Absolute Delights

By Charmbrights

                                                                                                                       

“The exercise of power is pleasant;
absolute power is absolutely delightful.”

 

© 2002 Charmbrights.  All rights reserved.

The author has asserted moral rights under sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright Designs and Patents Act 1988.

This is a work of fiction.  Any resemblance between any of the characters depicted herein and any real person, living or dead is wholly a matter of Nature imitating Art.

Author’s Note:  it is difficult to portray multi-lingual conversation in works such as this.  Since some of my readers may not be fully fluent in either French or in the Kobekistani dialect of Arabic, the convention used is that all direct speech in normal quotation marks is in English;  French is in continental quotation marks, thus: « This is French »;  Kobekistani Arabic is in italic between tildes, thus ~ This is Arabic ~.

 

 

Prologue         Families

She was a natural blonde with a slim figure and good teeth.  Her hair was worn shoulder length and straight.  Amelia Smith was just twenty and reading medicine at the University of London when she met Prince Abdullah from the Emirate of Kobekistan and fell head-over-heels in love with his dashing good looks and enormous fortune.  Dinners at restaurants, the like of which a country doctor’s daughter could only dream about soon led to visits to his sumptuous apartment overlooking Hyde Park.

She was, unusually for the late 1970s, still a virgin when she met him;  this small inconvenience was soon disposed of and they were soon revelling in every imaginable sexual activity possible for two people.  Amelia loved the games they sometimes played and one of her favourites was where he pretended to be her ruthless Master and she his abused Slave.  For some reason pretending to be used by a powerful Master whether she wanted it or no, excited her.  She adored his penis and could spend hours playing with it, pausing whenever it looked like boiling over, or using her mouth to revive it after a joyful mutual climax.  They rutted like the two magnificent young animals they were and, although he usually came in her anus or mouth, they made a mistake.

As she described it when she told him, “We’ve had an accident, Abby, a fœtal accident.”

The next time they met Amy asked her real life Prince for a thousand pounds to pay for an abortion and he put her over his knee and spanked her for even thinking of it.  He spanked her seriously, not in fun as they sometimes did, but she also had the best orgasm of her life so far as he pumped into her womb from behind with his pubic hair chafing on the sore buttocks.  Nevertheless, she couldn’t sit down for days without being reminded of the spanking, nor could she go anywhere without two large men in Arab dress escorting her.  They even joined the Prince’s bodyguard when they went to Dorset to meet her parents.  Their purpose was, according to Prince Abdullah, to protect his son, and also her.

“We go to Kobekistan next week,” he announced about two weeks later, “My father, the Emir, wishes to meet you.”

“Why do we go there?  Couldn’t he come here just as easily?” she asked.

“Because we are to be married there in ten days time.  My son must not be illegitimate and must not be born in any other country than my own.  I dare not risk that,” was the perplexing reply.

“You haven’t asked me to marry you,” Amy pointed out, reasonably enough she thought.

“It is all arranged.  Your father gave his permission last week when we visited them.  It is not my fault if he has not told you.”

“Hmmph.  And what is the risk involved if your son, who may equally be a daughter, is born in England?” she demanded.

“Politics,” he replied, in a bored voice, “I am fourth in line for the throne and should I ever inherit, my first-born son must have the indisputable pedigree of being borne by a wife, rather than a concubine, and in Kobekistan, rather than abroad.  If it is a daughter, none of that will matter of course, but I want to be safe.”

Amelia sat down rather suddenly, overwhelmed by the sudden realisation that her magic prince had turned out not just to be rich, but to be a real Prince, for whom succession to a throne, only a little one but a real throne none-the-less, was unlikely but by no means impossible.

***

When they arrived in Kobekistan she was given a abaya to wear on the journey from the airport to the Emerald Palace.  The sheer magnificence of the triple palace was overwhelming;  its central section was bigger than Buckingham Palace and gleaming gold, flanked by the Ruby and Emerald Palaces.  Together the effect was like a giant Kobekistani national flag of red, yellow and green.  Abby explained to her that the Emir, his father, lived in the Golden Palace, his brother Crown Prince Gamal lived in the Ruby Palace, and she would live in the Emerald Palace.  As they passed through magnificent room after room with decorations on the walls and luxurious carpets on the floor, Amelia was imagining herself as the hostess at splendid gatherings and walking with her Prince when Royal visitors arrived from abroad.

They went into a smaller room through doors which were guarded by very large men carrying scimitars.  Amelia thought they seemed the sort who would chop your head off as soon as look at you.  The room was long and narrow with another door at the far end.  It wasn’t lit by windows but had a frosted glass roof.  There were several chairs round the walls.  In the centre of the floor was a dais which was about three feet square and two feet high.  To her surprise the walls were decorated with bedroom scenes depicting couples in various forms of sexual congress, almost all of which she and Abby had tried.

A huge obese black man with an odd-sounding voice took over from the Prince as her escort and she passed through the far door into a large greenhouse-like area with trees and pools of water beside which some young women were sitting.  Amelia drew in a sudden breath when she realised that they were all nearly naked.  The items they wore were like the ones Abby had had her dress in in London when they played the Master and Slave game.  A sort of grass skirt effect made from inch wide, twelve inch long strips of chiffon, each skirt in one of several pastel colours.  The strips hung from a waistband, which left most of the rump bare and did not really cover the private parts at all.  The black man waved away the women who came over to investigate the newcomer and ushered her into a suite of rooms somewhat secluded from the rest of the complex.

“This is your suite, Princess,” he said, “I am the Chief Eunuch to the Prince Abdullah.  You will be prepared now to meet the Emir and the bath girls will see to your bathing, depilation, oiling and scenting.  I will provide suitable attire according to the Prince’s wishes.  Do not cause trouble or you will learn that in the harem here I am in charge.”

Amelia got the distinct impression that he didn’t approve of her, nor of the Prince’s choice of attire.  The only difficulty with the bath girls’ attentions was some embarrassment when they insisted on applying rouge to her labia and nipples and oiling her vagina and anus.  She had shaved her mons only the previous day though they did it again, more meticulously than before.

The clothing was much as she would have chosen, a light linen suit with a loose skirt and a white blouse.  However, there was no underwear at all and when she went to find some in her luggage it was all missing.

“Such things are not worn in this harem,” the Chief Eunuch decreed.

When she protested he took out the whip and casually struck one of the bath girls, causing her to scream in pain and raising a nasty weal across her shoulder.

“It is not impossible that I might use this on you if you make trouble,” he said, “now put this on.”

He handed her an ornately embroidered abaya to wear over her suit.

“Why must I wear this?” she asked.

“You will be moving through the palaces where men might see you,” came the disquieting reply, and her visions of dinner parties faded.

The visit to the old Emir was equally disturbing.  When she and Prince Abdulla were safely in another room rather like the anteroom to the Emerald Palace’s harem, but larger, there was a second dais bearing a small throne on which the Emir sat.  He spoke only to the Prince and only in Kobekistani of which she understood only a few sexually-oriented phrases.  Abby asked her to stand on the dais and remove her abaya.  The older man walked round her, inspecting her as though she were a prize cow he was considering purchasing.  Then he left the room without another word.

On the way back to the Emerald Palace alone with the Prince, Amelia ventured, “He seems a taciturn man, your father.”

“He does not speak unnecessarily, but he approves of you,” he replied, “Otherwise he would have ordered you out of the country and out of my life.”

“And would you have allowed him to do that?” she asked.

“Of course;  he is the Emir.  One other thing,” he continued, “I understand you were a little difficult with the Chief Eunuch this afternoon.  That is unwise;  there are many ways he can be unpleasant to you and make life in the harem unbearable.”

“I saw the whip used,” she replied tartly.

“For the moment he will use a bath girl as your whipping girl,” said the Prince, “but when we are married that will no longer be true.”

“What do you mean, my whipping girl?”

“When you misbehave, one of the bath girls will be given the whipping you deserve,” he replied, shocking her into silence.

***

Amelia was duly married to her Prince in a small ceremony in the anteroom to the harem, wearing an abaya with very few others present.  Thus she became the Princess Zubeydeh.  She was then incarcerated, as she saw it, in the Prince’s harem, which was far from empty, but in which life was terminally boring.  Her wedding night she spent alone in her suite wondering if she had done the right thing.

However there were three consolations for her in her prison life;  her position, her status and a friend.

She was the only one married to the Prince.  The others were concubines and that made her number one in the harem, as the Head Wife.

Her pregnancy meant that she had her baby to look forward to and to plan for.

And there was one other English girl there, Beryl.  Beryl was an ex-chambermaid from a Brighton hotel who had seduced the rich Arab guest, and persuaded him to take her home with him, only to find herself classed as ‘just another concubine’ who was, on occasion, even lent to the Prince’s friends.

She almost never saw the Prince.  All she saw were the black eunuchs who were at once her servants and her jailers.  They all carried whips, but didn’t often use one on Princess Zubeydeh because she was the Head Wife, and pregnant to boot.

Her son, also with two names, David Smith on his British passport, and Mahmoud Abdullah on his Kobekistani passport, was born easily and quickly in the superbly equipped hospital in the palace.  His father came and checked him over, then gave him to her to nurse.

Some three months after his birth, her husband, her Prince, sent for her one night and they made love all night.  Her heart was finally broken when she heard that her friend, Beryl, had been sent for the very next night and they too had spent rapturous hours together.

Life went on and the boy baby learned to walk and to talk a little in English and more in the Kobekistani dialect of Arabic.  He was the only baby in the harem at first, but soon after his birth several of the concubines became pregnant and just after one of them had a son, Princess Zubeydeh learned that the Prince had married her also.

The Prince visited her son on his first three birthdays and played with him for a while.  They were the only times Amelia ever saw him.

***

Just a week before David’s fourth birthday, they brought her the news that her husband was dead.  He had fallen off his pony playing in a polo match arranged to celebrate his father’s fiftieth birthday, and had broken his neck, dying instantly.  The Emerald Palace, including the harem, was to be closed and all the women except her were to be sold.  She was to move to the main harem in the palace, nominally as the inherited property of her son, to look after him until he reached the age of twelve and moved out of the harem.  Her real Master would be the Emir, her father-in-law.  She knew enough by now of the politics of the palace to surmise that the Emir could, and probably would, take her to bed, if only to try out the woman his son had used to mother his first-born.

Sure enough, a few weeks later, she was selected for the night by the Emir.  That scared her, because she had already made an enemy of the Emir’s Head Wife, and this would not endear her to Djamilla in the least.

When she arrived in the Emir’s bedroom and had offered the usual obeisance, she sat on a chair and said, “Father-in-law, I am glad we have met, for I want to return to England.”

“Nonsense, my child,” he answered, eyeing her youthful charms, dressed as she was in the uniform of his harem, consisting of a short waistcoat which did not fasten across her breasts and open crotch thin silk slacks, “You will be happy in my harem, and you could easily be chosen by Allah to have one of my children.”

“Sex with you would be incest and is prohibited to me as a Christian,” she answered.

“Christian?” he queried.

“Yes.  I never changed my religion, and Abdullah never asked me to do so,” she answered.

Her bravery was ebbing fast and her body beginning to react to the all too virile man before her.  She was still a young woman and had not seen a whole man but once a year for four years, and had not had sex with a man for three years.  Her body was dampening at the thought of this powerful man mastering her on that bed.  The perfumes she had been prepared with helped this arousal and she knew she would yield if he took her;  yield to, and welcome his body invading hers.

The Emir thought for a while, and said, “I could take you on this bed by force.  I could have you whipped until you begged me to take you.  But for some reason I don’t understand I want you to desire to be with me.”

He paused.

“So …  If you give me now a night to remember, on that bed;  if you truly show me why my son chose an infidel as the mother of his first-born, you can go back to England and take your son with you.  No conditions, but no money from Abdullah’s estate, except what is rightfully little Mahmoud’s, and that will be administered by our ambassador at the Court of King James.”

“Saint James,” Amelia murmured.

“What?” the Emir demanded.

“It’s called the Court of Saint James, Master, after St. James’s Palace where it officially meets,” she said;  taking a deep breath she knelt before him and continued, “Do you want me to prepare you for the bed by sucking your mighty weapon, Master?  I am already prepared and oiled as I should be.”

***

Safely back in England with David, she lived at her parents’ home in Dorset.  She took care to comply with a wish expressed by the Emir, that David, whom he called Mahmoud Abdullah, should not be allowed to forget the stories and traditions of his father’s country, though the language was difficult as they had nobody with whom to practice.  After all he was fourth in line for the throne and might just, one day, be the Emir if enough people died in the right order.

In due course she married again;  this time her husband was a surveyor called Peter Ransome.  Little David’s name was changed to David Ransome and he was raised as an almost ordinary little English boy.  The only difference was that the allowance from his estate was ample for a ‘good’ education, so he went to Eton, and thence to Oxford.  At Oxford he took a good maths degree and stayed on to study for a real Master’s degree, specialising in the topology of finite non-Euclidian surfaces.

On his twenty-third birthday, he had a visitor early in the morning at college;  it was an Arab in Kobekistani traditional dress who insisted on speaking to him only in Kobekistani and addressing him only as Mahmoud Abdullah.

“I’m sorry, old chap,” said David, “all that Kobekistan era was in my dim and distant past.  I came to England when I was about four years old and have not spoken the language with a native speaker since then.”

“But you still have your Kobekistani nationality, do you not?” asked the stranger, switching to English.

“Well, I have dual nationality Kobekistani/British, but I don’t see …”

The stranger interrupted, “May I see your Kobekistani passport please?”

“Oh, OK.  It’s here somewhere,” said David rummaging through his desk, “Ah, here it is.”

The visitor glanced at it and then knelt down and pressed his forehead to the floor, “Forgive me Master, I did not recognise you, and you did not respond to the greeting.”

“Get up, and stop waffling.  Why have you come here?” snapped David who was becoming annoyed by this intrusion.

“To bring these, Master,” said the visitor, handing over a sheaf of papers, all written in Arabic.

With that he turned and left the room while David was still looking at the papers in his hand with total incomprehension.  The only things he recognised were his name and what appeared to be the official seal of the Emir.  He had never learned to read Kobekistani.

‘What am I doing?’ he wondered, ‘It’s my Kobekistani coming of age.  Party time.’

However, it was still only eight in the morning, far too early for partying, so he wandered over to the SCR and found a friend from the language department having breakfast.

“A bloke just gave me these, can you read them?” David asked.

After a brief look at them, his friend looked up quizzically.

“Kobekistani is an unusual form of Arabic.  Do you know who Mahmoud Abdullah is?” he asked.

“Yes,” said David cautiously.

“Well he seems to be twenty-three today.  These are,” waving one set of papers, “letters patent as Prince Mahmoud Abdullah who, it seems will inherit the Emirate of Kobekistan when the Emir dies.”

“Only if Crown Prince Gamal predeceases his father,” David interjected and then blushed deep red.

“Yes, that is what it says,” his friend remarked, giving him an odd look, “The next lot are title deeds to some property in Kobekistan apparently called the Green Palace.  What’s that?”

David looked embarrassed and then said, “It’s called the Emerald Palace, actually.”

“Yes, well …  The next lot are certificates of deposit and access codes for a bank account with the Royal Kobekistan Bank which seem to amount to some three-quarters of a million Kobestis, whatever that is worth.  I say, Ransome, what is all this?”

David sat silent for a few seconds and then took the papers back and said, “It spells the ruin of my birthday.  My grandfather is claiming me back.”

“Your grandfather?”

“The Emir.  My mother warned me that bringing me to England nearly twenty years ago did not mean that I had escaped him.”

“But you are David Ransome, what does any of this have to do with you?” asked his friend.

“I have dual nationality.  I am also Mahmoud Abdullah, the Emerald Palace has over five hundred rooms, and the Kobesti trades at about five Pounds Sterling to one Kobesti,” David said as though these facts added up to a tragedy.

“Well, it may sound trite, but congratulations on being a Prince;  you could always rent out the spare rooms in the Palace to rich Americans;  and I’ll buy your Kobestis at ten a penny if you just want to be rid of them.  Cheer up, it’s your birthday and you are rich;  at least let’s have a party before you jump in the Isis.”

“I know, I know.  You’re right, but it worries me,” said David.

The party that night was great.  Nobody gate-crashed it, everyone got drunk, and David woke up next morning in bed with a girl he had fancied for ages.  She wasn’t the only girl he had joined in making the two-backed beast, but she was the first he had felt he wanted to get to know properly before rushing her out of her knickers and on to a bed.

When she woke, she ruined everything by saying, “How do you feel this morning, Your Royal Highness?”

That was the first intimation of the problems to come.  The college wanted to change the designation of his rooms from Mr. David Ransome to The Prince Mahmoud Abdullah;  the department wanted him to sponsor his own research project for twice what it was costing them.  Several girls who had hardly given him the time of day previously suddenly wanted him to become very close friends, and so on and so forth until he wanted to scream.

***

Then he met Pauline in the Welsh Pony;  she was a town girl and didn’t know him, but they seemed to be compatible from the first few moments.  It wasn’t until their third date that she broached the delicate subject of money.

“You always pay for everything,” she said, “Don’t be angry, but students don’t get much money and I am earning well at Sainsbury’s on the checkout, so I can pay for myself sometimes, can’t I?”

“I’m not a real student,” he reassured her, “I got my degree two years ago and I am paid to do research and some lectures, so I have more money than your ordinary undergraduate.”

That seemed to satisfy her, and they started to go out together regularly.  Sometimes they went to the cinema or the theatre, and sometimes just for a drink.  In the summer, she would spend whole days with him, finishing the day with dinner in a restaurant somewhere.  It was after one of these long lazy warm days that David suggested that they have coffee in his rooms, rather than in the restaurant.  It was still only half past eight and Pauline was feeling very relaxed after the excellent meal with some very pleasant wine, so she agreed.

When they got back to his rooms, David made the coffee and then sat close to her on the sofa.  Soon the coffee cups had been put down and they were necking gently.  David unbuttoned her blouse and stroked her bare breasts which needed no support, as he had often done before.  Going further than he had previously, he slipped her blouse completely off and ran his nails up and down her back.  She kissed him even more enthusiastically, and let him lift her gently and carry her into the bedroom.

As he laid her down on the bed, she looked at him and said, “I’m a virgin, David.  I have been saving it for the right man.”

David asked, “And have you found him?”

Pauline blushed deep pink and nodded, then buried her face in his neck.  David unhooked and unzipped her skirt, and was pleasantly surprised when she lifted her hips to help as he slipped the skirt and her knickers down her legs together.  Then he stood up and looked at the beautiful nude virgin lying on his bed.

His gaze embarrassed her so much that she rolled over on her belly to hide the neat triangle of hair surrounding her cunt lips;  this gave him a view of her trim, tight little arse and he was tempted to pat, or even spank it.  That would have spoiled everything, he knew, so he quickly stripped and lay on the bed beside her stroking and scratching her back gently.  She turned onto her side facing him and kissed him passionately.  As his hand slid along her thigh and on to the thatch, she drew in her breath quickly, but then she caressed his thigh and gently stroked her hand on to his prick as it pressed firmly against her.

Rolling her on her back slowly, so as not to startle her, David played his fingers inexpertly over her outer labia in a way some of his earlier, and much more experienced, partners had seemed to like.  Immediately Pauline’s legs opened to allow him freer access to her cunt, and she started to tremble slightly.  Her slit seemed to be well lubricated so David tried to slide a finger into the narrow entrance, but found it would not go far in before meeting a blockage.

“Please, David.  I know it will hurt, so play with me a little more first to arouse me more, but then please take me, properly.  Don’t stop if it hurts me;  I know it will be better later on.”

David played a little more with her clitoris, but soon lost patience with that and pushed his finger hard into her vagina.

“Ow, that hurt,” she said, “and there’s blood on your finger.  Does that mean I’m not a virgin any more?”

“We’d better make sure,” said David as he rolled on to and into her with all the finesse of a bulldozer mating with a cowdozer.

Soon he was buried in her cunt right up to his balls.  She was grimacing with the pain, so David stopped moving and just lay there enjoying the hot grip her virgin cunt exercised on his prick.

“Oh,” she said, “That’s nice.  I feel so full and whole and complete.  Try moving slowly in and out.  I think that’s what’s supposed to be nice.”

David moved in and out as ordered and just managed to pull out as he came copiously over her belly.  She immediately rolled on her side and wiped the sticky jism off her body with the sheet.  Then she jumped up and dressed quickly.  When she was ready to leave she realised that David had fallen asleep, so she crept out quietly in order not to disturb him.

Waking an hour later, he changed the blood and semen stained sheets and wondered if he would ever see her again.  Had he blown his chances with her by deflowering her too forcefully?  Had he blown his chances by falling asleep?  Only time would tell.

***

About eleven o’clock the following morning she breezed into his rooms humming and kissed him before she said, “I hope you won’t be disappointed, but we can’t … you know … anyway we can’t today.  I’m much too sore, but everyone tells me that next week-end will be OK and I’ll enjoy it more then.”

“Who is ‘everybody’?” inquired David.

“Well, … actually it’s this book I got out of the town library,” she admitted blushingly, “It tells me all the things I ought to do and not do about sex.”

“And what should you do now?” he asked, “Apart from not letting me, that is.”

She blushed again, and went over to the window and drew the curtains.

“Please promise not to force me, or even seduce me.  It would hurt terribly, I just know it would.”

“I promise,” said David, intrigued.

Slipping all her clothes off quickly she came over to him and took his hand, “Come in the bedroom, please.”

In the bedroom she undressed him in a rather inexpert fashion, and pressed him down on the bed on his back.

“First I must get to know him,” she said, stroking his penis gently, “and to do that he needs to be lubricated.”

Reaching on to the bedside table she took some of his Vaseline and smeared his prick liberally with it, exciting him further as she did so to such an extent that he wondered if he could hold off his orgasm for much longer.

“It’s all right if you spurt.  I won’t be cross,” she said, “The book said you might and that I mustn’t criticise.  If you can wait a bit, though, the book said you might like to do it in my mouth.  It said I could either swallow or spit it out, but I think it would be more polite if I just swallowed it.”

By a super-human effort David managed to hold off coming as she said that.  The excitement of this innocent girl spouting what sounded like pornography at him while rubbing his penis enthusiastically was difficult to resist.

“Now we are friends I shall kiss him,” she announced.

“Wait a moment,” David begged, “When you suck him I shall definitely ‘spurt’ as you put it.  Do you really want it in your mouth?”

“Well, I’ve never tasted it, but the book said it was OK so I’ll try it,” she said gaily, “If you don’t mind, that is?”

“Just don’t be angry with me afterwards,” warned David.

Then she closed her mouth over the throbbing head of his prick and licked her tongue round the tip in her mouth.  Suddenly she was off the bed and over at the sink.

“What’s the matter?  I haven’t …” he started as his manhood wilted.

Interrupting him she said, “Sorry, sorry, it isn’t you.  I didn’t like the taste of Vaseline, so I’ll wash it off first.”

Suiting her actions to her words, she washed it carefully with a warm face-cloth and the reaction was very positive.

“Now,” she said and sank back on the bed and began to suck and lick for all she was worth.

Of course, the inevitable happened and David erupted in her mouth almost immediately.  She tried hard to swallow it all, but choked a little and some spilled out onto the bedclothes.  She seemed disappointed that he shrank to such a small soft sausage afterwards but, as he suggested, more licking and sucking soon got him back to strength.

“Please can we try properly?  I mean …” she asked shyly.

“But it will hurt,” David reminded her.

“Well if it hurts we could stop, but I’d like to try,” she answered blushing furiously again.

So they tried and it did hurt a little, but the pleasure was worth it, she decided, though the sheets did get in a mess.  After that the sheets in his college rooms needed changing almost every day.

The brouhaha about his becoming a Prince was a nine days’ wonder and all went back to normal.

Chapter One Inheritance

The Emir and Crown Prince Gamal were travelling together, which was unusual, in the Emir’s private 747 on the way back from a trip to Monte Carlo.  The chauffeur delegated to collect them at the Kobek International Airport was a little over-enthusiastic and raced along the runway after the 'plane.  Air Traffic Control spotted it and panicked.  The military also panicked and ordered the pilot to take off again, fearing an assassination attempt.  The pilot did his best, but was short of room and as the aircraft tried to take off, it hit the lights at the end of the runway and cart-wheeled into an expensive shambles of broken and burnt metal.

The Crown Prince was dead, but the Emir lived for two days.  The death of the Emir was not announced while a frantic search to locate his successor went on.  There were public medical reports of him clinging on to life in intensive care long after his body was in a mortuary freezer drawer.

Fortunately Pauline had not stayed the night when David was roused, this time by an irate Master of his College, at half past six in the morning.

“I have some Police Officers, both local and from the Royal Protection Squad here with representatives of the Foreign and Colonial Office, and the Kobekistan Ambassador, two other Arab gentlemen of unknown provenance, old Uncle Tom Cobleigh and all, demanding your presence, Mr. Ransome,” he said, “What is this all about?  What have you done?”

David was, perhaps, a little more compos mentis at that hour than the Master who, as was his wont, had dined and supped overly well the previous evening, so he offered, “I suspect my grandfather has died.”

“Grandfather, grandfather?” thundered the Master, “and who might your grandfather …”

Silence returned as the Master remembered the previous year’s affair of the Prince Mahmoud Abdullah.

“Shall we go and find out?” asked David.

As they entered the house of the Master of the College, the three Arab gentlemen prostrated themselves in total silence and did not move until David said, “Please get up, gentlemen.”

“Master,” said the Ambassador, “The Emir, your grandfather, has died, and Crown Prince Gamal predeceased him by some days.  Master, I am here to humbly beg Your Highness to come to Kobekistan and assume Your Highness’s rightful throne.”

The taller of the other two Kobekistanis then said, “Master, my name is Kamal Qumsiyeh.  I was Head of Protocol to the Emir, your grandfather, and yet I hope you will forgive my bluntness.  If we are to avoid civil war when the news of the Emir’s death leaks out, then we must go to Kobekistan today.  Please bring the Princess Zubeydeh with you, Master, she will be of inestimable use as a source of trustworthy information for you.”

“The Princess Zubeydeh?” asked David, not recognising the name.

“The Princess Zubeydeh, your mother – she knows Kobekistan which will be useful for you,” came the response.

“She may not want to come, and her husband may not want to let her,” David pointed out.

“Order her to come and she will come, of course.  If the husband objects, either buy her or have him strangled,” suggested Kamal Qumsiyeh, causing a sudden fit of choking among the Police and the gentlemen from the Foreign Office.

David ignored their discomfort and continued, “But I don’t want to be the Emir of Kobekistan.  I want to stay here and finish my research.”

“It is Allah’s will that this happens.  Master, when you are established as the Emir your actions are, of course, your choice.  You don’t have to stay long;  then you could return and we would run the country for you.”

“I will talk to my mother first,” said David.

“As the Master wishes,” acknowledged the Ambassador, “We will wait for the Master to speak.”

Everyone trooped over to David’s rooms and the party was again increased by the arrival of four enormous fierce looking Arabs armed with vicious looking scimitars.  One of the British policemen said something to his boss, but it was evidently overheard by the Arabs.

“We are the bodyguard of the Emir of Kobekistan and have full permission to go armed in your country,” said one of the four in excellent English, “The Ambassador has the papers.  Do not worry, we will not shoot unless it is necessary.”

“It was the swords that I wondered about, actually,” said the policeman, recognising a fellow professional.

“They are a purely ceremonial part of our uniform.  If there’s any trouble we drop them.  The other hand carries the gun,” explained the Arab, producing a machine pistol as if by magic, in his left hand, “Nobody expects a gun in the left hand.”

The two men went off into a discussion about the trials and tribulations of being part of the Royal Protection Squad in the United Kingdom, as opposed to Kobekistan.  David, meanwhile, was on the telephone to his mother.

“Yes, darling, of course I’ll come with you.  Peter won’t mind too much and you will most certainly need someone you can trust,” she said.

“What do you think they told me when I said I had to ask you if you would come, and if dad would mind?” inquired David.

“Oh,” said his mother, laughing, “I expect they thought I would do whatever the Emir orders and that if Peter objected they could either buy me from him, or shoot him.”

“Strangling was suggested, rather than shooting, but essentially, yes.  The police and the Foreign Office chappies almost had a joint fit.  I can see I am going to need you.”

Pausing only to leave a note for Pauline saying merely that his grandfather had died and so he had to go away for a few days, David gathered up a few essentials, including a copy of Choquet’s General Topology and the like, in the hopes that he could do some work, and left for London Airport.

***

When they were comfortably settled in the luxurious seats of another of the Emir’s private aircraft which was carrying them to David’s new life, his mother started to explain about the different way of life in Kobekistan.

“Remember always that you are the absolute ruler of the country.  Every citizen is entirely in your hands and is yours to do as you wish with.  I don’t suppose much has changed in the last twenty years and I expect they will all greet you by kneeling and putting their foreheads on the floor.  When we are in Kobekistan, even I will have to show such respect to you.”

“Yes, the Ambassador, Kamal Qumsiyeh and Hajji Kofi Natsheh did that in Oxford.  I was a bit embarrassed in front of the Master and the policemen.”

“Well, it goes much further than that.  You must watch what you say, especially if someone annoys you.  If you say ‘Oh, go away,’ to someone in an annoyed tone, then they will probably be exiled for ever by some over-zealous servant who thinks he knows what you mean.  If you played at being the Red Queen and said ‘Off with his head,’ the person concerned would certainly be beheaded, in public, within the hour.”

She fell silent, wondering how to broach the next subject.

Taking a deep breath, she said, “The women who bear your first two or three children, especially the boys, will be very powerful within your household, so be careful whom you impregnate.”

David stared at his mother.

“I … I don’t intend to …”  His voice tailed off.

“An heir is necessary and as soon as possible,” his mother replied, “When you are there you are an absolute ruler.  There are probably fifty or sixty women in the Emir, your grandfather’s harem.  You have inherited them.  One of them, Djamilla, was the mother of Crown Prince Gamal, your late uncle;  she has a separate section in the harem and thinks she owns the country.”

David sensed the bitterness in his mother’s voice;  obviously she had suffered from her mother-in-law’s interference before.

“You have to demote her to be just another woman in your harem.  When you meet her you must be firm and make her submit to you completely.”

“You mean?” asked David.

His mother gathered herself again and continued, “I mean sexually.  You must take her properly, and in her bottom and then make her clean your … you with her mouth.  But you must not ejaculate.  That declares your ownership of her absolutely.”

“But … but …” David stammered.

“Everyone will think that it is very kind of you to let her live.  Her husband, your grandfather had every woman in his father’s harem strangled the day he came to power, and she knows it because she was already his Head Wife.”

There was silence for a while, then David asked, “What about the running of the country?  I can’t do that;  I don’t know how.”

“Kamal Qumsiyeh, Hajji Darwish Dosmukhamedov, Hajji Kofi Natsheh and the others will do all the actual work, if you let them.  Policy is all you lay down and they attend to the details.  Be wary of them though.  They will come to you and offer you only one choice of policy if they want you to do something.  If you are wise you will find out for yourself about some things.  Use the Internet to find out what is going on outside;  the local press will be censored in your name.  When they say a decision is needed urgently, be especially wary.”

“Where will you live, Mother?”

With downcast eyes she answered quietly, “I would like to have the use of the Head Wife’s suite in my son, the Emir’s harem while I am here, if my Master permits.”

Her manner towards him had changed, and David sensed that it had changed forever.  In his own country he was her Master, and that of every other citizen.  He could order whatever he wished and it would be done, at least until his orders became so oppressive that someone decided to assassinate him and succeeded.

As they came in to land at Kobek another oddity happened;  his mother donned full purdah, explaining to David that it was the custom, and would be unwise for him to change it, even for her.  He, himself, she advised, should normally wear the local traditional dress which was more Indian than Arabic and was basically a shalwar kameez, though the kameez was a little longer than the Indian version.

“It isn’t a good idea to try to change anything for the first few weeks,” she advised, “Not until you have found your feet.”

Then she added as an afterthought, “Though you might have Djamilla strangled if you want;  it would save you a lot of trouble.”

David thought that an odd joke for his mother to have made.

Chapter Two The First Day Of The Rest Of His Life

At the airport there was some delay after the aircraft stopped before a Rolls-Royce arrived at the bottom of the steps.  This delay caused very worried looks among the officials, but one of them said eventually that it was only because the chauffeur was avoiding any mistakes.

The Emir’s palace was visible from some considerable distance away as the Rolls-Royce sped towards it from the airport.  It looked the sort of building a child might have made, if given a truly tremendous number of Lego bricks which were all yellow.  It had six floors and there were perhaps a hundred windows at each level.  The architectural style reminded David of drawings he had seen of some of Albert Speer’s proposals.  It was flanked by two smaller versions of the same style, but one green and the other red.

Close up, they looked even more massive and David realised that the yellow was caused by some form of glittering gold paint covering the exterior;  he later learned that it was tiny facets of the stonework which had been given a coating of gold leaf.  The red and green buildings had been treated with rubies and emeralds in the same way.

Inside it was airy, light, spacious and cool.  David vaguely remembered the high ceilings and the ornately painted walls, but the details which he had lived with until he was four years old and then not seen for twenty years were very vague.  Every servant they passed was kneeling with his forehead pressed down on the floor in obeisance at the arrival of the new Emir.  David turned to pass a comment on this to his mother but she was not there.

