Kate and Julia: Slave Girls of the Raj (3 page)

“Y… yes, Master.” Again Julia could not drag her eyes from his uncompromising stare.

“Come then.” Ignoring his scattered clothes, he strode bare-skinned out of the bathhouse.

She rose quickly and hurried after him towards the
zenana
.

*

“Ooh, what are you doing to me?” Kate cried. She squirmed against the horribly confining leather straps on her body and felt the chafe of the thick leather collar Ross had buckled around her neck. It was chained to a wooden rail behind her. Her arms too were bound, straps at wrists and elbows holding them in a reversed praying position at her back and attached to the same rail as her neck. Cutting into her flesh above her breasts was another strap that ran under her armpits and secured her tightly to a second rail behind her.

“I’m going to show you what Jefferson would have done if it had been him you had threatened to shoot,” Ross said as he finished buckling a strap around her left thigh. He had placed it very high, as he had the one on her right, with both of them biting into her skin and pulling apart more than just her legs.

“Ooh, that’s awfully tight,” Kate groaned.

“It needs to be. We don’t want you jerking around and injuring yourself.”

Her belly flipped at the implication in his words. “Oh, don’t hurt me. I’m sorry. Really I am.”

“You’re sorry now,” Ross said. “You weren’t when you pointed that pistol at me. There’s a lesson for you, little miss. Never aim a gun at a man unless you intend to use it, especially if that man is me.”

“How do you know I wouldn’t have?” Kate asked, a flash of temper rising through her fear.

His forbidding expression vanished in a grin. “I know. I reckon you would shoot if your life was threatened. You’re a brave little thing, after all. But even if the gun had been loaded, you wouldn’t have fired.”

Frightened, resentful and very uncomfortable though she was, Kate somehow still managed to be pleased that he thought she was brave. He was right too. She had never intended to shoot him. The sight of his whip in his hand made her catch her breath as he reached to two brass handles on the frightening device to which he had bound her. It was made of wood, a rectangular frame within a frame, one resting solidly on the floor, the other fixed to it by a large brass pivot at either side. The ex-soldier turned the handles beside each pivot, and Kate’s heart leapt when the inner frame swung back and forth as it was unlocked from the outer one.

Ross tilted it and she gave a startled cry as her body angled forwards. Her feet rested on the lower bar of the inner frame, strapped at ankles and knees as tightly as they were at her thighs. Kate felt some of her weight transfer from her legs to the strap above her breasts and a wooden bar that crossed the frame at her belly, in line with her hips. The collar around her neck pressed against her throat and she had to force her head back, increasing the strain on her pinioned arms and shoulders. It worsened as Ross tilted the frame further. He moved a hinged bar on it across her chest, two lengths of wood joined at each end by a big brass bolt topped by a large wing nut. They locked in place above and below her hanging breasts, and she flinched as his hands firmly pulled the twin rounds between the two bars.

“Oh, no” Kate whimpered when he began tightening the wing nuts, squeezing her flesh tightly between the narrowing space separating the wooden lengths until she hissed in pain. Ross tilted the frame upright, easing the pressure on her neck and belly, and she was able to look down as he locked it in place with the handles.

“No, please.” The bars were tight against her chest, the flesh of her breasts bulging grotesquely between them and their pale skin already mottled pink and beginning to darken. They hurt, and they looked horribly, frighteningly vulnerable. Their points had already become swollen and puffy.

“You’ve been a very naughty girl,” Ross said, giving one of them a tug.

“Ooh! Yes, Sir,” Kate whined.

“It’s ‘Mister Ross, Sir’ when I’m punishing you. Remember?”

“Yes, Mister Ross, Sir,” Kate answered quickly.

“Aye, you’ve disappointed me, little miss. I told you there isn’t much time. Just enough for you to learn the basics, really. But I thought you had listened to reason and all the time your head was still full of silly ideas about escaping.” He let the short tail of his whip slide over his left palm and swing free. “You know there’s no chance of that now, don’t you?”

“Yes, Mister Ross, Sir.” Racing though it was, Kate’s heart felt leaden with despair. She braced herself for the first stroke and her breath escaped in a rush as she heard the door to the mirrored room behind her open and his footsteps retreating. Belly fluttering wildly, she waited.

