Flowers of the Imperial Palace Ch. 02

There was a certain, quite subtle, sound in the air. It was very pleasing. Of course, the harem had been designed so as to soothe the senses, and its background murmur had been carefully composed by court architects. There was the burbling of fountains, the chirp of small songbirds, and the low rustle of air drawn in through vents high in the walls specifically so that it could waft through the leaves of the tall trees. All of these things had been set in place and finely balanced, so that none of them overwhelmed the others, and so that each could be heard only subtly, at an unobtrusive volume, from this particular spot where she, empress, most liked to lay herself down.

But now there was another sound just beneath the hum of the harem, one that Marakhthanilla so enjoyed hearing that she sometimes lay there for up to an hour, just listening.

Breathing. She heard her own most loudly. She could see it too, her chest and beyond it her stomach slowly inflating and deflating with each long sigh. And all around her were the breaths of the score or more of girls who had just attended to her, and who now lay, sleeping or lounging, exhausted.

Each girl made a slightly different sound. And though they blended together, some were so distinctive that Mara could still pick them out, without looking. Somewhere behind her she heard the curious shrill whistle of Lyrellie snoring, something the girl only did when truly sated and sleeping very deeply. And elsewhere, further away, there was what sounded almost like words, a muffled, slurring conversation between two drowsy voices. That would be Lissi's two younger sisters, who liked to curl up together when they slept, and seemed to whisper incoherently to each other as they dreamed.

Other girls breathed more quietly, and their voices were washed into the general murmur. Some punctuated their sighs with little groans, the sweet, feeble sound emitted by a body that can give no more. When one of them did so, often another girl lying somewhere else would answer with a moan of her own, as if in sympathy, and then more would join in, in a slow cascade of voices, some shrill, some hoarse, some louder than others, all exhausted.

Whenever she heard that sound, a slow thrilled passed through Mara's body, and she felt a little echo of her recent pleasure. She liked sometimes to think of it as the sound of victory. Not so much a victory won over the girls she had just used, but a personal one, an affirmation of her power, and of her fitness for her role. She had brought every girl to climax inside her, many of them several times, and yet here she lay, still awake, and even preparing to heave herself upright and walk away, to return to being empress.

Before rising, she would need to extract herself from the embrace of the two girls who still lay either side of her, clinging to her body. Marakhthanilla tested her limbs, subtly tensing her muscles. In her left hand she felt the long, limp weight of a girl's dick. The skin of the shaft was still slightly damp, but she could feel a patch of the dampness beginning to dry and turn to a delicate flaky residue. She squeezed, gently, and felt a snort of breath at her neck. She turned and saw Lissi curled up beside her, her head at Mara's shoulder.

At her right lay Lor, the slight, shy southern girl who had been the very last to enter her. That had been the girl's third time, and nearing exhaustion she had fallen asleep while still inside. Mara had managed to wring the girl to orgasm nonetheless, with a few firm caresses of her cunt. Then she had rolled Lor gently over to where she now lay, her head nuzzled beneath Mara's armpit, and the girl's long black hair plastered in a matted carpet across Mara's arm and shoulder.

Marakhthanilla hauled herself to one side. She felt the weight of her bust slough across her chest, and one breast spilled over onto Lor's sleeping face. The girl shook her head idly from side to side, searching, then found Mara's nipple and began suckling in her sleep. Mara recalled having learned that it was the custom among some southern peoples for girls to continue drinking from the breasts of other women in the tribe until they were married.

Lor nuzzled again, with more vigor, pressing her face into Mara's breast and pulling herself close at Mara's side. Mara's body shook in the girl's embrace, and she felt Lissi at her other side stir in response. Lissi threw her arm over Mara's chest, then her leg followed, slung across Mara's hips. She felt the girl's dick against the skin of her thigh. It was soft, but twitched faintly as Lissi ground herself idly against Mara's body.

Mara felt the will to move begin slowly to burgeon inside her. She was about to heave herself upright. Her muscles, though still slack and slumped against the warm stone floor, were coursing with readiness, an imagined tension. She needed only to give her body the word, the final impulse.

"My... my Goddess?" a voice mumbled hoarsely at her ear. Lissi stirred, and a faint spasm of her hips pressed her limp dick into Mara's thigh. A thin trickle leaked from its tip onto Mara's skin, warm, and then quickly cool.

