Golden Girl Ch. 09

Ravishing Chastity

"Please, your Grace, O please!"

Dorée sank to her knees, pleading for she knew not what. She was still flushed with arousal and overwrought with violent emotions. Her Lady was gone. There was no one to stand between her and the Duc. And the Duc's expression was as ominous as a thunderhead on the horizon.

"You have sinned, Dorée," the Duc pronounced. "You saw what happened to Berenice when she took her pleasure without permission. She was in line for severe punishment when you intervened –and believe me, what you suffered in her place was but a brief, ceremonial display. There are more dire consequences for those who are truly guilty."

Reaching down into the carven armrest of his judge's chair, the Duc drew out a wicked looking lash with many tails of leather. The tips glinted with barbs like rose-thorns wrought of silver.

Dorée bowed her head before him, tears flowing freely. At the same time, a dark delight stirred in her heart. Remembering the stinging stroke of the crop on her skin when she took Berenice's punishment gave her a voluptuous shiver. She had been denied such intense sensations for so long (or so it seemed to her) that she almost anticipated the cleansing pain of the lash. Instinctively she bent at the waist and placed her forehead on the floor, baring her naked back.

The Duc drew back his arm.

Dorée drew breath to scream.

The lash did not fall.

Long moments passed, so long that eventually Dorée dared to peek up at the Duc from under the thick golden mane of hair that had fallen around her face. He was looking at her with a contemplative expression on his face.

"You want this, don't you?" He said softly, stroking the lash.

"Y-yes, your Grace." Dorée admitted.

"Is a punishment desired truly punishment, then? Or is it not rather a reward?"

The Duc paced away from her, returning to his seat of judgement. Dorée sat back on her heels and raised her head to show that she was attending to his words. Clearly he was getting into one of his philosophical moods. She tried to quell her regret as he began his contemplations.

"Your body poses a riddle, Dorée, one that requires most a most subtle answer. On the one hand, you are naturally chaste. You do not seek to seduce others. You resist any who try to take your maidenhead, including my Chamberlain. You submit to pleasure only as far as obedience demands. This evening's slip was in fact the first time you succumbed to the temptation of your own flesh. Did you see any trace of blood on your hands, however small?"

"No, your Grace." Dorée said quietly, looking down at her hands. She had felt something stretchy around her opening, like a ring of filmy flesh with a hole in the centre that she could reach through, but there had been no blood, nor pain of tearing. The wetness on her fingertips had dried white.

"I see. Then your maidenhead is most likely still intact. Despite all that you have been subjected to, you remain a miraculous virgin. And yet. And yet, your maiden's body craves the most jaded and sophisticated of carnal acts –things that most of my subjects do not learn to appreciate for many years. I can usually punish willful servants with pain and reward them with pleasure. But you, petite innocente, I cannot punish with pain, for it would only lead you to the height of arousal."

Dorée could not deny it. There was a paradoxical power in her weakness.

"Now, how to discipline you? That is the question. We could try inflicting such extremes of torment that even you would not enjoy it. You might not survive a full crucifixion, but perhaps if we only disfigured you..."

Dorée's blood ran cold. She tried not to show how the prospect terrified her, lest it goad him into action.

"Or we could try the opposite extreme. Yes, that seems to be most effective with one such as you."

The Duc put away the lash and drew out instead another object. It appeared at first glance to be a walking stick, and a very fancy one at that: long, slender, and made entirely of silver polished to a mirror-shine. The handle was like that of an ordinary walking stick, though deeply engraved with erotic figures. But on the end, where the ferrule should be, it was smooth, rounded, and slightly curved. It couldn't be very useful for keeping one's balance with that flared bulb on the end. It rather resembled...

Oh.

"Come, Dorée. The Reception Bed is not suited for this task, but I have a space for just such an occasion."

Dorée began to rise. Apparently she was too slow for the Duc, because he snapped his fingers and instantly two members of his Guard appeared to haul her to her feet. Her sex began to pulse once again as she was roughly handled by the lean, handsome young men.

"This way, this way!" The Duc called impatiently from down the corridor. "Herald, there you are! Notify my Court at once of an event in the Terraced Room. There are some among them who would be most incensed to miss the Ravishment of a Virgin, so call the news loud and clear, for your sake."

"Ravishment? My Lord–" Dorée wanted to cry 'Please, no!' She bit her tongue, sensing that this would only provoke him further. Still, he heard her unvoiced protest. He strode back into the dark corridor, where she had stopped dead in fear, to take her chin in his cruel fingers.

"Tut tut, we just established that you have earned a severe punishment, which you also desire. To be given back by force the pleasure you tried to take would be a deliciously ironic chastisement."

He stood back and considered her again, as if she were a portrait-painting in progress.

"Or would you rather I clap you in irons and put you back in the oubliette instead? I can do so, should it prove a better punishment to have your hands chained away from your licentious body entirely. You could stay there for, say, a month? Two?" His tone was genuinely solicitous, as if he would he be just as happy to chain her up as to ravish her if that was what she truly desired.

