Warning: This chapter earns the R rating.

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Chapter 3: Kissing the Dead

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I didn't know what to do. I couldn't keep all this money...I could not accept such a gift from him...yet I feared that, somehow, if I disobeyed him again, he would find me and his wrath would be terrible. So I'd come, eventually, to decide that I would keep just enough to get me away, and put the rest back.

Then I realised that I had no idea what denominations were what. Nor, for that matter, could I count. Well, that was not true. I could count to thirty, and so I decided to simply count out thirty notes at random, and hope that it would get me out of Persia. I lost count nearly three times, though eventually I was sure I'd gotten in right. I then left the remainder of the notes lying on his desk - I could not re-open the cache he'd shown me - and went to go.

The door swung open easily, and I stepped out. I felt great trepidation, simply leaving like this, but I was under orders to do so...and the consequences for disobedience had been made all too clear to me. The floor was cold beneath my bare feet, and I realised suddenly that I was not wearing all that I came with...my necklaces were gone. Oh well, he could have them. Nothing was going to stop me from getting out of this place, though I did not know where to go.

"You! Slave girl! Where are you going?" The voice made me look up in horror at the massive guard from whom it had come. He was tall, muscular, terrifying...a man, not a eunuch. I instinctively bowed to him, though I wished desperately to run. "What is that you're holding?"

The bundle of money fell from my hand, flitting around me like careless butterflies as I dropped to the floor, pressing my forehead to the ground, speechless. It would be useless to say that I'd been ordered to leave, that he had willingly given me the money...I would not be believed. It was obvious that I had tried to rob my master and escape, and there was nothing I could do to prove otherwise. I felt his hand grab me roughly by one arm, while his other retrieved the errant notes. I did not struggle, but hung limply in his grasp, defeated.

"A theif, are you? And to so new a master, too. Do you know what happens to theiving slaves?" he growled suddenly, dragging my face to his by lifting my arm ungently. I kept my eyes cast to the floor and shook my head, willing tears not to fall. "You will have both your hands cut off, last I'd known," he hissed.

"But please!" I shouted suddenly, surprising even myself. The guard looked at me with shocked contempt, and opened his mouth to speak, but I interrupted, "I ask nothing for myself...I deserve any punishment that is coming to me, but I beg of you, do not displease my master further!"

It was a strange idea, I thought...lying in this manner. Of course, it was acceptable to lie to a man ("Yes, most satisfactory!", "Of course I did, many times.", "The largest I've seen!"), but not normally for one's own benefit, and I had to wonder what had gotten into me. But, possessed by this strange demon, I continued, "My master is the khanum's sorceror! He would be vastly displeased if I, his possession, was disposed of without his express permission. After all, do you not think it likely that he wishes to punish me, himself?"

"I feel he could punish you even without your hands," the guard smirked at my terror, and my mind raced for an egress.

"My master...has use...for my hands," I said, portentously, "I believe he would wish a different punishment on me. Unless you wish to feel my master's anger at you, I beg you, please only lock me up and keep me inside until he returns, momentarily."

The man stared into my veiled face scrutinizingly, searching my eyes for signs of trickery, and apparently he found none, for he then returned me to my master's house. I saw him stuff the money into his own pocket, before he forced me roughly through the door. I stumbled into the house, unsure of what to do now. I could slip through a window, perhaps. There was certainly some way out...

"Don't think of escaping again, slave," came a sudden angry cry from the doorway, "I will be watching every window, every door. And if I see you come out again, I shall bring you straight to the shah!"

I bit my lip. I knew that what he said was true. I could not escape while he kept watch. But...perhaps they would change the guards. If nothing else, I was much more likely to contrive my escape in darkness. He said he would not be back before nightfall, and that was not too far away...I would just wait until the sun set, and then leave, before he got home. I would not take the door, of course, for I might have run into him, there. I would take, perhaps, the bedroom window. That way, if he came back before sunset, I could slip out the window when I heard the door open. I gingerly, sat down on his bed, then, to wait, with a great fear growing in my heart.

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"I want you to make me a new toy," the khanum said, simply, as I sat down warily beside her. She lay back against her pillows languidly, and regarded my discomfort with pleasure. The divan was soft, softer even than my own bed, fittingly. The cushioning sank down beneath my weight, light as I was, and I looked at the khanum with well-concealed distaste.

"What purpose should it serve?" I asked, though the answer was obvious.