Marakhthanilla lifted her arm up and away from her body to lay it back down around Lissi's shoulders. She clutched the girl to her chest, stroking her hair, "Lissi?"

Lissi groaned, a rasping, exhausted sound that choked off as her throat blew dry. Her lips pursed and grazed at the skin of Mara's shoulder. The girl drew a long breath through her nostrils, then whispered again, haltingly, "My Goddess, your... your... body, your cunt. I... unhh... I want it, again. Once more. Please."

Mara lifted her head a little to look down, past the rise of her own bust and her stomach, to where the tip of Lissi's dick protruded, the shaft squashed between Lissi's thigh and her own.

"Lissi. For as long as I am here in the harem with you, you may empty yourself in me. That is what most pleases me. But..." Mara hesitated, seeking a formulation that would least wound the girl's pride, "You have pleased me already so much. Now you must wait, until you are next ready."

Lissi's leg stiffened, and trembled. She ground her hips once more and a pained frown crossed her drowsy face. "I... cannot make myself ready," her voice broke, almost into a sob, "But I want it. To please you. May I...?"

"Yes?" Mara lifted her head again to check Lissi's expression.

The girl's eyes were still closed, and she was frowning, as if in concentration, "May I eat a blossom for you?"

Marakhthanilla kept her eyes on Lissi's, hoping to be able to gauge better the girl's state of mind. But Lissi's eyelids remained scrunched shut. Perhaps the girl was deliberately trying to avoid revealing herself, did not want Mara to see how exhausted she was. Or she was simply thinking.

"Are you sure that is what you want?" Mara asked.

She felt the muscles of Lissi's slender thighs tauten and clench, grasping for purchase against Mara's softness, and squeezing a tiny droplet of wetness from Lissi's dick where it was wedged between their bodies.

"Yes. Goddess. Please," Lissi replied.

Mara ran the palm of her hand over Lissi's hair, stroking her. She sighed, "Very well."

Mara nuzzled the back of her head against the stone floor, subtly repositioning herself so that she could crane her neck a little backwards and look straight up to the glass canopy high above. She cast some of her hair from her eyes, pursed her lips, then blew a simple melody in whistles. Fourteen notes in all, meandering up, down, up and then finally down again in curious jumps of tone. Wistful, and oddly discordant. She listened to the shrill sound ring back faintly against the stone of the harem walls. Satisfied that she had been heard, she held Lissi's head and continued stroking her fingers through the girl's hair.

Though Mara had thought herself sated, she now found herself stirring with a slowly renewing excitement. Lissi's slim body pressing against hers, the girl's quiet whines of desire, wanting her. It was the one notion that always succeeded in rousing her no matter the state of her energies, the thought that the girls needed her. That they needed to put themselves in her, to empty themselves there, and to please her.

She looked up again to the canopy, scanned the curling vines of the llimhendel that clustered and tangled at the tops of the walls, and spied a blurry speck. It descended, darted once and then twice into the thicker carpet of leaves about the wall trellis, then quickly flitted out into the open space above and dropped, plunging towards her.

When the buzzing shape loomed suddenly in front of her face, Mara almost flinched. But she knew the precision with which the kulhaa birds flew. The bird's body, no larger than an eyeball, hovered just in front of her nose, as if fixed perfectly into that exact spot in space. Its feathers swept with waves of iridescent purple and orange as the leaf-filtered light from above crossed its body. Its wings beat too fast to be visible as anything more than a darkened blur, but Mara heard their hum, and felt their power in the breeze blowing against the skin of her face.

"Thank you," Mara smiled. She reached carefully for the bird's beak and took hold of the protruding stems of two llimhendel blossoms.

It seemed to her as if there was a trace of comic reluctance in the way the bird opened its beak only slowly as it relinquished the flowers. Mara looked into the bird's tiny eyes, then whistled again, and it flitted suddenly away, was gone so fast that she did not even see in which direction it had departed.

"So, Lissi," Mara turned her attention back to the girl who was lying slumped across her, "Sweet girl. Let us eat a blossom together. If that is what you want."

"I want," Lissi groaned. She reached out her hand, still without opening her eyes.

Mara gave her one of the llimhendel flowers, keeping Lissi's trembling hand clasped in hers until she was sure that the girl was not going to fumble and drop it. Lissi's eyelids were now finally open, and though her slightly slackened lips and the sheen of drying sweat on her face spoke of exhaustion, her eyes were bright, and wide with longing. The flower disappeared quickly and messily into Lissi's mouth, her lips nibbling eagerly at the petals. One of them escaped, and fell, but Lissi's fingers flitted to her chin and scrabbled it back in. Then a brief wincing frown crossed her face as she swallowed.

