Many of the girls carried bags containing small instruments of pleasure and torture - carved and polished pieces of bone for rubbing beneath the stem, single and double rings for fitting over it, smooth flexible narrow sticks for pushing down the tube and small leather cups with cords which would sheath only the cap and leave the rest of the stem exposed. The men, often untethered, would be fitted with one or more of these instruments and placed in a ring of girls who would smack or whip them. Some of the girls had designed leafy bowers in which they would lie with the men and amuse themselves by testing out these toys. In one such place, where there were many women gathered, Ikahiti pushed between them in order that Anya might get a better view, and Anya, though she shivered, was enthralled. The men were being pierced, as the Princess's slave had been pierced, though in more varied ways. No ceremony was involved here, as it had been with Anya; the piercing and the attachment of rings of varying sizes and lengths of polished bone, and the insertion of small, shaped beads beneath the loose skin, was performed while the victims whimpered on their knees and their cockstems rested on the block. The places of attachment or insertion were in the loose skin of the underside of the stem - at any point, it seemed, between the base and the tip - though most commonly in the region of the plum, and the usual procedure was the attachment of a large ring, which once inserted could be swung up and the head of the cock pulled through it so it thereby formed a collaring stricture round the cap, a tight narrow band of gold biting into the flesh below the rim. In some cases, as soon as the ring was fitted and the cap forced through, the mere pressure of the bedded ring would precipitate an emission.
Ikahiti watched for a long while and Anya, though she pretended to look away, found her gaze frequently returning. Ikahiti glanced at her, then moved round behind her, pressing her hand to Anya's belly and gently lifting her ring, moving it only very slightly, yet making Anya's knees begin to buckle slowly as she listened to the groans. She touched Anya's flesh itself where it was pierced by the ring, squeezing it and gently nipping, while on the block, the cockstem that had just been treated was sucked with its newly installed ring in place. The lips withdrew but the tongue snaked out in time to capture the flow of milt. The woman then led her man away. He was soon replaced by another.
The most intimate procedure involved the cutting of a small nick in the skin below the plum, followed by the progressive insertion of round beads or one or more polished oval stones. The cut was kept very small and the larger stones were inserted with difficulty by stretching the skin. The nick was then resealed with a stitch and the cockstem was left with this small bag of stones at the end of the plum. When the slave was made to stand, the weight of stones pulled the end down a little even when the stem was quite erect, and the stones were visible as small irregular bumps beneath the skin. Anya wondered at the function of these stones, but on hearing a shout, Ikahiti, seemingly bored now, led her away.
The call had signalled the arrival of food. The women sat round in a ring and bowls were passed round, each containing a different delicacy: chicken, fish pieces, shellfish - though those that Anya recognised as oysters, she would not touch, for they were raw, and even cooked, she knew oysters to be awful - but more temptingly, there were nuts and many kinds of succulent aromatic fruit. She felt quite hungry. There was also a pleasant drink; sweeter than the nutmilk, it tasted almost like wine and it made her feel warm inside. When she had finished, Anya lay down with Ikahiti by her side. There was much activity around them still. When Anya turned, that Ikahiti might stroke her back, she saw again the Princess and she sat up, disturbed and anxious. She could not understand how this woman - who was these women's leader and was supposed to set an example - could be so cruel to her man and perform these abuses with such coolness.
He lay face down on a horizontal tree trunk two feet above the ground. His stem, now very shiny and slick, had somehow been forced to stretch out behind him along the top of the trunk which his feet were tucked beneath. The Princess had discarded her feathered cloak and sat astride him, facing backwards with her thighs gripped about his waist. Leaning over, rocking gently, she dripped spittle down upon his cock, then smoothed it carefully into the plum. Then looking up, she noticed Anya and called to Ikahiti to bring her over. Anya was very scared to be made to kneel on the sand so close to the Princess. She could see the intentness in her gaze now as she worked upon the man, squeezing him between her thighs, pressing her patterned naked flesh into the furrow in his back, then adjusting his chain, which had been drawn taut and inserted deep between the open cheeks of his buttocks, then tasting the weight of his nearness to pleasure through the wet pads of her fingers as they applied the pressure rhythmically to the underside of his stem. The saliva was dripped again; he murmured when the globule touched, then spread across his skin. The Princess rubbed a finger-sized smoothly curving length of bone into this spittle, then slipped it through the ring and held it pressed against the tube. The cockstem weeped. She encouraged this weeping; she opened her thighs, then opened her sex above his back and something long and slender and golden dangled from between her legs to touch his backbone. It lay against him when she lowered, then it disappeared when she hunched forward to massage the curved bone finger against the base of the tube as she slowly licked the plum, which suffered tiny tremors and a clear and steady leak. Then she sat up, removed the bone finger and carefully pulled the chain until it was withdrawn. A piece of thick and twisted root was inserted in its place. Then he was allowed to stand and the Princess donned her cloak but played with him for some minutes more before leading him away with his sex burgeoning heavily and the root still bedded securely between his cheeks. At no time that day had Anya seen his pleasure fully spilled.
