Sisterhood - Temptation Ch. 33

Katharina knew the room that she was walking into. Like the testing chamber, it was one of the spaces she had passed through on the way to assemblies, in the company of senior girls. And also like the testing chamber, she knew it as a quiet, darkened passageway, somewhere that had the feel of a storeroom, or an empty theater. The room was quiet now too, but it looked and felt as if it were somehow on the point of coming alive. The light from hanging lamps, though soft, was clear. Katharina saw the roomy arches of a stone ceiling that she had never looked up at before, and she saw the dusty dark wood of the floorboards, grooved and twisted by humidity. They were of the same kind that made up the wooden stage that covered the ruins of the amphitheater, just beyond the opposite wall.

Aside from the light, most striking was the furniture. Katharina did not know where it had appeared from, but where before she recalled a barren wall, lined perhaps with only a few chairs and benches, there were now seven large dressing tables backed with mirrors, arranged in a shallow arc, at one end of which she and Anna now stood.

Before each of the dressing tables sat a plush reclining chair. Though all more or less of a kind, the dressing tables and the chairs differed enough from one another in their details and their state of repair that they gave the impression of being particular personal spaces. Each was equipped with a slightly different array of small trinkets laid out on the main dresser. Lipsticks, pencils, small items of jewelry. The hairdryers on each table stood out as a curious concession to modernity. And they too were not all of a kind, some black, others in dark chrome colors, and of slightly varying models.

After looking around, Katharina's gaze returned to Anna, now standing at her side, and she saw Anna's cheerful yet enigmatic smile. Wondering whether something was expected of her, Katharina thought to take the initiative and make a guess as to what she was looking at, the meaning of the seven tables.

"This is your... dressing room?" she asked.

"Not ours, no," Anna shook her head, then turned to look across the tables, "This is where they will get dressed before the rite."

"They...? The offerings, of course," Katharina nodded as she realized. This was where the new girls would prepare before they were brought to the gathering of the coven just before dawn. In the opposite corner of the room, Katharina saw the small archway that she knew led into the pit of the amphitheater.

Anna looked also at the door, "They will be very excited. They will be able to sense that something beautiful is going to happen to them, though they won't know what it is. It's in the air here."

Katharina smiled to herself. Hearing Anna's words, she felt a quiet shiver pass across the skin of her neck and shoulders. She thought perhaps that she had retained some coherent sense of the passing of time since descending to the North Wing, despite having left the sky and the natural light behind, and she sensed that dawn was still some time away. But here, she stood at the final northernmost point before the amphitheater, where the climactic event of the Ball would take place, and it was also the place where the most important participants would ready themselves. Beyond the fact that the offered girls would be chosen among the Seven and subsequently offered, in private, to the Goddess, Katharina did not know much about what would take place later. But she knew now that something important would be decided for Vera, and perhaps because of it also for herself.

"Something beautiful," Katharina repeated quietly. Then, thinking about the Rite of Offering, she recalled who it was that was standing beside her. She wondered what Anna would be thinking, knowing that she would claim one of the new girls for herself. Anna might claim Marina, or Leah. The idea, and the image, flitted suddenly through Katharina's imagination, and she found she had to expend a rush of nervous energy in a tiny giggle.

"Indeed," Anna smiled at her.

Then Anna let go of Katharina's hand to take a long stride forward, the heels of her shoes striking the wooden floor with a sharp clunk. She leaned over the closest dressing table and examined the bottles arrayed in front of the mirror. After looking at a few of them, and holding one to her nose, she moved to the second table, and seemed to find there what she was looking for. She took a thick oval glass flask in her hand and stood straight, then curled her index finger to depress the cap of the flask and spray a short hiss of its contents onto her neck.

Anna's nostrils widened as she inhaled. She leaned back on the edge of the dressing table and let her gown fall open, "I like finding a distinctive perfume, don't you? Scent is a kind of special memory, I suppose. Every now and then a girl will smell something particular, and be reminded of me. Without necessarily remembering me."

