Devi's Paradise (9 page)

She could not move, tears running unchecked down her cheeks and dripping onto the stone beneath her head. Then a large black-haired man with fierce eyes leaned over her, blocking out everything. A cloak of vivid feathers fell from his immense shoulders, and he raised his arms to heaven, evoking his gods.

‘Awan! Awan!’ chanted the tribe, while the shaman presented Alvina’s jewels to the chief and then fell flat on his face at his feet. Mahil, in a religious fervour, took up a knife and slashed her arms and body, bleeding copiously.

Awan was naked beneath his cloak, his body gleaming and muscular, his skin mahogany. His erection was large and stiff and his intention plain. He intended to thrust it into Romilly. He reached out and ripped her robe aside. She lay helpless, her treasures on view to him – to all of them. A handmaiden stepped forward carrying an earthenware jug. She tipped it slowly and a stream of oil trickled down across Romilly’s breasts, past her navel and disappeared into her crack. She was being prepared for the chief and, almost, she wanted it to be over. The suspense was terrible – dread and fear of the unknown and yet a curious kind of submission – the female turning her body into a vessel for the dominant male’s seed so that the human race could continue. It was a primitive, frightening feeling.

Awan was ugly, with coarse features, running his spade-like hands over her slippery body, lingering on her hard nipples and reaching down to hold open her sex-lips, ready to plunge that enormous phallus into her tender opening. The drums quickened their beat. The tribe swayed in unison and Romilly shut her eyes tight, waiting for the agony that would surely shoot through her as he inserted the monstrous, shiny dome.

Then a single shot rang out across the clearing, followed by deathly silence. Awan’s penis shrank visibly as he swung round. Romilly opened her eyes. A tall man with a commanding bearing strode across to the altar. He was white, though swarthy, and wore a belled-sleeved shirt and close-fitting velvet breeches that left little to the imagination, and supple leather boots that reached his thighs. His long black hair coiled way beyond his shoulders and his face was a mask of fury.

‘Awan!’ he thundered, and even the warriors cringed, for a gang of villainous looking men, all armed to the teeth, backed the newcomer. ‘Haven’t I given orders that any prisoners are to be brought to me? You’re disobeying and I could have you hanged!’

‘But, sire… I’m sorry…’ Awan stammered, robbed of his dignity, shamed before his people.

‘You know full well that this island and all who live here belong to me. So does anything that fortune drives this way… ships, goods, prisoners.’

Awan fell to his knees and clasped the stranger’s boots. ‘Mercy, mercy…’ he begged. ‘You our king… our emperor,’ and the tribe followed suit, kneeling and wailing and begging forgiveness.

The men who stood solidly at the stranger’s back, brandishing cutlasses or cocking pistols, waited but a single word from their leader to fall upon and butcher the hapless natives.

He stood, hands on hips, looking around with blistering scorn. ‘You all know me.’ His deep, heavily accented voice rang out and even the shaman and sorceress cringed and pressed their faces into the dust. ‘I am Captain Armand Tertius, your lord and master. I protect you and, in turn, you belong to me. I allow you to have your chief, but he must yield everything up to me. He owns nothing.’

‘The woman… my bride,’ Awan muttered, and Armand spun round and glared at him.

‘You have half a dozen wives already. News reached me that you’d captured these people and had the audacity to think you could take one of the women to wife. How dare you? They should have been brought to me.’

‘Mercy, mercy,’ the wretched chief repeated, shaking like a leaf.

The captain approached Romilly and a shiver went through her as he stood over her and subjected her to close scrutiny. He was the most handsome and striking man she had ever come across, with all the hauteur of someone highborn, maybe truly a king. What was he doing in this godforsaken place?

‘Well, well,’ he said slowly, and bent and lifted one of her tresses to his lips, inhaling deeply. ‘Are you Lady Romilly?’

This shocked her. ‘How do you know my name?’

‘We found Captain Willis and some of his men wandering on the shore, also your servants and those of your male companions,’ he answered, and she was puzzled by the enigmatic expression in his steel-grey eyes.

