Free The Surrender of Lady Charlotte by Lizbeth Dusseau

transformation—while at the same time, none forgot the behavior of her first days in Ilusia. She’d been in her adopted country merely six months and had other trials yet to endure.

 
     
Chapter Six
     
    “You are the prettiest bride,” Loria giggled as she fixed the curls of Charlotte’s golden hair with flowers and ribbons.
    “I do wish it were longer!” she moaned. Her new hair barely reached her shoulders, though it shone with a luster that seemed sparked by the sun.
    “Ah, but it is so beautiful,” the brown-haired slave retorted enviously. “Imagine how it will flow down your back once it’s grown again.”
    “But today is my wedding!”
    “And still you look like heaven, milady.”
    “Ah! But when we say wedding in my world we mean something quite different than an Ilusian one.”
    “I can’t comment on that,” Loria said. “The rites are secret—especially from slaves.”
    “And you’ve never married Caius?”
    “Men like Caius don’t need to marry. It seems a ritual most suited for nobles.”
    “But you were noble born,” Charlotte pointed out.
    “And I’ve made my choices.”
    “You chose Caius’ dungeon—freely?”
    “It’s as free a choice as any woman can make in Ilusia.”
    Charlotte looked troubled. “Seems I have little choice in anything.”
    “Perhaps not.”
    “So, what rumors do you hear of weddings if you don’t know facts?”
    Loria scoured her thoughts. “That they are three day rituals, the wine flows, the dancing is lewd, and the sex takes the extremes to their limit.”
    “And the bride?”
    “Well used.”
    “As I thought.” Charlotte sighed deeply. “I cannot tell you how my loins burn for this. I confess, a hundred men could copulate with me and I would not be satisfied. My desire breeds the basest thoughts. I fear I’ll go wild.”
    “Then why so morose?”
    “I’ve come to this—become this savage beast of a woman—not even a woman at all but an orifice to be used!”
    “You still resist yourself and that could hurt you, milady,” Loria cautioned.
    Charlotte thought on how her life had changed in the last several days since Mountbane had brought her from the dungeon. She lived in luxury now, was attended by slaves who’d been her equal the week before—by Loria herself who’d been the mistress of her training. She was called milady and Lady Charlotte , as though respect had been restored to her after long months of disgrace. All this because she’d sacrificed herself, remade her life, her thoughts, her feelings and her sense of self to become Mountbane’s slave. Resist? Only by the merest thread. Her sexual hunger was paramount in her now.
    “Resist? I think not. I just wonder at myself.”
    Loria fooled with her hair, adjusting the flowers while she hummed some pleasant tune Charlotte had once heard played on flutes in Mountbane’s dining hall. “Perhaps you wonder too much, milady. What is can always be changed, but why? Why bother when what you are pleases you—or at least soon will?”
    The maid was right again.
     
    d
     
    Transparent robes of green, gold and purple were attached to her white collar with rings, and descended down across her shoulders, skimming the floor at her bare feet. She’d been bathed, perfumed and primped until she might have felt as special as any new bride—but a look in the glass revealed a truth far more stark than Charlotte’s pleasant musings.
    She was utterly naked now beneath her diaphanous attire—though these silks were inclined to enhance her natural loveliness, they did nothing to disguise her sexual body. Her breasts shaped the garments as they flowed downward, the buds of her nipples making tiny tents of the material; and from her bodice the remainder clung to her form below, highlighting the slender waist and the blooming flower of her nether regions, where from behind, her twin melons of flesh invited the touch of hands, or the kiss of a whip. In front, her trimmed bush of pubic hair hid