Читать книгу Underworlds: Tales of Paranormal Lust - Various, Glenda Jackson - Страница 5

Rub it! Rub it harder! Oh – oh, yes! Don’t stop! Yes, I’m coming!

In an indigo-hued cloud I gush forth from the neck of the Lamp, swelling immensely. Flesh thickens into solidity as it contacts the air. New skin, the colour of a twilight sky, webs across sheets of muscle. I open my just-formed mouth to take great breaths, smelling wild sage and dust, incense and cardamom and the hated stink of humanity. Then I stretch my limbs and groan with the indescribable pleasure of incarnation.

There’s plenty of room to stretch. I am outdoors this time. As I blink my eyes into focus I see I’m standing in a broad valley walled by yellow hills. Around me kneel the Children of Earth, their faces hidden in their sleeves. They are so small that I might crush one into the dirt with the ball of my bare foot, and I laugh in contempt. My shout booms from the cliff faces.

‘Djinni!’ Only one figure does not kneel or avert her gaze. She stands in her royal robes under a canopy, surrounded by a sea of bowed heads, and she looks at me without flinching. Her hair is like the mane of a lion, though the pelt across her shoulder is that of a leopard. A broad collar of gold lies upon her breasts, and in her hands sits the Lamp.

Bilqis: Queen of the Land of Sheba. Under the necklace, the jut of her breasts is most enticing to the eye.

‘Djinni,’ she says, in that throaty voice, ‘you should appear in more seemly guise.’

I glance down at myself, pleased by what I see. Every inch of my flesh thrills to the sensation of release from confinement, my male member no less than the rest. It stands as solid as the central pillar of a temple, and as blue as a storm cloud. I grasp it in my fist, caressing it lovingly, rediscovering that particular pleasure.

‘Does it not please you, mistress?’ I ask, grinning at her. My cock is hot and full, and so hard that if I lay upon a mountaintop I could prop up the dome of the sky with it. And it has not escaped my notice that the mortal queen stands almost exactly as tall as it does. I might wear her as an ornament. That mental picture is gratifying.

She jerks her head, and I am pleased to have discomfited her. I give myself a stroke and my cock springs back and slaps against the hard wall of my stomach.

‘Cover yourself!’ she mouths. Then, louder: ‘I command it.’

I shrug, trying not to show my prickling irritation. I cannot disobey, of course. She summoned me from the Lamp, and I am its slave. With the mere lift of an eyebrow I attire myself in loose turquoise-blue trousers, then I tuck my swollen glans behind the waistband. I put my fists on my hips, largely to stop me reaching down and sweeping into ruin the whole verminous swarm at my feet. ‘Your every whim is as divine law to me, mistress,’ I say silkily.

She relaxes a little. She is beautiful – no longer with the fawn-like charm of youth, to be sure, but lushly curved – yet she stands upon her modesty among men, as I remember. I comprehend how my naked masculinity must disturb the peace of her woman’s mind, like a wild bull rampaging through a tidy garden.

‘I have a task for you, djinni,’ she says.

A baby wails.

My interest sharpens as I recall that she was pregnant the last time I saw her, though now her womb is empty. Looking among the entourage crouching in the dirt, I spot the small form cradled in the crook of a nursemaid’s arm. It appears to be trying to escape from its captivity. The girl pulls it to her anxiously.

‘Is that the child?’ I ask, my voice a rumble like distant thunder. ‘Is that the get of Solomon the Wise?’ It is hard to conceal my loathing of that name and Bilqis casts a sharp, maternal glance over her shoulder, bristling.

‘He is my son,’ she says. ‘And it is my command that you never bring him to harm.’

‘A son?’ I laugh, wanting to hurt. ‘After sixty generations of queens in Sheba?’

‘My son,’ she repeats, warningly. ‘And he will be great among the kings of the world. And you will kneel before him. Now.’

I clench my teeth. Then I sink to my knees and press my forehead to the earth. I have no choice.

