Indian Spice

"Have you taken pleasure with any of the others?"

"No. Not yet."

"You should not hold back. Choose your favourites and they can join us. I will take you while you take them."

My veins were filled with fire at the words. A promise of bliss I could not imagine. For a moment I saw myself as a mural in the hall. My pale body bent over to feed on the quim of a sweet Indian girl whilst my master impaled me from behind.

"I will."

The shudder in my voice betrayed my ongoing desire and letting his staff slide from me he pushed his fingers inside to work me a third time. With my arms around his neck and my legs spread on either side of his body I stared down able to see every movement that sent tendrils of fire leaping up my spine.

"Oh god."

I cried out with all the power of my lungs as again I was encapsulated by the joy of orgasm.

We ate more fruit after and a servant girl brought us afternoon tea. It felt so strange, so liberating to lay in the arms of my master, naked to her averted eyes as she poured our beverage and passed us the delicate cup and saucers.

"Thank you." I said sitting up.

He sipped his before placing it to the side to cool.

"The English associate tea so readily with India. But the first tea plantations were in Assam with plants from China." He said.

"Before the British arrived our tea was herbal. For thousands of years, we made it with herbs and spices, the flowers and fruits of the wild. Now we have this to thank the Empress for. A wonderful concoction of the tea plant, and of course, milk and sugar."

I giggled.

"You make it sound so English."

"It is.

You see, we have a mutual exchange. You bring us tea and beautiful women with golden hair. And in return, we grow your crops and instruct you on emotional fulfilment."

I blushed.

"I think sir, you indeed bring me fulfilment but I cannot claim to be the bringer of tea with milk and sugar."

"But you do bring golden hair and skin the colour of milk."

Before I knew what was happening, the Maharaja had taken my tea from me and spun me to my hands and knees. A moment later he pulled my head back firmly with that golden hair and thrust into me again.

"Uhhh."

I was taken with an urgency. Deep hard drives into my cunny while his hand came over my mouth and fingers slipped in to play with my tongue.

"Uh. Uh."

I almost died when I was given my moment of pleasure once more, and I fell exhausted across his bed of cushions.

"Now, you may drink your tea." He said.

I returned to the depths of purdah accompanied all the way to the curtain by a servant. There, the charge of my protection returned to the ever-present eunuch.

I stepped inside and studied the murals once more for instruction. My first view of these paintings had left me embarrassed and in denial of my womanhood. As I looked on them today I felt empowered by them. A wish to experience the delights each position offered.

I went back through to the gardens where my sisters as I should consider them were busy swimming and sunning themselves. Some small children ran around me in a game of chase. Everything seemed more vivid to me, as though I was invigorated by the Maharani's touch.

How was this not closeness to god? I sat by a tree and sipped a juice another of the many girls offered me. My life in England seemed so far away. A distant memory. I'd feared Maya had been building me a prison to replace the debtor's gaol that had beckoned had I not found a husband. What she had given me was bliss. I felt it coursing in my very veins with a power the equal of any great steam engine.

TEN

Breakfast came as it always did. Delivered by servants, young boys and girls as yet not on the cusp of puberty, overseen by one of the only men permitted entry to this hidden world. A eunuch. An ineffectual man who it could be certain would never lust after us.

I had known of their existence of course, but to see one in the flesh had been a shock. To think that a man could willingly accept losing the very things that made him a man still remained beyond my comprehension. My recent experiences had also made me understand just how great their sacrifice was for their life of servitude. A man who could never know the pleasure of a woman's warm cunny or the delight an accommodating mouth could bring. I found myself looking at his groin for a moment with the knowledge that his staff and ballocks had been removed before puberty just so he could move freely amongst us.

The food itself was traditional Indian fare. A taste I was quickly becoming used to. And as always it was served with tea.

We sat on cushions in a large hall with the food and drink served on long low tables, each of us taking what we wished. Everyone was present for meals. All of the Maharaja's concubines and their children. A noisy and busy event that sat in contrast to the rest of my much quieter day.

With children perhaps seventy people were present and it was a testimony to the size of the palace that they could all disperse so widely after meals.

It was impossible to always be certain which child belonged to which mother. Everyone seemed to treat them as their own. And the children readily took comfort from anyone willing to give it. Indeed, I found myself a favourite to a small boy of around six. He had an obsession with my hair no doubt never having seen fair locks such as mine. I did not dissuade him too much when he felt the urge to play with my natural curls.

Then with a sharp clap of hands, the children were ushered away for schooling and the girls moved to whatever duties they had accepted to maintain Purdah. I'd agreed to assist in teaching but had yet to take my first lesson as I settled in. I was to instruct in the use of the English Language and explain how the Empress ruled over India and her Empire.

I don't know why, but as I lifted the tea to my lips I was suddenly hit by the image of Maya adding spices to the beverage in the Maharaja's rooms. In the same moment, I saw every other instance of her offering tea to me. Even the hint of its flavour on her fingers when they had touched my lips in the moments I'd wavered. I felt a sudden revelation that shocked me to the core. I took the cup and went to the garden.

Maya must have seen me leave so abruptly as moments later she appeared.

"You are angry." She stated.

"What did you put in my tea?"

I was angry. I knew Maya's power over me now. It was the spices.

"Cloves to heat the body. Ginger to increase desire. Your words. This is why I am captive to my base instincts."

She looked at the cup still in my hands.

"It's only a blend of herbs and spices to help you relax and open your mind."

"You drugged me." I was incredulous.

"As surely as if you had taken me to an opium den.

I see now why every time we met you offered tea. You drugged me so that I would go along with your scheme. Have you drugged everyone here?"