"To amuse me, what other purpose?" she asked, as if there were no other. I supposed, to her, there wasn't.

"Other than the obvious, madam. Any...specifications?"

"I should like it done in a week. Postpone all else if you need to, but I wish it finished," she ordered. I hated her ambiguity. If she wished me to make her a "new toy," the least she could do would be to give me some instruction. And to postpone all else, for this...I felt the fuse of my temper begin to burn low, and took a deep breath to steady myself. Just as I was preparing to serve the khanum with a pointed silence, she spoke again, "Something colourful, perhaps...you know what it is that I mean. Spinning blades are a favourite of mine. And make it multi-purpose, something my son could use against his Babi dissidents."

"Ah," I said bitterly, smiling without mirth, "I see."

"I thought you would."

"An idea is all ready forming," I lied.

"Good. I trust in your ingenuity," she whispered, "And that is a great compliment, coming from me."

"Thank you, madam."

There was a long pause, as this unpleasant woman and I stared at one another's faces. The khanum shifted slightly, and would have given me a better look into her scant decolletage, had I been looking. Then she spoke, her voice flowing over me like honey wine drenches Italian tablecloths when spirits are high.

"I gave you my name, Erik. Yet you do not use it. I do not believe it is a mark of respect. Explain."

"Isn't it?" I retorted, too quickly, "In my country, even if we should know the name of someone above our station," at this I saw her smile, "We do not use it."

"Such is also the case in my country. But you do not seem the type to accord such respect, I have noted." She was testing me, I knew...but I was not precisely sure what was the correct response. I would have chosen to remain silent, but the daggers in her eyes warned me that silence was insult. I fought off a smile at the angry indignance the woman would endure, should I obey my impulse, but something made me reply.

"I did not know you were giving it to me to use."

Her smile was dryer than the desert that surrounded us. "That is because I was not," she said, simply, "However, it does rather surprise me that you, in your arrogance, would hesitate to use it."

I did not say that I wished to remain as detached from her as possible. I did not say that, if faced with a particularly mean-spirited, but inherently lowly, snake, I would refer to it in much the same manner. I did not say that her lofty air amused me to no end, that her pleasure in placing herself above me was disgustingly childish to me...but I thought all of these things.

"Erik," she began again, rousing me from my embittered thoughts, "Where precisely did you learn this...sadistic genius, which you possess?"

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He seemed to become immediately introverted at my question, and I wondered if he was not becoming soft to me. I waited impatiently for his answer, and it was not long in coming.

"It was within me all along, I believe. As it is in everyone. If you are asking if it was taught to me by a specific person, then my answer is no. But...when a dog is treated with nothing but cruelty, it learns only to be cruel," he said, and there was such rampant, obvious self-pity lining every syllable that I was almost sickened by this display of weakness. Perhaps to remind him to keep his strength, I snapped at him.

"Well, someone like you cannot expect anything better, can they?"

He seemed stung, though perhaps it was only my imagination. I had never seen him in a state of emotional vulnerability, and while this normally intrigued and pleased me...on Erik it only angered me.

I have never claimed to love anyone, my entire life. Not even my own son could demand anything more than a brief flicker of concerned affection from my defective heart. But Erik had achieved something that no one ever had, which was a kind of respect. It was not love, for I barely knew the feeling, but I was aroused by his unflappably cool facade, his ridiculous arrogance, and of course, his genius. And to see him in a state that hinted that he might indeed have true emotions, like the human race which he so despised, revulsed and horrified me.

"If I did not know any better, madam," he hissed at me, and I found with glee that the void of emotion, save anger, had again taken its place within him, "I would think you were insulting me."

I smiled, mollified from my irritation at the effect my words had had on him. "If you profess to 'know any better,' then perhaps you do not know me as well as you thought." There was a slight pause and, to satisfy the silence, I added, "I suppose it is possible to venture so far into the realm of hideousness that you can come out the other side. I believe you have achieved this."

"Only you would think of that, madam," he said, his glowing eyes boring into my own.

"You flatter me."

There was another small pause, and I took the opportunity to shift my weight so that I was a little closer to Erik...to this corpse I employed. Any other man in his place would have radiated heat, from embarrassment, arousal, anger...but Erik was so delightfully cold that I began to wonder if blood ran through his veins at all. Perhaps he was cold-blooded, as reptilian as his face conferred.

"Erik," I said, and I could see the hairs on the back of his neck rise as my breath caressed his face, "What is it that you desire, besides money?"