“Where is my mother?” he asked.

“She will be taken to the harem, never fear, Master,” said Kamal Qumsiyeh who had accompanied them in a separate car from the airport.

“I want her with me, here, now,” David said firmly, deciding that if he was the absolute ruler he could at least have his mother with him if he wished.

“Master,” said Kamal Qumsiyeh with a note of real fear in his voice.

It was a matter of moments before Amelia appeared, completely hidden from head to foot by her abaya.  Just as she did so, they entered what seemed to be some sort of main reception room, which appeared to be carpeted entirely by crouching people as everyone pressed their foreheads on the floor.  At the far end of the room was a dais with a small but unmistakable throne on it.  David went to the dais, mounted it and sat down.

“Well?” he asked Kamal Qumsiyeh, “What do I do now?”

“If you would indicate to the major-domo, then all will be permitted to rise,” advised the old man.

David looked in the direction he indicated and saw a small man dressed all in black carrying a large mace, so large that it seemed he would not be able to lift it properly.  It was only later that David learned that this was so, to prevent the major-domo from attacking the Emir with his ceremonial mace.  Since this was the only other man still standing, David nodded to him and he banged the end of his mace on the floor, whereupon everyone stood up.

“We will eat now and discuss business later,” David ordered the general throng of people, “Bring a chair for my mother.”

“You wish the Princess Zubeydeh to sit on the dais beside you?” asked Kamal Qumsiyeh with the surprise showing in his tone of voice.

Sensing that that would be a mistake, David said, “No, no, of course not, but nearby.”

Within a few moments a table had appeared and David sat down to eat a sumptuous meal consisting of a series of dishes most of which he had never tasted before.  Some he recognised, but others were so new to him that he could not even guess at the ingredients.

His mother had declined his invitation to join him, evidently because of protocol, but she supervised the handling of the dishes as they arrived.  There seemed to be a quaint custom that the waiter (as David thought of them) who brought each dish was given a small portion of it to eat before it was given to David.  After the fourth or fifth time this happened he realised that this was his mother’s way of protecting him from being poisoned.  Fortunately, none of the plate-bearers showed any ill effects.

After the meal was over, David resumed the throne, with his mother sitting next to the dais, and the major-domo rapped on the floor again.  In answer to David’s query, Kamal Qumsiyeh explained that under the late Emir it had been his task to run the palace and its protocol.  There were about a hundred and forty staff working in the palace itself plus twenty-three eunuchs plus about sixty women in the harem, which was administered by the Chief Eunuch.

“The Emir also owns the Ruby Palace by inheritance from the late Crown Prince via the late Emir, and of course the Emerald Palace in your own right,” he continued, “Naturally, you are the only whole man allowed to enter the harem, except by your explicit invitation, Master.  The Ruby Palace harem has a further thirty women and the associated eunuchs.  These people,” he waved towards the throng in the room, “are all asking for audience with you, but all wish only to congratulate the new Emir;  it would be a gross breach of protocol to present any petition at this time.  If my Master wishes I can announce a general audience and then they will go away.”

“Do I need to make a speech?” asked David.

“Oh, no, Master.  If you stand now and let them applaud you, then wave them away, that will be quite sufficient.”

David stood and was met by tumultuous applause;  as it showed no sign of dying down he thought wickedly of just letting it go on to see how soon any of them would be too tired to continue.  After a minute or so, when some seemed to be flagging in their efforts he waved his hand and silence fell.  He nodded again to the major-domo who again rapped on the floor and the crowd filed out quietly.

David turned to Kamal Qumsiyeh and said, “I want to change things a little in the harem here.  My mother will occupy the Head Wife’s suite while she is here.  After she leaves, it will remain empty until I order otherwise.”

“Yes, Master.  Does my Master wish the harem here, or in the Ruby Palace to be cleared, as the late Emir ordered?”

“No, thank you,” said David, “I’ll inspect the place here, and both sets of women, before anything is done to anyone.  Now I believe there are other officials waiting to see me?”

“Yes, Master.  The Chief Eunuch and the two principal advisors to the late Emir wish to know if they are to continue in the same rôles as before.  I, too, would be proud to serve the Emir as I served his grandfather,” Kamal Qumsiyeh said with a trace of nervousness.

David reflected that it must be difficult to work for a man who could say, “Off with his head,” and be obeyed.  If these men had worked for his grandfather, there was no reason to sack any of them today.  Time would tell if he could work with them.

A corpulent black man of obvious North African descent was presented as the Chief Eunuch.  David repeated his order about his mother’s accommodation and the man withdrew.

Hajji Darwish Dosmukhamedov was the next one presented;  he explained that he had run the economy of Kobekistan.  The nation had lots of income from oil and therefore had no economic problems beyond deciding how to spend all that wealth.  David began then to appreciate how absolute a ruler he was;  he decided what this enormous wealth was spent on, and every penny of the country’s income was his private income from which he paid everybody and bought everything.

Hajji Kofi Natsheh was the other adviser to be presented;  he explained that he had run the diplomatic service, but that in the matter of relations with other nations he must be guided by the Emir.

“There is only one matter of urgency, Master,” he continued, “The question of the western border dispute.  The late Emir, your grandfather, was about to declare a change of emphasis on our policy in that area.  If the Master wishes, I will institute the changes immediately, as his grandfather would have done.”

David thought this sounded exactly like a fast one being pulled and wondered how to get out of anything rash being done while he was finding his feet.  Then he had an inspiration, which would buy him two months during which no policy changes could occur.

“Thank you, Hajji Kofi Natsheh, but I am grief stricken at the sudden deaths of my beloved grandfather and uncle.  Please instruct our Ambassadors world-wide to convey to all other governments that there will be two months of official mourning, during which no negotiations of any kind will be possible.  No notes will be sent or received, no meetings or discussions will take place and no social visits will be made or received.  Do you understand that?”

“But, Master …”

David cut him short, “I believe that ‘but’ is not a word you would have dared to use to the Emir my grandfather.  Do not presume to use it to the Emir his grandson.”

For a fraction of a second David wondered what he could do if Hajji Kofi Natsheh stood up to him, but then the Foreign Minister fell to the floor in the deepest of kneeling prostrations and said, “Master, I am yours.”

Looking across to Kamal Qumsiyeh, David saw a look of approval on his face.  Apparently he had passed his first test.  David confirmed the continued appointment of all three advisors, but made sure they understood that their tenure was not for life, and could be revoked whenever he wished.  He dismissed the foreign and economic advisors and asked the protocol advisor how he made these appointments formal.

“Master,” came the reply, “They are formal already.  What the Emir says, is.”

“And if I say something different tomorrow?” asked David.

Somewhat puzzled, Kamal Qumsiyeh, shrugged, “Then tomorrow it is different.  What is the difficulty?”

“And if someone has not heard what I said today?” persisted David.

“That does not matter.  If the Emir has spoken then the matter is as he has said.  Nobody will question the Emir?”

“But if I say something to you and you tell a person who was not here that I said something different?”

“Ah, I see my Master’s point,” the advisor said with evident relief, “Then the person who takes the Emir’s name and claims the Emir said something different from what was actually said is taken to the public square and skinned alive;  then he is left for the dogs to eat.  Few offend thus, but I recall one such about fourteen years ago.”

“Is there anything else urgent?” asked David.

“There is the delicate matter of the official Food Taster to the Emir,” replied the Protocol Advisor, “One really should be appointed soon.  The slaves who wait on table will not do it for long.”

“Can’t I just confirm the continuation of the Emir my grandfather’s appointment?”

“Sadly, that is not possible.  He is not available,” was the tactful reply.

“Did someone …?” David left the question in the air.

“Oh, no, Master, not that,” Kamal Qumsiyeh hastened to correct David’s misunderstanding, “He went everywhere with the late Emir and was also on the aircraft when …”

“How do I select one?” asked David.

“That might be difficult, Master.  While every Kobekistani would willingly give his life to protect that of his Emir, few would volunteer to be in the front rank of every battle.”

“You have a suggestion?” ventured David.

“Perhaps an unwanted woman from the harem?  Or possibly a condemned criminal?” offered Kamal Qumsiyeh.

“How would it work with a criminal?  Would he serve a fixed term and then be replaced?”

Kamal Qumsiyeh sounded shocked, “Oh, no Master.  He would serve until his duties satisfied the sentence.  For him it is a good choice, since execution is not long delayed here after sentence.  He gets to live and eat well, and if the Emir is popular, to live for a long time.”

“See to it then, please,” said the Emir.

“My Master may choose a murderer, or one who broke into a harem and stole a woman,” he was told, “These are the only two condemned to die this week.”

“Both,” said David, “They may taste alternate dishes.  Thus if one is unlucky I still have a taster.”

“My Master is far-sighted and cautious,” said the Protocol Advisor and David had no idea if this was flattery or sarcasm.

Chapter Three The Golden Harem

Leaving it at that, David changed the subject to the arrangements in the harem.  Kamal Qumsiyeh escorted David and his mother into the anteroom of the harem, where he took his leave of them, because he was not allowed further.  When David almost invited him in, his mother touched his arm and so he did not pursue the matter.

After Kamal Qumsiyeh had left, she said, “If you invite him in, you are offering him his choice of the lesser women, and I do not think it is time for that yet.  When you trust him enough, you may wish to reward him like that.  If he invites you to his home first, which protocol demands he should do, you may have any of his women for the night.  He will not do that for a while yet.”

Looking round David appraised the long narrow room with doors at both ends and no windows.  It was lit by a glass roof which was frosted to prevent the sun from being too strong and, David supposed, to prevent helicopter pilots from looking in.  There was a small dais for him to sit on, and several other chairs round the walls.  In the centre of the floor was another dais which was about three feet square and had no chair on it.  The walls were decorated with what David classed as mildly pornographic bedroom scenes depicting couples in various forms of sexual congress, some more possible than others.  It reminded David of his time in boarding school when an illustrated copy of the Kama Sutra had been passed around surreptitiously.

The Chief Eunuch came into the anteroom from the main harem and escorted David and Amelia through to the room David immediately christened the interview room.  This had a much higher dais at the outer end bearing another small throne and a large chaise-longue which were the only recognisable furnishings;  it was about twenty-five feet square, again with no windows, and in the centre of the room a curious contraption rather like a gymnasium pommel horse without the handles, but with rings set into the woodwork in some odd places.  Once again there were scenes of love-making on the walls.  These were much more explicit and lurid than the ones in the anteroom, including some rather violent ones where women were being spanked or whipped by the man;  David realised that the contraption in the middle of the floor was a whipping bench when he saw its use depicted on one panel.

There were two other doors to the room, one beside the throne and the other facing the one by which they had entered.  David was ushered through the nearer, smaller door and entered a sumptuous bedroom with a huge four-poster bed at least eight feet square.  Glancing up, he noticed that the canopy of the bed was one large mirror, enabling the occupants of the bed to watch themselves from that angle.  Most of the three surrounding walls were also mirrors, carefully angled so that there was not the dizzying prospect of an infinite number of bedrooms receding on each side, but again enabling the activities on the bed to be observed by the participants.

“I take it that this is my bedroom?” David asked.

“Yes, Master,” replied the Chief Eunuch, “It can be changed in any way the Master requests, of course.”

As David re-entered the harem interview room, he was greeted by the sight of several more plump dark-skinned men kneeling before him.  Telling them to rise, he ordered them only to kneel once per day each before him.  As they replied with odd voices, he correctly surmised that they were the more senior eunuchs who both acted as servants to, and controlled the women.

The first question from the Chief Eunuch when David was seated on his throne was, “Will my Master be sleeping in the harem tonight, or somewhere else?”

“What is the difference?” he asked.

“If the Master wishes one or more of his own women, he sleeps here.  If he is accepting the hospitality of a notable, he sleeps somewhere else,” said the Chief Eunuch.

“And if I have had the harem emptied as my grandfather did?  How soon could it be restocked?” asked David, more out of curiosity than anything.

“There could be three or four to choose from by this evening, Master, if that is your wish?  Two or three experienced concubines of the highest quality and one or two would be virgin daughters of notables, if the Master lets it be known that he so wishes.  Tomorrow there would be at least a dozen virgins.  Within a week there would be fifty women in total.  Does my Master wish the harem cleared?  I was told that my Master wished to inspect before deciding.”

The Chief Eunuch seemed confused, so David reassured him that the planned inspection would take place, and that after it there would not be a complete emptying of the harem.  Actually, at that moment, he could not see himself ever ordering anyone’s death, but was wise enough not to say that.

The women were brought before him in groups of five or six, each dressed similarly.  A sleeveless brocade waistcoat, in the style of a western bolero, which did not meet across the breasts but left them visible at each swing as she walked was complemented by loose chiffon trousers of various colours, but all sheer and all, he noticed, with no gusset or seam between the legs.  Thus the legs were encased, but the gap left each woman’s shaven cunt completely visible and accessible.  This gap ran from front to back, so that the arse-crack was also totally available for his eyes, or, he supposed, his hands.  All were exquisitely made-up and coiffured.  Each one had different little mannerisms clearly intended to catch his eye and make him remember her.  Each woman had a number from two to sixty-three and he noted the more attractive ones’ numbers carefully.  He also noticed that there was no number one.

Their appearance varied from very dark-skinned to a few obviously white women, and their ages ran from, he guessed fifty-odd down to late teens.  Almost all were very submissive in their manner.  Number two, an older woman, seemed haughty and not to care much whether he noticed her or not.  Most of them there seemed to want to let him know they were available, even keen to make his closer acquaintance.

This made David wonder.  It was only a few days since his grandfather had died.  Presumably some of these had slept with his grandfather within the last month, yet they were already vying for a place in the bed of the new Master.  It really was an alien world to him and he felt he would enjoy exploring the limits of this part of the experience.

Number twenty-two had especially taken his fancy, she was a tallish fair-skinned girl with very dark brown hair.  Her figure was on the plumper side, but her breasts looked firm.  As with all the others, she had no body-hair at all and the cunt lips looked plump and inviting.  Her eyes were large and brown and had something of the adoration of a Labrador Retriever in them when she looked at him.  Her little trick was a high kick as she turned slightly, so that her entire soft coral pink creviced area with its rouged edging was displayed to him.

Turning to the Chief Eunuch, he asked, “Do any of them speak English?”

“I believe there are four, Master,” was the reply.

“Then I will interview each of those four separately,” said David, “Bring them in order of their numbers.”

David had assumed, again correctly, that the numbers were not random, but indicated seniority.

***

The first one to enter the room and prostrate herself was number two, the fifty-odd year old raven haired Arab beauty, accompanied by one of the eunuchs.  Djamilla, the Chief Eunuch explained, was his grandfather’s Head Wife.  Telling her to rise, David examined her more closely than he had done in the line-up previously, and saw breasts which were only drooping a little and which had prominent rouged nipples.  The cleft at her belly had been plucked clean of hair and the crevice had also been rouged.  As he walked round her, he noted that her full buttocks glistened with oil and were paler than the rest of her body, and were also fairly firm.  All in all a well-set-up healthy woman whose appearance belied her years.

“My orders have been obeyed, I hope?” David asked the Chief Eunuch.

“Yes, of course, Master.  The Princess Zubeydeh has moved into the Head Wife’s suite and become number one,” replied the Chief Eunuch;  then as a thought horrified him he hurriedly continued, “Did my Master intend that the Princess Zubeydeh should be in the inspection?”

The image of his mother parading before him in clothing which covered nothing and only served to emphasise her sexual features flitted through David’s mind and a broad grin lit up his features.

“No, do not worry.  That was not my wish,” he reassured the Chief Eunuch.

Turning to the woman he asked, “Djamilla, what should I do with you?”

“My new Master doubtless will do as he sees fit with the mother of his grandfather’s first-born son,” was the less than respectful reply.

As the attendant eunuch took the short whip from his belt, David waved him aside and moved closer to the woman.

Looking straight into her eyes he said, “Respect and obedience are demanded.”

Wilting under his gaze Djamilla’s eyes dropped and she lowered her head into a submissive attitude.  David reached out and cupped and weighed one breast, ignoring the fact that she flinched as he touched her so intimately.  Feeling his manhood rise at this delightful exercise of power over the woman, he decided to take his mother’s advice.

Turning to the Chief Eunuch, he said, “I’ll take this one now.”

Djamilla looked horrified, but did not resist as the eunuch led her to the bed and knelt her down with her arse in the air and her legs wide, presenting her entire cunt and arse for the Master’s use.  The eunuch spread her labia and David could see that they too had been oiled ready for him.

Lifting the front of his kameez, he pressed his cock firmly in to the presented cunt right up to the hilt.  It slipped in easily, partly because of the oiling and partly because it was quite a slack cunt.  At least, it was much slacker than the young hairy cunts David had had in Oxford.  Three firm thrusts, taken slowly and the woman had pressed back on to the third.  David withdrew and lifted his prick to the darker hole.  Again it slid into a pre-oiled haven with little resistance, though this aperture was both tighter and much hotter.

‘I see why they say this is good,’ thought David, never revealing to the others that it was the first arse hole he had plundered.

Again he thrust slowly three times;  again the woman responded a little.  It was enough to be regarded as an acceptable obedience and respect.  David withdrew;  now for the final humiliation.

“Clean it,” he ordered.

Djamilla clearly understood exactly what he meant.  She turned and without any hesitation started to lick his prick.  As she took it deep into her mouth, he wondered briefly what he would do if she bit him.  Almost at once he realised that she was desperately trying to make him come, and was nearly succeeding.  Moving backwards he disengaged from her and let his kameez drop.

“Enough,” he said, and the woman was hustled out of the room.

“The Master understands women,” commented the Chief Eunuch, but was discouraged from any further intimacy by a look from David.

“Bring in the next one that speaks English.”

***

Number fourteen came in and performed the correct obeisance and stood quietly as David examined her.  She was about forty, a blonde a little taller than him, and had obviously been a great beauty but had rather let herself go and run to fat.  A rather too plump arse was counterbalanced by a rather too plump belly, and her breasts sagged distinctly.  David thought that with a proper brassière on and in a decent dress she would look well as a lecturer’s wife.

“And who are you?” David asked.

“I am Davina;  I was the Emir’s second wife.  We married in England years ago and I bore him a son who died a long time ago.  The Emir loved that boy and after his death would have nothing to do with me.  He was an old man;  now a handsome young Emir like you, well I could show you a trick or two.”

For a moment he wondered if she was referring to his father, but he knew that his grandmother had died giving birth to his father.  Her voice sounded like Kensington smart set to David and he didn’t doubt that she would grab every chance she could get to ingratiate herself with him.  He looked again at the sagging breasts and the rotund belly.

“Why do you still have your English name?” David asked.

“Because that was the Emir, my husband’s wish.  He said when we married that he didn’t want to change anything about me,” she replied proudly.

“Will the Master take this one?” asked the Chief Eunuch.

“No.  She doesn’t appeal to me at all,” said David.

At this Davina fell to her knees, screaming at David, “They’ll whip me for that;  I know they will.  Please, please fuck me;  please say you want me …”

Her voice tailed off into wails of despair as the two eunuchs dragged her out.  When the Chief Eunuch returned seconds later, David suggested a coffee break for a few minutes and was pleasantly surprised when coffee arrived in a very few seconds and tasted as good as that he had made for himself in Oxford.  This made David wonder if they made fresh coffee every couple of minutes, just in case he asked for it.

After they had drunk the coffee in agreeable silence, David said, “Next please.”

***

The third English-speaking harem inhabitant was number fifty-five, a local girl to all appearances, of about David’s own age, accompanied by one of the eunuchs.  Selima, the Chief Eunuch explained, was one of his grandfather’s latest acquisitions, given him as a present by her father to curry favour.  Signalling her to stand up on the small dais, David enjoyed looking at her youthful beauty much more than the previous two women.

Her breasts were young and firm, needing no support, with proud little nipples which the rouge emphasised nicely.  The crack between her thighs had been shaved or plucked so clean of hair that David could imagine it had not yet grown any and the inner edge of the lips glistened where they had been oiled ready for entry.  Motioning to her to turn round slowly, he saw that her young arse was firm and tight, also oiled as he now expected.  This was a girl he could imagine dreaming about as he lay alone in his bed in Oxford.  And now she belonged to him.  He could do as he wished with her.  Anything.  The idea excited him.

“What am I to do with you?” he asked the top of her head as she stood with a submissively lowered head.

“Anything my Master wishes,” she replied, “I am my Master’s to use as he sees fit.”

“Why were you given to my grandfather by your father?” he asked her.

“It was my father’s wish and my Master, your grandfather’s wish,” she answered simply, as though it was no concern of hers.

“Where did you learn such excellent English?” David asked.

“I lived with my father in England for many years and I went to school there until I was eighteen.  I was glad because here many girls do not even learn to read, but in England it was the law that all learn to read and write.”

“And my grandfather took you as a present.  Did he use you?” asked David in a sympathetic voice.

“Only once, as a symbol of accepting me.  My father was there to see it done,” she whispered.

Changing the subject, he asked her, “What is happening outside?  I heard some noise a few moments ago.”

The Chief Eunuch moved towards the door, but David stopped him with a gesture.  He had to lean towards Selima to hear her whispered reply.

“They are whipping Davina because she displeased you, Master.  Please do not have me whipped.”

“Well we can’t let them whip you, can we?  Will you let me make love to you, just to save your bottom from the eunuchs?”

“I am the Master’s to do with as he wishes.  Do not be angry because I don’t want them to whip me.”

The girl was really frightened now.  By this time David had a real hard-on at the thought of fucking this beautiful girl who had only been had once, and that only symbolically.  He led her over to the big sprawling couch and slipped off her bolero, kissing and sucking one breast.

Wiping his mouth clean, he turned to the Chief Eunuch and said, “No more rouge on nipples.  It is an order.”

“Master,” said the Chief Eunuch and signed to the assistant who slipped out.

Taking the trousers from the compliant girl’s legs he spat on the cloth and rubbed the rouge off the other nipple and took the breast in his mouth.  One hand slid up her thighs and her legs immediately parted to allow his fingers access to her entire body.  Finding her clitoris he stroked it, grateful for the oil it wore.  Faint moans came from deep in the girl’s throat, though he thought the trembling in her body was due more to fear of annoying her Master than from any passion he might be arousing in her.

“What would you like me to do now?” he whispered in her ear.

Depressingly, the answer came, “Whatever my Master wishes.  I am his to do with as he wishes.”

“And you have no wishes of your own?” he persisted.

“None, Master.  I am yours to …”

He cut her short by kissing her mouth.  When his tongue moved on to her lips, seeking her tongue, she didn’t open her mouth.  Then he understood, she had never been kissed before and didn’t know what Western kissing was like.  Well then, he would save that for later and just take her.  Sliding between her legs, he put his cock-head into her cunt and pushed.  It was difficult to make progress, but eventually he slid right inside a very tight warm cunt.

Starting to pump gently in and out, he sensed that the girl was getting very roused, and so was he.  Sensible of his mother’s warning about the politics of pregnancy, he withdrew and turned her over.  Entering her anus was no easier than her cunt had been, and it obviously was not easy for her either.  Once he was right inside her arse he reached round and rubbed her clitoris again.  Almost immediately her body convulsed in its orgasm and the muscles clenching within her set him off too.  She threshed about so much that his prick fell out of her arse and sprayed much of his jism on her back and thighs.

Looking down he saw that she had fainted from the pleasure of her first orgasm, so he stood up and said to the Chief Eunuch, “That was nice.  Promote her to number two for the time being.”

***

The fourth and youngest of the women, who had been wearing the number 63, who spoke English turned out to speak American.  When she came into the room she rushed over to David and tried to throw her arms round him.  The eunuchs dragged her off him none too gently and gave her a quick lick of the whip as they forced her to her knees and her head to the floor.

Immediately she shouted, “You can’t let them do this.  You’re English.  I heard you speak.  Ooooowww …”

She trailed off into silence as she was again given a harder blow of the whip.

“Stand up,” said David, not unkindly, “It seems you are unfamiliar with the customs round here.  Tell me, quietly and clearly, without moving, who you are and what you think I could do for you.”

Standing tall and looking David in the eye, Laura declaimed, “I am an American citizen and I demand to see the Consul or the Ambassador.”

“Demands will only get you more tastes of the whip,” David pointed out, “Now, tell me quietly and clearly how you came to be here and we will see what can be done.”

Calming herself, Laura started to explain, “I was kidnapped and brought here against my will.  A dirty old man tried to fuck me and these black brutes beat me until I sucked his cock.  Even that didn’t seem to please him and I was beaten again and then kept here until today.”

“The ‘dirty old man’ was presumably the late Emir, my grandfather, but your story is lacking in details.  How did you get from the USA to a harem in this country?  No tourists come here and I find it difficult to believe that you were working here?”

“Tourists do come here, lots of them.  I came on a package tour and we, my friend Marylou and me, we met these two handsome guys and they took us to a party.  Then we went to their apartment and we … well then I passed out and the next thing I know I’m in some sort of prison cell with no clothes on.  After a few days of the guards raping me, I was dragged into a room with lots of men and sold at auction.  Then I was chloroformed and woke up in this place.”

Laura ran out of strength then and sobbed uncontrollably.  David took the opportunity of using his phone to ask Kamal Qumsiyeh about her and her provenance.

“Ask her what her number is on her arm,” was the surprising reply.

On being told that it was EV1205, Kamal Qumsiyeh told David, “Her official name is Fatima and she is an indentured servant to the Emir for twenty years.  She was bought, sorry, her indentures were bought in the slave market here some five weeks ago and she was chosen by the late Emir once.  She was not pleasing to him and he had more or less decided to have her killed.”

“But she claims to be an American tourist called Laura,” David interjected.

“As to the tourist, Laura Goldblum,” continued Kamal Qumsiyeh suavely, “she was killed six weeks ago in a motoring accident in Tunis.  Her body was cremated the next day, because of the temperature you understand, and her ashes were flown back to the USA.  I believe her parents buried her ashes in a full-sized coffin with a religious service four weeks ago.  All her papers, passport, death certificate, etc., and effects were returned with the ashes.  The inclusion of her passport proves she did not leave Tunis.”

After listening to this, David said to the sobbing Laura, “Laura Goldblum died in Tunis and has been buried in the USA.  You are Fatima and your indentures were purchased by the Emir here at the slave market.  You are my property and I can do what I like with you.”

“I’m an American citizen and I demand OOOooooooooowwwww.”

Again the whip interrupted her outburst.  Looking at her cowering on the floor, David saw a thin girl, evidently striving as many young Americans did, for the Barbie look.  The breasts had no body to them and flopped about as though they did not contain enough flesh to fill the skin available and her arse cheeks looked much the same.  Bottle blonde hair which apparently had been coloured or bleached too often and was now lank and beginning to show darker for about half an inch at the roots.  She had no body hair at all.

He stepped down from the dais and leant over her, enjoying himself thoroughly.  He had never had absolute power of life and death over a young woman before, or any real degree of power over anyone for that matter.  Her reluctance made him the more excited, especially in contrast to Selima’s total submissiveness.  This one would resent being fucked.

“To save you from another whipping for displeasing me, I’ll fuck you if you want.  If you prefer a whipping just say the word.  My grandfather, the late Emir, had more or less decided to have you killed, because you cannot be allowed out of here with your present story and he found you unpleasing;  although we can prove that you are Fatima, and that you are not Laura, the story would cause too much scandal.  Now, on the couch over there with your legs wide open for me, or not.  Your call, as I believe they say in the American form of English.”

Horrified, Laura scooted herself away from him on her bottom on the floor.  As the realisation dawned that this was not to be her knight in shining armour, she accepted that another whipping was the last thing she wanted and moved over to the couch, glaring at him.  Lying back on it with her coccyx on the edge and her eyes tightly shut, she draped one leg over the arm at the end and let the other fall slackly to the floor, opening her cunt to his inspection and his use.  David was immediately roused even more by her look of pure hatred than he had been by her helplessness.  Wasting no time he drove into her and pounded away, oblivious to her cries whether of pain or pleasure.  Forgetting his mother’s warning, he soon came deep in her womb, and she shuddered as he did so in an unwelcome orgasm of her own.

“You bastard,” she said, “I’ve no pills and you might have made me pregnant.”

“Pray that I have, and with a boy,” said David, privately annoyed with himself for coming inside her, “The first woman to bear the new Emir a son becomes a real power in this land.  Her child will be the next Emir.”

Turning to the eunuch he said, “Keep her away from the others until we know whether she is pregnant.  Put her with my mother, but she stays 63.”

Tiring of looking at near naked females, most of whom expect him to solve all of their problems by impregnation, David told the Chief Eunuch, “I will be sleeping here tonight.  The girl wearing twenty-one in the line-up, who is now twenty-two, is she biddable?  Will she keep me amused tonight?  Does she speak English?”

“Master, I cannot tell ‘biddable’;  we bought her in a slave auction with her mother many years ago and she was used as toy for Royal Children.  She will please the Master, I am certain.  She speaks only Arabic and some French.  She will come when you tell,” replied the Chief Eunuch, whose English was good, but not perfect.

“Good,” said David and left the harem to return to the world of economics and of protocol.

Over dinner he discussed with Kamal Qumsiyeh the workings of Kobekistan’s entrepreneurial classes and what passed for internal politics in a country with an absolute monarch.  He gleaned that the deals between the economically powerful notables could be struck by the usual bartering of advantages.

His favour mattered to all of them because he could break any of them, if he wanted, by refusing key permissions.  He could not, however, take them all on;  they would simply have him assassinated.  They would send him presents from time to time, like Selima, or an aeroplane, or some other small token of esteem.

In return for their favours, he would aid one or another from time to time.  The knack was to favour them all evenly in the long run.  He could also send his unwanted wives or concubines to them as presents, and these were prized as status symbols in a society where no women were ever seen in public.  Late that evening it occurred to David that he had done nothing about the Ruby or Emerald Palaces.

“The Emerald Palace has been closed ever since the Princess Zubeydeh left Kobekistan, but the Ruby Palace still functions, though Crown Prince Gamal died some days ago,” Kamal Qumsiyeh told him.

“I suppose that had better be closed for the moment,” David mused, “I don’t need two palaces.”

“And the staff there?” asked Kamal Qumsiyeh.

“Add them in here where possible, especially all the Kobekistanis.  Any spare slaves you can suggest selling or giving away as presents, but I will decide based on your recommendations.”

“And the harem?”

“Ah, yes.  The harem,” David paused for a few seconds, “I will inspect the women now and we can decide tomorrow.”

Chapter Four The Ruby Harem

The interview room of the Ruby harem was similar to the one in the Golden Palace, except that the pictures were much more explicit and were much more heavily oriented towards pain than to pleasure.  There were depictions of girls and young men undergoing a variety of punishments, or in some cases tortures.  The mediæval rack was easily understood, but some of the other devices were incomprehensible to the young Emir.  He decided to look into that later, being fairly sure that the Ruby Palace would contain examples of most of them.  It seemed that the late Crown Prince’s tastes were decidedly more decadent than the late Emir’s.

It took about half-an-hour to organise a review of the women, and to get the Chief Eunuch in from the Golden Palace because none of the eunuchs spoke English.  When all was arranged, the parade was depressingly similar to that earlier in the day, except that the late Crown Prince’s ideas on harem uniform were very different from his father’s.  Each of the women wore short smocks rather like maternity tunics but which stopped at the level of the cunt lips, and nothing else.  The smocks were made from thin chiffon and showed off the bodies they contained very well.  While nothing was hidden, the effect was much more arousing than nudity could ever have been.

Once again, each woman had her own little tricks clearly intended to catch his eye and make him aware that they were available.  He marvelled that they did not miss Crown Prince Gamal, who had been their only male companion and who had only just died.  Then he remembered how rarely his mother had seen his father and concluded that love was uncommon here because the women scarcely knew their husbands or masters at all.

David had taken care to explain that he would not use any of these women that night and nothing was to be taken as an indication of displeasure with any of them.  As they paraded before him, he realised that the Crown Prince’s tastes had run to much younger women than might have been expected.  David guessed, correctly, that none of them were over twenty-one or twenty-two, and some looked as young as sixteen.  Simple inquiry showed that only one spoke English, and she was clearly of African descent and did not appeal to David at all.

***

The first one to catch his eye sufficiently to warrant closer examination was called Esh-Shems and only spoke or understood Arabic.  She was short and, by western standards, fat with plump olive coloured breasts and large wobbly buttocks.  David thought she might be fun to roll on a bed with, if only once or twice, so he decided to look more closely.

David had her stand on the dais and then he inspected her minutely, turning and bending her as the mood took him.  He palpated her breasts and pushed fingers into her vagina and anus.  All this she accepted submissively and to all appearances willingly, but when he took her hand and helped her down from the dais, she took the initiative and knelt before him, caressing his penis through the thin cloth covering.

As it hardened, she moved to lift his kameez, but he stayed the movement with one hand.  Waving away the eunuch who immediately approached with a whip he lifted her to her feet by the simple expedient of hauling on her hair.  Then he patted her arse and sent her back to join the others.

The only other woman that David really noticed was a tall, statuesque blonde with the palest blue eyes, who was described to David as being simple minded.  Her excellent deportment and clear stare convinced him that this was not true, but the Chief Eunuch explained that she spoke no language known to anyone in the palace.  She seemed quite content to obey sign language so David motioned to her to stand on the dais.  Inspecting her carefully, he was intrigued to see that she had very plump labia, while her high breasts were quite hard to the touch.  Twirling a finger in the air was immediately obeyed by a slow balletic pirouette showing off an equally firm looking arse.  David decided that this one might be interesting to investigate and then thought how Eastern European she looked.

