A Harem Fantasy

When I woke the birds were singing the happy song of morning and my maids were laying out my clothes into piles as I lay upon my bed.

"What are you doing, then?"

"Master Cassipe has ordered us to pack your things. You are heading to Caldor today, miss."

This brought a flurry of excitement, the kind of which I was prone to and which made Cassipe either smile or glower depending upon his mood. He told me it was childish to feel such surges of excitement, but how could I not, when life brought such wonders? At this time yesterday I was a mere girl, and now I was a woman, a woman who knew the pleasures between men and women, and I was headed for Caldor.

"Please ma'am, do not be so jubilant, your father has been in a fit all day, wracked with sadness. Master Cassipe is trying to convince him you must go."

"Dress me quickly, please."

"Here ma'am," one of the maids held up a more daring gown. The bodice dipped low on the chest and previously a flesh colored panel had kept it most modest.

"What happened to the front?"

They exchanged looks. "Master Cassipe ordered changes made while you were sleeping. He said your wardrobe must be fit for a woman."

So many things were different already, had that one act really changed so much?

All my clothes were white but I looked at the stacks and saw blues and greens. "What are these?"

"Cassipe ordered them a fortnight ago. White is a color of purity, and purity and womanhood do not go together. Like the yin and yang, now you have a bit of the dark within you."

Lousy know-it-all maids, that would teach me better than to let them read my philosophy books. I liked the purity of white, the color that set me apart. They must have sensed my mood for there was no more chatter as they dressed me in a tunic and breeches of white with blue trim on the pants, and high boots of bleached suede, a soft white that would no doubt be muddy by day's end.

My hair was brushed to a shine and set back from my face in combs, caught the long back in a net of gold. I wore no makeup as did the other women of my noble house, I was proud of my milk-white complexion and aimed to keep it pure. Against it my blue eyes were large and my lips a soft pink that needed no enhancement.

I was vain but what woman wouldn't be when from her earliest memory she was told she was the most beautiful woman in all the land? It was no small thing.

I grabbed a satin cloth of blue to cover my head as I marched to the house from my own small cottage. Servants cast their eyes down at me the way I did to my tutor, and my heels clacked loudly on the floor.

I found them in the solar where my father wiled away the hours. All his sons were married and my two eldest sisters had claimed their estates from his family in the north. My two remaining sisters lounged about, nodding to me as I entered.

Cassipe was facing my father at his desk. I bowed and kept my eyes away from him as I faced my father.

"Father I hear you have fears about my traveling."

"You're damn right. You're only eighteen and the furthest you've been from home was with Lady Marlowe to Provincetown. Now he tells me you are to move to Caldor and serve the queen? How can she when she's so young!"

"Father," Eliandra said in bored tone, "when Samantha and I were both fifteen we were allowed free reign."

Father shook his head. "With all due respect you are the third and fourth daughters of a great house. You have no land to inherit, you must find your own by winning notice from the queen. That is the same fate I should want some day for my youngest."

I knelt at my father's side and laid a hand on his arm. "Father, you have known my destiny longer than I have. You have always known this day would come."

My sisters made noises of support which shocked me. When we'd been younger there had been great jealousy between them for me, until we grew and they learned how cloistered my life was. No doubt they had known the pleasures of womanhood since they were sixteen. Judging by how attentive the male servants were I had little doubt.

Cassipe clucked his tongue in impatience. "Sir, she is right. The day has come. Do not lament on your child's ascension to glory, instead treat her as a father who loves his daughter should. Know that while she is with me she will come to no harm and there is no place safer in all the empire than in the Queen's Harem."

My father blushed at the last word, and I wondered what it meant. All I knew was that the Queen's harem served her, attended to her needs, was comprised of men and women, and was highly protected. My sisters chuckled.

"All right. Eliandra, Liliat, please leave us. Cassipe, sir, may I have some time alone with my daughter?"

"Certainly. I will continue to pack. We leave at sunset."

"I'll have her ready."

I watched my master go, wondering at the jumble of feelings I held. There was still the fear of punishment should I disobey, the feelings that I now recognized, but there was also a need to challenge him, to escape his tyrannical rule and be my own woman. My sisters had no idea how I envied them, those two wild and landless women, life was waiting to offer whatever they would take.

Only my other two sisters, Merchal and Simasde, knew what it was like. They had had arranged marriages since they were born, properties to inherit since our mother died. They had to go with it, never taking chances like the other two. They walked a fine line as much as I did, and so I had always gotten along with them better.

My father and I talked of mundane things, promised to write each other, and relived memories. He cried and I shed a tear, a rare occurrence for which he thanked me. Then he left and sent in Eliandra then Liliat in turn.

"Welcome to womanhood, little sister," Eliaindra told me with a slap to my back after she closed the door. "Though I know you were already welcomed well." She smirked.

