Sisterhood - Initiation Ch. 42

Leah was confused. She had expected, without actually having thought about it explicitly, that Marianne would be first to choose. Everything seemed to suggest that Marianne was firmly in charge. From the welcome address back in the Great Hall early the previous evening, to the way she had led and directed the proceedings of the coven meeting just now. Even just moments before, as Marianne had announced that Anna would not have first pick, Leah had assumed that this was a prelude to Marianne's asserting that prerogative for herself. But instead she had ceded to Julie. Had she done so with a hint of reluctance? Leah couldn't be sure.

Whatever the nature of the agreement of which Marianne had spoken, for Leah it meant that she was suddenly compelled to face up to a conflict of priorities that she had until then been unaware of. She wanted to be picked first. She wanted it very sorely, and had done so even before she had guessed what it might mean for Lena, to whom she had come to feel a powerful bond of loyalty. But she wanted also to be picked by Marianne. Or at least she had expected to be. And she had assumed that these two desires would coincide.

Leah wanted to look round, and find Lena in the crowd again. But she worried she would look conspicuous, with everyone else's attention fixed on the stage. Instead, Leah examined Marianne again. She saw the same tight almost-smile Marianne had worn for most of the evening, along with the bright but heavy-lidded eyes, the expression that was either contempt or benign amusement.

Did she love Marianne? With a slight pang of shame, she realized that probably she did not. At least not in the way she had loved other girls before. What she felt for Marianne was more like a proprietary, and above all visceral, longing. Even now as she took in Marianne's glossy red hair, her pale crossed thighs, Leah felt a hot ache between her legs, rather than in her chest. Maybe this was just the same overpowering sexual charisma that all Sisterhood girls possessed, to varying degrees. Marianne had been the first that Leah had met, and had seemed also to go out of her way to seduce her. Perhaps if instead Julie had invited her to the ball, Leah would have suffered the same spell of giddy lust at her hands instead. Or was she merely telling herself so, the better to prepare herself now for the possibility that Marianne might not choose her?

Leah turned to examine Julie. She tried to imagine how it would have felt, had she met Julie first. She remembered vividly how she had reacted when Julie had passed by as she entered the North Wing. That had been Leah's first proper look at Julie, though she had had the impression then of having seen her before, somewhere among the bustle of the ball. Julie had not even acknowledged her as she had passed, and yet Leah had found herself wracked by an acute and disconcertingly intense fit of desire. Julie's beauty was of a different kind to Marianne's. Marianne was pale, voluptuous, fair. Julie was slim, taut, and tanned. Julie looked younger, too. If Leah had had to guess, she would have said Julie was the youngest of the six girls sitting on the stage. Younger than Miriam and Anna, and definitely younger than the other three.

Aware that an expectant silence had gathered, Leah sought out Julie's big brown eyes, then followed the trajectory of their gaze. Sara. Of course, Julie had arrived at the North Wing with Sara on her arm. At the same time as this thought occurred to her, Leah remembered also Josephine having told her that it was Julie who had presented her with the necklace that marked them out as offerings. As if mirroring Leah's own train of thought, Julie's eyes left Sara and swept slowly along the line of girls in the pit towards where Josephine stood at the opposite end. But they came to rest before reaching Josephine.

Leah found Julie looking straight at her, "Leah. That was your name, wasn't it?"

Leah began speaking, but her throat locked up, dry. She swallowed, and nodded.

Julie held out her hands, "You are a very spirited girl, and beautiful. Come here."

Leah stepped forward hesitantly. She looked up at the other five Sisterhood girls, searching for reassurance. It seemed as if Lauren, and Lisa, too, gave her a subtle nod of encouragement. It was only when she reached the edge of the raised wooden stage that she noticed just how high it was. Its surface lay level with her chest, and there was no frame or lattice at its front on which she could get purchase. She swung one leg up and managed to get her foot onto the stage, then she reached her hands over and scrabbled to get a grip on the rough wood and pull her body up after. After a first heave she wavered, half hanging from the edge. Then she felt the grip of a slender hand at the top of her thigh, just shy of her bare pussy, and another on one cheek of her behind. She looked back and saw Sara pushing her up, the breath puffing from between her smiling lips.