‘Djinni,’ she says, mollified, ‘I have a task for you.’

‘Mistress.’

‘Vizier, show him the plans.’

I raise myself to hands and knees in order to look down at a bent old man with a grey beard, who comes forward unfurling a scroll. He looks like he is about to soil his silk robe in fear. He can’t even look me in the face. On the parchment is a picture of what seems to be a wall.

‘Do you see?’ says Bilqis. ‘I want you to build me a dam right across the Wadi Dhana here. To those measurements. With sluice gates at either end, as depicted – so that, when the river runs full again, water may be trapped here and used to irrigate the land around. Do you understand, djinni? It must be built of stone and fit to stand for a thousand years. That is my command.’

I dig my talons into the sand. But part of me recognises that I would rather be out here, even slaving as a menial builder for her, than be confined again inside the Lamp. It is a welcome respite.

‘To hear, mistress, is to obey.’

* * *

I was a parting gift. Imagine that, if you can! King Solomon gave me to her as a slave, the day she gathered up her entourage and set out from Jerusalem on the long journey home. She carried another farewell present inside her belly that day, though I do not think he knew about that. The unformed seedling in her belly was a blazing fire to my eye, but I was certainly not about to volunteer any such information to him.

The arrogance of the man takes my breath away still. He’d had lamps of brass and gold made to hang in his palace – each one the shape of a tear, as if the sun itself had wept. Into each lamp he’d bound one of my brothers or sisters, so that their undying flames might illuminate his stinking slovenly rooms. Can you comprehend such an obscenity – the Firstborn, the Children of Fire, the Lords of the Sky and the Earth, imprisoned and made to light up the corners of some miserable little sandstone palace in a backwater shit-hole? I, who have stood upon the ziggurats of Uruk and Harappa and Babylon, and had emperors cast their crowns at my feet! I, who have walked the Walls of the Earth, and looked over into the star-strewn void!

Solomon the Wise, eh? Solomon the Sorcerer. His people profess to abhor the magical arts, but he is the most cunning, ruthless and puissant of wizards. He has dug secrets out of the underworld and tricked the divine names from the lips of angels.

Bilqis knows all that, of course. She sought him out because his wisdom and learning were renowned, even among the maggot-headed Children of Earth. She tested him with her riddles – yes, we watched that from our prisons; the two of them sitting up long into the night, sparring verbally – and when he passed her test she lay with him to get a child worthy to be her own heir. Oh yes: a wise sorcerer-king for the great realm of Sheba; that was what she desired. The moment she knew she was carrying, she was out of that place. Before he could imprison her too, I do not doubt, and keep the child for his own.

I do not want to think about him. Remembrance fills me with such ire that the binding spells he wrought upon me – those words he etched onto my skin – burn and gnaw at my flesh, searing me to the bone. If I could, I would tear off my hide and incinerate it in the inner fires of the Earth, and then I would be free of him.

But what is written is written.

* * *

She summons me forth once more. This time I am indoors, and cannot grow to my full height. I rein myself in before I smash through the carved cedar beams of the roof.

There is a squealing and a shrieking, a flurry of panic at my arrival. I look down and see the room is full of women. It makes me grin to see them shrink away and cover their faces – though several are peeking through the slits of their fingers, and that makes me grin too. I have arrived clothed, because Bilqis commands me thus, but my silken trousers do not fully disguise the extent of my exuberance. They are all young and lovely; their breasts bare and firm, their shapely thighs and rounded bottoms a field of delight that my rampant share urges me to plough. In Solomon’s palace, I would assume that this is the apartment of his concubines. Here in Sheba, they must be the queen’s handmaidens. It is clear they have not been expecting the arrival of any male, and their consternation is enchanting. I wish to rush in among them like a cockerel among a flock of hens.

‘Djinni!’

I force my attention back to Bilqis, who kneels upon cushions in the middle of this fluttering crowd, with a slender maiden cradled in her arms. ‘Mistress?’

