Preface

 

It is only by an accident of history that we no longer observe the ancient Roman custom of judicial enslavement for debt or as a penalty for a criminal conviction. But what if history had taken a different path? Modern physics teaches that there are an infinite number of universes, and therefore an infinite number of Earths, some so similar as to be indistinguishable from our own, others so different as to be unrecognizable. Among the infinite number of possibilities then, there are an infinite number of Earths where history did go a different way than ours. Therefore, there must exist somewhere Earths in which the old Roman laws are followed, and slavery is still on the books. This story is set in one of those histories.

 

CHAPTER ONE - A NICE LADY

 

She hung head-downwards by a rope knotted around her left ankle. Her other leg was doubled up, calf pressed against thigh, a position that was enforced by a second length of hemp cord drawn tightly around her right ankle and the top of her thigh. Rivulets of the copious sweat produced by the humidity and tropical heat ran down her naked body. The salty fluid got into her eyes, nose and (whenever she opened it to pant for air) mouth. Her name was Bryn Matthews. She was a reporter who had gone out looking for a scoop, but ended up as a prisoner in this ancient, empty ruin, out in the middle of the desert.

Earlier, when she had first been hung up like a side of beef, pale moonlight, feeble and inadequate though it was, had provided some illumination. It gilded her slender nudity, highlighting the places where the perspiration gathered: her upper lip, the creases of her pert buttocks, the tips of her small, superbly firm breasts. But at some point during the endless night, the moon had set, leaving her in total darkness. It was so dark that she began to imagine little spots of color, red, blue and green, flickering and dancing in the blackness. Then, whether because of the blood accumulating in her head from being inverted for such a long time, her mind's need to see something in the impenetrable blackness, or the simple fact that she was utterly exhausted physically and mentally, Bryn began to imagine vague shapes where there was in fact nothing. These hallucinations gradually became more definite and solid as time went on, turning into shadowy, man-like forms. After a somewhat longer period of time, aural hallucinations joined the visual ones, in the form of ghostly, whispered words that she could not quite make out, but which sounded full of both malice and menace. She told herself that her mind was playing tricks on her, that these phantoms were no more real than a nightmare, but her ability to reason was failing, and she had to fight with all her strength to keep from herself sinking into an abyss of irrational, nameless terror that was only one step short of insanity.

So when she heard the sound of new voices, at first Bryn thought that these were merely additional manifestations of creeping insanity. Then she saw the solid shapes of three men outlined by their flashlights, and she knew they were real. Even though these were the same three men who had abducted her and left her hanging alone in the dark, she very nearly wept for joy at the sight of other human beings.

"Thank the gods you're here at last," she called out. "Have you come to let me down?"

The men chuckled at this as they approached, then surrounded her. One of them aimed his light directly in her eyes, making everything disappear in a dazzling blaze of red.

"Maybe we are nice, and we will let the pretty white lady down," one of the men said, "but only if she is nice to us." She felt a hand settle on her exposed sex and begin to gently massage it, while something warm, soft and spongy was pressed against her lips. A strong, gamey odor filled her nostrils.

"No," she said, turning her head to one side away from the offensive object. "No, don't. Please."

Strong hands took Bryn's head on either side, and forcibly turned her back to where the cock (for that is what the object was) awaited her.

"But if the white lady is not nice and friendly, then we are not so nice to her," the same voice added. Bryn was given a practical demonstration of what was meant by the phrase "not so nice," when she felt something cut viciously into the already welted, burning flesh of her buttocks. She screamed and writhed crazily. This commotion caused her body to begin slowly rotating at the end of the rope.

"No...more," she gasped, as soon as she could speak again. "I'll do...what you...want."

A hand on her hip stopped her rotation, and once again, she felt the spongy head of an erect penis pushing insistently against her lips. "Open wide, and show us how friendly you are," the man said. Bryn opened her eyes. The flashlight was now directed down at the thick cylinder of flesh being presented to her lips.

Ever since her graduation from high school, Bryn had resolutely concentrated on her career at the expense of everything else, including her love-life. Although she was occasionally indulged in a quick, one-night stand with a colleague she found attractive, she made up her mind not to become involved in any relationships, until she had established her bona fides as a journalist, so that no one could claim that she had slept her way to the top. She had therefore engaged in standard vaginal intercourse perhaps a dozen times, she was uninstructed and inexperienced in any other form of sexual intercourse. She had never even considered giving a blow-job, and was in fact nearly nauseated by even the idea. The one time her sex partner had suggested it, she had promptly jumped out of bed, dressed herself and left him.