Confronted with this choice not as a threat but as a genuine offer, Dorée had to give pause. Could she bear a month with no hand to touch her but the clasp of the manacles around her wrist? Two months with no voice speaking to her but the sound of murmured comments from above? Perhaps if she had not tasted the joys of carnal bliss and daily conversation with the Scarlet Lady, she would have begged for the punishment that kept her most pure. But now when she listened to her innermost heart, she found that it spoke a new truth. Her purity was already sullied. There was no going back to the Garden of her innocence. She had to try a new path.

"My Lord, I will take the punishment you have devised. The Ravishment."

"Tell me why."

Dorée shook her head slowly, struggling to put it into words.

"Your Grace, I am...I am poisoned with lust. But the herbalist in my town used to say that 'Like cures like.' So perhaps this will burn away my sin through its own excess."

"Formidable!" The Duc clapped his hands together in delight. "Have the noble Greeks spoken through the mouth of a village witch? It was written in Ancient times that when King Telephos was cut by the spear of Achilles, the oracle of Apollo decreed the only cure to be rust from the same spear that did cause the wound. This kind of cure is called pharmakon: that which is both poison and remedy. I will wound you, Dorée, and it will cure you. Eventually."

Dorée knew nothing of the Ancient Greeks, so she simply curtseyed and held her obeisance, head down in submission.

The Duc spun on his heel and vanished into the room, slamming the door behind him.

The Guards drew Dorée up from her curtsey and draped her with a white silken cloth, which they tied in a Classical style at one shoulder, leaving the fabric to drape diagonally across her breast. It was so sheer that Dorée could see her own nipples, hard and rose-tinted, through the fabric. She hoped that her wetness would not also seep through the cloth and make it transparent just where she most wished to be hidden. She tried to move carefully as the Guards guided her up to the thresh-hold of the door. They held her there with her nose practically touching the smooth-grained mahogany. Waiting. This close, she could hear faint clatters and scrapes and, after a while, something that sounded like a crowd entering a church. After a while there came the sound of muffled words. She couldn't make out the meaning, or even if the language was French or Latin, but by the cadence of the voice it sounded like the Duc was intoning the words of an unholy Mass.

Suddenly, the wood in front of her nose was pulled away and Dorée beheld what lay in store for her. There was an altar, yes, and candles and acolytes. But it was also like a theatre or Coliseum, since the room was open to the storey above where the walls were lined with boxes forming a tiered gallery. This must be why it was called the "Terraced Room." The terraces were occupied almost to capacity by gentlemen and ladies. To judge by their lavish apparel, they were all esteemed guests of the Duc.

Dorée might have crumbled to her knees if the Guards were not holding her by the arms. There was a rising susurration of voices as the door opened. Dorée stared up in panic, until she recollected herself and lowered her eyes modestly. The Guards walked her forward until she was inside the room, but not yet in the circle of candles that surrounded the altar.

"The word Pharmakon holds three meanings," the Duc said, apparently continuing his sermon. "The first is poison. The second is remedy. These you know already. But the third and greatest of all is Pharmakos: the Sacrifice. The ceremonial death that brings life."

The Duc turned and gestured to Dorée just as the Guards pushed her into the light.

"Behold your Sacrifice!"

The Guard behind her slit the knot at her shoulder. The other pulled the cloth away with a flourish, baring Dorée's body.

The crowd hushed in a way that was worse than any jeer.

Dorée's legs began to give way in earnest. But before she could fall, the tallest of the Guards swept her up and, in one smooth motion, deposited her on the altar.

The Duc circled her once. With each pace, he struck the long silver staff he held on the floor. It reverberated with a bell-like clang.

When he reached her head, that first time around, he withdrew a long strip of white cloth from his robe and used it to bind her hands over her head.

He circled her again. Again, the staff beat a steady rhythm on the floor.

When he reached her head a second time, he took out a red cloth and pushed it into her mouth, tying it behind her head to gag her.

He circled her once more, ringing what sounded to her ears like her death knell.

When he reached her head the third time, he pulled out a cloth as black as night and tied it around her eyes. Dorée's body shifted in unease, but the Duc placed a hand on her breastbone, pressing down hard, and the weight stilled her as the Lady's hand had done before.

Dorée had been lying with her legs stretched out and pressed tight together. But now many hands steepled her legs and lifted her hips to place a thick pad or cushion under her buttocks. With her knees spread apart and her hips raised up, her most private areas were presented to the crowd. She could not imagine a more humiliating posture.

There was a rustling of cloth, and a smaller hand –an acolyte's, perhaps?– touched lightly between her legs. The fingers were slick with a paste that carried the pungent scent of chrism. They rubbed it into the pearl of her flesh slowly, reverently, in a profane anointment with holy oil. Moments later, the spot where the unguent had been applied began to tingle and burn. The chrism was mixed with some sort of herbal concoction meant to increase her pleasure –or perhaps to draw it out of her, to burn it out as like cures like. It was already almost more than she could bear. She could feel her heartbeat pounding between her legs so hard that she was certain everyone could see her sex pulsing of its own accord.