A fleeting prickle of apprehension passed across the back of Katharina's neck when the slowly diffusing scent of the perfume reached her face. She recognized it as the same one she had found in Anna's chambers. Clean, floral, yet slightly bitter. Even the bottle looked familiar. Only then did Katharina recall that she had been there, in Anna's chambers, and what she had done. Anna would surely know it. Mari would have told her, it was too tempting an opportunity for mischief and provocation for Mari to squander. Katharina felt sure that by making a show of her distinctive perfume now, Anna was teasing her, letting her know that she knew, without having to mention it.

Though she was unable to fight back the warmth that she felt spreading across her cheeks, Katharina held Anna's gaze, and smiled, "I like it."

After a pause, Anna beckoned with curled fingers, "Come. Smell it. Try some if you like."

Katharina approached. Standing at Anna's side, but at a distance that still felt comfortable, not too intimate, she leaned and sniffed at Anna's neck. The scent was stronger, and the bitterness more apparent. Despite her nervousness, she found it refreshing, even felt her mouth water a little. She liked bitter flavors. She thought she saw movement, glanced down, and saw then that Anna's dick was slowly lengthening. Katharina looked up sharply. Anna was holding the bottle out for her.

Katharina took it, "Thank you."

She pulled the towel from around her shoulders and cast it off onto the top of the dressing table. Then she lifted her head, put her finger to the cap of the bottle, and scrunched her eyes in anticipation. She heard the hiss, followed by the cool of fine moisture settling on the skin of her neck.

When Katharina set the bottle back on the table, Anna lurched forward and stood straight. "Come," she held out her hand again.

Not knowing where they were leaving for, Katharina stood still while Anna turned. Then she was led around the side of the dressing table and into the space behind it. Here were two wooden doors, which Katharina had seen before when passing through the empty chamber. She had assumed they led into storerooms.

Anna stopped before the doors, and chuckled, "Now, where did I leave her?"

"Your... Mari?" Katharina wondered.

"Yes," Anna turned and smiled at her, then reached for the handle of the leftmost door, "In here I think. So, you would like to help me see to her, would you?"

"Yes," Katharina replied, finding herself suddenly resolved, "I like her."

"She is a special find, isn't she?" Anna paused again, having twisted the handle but still holding the door closed. One corner of her face twitched tight in a subtle wink, "But don't tell her that. Would go to her head."

"Okay," Katharina nodded hesitantly.

She wondered what to expect of the relationship that Anna had with her ka'ini. She knew only little about the lives of most of the Seven, and what she knew she had received via the tangled grapevine of occasional gossip. Anna had several girls, most a little older than Mari, about Anna's own age, and robust, full-figured. She wondered whether Mari was a favorite of sorts, or was the only one who liked to provoke her mistress so much.

When the door swung open and she saw Mari, Katharina felt a mixture of awkward excitement and relief. Excitement first at the beauty of Mari's body. The girl was naked, her soft tanned skin a golden color in the gentle lamp-light of the room. And she was tied, much as she had been the last time Katharina had seen her, only now her body was outstretched, her arms extended above her head, and her legs straight. Two bundles of cord held her at the ankles and at the wrists, bound upright to the nearest bedpost of a canopied bed, like those in the testing chamber and other parts of the house, only less grand. It was lower to the ground, and smaller, with a width that would accommodate two occupants only snugly.

Mari was tied facing away, her nose pressed to the polished wood of the bedpost. It was when Mari grunted and turned her head, craning to look at Katharina, that Katharina's excitement was tempered by relief. She found herself relieved to see, and to hear, that Mari was firmly gagged. Katharina saw a stray bulge of dark fabric hanging over Mari's lower lip, and wondered whether it might even be the same gag that she herself had earlier improvised, using her own discarded underwear. Only now it had been reinforced by a white strip of bandage wrapped around the front of Mari's face and tied under her hair at the back of her head, pressing the gag in and holding her jaw open.

Wondering why she should be relieved to see Mari unable to talk, Katharina realized that she had been anticipating with some embarrassment the prospect of Mari telling Anna all about what they had done earlier. Katharina could cope with the thought that Anna probably knew anyway that they had been in her chambers. If she knew, then she seemed not to mind. But if it were mentioned explicitly then it would become much more acutely awkward.

"Mari, sorry to have left you so long. It's difficult to get away from that place," Anna's shoulders trembled in a little shiver of excited laughter, "So many. So eager. But, I have brought someone to see you."

