Sisterhood - Temptation Ch. 51

Katharina stepped out. She saw the dust of the pit swirling in the beams of pale sunlight that shone down from the grilled skylights in the ceiling. To her left she heard a distant clunk of footsteps on the wood surface of the stage. There at the far end, a very tall figure disappeared through a side doorway before Katharina could see anything more than the glossy swish of a green robe. Lauren, perhaps.

Katharina walked forward, less and less sure of herself, unsure even of what she wanted to do now. If she could not face going all the way up to Miriam's chambers and looking Miriam in the eye again, she had at least to find somewhere to set down the girl she was carrying, to make sure that the girl was safe and warm, could sleep comfortably.

Thinking herself alone, Katharina stiffened in shock when she heard a voice immediately beside her.

"You," the whisper was cracked and dry.

Katharina looked to the source of the voice and saw that she happened to be standing beside the stone block near the center of the stage. Still laid out on her back on top of the stone was Yvonne, her raised arms bound at the wrist to the metal ring above her head. The surface of the block was at waist height, and from below, Yvonne was peering up and under the hood of Katharina's robe, looking her directly in the eyes.

Katharina's first instinct was to turn away. Of all the people who might recognize Katharina now, Yvonne was surely one of those whom Katharina could least expect to keep her secret. But though she sensed her heartbeat quicken in her chest as her eyes met Yvonne's, her reaction was curiously cool, purely internal, her body did not move. The thought that she should shy away unfolded slowly and precisely, affording her time to inspect it. She held fast, and returned Yvonne's stare. Yvonne had obviously recognized her already, so making an obvious yet futile attempt to conceal herself would only incriminate her further.

"Yes," Katharina replied softly, "Me."

"You," Yvonne repeated. Her mouth creased into a grin.

"And you," Katharina held her expression impassive, did not blink, "Did you enjoy your punishment? Was it as good as you'd hoped?"

Yvonne laughed. A feeble sound, hoarse and tired, "Nice try nice girl."

Katharina grunted. She shrugged, and felt the sleeping body slung over her shoulder stir and mumble something.

She and Yvonne held each other's gaze for a moment longer before Yvonne spoke again, "Nice try being mean, I meant. You're too nice for her, you know? That's what it was."

Katharina frowned, and turned her eyes away. She glanced back towards the stairway that led to the walled garden, then she looked out across the pit of the amphitheater. Then she realized, "Oh."

"I fucked her so many times," Yvonne twisted on the stone, her back curling into a shallow arch. She closed her eyes for a moment, as if in reminiscence, "She hated me. But she loved it. She really fucking loved it. Enough to beg. Sometimes I didn't even have to fuck her. Just gripping her, or choking her was enough. Or shoving it in her mouth. She came hardest for that stuff."

A small knot gathered in Katharina's throat, a lump that she resisted trying to clear. Instead she met Yvonne's self-satisfied smirk with a cold smile.

Yvonne continued to writhe on the surface of the stone block. She drew a deep sigh and then smiled smugly to herself, seeming to warm to her own words, "You know what really got her going?" As she spoke, Yvonne's dick began to lengthen against her thigh, then thicken and rise in slow twitches.

"Do tell," Katharina drawled.

Yvonne turned her head and looked up at Katharina, smiling, "She loved it when I told her about all the other girls I fucked, how much more I enjoyed them than her," Yvonne's voice sank to a whisper, "Especially dmurrhisi girls. When I told her I liked dmurrhisi girls better than her, that I thought of them when I was fucking her. That was the hottest, angriest sex ever. Then she let me do anything I wanted."

Katharina had been on the edge of discounting Yvonne's taunts, disbelieving them. Or of not caring. But something that Yvonne said suddenly rang truer, or at least more real, because it matched something that Ivy had said, or maybe half said.

Katharina's face twisted in a subdued grimace of anger. As before, impulse came upon her curiously slowly, affording her time to examine it. But this time she did not check herself. Instead she reached out with her free arm to plant her hand on Yvonne's neck. She felt there the sticky crusting of dried cum, flaking under her fingers as she curled them in a firm grasp. She saw that streaks of it coated the front of Yvonne's body, from a spattered pool on the soft cushion of her stomach, up to her chest, where a slick had gathered in the slight depression between her small breasts and glistened, not quite dry. Yvonne's face was flaked with clumps of it too, over her lips and across her pretty dark eyelashes.