"What ever do you mean?"

"My first tumble with a man, well to be fair he was a boy and a virgin as much as I, was nothing like yours."

I blushed. "You heard?"

"The whole province heard. Jealously, I'm sure, for we've all admired Cassipe from afar, but he's never had eyes for anyone but you."

"What do you mean?"

"I find it so funny," she said after chuckling, "that for a woman bound for the harem he's taught you nothing of what he should."

"What do you mean?"

"Can you say nothing else? What do you mean?" she mimicked. "I mean the fact that man has been in love with you for some time. I've heard from your maids how the priest who was sent for you disappeared. I wouldn't put it past him to killed the man with his bare hands. I've been to Caldor, I know how these things are done. The tutor is never to touch you, and little sister, pleasure for the harem bound woman is forbidden outside the harem. Tell anyone when you get there how he made you scream and he'll be put to death."

I paled.

"The harem has never been explained to you, has it?"

I shook my head.

She grabbed an apple and slouched in her chair, taking a generous bite and looking evil. I knew the ancients had believed a woman had bitten an apple from the tree of knowledge and condemned mankind to pain, but I had never understood until that moment.

"The harem is the source for the queen's pleasure. It has always been filled with the most beautiful of all men, but the queen is only one woman, and men are not like us. What made you scream, little sister, is called an "orgasm." Women can have as many as they like as often as they like, but we do not need them every day. Men need at least one a day though very few can have more than that.

"So the queen stacks her harem with women to see to the needs of the men. For many centuries the women of the harem were ugly so as not to be competition, but more and more the queens have chosen a consort and tend to call on the other men very few times, so the queens have selected beautiful women.

"But this queen," she whispered and drew nearer to the edge of her seat, drawing me forward on mine, "likes women almost as much as she likes men."

I gasped at that and she laughed at my shock.

"Do- can she really do that?"

"You haven't grown up the way we have. When I was on board my ship for a year with no men around, all we had was each other."

"But you said women did not need...orgasms like men do."

She raised one brown eyebrow. "You have had one, would you really like to go without?"

"I guess not."

"So, little sister, you had better appreciate women."

Liliat had similar advice but a much kinder delivery. She too warned me never to tell about the pleasure between Cassipe and myself, and also not to expect any more from my tutor.

We ate dinner together and when the sun set Cassipe and I climbed onto our horses, and rode off with our pack mules behind us and my maids sharing one horse to bear their dainty weight.

We rode in silence and passed the capital, breaking an hour before dawn in the Black Woods of the North. The maids set up two tents while Cassipe made a fire. I agreed to cook and made our meal quickly with unleavened dough and meat cooked on a metal plate with vegetables from the garden and herbs from my collection.

Cassipe lectured me on the virtues of humility and then I was left alone in the dawn to practice with my sword. My maid Welmet was trained as well but I was an official knight and had the duty of guarding our party. I worked up a sweat and washed in a small brook before coming to bed. My maids slept at the foot of the tent leaving me the larger space while Cassipe slept in the tent next to us.

I awoke when the sun was high and knew I was two or three hours early. Then I heard it; a moan. It sounded like Welmet might be ill. "Arte you all right?" I sat up and gasped.

Welmet was on her back, her nightgown pushed high to her waist, the collar low beneath her breasts pushing them out, her legs bent at the knee. Between them Kisant knealt, her face pressed between them. For a moment they did not notice me and I felt my own body tingle. If the jutting piece of flesh- a cock, Liliat had insisted I call it, had felt so good, if fingers had felt so good, how might a kiss feel?

"Oh my goddess!" Welmet screeched and tried to shove Kisant from her. It took the other maid a second but then she stumbled back.

"My lady!"

I held a hand out. "No! Please, my sister tells me I may have to do this for the queen. Please, show me what to do."

They gave each other sideways looks and otherwise froze. "Please?" I gently asked.

At last Kisant nodded and knelt again. She turned Welmet so that I could see her clearly and I was fascinated by what I saw. Was this how I looked? So pink and shiny.

Kisant shifted until the sat at Welmet's shoulder and then she bent down. I saw every inch as her tongue snaked out and licked the length of Welmet's slit. The other woman gasped and then Kisant used her fingers to spread her wide.

I scooted down my bedroom to peer closer and saw a nubbin of flesh revealed. The same in me that Cassipe had stroked me to pleasure with? From Welmet's moans I assumed they were the same.

Suddenly her moans grew shorter, breathier, quicker and then she squealed out a moan. Her flesh quivered and the shiny juices flowed, covering Kisant's mouth.

"Wow," I said when they pulled away. I was intrigued. "Can I try?"

They exchanged looks again. The damn rules. "The rules say I may not experience pleasure but do not say I cannot gift it to another. You, Kisant, lay down."