Mari twisted her neck a little further to look at Katharina again. Katharina wasn't sure what the groan and the little roll of Mari's eyes were expressing.

"Indeed," Anna continued, "I have high hopes for Katharina, she is a good student of Vera's. But still, you should be grateful she's here. I suppose I won't punish you quite as severely as I should."

Katharina found that it irked her, just a little, the implication that she would not want to witness whatever punishment Anna would normally mete out. She recalled the excitement she had felt stepping out of the changing cabin after her last encounter with Mari, the quiet pride she had taken in doing something new, something unlike her.

"Oh," Katharina narrowed her eyes at Mari, "I wouldn't mind seeing her punished however you see fit. Please don't hold back for my sake. She has been a serious nuisance the entire evening."

Anna raised her eyebrow. She looked pleased. Then she lowered her voice and addressed Katharina, "Secretly, just between you and me, if you weren't here I would probably be tempted just to fuck her right away. But I have a reputation to maintain."

Katharina laughed, "That can be made into a sort of punishment too, though, can't it?"

Anna grinned, "By teasing her, you mean? Giving only enough to excite her but not enough to satisfy?"

Katharina had not really been entirely sure what she had meant. She had wanted mostly to make a quick retort, to assert herself. She shrugged, "For example."

"Good," Anna narrowed her eyes in mischief, "Then let's do that."

Mari groaned again. She turned away, closed her eyes and set her forehead against the bedpost, nuzzling her face between her upstretched arms. The position she was bound in did not look particularly comfortable. She looked curiously a little taller, up on the bedpost. Her short body was held straight, from her feet to her hands. She writhed a little, and it seemed she was pushing her hips against the bedpost, trying perhaps to clasp her thighs around it.

"Well," Anna held out her hand towards the bed, "Please touch her, if you would like. Tease her."

"Oh," Katharina's heart gave one firm beat, pushing a wave of cool excitement out into her body and her limbs.

As she stepped forward, she dithered, looked around the room again, seeing now the rest of it. The walls were a dusty, uneven stone, like the older parts of the North Wing and the amphitheater, which lay on the other side of the far wall, beyond the head of the bed. Other than the bed, the only other furnishings were two dressing tables, one in each corner. They were like those in the room from which they had just entered, only bare, without the clutter of cosmetic items.

"Hello again," Katharina reached out and laid her fingers on the back of Mari's thigh.

Katharina was aware of Anna at her back, and resisted the temptation to turn and look at her for reassurance, confirmation that she was doing it right. She held her attention instead on Mari. She looked over the skin of Mari's buttocks, saw the glint of very fine blonde vellus hairs against the girl's tan.

Katharina was gratified to feel Mari's body buck with a slow shiver as she slid her hand inward. She held her fingers against the smooth crease between the top of Mari's thigh and her pussy, felt the firm tendon of the joint. Mari's skin was warm and damp, and reminded Katharina very vividly of when she had held Mari and touched her in the same spot, during their dance in the Great Hall.

Katharina set her other hand on Mari's flank. She felt Mari flinch, and wondered whether the touch was ticklish for her. She tested, stroking her fingers lightly up along the side of Mari's body until the armpit. But Mari did not flinch again. Instead, she only groaned, a moist, gurgling sound dampened by the gag. Then she shuddered, and pushed her hips once more against the bedpost.

Between her own legs, Katharina could feel the warmth and the pressure of her dick growing hard. Without looking down, she knew that it was rising, in firm, heavy pulses. She tensed, stoking her own excitement. Then she leaned forward and put her mouth on Mari's shoulder to kiss her. There was another flinch, or a twitch. After once setting her lips on Mari's skin and having savored the closeness of Mari's body, Katharina found that the kiss quickly felt odd and incongruous, a sign of intimacy in a situation that was either not intimate at all or was intensely so but in a way that Katharina found very unfamiliar.

Katharina withdrew her hand from between Mari's thighs. She reached for her dick, now stiff and hot against her fingers, and angled it down to aim it towards Mari's pussy. The pulse of warmth and anticipation she experienced as she felt the tip brush against Mari's wetness was interrupted by a startle when Anna coughed, and then spoke behind her.

"Sorry, should I move her down a bit?" Anna asked, "She is height adjustable."