‘Where are they?’ she demanded, concern overruling fear.

‘Safe,’ he replied, then took out a dagger and sliced through her bonds. He made Awan hand over his robe and placed it round her as he assisted her to rise.

Alvina, meanwhile, had been acknowledged, also Jamie and George, and Romilly began to hope their troubles were over, until Armand announced, ‘You will be taken to the fortress and there I shall decide what is to be done with you.’

‘What do you mean?’ demanded Jamie. ‘We are English citizens and should be cared for and then delivered to the nearest port belonging to our country.’

The men with Armand gave great bellows of sardonic laughter at this, and he towered over Jamie and said, ‘You forget, sir, you are not in Europe now. I am master here and I abide by no such rules. I may enslave you, sell you, demand a large ransom.’

‘And the women? Lady Romilly is my betrothed.’

‘Ah, the women… yes,’ Armand replied thoughtfully, fixing Romilly with those piercing eyes. ‘I may include them in my harem. Who knows? It will be as the fancy takes me.’

Screaming, kicking and protesting, Romilly was lifted as if no lighter than a feather, wrapped in the chief’s cloak and slung over Armand’s broad shoulder. She hung head down, her hair cascading to well below his waist. It was an ignominious position, but there was absolutely nothing she could do.

He set off across the clearing in long, loping strides, and she bounced and cursed him at every step. The tribe parted as if before a tidal wave, letting him through. They were subdued, the festivities over. Romilly tried to see what was happening to her friends, and heard Alvina shouting as she, too, was flung like a sack of potatoes across the shoulder of a big, bearded man. Jamie and George were manacled and forced to walk. They had no alternative, with muskets boring into their backs.

Their new captors were in fine fettle, laughing and cracking coarse jokes, in English mainly, their sallies bringing a blush to Romilly’s cheeks. She was very conscious of Armand’s powerful body pressed close to her breasts. She could feel his heat; smell him, a pungent combination of sweat, verbena oil and a personal odour that breathed out from his pores and hair. She remembered his hawk-like features and arrogant manner. This added to the fire blazing inside her, and out, for he had wrapped the feather cloak tightly round her, as if insuring that no eyes should look upon her nakedness but his own. Such possessiveness was humiliating yet gratifying. She was nothing but a weak female in the grip of the alpha male. Part of her rebelled, but the other, guided by instinct, relished such a mighty protector.

He strode on effortlessly and she couldn’t tell how far they had gone, but was aware that the terrain was different, the path rising steadily and broad paving slabs had replaced the forest floor. The ground fell away on either side and the air was fresher, the tops of the trees lying below. Armand did not change his pace, but finally stopped when he reached a large wooden gate. He threw back his head and hailed the guards within. The gate rolled open to let them through. Now they were crossing a courtyard and into the shade of a building whose walls rose sheer above them. Romilly gave up trying to ascertain their surroundings, hearing his footsteps ringing on stone, aware that they were entering a room.

He set her down with such forced that her teeth rattled, and she staggered and clung to him to balance herself. He held her lightly and, glancing up into his swarthy face, she saw his lips curving in a sardonic smile and little flames, like amber jets, flaring in the black pupils of his eyes.

‘Welcome to my castle,
mademoiselle
,’ he said.

‘A fine welcome indeed!’ she raged. ‘Is this how you treat your guests, you villain?’

Alvina had been unceremoniously dumped close by, and she was furious too. ‘You’re a rogue, sir, a black-hearted thief who should be strung up. Where are my jewels, you scoundrel? I saw you take them from Awan. Are they also part of your spoils?’

‘Shall I stop her row, captain?’ enquired the one called Johnson, part amused, part exasperated, ruefully dabbing at the bloody scratches her talons had left across his craggy countenance.

Armand shrugged. ‘Sabrina will deal with them. Take them to her quarters.’

‘And the men?’

‘Lock them up till I decide their fate.’

‘Don’t despair, sweetheart,’ Jamie called across to Romilly, ‘I’m certain I can find a way out of this. I’ll settle on a price.’

‘You’re very sure of yourself,
monsieur
,’ Armand mocked.