Much more than the bitterness of rejection, it was the sense of having embarrassed herself that stung Katharina, the idea of Ivy quietly scoffing at her as too simple, too nice. Here, in the wake of her burgeoning doubts about how she had acquitted herself in the rite of offering, was something else that Katharina felt she had failed to understand, and that was important. In her imagination, Katharina's anger sought out Ivy more than it did Yvonne. But Ivy was gone. Even if she was probably still here in the house, Katharina couldn't imagine confronting her now, and didn't want to.

When Katharina tightened her grip just a little more, enough to feel the bob of Yvonne's throat as she swallowed, Yvonne's smirk wavered, and melted away for a moment. Then she spoke, whispering still, "You're too nice."

Katharina let go of Yvonne's neck. She leaned forward. She became aware again of the girl she was still carrying over her shoulder, as the weight of the girl's body slumped forward. Katharina bent and with care set the girl down, seated with her back propped up against the edge of the stone block. Then with both hands free Katharina put them at the sides of Yvonne's face, cradling her head, and leaned over again.

The words of the chant spoke themselves. Katharina knew her lips were not moving. There was no sound either, or at least no sound in the space between her and Yvonne. Instead, the words sounded in Katharina's head, and she knew somehow that Yvonne could hear them too, in the same way. Katharina did not even know the words, know their meanings or how they should be spoken. It was rather that she experienced them as sounds that naturally communicated their concepts, without the arbitrariness of a real language.

As the words of the chant flowed and then began to blend, the vigor that had possessed Katharina just after the rite seemed to pour out of her and pass to Yvonne, without diminishing. What she was communicating felt strangely like a serene inevitability, and yet it was delivered with force, was being driven into Yvonne rather than communicated to her. Serenity. Submission.

"N- nnnh... no," Yvonne's pretty, smirking face knotted into a slow agony. Her mouth fell open, her jaw slouching as if slack, and the sound gurgled in her throat. Her hips thrust upward, thrashed, and her dick stood long and stiff, jutting into the air, jabbing at nothing.

Katharina watched, her anger turned to bitter delight, her body pulsing with the excitement of power. She held her gaze on Yvonne, and it seemed that Yvonne tried for a moment to match it, eyes wide with apprehension, before her head lolled aside and she moaned louder, bunching her eyes closed as she shoved her hips in the air again, whimpering.

Still with her eyes on Yvonne's face, and the echo of the chant inside her skull, Katharina clambered up onto the surface of the stone block. She threw the wings of her cloak open and climbed over Yvonne's body to kneel between her thighs. With Yvonne bound at the ankles at the foot of the block, there was only a small space into which Katharina could place herself, but she pushed Yvonne's legs open as wide as she could and then laid herself face down against the stone, supporting herself on her arms planted either side of Yvonne's hips.

Yvonne's dick throbbed in front of her, twitching above Yvonne's stomach. Katharina leaned forward to let it touch her for a moment, brushed the silky fabric of Miriam's dress against it, nuzzling it between her breasts beneath.

Yvonne gasped and grunted, jerking her hips to try to thrust herself at Katharina, "Yes! Yes yes yesss, please... oh... ffff-... tits!"

Katharina reared up. She too had grown very hard. She felt the long, heavy pulse between her legs. She threw her cloak wider, covering the breadth of the stone block, then grinned down at Yvonne as she angled her hips backward to poise herself. Finding Yvonne's butthole was a little more difficult than Katharina had anticipated. The position was awkward, and Yvonne's buttocks were squished together against the hard stone. Katharina felt the rub of warm friction as she wriggled herself forward and nudged the tip of her dick over the smooth sweating skin between Yvonne's thighs. Yvonne thrashed and grunted, reared her head and growled at Katharina, but then fell limp with a whimpering cry of exhaustion.

Katharina shoved hard, gasping out her frustration. She felt her dick bend back as it struck the tight knot of Yvonne's butthole, but the easy strength of the boon throbbed through Katharina's muscles still, and carried her forward and in, pushing Yvonne open with a hot burn of skin on skin. Katharina's body shook with a shudder of triumphant excitement as she heard Yvonne gasping and whining.

"Uh, uhh, yes, give..." Yvonne's cum-matted hair flailed as she tossed her head from side to side, groaning.

