Chapter 1

I was in a large tent, one of several in a desert encampment, having led there by a slim woman clothed from head to foot in Arab garb: a dark brown floor-length “abaya” covering the entire body and a matching “niqab” hood, revealing nothing but her slim stature and dark eyes. I was naked, having been instructed by her to remove my clothes and lay them on a bench. On the walls of the tent, tapestries had been hung. The motif appeared to be Arabic in style, but the subject matter was certainly not typical of Arabic non-representational art. Each tapestry depicted two nudes in nearly full size, one male and one female, blindfolded and bound to pillars, their hands tied behind them, their bodies covered with the welts of whippings. The women had sagging breasts with dark areolas and protruding nipples; the men had large penises, fully erect. My guide appeared not to notice them, but already I could feel my own cock swelling.

My guide led me to a second room, which was actually a larger tent whose sides adjoined the first. In the dimness, I could just make out more paintings hanging on the walls, identical to the ones in the other room. There was a slat bed in the center, made of heavy beams of wood, about the height of a table, with a thin mattress. It was a four-poster, but instead of a canopy, there was a lit candle on the top of each bedpost that illuminated the room with soft light.

As my eyes adjusted to the light, I saw three other men, all naked, standing around the bed. They all had erections and, as I looked past the closest one, I could see why. The tallest man stood before me, facing the bed and with his dark-skinned back to me. As he turned to greet me, I saw, tied to the bed, a naked white woman, on her back.

Her ass was positioned on the near side of the bed, right on the side rail. Her feet were tied to the bedposts at the head and foot of one side of the bed, and her thighs were lashed to the side rail, so that her legs were splayed wide and her bald cunt was positioned right at the edge of the side rail. Her meaty inner lips were unfolded, and the entrance to her vagina was plain to see. Her arms were tied to the other two bedposts. She was utterly helpless; her only comforts were a thin mattress and a pillow placed underneath her head.

She was a large, fair-skinned woman, with ample breasts that spilled over onto her sides. Her fat nipples, pink and erect, stood out from areolas the size of the base of a goblet. I could not see her face or hair, since they were covered by the same sort of “niqab” hood that my guide wore. Her sole adornment was a ring on her right middle finger, a cunning thing of gold, wrapping around her finger like a serpent, with a variety of colored beads set into it and gleaming in the candlelight.

I looked at the other men. The one on the right, at the foot of the bed, had dark skin, curly hair, and a hard penis, short but thick, sticking straight out from a mass of curly hair that obscured his balls. His nipples were pierced with rings that gleamed against his dark skin. The second man, positioned at the woman’s head at the far side of the bed, was a fair-skinned man, of medium height, with smooth muscles and a shaved crotch, from which a hard penis swooped upward in a graceful arch. His bare balls dangled low below his crotch, one side lower than the other. There was nobody at the head of the bed.

The third man, positioned between me and the bed, was obviously in charge. He was the tallest, and his penis was the longest; it was adorned with two bejeweled cock rings, the larger one encompassing his cock and balls and the smaller one encircling the base of his cock. He had a dark complexion and the heavy muscles of a weightlifter, and his oiled chest and groin were covered with fine black hair. He held a riding crop in his hand.

My guide positioned me at the vacant spot at the head of the bed. Then, removing her niqab, she revealed herself to be a young woman ... her early twenties, perhaps ... with a thin face and hair that was long, straight, and almost black. Her large, dark eyes shone in the candle light. She had a prominent, but by no means unflattering, nose, and her lips were red and full. She handed me a drink from a glass goblet, a drink that tasted like honey and vinegar. As she held it to my lips, she caressed the underside of my cock with a long, thin finger until she was satisfied that it was as hard as the other men’s.

Then she replaced the goblet on a small table, where three other goblets were standing, along with a pitcher to refill them when they were emptied. She stood in the corner of the tent, hands clasped behind her, ready to do whatever was necessary. I could just discern the outline of her small breasts underneath the fabric of the abaya. Outside, music that might have accompanied a belly dancer could be clearly heard; we were evidently only a few yards away from its source. It would keep playing for hours as the evening passed.

The tall man said, “Now we are together.” The woman tied to the bed shivered, not from the cold, but from the anticipation. The torture would now begin.

It was a scene that could have come from some ancient sex ritual in the Middle East, perhaps from the time of the Crusades, but it wasn’t. In fact, the scene was southern California, and the time just last year.

It all started with a comment on one of the erotic fiction forums I’m on. I’d mentioned that I’d heard about the Sons of the Desert, a group that specialized in recreating aspects of Arabian life in the heyday of the Islamic empire. It turned out that a writer who called herself “Zahara” was a member of that group, and asked if I would like to get to know her better. At that point, we took the discussion off-line and went to messaging.

In her messages, she said that she was acquainted with my writing. In particular, she liked the fact that my characters used “safe sex” to avoid diseases and unwanted pregnancies, and asked if that was also my personal ethic. I said it was, and that I’ve always been “clean.” She said it was her ethic, too, and then changed the subject. I thought nothing more of that, as we went on to other topics and didn’t mention it again. One of her favorite genres was bondage, which isn’t one of my personal kinks, although pictures of it sometimes turn me on. She also mentioned that she was a jeweler who sold her work at craft fairs and historical re-enactment venues. I was familiar with that art, since I had a friend in college who did that as a hobby. Zahara and I had enough in common otherwise to keep the acquaintance going, and we kept in touch.