Marakhthanilla smiled to herself. She knew that the petals were mostly inconsequential. She had studied the work of the harem botanists, the histories of their experimentation. Almost all of the flower's potency was in the dusty pollen at its heart. Some was in the nectar that it secreted, but the kulhaa bird would have drunk that before delivering it.

"Why don't you lie down?" Mara pushed gently against Lissi's flank, "The blossom will work on you. You can rest while you wait."

Lissi grunted, and rolled aside and onto her back. Her arm flopped across her body, then she lifted it and laid it out above her head.

Mara shrugged off the other girl at her side, Lor, and sat up. She took hold of Lor's shoulders and carefully lifted and dragged the girl a slight distance aside. She waited, watched Lor stir and smile in her sleep, then she lifted the second llimhendel blossom and held it in front of her eyes. The petals were a very dark, deep green, wispy and ragged. Not everyone found the flowers attractive. They were in any case rarely used decoratively, because of their potency. But Mara liked them. She sometimes had them brought to the imperial apartments, and her bedchamber was decorated with several little icons each consisting of a single dried blossom, pressed between two panes of glass.

She pressed the flower to her lips, took one long savoring sniff of its particular mealy aroma, then slipped it between her lips. In her mouth, she held it crumpled under her tongue, gently sucking on it. Its effects on her would be extremely mild. The dickgirls were much more susceptible, it was for them that the plant's properties had been bred. Mara had discovered early in her reign that even for a breeding woman she was particularly insensitive to the flower's seed. When she ate the blossoms together with a harem girl, it was mostly out of a sense of ceremony, a small symbol that linked her role to theirs, like an everyday rite of marriage.

After a few long breaths Mara bent her legs and turned, clambered up and onto her knees.

"Come," she crawled over to where Lissi lay, "I will lie on top of you. As the blossom takes you, you can let yourself grow up into me."

Lissi looked up. Her eyes focused and then widened as Mara clambered over to poise herself on all fours on top. Mara lowered her hanging breasts, felt their weight diminish and cease tugging on the skin of her back as they came to rest on Lissi's face, sloughing over the girl's cheeks. Lissi groaned, and reached up to press her hands against the sides of Mara's breasts, grip them and knead them, then thrust her face between them. Mara felt the tickle of Lissi's dry lips on her skin.

Mara lowered the rest of her body and laid herself out, aligning her spread thighs across Lissi's hips. She was shorter than Lissi, by perhaps half a head or more, and she found she had to shuffle back to poise herself properly. The bare front of Lissi's body was warm, and damp with sweat.

Once Mara was satisfied that her weight was in place and she would not have to shift further, she relaxed and slowly let herself rest. She had lain on Lissi before, she knew that the girl liked it. Many of them did. Still, she took care to leave some of her weight on her knees and on one hand. With the other hand, she reached round the small of her back and down between her spread thighs, sought out Lissi's dick.

Lissi mumbled and shook her face between Mara's breasts when Mara found her, and took her in a firm grip. Lissi was a reasonably big girl, her dick was long enough that the end of it protruded from Mara's fist, even when half soft. When Mara gave it a first probing squeeze she felt it pulse and thicken against her palm. She could feel too that the shaft of it was coated in the fine flakes of dried wetness, the wetness of Mara's cunt, and Lissi's own seed. It rubbed away, dusty, as Mara began to stroke.

She lifted it, slapped it against the slit of her cunt, then rubbed it on her folds. She felt the warm excitement of anticipation spread out from within her, then when she rubbed the tip of Lissi's dick again back and forth she felt the glide of wetness, pushed and pressed, and nudged it into herself with her fingertips. Then she let go, and brought her hand back to the stone floor beside her to take a little more of the weight of her torso.

Inside, Mara felt with a wry satisfaction a slow stiffening and lengthening, Lissi pushing up into her. The llimhendel blossom would soon be at work in Lissi's body, inflaming her, but it was perhaps a little early. This first surge of arousal was Mara's own achievement. She had learned how to goad the girls when she needed to, when she wanted more and they seemed unable to continue. Laying herself on top was a very reliable trick. Smothering them with her body, letting them feel her weight, and her softness, and know that she was pinning them down to use them.