As she got down from the dais, David casually used one of the only two Russian phrases he knew, “Spasibo, gospodina.”

Immediately she launched into a stream of babbled words of which David understood none.  Nevertheless the breakthrough had been made.

Wondering as to her background David tried a name he thought she might recognise.  “Bolshoi?” he asked making ineffectual ballet dancer movements.

“Niet Bolshoi, Kirov,” the woman said and executed a few extremely graceful steps.

David had always heard that ballet dancers were extremely agile, so perhaps some of the odder positions depicted on the walls of his harem might be possible after all.  That decided him.

“Bring her and Esh-Shems to my harem and present her in the anteroom to the harem in an abaya in two hours from now,” he ordered the Chief Eunuch.

Walking back from the Ruby Palace with the Chief Eunuch, who was obviously very flattered by his company, David indicated that both of the girls he had specially inspected would remain when they had been moved into his harem, and that the rest, together with a dozen or so of the Golden Harem women would be sold or given away, with the details being decided the next day.

Then David won the total undying loyalty of the Chief Eunuch by saying, “Please take any one of the Ruby Harem to be your own slave.  Sell her, or whatever, but she is to be a gift from me to you to thank you for your services today.”

“Master,” said the Chief Eunuch, “Really, any woman?”

“Any except the two I want,” said David, “Tell Kamal Qumsiyeh which it is and remove her tonight if you like.”

“Even the late Crown Prince’s Head Wife?”

“Even her.”

“Master, I dare not ask,” simpered the Chief Eunuch.

David was amused by this creature’s craven attitude, “You may ask.”

“Master, she has a child at the breast, a daughter?”

The Chief Eunuch looked extremely worried, lest he had asked too much, and might lose all.

“With the child,” said David.

Kamal Qumsiyeh was waiting in the Throne Room for him and they discussed the disposal of the Ruby Harem.  David got the impression that there would be much approval of the distribution of gifts by the new Emir, and that virgins would be showered on him in return.  Then he called for Hajji Kofi Natsheh and demanded that by the time Ludmilla was in the anteroom of the harem, someone who could act as an interpreter for the Russian would also be there.  Naturally all the diplomats in Kobekistan were able to speak English and French, but each specialised in their own area of interest also.

***

Half an hour later a small and very old Kobekistani arrived who was presented to the Emir as the leading Russian speaker at the University of Kobek.  He seemed very frightened to be in the presence of his Emir, and it took David several minutes to elicit the fact that the man did speak fluent Russian and English and that he could and would interpret for the meeting with a woman in purdah without asking too many questions and without gossiping later.  The promise not to gossip, David quite rightly took to be an outright lie.  However, he explained what he wanted to know from the woman, and made sure the Professor understood all of it.

Moving to the anteroom of the harem, David was pleased to see that Ludmilla was already there, in full purdah.  He indicated to the Professor to go ahead and find out what they had agreed.  A long conversation in Russian ensued between the Professor and the concubine.  Overcome by the excitement of finding someone who spoke her language at last, Ludmilla had to be physically restrained from embracing him despite the purdah.

Finally, the Professor turned to the Emir and said, “Master, much of what she says is of no consequence.  Her name is Ludmilla and she was some sort of dancing-girl in a line of dancers.  She was brought out of Russia by a man not her husband nor her fiancé but something different which I do not understand.  It seems to translate as friend-boy.  They travelled to Rome where they lived for some weeks until this friend-boy made her work in a brothel.  She was sold on because she spoke no useful languages and so her value to the brothel was limited.  The late Crown Prince also used her only once and had her whipped for not understanding his desires.”

“The phrase you lacked is ‘boyfriend’ in English, but I am sure there is no equivalent phrase in Kobekistani,” David said, “and the line of dancers I take to be the chorus of the Kirov Ballet.  What were all the things she said which you consider ‘of no consequence’?  I shall not be angry if you tell me truthfully, because they are her words uttered before me.  I shall be very angry if I discover you have concealed anything.”

“Master, please,” the old man was frantic with fear.

David remembered something from films about mediæval England and gave the man his handkerchief, saying, “There is my promise that you will not be harmed for telling the truth.  Even if she called me a pig, you would not be harmed.”

The Professor calmed down a little at this and said, “She wants to know if I intend to use her, and if she is to be given to an old goat like me just because I understand her language.  She says she much prefers to stay with the handsome young Emir.  She promises to do anything the Emir wishes if he will only show her what it is, but she failed at school to learn any other languages but her own and does not think she could do so now.  Otherwise please send her back to Moscow.  She refuses, in her words, to be whipped again for what is not her fault.”

David considered this and decided that most of it was a true translation and that it was probably most of the truth;  he asked the Professor, “How old is she?”

A brief question to the girl elicited the answer twenty-two.

“Thank you, Professor.  You may go, and you may keep the handkerchief.  If you ever need a favour, send it back to me with your request.”

“Master,” said the old man, struggling to kneel before the Emir, “You are too kind.”

When the old man had left and the doors were secured by the eunuchs, David said to the Chief Eunuch, “Bring Selima in immediately, no preparation needed.  I want to experiment with something.”

When Selima came in, David motioned to Ludmilla to remove her purdah and was rewarded with the sight of the Russian blonde resplendent in the bolero and split transparent trousers of the Golden Palace.  Beckoning her over to the chaise-longue and making her stand before it, David pointed to her eyes and then to Selima.  When he thought she understood that she was to watch Selima, he ordered the young Arab girl to lie on the chaise-longue and raise and open her legs as if he was about to mount her.  Selima complied and he told her to get up again.  Repeating the process, he made sure that Ludmilla had watched this simple process.

Then he gestured to Ludmilla to go to the chaise-longue and sure enough in a few seconds he was presented with a view of her gaping cunt.  Half an hour of practice had Ludmilla obeying the separate words of command “Down”, “Open”, “Close”, and “Up”.  It was just like training his puppy when he was ten years old.

Feeling that this was quite enough for one day, David told the Chief Eunuch he was well pleased with the progress they had made and the two girls were to be rewarded.  The Chief Eunuch remarked that it was like training a camel, and David agreed, asking if the Chief Eunuch could take the training further, without using the whip.  The Chief Eunuch seemed doubtful, but agreed to try and to comply with David’s suggestion that before each training session the whip be placed on a side table to show that it would not be used.

***

A little later, and pondering what Kamal Qumsiyeh had said of the distribution of the women of the Ruby Harem and a few of his own as gifts by the new Emir, and the prospect of virgins like Selima being given to him in return, David headed for his bedroom where he found a small army of people waiting.

There were four very submissive looking girls, dressed only in what looked like the bottom halves of bikinis, and who all prostrated themselves as he entered;  there were four assistant eunuchs, who did likewise;  there were two uniformed flunkeys who also hit the ground fast;  finally there was the Chief Eunuch who tried to prostrate himself but was really too fat to succeed.  Surveying these displayed rear ends, David wondered how it was that it took eleven people to put a healthy twenty-three year old to bed, and where his chosen bed-mate was.

“Up,” he said, “tell me, Chief Eunuch, who these people are?”

“The valets are to assist with your clothes, Master.  The girls are to assist with your bathing.  The eunuchs are to assist by disciplining any girl or valet who fails to give satisfactory service, and to assist me.  I am here to supervise as your Chief Eunuch.”  The Chief Eunuch seemed to be very pleased with this explanation.

“These arrangements will be altered tomorrow;  I can’t be bothered tonight.  Where did the girls come from?  I didn’t see them this morning.  And where is twenty-two?” asked David.

“These ones are of no account, Master.  They were bought as house slaves and they do menial tasks.  Nobody uses them, unless the Master chooses to give one to a friend as a day’s hunting.  Of course they have been cut and sewn.  The Master’s chosen one, Maryam, will come when Master is ready, after his bath.”

At this, to them incomprehensible, exchange the girls looked even more frightened.  David left the bits of this conversation which he did not understand as more questions for later and fought his way out of his clothes, much hindered by the valets.  Obviously undressing like an Emir took practice.  Being bathed by someone else for the first time since babyhood was another strange experience.  The near nudity of the girls made it more interesting than undressing though, and when he pulled one girl into the eight foot square bath with him it seemed to amuse everyone, but he didn’t do any more than play with one of her breasts for a moment.  After she had been pulled from the bath he noticed she had somehow become the boss of their little group.

Eventually he was in bed, and only the Chief Eunuch remained.

“I’ll have the girl in here now, please,” said David, “and nobody else.”

“You will be alone with her?” asked the Chief Eunuch, puzzled.

“Yes.”

“You do not fear assassination, and who will correct her for any disobedience?” again the Chief Eunuch did not understand.

“Just do it,” said David, not wanting to go into long explanations.

Moments later number twenty-two slipped into the room and the door closed behind her.  She looked round, obviously amazed that there was nobody else in the room.  Then she trembled in obvious fear.

David summoned up his schoolboy French, « On dit que tu parles le français? »

« Maître, oui, » she replied, still very disturbed.

« Tu t’appeles? »

« Maryam, Maître. »

« Pourquoi le peur? » essayed David.

« Maître.  Je vous prie de ne pas me … me tuer, Maître, » she whimpered.

Evidently it had been the old Emir’s habit of seeking solitude in order to strangle his women when he wanted to do it himself.

« Tous que je veux c’est … » David’s French failed him, so he tried pidgin English, “jig-a-jig?”

The girl seemed reassured so he held out a hand towards her.  She came slowly towards the bed, obviously frightened and knelt at the foot of the bed.  Lifting the covers she pushed herself slowly under them and up towards the head of the bed, kissing and licking his legs as she went.  David waited, pleasured a little, and very intrigued.

When she reached the flagpole half way to the head of the bed, she gave a little whinny of pleasure and set about licking and sucking his balls and then up the pillar, until she eventually reached the tip, and took it in her mouth.  Her tongue circling the corona soon had him on the point of coming, but each time she sensed this she expertly tightened her grip so that he subsided a little.

Then she started again from the base of his prick until he could stand it no longer and shouted aloud, “Yes,” as he ejaculated pulse after pulse after pulse of hot seed into the girl’s throat.  Every drop was swallowed and she did not allow any to spill on to his body.

After he had subsided completely, she washed his prick with her tongue and dried it with her hair.  As she did this, David reached down and pulled her up to his pillow, rolling her on her back.  His hand slid down across her breasts and on to her belly, whereupon her legs opened wide with her knees held high to allow him maximum freedom to do whatever he wished to her.  Nobody, not even Pauline at her most eager had ever been so blatantly available, and so amply visible, thanks to the mirrored walls.

‘I could easily get to like this,’ thought David, reflecting that he could do this all day every day for the rest of his life, if he so desired.

As the night wore on he discovered that some of the positions he had seen on the wall and dismissed as impossible were, in most cases, perfectly possible if the couple were keen and the girl was flexible and uninhibited enough.  Taking care not to ejaculate in her womb, David came three more times, once in her mouth and twice in her arse, before sinking into a deep sleep.  Just as he was dozing off, the girl rose to leave, but he held her in place by gently snagging her long hair and when he woke it was to the pleasant feeling of a tongue rolling round his glans.

Waking he murmured, “Pauline, I had the oddest dream.”

Then he sat up as he realised it wasn’t a dream.  He was the Emir, he was in his harem, he was at liberty to do as he wished with this girl.  When David had finally had all the sex he could possibly want before breakfast, coming twice more, he stood up and called out, “Come in.”

As he expected, the army of attendants streamed in to the room immediately;  evidently they had been waiting for his call.

“Coffee, please,” he said to nobody in particular, and was amused that it arrived in seconds.

He was beginning to enjoy this, and thought momentarily of calling for black pudding with roll-mops and boiled eggs for breakfast, but decided that if they arrived he wouldn’t want them and if they didn’t someone would be whipped pointlessly.

Taking Maryam in his arms as she was about to leave, he kissed her long and hard, fondling one breast as he did so, then turned to the Chief Eunuch and said, “Promote her to number three.”

Chapter Five The Second Day

Leaving his bedroom and heading for the Throne Room next morning, it occurred to David that his mother was probably the best person to answer his questions in a way he would understand.  Accordingly he gave instructions that today he would breakfast in the ante-room to the harem, with Kamal Qumsiyeh in attendance and with his mother also eating with them.  This struck everyone as most shocking, and it was Kamal Qumsiyeh himself who pointed out the problem.

“It is most unusual for a woman to eat with her Master, and in full purdah the Princess Zubeydeh will not be able to eat.”

“She will be dressed in Western clothes and will have no trouble eating.  You have met her in Western dress before, and nobody else will be there.  The eunuchs can serve us.  It is my wish, now arrange it,” said David firmly.

When they were settled at table, David looked across at his mother, neatly dressed in a summer frock but also wearing a lightweight sulham with the hood covering her hair, and remembered how she looked in the very revealing harem dress the day before.  The thought gave him the beginnings of an erection which was only minor because he had had a lot of sex already that morning.

He asked her, “What would you like for breakfast, mother?”

Once again, everyone looked shocked at the Emir asking for the wishes of a woman to be expressed.

“I would quite like a Scotch Woodcock if that is possible?” she asked.

Nobody moved a muscle and nobody replied.

“Well?” snapped David, wondering where they would find the anchovies, “Is that possible?”

The Chief Eunuch immediately said, “Of course, Master, and what is the Master’s wish?”

“Bacon and eggs,” said David, intending to shock them and expecting that bacon would be unavailable in a Muslim country.

Breakfast started with coffee and the main dishes arrived some ten minutes later, with half a dozen slices of Scotch Woodcock, enough for an army, and David’s bacon and eggs were done just as he liked them.  Some dish which David could not identify arrived for Kamal Qumsiyeh.

During breakfast, David said, “Perhaps one of you two can enlighten me.  Two comments I heard yesterday went right over my head.  Why would the late Emir my grandfather lend a woman from the harem to someone for hunting?  The lending I can understand, but ‘hunting’?”

Amelia looked at Kamal Qumsiyeh and he started to explain, “The late Emir had been educated in England and had ridden with, I believe, the Quorn, hunting wolves …”

“Foxes,” David corrected.

“Quite so.  Well when he returned he instituted a hunt here, only we have no suitable prey in Kobekistan so he used women.  Originally, I believe, they were bought for the purpose, or were field slaves, but then somehow a tradition started that the first man on the scene of what the Emir always called the ‘kill’ could use the woman, there and then, and could have her for the night if he wished.”

David was curious, “What do they use to hunt, not hounds, presumably?”

Amelia broke in just as Kamal Qumsiyeh was about to reply, “Oh, yes, hounds.  Visit the stables sometime and see them.  They are mostly Irish Wolfhounds, but they are supposed to be trained not to damage the prey.  One girl was quite badly bitten while I was here.”

“Hmm,” David thought for a moment, “Oh yes, and I was told that the bath-girls had been cut and sewn.  What is that?”

Again Amelia answered, “It is a disgusting practice and you should put a stop to it.  ‘Cutting’ is essentially when they amputate the clitoris and the inner labia so that a woman has no way of pleasuring herself.  Then they sometimes sew the scars up so that there is only a tiny hole for her urine to escape.  After that she cannot be entered by a man without enormous pain, except through the rear passage that is.”

Turning to the Chief Eunuch, David said, “Bring one of the bath girls and show me.”

“David!” said his mother, “Not at the breakfast table, please.”

David just looked at her and she stood up, knelt before him and pressed her head to the floor, saying, “If the Master allows, I will withdraw,” and fled into the harem.

When the girl had been brought in and displayed for David’s information, he continued with his breakfast.

Motioning the Chief Eunuch to sit and have some coffee, David said, “From today, my bedroom party will be two girls only.  The valets can tidy up after I am in my bath.  Will you be able to control two bath-girls simultaneously all by yourself?”

“Of course, Master,” the Chief Eunuch replied, much offended in the pride.

David was well pleased that he had fallen for the little trick and added, “Then we won’t need four assistants there either, will we?”

As the Chief Eunuch’s face fell, he mumbled, “As my Master wishes.”

“And now your Master will inspect the marks left on Davina yesterday because she did not please me enough to be fucked.”

The Chief Eunuch paled a little at the crudity, but hurried off to fetch her.

***

It was twenty minutes before she was brought into the room and made to stand on the dais for inspection.  Clearly she was not happy with this, but she was even less happy when the waistband of her transparent trousers was pulled unceremoniously down to her knees, allowing David to see clearly the prominent red weals running across her buttocks.  They were neatly spaced horizontally about a half an inch apart starting just above the crease where her arse-cheeks hung over the tops of her thighs, continuing evenly upwards to the end of the cleft between her buttocks.  There must have been over a dozen of them and David wondered what would happen to a harem woman with whom he became really upset.

More or less rhetorically, David said, “What am I to do with you?”

Davina replied firmly, “Give me away or sell me, Master.  Do not keep me here to live the life of a nun.  I know you won’t want a woman old enough to be your mother, but other men here would want me just for my skin colour.  Don’t just forget about me, I beg of you.”

The request seemed entirely reasonable to David and so he said, in a kindly tone, “Pull your knickers up and get down from there.  If I don’t use you now, will they whip you again?”

“They might, but that depends how you speak to me and what you say to them,” she replied.

“Well, if I fuck you now would that help?” said David, curious what her reaction to the bluntness would be.

“Why else would I be in someone’s harem in this awful country but to be used whenever and however my Master wishes?” she asked bitterly.

“Did you not love the Emir, my grandfather?”

“Oh, yes,” came the dreamy reply, “I loved him in London.  Here, I didn’t see him for the last fifteen years.  For me he died many many years ago.”

David leant back on the chaise-longue and said, “Come and join me here and we’ll see what transpires shall we?”

As they half-sat, half-lay on the sofa he toyed with her slack breasts and licked the dark nipples until they stood to attention.  She reached beneath his kameez and fondled his penis and it grew a little longer and fuller, but it didn’t really stiffen.  The she started sobbing quietly.

“What’s wrong now?” asked David, a little exasperated.

“You don’t want me, do you?  I’m old and run to fat and you don’t get a hard-on for me, even if I play with it.”

“You could use your mouth,” he suggested.

“No point,” she replied, “It wouldn’t work, I just know it wouldn’t work.”

Pushing her away, David said to the Chief Eunuch, “She doesn’t please me.  Today only six strokes of the whip, but do it now, here.”

Wondering a little at the easy way he had just ordered a whipping for a woman, David realised that it was more to see a demonstration of the whipping bench than because of any transgression on her part.

‘It seemed like a good idea at the time,’ he thought to himself, aware that he could stop it with a gesture, but not caring to do so.

Davina was quickly strapped face down on the bench and seemed resigned to her fate.

Whish, crack.

Davina didn’t move and the Emir realised that the Chief Eunuch had merely cracked his whip in the air above her arse.

Whish, thwack.

Davina yelped as a new line rose across her abused arse, this one much more prominent than those of the previous day.  She looked pleadingly across at David but saw that he was excited by watching her being whipped and gave up all hope of mercy from this, as she thought of him, nasty little boy.

The whipping continued slowly, with an appreciable time lapse between each stroke and David found his anticipation growing as he waited for each blow to fall and Davina to cry out.  He also noticed that his rod stiffened at each blow and after all six had been delivered it was iron hard.

He moved quickly over to the bench, almost running, as the eunuchs prepared to release the sobbing woman, and thrust himself deep into her cunt from behind.  As he plunged time and again into her oiled recesses, his belly and the abrasive cotton of his kameez rubbed on the sore and burning posterior of the woman causing her to scream again in pain.  The sound triggered David’s climax and he only just managed to pull out in time to spray her back and thighs with his semen.

His only thought as he moved into the bathroom to clean himself was that it was lucky he had remembered in time.  It would not do at all to have Davina pregnant.  In the bathroom were two of the girls who had bathed him the evening before and one licked his prick, thighs and belly clean while the other ran a bath for him.  It seemed somehow a fitting way for an Emir to end a session of inspection, whipping and using of one of his concubines.

***

Later that day, David’s mother sent word that she was asking for a brief audience.  It seemed an excellent reason to break off some very boring explanations from Hajji Darwish Dosmukhamedov about the economic problems of a country earning too much foreign currency, and not being able to spend it all.

David nearly choked when he entered what he thought of as the harem interview room and his mother was there dressed in the now familiar bolero and split transparent trousers.  Her figure was thickening, but her breasts hardly sagged at all and she made a very attractive older member of a harem.  He just had time to notice that she, too, had had all her body hair removed before he was even more embarrassed when she knelt in obeisance before him as the others always did.  The contrast with Davina, who was younger than his mother but who had not taken care of her looks, was impressive.

“Thank you, Master, for sparing a moment for me,” she said.

“Go and dress in your western clothes, please mother,” he said, “I will give orders that you wear whatever you wish in the Palace.”

As she left he gazed at her firm buttocks, the shadowed crevice displayed between them, and the swing of her hips.  He didn’t, however, give a direct order about her dress and wondered if his openly expressed wish would be enough.  He was determined to test this later in the day and woe betide the Chief Eunuch if he had not got it right.

“Thank you,” she said and left, trailing her eunuch behind her like a puppy.

Returning a few moments later wearing a simple summer dress, Amelia stood at the door until David motioned her over to sit beside him.  He was pleased to see that the Chief Eunuch looked shocked at this informality.

“You never need to bow to me, mother, anywhere, ever,” he said firmly, hoping that this also would be relayed to anyone who needed the information, “Why did you want to see me?”

“It’s about Laura, the American girl.  She’s in a terrible state and thinks she’s going to be killed if she’s not pregnant.”

“If he hadn’t died when he did, my grandfather had more or less decided to have her killed, so she’s lucky to be alive now,” David said, “Explain to her that if she is not pregnant she has three options: she can live in this harem, she can be sold to another master, or she can die.  If she is pregnant, she lives in seclusion in the harem with her child.”

“Yes, I wondered why you tried to impregnate her?” his mother ventured.

“I forgot myself, mother.  I am truly sorry, but it happened and I have no intention of ordering an abortion.  Now go and talk to her, and bring her here in fifteen minutes to tell me her answer.”

Staring at him for a moment, as though she didn’t know the man in her son’s body, Amelia got up and walked out of the room.  As she did so David remembered the rear view from a little earlier and Amelia wondered why she felt aroused at the thought of her son imposing himself on the harem as Emir.

***

Turning to the Chief Eunuch, David said, “While I’m waiting, Selima can come here to see me.  Immediately, please;  there is no need to prepare her, I only wish to convey my decision about her.”

The Chief Eunuch nodded to one of his assistants who ran out of the room.  Within thirty seconds Selima was before him on her knees, forehead to the floor, wearing only the familiar trousers.  David felt pleased that she had not waited to put on the bolero top, because her firm young breasts were truly beautiful to behold.  He signalled that she was to rise.

“Selima, I have decided that you are to be married,” said David, “And I will consult with your father as to a suitable husband for you.  I am well pleased with you and this is a reward for your performance yesterday.”

“Thank you, my Master, thank you,” said the girl.

David moved over and stroked her breasts, wondering if he should change his mind.  Then he decided that once he had spoken, especially when rewarding someone, he should always keep his word.

“I admit that I shall miss these breasts, though,” he murmured so that only she could hear.

“Master, they are yours to command at any time, even if I am married to another,” she replied.

David realised that she was only telling him the literal truth.  The Emir could enter any harem and command any woman he wished.  No man would dare deny him.  His thoughts were interrupted by his mother’s return.

“Go and wait patiently,” he said to Selima, “I will discuss this with your father as soon as I can.”

***

His mother looked worried and said to him, “Laura demands to see her ambassador, or her consul and to be returned to America.”

“Mother, she cannot go.  Laura Goldblum is dead and buried and this girl is legally Fatima and I own her indenture.  That is an end of it.  Has she chosen?”

“But …”

“No buts mother.  I am the Emir and I have decided to be generous in allowing her any choice at all.  Frankly, she bores me and I want rid of her.”

His mother stared at him;  then she said, “David, I want to go home to England.  Today.”

“I’ll decide when you go,” he snapped, “Now bring the girl in and she can decide which she wants.”

The Chief Eunuch moved quickly and Fatima was soon on the floor before David, sobbing distractedly.

“Well, stupid?” snarled David, “I’ve had enough of your snivelling.  Do I have you strangled here and now?  Or do I sell you?  Or do I keep you.”

The Chief Eunuch moved over and lifted her up, holding her upright by her neck, obviously ready to strangle her there and then.

“No, no,” sobbed the girl, “Don’t let him kill me.  I’ll do anything you want.  You can fuck me, I’ll suck you, or you can have my arse, anything.  Just let me live.”

“Take her away, mother, and let me know when you think she’s pregnant or when you know she isn’t.”

With that David strode out of the room in a thoroughly bad mood.

***

When he arrived at the Throne Room after a five minute hike through the corridors of the Golden Palace he sat on the throne and Kamal Qumsiyeh knelt before him.

“Master, one awaits your pleasure,” he said.

“Who?  And more important, why?” David snapped.

“Ghada Baroud, Master;  he is the father of Selima and you sent for him.”

‘That was quick,’ thought David.

“Bring whatever is appropriate to the entertainment of an honoured guest and the discussion of business,” David ordered, “Oh, and have Selima brought here in purdah.”

Startled by this last item, Kamal Qumsiyeh quickly recovered and said, “At once, Master.”

A signal from him was enough to set his assistants scurrying to obey the Emir, and he moved smoothly to call Ghada Baroud in to the room.  David greeted him with a handshake, which appeared to surprise everybody, and then motioned to Kamal Qumsiyeh to join them.  Sweet pastries and thick coffee were served to the three of them, with David having his own favourite coffee separately.  Ghada Baroud spoke excellent English and the conversation ranged far and wide for many minutes, with a purdah covered figure kneeling silently at David’s feet.  After some time Kamal Qumsiyeh signalled to David that he could start to broach the matter in hand.

“Ghada Baroud, I am well pleased with this, your daughter, and I have been wondering how I might reward her,” he started.

“There is no reward greater than the Emir’s pleasure, Master,” was the reply.

“It must be hard for a man of your importance to know that his daughter is only a concubine, when she might be the wife of some important man,” David continued.

Ghada Baroud countered with, “There is nothing hard about knowing one’s daughter is giving pleasure to the Emir, in whatever capacity he wills it.”

“Well, I wondered if we might both be pleased if she were married to some suitable person, but I was at a loss to think of who might be worthy of her.  So I come to you, as a trusted friend of the late Emir, my grandfather, to advise me.”

At that Ghada Baroud stroked his beard pensively, and then opined, “Perhaps Ramzy El-Najjar might please my Master.”

David stood, indicating that the audience was over.

“I will consider that,” he said.

When Ghada Baroud had left, David asked Kamal Qumsiyeh what he thought.

“The Emir knows his own mind,” was the enigmatic answer.

“Stop that now, or someone else can advise me on protocol,” David snapped, “Now, do I accept the suggestion or not?”

“Well, there is nothing against the suggestion per se, but there may be others whom you might choose.  It depends why you are doing this?”

“As a reward for this young lady,” David said, indicating her with his hand, “As I said.”

Lifting her to her feet, David asked her, “Will this suggestion be pleasing to you?”

“Whatever the Master …”

David cut her off brusquely, “You were at school in the West.  Answer my question without fear.  I am trying to reward you and you must help me to get it right.”

There was a long silence, and then the girl nodded.

“Good,” said David, despairing of ever getting a true answer, “And would you like to hold the wedding here, in the Palace?”

“Master …” started Kamal Qumsiyeh, but David silenced him with one hand.

“Oh, Master,” said the girl, overcome at the munificence of this suggestion and threw herself to the ground, kissing David’s shoes.

After she had been returned to the harem, David said to Kamal Qumsiyeh, “I want this wedding to be fitting for a Prince of about tenth in line to the throne.  I don’t want arguments and I don’t want to hear any more about it until you tell me when it is to be.”

“As the Master wishes,” said Kamal Qumsiyeh, who had no idea why the new Emir could conceivable wish to ally himself so firmly with Ghada Baroud and Ramzy El-Najjar.

It was quite impossible for him to think that the David inside the Emir might, out of kindness, be trying to rescue a girl from his own harem into a formal marriage with someone of good standing, nor would he have understood if David had tried to explain.

***

“I’ll have number three, the new number three, Maryam, in my room for a while, please,” David said to the Chief Eunuch when he entered the harem, “Meanwhile coffee in here with the Princess Zubeydeh immediately please.”

When they were sitting sipping their coffee David asked, “Has the American accepted her station in life yet?”

“No, she is very unhappy,” Amelia answered, “and you are behaving very badly towards her.  You could release her and explain that you, and probably your grandfather, did not know she was Laura.  Then the Americans could only be grateful that you had rescued her.”

“No, it wouldn’t work.  We have denied knowing anything about her for too long.  Besides, her kind only make trouble;  it is their only pleasure in life, being nasty to others.”

“David!” his mother expostulated, “You are surely not dismissing her being kidnapped, sold at auction, and raped as merely part of ‘her station in life’ as though she were born a slave?  That is inhuman.”

“If you were not my mother, I would have you beaten for saying that,” he stormed.

“If you were not my son I wouldn’t dare to say it,” she shrieked back, “And I wonder if this Emir you have become really is my son.”

“Go and tell the stupid American just what an Emir could do to her,” raged David, “And don’t think that I won’t have her strangled just because you have taken pity on her.  If she is so innocent, how come she went to a strange Arab’s house in Tunis to be fucked when she had only met him hours before?”

With that he rushed out of the room and into his bedroom.  There the usual panoply of servants waited, but when they saw his face, most of them found duties elsewhere, so he undressed himself and only two girls bathed him.  They were experts at soothing an angry Master, however;  they had to be to have survived.  Soon he was feeling calm again and when he pulled one of the girls into the bath with him and started to play with her breasts, she asked if he was ready to have Maryam fetched.

David got out of the bath and let the girls dry him, then slipped into bed and waited.  He did not have to wait long.  There was a small movement at the door and a warm body insinuated itself under the bedcover by his feet and wormed its way up towards his head.  Again the girl displayed her experience in this approach because he felt her breasts rubbing on his legs all the way up until her mouth descended on his engorged manhood and began to fellate him in a most expert manner.

Long before she managed to make him come, David had her on her hands and knees as he plundered her arse while playing with her dangling breasts at the same time.  She was most co-operative and pushed enthusiastically back on to his prick as he thrust forwards.  Balancing on one hand she reached between her legs and caressed his balls as he sodomised her.  Inevitably this was unstable and she crashed down on to her face with her shoulders taking the majority of her weight.  David merely ploughed on regardless and soon felt the pleasure of jets of his semen passing through his penis and erupting deep in her bowels.

Pulling her along side him as he lay in bed, he played with her nipples and they kissed for a while.  Then as he felt sleepy he used her warm breast as a pillow and slept the deep sleep of a happy man.

In the morning she was still there and so he used her mouth to empty his morning erection, caring nothing for her lips and tongue but thrusting deep into her throat.  He was beginning to like this one a lot and if he needed an heir quickly he thought she might do.  First, however, he needed to find out about her background and provenance.  Speaking in French she explained and David tried to follow her story to the limits of his understanding of that language.

« I was too young to remember what happened, Maître, » she said.

« Il ne faut pas toujours dire ‘Maître’, » said David.

« One tells me that I was bought as an infant for a joujou for the children here, especially one Princess. »

« Qu’est que c’est ‘joujou’? » David thought he ought to remember that from school.

« On joue avec un joujou? » she replied.

“Oh,” said David in English, “a toy.”

“Yes Master,” said Maryam, in English this time.

“You speak English?”

“A little,” she replied.

“Why didn’t you say so?  It makes everything so much easier for me,” David queried.

“Master, not be angry,” said the girl, cowering away from him.

David leant over and kissed her nipple again, and sucked briefly at it.

“Tell me more of your story, but in English this time,” he said, “I’m not angry;  I’m pleased, especially with this lovely nipple.”

“The Princess, she girl and she play with me like … like poupée?” she tried.

“Doll,” said David.

“Like doll,” agreed the girl, “Then she grow and she leave to marry.  I am here, but nothing.  Then I grow,” she gestured at her breasts, “and the Emir see me and say ‘teach her’ so I go to man of l’Armée.”

David nodded his understanding and Maryam continued, “He teach me jig-a-jig until ready for the Emir, then I come back here, but he die.”

“The Emir, my grandfather did not use you?” asked David.

“He not jig-a-jig me,” she confirmed, “Only others.”

“Others?” asked David.

“Others come in Palace and use me.  Big men like visit Emir.”

“Oh, you were used for visitors,” said David, “Well I fancy you so I’ll use you for a while now.  No more visitors.”

She looked puzzled but all this mixed languages talk was too much trouble for him, so he took her in his arms and swung her on top of him.  This she understood completely and in seconds was triumphantly riding him to a climax.  As he came, jetting his sperm up into her womb, he thought about the succession, but decided she would do well enough.  After all she had no known family for him to worry about and had been here in the harem for almost all her life.

Later he told the Chief Eunuch and Kamal Qumsiyeh to arrange English lessons for her.  If necessary she could be taught by a man, provided that was done in the anteroom of the harem, in purdah, and properly escorted by eunuchs.