Now, without any warning she was expected to find accommodation for the kidnapper's turgid, oversized organ in her mouth (in fact, the man was unusually well endowed, which made him, from Bryn's perspective, inhumanly, almost freakishly, large.) She began to plead for time to mentally adjust herself for this task, but was not even permitted finish asking. She got as far as "Could you just give me...?" when she was obliged to conclude with a wet "glug!"

Before she could finish, the man answered her in an unmistakable manner, by thrusting his cock through her parted lips. The gamey, unwashed smell she had noted before was matched by a flavor that reminded her of a spoiled salami soaked in used bathwater. The taste was so strong and repulsive that her stomach revolted, and she gagged. Fortunately, she did not vomit, as she had not been fed for more than 12 hours and her stomach was empty.

"Do not let your teeth touch my jamolo, white lady," the man warned. "That is not nice, and if you act bad, we won't be so nice to you. You see?"

"Ummm!" she assured him as well as she could with a mouthful of his cock. Her tongue had been trapped and forced back while trying to fend off the head of the invading staff, until it closed up her trachea, cutting off her air. She made bubbling sounds of distress, trying to bring her plight to the man' attention. The man noticed her struggles, and obligingly pulled his rod back until only the first two inches or so were still in her mouth, allowing Bryn to move her tongue down and out of the way, so she could breathe.

When she accidentally swabbed the head of his shaft in the course of this adjustment, the movement had an unintended effect on the man, one that he evidently found exciting, judging by his grunt of pleasure. In any case, he must have been highly aroused even before he began, because in less than a minute, he gripped Bryn's head to hold her in place, moaned and came. "That is very nice, white lady." Bryn felt his cock pulse, just before her mouth filled with his discharge. It had a bitter, ammoniated flavor and a gooey, slippery texture that reminded her of mucus.

Some of the goo got into her windpipe, inducing a series of wracking coughs in response. Since her mouth was still full of the man's oversized organ, the coughs sent some of the cum up her nose, and momentarily blocked her airway again. She turned her head to the side, in a sudden violent motion, pulling out of his grip, which had relaxed considerably during his orgasm, coughing and snorting, expelling globs of the noxious goop and gasping for air.

"My turn," said one of the other men, from behind her.

Bryn fought desperately to speak, to beg for time, just a minute or two, to recover. She got no further than "No wait...!" before a new cock, this one perhaps not quite as thick as the first, but an inch or two longer, turned her plea into the meaningless, "Mmmmm!"

As the ramrod advanced deeper into Bryn's mouth, she noticed that one of her "dates" had picked up where his colleague who was now skull-fucking her had left off, by arousing her manually, fingering her exposed sex. It was only now Bryn realized that the second man had been fondling her while she was preoccupied with by the cock in her throat. The sensations produced by the rubbing and flicking her clit were so distracting that she almost forgot about the fat shaft in her mouth, until the head of the latter butted up against the back of her throat. This sharp reminder brought Bryn's full attention back to the man she was servicing orally. She gagged and twisted with all her might, trying without success to shake off the hands controlling her head, as once again she was threatened with suffocation.

Her struggles evidently had much the same effect on this second man, as her inadvertent tongue action had on the first. "Ahh! Dimele rekembi el jamolo!" He exclaimed (this might be roughly translated from the original Nardo as, "Suck my cock, whore!") He pulled out before Bryn's shortage of oxygen became critical and, holding his cock in his hand, directed his sticky discharge to spatter her eyes, nose, and lips, from where it gathered to hang in long strands before falling to the ground.

They changed places again, and during this exchange there was only the briefest of interruptions in the manipulation of her sex. When the calloused side of a hand ran back and forth over her stiff, slippery clit for perhaps the 50th time, Bryn made a sound deep in her throat and her pelvis writhed in uncontrollable passion.

"No, no, nuhhh..." she protested weakly, until the third assailant's cock stifled her. This last assault proved to be the most difficult to endure of all. The man's organ was as long as the second man's and as thick as that of the first. Even worse, he demonstrated not the least consideration for his unwilling partner: whereas his comrades had stopped and pulled back when they reached the back of Bryn's throat to give her a chance to breathe, this one used the occasion to force himself in deeper, as if he was attempting to bore a new hole in her neck to accommodate his manhood. Bryn gagged, made soft, liquid sounds and fought for her life with what remained of her failing strength, all of which accomplished nothing.