There was a moment as he paused in thought, before scoffing at himself and half-smiling. "To be honest, I do not care over much for money, madam."

"I wonder why we pay you so well, in that case. What, then, do you desire?" I inquired, mentally making a note to speak to my son about lowering the man's exorbitant fees for building and entertaining.

This time the pause was longer, and I began to wonder if the damned man intended to answer me at all. He was excellent at wriggling his way out of answering questions which didn't suit him. Slippery as an eel, and as clever as a fox. Sometimes, he simply did not reply at all. But as I was about to throw another empty threat at him (damn my son's cursed need of him!), he spoke.

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I knew better than to say what was on my mind, what was in my heart. As a matter of fact, I knew better than to even feel it. I suppose that, had God descended from Heaven and promised to grant me any wish, any wish at all that I could think of...I would wish for the two things which I desired most: Love. Normalcy, and love. But the woman before me was far from being God, though her son might claim to be his shadow, and she wished to hear about my cursed loneliness even less than I wished to speak of it. So instead I replied,

"Solitude, I suppose. And time. Two things I have been desperately in need of, lately."

"I shouldn't think you were in a position to complain," she snapped, but the venom that would normally accompany such a phrase was absent, and I wondered what could be troubling her.

"What is it that you care about?" I asked. The khanum objected, normally, when I dared to ask her questions, but she had an immense vanity that would not allow her to be truly displeased when someone wished to know about her.

The khanum's head rolled back for a moment and she gave a derisive laugh. "Precious little."

I coughed slightly, almost a chuckle but not precisely so, and shook my own head. "I wish I could be so lucky."

"Make no mistake," she added quickly, "I concern myself with far more than I actually care about. My son, for example."

Despite myself, I found the words, "You do not love him," rising to my lips, floating past the wall of defence, to sink into the pool of the khanum's consciousness.

"No," she replied, with a certainty and a finality that quite sickened me, "Frankly, I wonder if I do not simply hate him."

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The sudden anger that I saw in Erik caused a naughty little twinge inside me, and I sat up eagerly to witness the outburst that seemed imminent. His shoulders tensed, his eyes swung down to the floor like fatal pendulums, and I could see his long, manicured nails digging deep into his palms. As I observed, a droplet of crimson sprang up from beneath his finger, solving the mystery of whether or not the man bled. I admit, I rather expected it to be blue.

But Erik's breathing, miraculously, remained even, though slightly laboured, and in time, the high points of colour that had been forming on his deformed cheeks began to fade. Still he kept his eyes averted, but he now released his death grip on his own palms, and wiped the blood absently off on a handkerchief that he withdrew from his vest pocket.

I waited to see if he would speak, but he did not. He seemed quite content to sit in his furious silence for all eternity, and I have to say I was almost willing to let him. But I had called him to me for a reason, and I do so hate to wait for what I want.

"Sometimes," I said suddenly, breaking the silence unceremoniously, "I wonder what it is that you can think of me."

I could see that it was anathema to him to have to answer, but the words came, nevertheless. "I think...that you have a 'sadistic genius', as you put it, all your own, madam."

"Do you find me beautiful?" I asked, leaning forward. To his credit, he did not lean back, though I could smell his fear of me.

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"Yes, madam," I replied, reluctantly. There was a sudden energy coursing through the khanum that rather put me off. I began to wonder exactly why she had called me here. Well, I tell a lie. I had been wondering since the moment I arrived why she had called me...but now, I feared I might know.

But, no. Simply ridiculous. I was, as the khanum had said herself, ridiculously arrogant.

"How beautiful?" she persisted, and moved ever closer to me. I noticed, for the first time, the serpentine way she coiled toward me. The unconscious shifting of her lovely hips from side to side, the way her breasts - small though they were - rose and fell as she breathed, nuzzling one another affectionately within the confines of her boustier. Her eyelashes were thick and long, covering beautiful dark brown eyes, and though I did not say so, they rather put me in mind of a camel's eyes. Camels may be odourous, unlovely creatures...but they do have pretty eyes. However, I doubted I would live long enough to explain my reasoning, if I should choose to mention my thoughts to the khanum.

"I think an appropriate adjective would be 'terribly'," I replied, at length. I could feel my mind begin to cloud with the red haze of lust that had all ready claimed me once, that day. I was helpless to fight it. After all, if even thinking about camels did not dispell the feeling, I was not sure what would.