Chapter Six Selima’s Wedding

The full state wedding of Selima and Ramzy El-Najjar was an experience which nearly wore David out, and he was only a spectator.  His head spun when he tried to remember all the components of the very ornate ceremony.  It spun even further when he contemplated the enormous banquet which followed with the women participating from behind a decorative wall which hid them from view.  He now understood how exciting it could be to know that a strange woman was in the room, even though you could not see her.  The total absence of females in all aspects of Kobekistani social life made it exciting.  Even as he thought this the other element was that he was well aware that although he had not smoked one of the pipes circulating, there was enough smoke in the room to get anyone a little high.

After what seemed like six days, but had probably only been six hours, Kamal Qumsiyeh indicated to him that he could leave without offending anyone.  David quietly slipped out of the ballroom and went into the harem.  Telling the Chief Eunuch that he didn’t want any company that night, he retired to his bedroom, submitted to being bathed and lay down on the bed.

Had he done the right thing by marrying this girl off to get her out of his harem?  Why had he wanted her out?  She was beautiful and compliant and her cunt and arse were tight as any man could wish for.  Why did he not just marry her himself and make her the chosen mother of his heir?  Would the absolute ruler of an Emirate be allowed by his advisors to pick the daughter of a prominent businessman as his bride?  His mind was in turmoil with these questions when he heard the door open and close quietly and a warm naked young female body stretched itself beside him.  As he turned towards her, he realised that it was Selima.

“Why are you here?” he asked her.

“My Master may want to use me, after the ceremonies,” she replied, “So I have come to him.”

“Your new husband may also think, with some justification, that he is now your Master and he may also want you with him,” David pointed out.

“Pouf, no, he is lost in his pipe dreams,” she said in the first sentence she had ever said to him that was her own, and not an answer to a question, “Anyway, you are the Emir and the laws of precedence here say you may have me if you want, especially tonight.”

“Well, I’m too tired tonight, and it is not my idea of fun to sleep with the bride on someone else’s wedding night.”

“You have taken others,” she pointed out.

“Only virgins, and only for political reasons,” he said, “I enjoyed your charms before your wedding was arranged, and very nice it was too.  Now go back and join the party as though it were a western occasion.  Dance with your husband and some of the guests.”

She giggled at that unthinkable suggestion, knowing it was said in fun.  When she realised that the Emir was not going to use her that night, off she went, her Kobekistani half disappointed, her western half relieved, and David turned over and tried to decide why he had ‘kicked her out of bed’ when it was obvious that she was entirely willing to be his for the night and that her husband expected it to be so.

***

Not long after David gave up wondering why he had let such a beautiful and willing girl go, the door opened again and a woman in purdah came in to the room.  Stripping the purdah off, she was revealed as a completely naked and rather older version of Selima.  His first thought was that this was probably an older sister.

“Who are you?” David asked, and wondered how these women had got past the eunuchs.

“I am Marseeneh, Selima’s mother,” she whispered as she went to the foot of the bed and prepared to slide into it, “I am sent by Ghada Baroud to thank you for the great honour you did my husband this day.”

“Please, I mean no discourtesy, but no such thanks are necessary,” said David, fending off her questing hands.

Sounding slightly cross, the woman asked, “Is it my son that the Master wishes?”

“No it isn’t,” said David abruptly, now becoming more and more angry at the overwhelming gratitude of this family, “As you leave ask the eunuchs to send Maryam in immediately, no preparation needed.”

“If that is the Master’s wish, it is our command,” said Marseeneh as she replaced her purdah, “but we hope the Master may deign to accept our humble hospitality in the near future.  Be assured that Ghada Baroud will do everything possible to ensure the Master’s comfort when he visits.”

~ Im sh’Allah, ~ said David in the time-honoured phrase ‘if it is God’s will’ which neither accepts nor refuses anything all over the Middle East.

For some reason the memory of his own mother almost naked in harem dress kept coming into his mind.  He had to admit that even at forty-five the Princess Zubeydeh was still a very attractive woman.  Mentally shaking himself he dismissed the thought;  not even the Emir could contemplate incest.

When Maryam arrived he was already asleep, so she wisely sat at the foot of his bed all night.  Her thoughts were that it really was possible that this Emir meant what he said and that she might become the mother of his Crown Prince.  For her that truly would be a Cinderella story, even though she did not know the name.  Bought as an infant at the breast of a domestic slave, used as a real live doll by a Princess, trained to be a prostitute for the old Emir’s guests, and then to become …  She dare not even think it, or it would not happen.

Chapter Seven Harem Problems

After breakfast the next morning, as Zubeydeh was about to leave the Emir’s presence, the traditional moment for asking favours, she ventured a question, “Have you decided what to do about the children?  You really should decide soon.”

“Children?” he asked, “What children?  None of the women I have used can expect to give birth for another eight months if the rumours I have heard of the human gestation period are accurate.”

“Did they not tell you?” Zubeydeh asked, “There are forty-one children of the late Emir your grandfather living in the harem.  Seven are boys under twelve and the rest are girls of all ages from babes in arms to seventeen.  They have hidden them on Djamilla’s orders I expect, because the old Emir had the harem cleared when he took the throne.”

“Well, I know he had his predecessor’s wives strangled, but what happened to the children?”

“The boys were all killed and the girls were cut, sewn and sold.  The prettier ones were disfigured so as to make them less attractive,” was the reply which shocked even the Emir.

“I shall inspect these children in an hour.  All of them,” he ordered, “Someone shall be whipped for telling you, and thus disobeying the Chief Eunuch who must have made it clear I was not to be told.”

Zubeydeh stared at him;  not for the first time she was startled by the ease with which her son had slipped into the Kobekistani ways of his paternal family, brutal as they seemed to western eyes.  She feared for the children and wondered if she had done right.  Then the Chief Eunuch hustled her out.  Within minutes David was in the Throne Room demanding details from Kamal Qumsiyeh and the Chief Eunuch.

“Why was I not told about these children?  Did you think to hide them for ever?” he yelled and the two old men visibly quaked with fear, “What other secrets are you hiding?”

Receiving no reply from the prostrate pair, he said, “Speak up now, or go away.”

Fear of losing their jobs, and quite possibly their lives, impelled Kamal Qumsiyeh to reply, “No other secrets, Master.”

“Now these children?” asked the Emir, whereupon the Chief Eunuch and Kamal Qumsiyeh cowered again.

“Master, it was the wish of Djamilla to hide them before you were found.  She was conscious of what happened to the harem when her husband became Emir,” said the Chief Eunuch, who had found some courage from somewhere, perhaps from the fear of death.

“How many, how old and what sex?” asked the Emir, implacably.

“Master, there are seven boys, all under twelve,” said Kamal Qumsiyeh, “The rest are girls and represent no problem.  Any one of the boys might be used as the focus and figurehead of a palace coup.  I recommend that they are smothered.”

“What is the current line of accession if I drop dead this minute?” asked the Emir.

“Well, we wait to see if any of the Master’s possible babies are born, are boys, and are fit and well.  If so, the first born becomes Emir under a regency until he is twenty-three,” said the Protocol Advisor, “If not, then really nobody has a good claim and there would be Civil War between three factions, each supporting a different claimant.  Naturally, none of the claimants lives in Kobekistan, though one does call himself the Emir and lives in exile in France.  None of the younger children come higher than tenth in line on a strict interpretation of the law as promulgated by the Emir your great-great-grandfather in 1855 after his succession which was based on a bloody three year Civil War.”

“Tell Hajji Kofi Natsheh to persuade the ‘Emir in Exile’ that if he doesn’t stop claiming the throne, he will be returned to this country and made to answer for his presumption,” ordered the Emir, “The children under twelve of both sexes can go to new homes as their mothers are transferred.  Make sure all the mothers are on the gift or sale lists, whether I have chosen them or not.  Females over twelve can stay in the harem.  I will inspect only those girls today and decide on their disposition then.  No child will be hidden in future.”

***

Within an hour the girls between twelve and eighteen, mostly virgins, none of whom had ever stepped outside the harem and its gardens since the day they were born, or arrived as infants, were paraded before the Emir.  The younger ones were openly curious, while the older ones were doing their best to look bored but attractive at the same time.  Each was dressed in the standard harem dress of open bolero jacket and transparent trousers which looked wholly out of place, especially on the younger girls barely reaching puberty.

“Take them away and dress them in white blouses and dark skirts, as an English schoolgirl would be dressed,” ordered David, “Ask the Princess Zubeydeh if you need to know what that looks like.  Tell me when they are ready to be seen again.”

As they all trouped out, David wondered how long it would take the Chief Eunuch to find upwards of twenty assorted sizes of English-style school uniform blouses and skirts.  He was totally nonplussed when it was done in less than two hours, nor did he ever learn how this was achieved.  It was Amelia who had suggested borrowing the clothes from the various diplomatic enclaves from Europe and the USA.

Again the girls paraded and he looked them over.  Marriage here in Kobekistan was permitted at thirteen years old and usual before about sixteen or seventeen, so the older ones assumed that they would not be allowed to marry, but were being kept for use as concubines.  It was, David thought, a tricky problem.  He was related in some way to the majority of them;  though none could be his half-sisters, most were presumably the offspring of his grandfather.  It would be out of the question for any of those to bear his children.

A brief discussion with the Chief Eunuch reduced the numbers to six, all of whom had been brought into the harem when their mothers were bought, or received as presents, or in one case taken away from her father as a punishment for some crime against the Emir.

“These six, and therefore their mothers, can stay.  The rest of the mothers will be sold or married off,” David decreed, switching the conversation to English.

“That presents a small difficulty, Master,” offered the Chief Eunuch, “since several of the harem women now fall into both categories, to be sold and to stay, having arrived with children and subsequently borne new ones.”

“They too must go, with the children not in this group.  These six stay.  Any other problem?” asked the Emir.

“No, Master,” said the Chief Eunuch.

One of the younger girls was crying and David deduced that she spoke English and had understood what was happening.

“What is the matter?” he asked her.

“Master,” she sobbed, “I do not want to lose my mother.”

“Then you shall not,” said David, “How old is your sister?”

“It is my brother,” said the girl, “He is five years old.”

“And how old are you?”

“I am fourteen, Master.”

“Old enough to be married yourself then,” said David, provoking another flood of tears.

It was obvious from the underdeveloped breasts and thin arms and legs that the girl was far from mature enough for marriage as yet.

“Oh, let her go with her mother then,” said David to the Chief Eunuch, “and they shall be a present to someone.”

“One of your subjects will consider himself most fortunate, Master,” came the inscrutable reply.

***

Three days later David got the message that Fatima and the Princess Zubeydeh wanted to see him.

‘If she knows that quickly, it means she’s having her period and therefore not pregnant.  Good!’ thought David and he sent no reply.  They could wait.

In the afternoon he wandered into the harem and went into his mother’s suite where he found her sitting in a summer frock eating fresh fruit.  Since the harem dress was so revealing, David wondered how they dealt with menstruation.  The internal and external pads advertised on TV in the West would look awful with those trousers;  he giggled at the thought.

“David,” his mother started, but remembering herself to be asking a favour she corrected herself quickly, “Master, Laura … I mean Fatima is not carrying a child.”

“Go and fetch her here to tell me herself,” he said.

“But she is …” his mother started to protest.

“Princess Zubeydeh, you personally will fetch her here.  If she needs covering put her in an abaya.”

While his mother was off fetching Laura he checked with the Chief Eunuch and was told that the women used large towels and were simply not seen by anyone during menstruation.  David tried to imagine his harem all wearing their split transparent trousers over giant nappies and laughed aloud.

Laura came into the room, at least he assumed it was her under the abaya, and prostrated herself before him.

“I just know they want to strangle me, those eunuchs,” she sobbed, “Oh, please, please Master, anything if you just let me live.  You can do anything to me, have me, have my arse, cum in my mouth, anything.  Just let me live.  If you really can’t stand the sight of me then sell me again, even that’s better than …”

Her voice tailed off into uncontrollable sobbing and David felt disgusted that anyone could sink so low and be so desperate.  Then he had an idea.

“There are one or two jobs you could do for me.  Perhaps you could help with the hunting, but next week you can help with my jus primæ noctis session,” he offered.

“What is jus primæ noctis?” the girl asked, fearful that this was a trap to degrade her further.

David didn’t want to enlighten her just yet so he merely said, “I’ll explain later as we go along.”

***

Four nights later, Laura was brought to David’s bedroom having gone through the whole routine of being bathed, shaven, perfumed, made-up and oiled front and rear, just as she had seen other chosen girls prepared.  She thought it just possible that this English Arab bastard had relented and would keep her as his wife, or as his woman, or at least as one of his women.  What she wasn’t expecting was the crowd she found in the royal bedroom.

The servants and the eunuchs she half expected, but there were five other people she didn’t expect.  Two were girls she knew by sight from the harem, though neither of them spoke English;  they were in harem dress and were fully occupied making amorous advances to two Arabs, one old and one young.  Then there was a young girl, perhaps her own age, but made up to look much younger.  She looked oddly American in that she was wearing a white smock of fine muslin which reached down to her knees;  she looked about as scared as could be, and equally determined not to show it.

The Emir was just arriving from his bathroom as she was brought in to the room and he said, “Good.  I do need someone for a few minutes.  Your job is to warm up this little thing for me so that she is at least a little more relaxed when I fuck her.”

“What the hell do you mean?  Warm up?  Why are all these people here?  Do you usually need an audience to fuck a kid like her?” Laura raged.

“Fatima, one nod from me and you go out of here.  Where you go then and what happens to you I don’t care.  Now will you cooperate or not?”

This put the fear of death into the American girl, quite literally, and she answered very meekly, “What do you want me to do?”

“The others don’t speak English, so I can explain whenever you need it,” David answered, “I am exercising my jus primæ noctis tonight.  It’s Latin for ‘the right to the first night’ and these men are the girl’s father and husband.  She was married a few hours ago and they are here to witness me taking her virginity as is my right as their Emir.”

“Do you do every girl in the land?” she asked, curious in spite of herself.

“No, of course not, I’d never be finished.  Only the most influential of fathers can arrange this;  it is a big privilege for the girl and her husband.”

“Well that wouldn’t go well in the U S of A  I know some of our Presidents have put it about a bit, but none of them demanded that,” she remarked, “Won’t the husband be jealous?”

“Why?” asked David, “It is usual here.  He’s never seen the girl before today and she has never seen him.”

“Crazy, but if it’s usual here, well … what do I have to do, cheer-lead?”

“Watch it,” warned David, “You have to warm her up for me, because she needs it.  She’s very nervous.  Then you hold her in place while I take her.  Then you tear off her night-dress and give it to the husband.  Then you’re available if either of the Arabs wants you.”

“What do you mean, warm her up?”

“Well you know, foreplay.  Feel her up, suck her clitoris, do I have to draw a diagram?” David snapped, his tone persuading a eunuch to wave a whip at Fatima.

“I’ve never touched a woman like that.  I’m not doing that for anyone, that’s perverted,” she fumed until David nodded and a whip cracked across her arse, raising an angry red line.

Suddenly she realised how she must look and sound, and just what this man could do to her.  Falling to her knees in front of the frightened virgin, she gently drew her to the bed.  Positioning her at the edge of the bed she started to stroke her vagina and then swooped to suck at it rather inexpertly.  Still it was enough, she could feel the girl relaxing into the mood.  Wafts of very musky perfume helped the ambience and soon the young thighs opened and lifted to her mouth as the bride became excited.  Motioning her away, David took over fingering the now-puffy labia and he could feel the tremors of pleasure in the girl’s muscles.  He raised the girl’s legs until her knees were pressed to her breasts.

Waving Laura to go round the bed he said, “Hold her feet there.”

He made sure the muslin was beneath her arse and would catch any liquid coming from her vagina, then he turned to check that the other men were watching.  Both were avidly eyeing the girl held on her back on the bed with her legs high in the air and her vagina spread open ready for the Emir to use.  Each had a concubine sucking his prick.  David turned back to the bed and lodged the head of his prick in the oiled aperture of the virgin bride.  One thrust put the glans inside her entrance and she cried out in pain;  he felt the resistance and then with a rush he was through and completely sheathed in the girl’s vagina.  She screamed at this invasion, but David and Laura between them held her until her father signalled that he was sure she had been entered.

As he withdrew, David saw blood on his weapon, so he wiped it on the girl’s clothing.  More blood was seeping from her now opened gash and he mopped that up with her smock as well.  Then he moved back and two eunuchs lifted her up and held her while Laura ripped the flimsy material off her to leave her weeping, trembling and still seeping blood, naked in the middle of the room.  Laura bundled the torn clothes and handed them to the husband.  He inspected them carefully, and nodded to the eunuchs who hustled the bride out of the bedroom.

David gestured to Laura and said in Kobekistani, ~ Help yourselves gentlemen. ~

Laura was a little surprised by the alacrity with which the men moved.  The husband, who she thought should be with his wife, fell back on the bed and grabbed her round the waist.  He swung her over him and she felt herself being impaled on his rampant prick as her own weight carried her down until it was fully embedded in her womb.  Moving his hands up from her waist, he hauled on her shoulders until she was lying flat on his chest.

The next thing she felt was another prick nosing at her smaller entrance and then brutally thrust into it.  She had only allowed one boy in America to try this and she had not liked it.  She vaguely remembered her handsome Tunisian doing it, but she had been stoned then and nothing had mattered.  Now it wasn’t as bad as she expected, probably because of the thorough oiling her arse hole had had as a part of the preparations for this ceremony.  David’s prick suddenly appeared beside her face and she automatically opened her mouth to let him in.  Then the three of them were moving in time together and she was carried off to a totally unexpected orgasm induced more by the thought of three pricks in her at the same time than by any of the sensations any of them were creating.

After that life became a blur of movement as a procession of pricks moved in and out of her various orifices, some exploding, some not, until she passed out from over-excitement and the effects of the scented smoke wafting around the room.

***

Next morning Laura woke to find herself in her own bed in the harem.  She had been washed and cared for after the mini-orgy of the wedding night and put to bed by unknown hands.

The Emir had only used her mouth, and he had not even cum in that;  of that she felt certain.  He had used her as a servant to hold the virgin he was deflowering in that ghastly ceremony and then had simply given her to the bridegroom and the bride’s father as though she were a book he could lend.  Her arse was still sore and her cunt felt well-used.  Her hangover made her think that there was more than scent in the smoke that had been in the bedroom last night.  Seeking out the Princess Zubeydeh who was the Emir’s mother she pleaded again to be allowed to go back to America.

“He will not do that,” was Amelia’s response, “since it would show his grandfather in a bad light and many important people would be angry.  If you got back to America you could easily prove by DNA tests who exactly you are.  Then somebody would start asking why the US Consul in Tunis could allow you to be kidnapped and could send ashes that were not yours to the USA, and then there would be an international incident.”

“What can I do then?” wailed the girl.

“The best you can hope for is that he will sell you,” advised the older woman, “At least then you can be sure that your new Master values you, if only because he has paid for you.  Also he will be more used to harem arrangements than David.  He had not been inside one since he was four years old when he suddenly inherited this harem, the Ruby Palace one, where Esh-Shems and Ludmilla came from, and a whole country as well.  I am not surprised he has revived the Emir’s privilege of deflowering virgin brides;  what young man could resist it?”

“Can’t you persuade him to do something?” begged Laura.

“I don’t think he listens to me any more,” said Amelia, sadly, “He is less and less David, and more and more the Emir every day.”

Laura didn’t notice the older woman’s voice suddenly fill with admiration for her son when talking of the new young, powerful Emir because she was too engrossed in her own problems.

Chapter Eight Pauline

A fortnight after the precipitate departure of her boyfriend to attend his grandfather’s funeral, Pauline was just beginning to worry about David’s continued absence when the ’phone call came through.  At first she demurred at the idea of flying thousands of miles into the Middle East to see him, but the idea of a free holiday appealed and when David said they could stay in what she thought he described as “my grandfather’s place” and that his grandfather had left him “some money” so that he could afford her tickets, she finally agreed.  It was arranged that the Kobekistani Embassy in London would send her the tickets.

A courier service brought the tickets the next morning and all was set for her to travel by train from Oxford to Paddington and then on the Heathrow Express to the airport.  An airline ticket specified the outward flight for three days’ time and was an open return.  There was a seat reservation on the Oxford train, which she noticed was first class.  Shrugging her shoulders at David’s ‘squandering’ of his inheritance she took two weeks’ leave from her job and set off to join her wandering boy-friend.

Her first surprise was at Paddington where her luggage was collected by a Kobekistani and she was carefully escorted to the Heathrow Express and settled, again in first class, for the fifteen minute journey to the Airport.  There another Kobekistani in an airline uniform met her and took her and her baggage to the terminal building, where they went through an unmarked door into a lounge she did not know existed.

The next surprise came when looking around she recognised a well-known pop star making a fuss because his flight was delayed, and realised that this was the VIP lounge.  An attendant came up and asked if she wanted a drink, or anything else before her flight.

Politely she replied, “No thank you.  When does the flight leave?”

She was could not believe her ears when she was told, “Whenever you wish, Your Highness.”

“I’m in the wrong place,” she said, “I’m not a Highness.  Look, here’s my ticket and please can you show me where the ordinary departure lounge is?”

The attendant looked worried and glanced at the ticket, then with a conspiratorial smile she replied, “No, Highness.  This is a VIP ticket and your aircraft is just waiting for you to be ready.  Then it can leave.”

“But I thought that all flights had set times?”

“Not this one, Highness.  Oh, no, of course not.”

The attendant laughed as though she was joining in some joke of Pauline’s.  Escorted by the attendant and the Kobekistani who had her bags, she was taken to an aircraft which was waiting on the tarmac.

“What about customs and check-in and passports and so on?” she asked the girl attendant.

“All taken care of, Your Highness,” came the perturbing reply.

The aircraft seemed quite large and to have no passengers on it yet.  She was shown to her seat by a steward who made sure she was comfortable and then said, “May we leave now, Highness?”

Dazed by this treatment, Pauline just nodded and within a few minutes they were airborne.

***

As they were preparing to land the steward brought what looked like a small tent to her and said, “If the Highness would please dress, we shall be landing in a few moments.”

“What is that?” asked Pauline.

“It is purdah.  In Kobekistan it is necessary for any lady who leaves her dwelling, while travelling in the street.  Do not worry, we shall only be ten minutes after landing before we arrive at the Palace.”

Shrugging her shoulders at one more oddity, Pauline slipped it on, thinking that it would at least keep the fierce sun off her skin.

Only moments after the aeroplane stopped, Pauline was escorted to the steps down from the door, just having time to notice that there were, indeed, no other passengers.  At the bottom of the steps was a limousine with blackened glass windows, into which she was shown.

There was nobody else in the car, except the driver who was beyond the forward glass screen.  The streets seemed strangely free of traffic also;  though she saw vehicles waiting in side streets for the traffic lights to change, all the ones they met were green.  Ten minutes later, they drew in to the gardens of a huge triple building which was red, gold, and green in the three sections of its façade.  Turning in to a doorway which had clearly been built for horse-drawn carriages they stopped and the door opened.

“Welcome, Highness Pauline,” said a tall distinguished-looking Kobekistani, “Please come this way.”

Only slightly reassured by the fact that he knew her name, she followed him along a corridor panelled with pale cream wood and lit only by its glass ceiling, into a large ornately furnished anteroom where there were three chairs placed in the middle of a superb Persian rug, round a low coffee table.  As she sat down she realised that there were two fat black men in some sort of uniform by the inner door, clearly guarding it.  The outer doors closed behind her escort and one of the fat men came over towards her.

“Please, the abaya?” he asked.

Pauline did not understand until he mimed undressing and then she slipped out of the tent she had been given on the 'plane.

“Where is David Ransome, my boyfriend?” she asked, but the fat man either didn’t understand or wouldn’t answer.

Much to her relief, David came through the inner doors only a moment or two later and sat beside her.

Looking across to one of the fat men he ordered in Kobekistani, ~ Coffee.  Her Highness likes it as I do. ~

Turning to Pauline he said, “Did you have a pleasant journey, and was everything done properly?”

She hardly knew what to say.  Eventually she managed to stammer, “Yes, but I had the ’plane to myself and … and what is going on, where are we?”

David smiled, and said, “Nothing is going on.  The ’plane was part of my inheritance and it costs little more when it is flying than when it sits idle.  This was my grandfather’s palace.”

“Part of your inheritance?” she exploded, “An airliner was part of your inheritance?  What else did you inherit?  A few oil wells?  The whole country, perhaps?”

“Yes, the whole country,” said David.

Just then David’s mother came into the room and joined them.  She was closely followed by another fat black man carrying the coffee on a tray.

“Please, Mrs. Ransome, David is pulling some kind of practical joke, I just know he is.  What is going on?” asked Pauline, “He says he inherited the whole country?”

“Nothing is, as you put it, going on,” Amelia replied, “He did inherit the throne, and here that means the whole country.  While I am in Kobekistan I am called Princess Zubeydeh, and my son is normally addressed as Master and referred to as the Emir, may he live for ever.  You are staying here in the Golden Palace in the harem during your visit.  The Emir hopes you will like it here and possibly consent to return one day as his wife.”

“His wife?” Pauline almost shouted.

“Well you have been sleeping together for a year or so in Oxford, so perhaps you know already whether you like, or even love, him.  If you like the country, and could cope with being a wife of the ruler of this land, I think he would be pleased.”

“Can’t he ask me himself?” demanded Pauline looking straight at him.

“My dear, Emirs do not ask, they command,” said Princess Zubeydeh, “and he does not want to command you to stay and marry him …”

“Well thank you David for not commanding me to be your wife!” Pauline interjected.

“As I said,” Princess Zubeydeh continued, “So, I was the only possible go-between.  All of the other advisors are men and would expect to negotiate with your father, and certainly would not expect, or even countenance a refusal.  When I married the late Prince, the Emir’s father, it did not occur to him to tell me of our engagement and impending marriage, because he had agreed it with my father and he assumed I would be told of it that way.”

David got up and his mother stood also.  Then he left the room without speaking.  After he had left she sat down again and the two women continued their chat.

“He thinks he loves you,” said Amelia, “and wants to resume where you left off in Oxford a fortnight ago.  Specifically, he would like to sleep with you tonight.  You do still want him, don’t you?  You wouldn’t have come here otherwise?”

“Well, I was looking forward to …” Pauline started, but broke off when she remembered she was talking to her boy-friend’s mother.

She had never dreamt of doing anything but hide their actually having sex together from her own mother.

“Come through to my suite, my dear.  All this must be new and strange to you,” the older woman said, consolingly.

***

After some real heart-to-heart woman talk Amelia was very doubtful whether Pauline would be suitable for an Emir’s wife.  Nevertheless she resolved to give the girl every chance.

“So you will sleep with him tonight then?” she asked.

“If he loses his temper with me what will he do?” Pauline wanted to know.

“What will he do or what could he do?” countered the older woman.

“Both,” Pauline replied carefully, “I would like to know the risks.”

“He could do anything, up to and including having you beheaded in the public square, and it would be legal here, and it would not be reported in the west,” Amelia said, trying to be honest, “If you ask me what I think he would do, I think he would send you home.  If he were very angry he might send you tourist class instead of private jet.  A woman in tourist class on Air Kobekistani does not enjoy the journey.”

“May I think about it for a while, please?” the younger woman asked with a pleading tone in her voice.

“Of course, it will be ages yet before they start to prepare you,” replied Princess Zubeydeh, then seeing Pauline’s face she added, “I don’t think you will dislike the preparation.  Think of it as a beauty treatment by the best experts in the world and just be glad you don’t have to pay for it.”

Lunch was a strange mixture of western and eastern food;  some lamb chops were served with several vegetables which Pauline could not identify and some succulent Brussels sprouts.

“How do they do that?” she asked, “I normally hate sprouts but they were lovely.”

“David likes them, so somebody was sent to learn how to do it from a top chef in England,” Amelia explained.

The dessert course arrived and consisted of a selection of pastry rolls apparently filled with Shredded Wheat and liberally soaked in honey.

“These are lovely, but I dread to think what they will do to my figure,” Pauline remarked as she ate her third.

“That is the idea.  The Chief Eunuch evidently thinks you are too thin.  After coffee we can stroll out in the gardens and you can see what they did to Davina’s figure.  She looked a bit like you when she first came here I understand.”

In the harem, Pauline marvelled at the beautiful gardens with trees, fountains and birds flitting among the branches, all under a high glass domed roof.

“It’s just like the Eden Project in Cornwall,” she said to Amelia.

“Yes, I know what you mean, but this has been here for two hundred years or more.  I think this might be what the Hanging Gardens in Babylon were really like.”

“Where do these women come from and how do they pass the time all day?” she asked when they came across another two women sitting doing nothing by one of the pools.

“They are bought for the harem, or given by their fathers or others who want to impress the Emir.  They don’t really do anything much all day,” Amelia explained, “Of course, they can eat sweetmeats all day if they want, but those lovely rolls at lunch soon become boring.  Mostly they just sit.  Sometimes two will pair off for a session on a bed somewhere, but the eunuchs discourage it.”

“A session on a bed?” Pauline asked, “You mean with each other?  Lesbians?”

“They aren’t really lesbians, just bored,” Amelia said sadly, “Don’t forget most of them will be lucky to spend more than one or two nights a year with David.”

“With David?” Pauline sounded shocked.

“Pauline, this is David’s harem now.  He can sleep with whom he likes when he likes.  He always has one or other of them in his bed.  Tonight it will be you, last night it was Maryam, tomorrow night it could be any of these.”

“But if I marry him …?”

“Then you bear his first child, if possible, and preferably a boy.  If that goes to plan that child becomes Crown Prince and you become queen bee in this little hive.  I move out of the suite and it becomes your private realm.  Even the Chief Eunuch has to be polite to you.”

“But I get to sleep with him all the time if I’m his wife, don’t I?” asked the troubled girl close to tears.

“I have to be honest,” said Amelia, “I slept with David’s father once after he was born, and that was in almost four years.  But please don’t reject it out of hand.  Sleep with David tonight and discuss it with him;  maybe an English upbringing will have made a difference.”

Privately Amelia knew that her reaction to him as Emir was very different from her reaction to David her son.  She was very frightened of where all this was leading, frightened and yet curious and excited.  She had all but forgotten the high spots of harem life in her humdrum existence in England.

Pauline was off on another tack now, “Why are these women willing to give up a normal life, outside, for this life of utter boredom.  Don’t they even go shopping?”

“There is no such thing as what you call a ‘normal life’ in Kobekistan for a woman,” Amelia explained, “This harem, or another one, is all they have and for most of them it is all they can imagine.  They have no contact with what you think of as civilisation, no cinema, no TV, no radio.  If you took Maryam and put her down in Harrods dressed smartly she would die of fright.”

“Every woman in the country is kept in like this?  In what is virtually a prison?” persisted the younger woman.

“Not all,” said Amelia carefully, “Some are in brothels, and some work as draught animals in the farms.”

“But do they all dress like that?  All the women in the country?” asked Pauline, horrified.

“There are variations, my husband’s women wore only skirts made of inch wide strips of chiffon hanging about twelve inches from a waistband;  my brother-in-law’s tastes, I am told, ran to totally sheer smocks.  David is thinking of changing to silk shorty dressing-gowns.”

“But don’t the women mind?”

“Nobody asks them that question, and if they complain they are whipped.  Those whips the eunuchs wear are not for show,” the older woman commented wryly.

“Have you been whipped?” asked Pauline, fascinated and horrified.

“Years ago, when I first arrived here and refused to be shaved, I was whipped,” came the reply.

“Shaved?”

“Look between their legs!”

“Oh.  It looks so odd.  What did it feel like?” inquired a fascinated Pauline.

“It feels good, and clean, and right when I am here,” Princess Zubeydeh replied, and then her Amelia personality added, “I don’t know what my husband will say when I get back to England.”

“You’ve been shaved this trip?”

“Yes, of course.  Unless you kick up a devil of a fuss, they will shave you whenever you are bathed.  Try it tonight, you might enjoy it,” counselled the Princess, sensing that the young girl was at the stage of her life when she wanted to try everything.

“Do the men do it?  Shave you, I mean,” was the next nervous question.

“There are no men in here, only eunuchs, but no, the bath girls do it.  You must realise that there are servants for everything, to dress you, undress you, bathe you, brush your hair, apply your make-up, everything.  It will surprise you how soon you will get used to that;  inside a couple of days, if you drop something you will find yourself looking round for a servant to pick it up.”

“The eunuchs, does that mean …?” asked Pauline.

“Yes, they are castrated usually as young boys.  It is a career move and they are extremely well-off by Kobekistani standards,” replied Princess Zubeydeh and Pauline was shocked into silence.

***

Pauline was a problem for the harem because she had her own ideas about bathing, about what to wear in bed, and about how she would approach the Emir’s bed.  In the bedroom she created a scene until David told the eunuchs to withdraw.

“I really didn’t like it when they washed me and did my make up and oiled my private parts, even my bottom has been oiled,” she complained when they were finally alone.

“It makes it easier if I want to use it,” said David.

“Turned shirt-lifter have you?” she chided.

“If you’ve never tried it, don’t knock it,” he answered.

“Well I’m not going to try it,” she declared.