She turned to see Ikahiti staring at her, then pointing to the cord about her waist. Ikahiti's fingers interlaced, then drew apart. Anya's heart was in her mouth, for Ikahiti meant to remove the cord and free the captive ring. Ikahiti made her stand, then she touched the cord, lifting it, causing delicious pressure against the swelling hood, drawing the ring tight, teasing out her nubbin. Anya felt the sliding bead being released, then the cord being unfastened and taken away, leaving her feeling deliciously naked. Ikahiti's fingertips tickled down that naked belly and through the hairs and found the small gold ring, which had remained uplifted, impressed against the hood and held fast by the swelling pressure in her nubbin. Ikahiti gently rotated it down and Anya's knees began to buckle. Her softened sex lips were carefully closed about it, as if to seal the ring within, yet they opened at the top again to form a tiny gape, for the ring had been threaded through her from side to side; it could never be hidden completely but instead pushed out and glistened in the light.
As Ikahiti continued to touch Anya and to make these small adjustments to the ring, the feelings as it moved were so intense, so awful, yet so delicious too and strange - the pleasure and the fright and the harrowing sensitivity as the gold thread turned inside her - that she knew not what would happen next, whether she would faint from such a dissonance of feelings or disgrace herself completely by doing something worse. But Ikahiti moved those shuddering legs apart and slipped the cord, which had cooled now, between them. Using one hand at the front and the other at the back, she drew the cord from side to side across the lips which, as the knees bowed wider, continued to moisten and swell. Then while Anya stood there, Ikahiti wetted her fingertips and played with the ring until Anya almost died; she collapsed against Ikahiti, who gently lowered her to the ground and moved closer, until her face filled Anya's vision.
'Abaata ...' Ikahiti whispered and Anya pushed her belly out and opened her thighs until they ached. The deep brown eyes held her while the smooth bronze fingertips tasted the taut and tender skin and Anya's honeydew leaked from the warm soft lips around the gold ring standing hard now, at one with the pinned bud sleeved around it. It wanted to be touched, to be moved, to be kneaded. But Ikahiti merely brushed the skin of Anya's thighs and kissed her nipples and breathed her body scent while Anya's belly slowly tightened and Anya's sex lips leaked.
The afternoon advanced; Ikahiti lay with Anya, stroking her body, her belly, then turning her and brushing her fingertips down her back, but not touching Anya more intimately than this; around them, the activities became less frenzied, the pace more leisurely, the punishments less acute and eventually the crowd broke up into small groups, sometimes of women only, but frequently with several women to one or two men, and these groups retreated from the clearing and into the surrounding leafiness.
Ikahiti had been tickling the base of Anya's spine and Anya had her eyes closed. Between her legs she felt warm and swollen; she liked that feeling now - the pressure and the constant wanting, and the gentle arousal that the tickling caused. Ikahiti turned her on her back, opened out her legs and examined her. Suddenly she spread the lips, slipped two fingers into Anya and Anya almost came. 'Tika!' Ikahiti warned, looking over her shoulder then, as Anya squirmed on the verge of pleasure, she looked at Anya lovingly and whispered under her breath, 'Nisha, Kalisha ...' then more loudly, 'Shi-shirula, shi ...' And Ikahiti wetted and gently rubbed the nubbin ring.