They were my servants and had to obey.

She lay down and arranged her nightgown like the other woman's and waited nervously. I leaned over her and experiment with my fingertip against her- what had Lilant called them? Her nipple. It hardened so I stroked it and that got me a whimper. I smiled with pride and then did as Cassipe had. I rolled and pinched and when her breathing leveled I licked at it.

Her back arched and her hands tightened around Welmet's who smiled at me, encouraging. I moved down and found her slit shiny as Welmet's had been. I used a finger to trace its line and found her nubbin peaking out from a hood of flesh. I rubbed it and she gasped loudly, the sound cut off by a hand over her mouth thanks to Welmet.

I leaned down and gave it a kiss and found her grunting. I looked at Welmet for advice.

"Lick it with your tongue. Suck on the clitoris. The nubbin sticking out," she explained at my blank look.

I licked and found the taste very salty, similar to my own. I liked the feeling of power her moans gave me but I began to wonder about using my mouth on Cassipe like this. Would he like it just as much? Did men, as much as women? I really wanted to know.

I licked until she was clawing at the bedroll and then, as directed by our third, I closed my mouth over the clitoris and suckled. She cried out and Welmet clamped her own mouth on hers, silencing the cry, but it was too late.

The flap was jerked open and Cassipe stormed inside. "What in the name of demons!"

He jerked me to my feet and dragged me from the tenth before turning back. "I will deal with you two later."

"Sir, she made us do it!"

"Silence!"

He dragged me all the way to the water and I kept silent, knowing I had earned whatever lecture was coming. It was to my great surprise that he threw me in. "Clean yourself."

I stood shivering the cool water under the sun's rays, my hair hanging loose and wet in my eyes. With my rage I expected the water to be steaming, but no such luck.

I waited for him to turn around and then I peeled my nightgown off, slapping most of the water loose on some rocks before dunking myself and scrubbing my face. I gargled water and came up, naked and shivering, my arms folded across my breasts protectively.

"You don't know how bad this is, young lady!" He blistered me with a raised voice, a rarity for my tutor. "The queen is expecting you to be biddable, trainable to her liking. If you express your appetites now how on earth will you come to like hers?"

The argument made no sense to me so I held my tongue.

"Now come out," he ordered and sat down on a flat low rock.

In shyness I hesitated and he waved it off. "I have seen you, young lady, now get over here now."

I came to stand by his side and he grabbed my arm, forced me to my knees and draped my over his lap. The first slap came as a shock, he'd never stuck me before, but the second and third felt good. His palm was warm and big, my behind was soft and firm and received the blows well.

It made the tingling that had begun in my core grow again and I felt myself getting wet. Then I was raising my hips to meet him and keeping stubbornly silent, determined not to let him know how it affected me. Then I felt the hardness at my shoulder.

Impulsively I turned and rubbed my face against it. He gasped and sprang up, dropping me to the soft ground. I rolled over onto my back and pushed myself up on my elbows, watching.

I did not look at his chin like I should have, I looked him in they eyes and let him see all the questions and frustrations there in. He swore in words I did not know men knew.

"Virtal, no."

"I did not ask a question."

He stepped back and then forward again. "No. If I touch you I could well meet my death in Caldor. Have a care for how serious this is."

"The rules, as they have been explained to me, say that I must not feel pleasure, but that is not true for others around me."

He swore again and my eyes widened.

"No, Virtal, no."

"I have already experienced pleasure, what harm can come from this?"

He swore again, but used the same words. "You have had one peak and this is how you act, like a madwoman. Goddess forbid you have another or I will have to keep you from the village men as we pass."

"I don't want them, Cassipe. I want you."

Those light eyes froze on mine and I sensed victory. I stood and raised my chin, not allowing myself to fall back into the role of student and give him an escape. I waited four full seconds before reaching for him, and found myself slammed into a tree.

He raised me and wrapped my legs around his waist, capturing my mouth. I felt his hand between us and waited for the touch but he was opening his trousers. The jutting piece of flesh- the cock sprang out and he thrust into me without warning. His mouth caught my cry.

The feeling was powerful and I was aroused, but not like the last time. The last time he had been gentle and caring, this time he was a feral animal, pumping into me harder and faster than I had imagined a man could. He pumped like a man too long denied, desperate, and I got caught up in it.

I caught a tendril that I had felt before and rode it. I cried out a split second before he did but he jerked out of me and I felt a splatter against my belly. I felt warm but empty and puzzled at it.

Cassipe set me down and used his own night shirt to clean it. "Ejaculate," he explained, "men release it when they peak. If they do it inside a woman she could get with child. I couldn't afford to have you sleep the night away. Now get dressed and don't, for a moment, think this will happen again."

Smiling, I cleaned myself, redressed, and followed him back to camp.