Kate and Julia: Abducted in India (6 page)

A shout from behind kept Julia running full-tilt. She turned the corner and slammed into someone large and broad and very solid with enough force to send her sprawling.

Chapter 3

“I seem to have run into one of your more reluctant guests, Jefferson, or more accurately, she has run into me.” As he spoke, the man Julia had crashed into bent and hauled her to her feet. Her knees buckled and he moved his hands to her armpits and held her upright with her back towards him.

“Please don’t beat me! I’ll be good. Please, I’ll do anything you say. Don’t beat me. Oh, don’t!” Julia cared nothing for her humiliation as she pleaded. The cane was utter horror to her. She would do anything to avoid the wicked pain it would inflict on her defenceless buttocks.

“She seems very anxious to avoid a beating,” the man holding her said.

“She’s just seen her friend take one,” the man who had been about to deliver it replied, “but I’ve never seen a girl react so extremely to a straightforward caning. Now I’ll have to add some more strokes for her trying to run.”

“Oh no, please!” Julia begged desperately. Her head whirled and she sagged in the big man’s grasp.

He shook her gently. “Now don’t go fainting, girl. No one is going to beat you today. I give you my word on it.”

“Just a minute,” the man he had called Jefferson said, “she’s about to start training. She’s bound to need disciplining.”

“There are other ways than flogging her. I take it she is one of the two you told me about?”

Heart racing, Julia saw Jefferson nod.

“Then let me take her home with me.” Holding Julia up with one hand, he raised the other as Jefferson began to protest. “It will make no difference to her price, I promise. I will see she is properly trained and obedient before the day of the sale. And you will save the time and trouble of training her yourself.”

“Well…. I have my reputation to think of. If she isn’t satisfactory it will reflect badly on me.” Jefferson rubbed his jaw thoughtfully then gave a shrug. “Oh, very well. Since it’s you, I’ll make an exception. I expect you’d like to see the other one too?”

“That is why I rode over here.” Strong arms lifted Julia easily and carried her back to the room where Kate stood under the guard of one of Jefferson’s henchmen. The redhead exchanged a frightened glance with her, and then glared at Jefferson and the newcomer.

“Ah, a rare flower in this part of the world,” the man said, placing Julia back on her feet but retaining his hold.

The man guarding Kate gripped her tightly as she flinched from Jefferson’s outstretched hand. He slid the straps of her chemise from her shoulders and jerked the garment down until it joined her silken panties around her ankles. Kate’s cheeks flamed crimson at the exposure of the pointed mounds of her teats. Her leg twitched, and Julia had the impression the girl dearly wished she dared sink her knee into their captor’s groin.

“Hair like burnished copper,” the man holding Julia said admiringly, “and her skin is so light and fair. You did not exaggerate her beauty, and I fancy she is spirited too.”

Jefferson laughed shortly. “I fancy you are right. But I’ve never come across one yet who didn’t see sense in the end. Of course, white girls can be more difficult. They have a different mind-set to the Indians and you have to get through that before you can really get started. They usually have to learn the hard way that their European culture and ideas don’t mean a thing here. Once they do, they’re just like any other woman underneath. I’ve had well over a dozen before these two and never failed.”

“Time is short, however.”

“No matter. We might have to flog our little spitfire a bit more than most but you can be sure she’ll be ready.”

Shuddering, Julia looked at the purpling weals across Kate’s pale buttocks and sensed the man gripping her do the same.

“I hope she will not be marked on the day. That would be most displeasing,” he said.

“I know my profession, Jahngir Khan,” Jefferson said stiffly. “She won’t be.”

Julia gulped. The man was a native. In her distress, she had not seen him clearly, and from the way he spoke English had taken him for a white man. Looking up, she could see little of him but a firm jaw covered by a small, trimmed beard, and the skin of one cheek, no darker than that of the deeply tanned Europeans. Her belly turned over. He was one of the frontier tribesmen, one of the barbarians that Kate had talked about.

“Of course you do, Jefferson,” he said. “I beg your pardon. But if I may make one suggestion: do not have the red-haired one fully depilated. Leave some of that coppery fur on her mound. It will make her even more stimulating.”