She’s dressed less formally today. I can see her ebony nipples through the damp and clinging gauze of her robe. I understand that the land of Sheba is considered punishingly hot by humans. ‘Djinni,’ says she, ‘my slave here has been bitten by a viper. Can you heal her?’

The girl in her arms is twisting with pain, her dark skin grey now and glistening with sweat. I can see her injured foot, swollen to twice its natural size, propped upon a cushion.

‘Pray to the God of Solomon, mistress,’ I suggest sourly. ‘Does He not promise to be merciful?’

‘I have. And to Shams and Ilmaqah and Athtar, who rule this land. The gods do not answer me. So if it lies within your power, djinni, I command you to heal this maid.’

I briefly consider some way to twist her words, but my heart is not in it. I am too distracted by the perfumed, quivering throng of women. And the girl is pretty, for a human, or will be so when well. I twitch a single finger – mostly to show how easy this is for me – and the poison hisses out of her, issuing as a faint green cloud from her open lips. Her leg reverts instantly to healthy flesh.

Everyone in the room utters a wahwahwah of wonder. Except Bilqis, who smiles and nods, and the girl, who sobs and buries her face in her queen’s breasts.

‘There, there,’ says the monarch of all Sheba, both left and right of the Red Sea. ‘You are fine. No need to cry, my sweet one.’

And my eyes widen as the maid pulls down the fine gauze of the queen’s robe and sucks a big nipple into her mouth.

Bilqis closes her own eyes for a moment in pleasure, then opens them, meeting my gaze with a long, considering look. ‘You did well, djinni,’ she says. ‘It pleases me to reward you.’ With a couple of clicks of her fingers she jerks two of the women at the side of the chamber from their knees. ‘You two: see to his pleasure.’

I’m taken aback, but far from dismayed. The young women are curvaceous of body and beautiful of face, and they advance towards me with rapidly rising and falling breasts, bright-eyed but gratifyingly nervous.

‘It would help, djinni,’ says the queen in a dry voice, ‘if you were to assume the size of a mortal man.’

I comply, shrinking my towering form down from the ceiling, until I am only the size of a very large man. The two handmaidens kneel before me on the cushioned floor, and reach for my hidden weapon, wetting their lips as they tug at my clothes. They are eager to obey their queen, I note, approving.

‘Do not hurt them, djinni,’ Bilqis adds as an afterthought.

I bare my sharp teeth in a grin at her. But I clasp my wrists at the small of my back, safely out of the way.

Then the handmaids lay hold of their prize; one cupping my big balls, the other stroking my thick shaft. Both of them vie for the right to suck my glans, and most stimulating it is to watch them fight for the honour; their lips wrestling over the crown of my manhood, their tongues lashing and sliding over the veined pillar of my magnificence. Teasing fingers stroke my balls and the skin behind. I let out a groan of appreciation. These two are not ignorant of the bodies of men, clearly.

And it is so long since I have known carnal pleasure. Years now, trapped in that Lamp. My sap rises swiftly. I look up from the two bobbing heads at my crotch, just to distance myself and prolong the delight, but the broader view does not provide distraction. Every woman in that room is watching me, looking at my body and my cock and their two sisters sucking and slurping at it. Their eyes are wide, drinking in the sight. Their full, moist lips are parted. Their soft breasts heave with each breath they take. Some look entranced; some wary; some hungry. Even the queen herself wears a faint smile, though the maid she is suckling at her breasts is kissing with such vigour that Bilqis’ expression appears somewhat unfocused.

My bow is at full stretch, straining for release. I can feel my balls tighten, their hot wet burden ready to be spilled. My thighs are so taut they tremble. I look down once more and see my two handmaidens are taking it in turn to run their tongues up the length of my cock, each swallowing the head, sucking it lovingly, and then letting it go just in time for the other girl to engulf it.

‘Yes, oh yes,’ I growl, fire swimming in my veins. ‘That is right, you Whores of the Earth! This is your place, all of you!’

‘Stop,’ says Bilqis sharply.

