corner.
“You must be strong, Laela,” Teesia said. “You must fight your way through this, and before you know it, Ogran will be dead and then you can be like my friend, Bella, flitting from bed to bed with whomever you please.” She finished with a smile, as if her words had actually made the situation more palatable.
“It’s a bit difficult to think that far ahead at the moment,” Laela replied with a scowl.
Even as Maven continued clinging to her, Teesia sat down on her other side and took her hands. “I know, but you must focus on the positive…and, well, that’s the only positive I’ve come up with so far.” With that, Teesia’s eyes dropped to the stone floor, as if she’d misspoken. “I’m so sorry Father has done this to you.”
Laela answered honestly. “I just thought he’d choose someone for me like Dane or Ralen. Someone…masculine, handsome. Someone who might please me. I’ve been waiting so long to be with a man…” She trailed off into a forlorn sigh.
Maven suddenly shot one finger triumphantly into the air. “I have a positive for you to focus on! The Rituals of Passion!”
“Rituals of Passion?” Laela echoed.
“Yes, that’s right!” Teesia answered, her expression becoming just as lively. “I did not get to have them—due to Ralen’s rather forceful ways, but Maven did, didn’t you, Maven?”
Maven nodded. “It’s what happens after the marriage ceremony, after the game of Maran tiles. It is sinfully pleasurable, Laela—in a way that need not have to do with your husband, exactly—and once you know such pleasures, you can simply…well, you can concentrate on
them
afterward. Perhaps you can remember them at…unpleasant times. You can close your eyes and travel back to the Rituals of Passion whenever you have need to.”
Teesia spoke up then. “But remember, do not try to play an especially good game of
Maran tiles—right, Maven?”
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Lacey Alexander
“Yes, that’s right! Play poorly and you will get more and more pleasure for it. Your pussy will hum like it never has before and your breasts will ache most delightfully, and then you will be introduced to the cock—”
“Pussy? Cock?” Laela repeated, perplexed.
Teesia rolled her eyes at Maven. “Stop. You’re confusing her with words she doesn’t yet know.”
Her sisters were talking so fast that Laela
indeed
felt thoroughly befuddled looking back and forth between them. “I don’t understand. What
are
these Rituals of Passion
exactly? What will happen to me when—”
At that moment, the thick wooden door to her room burst open and all three sisters went instantly still. It was unheard of to tell a royal bride what she could expect on her wedding night, especially concerning the Maran tiles.
Fortunately, it was only their mother, allowing them all to breathe a collective sigh of relief. Jalal’s dark hair shone in dramatic contrast against her usual sky blue silk as her eyes locked on Laela. “It is time for your Orientation, Daughter.”
The girls began to exchange looks of doubt and fear and dread. How could they be separated
now
? Laela had so much more to learn from her sisters before she was subjected to marrying Ogran of the Mountains. It was Maven who finally spoke. “Mother, could we just have a few more minutes with Laela? She is frightened and she needs our counsel.”
Jalal let out a regretful sigh as she shook her head. “I’m sorry, but your Orienter is here and it’s time to begin.”
“Mother,” Laela beseeched her, pushing to her feet, “you cannot possibly be behind Father’s decision.” Yes, Jalal had backed Enrick when he’d matched Maven with “Dane the Dreadful,” and that had turned out to be for the best—but this was altogether different.
Jalal released another long breath. “I will admit I’m troubled by your father’s decision, Laela. But you know he is not a man who changes his mind, and if he has chosen this path for you, it will stand.”
Obviously seeing the hurt in Laela’s eyes, Jalal moved toward her, taking her youngest girl’s hands. “I’m truly sorry, Daughter. I would not have wished this for you.” She drew back to look at her, eyes filled with faith and resolve. “But you are stronger than you know. You will survive this. And your life will ultimately be good. I feel it in my heart.”
Within a too-short moment, Laela had hugged her sisters and mother goodbye, all of them shedding a few tears as she tried to accept her horrible fate. Over and again, the question pummeled her—
How can this be? How can my father expect me to endure such a marriage?
The despairing thoughts were interrupted when her private teacher for the past several years, Aris, entered the room. Aris’ brown hair was darker than Laela’s chestnut-colored locks, and fell straighter and more fine, nearly to her waist. Laela had
8
Carnal Sacrifice
always thought her a pretty woman, but quiet and prim—not the norm for a single woman in Caralon where, so long as you were not of royalty, you could live whatever lifestyle you pleased, having a different man in your bed every night if you chose. She’d never seen Aris with
any
man and was surprised the young teacher had been selected to play this particular role in Laela’s life. “You are to be my Orienter, Aris?”
Aris smiled thinly, looking slightly uncomfortable. “I, too, was shocked when your mother asked me, but she reminded me that you and I have always gotten on well and that this is key for your Orientation.”
“True enough.” But even so, it seemed this might be awkward. Up to now, Laela had been bubbling with excitement at the prospect of learning from her Orienter about what happened between a man and a woman—the sensations in her breasts and between her thighs, the way she rubbed herself there sometimes and reached the most spectacular summit of pleasure. Now, however, such enthusiasm was difficult to fathom.
“Shall we begin?” Aris asked.
Laela nodded, though her mind still swam with worries. How could she embrace this particular royal marriage ritual given the man she was expected to marry?
“Very well then,” Aris said, and stepped back out into the corridor to start carrying in charts and lists and drawings similar to those Laela was familiar with from their lessons in language and geography.
“Take a seat on the bed, Laela,” her teacher instructed as she took up her pointer—a long, smooth stick carved from cherry wood that she always used during lessons—and aimed it toward the first word in a list of many. Aris had never been one to waste a moment of time in class, and this was no exception, as she dove right into her lesson.
