawing her arms up over head and pressing her fingers together, lifted her up and stretched her out to carry her. She felt those silky fingers supporting her from her elbows to her feet. And gazing dreamily at the low wooden ceilings, she was carried up a stair and into another room thick with the babble of foreign voices.
She saw brilliant fabric above her, artfully draped, the rich red field covered with tiny intricate bits of gold and glass, and she smelt the strong aroma of incense.
And suddenly she was being set down upon a much bigger, plumper satin pillow, her arms stretched way out to the edge above her head, her fingers beneath it.
She made the tiniest noise only to see her angelic captors evince terror, fingers darting to their lips again, heads shaking in ominous warning.
Then they withdrew, and she was looking up into the faces of a circle of men, their heads wrapped in brilliantly colored silk turbans, their dark eyes flitting over her, heavily jeweled hands gesturing as they talked back and forth, seeming to argue and to haggle.
Her head was raised, her long hair lifted and examined between careful fingers. Her breasts were very softly pinched, and then spanked. Other hands parted her legs, and with the same careful, almost silky manner, fingers pried open her pubic lips, rolled her *oris as if it were a bauble or a grape, the rapid conversation continuing above her. She tried to be still, gazing up at the bearded chins, quick black eyes. And the hands touching her as if she were of immense value and very very fragile.
But her well-trained vagina tightened, gave forth its juices, fingertips gathering the moisture out of her. Her breasts were spanked again and she moaned, very careful not to open her mouth, and she closed her eyes as even her ears and her naval were probed, her toes and fingers examined.
She let out her breath with a start as her teeth were pried apart, her lips pulled back. She blinked and drowsed again. She was turned over. The voices seemed to grow louder; a half dozen hands pressed her welts and the crisscross of pink stripes that surely covered her buttocks. Her anus must be opened, too, of course, and she squirmed only a little, her eyes closing again as she rested her cheek on the delicious satin. A few sharp slaps roused her only slightly.
And when she was turned on her back again, she could see the nods, and the dark-faced man in the center to her right smiled at her quickly and gave her sex that same approving pat. Then the angelic boys again lifted her.
“I have passed some test,” she thought. But she was baffled more than afraid, lulled, and almost unable to remember what she had just been thinking. Pleasure zinged through her like the echo of a plucked lute string.
It was a different room into which she was taken.
And what a strange and marvelous thing! It was filled with six long golden cages. A paddle, delicately enameled and gilded, its long handle twined with silk ribbon, hung from a hook on the end of each cage. And the mattress inside was covered in sky-blue satin. It was full of rose petals, Beauty realized, as she was laid inside one of these cages. She could smell the perfume, and the cage was quite high enough for her to sit up if only she had the stamina. It was better to sleep as her attendants told her to do. And of course, she understood the reason they were fitting the most lovely little golden mesh covering to her vagina, strapping it over her moist *oris and lips, and clasping the delicate golden chains around her thighs and waist to hold it. She could not touch her private parts. No, she shouldn’t. That was never allowed in the castle or the village. The door of the cage closed with a clink and the key turned in the lock, and she closed her eyes again, the most luscious warmth suffusing her.
Sometime later she opened her eyes again, though she could not move, absolutely couldn’t move, and she saw Tristan being put into the cage that stretched out at an angle from the foot of her own, those lovely young men—they were men, not boys, just very small and delicate men—patting Tristan’s balls and cock with those dark, languid fingers. One of those pretty mesh coverings was being fitted to Tristan, too, and how much larger it was! And she glimpsed for a moment Tristan’s face, utterly relaxed in sleep and incomparably beautiful.