One day in December, she proposed that we arrange to meet in person at the group’s major event, where they simulated a large Arab encampment of the period. It would be in an area just east of Barstow in March, and they expected more than a thousand people. She also asked if I was still clean of STDs, and I assured her that I was. She left me wondering why she’d asked that question, but I assumed that there was going to be some kink involved ... maybe some sort of oral sex, a mutual kink that we’d discussed at some point. I gathered that she’d been in a stable relationship for some time, but it wasn’t an “open marriage” in the usual sense.

As it turned out, I had some time off that May, so I arranged to be at the event. When I asked how I would find her, she replied that she would find me. She wanted to keep her identity secret, but told me that a young woman would meet me at the vendors’s area, in front of a certain booth, at a certain time of the evening on a certain day. And she gave me two phrases to use as passwords: one for me to identify the guide, and the other to identify myself to the guide. “Take a shower before you come,” she told me. And she promised me “an evening to remember.” As it turned out, she wasn’t wrong!

I’d borrowed a small wall tent from a friend of mine who was a regular participant in this sort of event and had all the gear, although he and his wife couldn’t make this one because of work obligations. It came with a double-size rope bed and a mattress. Since I wasn’t affiliated with any local groups, I set up the tent in the perimeter of the site, away from the encampments of the larger groups that had priority. It turned out to be a bit of a walk from the center of activity, but it was also quieter. My friend told me that it could get noisy in the central area, with all the parties going on at all hours of the day and night.

After setting up camp, I took a shower at one of the shower trucks on the site, and then dressed in the costume that participants are required to wear ... nothing fancy, just something that might pass for Arab clothing. Fortunately, my friend was roughly the same size I am, and he loaned me a garment loose enough to fit me and long enough to hide my jeans. I figured that my sandals would look close enough to pass for “authentic,” or at least not draw much attention to them, since my clothing hung down to my ankles. He also gave me a hood and a cloak and, thus clothed, off I went to explore the site.

The vendor’s area was huge, with what must have been three dozen booths selling everything from costumes to books to food to ... well, anything a participant might need or want but couldn’t get in a regular store. On my first afternoon there, I threaded through the crowd of shoppers, located “Saladin the Shoemaker” and marked its location, so that I could show up right on time for my liaison.

Then I bought some food from a vendor, ate dinner, and wandered the grounds of the event. I was particularly attracted to a group of dancers and musicians. I’d seen belly dancers before, but not in an outdoor setting, lit only by a fire. They’d oiled their skin, which shone in the firelight, and the sight of their swaying hips and rippling bellies in the sensuous dance went right to my cock. I only wished I’d brought a girlfriend, because there was nothing I wanted more at this point than a woman I could bury that cock in. But all I could do was watch them, go back to my tent, and jack off.

I was at Saladin’s shop on the next day, at the appointed time, and most of the shops were closed. The day had been unseasonably hot, and even after sundown, the air was warm. My hair was still damp from the shower I’d just taken, although I knew it would be dry in a few minutes. As I stood before Saladin’s shuttered booth, a young, slim figure approached me. She was clothed in a dark brown floor-length “abaya” and a matching “niqab” hood, with only a pair of dark eyes showing. (I learned the names of these garments only later.) It could not have been Zahara, since who had identified herself online as a “large” woman. But the stranger seemed to be looking for me.

“What brings you to the desert, good sir?” she said. That was one of the passwords.

“I’m in the market for a camel,” I answered, completing the ritual. She bowed and said, “Follow me, please.”

She led me past that large encampment where the dancing had been taking place the day before. I caught a glimpse of two belly dancers, their bare midriffs and legs gleaming in the firelight as musicians played ouds and dumbeks and flutes. Then my guide darted down an alleyway formed by two rows of tents, and I followed. She stopped at the third tent on the right, lifted the flap, and motioned me to enter. I was not far from the musicians, for I could still hear them clearly.

The tent was high and roomy, with a center-pole to which was attached a sort of candelabra equipped with eight lit candles, just above head height. The floor was covered with a soft, rich rug. That was when I saw the erotic tapestries on each of the four sides of the tent, hanging from a rope attached to the eave poles.

There was a long bench there, with two heaps of clothes on it, and two pairs of boots on the floor. “Undress, please,” I heard her say. “All the way. Your shoes, too.” I was unsure what was going to happen next, but also intrigued. As I stripped off my clothes, she took them into her small, slim fingers and piled them neatly onto the bench with the others. As I stood there naked, she opened a door on the other side of the tent. I could smell incense burning. The tent turned out to be an annex to a larger tent, also thickly carpeted. I stepped into the darkness of the next room.

And that was when I saw the other three man, and the naked woman tied to the bed.

As I took my place at the head of the bed, the tall man nodded to me and addressed the group. “Now we are together. You may call me ‘Ali.’ The woman on the bed is my slave Zahara. Fatima, the other one, is my slave as well. Their task is to offer you pleasure, and you will acknowledge that pleasure by keeping your erections hard and ready. In turn, we will pleasure this one...” he gestured to the woman on the bed. “But first we must inflict pain, because she has been disobedient.” With that, he flexed the riding crop in his hand.

The woman spoke, her words slightly muffled by the hood she wore. “Yes, Master. I have failed you. I will accept your punishment, whatever it may be.” Her voice had a trace of a tremor in it, as if she were contemplating what might be lying ahead.