Iron bands formed around her chest, then tightened excruciatingly as her need for air grew acute. The sensation was so painful that Bryn welcomed the relief offered by the approach of unconsciousness or death (at this point, she hardly cared which.) Just before she released her hold on consciousness to embrace the peace of oblivion, she heard a voice from what sounded like the far end of a long tunnel.

"Let her breathe, Akeem," a man said. "Shaka-La will not thank you if she is dead when he returns."

The man with his cock in her mouth said something in Nardo, and the hands holding her head relaxed, as he came out of Bryn's mouth, allowing her to draw in a long, shuddering breath. As he started to re-insert himself, one of the others spoke sharply to him. This must have been some sort of admonishment to use her more carefully, because thereafter he took some care not to suffocate Bryn when he resumed the skull-fucking.

With the threat of suffocation no longer hanging over her, the powerful waves of pleasure flowing from between her legs soon came to occupy the forefront of her mind. Whoever was rubbing, teasing and twirling her love knob knew his business, and he had not stopped while she was fighting to stave off suffocation, while by the way his fingers slid so easily inside her, she knew she must be very wet indeed.

She began to automatically tell him to get his hands off her, then stopped when she realized that: A. she could not communicate very effectively with an erect penis in her mouth; B. even if she could, he was unlikely to listen and; C. she was so close to an orgasm at this point, that stopping the last thing she wanted. In fact, what she really wanted was... "Uhrrr! Uhrrr!" she demanded around the mouthful of meat, which was as close to saying, "Harder! Harder!" as she could manage.

They men laughed when she came, moaning as her abdomen weaved uninhibitedly in the ancient dance of lust. Bryn's orgasm was all-consuming; when the third man came, spattering her face and hair with his sticky seed, she did not feel it. When the men commented on the remarkably sexy way her slender, flexible frame moved, she did not hear them. Her higher mental functions had all but closed down, leaving in charge the primitive reptile brain that knew only pleasure and pain.

When the level of pleasure-hormones finally fell enough to allow rational thought again, and Bryn reviewed what her captors had just done to her and how she had reacted, she sagged under the weight of humiliation. She had been used like a five-crown whore..., no that wasn't right, she corrected herself. She had not been used like a human being at all; she had received the kind of treatment normally accorded an inflatable sex-doll. And yet, she had climaxed, while tied up, naked and with a mouthful of a stranger's thick, disgusting penis.

It made her cringe to think about it, and yet, she could not stop replaying the memory. How could I have possibly responded like that?, she demanded of herself. Finally, she decided that she was particularly vulnerable to being manipulated, because of how infrequently she had enjoyed sexual intercourse over the last few years, and her reactions were just those of a normal woman of her age who had been long deprived of a normal sexual outlet. Now, I'm ready for them, she told herself. They won't be able to control me that way if, god forbid, they start in on me again.

Then she noticed that while she been reviewing the immediate past and planning for the future, the three men had been anything but idle in the present. The clever fingertip touches that had made her climax before had given way to even more provocative handling. Her hips were weaving side to side, up, down and around in sensuous spirals, under the urgings of a series of fiendishly clever tongue flicks. Another huge orgasm was building like a gathering storm, as each wet nudge sent a tremor of sexual pleasure vibrating through her, and Bryn was helpless to stop or even delay her reaction.

One of the men lifted her head up until their eyes met. "You see, white lady?" He asked. "You are nice to us, so now, we are friendly and nice to you."

Bryn ordered them to stop, intending to say in no uncertain terms that, she didn't want their filthy hands or tongues inside her, but when she tried, her words did not carry much conviction, even in her own ears. "No...d-don't. Please...oooh!... no... god...don't..." her voice fell to a whisper as she finished by begging, "please... don't...stop."

They brought her off three more times, delighted by how easily they were able to make beautiful, young Western woman climax with their fingers, lips and tongues, laughing at the way her flexible body contorted in the throes of orgasms and at her ineffectual orders to stop, which were even more amusing, when they turned into desperate pleas to continue.

By the time the men were finished with her, Bryn was drained in both body and spirit. She hung head downwards, as limp as a boned fish, unresponsive as they patted her buttocks and laughingly praised her sexual prowess, before leaving her hanging head-downwards in the dark, just as they had found her. After the final echoes of their voices had faded in the distance, lacking any better way to pass the time, Bryn reviewed the poor choices and (she had to admit this to herself) downright stupidity that had brought her to her present, sorry condition.