Mara could feel herself becoming very wet again. She quickly became slippery enough that it felt as if Lissi might slide out of her before becoming usefully hard. Mara had to resist the urge to clench and pleasure herself, for fear that she would squeeze Lissi out.

But then as Mara felt her cunt pulse and warm with excitement, begin to contract itself against her will, Lissi's hips thrust up beneath her, driving deeper in, in time with a firm throb of stiffness.

Lissi twisted her head to free her face from between Mara's breasts, and gasped, "My Goddess. I feel it. The blossom. It is... I am ready to give to you."

"Good," Mara purred, letting her voice resonate in her chest, so that Lissi would feel it.

She was for a moment unsure whether the girl meant to announce merely that she was hard, or that she was already nearing climax. Then Lissi whined and sobbed, grabbed one of Mara's breasts in her hand and slid her gasping lips onto Mara's nipple, grazing it, stroking it with her teeth as she thrust again, several times.

"Goddess, Goddess... your... cunt... want... oh, oh! Oh!"

Lissi coughed, her chest convulsing beneath Mara's body. Saliva sputtered from the girl's lips and she groaned, haltingly, her voice a wet rasp. She continued to thrust as she gurgled and sighed, and Mara felt her own pleasure suddenly stoked and ignited by the slick rubbing at her entrance, and the tremor of Lissi's movements against the nub of her cunt, pressed against Lissi's slim stomach.

Mara's skin flushed and she let herself be swept by the simple sore warmth of unexpected climax. Inside, Mara felt the gush and spray of Lissi spending herself, then heard the quiet squelch of the thinner part of the liquid seeping out of her while Lissi continued to plow upwards.

"Good. Good girl. You are filling me. Very good," Mara brought her hand to Lissi's hair to stroke it as the girl grunted and twitched out the last of her spurts.

Mara swept her breasts once more across Lissi's groaning face. Lissi's brow was wet with sweat, and her cheeks were hot. Mara arched her back, stretched, pressing her hips down to keep Lissi buried inside her while she reared up and lifted her head to the dome of the harem and sighed.

"My Goddess?" Lissi's voice croaked.

"My girl?" Mara looked down and smiled.

"I- I am still hard for you. I can fill you again."

"Good," Mara purred. She twisted her hips idly, testing Lissi's stiffness. The girl's dick slid inside her as she moved. It felt thick, and rigid.

"But..."

"Tell me," Mara looked into Lissi's moist and drowsy eyes.

"My limbs are tired," Lissi coughed out a tiny saliva-wet sob of frustration, "I cannot move them, to move in you."

"Then let me sit on top of you, and ride you," Mara replied.

"Does that please you?" Lissi looked up at her.

Mara set her hands on Lissi's chest, across the slight cushion of the girl's small, flat breasts, "Anything that will make you fill me, pleases me."

Grunting, Mara waddled her legs forward to bend them at the knee, taking care to keep Lissi lodged inside herself, then she settled back, sitting up to straddle Lissi at the hips.

Now upright, Mara looked out over the clusters of naked girls that still lay sprawled or huddled in pairs among the foliage of the harem's central garden. She watched one of them staggering to her feet. The girl was quite tall, and thin, even a little bony, and flat chested, with very long and luxurious brown hair. Her skin, not dark but slightly golden from the sun, was dashed with freckles across the shoulders, and over the bridge of her nose.

"Inyll," Mara spoke the girl's name as she met her gaze.

The girl smiled at her weakly. She shrugged off the idly grasping arm of another girl who had been sleeping beside her, then finished lurching upright. She straightened her long legs and took one trembling step towards Mara.

Inyll, Lissi's younger sister, had the same full, smiling lips. She had a lot of Lissi's boisterous confidence too. Though the resemblance was striking, her beauty was a little sweeter, more girlish, where Lissi's was stern and elegant.

"My Goddess," Inyll called out, hoarse, as she stumbled forward.

"My girl," Mara smiled.

"I-I..." Inyll almost staggered into Mara as she pulled up in front. She righted herself, stood and caught her breath, "I am not... not spent. I can... I want..."

Mara glanced at the girl's dick, hanging soft and heavy between her slender thighs. It had the same pleasing length as her sister's. It was perhaps thick with the very first flush of excitement, seemed to be pulsing in time with the girl's sharp breaths.