“I’ll take your advice,” the slaver said. “Now, let’s see if she’s virgin.”

Kate bucked as he pushed his hand between her legs, shrieking in outrage and then pain as her struggles pressed her flogged backside against the man holding her. Despite her efforts to evade him, it was obvious from the way she abruptly gasped and stiffened that Jefferson had managed to force a finger into her sex.

“No hymen,” he announced. “Have you been fucking, girl?”

“Go to hell,” Kate spat.

Jefferson laughed. “You’ll take another caning before the day’s out if you carry on like that.” He turned to the tribesman. “It won’t alter her price.”

“I know,” Jahngir Khan said, and laughed. “As you British say, one does not look a gift horse in the mouth. The hymen is not important.

The hair and skin are enough.”

There was a vast, hollow feeling in Julia’s belly. They were talking about Kate as if she was an object, an article on a shelf to be bartered over, not a person at all. Jefferson had called them slaves and talked of selling them. And it was all real. He meant every word!

“Should I check her?” Jefferson asked with a nod at Julia.

“I will
ask
her when I get her home. A blonde and a redhead are a fine prize, Jefferson. Your reputation for always providing the best seems well deserved. Now I must take my leave. We will meet again on the appointed day.” Jahngir Khan scooped Julia into his arms.

“Oh, Kate!” she wailed as he carried her away.

“No, you can’t let him take her!” Kate cried. “He’s a heathen Pathan. He’ll treat her…” The rest of her words were cut off by the closing of the door.

Jahngir Khan’s grasp tightened on Julia’s anxiously wriggling body. He took her outside and set her on her feet beside a horse tied to a hitching post. Filled with a new horror by Kate’s words, Julia blinked in the bright sunshine. Wherever she was. it was definitely not Peshawar.

They were in a compound surrounded by a high wall and beyond it lay rank after rank of brown and yellow mountains for as far as she could see.

“You had better take those wet pants off,” the Pathan said.

Shaking with fear she cringed inwardly at the reminder of her panic and at the idea of exposing herself to him, but he took a light, cotton cloak from behind his saddle and draped it around her shoulders to give her some privacy. She was surprised but grateful. The soaked panties clung uncomfortably to her skin. Julia pulled them down and stepped out of them.

“Can you ride?” he asked.

Clutching the cloak around her, Julia saw him clearly for the first time as she faced him. She nodded, too afraid to speak. Eyes that were nearly black met her own, looking at her down a long, straight nose. The man’s face was angular – as hard and rugged, she thought, as the mountains that surrounded them. A neat, short black beard covered only the outline of his chiselled jaw and chin, and a narrow moustache crowned his upper lip. His wide mouth broke into a smile that did not look unkind.

Julia squeaked in fright as he took hold of her, but it was only to place her astride his horse. He mounted behind her and set the animal towards the gate of the compound. She sat stiffly, leaning forward to try to avoid contact with the body pressing against her back, though with two people filling a saddle made for one it was useless. Julia looked away from the curious stare of the man with the rifle who opened the gate, very conscious of the two arms holding the reins at each side of her waist, and conscious too of her bare crotch straddling the saddle bow with only the thin cloak between them.

“Relax,” Jahngir Khan said behind her. “We have a long ride ahead of us.”

She knew it was good advice but could not have followed it even if she had wanted to. Why had she ever chosen to come to this awful, alien land? Why had she not followed her parents’ wishes and stayed in England? It was bad enough for poor Kate, held captive in the house they were rapidly leaving behind and under the constant threat of another cruel beating. But at least the redhead was in the hands of white men, however wicked. She was riding towards an unknown and terrifying fate in the hands of a native savage. Julia’s belly shrank and a cold dread filled her heart.

*

“You bastard,” Kate spat as the man gripping her arm tightly pulled her into the room and closed the door. She had heard the one named Jefferson call him Ross when he had told him to see to her training.

“You shouldn’t call me that,” he said. “It’s disrespectful of my mother.”

“Bastard,” Kate repeated and the fire scorching her buttocks flared as the man’s big hand slapped them hard.