Katharina looked back, was reassured to see a flicker of mirth on Anna's face also. She turned back to Mari and examined her position on the bedpost, "Hm, no, it's okay. Her height is ideal."

Mari leaned her head back and something like a shrill growl sounded in her throat, a muffled cry of protest.

"Ideal height," Katharina repeated, chuckling to herself.

Mari's behind was just a little higher than Katharina's hips. Even so, as Katharina grew fully hard, she had to hold her dick down against its own stiffness in order to press it forward and in. Then, once she slid past the first tight clasp and upward, she could stand straight and plant her legs comfortably, only a little more than half of her length buried inside.

Mari groaned again, a slower, deeper sound than before. Her head hung back, eyes half-open, drowsy with desire or perhaps with exhaustion. Katharina did not know how long Mari had been bound. She recalled Mari earlier having boasted about being able to stay tied for a long time.

Katharina shuddered as the first sweep of hot relief passed through her body. She could feel Mari clenched tight around her, hips still idly squirming. She nuzzled herself up against Mari's back and they came face to face as Mari twisted her neck. She thrust her mouth at Katharina's, eyes still half closed, as if in a delirium. Then when the cloth of her gag brushed Katharina's face, Mari gave a silent laugh of exasperation, her shoulders shaking.

Katharina grinned, and whispered in Mari's ear, "Now what extra mischief have you been getting up to since I last saw you?"

Mari mumbled something, sounding for the first time as if she were trying to speak rather than simply groan or cry out. Her lips moved a little, and a glisten of saliva seeped out at the corner of her mouth and trailed slowly across her cheek.

Then Mari's body twitched and stiffened. She lifted her head, pressed it again to the bedpost and went silent. Around the shaft of her dick, Katharina felt a slow, firm clasping sensation, the muscles of Mari's pussy squeezing and wringing at her.

"Katharina," Anna's voice spoke suddenly right behind her.

"Oh," Katharina felt a hand on her shoulder and startled, then turned to see Anna's face in front of hers. She had not heard Anna move closer.

"Come," Anna tugged gently, "That is enough already."

"Ahh," Katharina stammered. She fought a sudden urge to give in to the smooth strokes of Mari's pussy and thrust herself to quick relief. "Okay. Sorry."

Katharina withdrew, stepping back. And as she slid out, Mari grunted and groaned, writhing harder and trying to shove her behind backwards at Katharina.

"Teasing is a very delicate balance, with a girl like Mari," Anna nodded at Mari's shuddering body, then giggled, "She cums too easily, is what I mean."

"Oh right," Katharina realized how hard her dick was throbbing, upright in front of her and exposed to the cool air. Her face was flushed. She too had perhaps already been closer to climax than she wanted to admit to herself.

"I suppose it is another aspect of her character in general," Anna continued. She was looking at Mari, and seemed to be addressing her as well as Katharina, "She is impulsive, has no self control. Which is why she needs someone to take responsibility for her. It reassures her to know that there is someone else who will decide when she has gone too far, and punish her for it."

"And has she gone too far this time?" Katharina asked hesitantly, "Or..."

Anna smiled, her unsettlingly cheerful smile. Then she turned away from Katharina and reached out to stroke the tip of one finger up the curve of Mari's back, from the cleft of her buttocks up to her neck, "I have had to find other ways with her, for when they are really needed. Things that really do put her place, but are still fun for me."

Katharina frowned, wondering. She wanted very much to ask what Anna meant, but held back. Anna turned away from Mari and wandered towards one of the dressing tables, setting one foot deliberately in front of the other, the heels of her shoes striking the floorboards. Anna sighed, and bent to look at herself in the mirror of the dressing table. For a moment Katharina thought that Anna might be preparing to leave already, and that her oblique comment would be left unresolved. But then Anna straightened up and Katharina saw her in the mirror, still smiling at her, and with a shine of mischief in her eyes.

"Oh. Oops," Anna looked down at her own body, where she was bare between the open wings of her gown. She appeared to inspect herself again in the mirror, brushed her hand across her stomach. Then her hand went to her mouth and she stuck out her tongue and wetted her fingers with saliva. She dabbed them against her skin, out of sight, at the level of her hips.