Claiming Crystal (9 page)

She had shivered then; out of horror or arousal, she did not know.

The people who oversaw the dungeon were said to have used some of the most beautiful dancers to tease many prisoners into confessing to their crimes, if only to be allowed a single kiss from the object of their affection. This dungeon was scarce compared to other prison keeps, and was entirely lacking in the more gruesome instruments that littered the halls of other cities and towns that stretched men like wool and cut into them like fowl birds. Men did not come out of this place missing their teeth or broken of their limbs. Their faces were not bruised and their bodies were not deadweight from the suffering they endured inside.

Come to think of it, men did not ever leave this place, and Crystal realized that she had no idea where they left to. Perhaps, she considered, they donned the long and concealing black robes of the jailers to join the endless procession of domination and submission.

There were no hangman's nooses, but there were hoods. There were no knives and mutilating instruments, but there were whips and strange cords and plugs. Such lasciviousness!

This place had always been for clever torments, as if the very atmosphere of the underground was plagued by the erotic ideas of her family or the people her family hired to do the unmannered things to the crooks and criminals that plagued them all. Disturbing the peace was due a disturbing reflection made in kind, and Crystal found herself nodding and waving politely to the jailers who recognized her appearance and dropped to their knees, the dominators suddenly become dominated, and eager for it. They knew that they were in the presence of the crown jewel - a woman of exquisite lineage, who now walked with two guards down the gravel pathway that was strewn about with the tatters and rags of peasants who had been seized and imprisoned for a variety of arbitrary laws the lordship of the kingdom had translated from the very old text of laws which governed their land. Many jailers would read from these very texts themselves when committing their erotic torments, inventing passages from their disturbed imaginations, for they could not read, but wished for the authority that came from books.

These ancient laws had been written out in a language that only the educated knew, and spoken at great length against the lesser people so that they might learn its wisdom and obey its commands. Crystal had always suspected from a young age that not even the educated people knew the language, and simply used its mystery to write out their own ideas from the thin air of mythical texts that the lowest class of people always seemed to favor with an almost religious superstition. Crystal had learned to read when she was four years old, and since then she had been acutely aware of the veneration with which people showed even the most witless pamphlet.

A single demonstration of this would probably cause every jailer in the prison to clean her body with their tongues.

Crystal found the rogue in the very last cell at the end of a long hallway noisy with the catcalls of prisoners who were pleading their cases, rightly taking her for a person of some worth and sway in the political arena. She ignored them as soon as she heard them, her attentions focused elsewhere, her heightened senses having already brushed against the unique aura of the wild man before she even laid eyes on him. He radiated something that met with her awakening and pleased it into the kind of chills all women dream about when they are lost and lonely in the bedside of another they do not care for.

She did not even acknowledge the three dancers who were parading themselves about the dungeon, teasing the prisoners in roughly the same mannerisms that Crystal had heard about from the gossipy slaves. The prisoners, in turn, tried to deny their teasing by masturbating roughly and then lifting up their cum stained hands to the dancers in proclamation.
‘I do not need to touch you!’ they cried. ‘Not when I can touch myself!’

The dancers wore fetish dresses. Their breasts were held up by beads, and their hourglass figures were complimented with linings that sketched out the chest and the ass so that all male eyes would be drawn to them, and their cocks in turn, rising to an occasion so old and primal that it overrode even the thought of food and sleep. One dancer had a crude imitation of a sold
ier's armor, with a tiny breastplate barely covering her enormous bosom, and a see through skirt that gave every prisoner who cared to look an ample view of her shaved treasure. The jailers had rented these women out from the bordello, paying them handsomely to turn on every single criminal in the dungeons before promptly sending them away so that each of the jailers could enjoy the horny men all to themselves.

The jailers had long forgotten their own sexual preferences. All that remained for them was the ecstasy of their position, and the joys that came to them when they were able to ply skin in such a way that the person called out in shame and excitement. If the dancers merely wore fetishes, the jailers had been completely overwhelmed by fetishes, and knew nothing that was ordinary and godly.

Everyone had their custom.

But now her eyes were peeled for the rogue she had been promised was waiting somewhere down here in the gravel an
d firelight, his large body ill-fit for a cage, his bright white smile still sheepishly amused, like a jester at court who could not stop finding the humor in things even when his joke offended and he was brought to the hanging rope. The dungeon was made up of nearly twenty cells that could fit up to four vagrants and drunks, each with a slab of rock for sitting and a lay of dirt for sleeping, crawling with small bugs but otherwise clean in the heat and the infrequency of royal guests who would have their sensibilities offended if there were too many worms and open wounds. Quite by accident the prisoners of this kingdom seemed altogether relatively tidy and kept, their hair washed and their bodies soaped. Crystal had already noticed one such cleaning room where a small and stout prisoner was being dunked over and over again in order to shave off his beard, which was too long for the nobility to enjoy when they came down here to sightsee among the most unfortunate people within their kingdom (long beards, of course, were signs of royalty, and great offenses when they were grown on the chins of unworthy men).

The criminals, she supposed, counted themselves lucky to be exotic animals for the noble born, since any entertainment, even those considered animals, were owed their better appearances and health for the sake of manners.

When Crystal approached the rogue's cell, preparing herself for the sight of the man out of his element and sicker than his prime - perhaps having gone unwashed for the day as a frilly sort of punishment, she instead found a man who looked even more beautiful than the wild stable worker she had approached no more than a day ago. It occurred to her that she had not even gone forty eight hours without touching his body, although the wait in between had seemed as endless as the cycles of slavery that bound people to other people, be it in sex or life. The jailers had taken good care of them. Maybe one of the jailers had taken a liking to his charm, and made him look extra pretty for some later tormenting.

