Hednar grabbed Alira’s head and forced her mouth back onto his cock, moving her head back and forth for a few moments until he too came, stroking the filly’s red hair with surprising tenderness as she smiled up at him, having bravely swallowed his youthful seed. Ranin could not shake the impression that Lady Alira of Amidia would not return home if given the chance, now.
Sweet Adilan’s turn had come, after Alira had been rinsed, shivering blissfully with pleasure, and darting glances at Edera, at Ranin, at Master Morqan. Ranin gave her a little nod when the stable boys had wrapped her in her soft blanket, and she smiled back. Truly, he could not help feeling happy that she at least, despite the appearance of the thing—leaving behind a noble Aurian wastrel of a husband to be a filly in the imperial stables of Maq—had found a thing for which she had searched. Alira crawled to the far wall to join Melisan, who looked at her with fascinated wonder. Ranin could tell that Melisan had felt some of what Alira had, when Hednar had alternately pleasured and punished her, but the raven-haired girl did not seem to have the depth of Alira’s need for degradation.
So, thought Ranin, what of Adilan? And what of Edera?
When Gad and Hednar came to fetch Adilan, she looked up at them with uncertain eyes. Then, as if she were not sure what she wanted, the lovely naked girl shrank back.
“Hold!” came Comnar’s voice to Ranin’s right. “Filly Adilan,” he said in a light, bantering tone of voice, “do you truly wish to escape?”
Adilan replied instantly, clearly grateful for the chance to use her power of speech without fear of whipping. “No, your imperial majesty.”
“What do you wish?”
Adilan looked up at Gad and Hednar, and whispered, “The ties? I… I don’t think…”
Comnar laughed. “Yes, lads,” he said. “Get her into the cross-ties. She cannot yet show you what she truly wants.”
Ranin could not believe what he saw. Adilan seemed to resist them as they coaxed her across the stone floor to the posts where the cross-ties hung, but her resistance also seemed half-hearted. They put the collar around her neck and the wristlets around her wrists, and the look of fear on her face seemed real, but at the same time Adilan seemed to flush with quite a different sort of feeling, and her harsh breathing seemed to speak of a forbidden pleasure.
“Easy now, sweetheart,” Gad said, as he put his cock into her mouth, which she opened after Hednar gave her a single spank upon the center of her lathered rump. “Your friend Melisan sucked me dry already.” Versal glanced over at Melisan, who compressed her lips into a tight line, blushing. Gad continued, “Just be gentle and get to know my cock, alright? I’ll give you my seed soon enough, I promise.”
Adilan, the cock still in her mouth, nodded only slightly, as if she wanted to be sure she didn’t hurt the stable boy’s massive manhood.
They washed her down quickly, and Ranin thought perhaps he even saw a look of disappointment in her eyes that they had not treated her with greater severity—had she hoped to be ravished? Ranin shook his head. And what of Edera? He had thought he had heard her whimpering as she watched Adilan please Gad, while Hednar paid persistent, lewd attention to her bare, virginal cunt. Poor Edera must be frightened half to death.
Gad and Hednar came to stand in front of Edera, after they had wrapped Adilan up to dry her and keep her warm. Ranin did not know whether he wanted them to take Edera and wash her—the emperor had said she would be set apart and would not have to suck a cock, had he not?—or to hear what Comnar did say then: “Let Goodman Versal wash her, lads, while you get the tails back in the other fillies and feed them in their stalls.”
The stable boys bowed to the emperor and went to the shelf where the girls had laid their tails after they washed them. Gad and Hednar took the three black tails and