A young girl, the same one that they had seen with the woman under the tree, appeared above them. The lips of her sex were still swollen and marked with the bright blue dye. She stood watching for a while, as Anya's mouth opened and Anya drew breath deeply each time that Ikahiti's fingers penetrated wetly, deeper, and Anya moaned and her knees opened wider until they touched the ground. Then the girl knelt beside Anya and her small fingers began to touch the ring in place of Ikahiti and Anya's pleasure came on so strongly that she thought that she had wet herself, her belly turned hard and tried to lift but Ikahiti held her, pushed deeper and touched the mouth of Anya's womb while the young girl gently turned the wetted ring. Anya's sex contracted hard about Ikahiti's fingers and the pleasure came again. Ikahiti then removed her fingers and sucked them while the girl took the narrow skin band that had fastened her hair and slipped it through the ring. The soft thin leather, looped through the ring, lay loosely against Anya's belly; its presence there made Anya feel aroused again. Then the girl lifted it over to make it trail against the open wetness of her sex; it became coated in her honey as the girl continued to play with it and press it into her, then tease it out again.
Eventually, she was helped to her feet and led, with the leather skin band sticking to her at first, then hanging down and touching its wet warmth against the tops of her thighs, to a bower in the leafy bushes where two people were already installed: a man - Ikahiti's slave - and a woman, the same one who had prepared the girl. The slave was already groaning with pleasure, though as the woman was above him as he lay belly down with his face turned to the side, it was unclear what she was doing. Ikahiti settled down with Anya on a pile of leaves and the young girl joined the woman.
There were various bowls and sticks and straps scattered about and also several of the long fruits, of the kind that Anya had seen used on the man the other day. They ranged from narrow to thick and from small to large. When the woman climbed off the slave, she turned him over. 'Tika,' she said when he tried to move away as she touched his erect stem. The expression on Ikahiti's face was one of interest; she watched what the woman did, but without any visible sign of jealousy. She seemed quite happy to allow this other woman to use her man, just as she had allowed the girl to touch Anya and to precipitate her pleasure. There appeared no jealousy at all between these women and Anya then recalled that the only sign of it that she had seen was when Anya had spoken to the man in the Lidiran tongue and that had caused Ikahiti to become very angry indeed and to punish him.
Then Anya gasped at what she saw - the stem was lifted back and its underside was bulging; there was a pebble beneath the surface of the plum. His skin had been opened and filled; a small stitch could be seen and a spot of blackened blood. Ikahiti now became very interested indeed; her eyes widened, but still she did not move from Anya's side. Almost absent-mindedly, she played with Anya's nipples, rolling the tips then lifting them and rubbing the undersides. The man turned very pale as the woman placed one hand behind the head of his stem and with the fingers of the other, began to move the pebble around inside him. The oval bump moved below the surface, then stood out progressively further as the skin tightened from the unwanted pleasure of the movement against the sensitive inner core, and the cockstem pumped up until the veins stood out. While the woman held it near the base and pulled the skin down, the young girl, kneeling over his prostrate form, sucked the underside of the plum. When her head lifted, the pebble formed a shiny bump. The flat of her tongue now pushed against this stone to move it in a circle, then her lips formed a sucker which once more drew it to a bulge, the shape of which was clearly visible through the skin.
The girl moved up his body and began to nip and play with the area on and around his nipples. The woman took a double loop of cord and drew it tightly round his bag, so each ballock stood out shiny and separated from its mate. She gradually inserted a thin short rod into his stem and slowly turned it whilst her thumb massaged the stone beneath the skin and the girl continued working the nipples, tugging at them until they and their surrounds had engorged almost to the size of her own small teats. Then she began to bite them and to pull them with her teeth. Between the man's legs, the short rod had almost disappeared and the woman's lips descended to close round the cap. The man groaned. When her head lifted, her tongue was still protruding but the rod was gone. She sat back. The girl moved up the body and held the man's head very firmly by the hair. She kissed him with her small bare sex; the blue lips spread about his own; the bone projection pressed against his nose. The woman gently rubbed his stem and the short slick rod slipped slowly out, forced by the gentle pumping. Bending forwards, the woman thrust out her tongue and pushed the rod back in again while the young girl held him firmly with her thighs against his cheeks.