“There’s another reason you shouldn’t call me that, and I’ll give you a few more if you don’t behave yourself,” Ross said as she hissed in pain. “Stand over there.” He pointed to the floor beside a raised, white-tiled platform about as big as a single bed. Two such platforms took up much of the space in the room, which was almost identical to the bare cell where she and Julia had awoken from their drugged sleep barely two hours earlier.

Fiercely resentful, but far more afraid than she cared to admit even to herself, Kate felt the stinging throb of her backside, eyed the short, thin whip tucked in the man’s belt and did as she was told. Burning with humiliation she lowered her head as he looked her nude body up and down.

“You’re a pretty girl, all right,” Ross remarked. “First thing you need to learn is to hold your head up. A man likes to see his slave girl’s face. It’s a good part of what he’s paid for, after all.”

“I’m not a slave,” Kate said hotly. “For god’s sake, I’m a white woman. You have no right to treat me this way. You… you can’t just sell me.”

“Of course we can,” Ross said. “Do you think you’re the first white girl I’ve trained? Slavery is as natural for you as for Indian girls.

You’ll be surprised how quickly you’ll get used to it. So don’t go getting yourself into a temper.”

“A temper! How else should I feel, you b...” Kate bit back the insult as he laid a hand on his whip. “Listen, my father’s an important man in the government. He’ll pay you well if you take me back to him.”

The man’s harsh laugh shattered her faint hope that he might agree.

“He’d slap me in jail quick as I could blink and we both know it.

Now lie down. As the Captain said, we haven’t much time ’til the auction so we’d best get started.”

Swallowing hard, Kate lay on the tiled platform, propping herself on one elbow and careful to keep her caned bottom off its hard surface.

She pressed her shivering thighs tightly together and raised a trembling hand to cover her breasts. Warily she watched Ross raise a hinged metal bar in the shape of an inverted ‘U’ from the floor and lock it in place above the platform in line with her thighs. He moved to the opposite end and did the same with another bar, this time hinged at the edge of the platform, above her head.

“W… what are they for?” Kate asked, her belly flipping.

“Well, this one is to tie your wrists to,” Ross said.

“Oh, no!” Kate had half risen from the tiles when his palm pressing between her breasts forced her back down.

“We can do this hard, little miss, or we can do it easy,” he said.

“Either way you’ll end up where I want you, but hard means you’ll get a dozen licks of my whip to your backside first. Do you really want it hurting more than it does now?”

Kate definitely did not, but it was hard to stave off her panic as she felt the leather straps tighten around each of her wrists, and Ross secured them to the bar above her head. She wanted desperately to fight him.

“I don’t suppose you’ve ever been tied before,” he said, “but you don’t need to be afraid. Nothing drastic is going to happen, if that’s what you’re thinking.”

That was exactly what Kate had been thinking. “What are you going to do?” she asked, hating the tremor in her voice that betrayed her fear.

“Just tidy you up a bit, little miss. Nothing too unpleasant.” He gave her a smile. Much to her surprise, it seemed to hold some genuine warmth, but it did nothing to quell her mounting apprehension.

“Oh, please!” She cringed at her weakness. She had always felt so sure of herself, yet here Kate knew she was completely and helplessly out of her depth. Embarrassingly aware that she was revealing her most intimate places, she did not argue when Ross made her raise her legs and hook the backs of her knees over the second metal bar. It took all of her self-control not to kick out as he fastened a strap in a figure of eight above and below each of her knees, tightening the leather to hold her upraised thighs apart. At least the position lifted her smarting buttocks off the platform.

“Good girl,” Ross said. “No sense making trouble that will only get you punished.” He fed a leather belt through a metal ring on the platform at Kate’s right hip and then through another at her left, and buckled it tightly across her belly, which immediately fluttered with fear.

She could scarcely believe she was actually cooperating in her own enslavement. She was stronger than this. She had courage – she knew she had. Kate’s pounding heart and churning gut told another story.

With tears prickling her eyes, she watched Ross take something from a cupboard and sit at the end of the platform facing her spread thighs.

From there he could see everything, she thought, and felt her buttocks clench as she realized how close he was to her defenceless sex. Ross produced a roll of sticking plaster and tore off a strip.