The Duc's free hand, which all this time was resting on her breast, now trailed down her body. The touch was erratic, sometimes scratching, sometimes tickling, sometimes caressing. When it found her sex, however, it was firm and questing. It rubbed her along her length, opening her lips, then dipped inside shallowly but purposefully. Dorée gasped. The Duc inhaled in heady satisfaction. The hand lifted away.

"The Virgin's honey flows thick tonight!"

Her gag was drawn up suddenly and the Duc's tongue thrust into hers. It was pungent with chrism and salty-slick with her own juices, licked from his fingers. Then he brutally pushed the gag back into her mouth and whispered to into her ear,

"With this kiss, I ravish thee. Prepare for the death of thy chastity."

His heat pulled away from her face. His footsteps ranged swiftly around her. When he was at the foot of the altar he drew up his rod. It rang out in warning as it scraped against the stone floor. Then, without a moment's hesitation, he plunged it deep into her opened sex. Dorée screamed into her gag at the pain and coldness. It was so cold, so hard inside her moist heat! It seemed to split her in two, cleaving her old life from her along with her maidenhead. The voice of the crowd rose to an ambient hum, breaking the silence for the first time.

Slowly the Duc withdrew the rod, only to thrust it back in even deeper than the first time. Dorée cried out again. It was like being cut with a knife. She thrashed against the altar. Distantly, she felt the Guards grab her bound wrists and shoulders to keep her in place. The Duc proceeded to pierce her mercilessly over and over. As he kept going, however, the sensation began to change. Her heat warmed the metal. The Duc began to tilt the slightly curved tip. Probing upwards, he found that soft, shallow spot she had massaged with her fingers in the act of self-pleasure. He knew with inexplicable precision just where it was and he exploited it. Her pain gave way to a deeper sensation, a carnal yearning. She became freshly aware of the delicious tingling caused by the unholy chrism on her most sensitive flesh. She was well past the point of no return now. Her thrashing took on an undulant rhythm, beseeching, seeking, pushing herself against the rod to drive it in deeper, to fill her up, to bring on the rise, the rise, yes...!

And then, everything stopped.

The rod was pulled out of her quivering sex and the blindfold yanked from her eyes. The first thing her eyes beheld as they focused was the phallic staff held high in the air above her. On its tip a trace of red gleamed in the firelight. The Duc lowered the staff to his mouth and kissed the tip, tasting her blood upon it.

"The virgin is no more!" He proclaimed.

Now there were raucous cheers and people calling to be allowed to kiss the staff. One fop yelled out,

"Aren't you going to finish her off now?"

"No." The Duc said firmly. "She shall not know full consummation until I command it."

Dorée squirmed frantically on the altar. She was still so close, so ready, so desperate for release. She whimpered through the gag to try and get his attention. She wanted more than anything to beg him to finish her. It was like being married only to have the priest stop before proclaiming her a wife. The ceremony of her ravishment was incomplete, profaned. Why? Why was he doing this?

The Duc smiled as if he knew exactly what she was thinking. He turned to address the audience.

"As of this night, the Golden Girl is to become a martyr to pleasure. Any one of you here may caress her, tease her, hurt her, and stimulate her, as much you like. But on one condition."

His voice rose to a shout of stern command.

"You MAY NOT bring her to consummation. Any member of this Court who does will be subject to the same public punishments she receives. This is my will!"

The crowd grew hushed, cowed by the violence of his outburst. But instantly the Duc smiled and went on in a perfectly civil tone, as if he had never threatened them at all.

"To be sure that no one goes too far –including the girl herself– she will be placed in chastity. But rest assured, she is no chaste maiden. Use her well. Let her come to know pleasure intimately through constant stimulation. She is lustful? Well then, make her lust on perpetually. This is her punishment for wantonly taking her pleasure: to be drowned in its unceasing excess. It will continue until I judge her ready for the final cure."

At this, two acolytes in black robes came out bearing what looked like a hinged belt of silver with a thick silver band between the legs. They lifted her bottom off the cushion and slid it up around her waist. They closed the hinge and locked it. The band pressed against her sex, cold and smooth and absolutely featureless. At first the pressure alone was enough to stimulate her already-aroused body, and her hips bucked against it involuntarily. The Duc turned to her and said,

"Dorée. If you should take any enjoyment from this device, know that it will be kept locked in place for an extra month for every climax you steal."

He pulled the gag from her mouth and asked if she understood.

"Please, no, please do it to me first, let me know what I'll be miss—"

There was a resounding crack as the Duc struck Dorée across the face.

"Do you understand?"

"Yes, your Grace," Dorée panted. Her voice shook with the surge of arousal the slap brought on.

In reply, the Duc gestured to his Guards. The men untied Dorée's bound wrists and sat her up. As they did so, one of them seized her breast and pinched her still-swollen nipple. The Duc clapped him on the shoulder and said,

"Golden Girl. Your martyrdom begins now."