To my amazement, Maya looked insulted. Disappointed by my accusation.

"I only lowered your guard so that you might see things more clearly. It enabled you to do only what you would have liked to do, but feared to. Nothing more."

"That I and the other girls might be easier to manipulate."

My interpretation seemed clearer.

"No one here is manipulated. I told you these girls come here of their own free will. They know what is in the tea and drink it willingly to help them enjoy their mortal life. I explained to you the importance of herbs and spices to Indians. I even told you the purpose of each one. It is perfectly normal to add them to drinks as it is the food."

She could see me studying her. Trying to decide where the woman ended and the Dayan began.

"You should know I drink from the same pot. The Maharaja himself drinks the same blending."

Maya's eyes looked into my soul. Already I was withering so completely as I remained in awe of her.

"Let me ask you this. Were you happier lifting your skirt for a husband who took his pleasure and gave you none? Or are you now more satisfied knowing that the fire in your belly brings happiness as it is truly quenched?"

I stared, unable to answer. Like it or not I was satisfied beyond my dreams.

"Does the Maharaja not show you consideration and take care to meet your own expectations?"

I looked at the tea. The innocuous pleasant drink that we all drank in Purdah with our breakfast each morning. Drugs or herbs? Different names with the same effect. To lower inhibitions, to make us pliable to the games of the Maharaja and the Maharani. We were toys, puppets to be positioned as the murals portrayed. Or so it seemed in my anger.

"What if I choose to leave?" I snapped.

Maya looked genuinely disappointed.

"I have no power to stop you."

She stepped aside as if to indicate I could leave there and then. My bare feet remained rooted to the spot.

"Decide Rayne. Decide if you want to return to the quest of finding another Englishman with his stiff upper lip and limp instrument. Perhaps you will be the kept woman of the married Captain Andrews.

Or stay here where you can attain true spiritual enlightenment and enjoy the sexual eroticism that your creator intended."

Her brown eyes burned into me as though she might hypnotise me. I turned away unwilling to let her touch my soul.

I saw the girls, perhaps ten or so, each happily playing games or reading. Two more intent on each other were tucked away under a tree.

Every one of them had drunk the tea daily as I had. Every one of them compliant for the sexual gratification of their mistress and master.

"Am I a whore to you? Someone to be toyed with?" I asked softly.

"You are a treasured member of our family. One who is loved by all. Open your heart and your eyes and accept purdah as a gift.

Or leave.

The choice is yours. It always has been."

I hesitated. Weighing the unimagined joy I had experienced against a resurgence of my very English inhibitions.

When I looked back Maya had vanished as though her presence had been an illusion.

Maya's spell over me had been delivered in a cup. I had my confirmation. Each time we'd met she had encouraged me to drink tea. Each time laced with some intoxicating herb that made my flower bloom and want for pollination by any means. But then there was the very real question. Did I care? The sensations and need were real enough as was the gratification. And these girls, all with the knowledge of what they drank, were happy and content.

I looked at the tea again, now with a certain knowledge of what it contained. I pondered it for a moment along with my question. Did I care? Did I want to leave?

What was there for me on the outside? Maya had been succinct in her assessment. A marriage of convenience to supplement my meagre savings, or the kept mistress of a gentleman who gave me little pleasure.

Perhaps Maya was a Dayan. Perhaps she had held me under a spell since my first visit to the villa. I'd momentarily broken her power, but in my sudden clarity of thought, I was realising that her spell was also comforting.

I took a mouthful of the now almost cold tea. I swallowed, this time with the realisation that the fire inside me would begin its burn again. It did. Almost immediately. I wouldn't fight it. Had Maya bewitched me? I was still unsure. But I would embrace it as the gift she said it was.

I looked about, spying Geeta, a particularly pretty girl a year or so younger than me. Her name meant sacred song and I had heard her sing. It was appropriate.

She glowed in the hot sunlight and her large fruits moved with the restrained grace of firm, fluffy pillows against her chest, nearly covered by a thin sari. And she had such shapely, silky legs that I longed to lay between in my bid to quench the fire. She saw me watching and beckoned me over.

If indeed I was to stay, I decided it was perhaps time I partook of some of the other delights Purdah offered.

I smiled and approached, losing my Sari as I reached her. I could see her eyes widen at the sight of my naked body. I was already leaking at the thought of knowing what her ruby-tipped globes would feel like against my lips and in my hands.

Geeta knelt before me and looking up with her big brown eyes, she smiled so warmly. I quivered as she raised her hand, palm up, placing it directly between my thighs. My tremble became an all-body shudder as she drew her fingers over my cunny to collect leaking nectar. She held my gaze as she did so, her whole face portraying excitement and desire to be the first, other than the Maharani herself, to enjoy the pale English girl.

"Uhh." I gasped at her touch, my knees already weakening.

Without breaking eye contact she tasted my juice, sucking her fingers clean. I would take her here in the open where everyone could see I decided. I would be as the other girls of Purdah, unashamed of my lust. Then later, perhaps the Maharaja would summon me again and I could deliver on my promise to bring a favourite.

I did so hope he would.

I knelt with Geeta, letting my hands stroke the smooth shoulders of the young girl who waited expectantly before me. With my help, her sari slipped to her waist and I saw her ripe fruits, rising with each breath. I closed my lips gently around a swollen tip and sucked it in. I delighted at her shuddered breath and gave myself to the fire.

I had made my decision. Purdah was indeed where I wanted to be. I would drink the tea with its Indian spice and enjoy the pleasures it afforded me. I belonged here.

The End