"Do you want me, Erik?" A third and final blow to my weakening resolve, I actually physically recoiled at the sudden rush of torrid lust that filled my veins and gorged my all ready stiffened yearning. The khanum's hand snaked out toward me, deadly and enticing, and a finger ran the length of my jaw. My body shuddered with longing, involuntarily, and I heard a low chuckle come from my seductress's throat. "Do you believe yourself loyal to me, Erik?"

My mind was aware that she had spoken, that a response was required, but I felt almost as if the connections in my brain were being hampered, and it took me a moment to become sane enough for speech. "I am unsure of what you are asking me, madam."

"It may surprise you to know that I am not so arrogant to assume that your loyalty to me is strong enough for me to actually trust you," the khanum said. Strange words from a woman who was seeing a known killer in her room, testing his patience and his temper, without the aid of nearby servants.

"My work has seemed to satisfy you, thus far," I replied, employing my own unnerving tactics on her. I had not precisely answered the question she had asked, but neither could she deny that I had answered her question. However, if she felt any irritation at my demurrance, she did not show it, for she smiled a catlike, predatory grin at me.

"Indeed. And I hope it shall continue to do so. You see, Erik...I have been thinking, recently, of...diversifying your duties," she whispered, her voice a pink fog lousy with pheremones that drifted, seemingly innocently, across my senses.

I forced myself not to stutter. "What would be required of me?" I asked, though I feared, above all things, that I knew the answer.

"If you do not know that, you are less of a man than I took you for," she snapped at me, and I did not bother to correct her, "Are you prepared to extend your duties to me, Erik? Or would you prefer to return to your masonry?" She spat the last word as if it were poison, and I knew that, though my answer was of course that I wished to finish my work, I could not say so.

"Do I have a choice?" I asked, bitterly, though if truth be told it was hardly a question at all.

"No," she replied, but then seemed to think better of her sudden denial, "Well, perhaps you do have a choice. Yes, there is always a choice. But at the moment, Erik, the choice is loyalty to me, or death."

I did not think that the khanum would kill me, even if I refused her, but as my assignment neared completion, and because, as only the Daroga and I knew, I was not even truly needed to finish it, and furthermore, but perhaps lastly, because my loins ached desperately, I did not chance it.

"I believe," I had to whisper, for I did not trust my voice, "that I could find the time to please you in whatever manner you order me to, madam."

The khanum laughed in sheer delight, and leaned forward with all the shameless alacrity of one of the shah's cats in heat. Her jewelry tinkled pleasantly as she raised up onto hands and knees and approached me like a lioness approaches her prey. Though I was trying to keep my eyes averted, I daresay I caught a glimpse of her tongue - as pink as any western woman's, despite her dark skin - darting out to wet her lips in anticipation of my only half-willing deflowering.

She knealt before me, and her hands twined like creeping vines beneath the fabric covering her breasts, lifting and exposing, tossing the unwanted garment away. It landed on the dead serving girl, I noted with horrified displeasure, but there was nothing at all I could do. I knew she wanted me to watch her, but I dared not. I had never before seen a woman naked, not in the flesh, and I was now not certain that I wished to. But as my eyes caught a glimpse of a row of small jars on a shelf installed into the wall, reminding me of the constant threat to my manhood, my eyes ran to the comparative safety of the khanum's breasts gratefully.

Then, suddenly, her face was before mine, sex pulsating in her aura, the heat scorching my face pleasantly. Her lips ghosted over mine, and she then explored the rest of my face with hers, toying with her prey. Then, without warning, she kissed me. It was hot and searing, a true kiss, but with an edge of danger that made it all the more delicious. I did not move to kiss her back, though it cost me great effort, for I did not yet know what she expected of me, and I was determined to remain stoic.

She broke off and spoke into my mouth, her words slipping in through my teeth like the food which I so despised, "Your lips are cold. I feel like I'm kissing the dead." Again, her mouth claimed mine, and I waited patiently until she pulled away again.

"Perhaps just Death itself," I whispered hoarsely, and I heard breath catch in her thoat. She gave a low moan and moved ever closer to me.

"Now that excites me," she said, and the passion with which she next kissed me, I must say, took me quite by surprise. The khanum's two favourite things were death and carnal love, and she seemed childishly delighted to combine the two. She wriggled up against me with fleshy nakedness, her small but supple breasts rubbing tantalisingly across the soft fabric of my shirt.