In an instant the two girls draw away, leaving my cock standing bereft and waving wetly. My vision swims. I can feel the flame burning in my blood turn to pain. I can feel my balls clenching. I turn to the queen with a snarl.

‘I give, and I take away,’ Bilqis says, brushing the girl from her as she stands. The queen has a wrathful glitter in her eye. ‘Get back into your Lamp, djinni.’

I have no choice but to obey.

* * *

Inside my prison it is not cramped. Or at least, it’s not a constriction of the body, there being no body in this place. But it is dark, and it is lonely. I may light it with suns and build within it worlds of my imagining, but the mind grows weary in time. I walk the star-strewn halls of artifice and replay the wild events of memory, but I speak to no one but myself.

I understand that the Children of Earth dream, and in their dreaming minds meet with those who are not themselves – gods and tricksters, lost friends and the forgotten dead. It is not like that for the Djinn. We do not dream.

It is possible for me to look out from my cell, and see all that the wavering flame at the tip illuminates. But Bilqis has me kept in an empty room, and I rarely bother. I create in my prison a woman of gold who moves and walks and does as I command her, and I fashion her in the form of my captor. Upon that golden body I heap every indignity I can conceive of – but without the sensations of the flesh, and without her having will or thought or speech of her own, there is no satisfaction in it and no release for me. I burn, and I will burn for ever. My Lamp will never go out.

* * *

The next time Bilqis calls me from my prison, the hand of night lies upon the Earth. I stand in a chamber I have never seen before, which contains a great bed. There are only three women in the room this time. Two are entirely naked, and they may not have noticed my entrance at all, because the first is lying back upon the coverlet and the other has her face buried in the girl’s sex and is lapping away – to some effect, judging from the hitch and twitch of those hips and the way the reclining maid is panting as she plays with her own breasts.

‘Djinni,’ says the third, the queen herself, ‘I have something to show you. Stand and watch. Do not move until I tell you.’

It is not an entirely disagreeable command, for once. Bilqis is clad only in a collar of bright feathers and a belt of lapis lazuli beads. They glow against the dark shimmer of her skin, drawing attention to its velvet softness, to the curve of her waist and the swell of her heavy breasts. But there is no vulnerability in her near-nakedness; she holds herself regally, as if in coronation robes.

She rises and places the Lamp safely aside upon a shelf, and then from under a cushion on the bed – she reaches around the two labouring handmaids, stroking both idly with her fingertips – she fetches an apparatus that I do not, at first, comprehend. It consists of two phalluses, shaped from stitched and stiffened leather, joined at a peculiar angle. There are many soft straps too, and Bilqis fastens these about her hips and thighs, sliding the more curved of the two false members deep inside her. When she tightens the harness and straightens, the second cock stands out from her pubic mound – for all the world like a true erection, if a woman could sport such a thing. It looks obscene. She strokes it lovingly, dipping her fingers into a bowl of perfumed oil to lavish her slippery caress upon the thick shaft. She pumps it with her fist as if it might ejaculate.

I do not know whether to be amused or affronted. She is a mockery of all that is a man – and yet my own cock twitches; I find this sight strangely arousing. More so when, ignoring me, she kneels up upon the bed and touches the supine handmaid upon the peak of her breast.

The girl opens her eyes, gazing up at her queen with a look of naked adoration. First she stretches up to kiss the slippery shaft, then she rolls over onto her front, drawing her knees beneath her to raise her ass. Presented like that, it appears as an exquisite heart-shape. The girl who has been doing the licking slides her hands into those of the kneeling girl and grips her tight, as a comrade offering comfort.

Oh, how I ache.

The queen … the queen is kneeling up behind that luscious rear, her hands on those hips. The phallus is angled right at the maiden’s well-licked sex. That cleft must be puffy and wet and open by now; it certainly seems to offer no resistance as the blunt helmet noses into it and the shaft follows, disappearing inch by inch into the hot depths. The queen works her hips with consummate care, biting her lip as she surges and then slacks. Her eyes are half-hooded, her sapphire-painted lids fluttering with each push of her thighs, each heave of her glorious breasts. The handmaiden below whimpers and gasps, twisting her own hips as she makes room for the obdurate prod invading her innermost parts. I struggle to understand what is happening – surely the queen can feel nothing through that false manhood?