‘I’m sure of one thing… money talks, especially to someone like you.’

Armand laughed and Romilly both hated and feared him, and yet there was something about him; he was impressive, even desirable, though she loathed herself for entertaining such a thought.

They were in a lofty hall with a massive fireplace at one end. Rooms led off from it, like the yawning mouths of caves. There was a refectory table in the middle, with benches and stools on either side and an oaken carver at the head. The thick grey pillars that rose to the ceiling were decorated with banners and flags, crossed pikes and other relics of skirmishes fought and presumably won by the ruffian who now appeared to own the place. It was hard to categorise Armand as such, for he carried himself like royalty, and the tribesmen had feared him and his own bullies accorded him respect.

She searched the room, hoping to find Joshua or Jessica and Kitty, but there was no sign of them. What had been their fate in the hands of these freebooters?

‘This way, my lady,’ said Johnson, and he was truly alarming, every inch the desperado, a swaggering bully, though there was a twinkle in his eye as he viewed the women.

Romilly and Alvina followed him up an immense staircase, hand in hand and very wary. They passed servants going about their duties, and many tightly shut doors, finally coming to one at the end of a passage. Johnson knocked and a dusky maiden in a single chiffon scarf wound around her lissom frame opened it. It was transparent and formed little barrier between his lewd gaze and her breasts, and the dark triangle that marked the division of her thighs.

The room was airy, though like all others in the fortress the windows were narrow and facing into the courtyard below. Only musket slits gave access on the outer walls. A woman rose from a luxuriously draped divan as they entered, and her beauty struck Romilly. She was raven-haired, her head covered in a multitude of beaded plaits. Her body was magnificently proportioned, a sari draped across one shoulder and falling to her feet, tight and revealing. She was a person who gloried in her body and liked to display it. She sashayed across to them and then stood, hand on one hip, looking them up and down.

‘Who are these, Johnson?’ she asked in a rich, husky drawl.

‘More captives, Sabrina,’ he replied, one big hand fondling the slave girl’s breasts. ‘We took them from the Indians. That fool Awan was about to marry this one,’ and he pushed Romilly forward. Sabrina gave her a searching stare, frowning a little, and narrowing her cat-like eyes.

‘They are from the wrecked ship, like the others,’ she mused, walking round to view them from every side. ‘But a cut above, eh?’

‘They say they are ladies,’ he replied. ‘And there were a pair of gentlemen with them who claim to be lords.’

‘That fits in with what the cards foretold,’ Sabrina murmured mysteriously, then gave a sharp order to the slave. ‘Fetch their servants, Aponi.’

The girl scurried off while Sabrina conducted Romilly and Alvina to the couch, and had a lithe male slave pour wine into cut glass goblets for them. ‘That’s right, Marcus, treat the ladies politely and I may let you satisfy them later.’ She turned to Romilly, adding, ‘Would you like that, my lady? He’s a fine, virile stud. I can vouch for that. Tireless, my dear, always willing to oblige, especially if you give him a tiny flick of the whip.’

He was Caucasian, though with a deep tan, and his hair was flaxen, his eyes pale blue, but he acted in a subservient manner, doing precisely as Sabrina ordered, keeping his lids lowered. He wore a thong that cradled his genitals and Romilly avoided looking at him as she said, ‘I have scant knowledge of men, madame.’

‘Call me Sabrina,’ insisted their hostess, and she sat between Romilly and Alvina, her pungent perfume seducing their senses.

‘I’m Lady Romilly.’

‘And I’m Lady Alvina.’

‘Are you virgins?’ Sabrina enquired. ‘How fortunate if you are, for this will stimulate Armand’s appetite.’

Aponi returned before they could reply, and Romilly gasped as she saw Kitty and Jessica with her, but they were much changed in their dress. ‘Oh, my lady, thank God you’re safe!’ cried Jessica, rushing across to her.

‘Madam, ah, my dear madam!’ Kitty exclaimed and Alvina stood up and embraced her, then she held her at arm’s length.

‘Gracious heaven, what
are
you wearing?’