“Sex,” she said. “Sex is the common term for what happens between a man and woman.” She drew the pointer slightly down to the next word. “This is also called fucking. To fuck is to have sex.” Again, the pointer moved lower. “Cunt is one name for your—”
“Wait,” Laela injected. “Stop.”
Aris looked up, clearly taken aback at having the lesson interrupted. “What is it?”
Laela swallowed. She knew she must somehow get past this, but how? “Aris, my father has condemned me to marriage with…an old man. The idea of being physical with him in any way makes me feel ill.” As if echoing her words, her stomach churned at the thought.
As Aris came to join her on the bed, her eyes softened—Laela recognized the look as the same one of sympathy her mother and sisters had imparted. Aris stayed silent for a moment, then said, “Perhaps you will take a lover outside of marriage if you so dare. Some women in arranged marriages do.”
That thought filled Laela with simultaneous hope and fear.
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Lacey Alexander
“And if not, when Ogran dies, you can take
many
lovers. You will be free, and still young and beautiful enough to indulge in any man you desire.”
“That’s what everyone says. But in the meantime, how am I to learn the ways of the marriage bed when my stomach shrivels with every thought of the man I am to wed?”
Aris appeared deep in thought for a moment, until she finally looked up at Laela with a speculative smile. “Think of someone else. During our lessons. And afterward, whenever you need to.”
“Someone else? Who?”
Aris’ green eyes widened at the prospect. “Is there some handsome man you’ve seen or know who you might wish to be close to? Who might make your body tingle with arousal when you are near him?”
Laela turned the question over in her head. The first male to come to mind was Donnell, of her father’s fortress, who had once been smitten with Maven. Sometimes when Donnell looked at her, the ever-so-sensitive region between her thighs burned and ached to know him better. And there was also the dark blond man in the village. Even darker stubble generally covered his chin, his angular jawline was strong and slightly forbidding, and since the first time Laela had noticed him a year or two ago she couldn’t help looking for him whenever they ventured into town. Unlike most villagers of Myrtell, he never came to fortress events, but she’d seen him on shopping excursions and the walks she and her maid sometime took on the beach that passed by the liveliest part of the settlement. Donnell was young and handsome enough, but the slightly dangerous air of the blond stranger drew her thoughts to him in a more forceful way. “I…think I have someone in mind,” she told Aris cautiously.
The teacher smiled, then reached to gently squeeze Laela’s knee through her pale yellow silken gown. “Good. Now you need only concentrate on
him
as we continue and all will be well.”
From there, Aris proceeded with the lesson, teaching Laela terms she’d never heard before—or at least not before her conversation with her sisters a little while earlier—all of which she committed to memory. The teacher used drawings and diagrams to explain exactly what sex was—and Laela couldn’t help being astounded at the concept of each man having such a shaft extend from his body as Aris’ drawings showed. Not to mention the fact that men
entered
this appendage into the opening between a woman’s legs! She couldn’t imagine anything more intimate and felt a little stunned to realize how many people were engaging in such acts all the time, all around her, yet keeping it from her virgin eyes.
Of course, her thoughts flitted back to wrinkled old Ogran, but she quickly banished thoughts of him for the blond man from Myrtell who was quickly becoming her fantasy lover, the man who touched her breasts and pussy in the way Aris described, who slid his cock into her wet cunt, which grew wetter still as she envisioned it, as she nearly
felt
him next to her. As the lesson proceeded, Laela suspected that this
sex
she was learning about was even more intense and pleasurable than she’d imagined.
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Carnal Sacrifice
An hour later, when Laela’s head was filled with visions of different sexual positions and all the new words that described them, Aris said, “Now, although it may be awkward, you must disrobe and we will remove your hair.”
Laela reached up to the back of her head, grasping her braid protectively. “My hair?”
Aris laughed. “Your body hair, Laela. We will be removing it from the waist down,” she explained, then walked to the door and admitted several young men bearing a wooden tub and ewers of water to fill it. One of them was Donnell, whose smile felt purely sexual. Then again, perhaps that was only in her mind, given all she’d just learned. And now she was forced to realize the strapping young men had apparently been waiting outside all this time, possibly hearing their discussion through the crack at the bottom of the door. At the very least, they knew what lessons took place here.
At last, one of the boys placed an expensive glass jar into Aris’ hand—filled with blue paste. “The rich use this to remove hair from the legs and pussy,” she said, the boys not quite yet gone from the room.
Her face reddened slightly and her cunt twitched as the door finally closed behind them. “But…why?”
Aris smiled. “Many men prefer smooth skin in these areas. It’s considered a great luxury.”
Laela nodded uncertainly, then followed Aris’ instructions to take off her gown and step into the small round tub, trying not to feel shy about her nudity. She listened as Aris spoke more, about men and their preferences—they even liked for women to take their cocks in their mouths!—and she watched as Aris smoothed the blue ointment over her calves and thighs, then her cunt. That particular area felt unusually sensitive to the touch as Aris generously applied the paste, and Laela was almost sorry when the application was done.
Minutes later, Aris used a wet cloth to wash the blue paste away. When her hair disappeared, Laela had never felt smoother—or more on display. The notion made her whole body tingle strangely. It was odd enough to be naked before her teacher, but now she had not even her pussy curls for modesty.
Aris handed her the small viewing glass from her dresser. “Look,” she said, “and see how pretty your cunt is now.”
Laela peered carefully into the jagged bits of assembled antique glass, surprised at the appearance of her denuded mound and studying in particular the way bits of pink flesh protruded from the slit there. She found it at once arousing and disquieting. “Is this normal? For this flesh to jut out?”