David was on the point of telling her she would do what he wanted and damned well like it when he remembered this was an Oxford girl he was talking to and not one of his concubines.  He couldn’t have her whipped into submission;  well, he could actually, but there would be repercussions.

Their attempts at love-making were an abject failure.  David discovered that compared to his concubines she was recalcitrant, self-willed and obstinate.  She objected to him even putting a finger in her arse and she didn’t want to try out different positions.  In Oxford she had sucked him off the day after he took her virginity, but now she didn’t want to do it.

‘What the hell does it matter what she wants?  I’m the Emir,’ David thought, and surprised himself.

***

“Ouch,” said Pauline next morning as the comb snagged in her hair and pulled a little.

There was a small scuffle behind her and as she turned round she was horrified to see the slave girl who had been dressing her hair receive three swift blows from the eunuch’s whip.  That they were not just a small token was shown by the angry dark red stripes that appeared on the olive skin of her thigh.  The expertise of the eunuch was clear from the fact that they were neatly parallel about half an inch apart.  The girl picked up the hairbrush and returned to her work without uttering a sound, though her eyes were brimming with tears.

Pauline sat still and silent, though the brush caught again a couple of times.  She was wondering what it must be like to be a servant here, and not one of the rulers as she appeared to be.  It would not be long before she found out.  Things finally came to a head later the same day when Pauline complained to David that she wanted to go sightseeing round Kobek and then flatly refused to wear purdah for the trip.

“You simply cannot go out in Kobek with your face visible.  You would be mobbed and raped in seconds,” he explained, “Mother will tell you, there are no women seen on the streets here, none, ever.”

“Don’t be silly, tourists go everywhere these days,” she riposted.

“No tourists get out of the airport here,” said David, “Anyone without a formal invitation from a Kobekistani citizen is summarily returned to the airline that brought them.”

“Well you do make life here seem tempting,” she sneered.

Turning to the Chief Eunuch, David said, “Princess Zubeydeh and Pauline are leaving for London this afternoon.  Talk to Kamal Qumsiyeh or whoever and do it.”

With that he was about to stalk off, but the image of his mother in harem costume with her breasts bouncing and her pussy crack rouged came into his mind again.  Well, how absolute was absolute power?  Could an Emir play with his own mother’s naked breasts here and get away with it?  Certainly a misunderstanding could be arranged.

After Pauline had been hustled out of the room, David said to the Chief Eunuch, “I would like to inspect the Princess Zubeydeh and Pauline in traditional harem dress before they leave.  They will object, and you may not whip them, but I will see them in an hour.  When they complain to me of your behaviour I will tell them I did not order it, do you understand?”

“Yes, Master.  I shall be whipped for my mistake suppose?”

“Oh yes, but I’ll do it myself,” David answered winking conspiratorially.

And so an hour later the two women were paraded in the harem’s extremely revealing costumes for David, who took the vision in in an instant and listened to the voluble protests for some minutes, not averting his gaze.  Pauline, in particular, was extremely angry, but his mother had a strange look on her face, almost of enjoyment.  Eventually he told them that once they were at the airport, they would be allowed to travel out of purdah and in Western clothes and that he would whip the Chief Eunuch personally for this affront.

Even though he had slept with Pauline many times in Oxford and the previous night here in Kobekistan, it was not until this meeting that he realised two things about her.  Her breasts were noticeably different sizes, and her arse was too small for the rest of her body, or maybe he was coming round to the local standards of beauty.  Comparing the younger woman with the older, he was impressed that his mother, the Princess Zubeydeh as she was dressed now, compared very favourably.  The figure was a little fuller;  the nipples were firm and surrounded by fascinating dark areolæ in contrast to the pale pink of the younger one’s nipples;  the mound was more pronounced, more inviting;  the Princess’s clitoris was protruding a little as though inviting his touch;  her legs were much better proportioned;  certainly Pauline was not the one he would choose, all other things being equal.

Dismissing Pauline and all the eunuchs, he indicated that he wanted to talk privately to “the Princess Zubeydeh”.

***

When they were alone, David walked over to his mother and reached out, cupping and gently lifting one beautiful breast, amused that she looked a little shocked, then was surprised himself in turn as she murmured, “Master,” and turned slightly to press her tit more firmly into his hand.

They looked each other straight in the eyes and each of them knew what had tacitly been agreed and what was going to happen now.  Amelia was surprised to find herself becoming extremely aroused at the thought of being taken and used again in this room by another Emir.  The question of incest did not matter in Kobekistan;  after all, the last man to use her in this room had been her father-in-law.  She moved to the whipping bench and draped herself over it face down with her legs apart, her rear end raised, both the nether lips and the more secret rosebud displayed, glistening with oil ready for David to do whatever he wanted.

David was already roused by the earlier sight of the two Western women in harem dress and was not slow to accept his mother’s implied invitation.  He ran one hand down the cleft of her shapely buttocks and on to her puffy labia.  As his fingers reached her clitoris she moaned slightly and his thumb slid easily into her well oiled and welcoming cunt.  Manipulating her clitoris with his fingers elicited a wriggle of pleasure and a moan.  She moved her legs even further apart and put one foot up in a stirrup to open herself even wider for him murmuring as she did so.  Leaning nearer to her head he could just distinguish her words.

“Master, yes Master.  Please take me now Master,” she pleaded in her pleasure.

This excited David even more and he stroked her buttocks with the other hand.  Immediately Amelia reached back and pulled her own buttocks apart to afford him even better access to the puckered anal entrance which was also oiled ready for use.  David slid one finger into the dark rosebud, which relaxed for him at once.  Then he slipped two, three, four fingers into her rectum and was rewarded by a thrust backwards of her hips forcing his fingers further into her.

As he withdrew his hand from her arse she begged, “Please take my arse, Master.  Please.  It’s been so long.”

David wasted no more time but eased his prick deep into her greedy slick arse hole and started pounding without stopping his teasing of her clitoris, and she came gloriously in continuous waves, her muscles clenching and unclenching on his prick.  As she descended a little from the heights of her climax, David felt his own crisis pumping into his penis and exploding deep in her rectum.  As that happened, quick as a flash, she had unseated him, spun round and taken his prick in her mouth, licking and sucking the last few spurts of his semen into her throat.  David recovered from his own climax to see her lying on the floor in front of him with strings of his semen stretching from her arse hole across her body to her mouth where they had been sprayed as she turned to suck him.

“Master,” she said, kissing his foot, “Master, that was wonderful.  Please do not send me back to my nothing husband in England.”

Raising her gently and sitting her on the sofa, David asked her, “What’s wrong with him?  And what did you mean when you said it had been a long time?”

“He’s a nothing and you have power, Master,” she explained, “I need to be used by a Master in his own way, not treated as something on a pedestal whose purity must be maintained.”

“Purity?” asked David.

“The last man to fuck my arse did it in this room, and the last prick I tasted was that same night, just before I took you back to England,” she said bitterly, “Peter Ransome only fucks me in the dark, under the bedclothes in the missionary position, and not very often at that, and he doesn’t really like me to enjoy it.  He didn’t marry me for love, and certainly not for sex.”

“Then why …?” David was perplexed.

“He wanted a wife to keep his house and be hostess at dinner-parties.  I didn’t want to stay at home and become nursemaid to my parents as they aged, and I wanted sex.  Abby, your father used to fuck me anywhere, any time when we were in London, and he used every position either of us could think of.  I swallowed more of his cum than I drank tea in those days and my arse hole was always oozing his sperm.  When I offered to suck Peter he said he could not countenance any such dirty perverted practices.  I have never dared to offer him my arse.”

“But we are in the Golden Palace, not the Emerald;  who used you here?”

“The old Emir, your grandfather, of course,” she replied, “He affected me just like you;  my knees trembled and opened of their own accord when I even looked at him.  He used me the night before we left for England.  I think he let us go to England because he really wanted me out of the way of Djamilla, but he wasn’t going to let me go without trying me out at least once.  I wanted it, very much.  I wanted you to use me today.  When I saw the harem dress when we arrived it brought back all the memories.  Why do you think I let them dress me like that on the second morning when I came to see you?  When you admonished me with just a look that breakfast time, I felt your power deep in my sex and that is why I ran away, not because I was afraid to see a cut girl.”

Then she lowered herself to the kneeling position and pressed her forehead to the ground.

From this position she asked, “Will my Master use me again today?  And if I please my Master will he keep me here, and not send me back to England?”

David sat silent for a moment, and Amelia didn’t dare move.  He thought about her request, about the excitement of taking his mother’s arse, about the prospect of having her doing everything she knew in an attempt to please him.  Truly the exercise of power was pleasant.  He lay back on the sofa.

“Get up, mother,” he said, emphasising the word ‘mother’, “and you may try to please me.”

In a moment she was all over him kissing him, with her tongue going wild in his mouth, and then stroking and licking him as she lifted his kameez out of her way.  When his burgeoning penis was exposed, she took it in her mouth and sucked and licked and stroked and nipped it with all the remembered expertise of her youthful pleasuring of his father.  David enjoyed her ministrations, but it was not until she straddled him and took his prick deep into her shaven cunt that he really became roused.  Amelia rode him like a wild thing, and came herself several times.  David was close a couple of times, but didn’t really want to come again so soon;  after all there were others to fuck if he wanted to come.  This session was about exercising his power, not his twitching muscles.

“Enough, Zubeydeh,” David said, tacitly signalling by the use of her Arab name that he would accept her into his harem as a permanent fixture.

Amelia fell to her knees again saying, “My Master is kind and generous.”

“Not so kind,” said David, “You must go back to England tonight with Pauline.  Too many questions will be asked otherwise.  You will go back to Peter and tell him what you need.  You will give him at least a month to understand you.  If he can provide it you will stay with him.  If not, you may visit me again.  Just let the Ambassador know when you want to travel and he will arrange it.”

“Master,” she said and David left the harem without another word while she was still kneeling.

***

Later that evening he was told that the two women had left on a chartered 747, the only passengers with a crew of ten to look after them.  Still later, he did whip the Chief Eunuch as he had promised, but only one symbolic stroke on the well padded shoulders.  It left no marks.

David’s night was enlivened by one of the younger harem women whom he had selected by not-so-random number, whose first time it was in his bed, and whose name or face he couldn’t remember afterwards.  If number 42 had hopes of more nights, she wasn’t to be very lucky.  The number 42 might be the answer to life, the universe and everything, but the woman bearing it hadn’t helped David in his efforts to forget his first entry into his mother’s arse.

He telephoned his mother the next day, but his step-father said she was “too busy” to come to the ’phone;  he didn’t bother to ring Pauline.

Chapter Nine Trouble

For some weeks there had been an undercurrent of unease in the harem.  Nothing David could actually put his finger on, but when he had a parade the women did not all seem quite so keen to draw attention to themselves in the hope of being picked for a night.  Passing the door to the harem ante-room one morning, David thought he heard something.

When David entered the harem, the usual calm and tranquillity was broken by screams of female rage and pain from more than one woman, interspersed with the whistle of one of the short dog-whips slicing through the air.  Walking into the main hall of the harem a scene of general disorder reigned.  Women were fighting, both among themselves and with the eunuchs.  As David had feared, the eunuchs were coming off worst.

“STOP!” David thundered and the sound of a genuine bass voice seemed to calm them;  the sight of their Master glaring at them soon had all but a very few kneeling and pressing their heads into the floor as though their very lives depended on it.

‘And well they may,’ he thought, ‘a strangling or two might work wonders.’

The Chief Eunuch rushed up to David and became profuse in apologies in very fast Kobekistani dialect.

“Calm,” said David in English, “What is going on here?”

“Djamilla refused to be bathed by the assigned eunuch, Master, and demanded that serving girls perform her ablutions.”

“This led to a riot?” David raised his eyebrows.

“Others of the women joined in, Master.  We had not enough whips for all.”

“Bring Maryam, … no.  Bring Davina to the interview room,” was the curt order, and David walked through and sat on the couch.

“Coffee!” he shouted and noted with some interest that it took several minutes to come.

Evidently the trouble was real, for nobody had thought to start his coffee the moment they realised he was in the harem.  Davina, however, took only fifteen minutes to arrive.  A fine balance between preparation for an encounter with her Master and speed of response to an order.

“Come and sit beside me,” said David as she entered the room, “Forget the formalities for the moment.”

Waving the Chief Eunuch and his assistant out of the room as she sat beside him, David turned towards Davina and said, “Can you tell me the truth?”

“Always, Master,” she said.

“Liar,” David replied, “Usually I don’t care, but this time I want the real true facts, not just what you think I want to hear.  Pretend we are in Kensington.  Now, you don’t like me, and I don’t fancy you;  true?”

Davina looked at him for a long time, trying to decide if this was a trick, or if he meant it.  Finally she plumped for trusting him, but being careful about the protocol.

“True, Master.”

“What happened?  Not just today, but leading up to the trouble.”

“Djamilla wants her old accommodation back, and it would have been preferable before the Princess Zubeydeh returned to England,” as she said it she fell silent and looked very wistful.

“And?” David prompted.

“And she started a riot by refusing the bath, and demanding the serving girls she used to have when the old Emir was alive.  She had planned all this for a while and was going round the unhappier of the women, like me, like …”

She broke off.

“Like?” he prompted her again.

Eyes downcast, Davina whispered, “Like your mother, when she was here.”

Since David did not explode, she continued, “And the women you have not chosen.  Most of them think, as I do, that Maryam will be First Wife and anyone older than her doesn’t stand a chance of more than once a year fucking.”

“Thank you for being honest,” said David, “If I give you a pension of, say £25,000 a year, would you like to leave Kobekistan and go back to England?”

“Not England, not back to people I knew before …” Davina said, sadly, “The States somewhere perhaps, or New Zealand … but I know that none of that is possible.”

“If you are prepared to be banished from ever coming to Kobekistan or communicating with anyone here, or telling your story to the media, then you can leave today on the late flight,” said David briskly, “I don’t need to threaten you with what might happen if you broke those promises.”

“Really?” she asked, disbelief written large across her face.

Lifting the telephone, David gave the order to Kamal Qumsiyeh to make the necessary arrangements.

“You will fly in purdah to Abu Dhabi and from there still in purdah to New York and the Kobekistani Consul there will meet the plane and take you to the St. Pierre when clothes and so forth will be found for you.  You may stay there until you find a suitable home, up to six months if you need.  Simply tell the Consul what you want.  If you decide to go to New Zealand instead you must make that move within the six months or pay your own fare.”

“Oh, Master,” gushed Davina.

“NO!” snapped David, “Now I am not your master, I am David and I am just an absentee sugar daddy.  I should have pensioned off all my grandfather’s women when I first arrived.  It will be done for many of them soon, but you must not tell them.  Send in the Chief Eunuch as you go out.”

When the Chief Eunuch entered, David explained that Davina was leaving for America and would not be back.

“Now bring in Djamilla, please.  Immediately.”

When she entered, she stood before him.  The Chief Eunuch and an assistant forced her to kneel, and tried to make her bow her head to the floor.

“Why do you not train her properly, as you would the other concubines?” asked David in a quiet voice full of menace.

Both whips were out in a second and Djamilla’s howl of anger could be heard all over the harem, soon followed by screams of pain, but her head was soon firmly pressed to the floor without anyone holding her.

When she was quiet again, David addressed her, “You have plotted against your Master.”

Then he allowed a few moments for the awful import of that statement to sink in, accusing her of treason because her Master was also the Emir.

“For that I shall punish you,” said David, “And it may discourage you from further trouble-making.”

Turning to Djamilla’s assistant eunuch David ordered, “Strip her, put her on the bench, and give me your whip.”

The eunuch cowered in fear, trembling and not moving.

David assumed he had not understood and repeated the first part of the order slowly, “Strip her and put her on the bench.”

The eunuch scrambled to obey and very soon Djamilla was face down, naked, strapped to the whipping bench, ready to be punished.  David went up to the eunuch and held out his hand.

“Your whip, please,” he demanded.

Again the eunuch cowered, but reluctantly handed over the whip;  then he lay on top of Djamilla.  David at once guessed that this was the way a symbolic whipping of the Head Wife had been done in the old Emir’s time.  Gently, he lifted the eunuch off the prostrate woman and put him to one side.  Stepping back he swished the whip experimentally in the air and then brought it down on the bare buttocks in front of him.

Whish THWACK!

Djamilla made no sound as an angry red line sprang up across the two rounded cheeks, their olive colour making it darker than the ones David had inspected on Davina that second morning.  Looking up at the eunuch David saw a face suffused with relief and gratitude.  He turned back to his task.

Whish THWACK!

Again Djamilla made no noise as a second line joined the first, slightly lower but crossing the first line at one end.

‘It must take practice to lay them all parallel, like Davina’s,’ he thought.

Gesturing to the eunuch to take over he studied the creature’s style of whipping carefully.  After another half dozen strokes, David again took the whip himself.

Whish THWACK scream!

David suddenly realised that all the noise which had broken his concentration on learning the eunuch’s technique was Djamilla’s sobs and screams at the agony being visited on her arse.

‘Serves her right,’ David thought, ‘She shouldn’t try to cause trouble for the Master to whom Allah has given her.’

Then he stopped dead and considered the thought he had just had.  Was he going native and becoming a Muslim in spite of his atheism?  And he was enjoying her squirming and her sobs;  his prick was hard as a stick of seaside rock and her arse was tempting.  He swung again.

Whish THWACK scream!

And again … and again and …

Djamilla’s backside became on mass of angry red skin interspersed with dripping cuts where the weals crossed.  Her breathing was ragged and her screams had subsided to sobs, but she was definitely conscious and feeling the agonies heaped on her.

Dropping the whip, David quickly lifted his kameez front and thrust his manhood deep into her cunt with no preliminaries whatever.  To his surprise it was sopping wet and his lubricated prick next slipped as easily into her arse.  As his balls hit her cunt and his thighs ground on her abused arse cheeks in the repeated pumping of his lust, David felt her start to come as his orgasm flooded through him, filling her rectum with jets of semen that seemed to flow for a long time.

The woman’s screams were now half pain and half pleasure as she did her best to grind her hips back on to his cock in spite of the agony it bought to her skin.  Shrivelling slightly, he slipped out of her arse and stood upright.  Motioning to the eunuch to untie her, David sat back on his throne.  Djamilla was brought forward and knelt, her forehead on the floor before him, and there she remained as he surveyed her battered arse and naked sweating shoulders.

“Stand up,” he commanded.

Uncertainly she rose to her feet.

“That was a taste of what you will get if you try to cause more trouble,” he said sternly, “followed by a taste of what will be forbidden or even made impossible for you.  If you rebel again I will have you thrashed to within an inch of your life, then cut and sewn up, and then sold as a field slave.”

The woman fell to her knees and sobbed out, “Thank you Master for your kindness in showing me the mistake I made.  Thank you for your mercy in taking my body in spite of my mistake.  I will never displease you again.”

“Take her out,” he said to the Chief Eunuch.

***

Later in the day when he was talking to Kamal Qumsiyeh again, David asked, “What can I do with Djamilla?  I don’t want her and yet she can still cause trouble.”

“The Emir can dispose of an unwanted woman in any way he sees fit,” came the expected diplomatic answer.

“She has not done enough to be killed,” said David, “at least not by my standards.  I am loath to send her to the slave auctions because she is too old to work and no longer young enough to be bought as a concubine.  I don’t want her around causing trouble.”

“Well, the Master could sell her;  the Head Wife of the former Emir would fetch a very good price.  She would be what is known in the West as a status symbol,” suggested Kamal Qumsiyeh.

“Or I could give her to someone as a token of esteem?” asked the Emir.

“Or you could do that, Master, but I can think of nobody to whom such a token might not be excessive at the moment.”

“Nobody we want to bribe that much, eh?  Well then, I shall give her to the man I most depend on.  If you want her she is yours;  take her wherever and keep her, or sell her, or strangle her if you want.  She must be out of my harem before night falls,” decided David.

“Master, this is extremely generous,” enthused Kamal Qumsiyeh, obviously well pleased, “I shall take her to my harem and there she can be a servant to my wives.  It will give me much pleasure.”

***

Kamal Qumsiyeh accepted Djamilla as a gift from his Emir with much glee, but also with some trepidation.  It would be as well to be wary of the lady’s power, even with her husband dead, and her demoted, and then having been summarily ejected from the new Emir’s harem.  It would also be nice to have her in his own harem where his wives could exact revenge for the wrongs he felt she had done him over his years of service to the old Emir.  It did his standing no harm at all to have in his harem, and to lend to his friends the former Head Wife of the late Emir.  He used her himself only once before lending her to Hajji Kofi Natsheh when the latter came to visit.  Her night with Hajji Kofi Natsheh had not been pleasant, Kamal Qumsiyeh was sure, because she had often persuaded the old man go against his Foreign Minister’s advice.

Now he had another plan.  He would invite the new Emir to visit and offer him the choice of all the harem.  As an entertainment while they were eating, Djamilla would be given the bastinado for her past machinations against the new Emir’s mother.

David arrived at Kamal Qumsiyeh’s establishment, a small palace about a mile from his own, and was shown with all due ceremony into the harem proper.  This surprised him, as that was tantamount to offering him a free choice of the women there.  Then he realised that this should not surprise him as that was probably Kamal Qumsiyeh’s intention, out of gratitude for keeping his job when the old Emir died, and the gift of Djamilla.  As he sat down on a sofa in the middle of the room, a series of women, with ages varying from about his to his mother’s, came into the room dressed only in ballet tutus of royal blue and matching ballet slippers, which served to conceal nothing.  Their breasts were bare and were, he noted, not rouged at the nipples.

In an obviously well-rehearsed scene, and each of the women posed for him for the barest fraction of a second before kneeling down facing away from him with their foreheads on the ground, their knees about twelve inches apart, and their arses high off their heels.  This presented him with a view of their private parts which was totally unobstructed by the skirts.

When a semi-circle of ten women were in front of him, Kamal Qumsiyeh came into the room and made obeisance.

David said, “Good evening, Kamal Qumsiyeh, please rise and sit here beside me.  I find the view from here enchanting.”

“I’m glad my Master is pleased,” he replied, joining his Emir on the sofa, “Any of these you care to use this evening is available at any time for anything you may wish.  I have a selection of whips available, and other equipment can be provided in my special room.”

“Shall we enjoy ourselves here first?” asked David, “I could use a mouth if you care to recommend one.”

“Soraya,” said Kamal Qumsiyeh and immediately one of the older women rose gracefully and came to kneel at David’s feet, applying herself expertly to pleasuring him with her mouth.  A click of the fingers brought another woman to Kamal Qumsiyeh’s feet similarly.  Then two more of the women came to David and started to massage his feet and lower legs.  Finally one woman stood behind him, offering her breasts for him to play with if he wished.

As they settled down to enjoy what promised to be a long session, since Soraya was clearly skilled at bringing a man to the edge of orgasm time and time again without actually sending him over the edge until he indicated he wanted it, Kamal Qumsiyeh asked, “Would my Master care for some visual entertainment at the same time?”

“Why not?” agreed David, expecting dancing girls or some such.

The remaining four women moved away to the sides of the room and a strange piece of apparatus was brought in which consisted of a large base plate of timber which was fitted with cushions for someone to lie on.  It had a narrow pole about three and a half feet tall and had two leather straps with buckles at the top set vertically in the middle of one end.  While David was wondering what this might be used for, Djamilla came into the room, dressed like the others in only a tutu, but with bare feet.  She made the usual obeisance and was then led by two eunuchs to the apparatus.  When she saw it she let out a low moan which sounded to David like fear;  she had certainly seen this kind of apparatus before.  Lying her on her back on the cushions, they strapped her ankles in the loops and her arms to the base so that she was held immovable with her feet high in the air.  By now she was openly sobbing from what David was sure was pure fear.

“This is a suitable punishment for the treatment she meted out to the Princess Zubeydeh, your mother, Master, when the Princess Zubeydeh was in the harem of the late Emir, your grandfather,” said Kamal Qumsiyeh.

A somewhat larger than normal eunuch came in carrying a four foot long cane such as David had seen only in films of nineteenth century school scenes;  he bent it almost to a semicircle to show its flexibility and held it over Djamilla as if she were expected to approve of its use.  This brought a strangled scream from her lips.

“Would my Master wish to hear her screams, or shall she be gagged?” asked Kamal Qumsiyeh.

David felt a thrill at the thought of those screams which almost disrupted Soraya’s plans and sent him over the edge.

“Leave her as she is,” he said.

The eunuch stood to one side of the apparatus and David thought, ‘Either he’s left handed or it’s the front of her legs he’s going to thrash.’

Raising the cane in his right hand the eunuch held it high in the air for what must have seemed an interminable pause to the waiting woman.  Then it dropped with a menacing whirring noise to the side of his body, deliberately not making any contact with Djamilla at all.

As she screamed in terror at the blow which had not fallen David came involuntarily, almost choking Soraya as she swallowed the great gouts of semen which jetted into her throat.  This surprised David almost as much as it did his fellatrice.

The next blow fell accurately across the soles of the feet of the woman and her screams, David thought, would certainly be heard miles away.  After that blow her torturer, who was clearly an expert in such matters, waited over a minute for the victim to subside from screaming to merely sobbing.  Meanwhile Soraya had tentatively stroked David’s penis again and receiving a smile from him had set about arousing him again.

David’s cock went from soft to hard in an instant when the next blow landed and he accepted that this punishment was really a turn-on for him.  Soraya now understood what was happening and would take good care not to let him come again.

“How many strokes is she to receive?” asked David.

“As my Master commands,” was the reply.

“How many can she take?”

“If she is to walk ever again, not more than twenty without a month to recover, Master, but it is not sensible to administer them all at once.  Three or four will have her in a state where further blows become indistinguishable for her.  And hour’s respite then and restart is the usual practice.  Also it is not usual to tell her the total she is to receive so that she never knows when a blow is to be the last.  Of course, if it is the Master’s wish we can continue to fifty or sixty before she actually dies of this punishment.”

“Continue,” said David.

Again the eunuch made her wait, swishing the cane twice before it struck, reducing the woman to a quivering jelly of fearful anticipation.  After another stroke he paused again.

“Stop,” said David, “enough for now,” while signalling the creature to continue.

The next stroke came immediately with almost no lift of the cane and Djamilla was obviously totally unprepared for it.  The thrashing of her body in response to the unexpected agony almost upset the stand.  David came again in spite of Soraya’s best efforts to prevent it.

“Oh,” said David to Kamal Qumsiyeh, “it makes me quite hungry, watching all this punishment.”

At the same time he waved Soraya and the women around him away.

“Then we must eat next, Master,” replied his host.

After the bastinado stand had been cleared away, David looked at the bevy of women surrounding him.  Seeing the women in a harem outfit which was different again from those he had seen before reminded him once more of the arousal he had felt at the sight of his mother with her most intimate charms prepared and displayed for him as a concubine.

Turning to Kamal Qumsiyeh he asked, “Is there much of an incest taboo here?”

“Not for the rich and powerful, Master,” he replied, “Is the Master contemplating breeding with one of his half-sisters?  That might present political difficulties, but just taking pleasure with them is a private matter, inside the harem.”

“No.  I don’t even know where they are,” David said, glad his real interest had not been divined.

“Master, three at least are in your harem and some of the other girls there are unsure of whether they are your father’s or your grandfather’s offspring,” Kamal Qumsiyeh informed him, “Your grandfather enjoyed taking the virginities of his daughters and granddaughters, though he was meticulous in not impregnating any of them.”

A table had been brought in and food heaped on it, all manner of dishes, including David’s favourites, Inçik in the Turkish style and North African cous-cous.  The rest of the evening went well and David stayed the night, taking Soraya as a reward for her earlier efforts.  It did not occur to him that she might think she had done her duty already by swallowing him twice, or that she was Kamal Qumsiyeh’s own favourite wife, or that she might become pregnant in the course of his pleasures.  Nor did he care.

Chapter Ten Half-Sisters

David ordered DNA profiling of all the women in the harem and the twenty or so young children still living there.  He gave samples himself and had them all analysed to check on who was actually related to him and to what degree.

The results fitted pretty well with what Kamal Qumsiyeh had said.  He had three half-sisters in the harem, and a number of others who had been his grandfather’s offspring.  Several of the children shared the same grandfather as him as well as being children of his grandfather’s harem women.  The relationships would have crossed a genealogist’s eyes, since mostly they arose from the habit of lending members of a harem to honoured visitors and of giving female children as presents.  They also confirmed that Maryam was not a close relation of his.

He studied the results until he felt his head would whirl;  to a mathematician the topology was interesting but needed more than a Ph.D. to understand.  Then he decided to dismiss the three women who were his half sisters immediately.  He didn’t want to cause any more inbreeding and he was looking to have an heir as soon as possible.  Maryam seemed the best bet to bear him a Crown Prince, if she could.  He took care to warn the Chief Eunuch at breakfast that he wished to see the three women immediately after lunch.

***

The three women came into the interview room together and he looked them over.  They seemed three fairly typical Arab girls and he gathered from the Chief Eunuch that he would need an interpreter for all three of them.

The first one he spoke to was Menar, who had been born in the old Emir’s harem.  She did not know, until David’s inquiries had discovered it, that she was not the old Emir’s daughter.  Quite nonchalantly she agreed that it must have been a visit from the Prince when her mother became pregnant.

The Chief Eunuch admitted to David that they never kept records of who bedded whom and when.  Orders were given that this record was to be kept in future, together with records of menstruation so that without the effort of DNA profiling David could know which children belonged to which fathers, at least in most cases.

Menar’s mother had left the harem when she was still a small child and she could barely remember her.  The old Emir had taken her own virginity but had then never sent for her again.  Her body language made it quite clear that she would welcome David’s attentions in his bedroom any time he wanted.

***

It turned out that the second girl, much the oldest of the three, spoke fluent French and understood some English, so the conversation ensued with David speaking English and the woman speaking French.

“Surely Yenta is a Jewish name?” asked David.

« Yes, I am Jewish according to the traditions because my mother was Jewish, » the girl replied with a good deal more spirit than most of the harem women ever showed.

“Then why was she married to my father, the Prince Abdullah?”

« Oh, she wasn’t.  She was kidnapped when she was on holiday in Spain with her husband and brought here, then sold in the auction.  Someone bought her and gave her to our father as a birthday present for his eighteenth birthday.  He took her and used her.  She bore me ten months after she came here and then when I was seven he died after she bore him a son who also died as an infant.  I can only just remember her … »

The girl fell silent, then she sighed and continued, « Soon after my … our father died I came here with my mother.  She died when I was eighteen and the old Emir first used me soon after that.  I have not been chosen often, because he didn’t like me much, perhaps because I talk too much. »

He considered briefly trying her in his bed that night, but decided not to bother.  True, she could hold a conversation with him, but he was not overly struck by her looks and he wasn’t too keen on anything but the best.  After all he had a whole harem to choose from and there were much sexier creatures than she in it.

***

David turned to the third woman, who was about his own age.

She also could talk only through an interpreter and not much was said, because Noor seemed to David to be a little simple-minded.  She didn’t remember her mother and didn’t know how or where she had been conceived or born.  The old Emir had chosen her often, she claimed, but the Chief Eunuch seemed unwilling to confirm that.  She didn’t seem interested in what happened to her.

Turning to the Chief Eunuch he asked, “Are they all healthy and none of them pregnant?”

“Yes, Master,” was the instant response.

“Right,” said David and went back to the Throne Room where he found the usual crowd of courtiers who never seemed to do anything.  Hajji Darwish Dosmukhamedov was there and David asked him where Kamal Qumsiyeh was but nobody knew.  After some time discussing meaningless details of economic policy which Hajji Darwish Dosmukhamedov wanted him to approve without change, David finally saw Kamal Qumsiyeh come into the room.

“Ah, good,” said David, “A little job for you weeding out the harem;  I’d like you to find husbands for my three half-sisters.  I don’t really fancy any of them, but none of them have done me any harm, so get rid of them by way of marriage.”

“Master, none have done you any harm … as yet,” said Kamal Qumsiyeh, “but the Master’s wish is my command.”

Chapter Eleven Shopping

David decided that it would be a good idea if he visited the slave auctions and watched how women were bought and sold.  He asked about the way this was done and was told that there was a polite fiction that these women were not slaves, but indentured servants for a fixed period, usually twenty years, and it was these indentures that were sold.  Also men were bought and sold on the same basis.  He told Kamal Qumsiyeh to arrange a visit.

“There may be some difficulties, Master,” said Kamal Qumsiyeh, which was the nearest he ever came to refusing David anything.

“Smooth them out,” said David, “and not by arranging a fake auction, either.”

“Master, the problem is nobody will bid if you are there.  If the Emir bids for a slave then nobody would dare to bid against him.  If he does not bid for a slave, then everyone would assume there is a fault in the slave,” explained Kamal Qumsiyeh.

“Tell them I am only sightseeing.  I will not bid for, nor will I comment on any slave.  I will buy only through my usual agents,” said David, “No, better still, arrange for me to be hidden from view and tell nobody I am visiting.”

“The latter is truly impossible, Master.  The auctioneer will want to advertise your presence as much as he can.”

“Then hide me, but I want to see as near to a normal auction as can be arranged.  Do not tell the auctioneer until we arrive at his door.”

Some days later Kamal Qumsiyeh said, “If it is still my Master’s wish, there is a slave auction today.  We could attend quite discretely.  Many people will know that you are there but they have been told that you wish to be invisible;  none will acknowledge your presence.”