Leah got to her feet at the edge of the stage, looked down to whisper a quiet thanks, then walked over to where Julie was still holding out her hands. Leah took them, looked questioningly at Julie. Julie's eyes were strikingly big so close up. They shone with what looked like nervous excitement. Julie's breath seemed to be quickening just as Leah's was.

Julie looked down and let go of one of Leah's hands to reach under her chair and pull forward a thick red cushion, "Sit." Then Julie's eager expression fell for a moment, "If you want to, that is."

Up close by Leah's ear, Julie's voice was different. Girlish, excited. Husky but punctuated with the occasional shrill squeak. She sounded, and looked, young.

"I want to," Leah said, speaking through an uncertain daze. She turned and took a seat on the cushion, between Julie's spread legs and facing away from her out across the open space of the amphitheater. She looked up at Julie, who smiled back at her and then glanced away, her attention drawn by Lisa's voice.

"Just to be clear, Leah is your choice?" Lisa asked.

Julie nodded, "Yes."

Lauren leaned over to address Lisa, looking also at Marianne, "So that decides it? Right?"

"Indeed," said Marianne, "As we agreed." She stood, and called out to somewhere in the audience, "Polina. You have the ledger?"

Leah had not noticed before the seated figure of Polina, at the far end of the bank of wooden benches that ringed the arena. Polina pulled open a thick, leather-bound book that rested in her lap, then nodded sagely.

"Leah. There is no other girl with the same name among those brought to the North Wing tonight?" Marianne asked.

Polina shook her head.

"So who brought her?"

"Lena did. Or one of her charges." The exchange seemed somewhat formulaic. Polina made a pretense of looking down at the book, but it seemed that she and Marianne were rehearsing a ritual, merely making formal something that Marianne, and perhaps others, already knew.

"Then Lena," Marianne called out, "Where are you? You are summoned to join us."

Leah found Lena again in the crowd, sitting where she had been before. Lena stood and then stooped to exchange an affectionate, boisterous kiss with Vera sitting beside her. Lena sprang down onto the tier below, where a group of other girls parted to let her pass, and then she leaped again over the heads of the dmurrhisi girls sitting on the wooden bench beneath, to land with an elegant, catlike flex of her knees on the dusty floor of the pit. A little of the ocher dust of the pit settled on her white pants and top as she stood up.

As Lena walked over to the stage, Leah looked back at Vera. Vera's expression was hard to read. Smiling, but with a trace perhaps of the particular overstated smile of someone who is making an effort to appear unruffled.

Marianne walked out to the edge of the stage as Lena approached. She leaned down and offered her hand, then with a firm hoist pulled Lena up by one arm to join her.

Leah's heart was still beating fast with a residue of the nervousness of the climactic moment minutes before. She craned her head back to look up at Julie. She felt that knowing something of what her new mistress was thinking might help assuage her bewilderment. She had a mistress. This exciting novelty had yet to properly settle in to her awareness. Julie was not the mistress that Leah had imagined for herself. But this seemed to matter less and less the longer she sat cozied between Julie's firm, tanned legs. Julie was achingly beautiful. She looked pensive, her jaw set firm. Her eyes were aimed intently at the other end of the stage.

There, Lena was undressing. The tight white pants that she had worn earlier in the evening lay pooled at her ankles. She stepped out of them, struggling briefly to pull her high-heeled shoes through the legs. She steadied herself on Marianne's shoulder as she yanked the second leg of the pants off and cast them aside. Then she pulled off her lacy white top and stood free in just her heels and her black bra.

"Sisters," Marianne addressed both the audience and the stage, looking at each in turn, "Lena will take Paola's vacant seat on the council. As of now, she is one of the Seven, your patron, and your protector."

Marianne gestured to the empty chair at one end of the stage. Lena nodded, smiling, and walked over to it. She took the green robe that was draped over the chair, flung it out in a whirl around her, then wrapped it about her shoulders and sat down. There was an eruption of applause from the spectators in the tiered gallery of the theater. The tense quiet that had gathered was swept away by a wave of whistles, calls, and cries. Leah ran her gaze across the cheering crowd, flitting from one face to the next. Maybe not everyone was moved to more than simple applause, but most of the shouts of congratulation looked heartfelt. Was Lena popular? It seemed to Leah that she ought to be. She was kind, charismatic, beautiful. The Sisterhood's dmurrhisi pets had seemed in particular to adore her.

