Pleasure Island [The Chronicles of Lidir] by Aran Ashe

bars of its small cage. Her hands hung limply in front of her, touching at the fingertips, fastened at the wrists, which lay against the bareness of her belly. Her ankle chains had been removed. Her skin felt soft and warm. It tingled from the bathing; the hot salt water had left it feeling moist. She had been embarrassed - she still felt embarrassed at the recollection - to be bathed by two men, the leather-shirted guards, while Ratchitt stood by, averting his eyes and holding the towels. When they had untied the pouch, it had clung to her, from the pressure, from the moistness - from the touching she had been made to suffer, chained to the hook in the thick oak ceiling beam while the two men sat back upon the table and drank their mugs of beer. Once the pouch had been removed, her flesh, cool yet swelling still, had felt peculiarly naked before their scrutiny. And as if to make her feel more naked yet, they had made her use the bucket. In a very matter-of-fact way, they had made her kneel up, then had tried to place the bucket between her knees but, discovering that this was not possible with her ankles fastened by the short chain, they had removed this and tried again. Their methods would admit of no refusal. They had sponged her lower back unhurriedly, recharging the cloth in fresh cold water, until the thin trickles, running down the groove and between her legs, had provoked her beyond the point of urgent need, to the sweet release of a warm wet pulsing pressure that, once started, would not stop. But they had continued trickling the water down her until the last hot shivering drops had dripped from her person. And though she had thought that she might die then from shame, the men had continued their preparations for her ablutions as if nothing had befallen that was in any way untoward.
     
    The pouch was carefully wrapped in a soft cloth and put to one side. Again she felt a wave of shame. But once she was lifted into the giant shallow copper bowl and she felt the soothing warmth of the water on her skin, it was as if an unbearable weight was gradually lifted from her mind. The men had sponged her breasts, her belly and her back and had made her kneel. Then with her eyes tight shut but her knees apart and the warm salt water lapping heavily against her, dripping from her curls, her chained wrists were lifted and she was opened, back and front. Warm ocean flooded inside. Her leaves of flesh were held apart and the inner surfaces stroked; two fingers pushed inside; a third finger, oiled, was slipped into her bottom. 'No - keep your arms up,' one of the men had said. 'Fold your hands across your breasts.' The weight of her forearms, pressed against them, made them push out to the sides. The fingers, moving round inside her, pressed against each other through the inner skin. Warm oil was massaged into her nubbin until it came up very hard. The men made her lean back against the shallow side of the bowl, her hands still across her breasts and the fine golden hairs upon her forearms touching the enhanced tightness of those breasts, which to Anya now felt overfull and heavy, while the men looked at her nubbin, while each of them touched it.
     
    In time, they had lifted her out and made her sit astride a simple padded stool on which the towels had now been placed. Throughout the drying, her nubbin had remained erect. They had checked it at intervals, not touching it directly, but expressing approval each time the hood was slipped back and the nubbin was seen to be poking out hard. They had pushed her belly forward until it touched the padding and then had examined her bottom, touching the soft, sensitised skin very lightly, debating whether it should be fully oiled, then at last deciding against it, but fingering that skin repeatedly, while beneath, her rigid nubbin was pressed into the soft damp of the towels. They had brushed her hair until it hung straight and heavy and shining, then had refitted the leather pouch - dark