“Good,” said David, “I was beginning to think you had forgotten.”

“I would never forget your wish, Master,” was the quick reassurance.

The limousine whisked them to the low warehouse near the airport where the auction was to take place.  As David walked in everyone present fell to their knees and pressed their heads to the floor.

“The Emir is not here,” he reminded them in a firm tone.

Everyone stood up sheepishly, but David felt flattered that they liked him as Emir enough to show respect when they had specifically been told not to do so.  The fact that most of them had thought his invisibility wish was a trick to catch them not showing respect never occurred to him.

The Emir was shown round escorted by the Auctioneer, a man called ‘Old Saud’ by all and sundry because of his nationality.  The slaves to be sold were kept in pens which reminded David of the pictures of old cattle markets in England and there were a large number of men moving from pen to pen assessing the goods.  Some were making notes on their catalogues as they went.  David waved away the offer of a catalogue, since he was not buying and did not want to confuse the genuine customers.

There were women there of all shapes and sizes and of ages ranging from about eighteen to sixty, David judged.  Some of the younger ones had babies with them, but none of the children seemed to be old enough to walk.  Their skin colours ranged from the deepest purple-brown of equatorial Africa to light skinned women who could easily pass for white women.  The clothing they wore was as varied as their shapes.  Some wore very little, others wore tattered finery, while a few of the healthiest-looking wore clean new-looking outfits of varied types but all of those seemed to be suited more to the bedroom than to field work.

Kamal Qumsiyeh explained that there were three classes of indenture for sale;  field workers, domestic workers and pleasure workers.  The field workers were the big strong women who tilled the fields and generally acted as farm labourers all over the country.  One of those in prime condition could fetch as much as 200 Kobestis, which David quickly equated to £1000;  Certainly they were valuable property and one of proven breeding ability would fetch more than that.  Domestic workers were considered the lowest form of slaves and one of them might sell for as little as 4 Kobestis or £20 if she was small, old or otherwise poorly suited to working.

It was the pleasure workers which interested David the most.  These were the harem slaves who were concubines trained to please men.  The price of these, Old Saud explained, depended more on their pedigree and provenance than on anything else.  As an example he cited Djamilla, who would fetch next to nothing for herself, and would probably be sold as a domestic and not a high-priced one at that.  However, because she had been Head Wife to the Emir, many men would bid for her as a status symbol and she would be worth, perhaps, several thousand Kobestis.

“So my little Maryam would fetch what?” asked David, “She was bought at the breast by my grandfather and raised in the Golden Palace harem.  She is about twenty-five years old.”

“She is, I believe, Master, only nineteen,” replied the trader, “For herself, a few hundred Kobestis, but as your ex-favourite concubine and still young as she is, the price could be anything.  The best price I ever sold for was a girl who had passed only one night with the Emir your grandfather and she fetched almost 3,000 Kobestis.”

David thought that £15,000 was too much for any woman, even if money was no object as it was for him.  Considering what the man had implied about his knowledge of the workings of the Emir’s harem, David asked him how he knew these things.

“Master,” came the confident reply, “The buyers for the big harems and the Chief Eunuchs who fetch and carry the women are all close friends of Old Saud.  I could not operate successfully without the knowledge I gain from them.  In return there are special women occasionally, who are not openly auctioned.”

That made sense to David.  In England an estate agent would need to be au fait with everything happening in his area and would offer favoured informants first crack at the odd bargain property.  This was really no different.

“In fact, Master,” continued Old Saud, “If you care to come this way there is one ‘special’ in this auction which might interest the Emir.  She is a 100% guaranteed virgin from somewhere in Europe;  she speaks some English but I cannot understand her easily.  She seems to have no Arabic or French.  Other languages I do not know.”

David was shown into a small room with a window which was tightly shuttered.  When the door was closed darkness descended and the slave auctioneer then opened the shutters to show a cell not unlike a prison cell containing a sad-looking white woman of thirty or so, wearing a torn dress and showing no evidence of having any underwear beneath it.  She was sitting dejectedly on a low bench and looked very unappetising.  Then she started shouting and David at once recognised an Irish accent, though the swear words she was using were not all familiar to him.  When he indicated a possible interest in her, the auctioneer immediately had her stripped.  On balance, David thought, that was a mistake;  the attraction of a partly clothed body was lost without any compensating beauty being revealed.  She looked what she probably was, an Irish slut who had strayed too far from home.  Her virginity, in the unlikely event of it being true, made the stretch marks on her body evidence of the second coming.  After he had been shown to his seat behind a screen on a gallery above the auction, David asked Kamal Qumsiyeh if he could arrange for the ‘special’ he had seen to be bought on his behalf.

“I will tell the Auctioneer and she will be yours as a present, if you want her, Master,” came the reply with disapproval etched on every syllable.

“No, have someone buy her for me, and not officially either.  It must not be known that the Golden Palace bids for her,” said David, unsure himself why he wanted her and why he wanted to pay for her.

“As the Master wishes,” said Kamal Qumsiyeh, still in a tone full of his distaste, and bustled off to arrange things.

After that the auction started and the bidding was brisk.  Each slave was put up an a dais naked and was turned this way and that bending and stretching to order so that their best points could be shown to the bidders.  Watching the various slaves, male and female, react differently, some bold, some scared, some even wanton in their gestures and movements as the bidding for them progressed, David became aware that in this culture the vast majority of the slaves accepted their lot in life.  The image of his mother, naked, in such an auction floated unbidden before his eyes.  No, he could not do that, could he?  How much would a good-looking Englishwoman, only three previous pricks in her, mother of the Emir, fetch?

At what appeared to be the end of the auction most of the crowd left but some stayed on.  David assumed that these were the privileged few who had a chance at the ‘specials’.  These auction lots were mostly Arab girls from good families who had too many daughters, Kamal Qumsiyeh explained.  If a good marriage could not be arranged they were sold to be rich men’s concubines.  The girls did not seem to mind being sold, though some of them were nervous at being shown off on the auction block.  Most of them were not stripped naked, but were in some form of harem dress.

The Irish girl did not appear until last, and she was the worst behaved.  She refused to strip and the remnants of her dress were torn off her.  Then she curled up to hide her breasts and cunt from the crowd, only straightening when she felt the lick of a whip on her upper thighs.  Even then she was as uncooperative as she could be and felt the whip twice more before she was finally sold to a black eunuch David did not recognise.

“Did I buy her?” asked David, turning to Kamal Qumsiyeh.

“That was the Master’s wish,” he replied, “The eunuch is one of my harem staff and he will deliver her to my house, as he does not know it is for my Master he was bidding.  My reputation as a sharp buyer will be ruined for I paid far more for her than she is worth.  The other bidder was only trying to spite me.”

“How much was she worth and how much did we pay?” asked David.

“Well she isn’t a virgin I am sure, and she isn’t at all willing, so she is probably only worth about 50 Kobestis but that bastard pushed me to 240 for her.”

“I shall pay that, of course,” said David mollifying the Head of Protocol somewhat, “I realised she wasn’t a virgin when I saw the stretch marks on her belly.  She’s had at least one brat.”

***

A couple of hours later David was in the harem interview room when the woman was brought in, wearing an abaya, and stood on the dais for him to interrogate her.  The Chief Eunuch was standing by to strip her for inspection when David signalled.

“You haven’t really been a virgin for these many years, have you my little Dublin purchase?” asked David.

“How didja know oi was a Dub?” she asked.

The whip cracked before David could prevent it and she fell to her knees and cried out, “It wasn’t moy fault, Master.  Dey said I would be beat unmercifully if anyone found out oi wasn’t pure.”

“Get up,” David ordered, signalling all but the Chief Eunuch to withdraw, “Come and sit here.  Take off that silly costume;  it must be stifling.  I have seen you naked on the auction block, in case you didn’t know, but you can wrap it round you if you want.”

Lara rose and slipped out of the purdah with her back to him, then wrapped it round her like a bath towel.  Moving over to him she sat down, wincing a little at the pain in her bottom from the whip.

“Who are you, then?  You sound English to me, and you picked an Irish accent for sure.”

“I am the Emir, but I was educated in England from the age of five to my mid-twenties,” said David.

“The Emir?” asked the girl, scared again.

As she looked around her, she noticed the opulence of her surroundings for the first time and he sensed that she believed him.

“And that bastid works for you?  The eejit that hit me?” she asked.

“Yes, and he will hit you again if you don’t stop asking questions and start answering mine,” came David’s unkind reply, “I paid good money for you, almost two thousand euros in Irish money and I was sold damaged goods.  Now answer briefly the following questions;  one, are you even remotely in the least like a virgin?  And two, how did you get from Ireland to that auction room?”

“One, Master, not even remotely.  I haven’t been a blushing virgin these dozen years.  I had a child in Ireland five years ago, and lately I have been shagged every ten minutes or so front and rear by a different Arab.  The auctioneer had me not half an hour before the sale, and his boss earlier today, and even the man who dragged me in and out of the auction room did it just after you bought me.  Oh, when will I see my little boy again?” she asked as she dissolved into a flood of tears which David was sure were genuine.

“Two?” he asked menacingly, knowing he had to keep her from hysterics and using harshness to do it.

“Two?”

“Question two, how did you get from Ireland to the auction?”

“Oh.  I was working in Dublin as a lap-dancer when this man offered me a lot more money for a three month tour of the Middle East with his dance troupe, stage dancing.  I wouldn’t have come but there was twelve of us, and he had us rehearsing for a week before we all met the airport to come out here to Morocco.  Then when we got here we had to lap-dance instead of stage dancing.  That sounded OK because I had done it in Dublin and the punters aren’t allowed to touch you;  but one did in the club here and when I screamed they grabbed me and held me down while the customer spanked me.  After that it just got worse.  We were pawed and then sold for the night to customers for a while.  Well,” she paused, “That happened occasionally in Dublin as well.  Then, one evening we were told each of us would be sold to several customers for half an hour each.  I said I wouldn’t do that and they beat me with a cane.  I must have passed out, because I woke up in the auction place.”

David decided to tell her the worst first and the best afterwards,  “You aren’t in Morocco;  you must have been drugged because the auction house is in the Emirate of Kobekistan.  However, I don’t want you after that story, so I shall put you on a ’plane to London tonight.  You’ll be given clothes there and sent on to Dublin.”

Before she had time to answer, he stalked out of the room and left it to the Chief Eunuch to give the necessary orders to Kamal Qumsiyeh;  they both shook their heads at this Emir’s softness with women.

Later David said to Kamal Qumsiyeh, “Tell the slave merchant from me that I shall be angry if he offers me another virgin after he has fucked her himself, or allowed any of his staff to fuck her.”

“Does my Master wish the message to be delivered personally?”

David took this to mean that the man would be beaten, or worse.  “No.  The telephone will suffice.  Next time he will be much more careful.”

Chapter Twelve Routine

Maryam was pleased to be selected by the Emir for his bedroom again.  Any of the women would be pleased, but she had overheard one of the others remarking on how often Maryam was being picked.  Also she knew something the others didn’t;  although David used her mouth and her arse a lot and came in each of them, he also fucked her properly, in her cunt, quite often and never bothered to avoid her getting pregnant.  Of course she dearly wished to be the mother of his first child.  Even if it was a girl she would be important for the rest of her life, if it were a son he would be Crown Prince.

Carefully, she slipped beneath the coverlet and started to kiss and lick his feet, working slowly up until she came to his erect weapon.  This she wanted in her cunt, spraying new life into her womb.  She decided to take a chance and instead of the fellatio he expected she moved around and slowly lowered her cunt over his prick impaling herself exquisitely and moving slowly up and down, twisting as she did so in a way she knew men liked.

As she fucked him she thought of some of the men she had had to endure when the old Emir had lent her to visitors.  The thought of the smell of one particular old man made her shudder and David evidently thought that a wonderful sensation on his prick so she tried to do it again.  A sudden convulsion from below her heralded jets of his jism erupting into her womb and making her come in reaction.

Staying where she was, still tightening her internal muscles to keep him firmly embedded, she twisted round to face him.  Leaning forwards she started to lick and nip at his nipples until she felt him stir inside her, slowly lengthening and stiffening.

“Do that again,” he said.

«Quoi?» she dared to tease.

“With your insides, to my prick, what made me come.”

She made an effort and shuddered, but then had another idea and coughed quietly.

“Wow, that’s nice,” David said and almost asked where she had learned that.

Then he decided he didn’t care where she had learned it, it felt good.  The night passed in short sleeps interspersed with even shorter sessions of fucking.  Only once did he take her arse and once her mouth.  Four times he came in her vagina.

Eventually, still embedded in her cunt, he said, “My love, we must get up.  Even Emirs have to work.”

It was the first time he had addressed her as a human being and she was immensely encouraged by it.  So encouraged, in fact, that she dared to ask him something.

« Master, my best Master, may Maryam ask something? » she inquired in French.

“Of course,” said David, basking in the afterglow of his wonderful orgasms, deep inside this lovely body.

« If we have a son, will I be a wife? » she asked, trembling a little, « Not just a concubine. »

“I don’t know,” said David, honestly, “I would have to ask someone about that.  The Emir can do anything he wishes, but at the same time some things seem to be impossible.”

As she left the room, escorted by the Chief Eunuch, David casually said, “Move her into the suite the Princess Zubeydeh occupied, please.”

They both turned and stared at him;  then Maryam rushed to him and fell to the floor kissing his feet.

‘It does feel nice when people showed some gratitude,’ David thought.

***

“It’s time we had some fun,” said David to Kamal Qumsiyeh, “I’m getting fed up with the humdrum daily routine of audiences, decisions, visit the harem, eat too much.  I want to get out in the fresh air.”

“My Master might care to consider a hunt,” suggested the advisor, “The late Emir, your grandfather, enjoyed that.  It could easily be arranged for tomorrow.”

“Good idea,” David enthused, “Remind me, the hounds were Irish Wolfhounds, the prey is a woman, the first man at the kill gets to use her.  Is that right?”

“Yes, Master.  Does my Master wish to inspect the hounds?”

“No time like the present.  Let’s go,” said David.

After some five minutes walk through parts of the Golden Palace David had never seen, they emerged from a small door at the back, close to the Emerald Palace and went into a small courtyard surrounded by stables.  An old weather-beaten Kobekistani wearing a disreputable turban and shalwar kameez came forward and bowed to David, though it was far from the obeisance everyone else offered.

Kamal Qumsiyeh whispered to David, “The late Emir allowed this bow as his knees are very arthritic and he was a childhood playmate.  He is also the only man whom your grandfather trusted with the dogs.”

They three of then trooped across the courtyard to the nearest stable door which had the upper half open.  Looking in he could see three huge cages, filling the loose-box, each containing a very large and very healthy-looking Irish Wolfhound.

“Are they pure-bred?” asked David.

Kamal Qumsiyeh translated and the old man replied, also in Kobekistani, ~ All of them.  They are registered and the Emir, my master, is the leading breeder of these dogs in the whole world. ~

“That isn’t true, of course.  We only have about fifty dogs here,” Kamal Qumsiyeh added.

David tried to imagine who in Britain might own fifty Irish Wolfhounds but gave up after the Queen, Woburn and Longleat.  These dogs seemed in fine form and so he inquired how many a hunt needed and if there were enough.

~ We usually have about twenty out,~ the old man said, through Kamal Qumsiyeh, ~ and I have about forty fit and trained. ~

“The quarry is not usually hurt, I gather?” asked David.

~ Well, ~ came the cautious reply, ~ We have occasionally had quarry killed, and a few maimed, but nothing serious, and mostly they are only frightened. ~

“What would he consider serious?” asked David.

~ If the dogs were to eat the quarry, that would be serious, ~ said the old man with complete equanimity, ~ because they would have to be put down.  That is for the safety of others who work with them.  Once they get a taste for human flesh there is no holding them. ~

David thanked him and then returned with Kamal Qumsiyeh to the Throne Room.

“The matter of a quarry is all that is left to arrange, Master,” said Kamal Qumsiyeh, “Do you wish one purchased today in the slave market?”

“No,” said David, “I’ll provide one from my harem.  The Chief Eunuch will know what to do, I take it?”

“Most certainly, Master.”

Later that evening as he was preparing to retire for the night and was wandering in the harem garden, trying to decide which flower to pick for tonight’s pleasures, David happened on Laura sitting beside a fish pool looking very bored and a thought struck him.

“Hullo,” he said.

“Oh, Master.  What a surprise,” she said, sarcastically, “Have you come to have me whipped?  Or is there something else?  Don’t tell me I am to have the privilege of being your fuck-toy tonight?”

“Tut, tut,” said David, “Such language.  No, I wondered if you would like to get out of the harem for the day tomorrow?  A breath of fresh air in the country?”

“Joke, ha bloody ha,” she replied.

The Chief Eunuch, who was never far away when David wandered in his harem, had a whip in his hand, but David waved him away.

“We’re going hunting and I though you might enjoy participating,” he said.

“What do you hunt, here?” the girl asked, intrigued, “Bears, lions, something else?  If you’re serious and I have a choice, yes, I’ll join you.”

“Good,” said David, “Actually, we hunt women and tomorrow you will be our quarry.”

Giggling to himself he left the horrified girl and signalled to the next woman he came across to join him in his bed that night.  Not having the faintest idea how accidental his choice had been, she was very flattered and worked hard to please him.

Chapter Thirteen Hunting

Laura had been given two hours briefing by a man who was an expert on hunting, a map and an hour’s start.  She was dressed in a loose-fitting one-piece suit which looked rather like a western shell-suit and was a dull brown and green in random patches.  This, it was explained to her, would camouflage her quite well in most of the terrain where the hunt was to be held, which was in the fertile strip of Kobekistan beside the sea.  There were woods, swamps, grazing a small artificial desert, and some small hills with limestone caves in the twelve square mile area which was the artificial chase used for hunting.  The perimeter had a twelve-foot high chain link fence with razor wire at the top.

The Chief Eunuch explained to her that she would be sent off from the entrance to the Royal Estate and one hour later the hunters would start from the same spot searching for her.  If she was still uncaught some three hours after she started she had won and would automatically be freed.  What he did not tell her was that the hunters would be mounted on horses, nor that Irish Wolfhounds would be the hounds used, nor that her suit was bugged so that the Emir could locate her at any time.

Laura was not as stupid as she looked, and she remembered seeing films about Red Indians both hunting and being hunted, and about runaway slaves.  Her first move was to take to the nearest stream and to run half a mile or so in the water to throw any dog off her scent.  Then she headed into a wood and managed to go from tree to tree, breaking the ground trail again, for another hundred yards or so, though this was very slow.  Leaving the wood as it approached some small hills, she ran up the stream again, beside some very swampy ground where the horses would not be able to pass until she saw some caves in the low cliffs almost overlooking the stream, where she decided to sit it out.  Her reasoning was that the more she moved, the more trail she would leave and the more chance there was of her being found.  The only flaw in this stratagem was the location finder in her clothing which told the Emir where she was up to the moment she entered one of the caves.  Then she heard the cannon fired to indicate that the hunt was moving off.

David, being a sporting man at heart, did not give this information to the hunters below, but stayed in his helicopter, watching the hunters fan out on horse-back and successfully find a scent after only three-quarters of an hour.  By this time Laura was holed up in her cave and sitting tight, hoping for good fortune.  The dogs followed the scent the wrong way, into the trees, but the hunters soon turned them and the trail led to the hillside stream.

Up the stream they went until they picked up the trail again and were away towards the caves at a canter.  Only about an hour remained of the allotted time and Laura discovered a rear exit from the caves and fled down the far side of the hill through another patch of swampy ground into a small wood again.  The dogs tried to follow her trail through the cave complex, but were stopped by a chemical barrier, and they and the horses had to go round the far side of the hills on the path while a solitary hunter went through on foot.  Thus it was that there was only some ten minutes left when Laura was found and isolated up a tree and the first rider came up to where she was.  It chanced to be Ramzy El-Najjar, and he immediately climbed the tree and tore a small label off her suit to prove his claim to be first at the kill.  Then he pulled her from her perch some ten feet off the ground and unceremoniously dropped her among the growling dogs below.

She screamed as she landed painfully on one shoulder and was surrounded by large growling dogs, all showing huge teeth and apparently threatening to tear her limb from limb.  Saliva was drooling from their slavering mouths and their hot breath smelt foetid as they hovered over her prone form.  Then she fainted.

***

The next thing she knew was that there were hands all over her, some pulling her camouflage clothing off with scant regard for its possible reuse, while others were simply pawing her various parts.  When she was naked she was brought into the middle of the clearing, and laid flat on the leaf-covered grass with a couple of the dogs guarding her to ensure she didn’t escape.  She then watched all of the hunters throwing off their own clothing, and one by one she had the opportunity of seeing more nude men than she had seen in all her life.

Their pricks were of different shapes and sizes, but all had two things in common;  they were erect and she was about to take them into one or more of her orifices.  Curiously, they all held back when she expected them to leap on her.  The sound of a helicopter landing nearby was followed by the Emir’s arrival in the clearing, resplendent in an intricately embroidered costume and looking every inch the ruler.  Behind him, several eunuchs struggled to carry a throne and a large divan.  The helicopter could be heard taking off in the distance.

When the Emir was seated and she had been stretched on the divan and handcuffed to its headboard, he asked, “Who has the right of first choice?”

Ramzy El-Najjar stepped forwards, holding up the label he had wrenched from her suit.

“Proceed,” said the Emir.

“My Master does not wish to …?” he asked.

“Thank you, not at the moment.”

Ramzy El-Najjar approached the divan and started to turn her on her belly.  Then he lifted her arse high in the air and pushed a cushion under her belly.  As she thrashed about in his grip he brought his riding crop down on her thighs a couple of times, which quickly quietened her down.  Then, when she was set to his liking he entered her womb in one long firm thrust.  As he did so, she was acutely aware of the audience of naked Kobekistani males watching and felt a tingle and quiver in her depths at the thought of being displayed to so many men as she was thoroughly reamed by a truly competent swordsman.  Stroke after stroke slid firmly into her vagina, the end of his weapon prodding her cervix as it bottomed each thrust, the back stroke taking all but the glans out of her vitals and leaving her feeling vacant and empty.  As he pistoned evenly in and out, Laura had convulsion after convulsion of minor orgasms, culminating in a massive climax as he poured his seed deep into her womb.

Her last coherent thought for some time was that if this didn’t make her pregnant, then nothing would.  When she regained her awareness of her surroundings there was a somewhat shorter but thicker penis in her cunt and as the head of it was almost withdrawn each thrust it seemed as though it was pumping Ramzy El-Najjar’s seed out onto her thighs.  She felt a tinge of sadness that she might not be pregnant, when she experienced another orgasm as the new man’s semen flooded her and overflowed around his prick.

Another man entered her, disappointing her with a narrow short weapon, but soon showing her that size really didn’t matter if you knew how to use the opportunities offered.  Then she felt several cocks being shoved into her face, and having to choose which one she would suck off first.  The man behind her was now picking up the pace, making her moan out loud with each thrust.  Meanwhile the cock that was filling her mouth dropped a little pre-cum onto her tongue, which she tasted avidly as though it were the finest wine.

She was surrounded by eager men, and her breasts were being mauled from both sides, while her cunt was pulsating with climax after climax from the pumping she was receiving.  Suddenly her mouth was being filled with semen, and she sucked harder, wanting to savour every last drop of this delicious feast.

It occurred to her to wonder at her intense pleasure at an experience which only weeks ago she would have regarded as the utmost degradation to be avoided at all costs.  Why was she enjoying ‘a fate worse than death’?  The answer lay in the food and drink she was given the evening before and that morning, which contained a secret ingredient known only to the Chief Eunuch and designed to make her sexually insatiable.

A body wormed its way under hers and she was entered from below.  She started riding a formidable cock with much pleasure.  Meanwhile the penis in her mouth shrank even as its final spurt hit the roof of her mouth, and then it was over;  immediately he was replaced by another prick which was hard and large, threatening to choke her.  An odd feeling of emptiness inside her was a surprise as she realised it was a desire to have a third prick in her at the same time as the other two.  Nobody had ever been allowed to use her arse before her North African holiday, but now she welcomed it as her arse-cheeks were spread wide and a man’s rod wormed its way into her rectum.  Now she felt complete and gave herself up entirely to the pleasure as the three of them settled to a common rhythm.

An overwhelming, all consuming orgasm such as she had never felt before swept her off into unknown realms as her explosion triggered those of the three men which in turn reinforced hers in a spiral of ecstasy.

A couple of hours later she recovered her senses to find herself alone with the eunuchs.  Her anal passage felt much used, but the sensations were pleasant, and it and her pussy had not stopped leaking with her Masters’ juices for over two hours now.  All good things end though, and so it was, that when she felt the last orgasm of the day, she could hardly open her eyes, she was so exhausted.  Looking down at her body, and seeing so much sticky cum plastering her breasts, she smiled looking up at the eunuchs preparing to bathe her there in the clearing.

Then one of the wolfhounds loped up and began to lick at the deposits on her body and at the slimy goo exuding from her cunt.  The feeling of the huge warm tongue moving across her cunt caused her to moan with pleasure and spread herself to give the lapping tongue easier access.  She hardly noticed when the dog mounted her and added its own offering to the mixture of assorted sperm in her vagina.

As the Emir left the hunting ground, he said to Kamal Qumsiyeh, “The man who briefed her, does he always do it?”

“That was Ramzy El-Najjar, Master, he had the post of Master of Quarry to the Emir your grandfather.  It was an honorary post and involved much work training girls to be good quarry.”

“He can keep it.  What did I do wrong?”

“Master, nothing, of course.”

“But?”

“He might have expected to provide the quarry for this hunt as for all others for the last two years or so.”

David just nodded and filed away for future reference that he needed to be careful about everything he ever did.

***

One night, not long after the hunt, David specified Maryam and Laura together for his bedroom.  When all the preliminaries were over and the two women came in to the room he waved the eunuchs out, as he almost always did these days.  The girls stood stock still waiting for him to indicate what he wanted.

Neither of them had been in a proper threesome before and the Chief Eunuch had been unable to advise them on what David wanted of them.  Maryam felt sure that she would be the star attraction and that Laura was only there to help out with something.  Whatever he wanted Maryam would go along with it;  she felt the Emir was close to deciding she was to be his wife and nothing she did would be allowed to jeopardise that.  Laura, on the other hand, felt he was just trying to upset her again and that she should really fight for her rights;  the memories of the gang-bang after the hunt were not all bad though.

David started by standing in front of the two women and placing a hand on each of the shaven cunts.  The different reactions amused him;  one pair of legs opened obligingly to allow him all the access he might want, while the others snapped tight shut in an attempt to stop his marauding fingers.

“You’re very tense, Fatima,” David said, “Lie back on the bed and watch us, it may relax you a little.”

Cautiously she moved over to the bed and lay where he indicated.  Bringing Maryam along side the bed and close to Laura, David bent her forwards and she immediately spread her legs.  Gripping her hips firmly, David pushed his prick in a single thrust up her arse-hole in full view of Laura.  Slowly he pumped in and out, and watched as Laura became more interested in a spectacle she had never before witnessed.  She had always thought that a woman could take no pleasure from this act, but Maryam actually seemed to be enjoying it.

Without disengaging, David moved Maryam so that her head was over Laura’s body and the Arab girl quickly took the hint and began sucking and licking the American’s cunt.

“Laura, can you help me please?” asked David, deceptively sweetly.

Laura was really aroused by watching David’s slow deep thrusts and withdrawals in and out of Maryam’s oiled and obviously willing arse-hole.  He seemed to be reaching close to his climax and she was beginning to hope that she might also benefit from the attentions of his prick sometime during the evening.  Maryam’s tongue was weaving magical impulses on and around her clitoris and she felt that the three of them would erupt together if one of them started to climax.

“Yes, Master, anything,” she said.

“OK, get up,” said David and withdrew from the hole he was reaming.

Pulling Maryam roughly away from her cunt-lapping and turning her over, he lifted her legs high in the air and slid his hungry prick into her oiled cunt.  Then he pushed her legs as far back over her head as he could.

“Go round the other side and hold her legs there,” he ordered and Laura quickly complied.

A few deep slow thrusts got David firmly and correctly placed so that the end of his cock touched Maryam’s cervix on every stroke.  Then he pistoned in and out fast for a dozen strokes before coming spectacularly and filling her vagina and womb.  He lay on her for a few moments until he was sure the last drops of his sperm had been deposited in the young girl.  As his penis shrivelled out of the shaven cunt, he stood up and moved round the side of the bed, looking carefully at the two girls.

“Let her legs up a little higher, please,” he asked and Laura complied.

Once he was satisfied that Maryam’s cunt entrance was exactly horizontal, so that none of his sperm could spill out of her, he said, “Good.  I want both of you to stay like that for half-an-hour while my seed has every chance of making me an heir inside Maryam’s cunt.”

Laura could have wept.  It was bad enough that she was only being used as an adjunct to their pleasure, a toy to aid arousal, but now she was being asked to help her rival get pregnant.  And that bastard Emir wouldn’t fuck her properly, so she had no chance of getting pregnant herself.

Suddenly she exploded, “You bastard, you can hold …”

“Fatima,” the Emir interrupted her, “If you let go I’ll have you whipped night and morning every day for a week.”

With that he left the room.  Half-an-hour later he came back and the two women had not moved.

“Good, that should do,” he said, “Maryam, you may retire.  Do not bathe tonight, and wear a small dildo to keep all the sperm in your cunt tonight.  If you are pregnant that boy child will be the Crown Prince.  Laura, you may spend the rest of the night here, as your reward.”

Maryam moved gracefully out of the room, eager to do anything she could to bear the Emir’s first born son.

Laura moved over to the bed and asked, “Are you going to fuck me as well?  Can I try for a son for you?”

The Emir laughed, “Certainly not.  How would I know whose child it was after the show you kindly put on after the hunt last week?”

Guiding her head down to his limp prick, he added, “You can suck me off, though.  You seem quite good at that.  Oh, and remember not to bite;  it would certainly be more painful for you than for me, in the long run.”

It took a long time to bring David’s prick back up to full erection and she worked hard to make him come.  She tried all the little tricks she had learned in America and some she had been whipped into doing here but it was almost an hour before she was rewarded by a few spurts of semen hitting the roof of her mouth.  She tried not to swallow, intending to transfer the semen to her vagina as soon as she could, but the eunuchs were awake to that trick and made her drink some hot coffee.

Laura felt sure she was pregnant anyway, from the gang-bang after the hunt, and had hoped to persuade David that it was his child, but a week later she started menstruating and so that hope came to nothing.

Chapter Fourteen Life Goes On

Back in England, Amelia decided that confrontation was the answer to her problem, so the first night back she took good care that Peter saw her shaven cunt as she came out of the bathroom.  He went in there after her, so she laid herself out on the bed naked, with her legs apart and as he came back from the bathroom he found her oiling her cunt with baby oil.

“What on earth are you doing, and what made your hair fall out?” he demanded.

“I’m oiling myself to increase my and your pleasure when you push your lovely prick into me,” she answered, “After all it is over a month since I went to Kobekistan and so you must be eager for a fuck.  As to the shaving, I had it done in the harem.  I had forgotten about that habit, but it is supposed to turn men on.  Don’t you like it?”

“Amelia, I am shocked,” he exploded, “How you can bring yourself to use such language and indulge in such heathen practices, I do not comprehend.  Get under the covers and turn the light out.”

“Oh, Peter,” she begged, “leave the light on;  I want to see your face as you come.  I want to know I please you as a woman should.”

“A proper woman pleases her husband by obeying him and observing the civilised rules of decency.  She doesn’t behave like a … like a …”

“Whore,” she finished for him, “But I thought all men wanted a proper woman who was respectable downstairs but a whore in the bedroom?”

“Decent men don’t,” said Peter, “I’m going to sleep in the guest room.”

“Please, darling,” Amelia sobbed, “Please come to me.  I need it if you don’t.  Punish me any way you want but not by leaving me alone all night.”

“Now you sound like a child,” Peter remarked.

“Then spank me like a child,” sobbed Amelia, “But don’t leave me alone all night when I need you.”

That was the first of many nights she spent alone while Peter slept in the guest room.  If she went to bed quietly and lay quite still in the dark he would sometimes join her and even occasionally fuck her, but if she showed the slightest sign of initiating sex he was out of the room like a frightened rabbit.

The next thing she tried was dominating him.  She ordered him about for the evening, telling him to wash-up instead of waiting for him to offer, changing TV channels without discussing it with him and generally treating him as being of no consequence.  As he came out of the bathroom she was standing beside the dressing-table brushing her hair.  As he got into bed she swung the hairbrush catching him square on the arse, hard.

“Ow,” he said, “What on earth?”

“The washing-up wasn’t very clean, and you don’t fuck me often enough.  You deserve to be punished for both of those.  Out of that bed and bend over.”

Peter just stared at her;  then he got out of bed and went to the guest room, locking the door behind him.  It was three weeks before he shared her bed again.  That night he tried, but failed to enter her;  his penis simply would not rise to the occasion.

Next morning she rang the Kobekistani embassy in London and twenty-four hours later she was on a plane back to join her son’s harem.  This time it wasn’t a private plane, or even a chartered jet.  She flew in Air Emirates economy class to Abu Dhabi and there she changed to Air Kobekistani’s routine flight.  The steward did not give her any special treatment, except to give her an abaya to wear as her purdah just before they landed.