Leah looked back at Julie, who was still watching Lena. A discomfiting flutter of anxiety passed through Leah's body. She wondered about something. Did Julie even want her? Or had Julie's choice simply been part of the Sisterhood politics that Lena had sometimes alluded to? Just as this thought occurred to her, Leah felt the brush of Julie's fingers through her hair, stroking the side of her head. Then at her cheek something else stroked her, something thick and hard. Julie's dick was slowly lengthening along the inside of her thigh. Leah turned her head to nuzzle her lips against it. She reached up to hold it steady in one hand while she planted kisses along its side. With a shudder of gratification, Leah felt Julie's fingers tense against her scalp and heard a faint breathy purr from above.

Julie looked down, smiling. Then she started, her shoulders twitching, and looked back across the stage. Someone had called her name. Lisa was leaning out of her chair to call out.

"Now you must nominate," Lisa said.

"Oh. Of course," Julie gave a brief nervous laugh, then held out her hand to point, "Marianne, please."

Marianne straightened up in her chair. She held up her head and declared curtly, "Then I will take Caroline, if she will have me."

Despite the slow pace of the proceedings so far, and the pregnant pauses that had punctuated the Seven Sisters' pronouncements, Leah felt as if events were rushing past her before she could properly assimilate them. She was still weighing the suspicion that had occurred to her a moment before, the possibility that Julie had chosen her for impersonal, purely diplomatic reasons. Now she watched Caroline clamber up onto the stage. Caroline was aided by Josephine and Kathi, each shoving with two hands on one of Caroline's big buttocks. Leah found she couldn't even be sure how she felt about this next development. She was glad, with a straightforward, untainted contentment, that her cousin, her close friend, had been picked early, and not left until last. Above all she was happy simply to see it confirmed that Caroline would indeed be joining her in staying with the Sisterhood.

But Caroline would be in Marianne's service. She would be spending her time here carousing with the girl that Leah had committed herself to longing for. Perhaps already later that same day Caroline would be writhing and cooing in Marianne's arms. And Marianne would surely treat Caroline to the same agonizingly pleasurable hypnotic spell that she had visited upon Leah. Leah felt she ought to be jealous. Perhaps she was.

Of course, there was the possibility that Marianne's choice, too, was more a matter of intrigue than of preference. Marianne's expression was aloof, unreadable. But Anna, sitting two chairs away, made no attempt to conceal her displeasure. Her pretty lips puckered in a tight scowl, and her fingers gripped taut to the armrests of her chair as she tapped one high-heeled foot against the wooden floor of the stage.

"Lisa," Marianne turned to her left as Caroline plumped herself down on the cushion beside Marianne's chair.

Leah understood now that in addition to selecting one of the offered girls from the pit of the amphitheater, each of the Seven Sisters must also then nominate one of her peers to be the next to pick. Lisa was now choosing. She looked serene and cheerful as she surveyed the line. "Josephine," she said, holding out her hands.

With a squeak of excitement, Josephine hopped on her feet where she had been standing at the edge of the stage, having just helped Caroline climb up. Kathi started forward to help Josephine in turn, but before she could do so Josephine had already swung her slim legs up and over onto the stage. She bounced to her feet, then flipped forward on her hands to cartwheel head over heels and hop into Lisa's lap.

Still toying with the idea that the Seven might be playing some competitive game with each other, Leah glanced along the stage, searching to see whether any of their faces betrayed a reaction to Lisa's choice. But nobody seemed particularly moved, except perhaps Ellen, seated at Lisa's side, whose lips curled into what looked perhaps like a grin of self-satisfaction.

Lisa put her arms around Josephine's waist, then looked to her left, "Dear sister."

Anna chose quickly. She pointed down into the pit, "Sara."

"Ooh, yummy yummy," Sara giggled, tapping her fingers together excitedly. She skipped to the edge of the stage, paused there to hitch up her long dress, then hauled herself up unaided.

Leah watched Sara take up the same stance as herself, on her knees on the cushion between Anna's legs, facing out towards the crowd. Anna proffered the snake that still hung around her shoulders, invited Sara to touch it. Sara stroked its head and it recoiled with a twitch. The two girls exchanged laughter, whispering to each other. Then Sara reached over her shoulder for Anna's dick and ran the backs of her fingers along it.