Then I realise that each thrust must press upon the sensitive nub of her sex, and grind the second phallus into her own passage. It seems to be sufficient to bring her satisfaction. There is a glow rising in the queen’s cheeks as she labours, and a trembling jerkiness to her movements, just as the girl’s groans are becoming deeper and wilder. Bilqis’ breasts shudder, and the wobbling dance of those delectable orbs with their staring nipples is almost enough to distract me from the unnatural fucking going on beneath. Almost, but not quite. The undulation of all that feminine flesh quivering and slapping together is making the hot blood throb in my cock.

I would show them how it is done, if I were free.

Then Bilqis begins to gasp, her hands biting into the girl’s flesh, her thrusts suddenly commendably savage. The girl wails – though not, I think, in protest; she is pressing back upon her queen’s weapon – and in a flurry of shudders and two mingled cries of release it is over.

A smile upon her flushed face, Bilqis detaches the thigh-straps of the harness and steps down from the bed, leaving the phallic apparatus still buried in the pretty slave-girl. ‘Was that instructive, djinni?’

‘Most enlightening, mistress.’ How I burn to use the harlot, just as she used the maid.

With a slap upon that bottom, she commands, ‘Leave now,’ and I watch as the two girls rise obediently and slip out of the room. Then she comes over to me. Her eyes are full of unassuaged lasciviousness. Oftentimes, my brother djinn have taken mortal women as concubines. Their own men, it is said, are unable to satisfy their great appetites, which is why they cannot remain faithful to their lawful husbands. Bilqis, I think, is one of those women.

She puts her hand upon the bar of my engorged member. With a grin I make myself naked once more, so that there is nothing between her skin and mine. She glances down, admiring, as she strokes my shaft, and my chest swells with triumph as my cock-slit weeps with joy.

‘Djinni,’ says she, ‘I want a cock.’

I am taken aback. I laugh to cover my dismay. ‘Would you be a man, then?’ I mock her. ‘Is it not enough to be queen, that you must be king?’

She steps back, eyeing my frustration with undisguised amusement. ‘Why would I want to be a man?’ she asks, running her hands over her own body, caressing the rich curves of hip and waist, hefting and cupping and squeezing her breasts until my eyes feel like they will burst from my head. ‘A man spends his pleasure once, and then is done. I may take mine over and over, with every woman in my harem. But …’ She licks her lips. ‘I want to be able to feel it when I enter my favourite’s tight hole. I want to be a woman, yet with a cock of flesh. I want one like yours.’

I don’t know what to say. It appals me, and it excites me in ways I cannot describe.

‘I command it, djinni,’ she says, looking in my eyes.

So I give her a cock. And, as an afterthought, a pouch of balls, because I think it looks better that way, and they will suit her. She steps back with a gasp, touching herself, her fingers like fluttering butterflies. Her member is already half-hard; it becomes harder as she grasps and strokes it, harder in great surges. She casts me a look of disbelief, which I do not understand because this is what she asked for. Then she checks between her legs to make sure I have not robbed her of her woman’s parts.

‘You have both, mistress,’ I say through gritted teeth. ‘As you desired. Though you will not sow any seed with that thing.’

‘Then it is for pleasure only,’ she says, and there is a fire in her eyes when she looks upon me that seems to belong to the Flameborn, not the Children of Dust. ‘Lie upon the bed, djinni.’

‘Me?’ I stutter. Outrage flares through my soul.

‘You, djinni.’ She smirks. ‘I command it.’