Ross reappeared. “I said your backside needs widening a bit.

We’ll start on that at the same time.” Dangling from one hand by three lengths of cord was a conical piece of ivory about six inches long. From a rounded tip no more than a quarter-inch across it widened gradually to at least two inches at its base. Attached at the broader end was a metal ring to which the three cords were tied. Kate gulped. The thing was shiny with oil, and from what he had said she had no doubt about where he intended to put it.

“No, you can’t. You mustn’t,” she said desperately. “Oh, please Mister Ross, Sir!” She jerked as his whip stung her left buttock.

“Nothing you say is going to change what happens, little miss, so you may as well save your breath. If you hadn’t been so impulsive you wouldn’t have ended up like this. But you just couldn’t resist grabbing the gun, could you, even though you had no idea what you would do next? If it had been loaded and
if
I had followed your orders, do you really think you would even have got across the compound, let alone anywhere near Peshawar?”

Kate did not reply. She knew she had acted without thinking. It was far from the first time. The same impulsiveness had made her attach herself uninvited to Mrs. Winter and Julia, and coupled with her yearning for adventure had brought her to the extremely uncomfortable and frightening position she found herself in at that moment. She squirmed as Ross’s arms encircling her caused a painful tug on her trapped and squeezed breasts.

“Best keep as still as you can,” he warned as he fastened a thin belt around her waist and moved behind her. She felt his fingers touch her skin at the back of the belt then slide to the rounds of her bottom cheeks and draw them apart. Reflexively, the little muscle they no longer concealed tightened. “You’d better relax if you don’t want it to hurt,” he said.

Though she was expecting it, Kate still could not help lunging forwards when she felt the pressure of the tip of the ivory cone. The fingers spreading her cleft let go and a second later tickled her between the legs. Abruptly, they thrust inwards.

“Oh! Ooh!” Impossible though it was in her tight bondage, she still tried to wriggle as Ross mercilessly teased her. Quivering she felt the oiled ivory push hard against her. Her tight little muscle yielded abruptly and her breath escaped in a whoosh as the cone slid inside.

“Ooh, ooh, no!” Kate wailed as the broad end stretched her rear opening and held it that way.

Ross stopped rubbing her pussy, moved in front of her, pulled the two remaining cords attached to the unusual dildo up in front and tied them to two iron rings on the front of her waist belt. The third was already fixed to the back, the three together drawn tight and holding the ivory so it would neither slide all the way inside her nor allow her to force it out. That knowledge did not prevent her knot from trying to clench and clamping hard around the cone. A trembling tickle ran through her there, and, alarmingly, another in front. A heartbeat later the sharp slap of leather on bare skin ended in a scorching streak of pain to her bulging left breast, followed immediately by another across the right one. The aching that being crushed between the wooden bars was causing was joined by a fiery stinging.

“Ow! Ooh, that’s awful!” Kate cried. “Ooh, it hurts so much!”

Ross paused and pointed to the rack of canes and switches on the wall nearby. “That’s what Jefferson would have used on you. Any one of them would hurt a damn sight more than my whip. You should be grateful it’s me punishing you and not him.”

Resentful and in pain, Kate could still be glad it was not Jefferson dealing her the blows. The ones Ross gave her were bad enough. The whip seemed to come at her from all directions at once, smacking onto her helpless teats, making them bounce and buzz with burning pain. The old soldier never missed. Every sharp, fierce stroke landed squarely on the distended flesh nipped between the wooden bars, sometimes just the split tip of the leather, sometimes its full length. Several times it scored her tender points, making Kate cry more loudly and squirm in her straps at the ferocity of its bite. Yet, even as her body ached in its confinement and the torment made her tears flow, she knew Ross could have hit a lot harder if he had chosen to.

When he finally stopped the blows, Kate hung in her bonds, her legs weak and her flesh on fire, breathing raggedly and with sweat streaming down her shuddering nakedness.

“Right, I’m off outside for a smoke,” he said. “When I come back it’ll be with a switch for your backside.” His familiar stern frown was on his face as he looked at her. “You blink away those tears, little miss, and ask yourself if you want to behave in future or if you want to go through this again.”

He disappeared through the door behind her and she heard it close.