Leah became aware that she had let her own caresses fall idle. She had been preoccupied with studying the events taking place elsewhere on the stage. She turned her head to press her lips once more to the side of Julie's dick, heard another sweet grunt of appreciation from above. She kissed it and ran her mouth along it. It was still growing. A flutter of excitement rose through Leah's body. She could feel Julie's pulse quickening, too. Each beat of Julie's heart throbbed through her dick from base to tip, swelling it a little more. It was going to be a big one once it became fully stiff. Almost as long as Katharina's, perhaps, and already thicker than either hers or Marianne's.

Anna looked up from her whispered exchange with Sara. She took rather longer over her choice of nomination than she had over her selection. She hesitated, seemed once to have already formed the first syllable of a name and then closed her mouth again. Just as the expectant silence grew long enough to feel a little uncomfortable, Anna turned to her right, "Lauren."

Lauren sat up primly and put her hands on her knees. She looked to the far end of the row of three girls that remained. She opened her mouth, then spoke haltingly, "Oh... I'm sorry. This is embarrassing."

Lena leaned over to whisper at Lauren from the corner of her mouth, "Emmie."

Emmie rolled her eyes and gave a simpering laugh, "It's okay. You can say it. The one with the huge boobs."

Lauren laughed, "Sorry. Emmie."

"Go on," Emmie giggled, "Mention the boobs. I know you want to."

Lauren sighed, grinning, "Emmie with the huge boobs, then."

Leah had been hoping that Lauren would pick Kathi instead. Not only because of the sympathy she felt for Kathi, but also as a matter of personal pride, since she had been the one to introduce Lauren and Kathi to each other. As she watched Emmie walk slowly across the floor of the pit, Leah recalled their brief but pleasant encounter, rubbing together naked in Lena's bed. Despite having enjoyed herself then, Leah found she had taken a mild dislike to Emmie, to her simpering manner. But there was no denying that Emmie looked absolutely ravishing. Cool, sultry, dark-eyed, her head held high and haughty as she approached Lauren's end of the stage. Emmie's body was plump but firm, and her flesh bulged subtly between the tight lace bands of her scant, one-piece bodysuit. Her enormous, soft bust sloshed heavily up and down against her chest as she walked.

Emmie struggled as she attempted to mount the stage. She was a little shorter than the other girls who had been chosen so far, and clearly neither flexible nor particularly strong. After an initial failed attempt, Lauren and Lena rushed to stoop over the edge and grab Emmie under the armpits to hoist her straight up.

"So, Lena, please," said Lauren, catching her breath as she sat down with Emmie at her side.

Lena smiled. She remained standing, leaned back over the lip of the stage and held out her hand, "Kathi, my dear."

Kathi looked exceedingly happy. Though she cast her eyes down to the floor as she trotted over to take Lena's hand, her red painted lips were spread in a broad smile.

As Lena yanked Kathi up by one arm, Leah turned to look at the last figure still standing in the pit. Sophia wore a sour frown very much like the one Leah remembered from when she had met her at the bar earlier. It was perhaps the look of someone affecting to be bored. Leah experienced a rush of vicarious relief when Miriam, instead of waiting to be nominated, hurried to the edge of the stage and bent down to hold out her hands, beckoning. Sophia walked slowly over, clasped Miriam's hands in hers, and let herself be pulled up, Miriam huffing with exertion as she leaned back and hauled. Leah thought Sophia looked very lovely, with her long silky hair, pale skin, and her striking, bottom-heavy figure. The lattice of thin silver chains that encased her body, and the ring through her nose, glittered in the torchlight.

Leah watched Sophia, too, take her seat, beside Miriam's chair. Then she looked up. The atmosphere in the chamber had altered. The faint natural light from above was becoming more insistent. She saw the glow of dawn forming a faint rose-tinged gradient across each skylight. Above the hushed chatter that followed, Leah thought she could hear the shrill chirp of birds.

Marianne shifted in her seat. She put her hand behind Caroline's head and stroked her hair idly, waiting for Sophia to settle onto the cushion beside Miriam. Then when Miriam looked up, Marianne nodded, and stood. "Sisters," she proclaimed, "We, as guardians of the Sisterhood, go now with our dmurrhisi offerings to perform the rites that bind us all and keep us safe. Be grateful, and be good. Retire to rest, enjoy yourselves, continue carousing, as you wish. Thank you." She gave a subdued laugh, and added, "And cleanup begins at midday."