Nobody met her at the Airport and so, after some difficulty in finding one prepared to carry a woman, she took a taxi the five miles to the gates of the Golden Palace, where she was questioned, albeit politely, by the guards for some time before they would agree to telephone the Chief Eunuch about her arrival and she was finally admitted.  The Chief Eunuch took both her British and Kobekistani passports and she knew she would never see them again.  The treatment left her in no doubt that her return was because she was begging permission and not because her son had invited her there.

“You must understand,” said David when they met in the anteroom to the harem, “that if you stay here you are Zubeydeh and not Princess Zubeydeh, and not Amelia, and especially not my mother.  Also the suite is occupied by my current favourite, who is trying to get pregnant.  Undress.”

She took off her purdah, and her Western dress, stockings, brassière and knickers.

Kneeling naked before him, she intoned, “All I want is my Master’s wishes to be satisfied.  If he honours me by letting me stay here I shall be ecstatic;  if he honours me even more by using me for his pleasure, I shall be in heaven.  I am my Master’s to do with as he wishes.”

David walked away without replying, and Zubeydeh was hustled in to the harem itself by the Chief Eunuch and led away to be held ready for her Master’s use.

‘If he ever calls for me,’ she thought.

***

The Chief Eunuch broke the news that Maryam was not pregnant and was relieved that David did not blame him for this occurrence.

“When will she be fertile again?” asked David, as though discussing a favourite mare.

“In twelve days’ time, Master.  I recommend filling her daily then for five days,” said the Chief Eunuch, happier now that this was all out in the open and was just a matter of breeding an heir and not a case of the Emir having some unnecessarily strong feelings about the woman.

“How do you recommend setting about it?” asked David, curious as to the local customs and superstitions.

“I will see that she is fed appropriately, Master.  Then if the Master permits, we will present her in a frame which hold her in position for maximum chance.  The position Fatima held her in is not quite the best, and she should remain for at least three hours after the seed is entered.  Seeding morning and evening every day is also recommended.”

The Chief Eunuch looked at David to estimate whether he had given offence by these, to his mind, scientific statements.

David merely nodded and said, “Remind me in twelve days then, or perhaps ten to be on the safe side.”

Ten days later, David was debating which woman to have for the night when the Chief Eunuch reminded him.

“Tonight would be appropriate if you wish to impregnate Maryam, Master,” he said, then he added, “Traditionally, the husband should warm her first with a light whip or cane.”

That night they brought Maryam to him already in the frame which held her so that her arms and legs could not move.  She was on her back with her head just a little lower than her hips, the arms were out horizontally and the legs were bent back either side of her body in what looked a fairly uncomfortable pose.  David walked slowly round her noting that all three entrances were readily available for his prick, should he wish to use any of them.

“Is that thing comfortable?” he asked, not really expecting an honest answer.

“It helps me to be enceinte,” she answered in her odd mixture of English and French.

Turning to the Chief Eunuch he asked, “You said something about warming her first?”

The Chief Eunuch passed him a light riding crop and stated gravely, “Do not punish her, Master, simply bring the arse and upper thighs to a nice deep red.  It is the flow of blood to the area that is wanted, not too much pain.”

“Then I’ll use my hands, they will cover a bigger area at less pressure.  What do you think?”

“The Master is wise, as always,” came the sycophantic reply.

David cursed under his breath as he squared up to the woman and stroked his target area;  would he never get an honest answer from any of these damned servants?

SLAP,  SLAP,  SLAP,  SLAP.

Four quick solid slaps, such as might be administered to a recalcitrant child, one on each buttock and one on each thigh raised flame-red areas but they quickly faded.  Eight more such slaps left the redness glowing but not very pronounced.  Eight more made a real impression and Maryam started to sob involuntarily, though she had stayed quiet during the slaps.

David moved round to where her cunt was held up displayed to him at just the right height for him to enter her standing up.  Thrusting firmly, he put all thoughts of dalliance out of his mind and concentrated on fucking this woman and filling her so full that she would have a hundred babies all at once.  As he thought of the child to come, his son, the Crown Prince to be, an image of his mother in such a frame came into his mind and he came in great jets of his seed which seemed never-ending.

“There,” he said to the Chief Eunuch as he stepped back from the frame, panting and with a little string of semen stretching between him and the body he had been trying to inseminate.

The eunuchs took the wheeled frame away, complete with its load while one of the bath girls knelt and sucked reverently then licked him clean and dried his prick with her hair.

“Do you recommend that I sleep alone tonight?” he asked the Chief Eunuch.

“That is quite unnecessary, Master.  Any of the women can give you much pleasure without spilling your seed.  Conserving it for her Highness is recommended,” was the grave reply.

“Send someone in that I have not tried yet,” David ordered, “but be quick about it and make sure she knows the rules.”

Less than a minute later an agreeably curvaceous young olive-skinned woman appeared whom David vaguely remembered from his first day inspection as the other one he took from the Ruby Harem with the Russian girl whose name he couldn’t quite remember.  She was fully prepared, so the Chief Eunuch had obviously predicted his wishes.

It turned out that her name was Esh-Shems or something like that, but she wasn’t very interesting or inventive and she neither spoke nor understood English.

***

After seven nights and mornings of Maryam, almost all in her cunt with her strapped in the frame, David thought that he had done enough for her and said so to the Chief Eunuch.  If she didn’t conceive this time she could be demoted and he would try someone else.  Maybe he would recall Selima, or ask if she had a virgin younger sister.  None of the ‘hot water bottles’ as he had come to think of the Chief Eunuch’s offerings had impressed him at all.

That evening he asked the Chief Eunuch, “How is Zubeydeh settling in?”

“Very well, Master.  She is re-learning Arabic and at the same time teaching some of the others English, in case my Master might find it convenient,” he replied, “Even Ludmilla seems to be learning more words.”

“Yes, I’d forgotten Ludmilla.  Oh well, I’ll have Zubeydeh tonight,” David decided, “and we’ll see if she is as willing as she tried to make out.”

Later, in his bedroom, David lay silent as his mother, now simply Zubeydeh, a concubine, insinuated herself into his bed by crawling up under the covers from the foot of the bed, pausing en route to give him a blow-job which he allowed her to continue until he came in her mouth.  Then she continued, kissing his body, until she reached his chin, where she stopped.  He pulled her to him and kissed her hard;  as their tongues danced the age-old dance he could taste his own jism in her mouth.

To continue his enjoyment of exercising his power over her, he ordered, “Turn round, head at the bottom of the bed, on your back, legs right up, knees held beside your tits.”

With an agility that belied her years, Zubeydeh contorted herself so that she was sexually completely open to him with her hands locked behind her knees to ensure he was not obstructed in any way.  David lowered his head to her cunt and licked speculatively at her clitoris.  She trembled with pleasure and so he started in earnest.  He licked and sucked at her hairless cunt, first on her clitoris, then darting to her vagina, then back, until she was beside herself with the thrills of oral stimulation.

She so far forgot herself as to murmur, “More on my clitty, please, darling.”

David complied, noting for later attention her failure to call him Master, and she soon came to a glorious climax, shouting, “Oh, David, you are the best.  You suck mummy so well,” and letting her legs thresh wildly about.

When she had recovered her composure, David was standing beside the bed with a riding crop in his hand.

“You have forgotten what I said when we last met,” he reminded her, “you are Zubeydeh and that is all.  I am the Emir and you address me as Master, not as darling or as David.  Turn over, and count the strokes as you receive them.”

‘He’s going to whip me.  He’s so masterful.  I am lucky,’ she thought as she turned over.

David surveyed the creamy cheeks presented to him as she lay on her belly on the bed.  They weren’t quite high enough, so he pushed a couple of pillows under her belly, surprised that she actually lifted her hips off the bed to help him.  Surely she must know he was really going to thrash her, that this wasn’t to be just playful taps?  Then as she lay waiting for the first stroke she wondered why she felt so aroused and why she wanted him to hurt her.

Hiss, crack.

First a line of white appeared across her buttocks, then it quickly turned angry red.  She felt nothing for a fraction of a second after she heard his stroke hit her arse, then it seemed as though a line of fire had been poured across her tender skin.  She bit her lip and tried not to cry out.  If you cried out early, the Masters didn’t like it, she remembered, though it was twenty years since she had last been whipped.

“One,” she counted.

Hiss, crack, scream.

David hit her much harder this time and her hips jerked up off the bed at the agony, and she screamed before she could stop herself.  Her buttocks were twitching and clenching alternately showing David her puckered rose, shining with the oil carefully applied by the bath girls, and hiding it.  His prick was iron hard and firmly at attention now.

As she quietened down from the blow she managed to sob, “Two.”

Hiss, crack, scream and …it dawned on her that he had not actually hit her that time.  Hearing him giggle like a small boy, she realised he had missed her deliberately, and now she wouldn’t know whether the hiss was a precursor of pain or not.

Hiss, crack, scream and hiss, crack, scream and sobs.

His third  and fourth blows, delivered in quick succession landed, he was pleased to note, parallel to the first two.  Her arse came even further up towards him and he grabbed her hips and rammed his prick home in the oiled dark entrance.  For her it was a mixture of pain and pleasure such as she had not had for years.  Even as she screamed at the chafing of her abused skin she felt her orgasm starting and then rolling on and on and on as David rammed himself in and out of her narrow anus, his belly landing on her burning arse-cheeks with each forward thrust.

The climax she felt did not subside until she felt him jerk to completion deep in her bowels, letting loose a torrent of jism which overflowed at each side of his prick and spread across the striped skin of her behind.  He withdrew his still twitching prick and let go of her hips, allowing her to fall ungracefully to the floor.

As she struggled up she saw him lie on his back on the bed and so she moved to do her duty and clean his prick with her tongue, finally drying it with her hair as was the custom.  Then, expecting to be dismissed, she moved to stand at the head of his bed.  David reached for her hands and pulled her gently until she was leaning over him with her weight on her hands on the bed beyond him.  She felt most ungainly and inelegant like this with her breasts and hair hanging down, but he evidently liked it, because he played with her nipples and swung her breasts about.  Then he pulled her down by her hair and started kissing her deeply again, scouring her mouth with his tongue, not looking to her for anything but passive acceptance.

He pulled her down beside him eventually and said, “I’m going to sleep now.  You can suck my cock while I sleep and we’ll see what happens when I wake up.”

Moments later he was snoring with his flaccid cock in her mouth and her head pillowed uncomfortably on his thighs.  Some time later, she too slept until she was woken by a non-to-gentle slap on her still stinging rump.

“Back-to-work time.  You let my prick fall out of your mouth.”

Hastily she resumed her devotions to his personal pleasure.

“Can you still have babies?” he asked.

With her mouth full she nodded.  Then she opened her legs in invitation, but David merely pressed her head harder down over his prick.

“I’d better be careful then,” he said, “It wouldn’t do for you to get pregnant by me.  Only the Egyptians expected incestuous lines of descent in their hereditary rulers.  I don’t want to have to have you strangled.”

Deep inside her Zubeydeh-concubine exterior, Amelia was horrified at what her son had become.  He had used and abused her as though he had bought her in the market, in a way she never thought he would treat anyone.  He had fucked and debauched his own mother.  He had whipped her last night more or less for fun, and now he was talking of the possibility of having to have her strangled.  What a strange race we are when the sudden access of unexpected power can change a nice young man into such a tyrant.  Yet … yet deep in her inner being she knew this tyrant, or any other like him, was exactly what she craved.  Perhaps Zubeydeh was the real Amelia, and not the other way round.

Then a thought struck her which sent a frisson of pleasure and dread through her backbone to her cunt and nipples, perhaps he would sell her in the slave market.  She nearly came at the mere idea of being stood naked on the auction block before a host of male bidders.  She redoubled her efforts on his prick and was rewarded with a long satisfying drink of his morning piss.

***

Some fortnight after the Emir had finished his bout of trying to impregnate Maryam, she definitely missed her period, and was whisked into the Palace Hospital for tests.  The Chief Eunuch was brimming with pride, almost as if he had been responsible, when he announced to David that Maryam was, indeed, expecting and that the three week old fœtus was, moreover, male.

David’s reaction was not what he had expected of himself.  He had thought that it would be exciting to be a father, and that he would want to see and hold the mother-to-be, but his chief feeling was one of relief that, all being well, there would be a Crown Prince in the palace within the year.

“Tonight, I’ll try the Russian girl, I think,” was all he said to the Chief Eunuch.

***

The Russian girl was all an Emir could ask for, obedient, submissive, incredibly supple, apparently enthusiastic about every sort of sexual activity;  in short, she was the perfect concubine.  They cavorted in the bedroom;  David dragged her naked into the harem rooms to be shown the ‘impossible’ positions and she achieved a reasonable facsimile of almost all of them.  His balls were drained four times before he slept, twice more at intervals in the night, and she sucked him dry before breakfast.

Yet, when she left him to the care of the bath girls and the valet he really didn’t think she had been that good a bed-mate.  Certainly with Zubeydeh there was more of a frisson and perhaps that came from her being so much older than him.  The younger ones all seemed somehow shallow, though women who had worked in brothels were clearly not inexperienced, while his mother had really only had one man, and that twenty-odd years ago.

He decided that he would use his brains to do a research project on what the properties were of the women who turned him on, and what turned him off.  Certainly heading the latter list was that horrible nasal whining American accent of Fatima’s.

Chapter Fifteen Settling Down

A few days later, the Emir had finally approved the list of the women who were to leave his harem.  The numbers were to be reduced to fifteen and then allowed to build up again by purchases and gifts.  The women whom Kamal Qumsiyeh thought were suitable would be given to various businessmen ostensibly as a celebration of the end of the two months’ mourning David had ordered and then forgotten about.  The remainder were to be sold, except for Laura.  Hajji Kofi Natsheh was adamant, or at least as adamant as he dared to be to his Emir, that it would be folly to allow her out of the Emir’s control;  somehow she might escape to America and that would mean trouble.

Hajji Kofi Natsheh’s private opinion was that if she returned to the USA the Americans would not have been too upset about her being kidnapped into an Emir’s harem, that was so Hollywood romantic.  They would, however, be totally incensed at her being used as the quarry in a hunt.  He did not voice this opinion to his Emir, since it would seem a criticism.

The Chief Eunuch was summoned and given the list of disposals and where they were to go;  he would arrange their removal to their new harems or to the sale warehouses.  Not all would be sold in one auction, they would be spread around so as not to favour one house over another.

“It seems to me,” said David affably, addressing Kamal Qumsiyeh, “that you and the Chief Eunuch are hiding something.”

The silence echoed round the anteroom to the harem as the two officials glanced fearfully at each other.

“Well?”

Kamal Qumsiyeh eventually spoke, “Well, Master …”

His voice trailed off and David push him, “What is the matter?”

“Nothing is the matter, Master, and we are not hiding anything, not as such,” the Chief Eunuch tried to reassure him.

“Not as such?” thundered the Emir, “I know a feeble get out if I hear one.  Tell me everything now, and I won’t punish you, but hide anything now and you will certainly pay for it when I find out.”

“Well, Master,” Kamal Qumsiyeh started, “I don’t know how to …”

“Just say it,” said David in a tired voice, “Just say it and I will ignore the insult.”

“Well, Master, …” he tried again.

“What is wrong with the well?” snapped David being deliberately obtuse.

“Nothing, Master,” said Kamal Qumsiyeh, “It is the status of some of the women in the harem.”

“Yes?” prompted the Emir.

“Some of them have no status, Master,” came the perplexing reply.

David took a deep breath and applied his mathematical analysis skills from Oxford, “List all the possible legal statuses that are available.”

“Well there are wives of the Emir, of whom there are none at present, who would be full female Kobekistani citizens.  There are a number of indentured slaves who have been purchased and have neither nationality or rights.  There are a few concubines who were gifted to the Emir and are Kobekistani citizens but without rights.  The only other possible status is that held by her Highness Pauline when she visited, which is foreign nationality with all the rights pertaining to that nation.  Oh and I suppose we could have female diplomats, but there have never been any.”

David thought for a moment and said, “I suppose Zubeydeh does not fit?”

“Among others, Master.  Ludmilla also still has Russian citizenship, we have now established, but seems to have no rights.”

“Well, what can we do about it?”

“The Emir can do whatever he wishes,” came the startling reply, “but I would caution against marriage, especially as a first wife, until appropriate fecundity is not only established, but also achieved.”

“I could have them indentured?  They would never agree,” the Emir pointed out.

“The Emir could decree.  Agreement by the females is not in the least necessary.  The position of Zubeydeh is particularly difficult as she was once the first wife of a Prince of the Blood.  She claims to hold dual nationality, and is not a slave.  She is not honoured as the Emir’s mother, and yet lives in the Emir’s harem.  She is no longer honoured as the Princess Zubeydeh yet is a concubine.  Administratively it is an unfortunate situation.  The Russian is much easier, and we treat her as a visitor who happens to be also a concubine.  She has no indenture number, so her return to Russia is possible at any time the Emir permits.”

“Right, I understand.  The Russian can stay here as long as I like or be sent home if I like, and nobody is looking for her.  Zubeydeh is being sought by her husband in England?” asked David.

“No inquiries have been made, but she telephones him about twice a week.  Transcripts are available.  He does not expect her to return soon, as she has led him to believe she is as honoured here as the Queen Mother is in England,” came the suave reply.

Later the same day David had a bad tempered session with Hajji Darwish Dosmukhamedov and Hajji Kofi Natsheh who seemed to have joined forces to persuade him to adopt a more aggressive stance on the north western border.  For years there had been raids back and forth across this border by bands of nomadic Bedouin who really owed allegiance to neither country.  With the advent of modern weaponry each country blamed the other for harbouring these bandits and demanded the right to follow escaping bands in hot pursuit across the border.  Naturally, each country also demanded that their territory be regarded as sovereign and inviolable.

David’s suggestion that the diplomats agree a joint border force which would be allowed to operate in either country was deemed naïve by the Diplomatic Advisor on the grounds that their neighbours could not be trusted.  A measure of how untrustworthy they were was the fact that they were a republic with a President and not a feudal state as Allah had intended.

David’s suggestion that negotiations be opened anyway met with the most determined resistance he had so far had from any advisor.  The spectre of Kobekistan being invaded if they showed the slightest sign which might be construed as weakness was paraded.  In the end the Emir said he would think about this problem and they would discuss it again on the morrow.  With that he stormed off into the harem calling for Zubeydeh to be in his bed ready as soon as he finished his bath.

When he had finished a quick bath, ignoring the bath girls completely, he stalked into his bedroom to find that Zubeydeh was not yet ready.  This, of course, did not help his temper and he paced the bedroom, naked, fuming.

“Where the hell have you been?” he demanded when the Chief Eunuch finally appeared with Zubeydeh some ten minutes after David’s return from his bath.

“Master, I was being …” Amelia started to explain.

“Shut up.  Answer me, if you want to remain Chief Eunuch,” snapped the Emir.

“Master,” said the Chief Eunuch, dropping to his knees, “We were preparing the woman for your use, as you ordered.”

“Don’t tell me what I ordered,” screamed David and kicked the kneeling figure in the ribs, “Now get out of my sight.”

The Chief Eunuch fled but the bath girl and the other eunuch stayed rooted to the spot.  Long experience had taught them that really angry men are more likely to notice movement than servants who stay still as statues.  Turning to the horrified Amelia he grabbed her hair and dragged her painfully down into a kneeling position.

“Suck it well, if you know what’s good for you,” he ordered.

Amelia set to with a will;  she remembered the rage that Prince Abdullah, David’s father, could show occasionally, and she knew that her son was perfectly capable of having her whipped if she failed.  That thought made her work all the harder, but only a part of the emotion it raised in her heart was fear, the rest was pure thrill of ministering to the wants of such a powerful man.  Power was, for her, a real aphrodisiac, she realised.

Soon enough, David came and filled her mouth with his semen faster than she could swallow it.  As she choked slightly he pushed her away and motioned to the bath girl to clean his prick.  As she finished gently licking his organ clean it rose again and he pulled away and dragged Amelia to the bed, throwing her on her back.  Lifting her legs high on his shoulders he plunged into her and pumped away for a while as he regained the strength in his prick.  Almost at once, Zubeydeh felt her own pleasure surging towards a peak.  As the Emir was rising to his second explosion of the night, he rolled onto his back without dislodging from her cunt and had her riding him.  His hands controlled her movements and slowed them to a pace which he found pleasant, but not fast enough to make him reach an orgasm.  Zubeydeh, for her part, was now feeling very frustrated that she was not receiving enough stimulus to bring about her own crisis.

“I am not happy with the situation vis-à-vis Peter Ransome,” said the Emir.

Impaled as she was on his phallus which still moved firmly inside her, Amelia was surprised at this reference to serious matters and tried to bring her thoughts back from the purely sexual excitement she was feeling.

Playing safe, she said, “What does my Master wish?”

“I wish him to divorce you, so that you can remain here unencumbered.  I wish you then to renounce your British citizenship and become wholly Kobekistani.  Then we will regularise your position in the harem,” he said.

“Regularise in what way?” she asked, feeling a thrill of fear that he might have her killed.

A bigger thrill ran through her when she realised that he might even sell her.  At that thought, a frisson of pleasure ran through her backbone to her cunt and nipples.  She nearly came at the mere idea of being stood naked on the auction block before a host of male bidders.  Although she had never seen an auction, she had heard them described often enough by women in the harem.  The preparation, the inspection by buyers fingering and handling, privileged buyers even trying her out, standing naked listening to the bids, wondering who might buy, she came and came and came at the thought.  David’s pleasures were redoubled as she clenched her muscles on his prick and he, in turn, flooded her with his excitement.

“Oh, Master,” she gasped, “To be indentured to you would be heaven on earth.”

Chapter Sixteen Parting

After the divorce from Peter Ransome had been agreed and was working its steady way through the English courts unopposed, David gave some thought to what he might do with Zubeydeh which would amuse him.  He started by ordering a suite to be built specially in the Ruby Palace harem and explained his plan to the Chief Eunuch who said it would be simple to implement the eunuchs’ end of the matter.  One or two would simply be borrowed from the chosen man’s own harem and would not need to be taken into the Emir’s confidence.

The next move was to decide on an accomplice and to brief him.  After some thought David decided on Ramzy El-Najjar, reckoning that the man owed him a big favour.  When he discussed it with him, the Emir was surprised to find that the whole affair was treated by Ramzy El-Najjar as a further huge favour from the Emir, and a dinner invitation was issued to the Emir.

After the dinner, which was sumptuous, Ramzy El-Najjar offered to show the Emir his ‘humble’ home.  Naturally the tour included the harem, where David noted that the women wore nothing but slippers and ornamentation.  Ramzy El-Najjar, it seemed, liked bracelets and anklets, for all the women had many of these.  Selima looked lovely and Ramzy El-Najjar specifically offered her to the Emir, who graciously accepted and stayed the night, using her fully both before and after they slept.

After he had come for the second time in the morning, she asked shyly, “May I speak, Master?”

Expecting her to ask for some favour, the Emir said, “Ask away.”

“No, Master, I do not ask a favour.  I only wondered if I might speak to you in the western fashion without angering you?”

“Of course,” said David, toying with her breasts and wondering again why he had let her go.

“Master, that was a wonderful night.  I have never had so much pleasure in my life.  I hope you will visit my husband again,” she said, blushing as she did so.

David felt very pleased that he was sexually better than Ramzy El-Najjar, according to Ramzy El-Najjar’s own wife;  it never occurred to him that ‘she would say that, wouldn’t she’?

***

With all the plans set, all that remained was to deceive Amelia into agreeing to be sold.  This was the tricky part and David set about it with infinite care.

“Why can I talk to you, but not to the other women?” he asked her when they were next lying companionably together in a post-coital haze of happiness.

“Perhaps it is because I have known you a long time?” she suggested.

“No, I think it is the western background that does it,” David suggested, “I must buy another western woman and find out.”

“What is it like in the auctions?” asked Amelia, “I often wondered, and it is one of the many facets of Kobekistani life I could never investigate when I was here before, any more than I could now.”

The thought of women being auctioned in front of a crowd of men excited her more than she would admit to him;  she probed further as he seemed very talkative tonight.

“What actually happens in the auction?  How is it all arranged?” she inquired.

“Oh, I’ve only been to one auction,” David said, happy that she was taking his bait, “There were all the slaves in cages, rather like a cattle market in England, and men wandered round deciding which they wanted to bid for.  Some of the better customers were even allowed to try the women out before the auction.”

Zubeydeh’s breathing became shallower and faster, he noticed, as she thought about the idea of being viewed, tried and sold.  Obviously the ideas excited her sexually.  He stroked her hairless mound and her hips lifted unconsciously to his fingers.

“Then the actual auction starts in another room,” he continued, “The women are brought in one at a time and stood on a small stage, stripped and auctioned.  A eunuch will show off their best features to the crowd as the auction progresses.  With one he might bounce her tits, while he will turn and bend another to spread her buttocks and show off her arse hole.”

Zubeydeh was definitely getting more agitated.

“I wish I could see that,” she exclaimed as David slid his erection gently into her cunt and moved in and out in a most arousing way.

His fingers played with her arse at the same time and she was away towards another climax when he slid a finger into the darker rosebud.

“The Emir can do anything here,” David reminded her, “I could arrange for you to see everything at one of these auctions if you want.”

“Could I?” she asked between gasps as he titillated her further towards coming.

“You could be there to be sold, officially that is,” he offered, “I could buy you back.”

“Oh, David, that would be so exciting, and this is so … so … oh fuck me hard please darling, fuck me and send me to be auctioned.”

It was not mentioned again and after a week or so when she had not been chosen, she assumed he had forgotten.  Nobody had said anything to her about her going out of the harem, and this was so unusual that she was at a loss to know why she was suddenly required by the Chief Eunuch to remove her harem bolero and trousers and then to don an abaya.

“Why?” she asked, “Where am I going?”

His reply was electrifying.

“You are to be sold,” he said bluntly, “And I am to take you to the Auction House today.  The auction is not for some days, but the buyers will have a chance to look at the goods before hand.  Some of them may even be allowed to try them out.”

Amelia felt her juices dampening her cunt and beginning to drip enough to run down her thighs.  Men, lots of them, would inspect her naked;  some of then would fuck her;  she would be put on display and auctioned like a pedigree racehorse or a fine picture might be in England.  She almost had an orgasm at the mere thought.

She was then pulled quickly through the long corridors from the harem to the side entrance of the Palace and bundled unceremoniously into the back of a small car.  The Chief Eunuch drove the short distance to the Auction House and parked close to a small unmarked door.  He got out of the car and knocked.  A short conversation ensued and the Chief Eunuch came back to the car and opened the rear door, pulling her out and bundling her in through the door, which was quickly closed behind her.

She was led again along a corridor, one which was distinctly less ornate than those in the palace, and into a huge room which was divided into a number of small cells by bars, rather like the wild west lock-ups she had seen in films.  Most of the cells contained a woman, naked, and they seemed to be in varying states of gloom.  Some of the larger cells contained low couches used, she later learned, by valued customers who were accorded the privilege of trying out the merchandise before the sale.  Each cell contained a shower-head above a hole in the ground and there was no privacy at all.

The burly auctioneer who had chivvied her into the room now pushed her into one of these larger cells and came into it himself.  A chain on the floor ended in a padded cuff which he quickly attached to her left ankle.  Gripping the abaya with both hands he pulled it over her head and there she was naked, in a cell, chained to the floor and visible to dozens of pairs of prying eyes.

Evidently the privilege of trying the merchandise was one he arrogated to himself also, for he patted the couch to indicate that she should lie down on it.  Turning her on her belly, he raised her until she was on all fours with her back to him, hair and breasts hanging below her torso, knees apart, arse and cunt open and available to him.  In this position he thrust his not inconsiderable mutton dagger deep into her cunt and pumped away for a few moments.

Looking up, Amelia could see dozens of pairs of eyes watching this edifying spectacle which provided a respite from the unutterable boredom of sitting doing nothing all day.  The idea that she was providing a spectacle for them made her very excited and she started to moan and to thrust back onto his prick.  Immediately, he withdrew from her cunt and repositioned himself to take her tighter entrance, which he achieved with only a little pain for her.  As he pumped again in her anus, reaching forward to grasp her breasts to give him leverage, she came with considerable gusto and the clenching of her internal muscles tipped him over the edge.  She felt her bowels being deluged with his semen and soon he shrivelled out of her.  She felt a strange loss at the departure of his intrusion and rather wished he had stayed longer.  However, he quickly adjusted his dress and left, still not having spoken a word to her.

Shortly after this episode she was taken from the cage by two eunuchs who bathed her, washed out her cunt and arse, and groomed her with all the care she had become accustomed to as an inmate of the Emir her son’s harem.  Then she was returned to her cage.  The bidders started walking through examining the merchandise soon afterwards.  Her Kobekistani was not yet fully fluent but she understood the excitement when she was described as Princess Zubeydeh, mother of the Emir, to be sold by order of the Emir.  None of these men were permitted to touch the merchandise, but if a buyer was particularly interested in a woman, the eunuchs would enter her cage and display her by taking hold of her arms and twisting her about, raising and lowering her arms, bending her over and spreading her nether lips or arse-cheeks or emphasising whatever other particular feature the buyer requested.

Later, when all these buyers had been shooed out of the holding area, certain men were allowed in one at a time.  These were the important buyers and were permitted into the cages to examine, and sometimes to try out the merchandise.  Her value was discussed with the auctioneer several times and he said that it was difficult to judge.  He had never auctioned an Emir’s mother before, though several concubines had been auctioned recently.  Nevertheless, he was confidently expecting to break the house record of two thousand eight hundred Kobesti with this one.

Only three buyers were allowed to try her out and all chose the narrower darker entrance between her buttocks.  None pumped for very long and nor came inside her, and she got the impression that none of them wanted to fuck for pleasure, using her merely to emphasise that he had that right.  Each of them also spent some time closely examining and fingering various features of her body.  Two thrust several fingers into her vagina and anus, and all three hefted her breasts to see whether they felt heavy enough for their tastes.

When the first potential buyer lifted his kameez to use her the miasma of stale urine rising from his private parts was noticeable.  He also spent what Amelia considered an inordinate amount of time examining her teeth, which were very good for her age, only two small fillings.  He, himself, had not only bad teeth but also bad breath and it was all she could do not to recoil as he peered, and exhaled, into her mouth.

After probing her deeply with his fingers and taking her perfunctorily in the arse, the second privileged buyer examined her feet closely, and she began to wonder whether each buyer was concentrating on his own preference, or even fetish.

Then she heard the him say in Kobekistani, “You can always judge them by the feet.  If the feet are hard they have never worn shoes and are only fit for labouring,” and truly felt like horse being looked over before being sold.

It was exciting feeling and she looked forward to the morrow when she would discover what she was worth.  Amelia wondered if her feet would be classed as hard, but she had the good sense not to ask.

The third buyer merely turned her face down on the couch and thrust once into her arse.  As he slid out again he grasped her breasts as though trying to achieve re-entry, but contented himself with sliding his prick along her cleft.

While she has not being examined and tried herself, Amelia was quite enjoying looking around her and watched with interest as some of the other girls were tried out.  It was exciting to watch when one very dark-skinned girl refused to cooperate and was beaten to make her submit.  Then it struck her.

‘I enjoyed her pain and I wished it were me.  Dear God, have I become so depraved as to behave like a Kobekistani man?’ she thought, ‘After accepting my son’s sex inside me and him coming inside me and kow-towing to him, am I no better than these men?  No more civilised than the richer members of a feudal state?  Half of these cannot understand, read or write anything but the Kobekistani dialect of Arabic.’

In spite of these doubts she was disappointed that no more men wanted to put her body to the test, to take her for a trial spin, as she thought of it.  As the evening wore on the last of the big shot buyers left and the eunuchs brought them all food;  at least they brought plates of unidentifiable stew which everyone ate, though there was some doubt in her mind whether it would be classed as food or pig-swill in the Golden Palace.

There was some desultory discussion among the other women of which Amelia understood about half.  It seemed they were discussing the relative merits of being bought for a private harem or for a brothel.  In general a brothel seemed to be the preferred option for most of them, because in a private harem you didn’t get much sex, it was very boring, and you could get stuck with a man you didn’t like.  In a brothel you got lots of sex and the bad men were interspersed with good ones.

She lay down on the couch, which still had wet patches on it where her love juices and the auctioneer’s semen had flowed earlier.  As she dozed off, surprisingly easily, she contemplated the options of brothel or harem and decided she might prefer a brothel to the smelly old man with bad teeth.

***

Next morning she woke to a scene of organised chaos as all the women were being prepared for the auction.  Several women at a time would be led off to be bathed, painted and perfumed ready to be displayed on the auction block.  After a time her turn came and she had to admit that the preparation was very thorough;  it was similar to the preparation for the Emir’s bed, in that she was oiled front and rear.  The only difference was that here her nipples and her labia were rouged as well.

Then the sale started and the women were led out in turn, each in purdah, though Amelia was sure that they would be naked as the bidding progressed.  It seemed to her that the less attractive ones were taken out first, and some of them did look fairly old and hag-like.  Some went willingly, some had to be dragged out, and some led the way as though being sold would be a great improvement on their previous lives.

