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Grab the end of C.C.'s scorcher short story The Whip Hand - included as a bonus in this amazing collection!
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An Erotic Tale set in Medieval times
The Whip Hand
Tucked deep inside a far away kingdom there was once a hamlet where the villagers gave each other The Gift of Pain.
It was at the time of every dark moon that, young and old, they would flock to the hall behind the chieftain’s house of wattle and daub. It is there that they publicly offered each other the pleasures of the flesh. “Blessed I be, O Lord, with the pain of receiving pleasure and the pleasure of giving pain,” they would intone.
Whether manacled to cross-shaped beams of solid oak, hanging heavily from chains thrown over the central beam, or with spines stretched over the bulging back of a barrel or bound and bundled into bags and thrown into the shallow end of the marsh, or blindfolded and gagged to heighten the razor-sharp cut of a blade, for each man and woman present every ounce of fear and pain was received as The Gift.
It is in this hamlet that there lived a maiden whose grandmother had given her the name of Ulahngsue. No one knew why the crone had bestowed such a strange name on such a lovely child, but no one had ever risked calling her by any other name.
Besides being blessed with a sunny disposition, young Ulahngsue’s eyes, more limpid than the brook that gurgled through burnished fields, peeked mischievously through dark strands of burntwood locks. Her lips were said to have been juicier than wild pears. As she reached puberty, it was said, too, that her laughter had become more heady than the sweetest of ciders. Be that as it may, by the time she was strong enough to scale up the tall aspen trees that circled the fields, the pucele had already scrambled up many a young person’s heart.
Then the day came when, crossbow at the hip and a pair of plump hares gripped firmly by the ears, a stranger drifted into the village just as quietly but surely as the mist that rose from the marsh. Clad in a top tunic the color of ripe grapes adorned with tiny quail feathers around the neckline, the newcomer, a young woman, was as welcome as the morning sun. One moment she had yet to be imagined and the next she was in their midst, the constant companion of young Ulahngsue.
Chunsina was her name and though she soon proved to be of unmatched goodness and sweetness of temper, it was on an evil day that St Anthony’s fire - the fever that comes from the grain - took hold of her.
In spite of Ulahngsue’s casting of circles to call in healing spirits, in spite of her many incantations, and in spite of her herbal concoctions, the sickness did not flee her lover’s body. Utterly helpless to find a cure, she called on her grandmother. Ears closed to the cries of the owl nested on a rafter above their heads, the crone blew cleansing smoke over the crown of Chunsina’s head. Then, she blew more cleansing smoke into her nostrils, into the holes of her ears, even between her legs to chase away the evil spirit. Then, ear closed to the dog that howled to the moon, she bathed her in a vat in which various rocks and mysterious leaves had been left to steep.
In spite of all these ministrations, one night after Ulahngsue had washed Chunsina’s face that had become blackened by the disease, after she had applied ointment to each of the raw sores and kissed the fever-blistered skin of her feet one more time, Chunsina’s soul migrated from earth.
The maiden who had once come as a stranger to the village was buried on the eve of the Cold Moon amid the greatest lamentations of all its inhabitants but not before, escorted by the entire hamlet, her shrouded body had been driven around the marsh in a cart drawn by a team of white oxen.
Time passed with the steady rhythms of its seasons and long after the great grief that had lay so heavily on her had finally relented, Ulahngsue accepted the favors of the chieftain’s daughter, charming Deuteria. But no sooner were the handfasting celebrations over and the identical drinking goblets, tokens of their bond, barely dry, than Deuteria began to show the colors of her true self.
Tall and nervy, the woman had the temperament of a cockerel and it was not a rare occasion when Ulahngsue would fall asleep comforted only by the ephemeral ghostly presence of her much loved Chunsina. Even when Deuteria took Ulahngsue’s body for her pleasure, it was never soothing. It was always in the ways of the animals rutting in the fields. The woman had the thrust of a billy goat and it was a great consolation to Ulahngsue that the agreement, as with every handfasting bond, was to expire after a year and a day. Her bond to Deuteria would not be renewed.
One day, however, perhaps foolishly, perhaps because by then her body had such a craving for The Gift of Pain such as only her lovely Chunsina could give her, Ulahngsue entrusted Deuteria with a dark secret that had hitherto only been known by herself and her departed lover.
Whereas all the villagers abided by the dogma that warned that The Gift of Pain could only be received from a neighbor and only on the night of the dark moon, Ulahngsue and Chunsina did not. It was said later, much later, that if the mattress of straw on which they caressed each other was their castle, the corner of the house in which they had erected a discreet but sturdy crossbeam was their private dungeon. Secretly, they indulged in The Gift of Pain, in its myriad forms, whenever their lustful, young bodies craved it. Thus fortified and electrified, they would then apply such caresses to each other that brought them to the brink of rare pleasure like no other known to the village women.
Because it was in Deuteria’s meddling nature to hunger for all that regarded Ulahngsue’s beautiful dead lady, she pressed her new wyf for more details.
Ulahngsue began, “It would always start in the same manner with me bringing back water from the brook and then my lady would …”
Talking about the past allowed Ulahngsue to revive such moments of pure joy that she closed her eyes to better feel and taste the memories awoken by Deuteria’s curiosity. Behind her eyes, Chunsina is still on this earth, as lovely and tender as she had always been.
Their little room is aglow with candlelight. Flickering wicks paint Ulahngsue’s naked body in shifting shades of pink. Though the ambient air is bitterly cold, wrists pinned under her and tied with twine, Ulahngsue’s body is kept warm by the fire that burns in a corner. Animated shadows cast Chunsina’s short tufts of hair as enormous spikes on the pale daub wall. Head bent in concentration, careful to not have the lice disperse prematurely, her strong hands, gentle over her lady’s mons, move very slowly. As slowly as marsh reeds sway in the breeze, she guides a narrow-toothed comb steeped in honey through the fine pubic hair. Once satisfied that, for a time at least, most of the nits have been trapped between the honeyed-teeth, Chunsina applies a thick coat of depilatory body sugar to the soft re-growth of pubic hair.
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“Sina, give me your tongue. Please … “, Ulahngsue murmurs. She cannot see through the cloth that is tied around her head, but she knows she is held and secure in her lady’s care. Chunsina brings her lips tantalizingly close to her lover’s mouth but does no more than tease the soft down that lines it. “Sina, your tongue. All of it.”
“You be patient, Ullie. You cannot have my tongue for now.”
Wax pools around the wick. A clever snap of the wrist makes it pearl inside Chunsina’s navel. Breath runs back up Ulahngsue’s throat before shaping a sigh. She is well familiar with The Tool that her lover is using for this Gift of Pain, but what she can never anticipate is where on her body the next patch of flesh will be brought to life. Where the next frisson or the next cataclysmic pain will manifest.
Another tear of hot wax slides off the candle held loosely in Chunsina’s hand. It shimmers briefly before dulling in the hollow of her lover’s throat. Nostrils flaring, Ulahngsue bites her bottom lip to stifle a moan.
Ulahngsue urges. “Sina, your tongue.”
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