Katharina was swept by an urge to rush to relief, to ram hard and fast and grunt her way straight over the edge inside the tight grasp of Yvonne's body. It was as if there was a knot inside herself begging to be undone. But she bit her teeth hard together and pushed back the moan of release that she could feel creeping up through her throat. She held back her own excitement and with one sharp twist of her hips, then another, she drove herself in snug. She felt Yvonne's body twitch beneath her, and when she looked down she saw Yvonne's dick pulse with stiffness, straining into the air.

"No," Katharina laughed. She shook her chest from side to side, swinging her breasts so that the stiff tips of her nipples grazed the underside of Yvonne's dick through the fabric of Miriam's dress.

"Uhh, just... give... come on... fuck me, if that's-... come... on... you want to... uhhhh," Yvonne's desperate murmuring choked off into another loud groan as Katharina thrust at her.

"No," Katharina repeated.

She held still at the apex of her thrust and clenched with the muscles of her insides. Her dick throbbed thicker in the tight grasp of Yvonne's hole, and nudged against a tough, pulsing knot somewhere just inside. Katharina clenched again, and watched Yvonne wince, her dick flailing upwards.

When Katharina squeezed her legs together and sent a second pulse of stiffness up through the shaft of her dick, Yvonne arched her back and craned her neck up to release a long moan out into the echoing space of the amphitheater. Suddenly aware again of the wide space outside the dark tent of her cloak, Katharina glanced out from under the hood. She saw only a thin swathe of the stage, which was empty. Holding still, she heard nothing. When she looked back at Yvonne beneath her, she saw that a clear drop of fluid had formed at the tip of Yvonne's straining taut dick, about to break and trail away. Katharina pulled back, and clambered carefully backwards. Yvonne's hole tightened and grasped at her as she eased out, until she came free with a hot rasp of friction.

Katharina stumbled down off the block, landing on her feet, and took a deep breath of air. Her dick throbbed free in front of her and swayed stiffly as she turned to look around. The amphitheater appeared still empty.

Katharina examined Yvonne. Yvonne's chest was heaving, hauling in each breath with a loud gasp. Her body twitched, her hips thrusting up into the empty air as she groaned and wheezed. Her head was still cast back, looking out across the pit, and the tendons in her straining neck stood taut. When Katharina stepped to one side to look at Yvonne's face she saw the pink-rimmed whites of Yvonne's eyes, rolled upward, lost to the agony of the Sisterhood's enchantment.

Katharina huffed, and tilted her head in a shrug to herself. The passion that had gripped her when she had first taken hold of Yvonne seemed to have cooled, though the simpler visceral pang of arousal had not. She contemplated again Yvonne's dick, stiffening each time Yvonne's body writhed, then falling back against her stomach, where a small patch of fresh fluid glistened. Katharina found herself aching to slide herself back into the tight space between Yvonne's pale buttocks. She dithered, pulled in one direction by a lingering spite and in the other by the simple force of lust, and sought some justification that would permit her to be merciful and just fuck Yvonne until she came.

She had meant to prove that she wasn't too nice. Too nice for Ivy. Too nice to be part of the gossip and the rivalry, the rough games. Too nice to be part of the Sisterhood. That she wasn't too nice to exercise the power that the Goddess had conferred on her.

But it was a power that she had stolen. She hadn't done this right, any of it. She had missed something important with Ivy, and was stuck now both wanting her and resenting her. She had missed the gathering of coven, and in her rush to somehow make good her mistake, she had allowed Miriam to manipulate her, maybe, or to use her for something she didn't understand, among the many things she now felt she didn't understand. And she had spoiled the chances of advancement that had looked so rosy and so exciting just hours before. There was no way that her deception could go undetected. There were too many people now that she would not be able to face in good conscience without betraying herself. Not only Yvonne, but also Miriam, and above all Leah. Leah who somewhere was being carried off to Julie's chambers, perhaps not even aware that Katharina had come inside her.

Katharina turned away from Yvonne, despondent. The burning need for relief that still wracked her also irritated her with its incongruity.

Then she felt her still stiff dick twitch in response to a touch. She looked down, and saw the girl that she had set on the floor slumped against the side of the stone block. The girl was reaching up, her fingers caressing the side of Katharina's dick, faltering, as if trying to take hold of it but weakened by drowsiness or delirium. The girl's hair was strewn across her face, her eyes only half visible. Her posture was slouched, shoulders slanted to one side, as if she had fallen asleep leaning against somebody.