Then, suddenly, it was Amelia’s turn.  As she was led to the Auction Block with an abaya covering her from head to toe, she felt herself becoming more and more aroused.  Eager hands hoisted her on to the Auction Block and lifted the veil from her body, displaying her on a small stage some five feet above the crowd of buyers.  She was sure that they could see that her pussy lips were not just oiled, but were thoroughly wet with her own excitement, and ready for her purchaser.  The auctioneer was on a small rostrum beside and to the rear of the stage and one of the black eunuchs was on the stage with her.

As he read out her background and her present owner, she heard the crowd take a collective gasp.  The rumours were true;  the Emir was actually selling his own mother.  What kind of matter was this?  Would it be a good or bad thing to buy?  Would it be good to use the mother of the all-powerful Master?  Would it be noted as bad if one did not bid?

Then the auctioneer motioned for the eunuch to display her.  This she did not want;  she could display herself, thank you very much.  Rising on one toe she did a pirouette, and when that seemed to go down well she did another.  Then she turned to face the bidders, opened her legs wide and lifted her arms high, showing off her still firm breasts and shaven glistening cunt clearly to all present.  Then turned and touched her toes, again showing her rear view off, then she reached back while still bending over and pulled her arse-cheeks wide apart to show the other darker rosebud entrance.  Finally she stood up and lifted her arms high in the air and clasping them behind her head, she turned slowly right round to show off her breasts again to their best advantage.  There could be nobody in the audience who thought she was unwilling to be sold, or that she would be reticent in his bed.  Finally, she knelt and pressed her forehead to the floor, but facing towards the auctioneer and with her hips high so that the audience had an unobstructed view of her private parts.

The bidding was brisk and the price soon reached almost two thousand Kobesti (nearly £10,000) when it became apparent that there were three men still bidding, none of whom seemed likely to back down.  The Auctioneer signalled to her to stand up and face the bidders.  He announced that bids would now only be accepted in raises of five hundred Kobesti and still the bidding rose.  At five thousand, he said only bids of one thousand Kobestis would be accepted and there was a momentary lull in the bids.  Then one of the men said something Amelia did not catch, but the auctioneer asked him to repeat it.

“My next bid is ten thousand and I suggest you only accept raises of four thousand at a time,” the bidder declared in a voice that revealed him to be a eunuch bidding, presumably, on behalf of his master.

Amelia was truly surprised, this man was suggesting that he, or at any rate his master, would pay £50,000 for her and that bids should be in units of £20,000!  She had thought of this as a great and exciting escapade, and that she could always go back to David’s harem after her fun because he would certainly outbid anyone else.  Now she realised that with that sort of money being paid, this was for real and she would truly have no say in the matter, or in the ensuing events.  The eunuch could be bidding for anyone rich, young or old, handsome or ugly, clean or disgusting, and she would be that man’s slave to be used, beaten, lent, prostituted, sold or killed as the unknown principal behind the bids saw fit.  She felt very cold and her arousal died when she realised that she had started something she could not stop.

Worse, the next bid came from the smelly old man with halitosis and she had to face the fact that later in the day she could find herself with his horrible tongue, or worse his unwashed prick, in her mouth and be required to endure his malodorous presence whenever he wished.  At the prices they were talking now, she was sure her new owner would want to make very good use of her and start very soon.  There were, to her surprise, two more bids after that and she was sold to the eunuch for over £100,000.  There would be talk of this for years to come;  it was an unheard of price, almost eight times more than had ever been paid before for one woman.

As the auctioneer went to put her abaya on her for her journey to the new owner’s harem, the eunuch stopped him and said, “My Master’s wish is that she be blindfolded only.  She will be led to the new harem through the streets naked, that all may see what my Master has purchased.”

Amelia thought that she was incapable of blushing after all she had done with her son, and after her exhibition here, but she discovered she was wrong.  The idea of walking through the streets of the Kobekistani capital blindfolded and naked, where no woman ever walked, even in an abaya, was embarrassing and frightening.  Who could tell what would happen?

In the event, it was a strange journey, on bare feet along hot and dusty roads, blindfolded and naked.  That there were people about was certain;  she heard them discussing why she should be treated thus.  Nobody touched her and nobody came very near her.  A leash had been fastened to a chain round her waist and this was used to guide her along the streets.  When the temperature fell and she realised that she was now inside an air-conditioned building the blindfold was removed and an abaya was put on to hide her nudity.  Evidently her new master didn’t mind parading her for all the world to see, but didn’t want his servants to see her.

She was taken to the ante-room of a harem, almost identical to that of the Emir’s Golden Palace, except that the scenes on the walls were much more explicit and illustrated scenes of a much more sadistic nature.  The romantic, pleasant sexual love shown in the Golden Palace was here replaced by scenes of pain depicted as a means of achieving pleasure.  Amelia felt at once frightened and fascinated by them.  She moved from one to another imagining herself as the woman in each one.  She remembered the pleasure inherent in being taken brutally in the arse by a man who had total power over her and felt a frisson of delight at the thought that she might be whipped first, or even while she was sucking her new master.  After all, why would his harem be thus decorated if this were not his penchant.

Later that evening she was led down some stairs and along a corridor into an even more frightening room, where the walls were decorated with whips, canes, thumbscrews, nipple clips and other instruments which Amelia was sure were for torture, but whose particular use she could not guess.

There were several different benches and frames whose use, again, was not always clear.  She was led over to a vertical frame rather like a door frame without the door, and with no walls on either side of it.  It was heavily built and was supported in the vertical position by stay ropes from the ceiling.  She was cuffed to it by her wrists and ankles so that she was held uncomfortably stretched in an X with her legs wide apart and her arms fastened to the top corners.

There was no warning and she saw no movement before there was a short hissing sound and a multi-tailed whip curled itself round her arse and lower back, with the weighted tips of the lashes curling round and hitting her belly and the lower curve of one tit.  There seemed to be innumerable lines of burning agony on her skin all at once and she could not even draw breath to scream.  As she hung there choking and heaving for breath she thought she would die of the pain and shock.

The second blow was lower, covering her thighs and her arse and curling round further to bite into the soft front of her thighs, her hairless mound and her lower belly.  This time she screamed and screamed and screamed.

They waited until she was silent again and hanging sobbing with her eyes closed.  The third blow was struck across her belly, making her feel that her whole body had been dipped in boiling water from the nipples to the knees.  Mercifully she passed out, but was revived by a bucket of cold water.  Then they left her hanging for what seemed like hours until she was truly in agony from the strain on her shoulders before they released her.

When she was being led away, she asked the eunuch who seemed to be in charge, “Master, what was my error, so that I may not offend again?”

He replied with complete equanimity, “You gave no offence.  That was only the routine whipping applied to all new slaves here.  It is to show you what the basic three strokes punishment is for breaking our rules.  Of course more serious offences are punished more severely, and it takes at least twenty strokes at one every half hour or so to flog a really recalcitrant slave to death.  We do not strangle here.”

When he saw the look of total horror on Zubeydeh’s face through the closed-circuit television, the Emir almost had an orgasm in the mouth of the concubine who knelt between his knees as he watched his mother’s humiliation and punishment.  This encouraged the girl and she redoubled her efforts and was rewarded by a mouthful of David’s potent seed.

As the girl left, certain that she had pleased the Emir, she was horrified to hear the Emir say, “Sell that one, she was too eager.”

Chapter Seventeen A New Home

The new harem in which Amelia found herself was strange, even by Kobekistani standards.  Each woman had her own small suite of three rooms, one for eating, one for sleeping and a bathroom.  At least Amelia assumed so, for she had seen nobody but eunuchs during her first few days.  In fact for two of those days it was painful to lie down at all, because of the weals front and back from her flogging.  At least she knew who had bought her, the eunuchs were quite willing to tell her that Ramzy El-Najjar had been the owner who bid the extraordinary fortune for her.

Then after a week, there was a change in the routine.  The eunuchs washed and perfumed and oiled her thoroughly and she knew she was to meet her new owner, in his bed, naturally.  Her orders were clear, she was to enter quietly and to kiss her way from the foot of the bed to his penis, then she was to suck that until her master indicated something else for her to do.  She would not be clothed at all, as her master did not wish it.  She was not allowed to say anything to her master, nor to come unless he specifically ordered her to do so.

The only difficult requirement for her was this latter one.  She was already excited at the prospect of being fucked, probably three ways, by her new Lord and Master, who owned her and could have her flogged to death if she did not please him.  In such circumstances, pleasuring a truly dominant and all powerful master, she would find it difficult not to come time after time.  Moreover, the eunuch who had oiled her cunt and arse hole had fingered her bud until she was on the verge of coming just from his manipulation.

In the bedchamber, Ramzy El-Najjar was still trying to work out what had given him such good fortune in the last few months.  Neither he, nor his father-in-law, Ghada Baroud, could understand why the Emir had given Selima to him as a wife.  She had been presented to the previous Emir as a virgin concubine in an unsuccessful attempt to curry favour, and had been virtually unused when she was passed to him.  Now he had been given the Ruby Palace to use as a second residence, albeit temporarily, and the Princess Zubeydeh, the Emir’s mother, had been led to believe that he had bought her.  Also all his friends had been led to believe that same, and that his use of the Ruby Palace was a reward for some special service he had done for the Emir.

The only special service he could think of was a mere nothing.  He had entertained the Emir to dinner one evening, in grateful thanks for the wedding feast the Emir had provided for him and for this loan of the Palace and Zubeydeh, and naturally the Emir had had the use of Selima.  He did not really know whether her pregnancy was his or the Emir’s, although she swore it was his, but that was of no importance to him;  she wasn’t a beloved and jealously guarded concubine, merely a respected wife.

Of course he assumed the room was fitted with a hidden camera or two and the films of his night with the woman would be held by the Emir, but that did not signify.  She would be used by six or seven men at each of the parties he had been instructed to hold over the next few days.  The only proviso the Emir had made was that Zubeydeh herself should not discover where she was, or that he had not bought her.  Ramzy El-Najjar had no illusions whatever as to his fate if he did not observe these two conditions.  He had seen the torture room here, and had himself whipped Zubeydeh the day she arrived as the Emir had instructed.  He expected that if he failed the Emir he would visit that room himself, and that his stay there would be as unpleasant and as long as the executioner could make it last.

The door opened and Zubeydeh entered, escorted by two eunuchs.  She came warily to the foot of the bed and knelt there with her forehead on the tiles until he clapped his hands once.  Then she rose and slipped under the covers at the foot of the bed, kissing his feet and legs as she worked her way up the bed.  She was surprised that her purchaser was not one of the three who had tried her out before the auction, and that she had not noticed him in the auction room.  What she did not remember was that he had come round the cells with the earlier group of “less honoured” customers.  He did remember this and knew absolutely for certain that he would be in the honoured customer category for the rest of his life, even if he never bought anyone there again.  Then she reached the top of his thighs and all thoughts of anything but sexual excitements, pleasures and experiences were banished from both their minds for a while.

His second orgasm, inside her womb, triggered her first climax for some days and she screamed out her excitement at the top of her voice in English, “Yes, yes, fuck me, fuck me harder, deeper.”

Ramzy El-Najjar was intrigued by this, as his experience of women had not included any who had particularly enjoyed sex for its own sake.  Such self-indulgence was frowned upon in Kobekistan and he had never before used a white infidel.  Her reaction when he played with her uncut clitoris as he took her arse a little later confirmed every prejudice he had about western women.  They had no shame and were all sex mad.  Well, as the Emir’s plan unfolded that would be an advantage he thought.  Mindful of the Emir’s orders, and disregarding his own preferences, he withdrew from her rectum and planted another load deep in her cunt.

***

In the morning he fucked her again and then she was escorted, not to her bath as she expected, but to the torture chamber where she was blindfolded and ear-plugged.  Thoroughly scared now, unable to see or hear, she was dragged to one or other of the instruments of torture and fastened down horizontally on her back, with her wrists and ankles firmly cuffed behind her and under the padded rest on which she lay.  Then she suddenly felt seasick as her head dipped below the level of her body and she was slanted down at an alarming angle.  Her cunt was plugged with what felt like a medium sized dildo and something odd was going on.  Occasional drops of liquid, some ice cold and some boiling hot, were allowed to fall on various parts of her exposed belly and breasts, though only cold ones landed on her nipples.  She could smell candles burning and deduced, correctly, that the hot drops were candle-wax.  Since the cold ones were iced water, the impact of either sort had a similar effect on her nerve-endings and as they landed she didn’t know which were which.

After a while her screams at each new impact died away and yet, and yet … this could not be all.  What were they doing?  Then there was a sudden burning sensation beside her cunt on her outer labia and she screamed again, more in fear than in pain;  they had put a candle in her cunt and lit it, she would be badly scalded by the wax as it burned down.  It wouldn’t go out until the flame was deep in her cunt and the labia closed over it cutting off the oxygen.  Now she understood the angle she was lying at;  it was designed to keep that candle upright.  After a while she passed out from exhaustion and pain.

***

Three or four days later, Amelia wasn’t sure because time seemed endless here in her solitary suite, she was again carefully bathed, perfumed and oiled ready to please a man.  Again the eunuch fingered her clitoris until she was on the verge of coming, and then eased her anus open with a succession of intrusive fingers until that, too, was considered ready for immediate use.

‘Why do they do that?’ she wondered, ‘The arousal has all but dissipated by the time I have crawled up to his cock and it all comes back anyway while I am sucking him.’

This time was slightly different, she was taken to a different door from the bedroom corridor and was pushed in though the gap with the door only slightly ajar and, unusually, the eunuch did not accompany her into the room.  As she looked round her the door snicked shut behind her.

The huge room was set out for a Roman-style banquet, with half a dozen low couches on each of which a naked Arab man lay being fed or fondled, or both, by a slave girl.  All were whole men, but each of the girls was smooth-bellied with no apparent cunt at all.  Clearly they had all been cut and almost completely stitched up.  The air was heavy with scent and sweet-smelling pipe smoke.  Amelia’s eyes watered slightly as the heavy air stung them.  Ramzy El-Najjar lay on one of the nearer couches and waved her over to him as soon as he noticed her entrance.

“Here’s the one I mentioned,” he announced to the general company, “This white Christian one will squeal in her own rutting pleasure the whole time we are shagging her … except when her mouth is full, of course.  She loves it in every hole and can’t get enough sex.  She quite wore me out when I last had her for the night.”

“And we can borrow her?” asked one of the men.

“All and any of you can do what you wish with her, except damage her seriously,” came the disturbing reply, “I wager you won’t wear her out if you all have her all night.”

Amelia knew then that she was in for a night of interminable sex, interrupted only for whipping or other tortures.  She felt a small orgasm start just at the thought of all these men fucking her.  She was not to know that her supper earlier had contained a stimulant which even now was combining with her own inclinations to make her into a total wanton.  The Emir knew what he was doing and knew that the strongest aphrodisiac can do nothing for a genuinely frigid woman, but that natural tendencies can be much enhanced by the judicious use of pharmacology.

“Who is she?  Where did you acquire her?” asked another man.

“The answer to that is even more interesting than her utter wantonness,” replied Ramzy El-Najjar, “She is Zubeydeh, the mother of our esteemed Emir.”

“You sly old goat,” one said, “I never knew you had that much money to spend.  What was it?  Twenty two thousand?”

“Well, I don’t have that sort of money any more, but I bitterly object to being called old as I still have time to recoup more money” commented Ramzy El-Najjar, “She will be worth even more soon.  I intend to sell her on with a daughter at her breast.”

“You’ve already filled her box?” asked one.

“Who knows?” Ramzy observed, “I may have, or you may fill her tonight, or one of the others.  I don’t care who does it, I just want to be able to sell her with her breasts flowing and a daughter suckling on them.”

Over the next couple of weeks there were several such parties where she was the only woman and six or seven men used her mouth, arse and most frequently came in her cunt.  Each evening rapidly became a hazy memory of almost continuous pleasure as her senses were dulled by the effect of the perfumed smoke in the air and the drugs she was given in her food.  One thing stood out in her mind, though;  she clearly enjoyed being the plaything of lots of men, and her best climaxes were when she was riding a solid prick in her cunt as another man either paddled or caned her arse, and then plunged into her rectum as the man beneath her filled her womb.

For a well-brought-up English woman whose experience had been limited to her first husband, one night with his father, a useless second husband, and a few sessions with her son, the idea of six or seven different men fucking her several times each in front of the others should have been embarrassing to say the least.  She knew now that it was actually immensely exciting and she could almost reach a climax just thinking of the next party.

Chapter Eighteen All Change

It was the little eunuch who told her she was pregnant.

“Nonsense,” she said, “I’m forty-seven years old and I’m just missing periods because of the menopause.”

“You are pregnant and your master does not know who is the father,” said the eunuch, “He says it is because you have enjoyed sex too much and with many men.”

Amelia could not deny that she had felt uninhibited when she was being handed round at Ramzy El-Najjar’s parties, because she had no choice, and at the times when she was being used in a way which might cause pregnancy she invariably joined in enthusiastically and with frequent orgasms.  She tried to think of whether any of the fuckings had seemed different or significant.  She thought she had known the instant David was conceived all those years ago, but she was horrified to realise that she couldn’t remember even how many men she had opened her legs for in the last few weeks, let alone which ones came in her womb.

“You will be punished for this development,” said the eunuch, “but only because it is a boy baby.  We can sell you with the child, so your punishment will be lighter than usual.”

“But I had no choice,” Amelia protested, “It wasn’t anything to do with me who fucked me, or how, or when.”

As she said it she knew all she was doing was adding to the punishment she faced, so she told herself to shut up.  The punishment was light, by the standards of this harem, only six strokes of the thin cane across her buttocks with her blindfolded and strapped to a whipping horse.  Of course, she didn’t know in advance how many there would be, and they were stretched out over a period of an hour, during which she was also fucked hard in both the arse and cunt, so she knew Ramzy El-Najjar was there, and that possibly he was also administering the blows.

***

Amelia then entered the most boring time she had ever known in her life.  She had only one eunuch looking after her now, and had been isolated from any other women ever since she came to this odd harem.  She was no longer used by the man she thought was her owner, nor was she lent to anyone else.  All she could do for seven months was sit and wait while the child in her belly grew;  wait and wonder what would happen to her next.

Even the longest of pregnancies comes to an end however, and Amelia duly gave birth with little difficulty to a baby boy.  He was taken away from her soon after the birth and was given to a wet nurse to feed.  She rarely saw him, but she was given medication to ensure that she continued to lactate and her milk was taken for use by her “Master”.  Usually this was achieved by the use of a breast pump, but sometimes he would have her brought to him so that he could suckle and she knew the physical thrill of giving the breast, though his teeth were sometimes a nuisance and his beard and moustache tickled horribly.  On those occasions she was not allowed to have any sexual relief, though she might be allowed occasionally to fondle his prick.

Meanwhile her real owner, the Emir her son, was having blood samples taken from every one of the twenty-three men, including himself, who had had the opportunity of fucking his mother since her arrival in Kobekistan and DNA tests were performed to discover the father.  After some days the reply came back from the laboratories that sample “J” was the one from the father.  Checking with his list of identities, he was pleased to see that it was Ramzy El-Najjar who had impregnated his mother.  The Emir was making plans for his half-brother’s future.

Her milk quickly dried up, as it often does with older women.  Once again the Emir deemed it necessary to have her auctioned, this time as an anonymous house slave or field hand sold with a suckling boy child.

Chapter Nineteen Sold Again

The return to the Auction House, this time with her son at her useless breast, was very different.  She was sold as a dried-up slave with a boy child and fetched only a meagre price.  No mention was made of her background or identity, nor was she shown to prospective buyers beforehand.  The rest of the women in the sale were mostly broken down ex-concubines who had now been cut and sewn for use as bath girls or even field hands.

She paid little attention to the bidding and was soon covered by an abaya and bundled with two other slaves into the back of a van and driven for an interminable time;  her great fear was that she had been bought by a member of a cafila, to be dragged across the desert and sold to the first wandering nomad clan who would pay a good price, to be used as a servant and a source of sexual relief for all the men in the group which acquired her.  It was several hours at least, until the van drew to a halt.  When the doors opened, Amelia realised that they were inside a large garage and had no time to take in any more details of her surroundings before being hooded and pulled along corridors to a cold room.

There she was stripped and the baby taken from her.  She was bathed thoroughly, depilated, her hair combed and, to her surprise, treated well – almost as though she had been bought for someone’s bed, or at least for breeding.  After the bath she was dressed in what appeared to be a short satin dressing-gown, reaching only to the tops of her thighs and without any buttons or belt to hold it closed.  Other than that she was completely naked, not even slippers were provided.  This was obviously this harem’s standard wear for sexually available women.  A further surprise was in store as she was led into the harem proper and discovered she was once again back in the Golden Palace, surrounded by old acquaintances, all now wearing satin shorty dressing-gowns without belts or buttons.

“Welcome back, Highness Zubeydeh,” said a familiar voice and she turned to find the Chief Eunuch bowing to her, as though she were again important.

“Highness?” she asked, “Since when?”

“Since your return, Highness,” he replied, “A special suite has been prepared for you.”

With that he led her to a suite in every respect identical to the one she had inhabited in her last harem, even to the pattern on the soft furnishings.  Except it wasn’t, but she couldn’t immediately work out what the subtle difference was.  Looking round carefully, she finally realised that this one was the mirror image of the previous one.  What was the Emir, David, trying to do or to tell her, she wondered?  Certainly he knew exactly where she had been incarcerated, but that would not be difficult to discover for the Emir.  He knew the details of her rooms in the harem, or at least whoever built this suite did, but again, that would not be difficult for the Emir to arrange.

Catching up with the gossip in the year since she left, Amelia discovered that Maryam was now the First Wife and her son was soon to be formally declared the Crown Prince, although he was only just over six months old.

Ludmilla also had a baby recently, but it was a daughter;  the surprise about that was for the Kobekistani women was that the Emir had seemed pleased, rather than annoyed.

Only one new girl had been taken to the Emir’s bed since she left;  the oldest of the girls Amelia had dressed in school uniforms had been given the privilege of sharing the Emir’s bed on her eighteenth birthday, and for a few nights afterwards.  She was very disappointed that she had not become pregnant, though the others said that it was because the Emir had decreed otherwise, which Amelia rightly assumed meant that he had only used the girl’s arse for his orgasms, after ‘warming up’ in her cunt.

Fatima, the American girl was still there, much to Amelia’s surprise, and was still predictably whining about wanting to go home.  She had apparently been used a few times as quarry in the hunt, but had yet to become pregnant.  She bemoaned the fact that she only ever saw the Emir after the hunt when he watched her being used by all the other hunters in turn.

She was surprised to learn that the Princess Maryam had become something of a martinet and ruled the harem with a rod of iron;  it was less surprising that Maryam was furious that Zubeydeh had returned and even more furious that the title “Highness” was decreed appropriate.  The reunion with Princess Maryam was one which Amelia did not relish.

The hour was late and she was tired, so she retired to her suite, pausing only to ask the Chief Eunuch whom the Emir had chosen for the night.

“The Princess Maryam, Highness,” he replied imperturbably.

So, her arrival was not necessarily a sign of a return to favour.  It could just be another cruel trick by her son, the Emir, as she now suspected her ‘sale’ had been.  She lay awake for some time longing to be in David’s bed and coming to terms with the fact that her greatest wish was to be the bed-mate and concubine of her son again.

***

While he was waiting for Maryam to be brought to him, David wondered how she would take to him having his mother back as Highness Zubeydeh in what she obviously though of as her harem.  She really was becoming a little tiresome with her tantrums.  The Chief Eunuch complained that she was having other girls whipped for no good reason, and that she was never co-operative.  Come to that, she had started to make him wait for her;  tonight, for instance, he had told the Chief Eunuch in good time whom he wanted, and he had not hurried over his bath.  He smiled as he thought of the game he played with the bath girls, pulling a different one into the bath each night and so messing up their pecking order thoroughly.  Why should Maryam keep him waiting like this?  He decided it was time to teach her a lesson.

When she arrived he was kindness itself, indicating she should join him side-by-side in bed instead of the more usual entry where the woman joins her Master from the foot of the bed.  Rolling on top of her, David filled her womb quickly in the missionary position and then they had a more leisurely romp and he deposited a second load of sperm in her vagina.  During this second session he took good care to excite her into having one, or possibly two orgasms.  With Maryam he was never quite sure if she was faking it now she knew he liked her to come as well.  That was a real contrast to his mother, whose climaxes were loud and unmistakable.

“That was good, Master, you have again made me pregnant tonight I think,” said Princess Maryam, “What will you do with Zubeydeh when I have given you two sons?”

“I shall do as I choose with her,” David replied, “I am the Emir, though sometimes I wonder if you think you are.”

His words should have warned Maryam that this was a sensitive topic and to be careful, but she plunged on regardless, “Well I don’t want to hear of her appearing in your bed.”

“Then you shall not,” the Emir replied coldly, “Chief Eunuch, bind the Princess Maryam to the wall over there,” indicating the portable whipping frame he had had installed, “facing the bed.  Gag her.  Fill her ears with beeswax, since she wishes to be deaf for the rest of the night.  Then have her Highness Zubeydeh prepared and brought to me.  I will bed her also tonight.”

***

Amelia was annoyed at first when the Chief Eunuch woke her and dragged her quickly to the bathroom, where two bath-slaves waited to prepare her for her Master.

He only said to her, “The Emir has ordered it.  You sleep with him tonight.”

Amelia racked her brains as to why she had been sent for, when Princess Maryam had already been elaborately prepared and had been with him for some time.  Had the First Wife succeeded in poisoning David against her?  Was she to be ritually humiliated for the amusement of Princess Maryam?

Desperate measures might be needed.  Amelia remembered something that a school friend had once told her and which had on occasion worked spectacularly on Prince Abdullah, David’s father.  After all the preparations were finished and just before she was led into the Emir’s bedchamber, she demanded and received some oil liberally spread on her hands.  The Chief Eunuch protested that he did not understand why she wanted that and she did not enlighten him.  This minor victory over the Chief Eunuch convinced her of the reality of her high status in the harem far more than any number of people calling her Highness.

As she was led into the bedroom, she did not look around but dived beneath the covers quickly.  Thus she did not see the gagged, deafened, naked Princess Maryam strapped to a whipping frame, watching the proceedings.  Entering the Emir’s bed from the foot and working her way quickly up the Emir’s legs, she did her best not to touch anything with the palms of her hands.  When she reached the solid flagpole between his thighs she used her oil-slick hands to caress the length of it up and down in a sort of figure-of-eight motion.  The effect was electric.  Within six or seven strokes David threw the covers off to see just what technique it was which caused such pleasures and was only just in time to see Zubeydeh take his manhood into her mouth as his third orgasm of the night tore through him and jetted out into her throat.

Swallowing as much as she could, the woman did not stop her oil-lubricated stroking of his penis for an instant.  Even as his supply of semen was exhausted, the penis was again rising Phoenix-like from the ashes of his previous erection.  The pleasure when she stroked the heavy purple glans was almost painful and David felt himself rising to another orgasm.  Amelia also felt the start of the surge and squeezed the base of the Emir’s prick to stop it coming to fruition.  As soon as the incipient ejaculation subsided, she resumed the entrancing manipulation and roused him again.  This process was repeated a number of times, until David eventually drew her hands away from his cock and kissed them, then he kissed her deeply, scouring the remnants of his own jism from her mouth with his tongue.

Turning to one side he said, “You never gave me that much pleasure, o mother of the Crown Prince.”

Amelia realised then that there was a whipping frame in the room, and that Princess Maryam was hanging from it looking by turns defeated, furious, and penitent.

“She’s angry because she can’t hear what I’m saying,” the Emir said, “But she asked me to make sure she wouldn’t hear that you had been in my bed, so I had her ears stopped up with beeswax.”

“And you made her watch?” asked the incredulous Amelia.

This truly was a Kobekistani punishment.  All vestige of the David she knew had vanished.  She felt a twinge of pure sexual arousal at the thought that her Master was cruel enough to make this woman, the mother of his first-born, watch him disporting in an incestuous night with his mother.

“Will she be whipped?” she asked, licking her lips.

David was fascinated to see that the thought aroused his mother.

“Would you like to whip her yourself?” he asked.

Adoring eyes were turned to him as her face lit up.

“May I?” she asked, pleadingly.

“If you whip her, I shall have to whip you, you know?” he cautioned.

“Please, Master.&npbsp; Please let me whip her,” she begged, “You can flog me as much as you like, whether I hurt her or not.  You know that.  I am entirely my Master’s, to do with as he wishes.”

At a signal from David, one of the eunuchs handed her his little dog-whip.

“One stroke across the breasts,” David said, “So that she can see it coming.  Take the earplugs out as well.  She can hear it then, even if she shuts her eyes.”

The whip was pulled back and held high in the air for several seconds as the tension mounted in the room and Princess Maryam realised what the Emir had permitted.  The hated mother of her man was to be allowed to flog her.  As the whip started to move Maryam closed her eyes.

Hiss …  CRACK.

Maryam flinched, half-screamed, and then could not contain herself as she realised that Zubeydeh had deliberately missed her.  She lost control completely and urine and faeces ran down her legs.  Swiftly the eunuchs rolled her out of the room still attached to the movable whipping bench.

“Ho, ho, ho, ho,” the Emir roared with delighted laughter, “That will teach her.  I couldn’t have devised a better punishment myself.  She has had all the humiliation without a single mark to show for it.”

He motioned to Zubeydeh to come back into bed and stroked her breasts gently.

“How was your little adventure?” he asked, “Was it exciting to be sold and then to be used as a party girl?”

Zubeydeh thought carefully before she answered.

“The auction was exciting and I hadn’t realised how much sex I was capable of enjoying before the partying woke me up.  Don’t forget I had only really had Abby and you before that.  Grandfather was only the once and Peter was useless,” she paused and then added, “The pregnancy in solitary confinement was very boring;  I thought I would go mad with loneliness.  But I do have little James as a consolation.”

“I think he should be called Mahmoud,” said the Emir, “At least here in Kobekistan.”

For a while they indulged in a bout of gentle caressing and kissing, with David’s prick in her from time to time, but never pounding away, only stroking gently into her cunt or arse, or being given respectful, almost worshipping licks and kisses.

“You know that I am to name little Mahmoud as second in line after my son, the Crown Prince, don’t you?” asked the Emir.

“Master, that is most generous,” Zubeydeh answered.

“Well, he is my half-brother, even if he is not of the Emir my grandfather’s blood line,” said the Emir, “And it will be politically acceptable for him to be of unknown father, though the tests show him to be Ramzy El-Najjar’s son.  I think there has been too much inbreeding here over the years and new genes will be advantageous.”

Amelia forbore to point out that there were no new genes involved, since Ramzy El-Najjar was Kobekistani and David already had his share of her genetic heritage.

In the morning, the Emir had Zubeydeh strapped to the portable whipping frame and spanked her bottom hard with his bare hands, reminding her of the last time she had been spanked by his father, all those years ago.  Then he filled her arse with semen so that it was oozing out and running down her legs as she was released from the frame.

Postscript       Assimilation

Some days later, the Emir was wandering through the harem trying to decide which woman to have that night when he chanced upon his mother with little Mahmoud in her arms, telling him about his good fortune in being born where he was and when he was.  Naturally, the three month old baby was supremely indifferent to her comments and ignored them.

“Come and walk with me in the garden,” said the Emir, “leave the baby with one of the others.”

As they walked companionably through the harem garden, Fatima who was really Laura, the American girl the Emir sometimes used as quarry when he hosted a hunting day, came rushing up to them and started pleading to be sent home or sold or, as she put it, “Anything would be better than the boredom of sitting doing nothing all day.”

The Emir watched without answering as the eunuchs dragged her away, presumably to be whipped for her insolence in approaching him.  He waved the Chief Eunuch over when she was out of sight.

“Fatima is to be removed from the harem,” the Emir ordered, all trace of David’s chivalry finally gone, the whining American girl-woman merely an irritation now.

“Where is she to go, Master?” asked the Chief Eunuch.

“You are stupid,” said the Emir, “She is to go nowhere.”

“My Master,” said the Chief Eunuch, feeling that his Master at last was beginning to adopt the right attitude to women.  That one should have been strangled months ago.  They were never much use after the first time they were hunted.  Amelia just stared at her son, the Emir.  Did he realise that he had just ordered the murder of one of his concubines?  The Emir walked on with his Zubeydeh as though nothing unusual had happened.

Ten minutes later the Chief Eunuch found them.

“It has been done, Master,” said the Chief Eunuch, “Fatima is no longer a problem for the Master.”

The Emir’s prick rose at this news until it felt ready to burst and made a visible tent in his loose clothing.  He pressed Zubeydeh to her knees and she dutifully took it in her mouth.  As she sucked on her son’s prick, Amelia finally recognised the Emir as being totally Kobekistani in his attitudes.  He had known exactly what he ordered and the woman’s death had only excited him;  her son David had vanished, together with all the western values and compassion she had tried to instil into him.

“Tonight I’ll have Ludmilla and Zubeydeh both at once, I think,” he said to the Chief Eunuch as he pumped his seed into his mother’s throat, thinking, ‘May as well give the Russian a chance to get pregnant again if she can.’

Later, as he contemplated his life as it had changed over the last year and a half, the Emir thought of the quotation he had read somewhere years before, ‘The exercise of power is pleasant;  even more so, absolute power is absolutely delightful.’