‘No!’ I bark, but I must go, and I am already going. I am her slave, no less than the women of her bedchamber. And to much the same end, it appears. She requires me to lie back upon the cushions, and she goes to dip both of her hands in the bowl of oil. I look up at her, at the luscious womanly curves I desire so much – and at the monster, standing erect from the juncture of her thighs, that she is slicking with one lazy hand. I cannot help wishing I had made it a little smaller.

‘Lift your legs,’ she tells me, grinning with anticipation.

I raise and open them, exposing the tight whorl of my sphincter. My cock lies across my belly like the trunk of a fallen cedar. ‘This is wrong!’ I snarl. ‘Man was made greater and stronger than Woman, to have the mastery!’

‘As were the Djinn made greater and stronger than us,’ she says, running one slippery hand up my shaft, while probing for entry below with her cunning and well-lubricated fingers. ‘And yet, who has the mastery there?’

I would argue, but I cannot speak. She is stroking my cock and the pleasure is exquisite, enough to transmute all the terror and shame of her other invasion to a delight almost its equal. I feel myself opening to her. She encompasses me at the same time as she enters me. The contradiction is acute, the confusion of my feelings unbearable – to be taken this way by a mortal, and a woman! – yet she is squeezing and pulling my limb in exactly the way I have needed for so long – oh, I do not understand this!

She leans over me and her bounteous breasts hang down like ripe and tantalising fruit. Her hands move with sureness and strength, and now my hole puts up no more resistance. Not even when her fingers make way for that unwomanly member and it pushes into me, as the footsoldiers of an army stand aside for the triumphal entry of their general into the conquered city.

‘Oh,’ she says in awe. ‘That feels wonderful!’

I expect her to ravish me cruelly, but she does not lose control. Her conquest of my ass is thorough and measured. She leaves no inch unplundered, yet she is merciful. Though beads of sweat spring out upon her breastbone, she keeps kneading my cock in her strong fingers, forcing me to own my pleasure. Her hand and her cock move in unison, until a groan is wrenched from my chest: a groan so deep that a roof-joist overhead cracks. I grab my knees with my hands and spread wider for her. Her face blurs over mine. I am losing the will to deny her. I am forgetting to hate. I want her cock inside me, deeper and deeper. I want her hands mastering my cock, forcing me to the bright and glorious moment of surrender.

That is when I come, spurting my quicksilver seed the whole length of my torso, roaring my release. The metallic liquid runs across my ribs and belly, evaporating in the desert air almost instantly. By the time I catch my breath there is nothing left. Only my ass carries on clenching rhythmically around her shaft.

Bilqis licks her lips. ‘Most impressive,’ she says huskily. Her face is flushed and her eyes bright, and I realise that she has not yet reached her own climax, even as she adds, ‘But I fear that a woman’s body is more to my taste.’

For a moment I misconstrue her meaning. ‘Shall I change you back, mistress?’

‘I mean, a woman’s body beneath mine. Change, djinni.’

My eyes widen. ‘Impossible!’ I rasp.

‘Nonsense. If you can get that big, brawny body down inside a lamp, you can change its shape in lesser ways. Do it.’

So I do. Burning with shame, I do. I become female, my bones and flesh flowing into new shapes; my waist narrowing, my hips flaring, breasts swelling to cushiony softness upon my chest. My cock vanishes. I lie before her as the most beautiful of djinniyahs, the colour of sky. Sensation chases over my whole body, every inch of my new skin thrilling with strangeness. My heart is pounding. No one has ever done this to me. No one has ever made me feel like this.

And all the time she stays balls-deep in my ass.

‘Oh,’ says she. ‘Yes.’ To my amazement, that cock of hers – which I had already thought so hard and big – swells even further inside me. She stoops with a groan to mouth at my breasts; I discover that they are exquisitely sensitive. I have no length of my own any more, but she manages to get her hand into my open sex, caressing its slipperiness even as she starts to ram me deep and fast.

I realise quite suddenly that that part of me is teardrop-shaped – just like a lamp; with a deep well of oil and a burning flame at the tip.

My mistress rubs it, and I come at her command.