Chapter 31: Emma's Contribution

The hospitality of the Kalinin's son was proving very agreeable. Emma joined me in one of the large bedrooms. She was sprawled on the canopied bed when I emerged from the shower.

She was wearing a stylised, emerald green, version of the Kushtian national costume, a beaded and jewelled bodice that left her midriff bare with a long panelled skirt split to the hip so as to reveal her legs as she rolled across the bed. She grinned as my towel slipped from my hips. "Excellent," she said, "I win!"

"What?" I said.

She pointed at my naked crotch. "Victoria said that you'd be really well hung."

"Oh thanks," I said. "Hang on; aren't you supposed to be the slave?"

"Pooh!" she said sitting up on her heels and leaning forward to display a cleavage that was doing it's best to help my insulted member to redeem its reputation. "Wives aren't slaves in Kushtia, they are valued possessions. Anyway, you owe us an explanation."

"Explanation?"

"We were a happy bunch of girls, enjoying making music and enjoying our own names. We meet Mr Impresario who seduces us with promises of bright lights and glamour. And instead we're stolen away, bought by a man that insists on calling us by our stage names and flown half way across the world to heaven knows where. I think that needs explanation."

"I don't remember the bit about bright lights and glamour," I said. "I think the best I offered was some better gigs. Isn't this a better gig?" I sat down on the bed beside her.

She smiled, "Well it's better than that pub in Southwark that's for sure and our husband's cute enough. Except we have to perform as the band — he's got this karaoke machine and we all have to turn out in the gear. Getting here was completely shite as well."

"Bad flight?" She seemed quite happy for me to run my hand up her leg in the general direction of her thigh.

"Not the flight, the bit before," she said. "The being bundled up into boxes, the being fucked whenever anyone felt like it without so much as a please or thank you, the beatings and the chains. That was the shite bit."

"Yeah well, when the Kalinin decides on something for his son, he likes people to go for it." My fingers were tracing a pattern across her belly. Her body was responding to my touch even if she wasn't saying anything to acknowledge the fact.

"Still, all we were ever in it for was the money and the glamour and this," she waved at the opulence of the room's décor, "looks like money and glamour to me."

My hand was on the fastening of her bodice. "How do the others feel about it?"

"Mel C probably took it hardest, but even she's coming round. She found the rape and the humiliation hard. But we all looked after her. Mel B's been like a bitch on heat with hubby; she's pregnant, would you believe, though hubby doesn't know yet. Ginger — well she's just good for a laugh anywhere and here's no different. And Vicky, she's has found her own little niche."

"Yes, I saw," I said. "What will happen to the baby? Mel's?"

"Can you imagine? If it's a boy? The first son of the first son of the Kalinin? It will be a major state celebration. Kushtia may be a democracy but that doesn't mean they don't still have a yearning for the old days of a hereditary dynasty. If it's a girl, well, she'll have a wonderful life here in the palace and marry well. Either way the child will have five doting mothers, more when our husband marries again, and probably quite a few brothers and sisters."

The hooks on her bodice fastening finally came loose. I pushed the garment aside exposing her breasts. I cupped one in my hand. Finally she acknowledged my touch.

"That's nice," she said, "I like that. And," she reached out with her hand for my now well stiffened cock, "you seem to be liking it too."

"Yes, the only question is how far your husband's hospitality extends," I said sliding closer to her.

"Kushtian traditions of hospitality are strong. The first Kalinin said 'for my guest; my property is his'. Those traditions are upheld to this day."

"And you are your husband's property?"

"Oh yes. Even allowing for the conventions here, the wedding ceremony is quite explicit. The husband vows 'I take this wife in ownership to keep and care for as my finest horse or hawk', and the wife answers 'I pledge myself to be kept and cared for.' Besides, I'm assuming that a sum of money changed hands for arranging the match between us and our husband. In Kushtia it is usual for the husband to pay the father of the wife but I suppose all traditions have to be updated. Still," her finger nails raked up the underside of my cock, "don't worry about going further than my husband would wish." She shrugged off her unfastened bodice and leant towards me waving her head backwards and forwards so that her long blonde hair brushed sensuously across my crotch. She moved her mouth towards my cock. "Well, I may have won my bet with Vicky but it seems to come up to expectations with a little encouragement. I guess I win both ways."

I leant back and let her bring her lips down around my shaft. I didn't know whether she had learned her techniques before she got to Kushtia or after but she was certainly more than competent. "Well," I said, arching my back to push forward to meet her, "you're well able to keep your head up in the fellatio stakes. Or should that be down?"