In stories there's a fate which threatens captured girls, but Yvette has never understood what it is. It's referred to as being
carried off
, but carried off to where, for what?
She grew up on the island of Martinique, where her father owns a slave-worked plantation. She attended a convent boarding school in France. With deliberate care, her parents and the teacher nuns protected her from any such disturbing notions as lascivious pleasure, even between husband and wife.
Her schooling ends when she's eighteen. She sets sail for her home, expecting to make her
début
in Martinique's exclusively white high society. But Barbary pirates seize her ship. Yvette is being carried off, that is beyond doubt, but what will happen when she reaches her destination?
Landed in a North African port, she soon finds herself suspended by her arms. Covered by nothing but a wrapping of diaphanous fabric from her waist to a few inches above her knees, she's displayed to a room full of swarthy men.
She's been raised with endless admonitions to hide her flesh from view, that to be seen is unholy. This display of so much that should be hidden scorches her with bitter shame. She twists her abdomen to one side and then another to keep her globes from the sight of the audience, but she can't turn far enough. She succeeds only in shaking those two lovely baubles from side to side, making them jiggle before the eyes of the onlookers.
A man stands beside her, gesturing at her while speaking an incomprehensible language. There's no doubt she's being auctioned.
What could only be bidding ceases. An old man stands amid the crowd with an air of victory. His back is crooked, unsightly growths all over his face. Has he bought her? She has no idea what happens to a girl after purchase, but nothing this wizened old gnome might do with her could possibly be good.
She's whisked away in a palanquin, through the city and into a palace. Several scantily clad young women, of varying complexions but all browner than Yvette, pull her from the conveyance into a large room decorated in oriental splendor.
A tall woman in purple robes looks the slender Christian virgin up and down with an appreciative gaze. She's as dark as the slaves that work the plantation owned by Yvette's father. She speaks briefly to the aged hunchback, who retreats bowing from the room.
Unknown to Yvette this is her new owner, Lady Zeinab. She sent the lump-faced manservant in her stead to buy this golden-haired beauty, as women are not allowed to bid at the slave market.
The Muslim noblewoman says a word, and the dusky girls holding Yvette carry her to where two leather thongs hang from the ceiling. They bind her wrists high, and then kneel to tighten similar straps attached to the floor about her ankles. When she's held in the standing position, unable to move from the spot, they retreat from her.
The tall negress reaches toward the face of her new property. Yvette has only ever known a world where, by unquestionable divine sanction, black slaves defer to white masters. The fair-skinned abductee shrinks in horror from this transgression of the Lord's will. She jerks her head back and strains with all her might against the bonds that hold her in place, blue eyes wide in fear and disgust. But it's all in vain. She can do nothing as a dark hand touches the underside of her chin, glides down her distended throat.
"Stop it!" Yvette shouts indignantly. "You may not touch me!"
Lady Zeinab laughs, and replies in strongly-accented but intelligible French. "You'll find that I can do whatever I like to you. And you will come to regret such insolence." She circles her latest acquisition, caressing arms, back, neck. She brushes a finger across Yvette's flat belly, then denudes the white body of its only garment. She admires the dainty triangle of thatch where lower torso meets legs, delighted to find it's as light a shade of gold as that on the girl's head.
The mistress strokes up the creamy hips, waist and flanks, then runs a single fingertip back and forth along one collarbone. Yvette has no notion of carnality, but physical contact this intimate clearly impugns the dignity of her person. It's an outrage beyond bearing that she's in a position of such vulnerability to anyone, her body the object of another's sport. But one of the race the Almighty has ordained for servitude! That multiplies her disgrace a thousandfold.
Lady Zeinab's hand trails down the white girl's sternum to her breasts, where the nipples are growing longer. "You enjoy the touch of woman, don't you?"
"No! No!" Yvette replies without thinking.
In truth she has always found the round soft shapes of the female form pleasing, in contrast to the unpleasantly blockish physique of man. It warms her to place her hand on another girl's arm or back, and she often held hands with her schoolmates. But to the sheltered virgin's mind, these things are merely expressions of friendship. Lacking any concept of fleshly conjunctions, it could never occur to her that there is anything improper in such gentle touching between girls.
The African violator laughs. "These tell a different story." She lowers her face to Yvette's bosom, which she smothers in kisses. She rubs one of the stiff buds with her fingers, then takes it between her lips and nuzzles at it with her teeth. She subjects both pink breast-pegs to prolonged torment with her mouth.
Slavegirls of assorted colors stand meekly by as their owner enjoys the new plaything. Lady Zeinab moves to Yvette's side and caresses her back. She barks an order in Arabic, incomprehensible to Yvette. The watching girls rush to strip off their few garments.
Stroking Yvette's nether curves, the negress beckons to one of her slaves. This olive lovely approaches and does as her owner did, defiling Yvette's chest with her fingers and mouth. One after another, their owner calls all of them over by name. They each take a turn with the her bosom, squeezing the luscious globes, tweaking and nibbling the erect nubs.