Kate already knew the answer to the question. Every heaving breath she took heightened the smart of her breasts. A glance down revealed they were fiery red and her nipples were swollen and throbbing. She very definitely did not want to experience anything like it again. Her belly tightened. Ross had just told her it was not yet over. He meant to treat her poor, defenceless bottom in the same way.

She closed her eyes and concentrated on breathing as shallowly as she could, vainly trying to ease the painful pulling on her trapped flesh.

A tormenting minute or two passed very slowly. Kate heard the door open but it was the one in front of her, not the one behind. She opened her eyes. Her sharp intake of breath stoked the fires in her breasts as she stared horrified into Jefferson’s forbidding features.

“What the hell’s going on here?”

“N… nothing, M… Master,” Kate stammered, quailing under his angry stare. There were some occasions when Ross frightened her and others when he did not, but she was terrified of Jefferson all of the time.

“Don’t lie to me,” he snarled. “Sergeant Ross wouldn’t put you there for nothing. What have you done?” He prodded the tip of the varnished bamboo cane he always carried into the plump swell at her lower belly.

Kate’s mind raced feverishly. “I don’t know. R… really I don’t.”

With a glimmer of hope she added, “He’s just outside. He can tell you, Master.”

The man eyed her reddened breasts, which were purpling now from lack of circulation under the bite of the wooden bars. “He doesn’t need to. If he’s done this, it must be something serious.” He walked a circle around her helplessly bound figure. “Ah, he’s stretching you, I see, but he hasn’t flogged you there yet.”

Kate’s heart leapt as Jefferson paused by the rack of punishment implements. He looked into her face and she shuddered at his cruel expression. Ross had said he was a bitter man. She could see it in his merciless grey eyes as they stared into hers.

“Impertinent girl! We needn’t wait for Sergeant Ross. You’ve been rebellious since the beginning and you’ve just lied to me twice.

That’s reason enough to give you a good thrashing.” The lines at the corners of his eyes and mouth deepened as he smiled coldly. “One I’ll make sure you don’t forget.”

Terrified, her bound body aching and throbbing, her gut churning horribly and her heart pounding in her ears, Kate opened her mouth to plead. Several things stopped her. Her breath seemed trapped in her throat, preventing speech, and she knew, too, that it would do no good.

Mostly, however, it was because Ross had called her brave and she was suddenly stubborn enough to prove that he was right.

Even so, she almost wet herself when she saw Jefferson take a fearsome-looking whip from the rack and bend its stiff leather between his hands until it creaked. From its cord-bound handle to its rounded tip it had to be three feet long, two heavy strips of brown leather stitched together along their edges and widening over the last foot of its length into a long tongue that was not just broader than the rest but thicker too.

As Jefferson stood behind her, Kate steeled herself for the torment she knew was coming.

It was still an awful shock. The blaze of pain that followed the first sickening crack of leather on her bare bottom was incredible. Jaw clenching tight, Kate somehow managed to choke back the shriek that was trying to escape her so that nothing more than a guttural croak got through her gritted teeth. A thousand needles simultaneously piercing her flesh could not have hurt her more than the second stroke. Still she fought the need to cry her pain and gave a half-stifled grunt as her buttocks bounced under the scorching fire of the impact. Torment greater than she had ever felt before flared across her tortured rear-cheeks.

Only then did she realize that even Jefferson had held back when he had caned her that first day. This time he was not sparing his arm or her ravaged flesh. His third lash brought more tears to her eyes, and with the next they flowed freely down her cheeks as the pain seared her tender skin and started a fierce throbbing deep in the muscles beneath. It was agonising, and growing worse with every wicked bite of the whip’s long, broad tongue.

At the fifth stroke, Kate’s resolve faltered, and with the sixth scorching like a licking flame through the flesh of her bottom it deserted her completely. She threw her head back, opened her mouth and cried her pain aloud. She shrieked at every savage stroke after that, jerking and writhing in her tight straps, helplessly and horribly exposed to the whip’s cruel work. Surely her skin was ripped to pieces by now and the vicious leather was tearing into the tender tissues of the flesh beneath, carving and biting deep. The thought filled Kate with a fresh terror so intense her bladder betrayed her and she let go a little squirt of urine as she squirmed in the aftermath of another agonising lash.