Her hand blindly found its way to my collar, and her long nails stroked my skin absently before her fingers deftly went to work on my buttons. Unwillingly, I suddenly and violently regressed to my childhood. The hand on my shirt was ham-like, the smell of garlic and sausage surrounded me, the cruel, chuckling voice of my master rang in my ears. If it had not been for my iron-strong desire to remain stoic, this sudden memory would have nauseated me to the point of vomitting. I was unsure of what attracted would-be molestors to me, what about my unforgiving ugliness made these bloodlusty tormentors desire to take me, forcibly or otherwise.

I had killed Javert, the gypsy man who would have had himself buried within my unwilling young body before I could think to scream. Instead it was I who had done the penetrating, in the form of a knife to his stocky chest, then to his gut, and finally, beautifully into his trunk-like neck. I tasted blood for the first time that night, and I was shocked to find just how pleasurable it was to me. And with this thought, my memory morphed from a nauseating fear to a sudden and categorical lust. The khanum's long tongue had reached out and was exploring my now bare chest, causing the skin to revel in the warm touch.

I was determined that I would still make no sound, no motion until I felt completely safe in doing so...but her nails cut through the fragile skin stretched taut across my gaunt ribcage, and when she lapped up the blood that sprang up, I betrayed my stoicism with a moan. This electrified her, and she grasped my shoulders hungrily. "Lie down," she ordered, and her growling alto stroked my rapidly hardening lust as tangibly as if she had done it by hand. I obeyed unthinkingly, wishing only for this to continue, and she bent over me and kissed me full on the mouth. She stroked the faint wounds on my chest, now, and brought her fingers to my lips. I tasted my own blood on the hot plush of her fingertips, and when I moaned, I felt the woman's tongue invade my mouth, carrying with it the irresistable lust for the kill, for the sexual gratification that I had never yet known.

I kissed her back, now, with fervour, and she made a noise that was not so much a purr as a growl of pleasure. Then, to my dismay, she broke away and sat up. I was helpless to stop the small, disappointed sound that escaped my throat, and the khanum's derisive, self-satisfied laugh at having entranced me so thoroughly filled me with a shame so encompassing that it was almost arousing in itself.

"Normally," the khanum now began in her serpentine dulcet tone, removing her pants absently, "I hold my lovers to a rather high standard," I thought of the jars with dread, "However, since this is your first time, I will allow you a small error margin."

I did not respond, but as she peeled my pants away from my obscenely stiff manhood, I knew I was being granted a great favour. Suddenly exposed to the warm Persian air, and to the cruelly scrutinising gaze of the khanum, I braced myself for some derisive comment. But her hand reached down suddenly, and as she stroked me, all thoughts of anything except the overwhelming, saturating pleasure, left me. In my haze of deeply ecstatic sexual delerium, I vaguely heard her remark coyly, "No small jar, indeed."

But even if I had thought of chuckling at this obvious comment, even if I had thought that I might overcome the immense intoxication that the khanum's hand was granting this poor, pathetic, untouched man, I was soon showed that neither of those was about to come to be. My senses exploded into white-hot fragments of what was left of my sanity as I felt her mouth envelope the head of my boiling lust. The sound that left my mouth like a wave from the sea was alien in its intensity, and though the unparalleled kundalini seemed to reach out in indefinite vastness, in reality it was only seconds before I came.

Like a nubile volcano spewing forth its first powerful spurts of magma, I tensed in the crippling seizure of my orgasm, so immensely overcome by this pleasure and release that I was nearly sick from it. The first expulsion of unhappily hoarded male product was caught and devoured by the hungry mouth of the khanum, urging on a feeling so intense that I was not certain I would survive. But then my benefactor suddenly seemed to decide against the wanton swallowing of my tangy ecstasy, and sat up without warning. There was a terrible second when I felt a gaping rift open up beneath my floating form; the empty horror of this feeling being cut off before its time, the ravine of not being touched, and I soundlessly screamed for it not to be so! But her hand soon calmed my wildly desperate fear, and urged from my spasming loins every last ounce of sticky, white satisfaction.

I sighed, despite myself, and felt myself settling into the calm and untouched oasis of afterglow like a child into its warm, soft comforter. So complete was my bliss that even the portentous phrase that the khanum next uttered did not touch me for some time.

"That," she said pointedly, contriving to indicate the throbbing pleasure ebbing from my loins, "was your error margin."