Somebody had washed his hair and cleaned off the rough stubble from his face, although Crystal felt a slight pang of loss to see him as cleanly shaven as the servant men she pleasured herself with. There had been something exciting about the untamed facade he had presented. The jailers had disagreed, evidently, and while Crystal flirted with the idea of punishing them for changing the appearance of her true suitor, she declined the idea with concern that she was overstepping her play and truly becoming her father's daughter.

She was not a tyrant. She was a tease and she could be a tomboy, but she was not a tyrant.

The jailers had dressed him in the modest garb suited for a prisoner, although the chest had not been large enough for his broad back and been cut slightly down the middle to expose the taught muscles of his person. He sat on his slab of rock eating a piece of stale bread, occasionally picking out the grains that had not been processed and were harder than his rocky seat.

‘Is this the one who offended your ceremony?’ one of the jailers suddenly asked from behind Crystal, making her whirl around and make a silent mental note to always watch her surroundings when she was around these sneaky people. ‘I knew there was something special about him.’

To speak of the jailer, there was something special as well, but not in the good way which burned the hips of any healthy woman. He was gaunt and bald, and his teeth were crooked from the strange initiation rituals people in the jailing service had to undergo before they could be hired by royalty. Crystal did not trust every rumor she heard, but it would not surprise her in the least if she discovered a man like this had once feasted on the cooked flesh of a living prisoner simply for the right to work in this dreamier, darker bordello of domination.

Before Crystal could find an excuse to dismiss the jailer he opened the bars of the rogue's cell and strode in without another word. Both Crystal and the guards glanced down curiosity at the strange flaps on the back of his robe before quickly averting their eyes once they realized it was the ass of the man, hanging out in the open and no less rigid than a young man's cock. Crystal could not discern him underneath the rest of the robe, but he moved with the strides of a predator, and although he surely noticed their attentions and could feel the draft from the dank dungeon air, he did not fix the robe to cover himself. He, too, was a man possessed by the shamelessness which ruled the underground.

‘
I will punish him for you, lady,’ the jailer decided.

Crystal opened her mouth to say something and then quickly closed it again. She realized that she would enjoy seeing some manner of punishment. The rogue was strong and unbroken, and it would be a kind of game to see if he could be taught like the stable mares, or if he would never be bridled, so like the wild horses that he had been hired to tame himself. She followed the jailer closely as he took the man by his arm and guided him out of the cell into the adjacent room, which was set up like a stage for voyeuristic sightseers to stand in a gawking crowd while prisoners were assembled throughout the many torturous looking devices standing on the platform. Crystal saw an iron maiden, a system of ropes and pulleys, paddles and whips, and she was dismayed with herself to feel absolutely no sense of revilement or fear at the sight of these gruesome objects.

Instead she felt a rush in her chest. She found herself imagining what it would be like to watch this weak and skinny jailer try to peel the muscles off the beautiful wild man who stood nearly twice his height. Suddenly the dryness in her throat was gone, replaced with a salivating anticipation that thirsted for the same decadence which seemed to rule everyone once they came under the shadows and firelight of the kingdom's prison.

The jailer chose the whip, which was exactly the instrument Crystal had hoped he might pick. He bent the rogue over a palette of wood and began beating him, or trying to beat him – the jailer could not muster up the strength to break through his thick skin.

What began with the titillation of violence slowed down into the awkward scene of watching an impotent man try to get a rise out of someone who was far too virile to pay mind to this lesser display. The guardsman was a slight fellow compared to the rogue, and the way that he slapped the man's muscled body seemed rather like a light spanking that probably tickled him. Crystal had almost become with the thought of punishment, a sexualization of the holy repercussions that the law book decreed must come to all crooks and sinners, and she would not admit that she was disappointed with the bloodless facility of the display.

She caught the dancing eyes of the rogue.

He noticed her staring and seemed pleased with whatever reaction he read on her face.

Is this still a game to you? Crystal thought to herself. It was not a matter of bravery, and might actually be a matter of stupidity, for any man worth the insight would have been rightly terrified the moment her father had approached him with sternness in his face. Any man with intellect would be begging for her mercy now, fearing the jails, fearing the jailers, altogether fearing everything that might come to cut him down to a much smaller size if this drama spiraled out of control any farther. This was no game. Women were bought to dance for men who were accused and jailed without trial, and then corrupt jailers had their way with the erect staffs of unwanted men. It was a violation in the darkness, where the sunlight and dispositions of law abiding men did not reach.

It was supposed to be despair.

Yet his eyes continued to dance.

Perhaps she should teach him something.

Before Crystal knew what she was doing she found herself asking the guard if she could administer the rogue's punishment herself.
‘You honor me,’ she explained, ‘but this man offended me personally, and I would like to punish him personally. Is that alright?’

It was a silly question that was asked only for the sake of formality. The jailer would do what she told him to do, because she was the object of the jailer's lord, and however strictly the lord governed his objects, he punished all who offended those objects with passionless, merciless fury.

‘Of course, my lady,’ the guard stammered.

‘
Your father will be so proud!’ the jailer exclaimed, laying down the whip and stepping off the platform. He wiped the sweat off his round face and quickly took a seat on an old creaky chair to gather his breath. The soft rasps of his wheezing tinged the atmosphere with a certain anxiety until Crystal gestured the guards to leave her presence and take the jailer with her.