Chapter 37: Second Helpings

It was just after three in the morning by his watch when Henry was awakened by all the lights in his bedroom coming on and the Emir's voice booming through the intercom, "Anybody else fancy a drink? I'm in my stateroom."

As he rose and quickly dressed, Henry asked the sleepy Ayda, "Princess, what is he doing? Why this call to his room?"

"I expect he wants to shuffle partners," she replied, "I wonder who you'll get next. Alima, if I know my daughter, and I rather fancy Tamsin."

Henry stared at her. He thought he had accommodated fairly well to the Kobekistani ways, but rousing one's guests in the middle of the night to swap partners was beyond anything he had imagined.

In the Emir's suite some minutes later, the scene seemed somewhat surreal to Henry. There were the eunuchs handing round drinks to the same people who had been dining there some four hours earlier. All were dressed as they had been then, and the several hours of intense sexual activity in which he, for one, had been indulging might never have happened. The only face missing was the Admiral's own wife Janice, but he was far too conscious of the Emir's power to ask where she was, or what had happened to her. Privately he guessed she had either annoyed the Emir, or passed out through too much drink.

Tamsin was there with a face like thunder, but nobody took any notice of her obvious annoyance at her husband. Nobody, that is, until Ayda went over to talk to her. From where he was Henry could not overhear the conversation until Tamsin exploded.

"That's disgusting and I won't!" she shouted.

All the room stopped their own conversations and turned to stare at her.

It was Charles who broke the silence by saying quietly to one of the eunuchs, "Three, here and now."

In a matter of seconds Tamsin found herself naked on a whipping bench, watched by the assembled company.

She lifted her head to shout at her husband, "You can whip me to death. I still won't!"

Whish ... THWACK!

Her protests were cut short as the first blow fell and she screamed as a beautiful red-to-black stripe appeared across her buttocks, just above half way. Clearly she had had forgotten her experience of real punishment, for she stopped struggling and lay with her mouth open, trying to draw breath. When she finally did so, she screamed aloud.

As she quietened, the Emir spoke to her, in a conversational tone, "You didn't make so much fuss about a little whipping when I had you in the Golden Palace."