He closed his eyes as they bustled around him, turning him this way and that. More disconcerting than his nakedness, or the touch of the soft, warm cloths they used on every part of his body, was the way they cooed to each other like a pair of mating turtledoves. He tried to keep his mind empty. This was just another ordeal a slave must endure. But the more places they found that needed their attention, the more difficult it became to ignore their ministrations and he realized with anguish that his shame was literally growing with each passing second. He swallowed hard and thought desperately for some escape route from this pleasurable agony, then opened his eyes wide in shock as he felt a delicate hand take him in its grip and raise him up so another could have access to his scrotum. The touch of the cloth there had a gentle urgency and now there was no hiding his desire.
'Waste not a drop, or you will have the flesh off each other's backs.'
The voice was answered by a delighted twittering from Rufus's tormentors. The girls took a step back and surveyed their handiwork. They must have been satisfied by what they saw, for the sister with the red cord took him and led him towards the bed.
Rufus stood before the purple curtain knowing what was required of him, but without the nerve to take the next step. A small hand pushed him in the back and he pitched through the thick cloth and landed in an ungainly heap on a soft coverlet.
At first he was dazzled. The area within the curtains was a gilded sanctuary, lit by four scented lamps suspended from the poles which held the drapes aloft. It was dominated by a huge bed scattered with soft pillows, and the poles were carved with graphic sexual scenes featuring combinations of male and female figures involved in various erotic acts, many of which seemed unlikely, if not impossible. But it was the slim figure on the bed which held his attention. Drusilla was lying on her back, completely naked, with the tawny mane of her hair draped around her head and her arms thrown above it. Her pale flesh glowed like molten gold in the lamplight. Not a single hair blemished the smooth lines of her body and Rufus's eyes devoured every curve and hollow of that beautiful form. She had faultless, rose-tipped breasts that rose and fell as she breathed; a smooth, flat stomach and generous, wide hips. She smiled at him from under hooded lids, and for the first time he was aware of the scent of her arousal and noticed the liquid sheen on the fingers of her right hand.
'Am I not beautiful, puppy dog?' she asked, in a voice husky with desire. 'Am I not the treasure you have dreamed of, but could never have?'
He tried to reply, but his throat was so dry he couldn't speak. He was kneeling near the foot of the bed, just close enough for her to reach him. She put out her hand, but the enormity of what he was doing had eaten into Rufus's brain and it in turn sent a panic-stricken message to his body. That which had been so impressive only moments before faded away from her.
To his astonishment she laughed lightly and sat up, her breasts rippling with the movement.
'Better still, puppy dog. I relish a contest, none more. First we must both relax.' She reached to the side of the bed and picked up a vial filled with a red liquid. 'A massage, I think.'
She gave him the bottle, which was warm in his hand, before lying back with her hands behind her head, exposing the full length of that sensuous body to him.
'Now, shoulders first. Come, place yourself over me, with one knee to either side,' she instructed him. 'Now!' The sharpness in her voice as he hesitated startled Rufus and he almost spilled the precious liquid. He did as he was ordered, aware of the closeness of her belly beneath him.
'Pour a little of the oil at the base of my throat, just there. That's right. Now place a drop on your hands and put them round my neck.'
Again, Rufus obeyed, as gently as he was able, conscious that his hands felt huge and rough against the slender vulnerability of her throat.
'Rub the oil in with your fingers. Mmmhhh. No need to be quite so delicate — I am not a toy. Yes, that is much better. Just think, you could choke the life out of me before anyone had time to stop you.' She laughed as he flinched. 'Now move out to my shoulders. Use your fingers. You have such strong fingers.'
Rufus felt her body shift beneath his hands as he smoothed the slippery liquid into her flesh and the sensation moved something in him, because he felt himself grow again, this time even more than before. She noticed it too.
'That's better, puppy dog. Now, some oil here.' She pointed to a spot between her breasts.
This time he responded immediately, and he did not need her instructions to smooth the viscous liquid right and left, his hands moving over the firm orbs and feeling her tiny nipples grow hard under his fingers. She shuddered below him.
'Yes, like that, puppy dog. You are a fast learner.'
He moved his hands over her, quickening the rhythm until she gave a little gasp: 'Lower.'
Lower, across the polished ivory of her abdomen and further, where he found he had been wrong: between her navel and that other place was a thin line of fine down. He tried to keep his eyes from her sex, but now he was drawn to it like a moth to a nightlight. Instinctively, he reached to touch it.
'Not yet.' Her hand grasped his wrist. He looked up at her and saw that her eyes were no longer hooded, but wide open and aflame with a naked hunger. 'Start again at my feet, puppy dog, and move upwards.'
'Like this?'
He did as she ordered. He was becoming familiar with the game now, and he made his way over ankle, calf and the long silky curve of inner thigh with agonizing slowness, and when he eventually reached that place she shuddered again.
All the time his hands had been on Drusilla's compliant young body, Rufus's own desire had grown, and the molten feeling in his guts had moved inexorably into his groin. He was so hard now it was painful. He knew something had to happen and was just about to drop on top of her when she shook her body like a dog emerging from a river pool.
'Now you.'
She pushed him on to his back and took the oil from him. Now it was he who experienced the sensations which had so pleased her. The feel of the fingers first hard, then soft, forcing the oil into the very fabric of his body. And there was something else. With the oil came a slight burning sensation, intense and erotic, so that his whole body seemed to pulsate with energy.
When she reached the object of her desire, it throbbed and twitched in her hands.
'Now, puppy dog, now you are ready.'
She raised one knee and with an easy movement slipped on top of him.
Rufus immediately felt as if he had been enveloped in warm honey and he groaned with the pleasure of it. By now each was so aroused that the heat of her body on his could have only one outcome, and as she began to rock back and forth and her muscles contracted around him he exploded inside her with an agonized cry.
Undeterred, Drusilla maintained her grip on him and slowly increased the tempo of her movements until, grinding herself into his lower body, she too climaxed with a series of stifled gasps that ended in a long, drawn-out moan.
Rufus opened his eyes a few minutes later and realized he had been dozing. The warmth of the room, the softness of the bed and the power of their lovemaking had combined to rob him of his instinct for self-preservation. Now a thrill of fear shot through him as he absorbed the full extent of what he had done. He moved to raise himself, but a slim arm across his chest forced him back and he turned his head to find Drusilla staring at him with open curiosity.
'My brother would kill you if he knew you were here,' she said, as if she was discussing the next day's weather. 'He is terribly jealous.'
There seemed nothing to say, but to stay silent was to let her believe she frightened him, and he sensed a challenge in her words.
'And will he?'
'Only if he finds out, but he will only find out if I choose it. The only people who know you are here are my little doves and Lucius, the soldier who brought you here. My little doves will not tell, because they cannot — they have been dumb from birth. Lucius will not tell, because he has more to lose than you.'
Her hand stroked the length of his thigh. 'You really are terribly beautiful, puppy dog, almost as beautiful as my immortal. What a pity your beauty will not last as long as his. Life is so cruel, don't you think?'
She said the words wistfully, but they seemed to trigger a change in her because her eyes clouded and the pitch of her voice changed.