"Let's... again..." the girl's voice was hoarse, slurring, "I can... suck you."

Katharina bent to shush the girl, and was about to speak in reply when she heard sounds from behind her. There were footsteps on the staircase to the walled garden, echoing out of the gated archway at the back of the stage. Footsteps still distant, but approaching surely, with the same smooth and confident stride that Katharina had herself discovered in the wake of the rite. Surely Lisa, now carrying Josephine back to her chambers.

Yvonne was still writhing, but her groans had grown weaker and more sparse. She would probably remain unable to communicate anything for some time. Katharina's fear at the thought of being discovered there immediately, by Lisa, overtook her guilt. She had to remove herself from the scene. Her panic carried her away several paces before she pivoted and rushed back to scoop up the girl from beside the stone block. Katharina slung the girl over her shoulder and started back across the stage.

She was relieved to find that the strength of the boon did not seem to have diminished, but the girl on her shoulder was no longer as limp and as pliant as before. Katharina felt a tension of resistance in the girl's body, though feeble. As she strode to one end of the stage, her step dipping into a trot, she heard the girl groan and then squeak, a little cry of confusion.

Katharina ducked as she passed under the arch of a side doorway, the same that she had seen Lauren exit by just before. The passage beyond was darker, and she had to reach out in front of herself with one hand, waving, to make sure she was not walking straight into some unseen obstacle. Then just as her sight adjusted, the space of the passage turned abruptly right and opened out.

With a first anxious glance she took in an impression, of a smaller chamber, cramped and narrow though long. Roman or earlier ruins like the amphitheater itself, but in a worse state of repair. Dust floor with some paving, and big, broken stone blocks jutting from the walls. Torchlight that had nearly extinguished itself. She shoved her head down, pulled forward her hood, and marched onward through the length of the chamber.

She had not seen anybody, nor could she hear any movement now. But her ears were full of the rush of her own pulse, her heavy breaths, and above all the drowsy mumbling of the girl on her shoulder. Katharina shushed, hissing through her teeth. She curled her arm tighter around the girl's waist and hoisted her higher as she strode.

She had chosen an exit into a part of the North Wing that she had never visited before. Stupid. But it had been the quickest escape from the large, exposed space of the amphitheater. Given its proximity to the stage, this was perhaps an antechamber used by the Seven Sisters from which to make their entrance at coven meetings.

The space grew darker and Katharina had to slow in case she collided with protruding masonry. The floor was uneven. But it seemed the curious surefootedness of the boon was still with her, protecting her. Its strength still twitched through her limbs, untired, though sapped a little by the cool rush of fear.

Where was she heading? She knew only that she wanted away from the walled garden and the focus of the North Wing. She had committed herself now to deepening her predicament, not facing it. She could still have waited and given herself up to Lisa, but the impulse to shield herself from shame had taken her, and with the first step made, the path of least initiative was now simply to continue, and flee.

Katharina was aware of a tremor in her breathing. She wasn't crying. But she felt the sting in her eyes that presaged tears, the feeling of being on the edge of breaking down and just bursting. She could cry, if she willed it, but she could also keep a hold of herself indefinitely if she needed to. Until she got to wherever she was going, to somewhere she could just sit down and forget, maybe just sleep.

Her bed. Her skin warmed at the thought of simply crawling under her crumpled sheet, where she and Ivy had lain side by side exchanging fantasies before the ball. But she couldn't go there now. Even if Ivy wasn't there, Lia would be. Katharina winced at the thought of waking a few hours later and being rounded up for cleanup, having to look every other girl in the eye as they spent an entire afternoon setting the Summer House in order.

The chamber felt longer in the walking than it had appeared at Katharina's first brief glance. She marched on along its length, aware of but unperturbed by the weight of the girl she was carrying. She continued for several strides more after being sure that she must have reached the far wall. Then when she looked up she saw a doorway.

Katharina's wilting spirit drained when she saw the trellis of thick iron bars that formed a gate across the low door. She knew even before she reached out to take one of the bars in her hand that it would be locked. When she tugged, feeling the strength of the boon in her arm exerting a sure force on the gate, it did not move. She searched some moments for a handle, though she had seen none. She put her fingers through the square gaps between the bars and felt around on the other side. Nothing.