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The Jade Pavilion Book II : The Rise of Li Chang

Chapter 154 Sharp Thorns, Soft Flesh

                   Chapter 154  Sharp Thorns, Soft Flesh

 

 

"Chuise, lassie!"  The third clang of the ship's bell was still echoing ominously in her eardrums when Erika Weiss heard Captain Andrew McMahon bark out the command in his coarse Scottish brogue.  She had had nearly half an hour to gather herself for the next cycle of punishment, but that respite from the lash had given Deng-shan, the crafty Chinese carpenter, ample time to put the finishing touches on the Mermaid's Necklace.

 

During the first interval Deng had merely crimped the broken link at one end of the length of wire-thin chain tightly around Erika's right nipple, leaving the long strip of mesh to dangle downward from her firm breast.  During the second interval, however,  he had taken the loose end of the yard-long length of chain, wound it around behind her neck, and then pulled the chain mesh down over her other shoulder until the loose end was draped over her left breast.  Then, after using his nails to pinch and twist Erika's nipple-bud into a tempting firmness, Deng positioned the broken link at the loose end of the chain around her left nipple.

 

With meticulous cruelty Deng proceeded to work the jaws of the broken link against the base of Erika's sensitive breast-nugget until the tasty morsel was trapped between the edges of the metal link.  His terrible pincers finished the job, compressing the ends of the link around Erika's swollen teat until tears of suffering had formed in the corners of her azure blue eyes.

 

When he stepped back, it was clear to Jesper Slegg and the rest of the crewmen that  Deng had calculated the length of the chain with his usual precision.   The nipple-gripping chain elevated Erika's firm young breasts slightly, lifting them upwards, but without unduly distorting their succulent shapeliness. 

 

Erika bit her lip, trying to swallow the pain.  She cursed Deng's thoroughness under her breath; much of the discomfort inflicted by the 'Mermaid's Necklace' could have been remedied if only she were able to bow her head slightly. But the hangman's noose around her neck kept her head and neck fully upright, exacerbating the strain the Mermaid's Necklace placed on her tightly clamped nipples.

 

"Chuise, wench, or I'll chuise for ye!" McMahon's voice thundered across the deck again.

 

Erika, her nude body stretched taut by the guy-ropes binding her wrists,  forced herself to examine the row of instruments of discipline hanging from Deng-shan's hooks once again.  The three bells that had just sounded indicated that the coming round of punishment would involve three strokes with one of the implements.  But the round after that would call for four strokes, and then five, and so on until "eight bells",  signaling the end of the afternoon watch, had sounded.  So it was necessary that she choose wisely – so that she did not have to endure more strokes than necessary with the most punishing instruments.  The cruel paradox of her dilemma was that she was virtually forced to resist every instinct of nature and select the most dreadful weapons first.

 

 Three different whips were left  -- the braided singletail, the thonged whip and the thief's cat which had already brought her so much suffering --  as well as the bamboo rod, the broad leather belt and the ghastly-looking thorn-switch.  Her mind raced – the cat and the thorn-switch seemed clearly the worst, but whichever one she chose now, she would have to endure at least four strokes with the other.  'Choose, Erika!' she screamed to herself silently, as she saw Deng-shan eyeing the rope-whip he had used to punish her earlier indecision.

 

"Th-the … thorn-stick," she stammered finally.  And then instantly regretted it.  Three strokes with the thorn-switch would mean four more strokes of the cat – the cat that had already turned her back and backside into a lake of fire.  But four with the thorn-switch – would not that have been even more unbearable?  Erika was seized by a sense of panic as the psychological pressure mounted.  How terrible it was to be compelled to choose the manner of one's own torture!

 

"Aye, three with the thorn-switch it shall be then, lassie."  The burly figure of  Andrew McMahon lumbered unsteadily toward the woolen cap which held the names of the crewmen who had yet to take their turn.  As he passed Erika, her heart sank as she recognized the  reek of  alcohol on his breath.  The red-bearded mariner had evidently  been using the intervals between the sounding of  the bells to quench his rapacious thirst.  The captain's fondness for the bottle could not bode well for her.  Despite the savagery of his sentence, the captain was the only man on deck who seemed to have any interest in maintaining a semblance of shipboard discipline.  Only he stood between her and complete and utter degradation.

 

As McMahon reached into the tam,  Jasper Slegg leaned back against the starboard rail, a mocking leer etched across his homely face.   The villainous first mate let his eyes wander lazily over Erika's luscious nudity as he did his best to shut out the shrill calls of the yammering seabirds that hovered above the ship.  Occasionally a white-winged gull would swoop down to get a better look at the strange sight of the golden-haired sea nymph, stripped to the skin and roped to the scaffold, on the deck of the aging freighter.  When yet another snowy-white seabird fluttered down in front of Erika's face, peering at her with his piercing eyes, Slegg pondered how ironic it was that gulls of such a virginal whiteness, had been drawn to such a savagely sinful ritual! Was it the smell of blood that had drawn them, he wondered, or  perhaps the staccato counterpoint of tough leather cracking against girlish flesh?   Or was it the soprano gasps of suffering that for this one day accompanied the rhythmic and sonorous sounds of the sea?

 

During the interval, while Deng-shan had been crushing the chain links tight around Erika's swollen nipples, Jasper Slegg had had a few minutes to reflect on the events of the prior twenty-four hours.  He and Deng and the two colliers had given the blonde tart a  good working over in the Stoking Room after she had clubbed him with the shovel.  Later, he and Deng had pocketed a few quid and given the boys a good show when they had subjected Erika to the Night of the Seven Torments on the prior evening.  How gratifying it had been to  bind the golden-haired wench in a series of erotic positions that had tested her flexibility and stamina to their limits!

 

  Even so,  he was coming to the conclusion that the rigorous punishments Captain Andrew McMahon had imposed for the 'crimes' Erika had committed while aboard the Yang-tze Dragon had proved, if anything, even more stimulating.   He had cleverly managed to position himself at the tail end of the fearful double column  for Erika's electrifying run through the gauntlet.  From there he had had a perfect vantage point from which to watch Erika's stagger bravely  through a dozen yards of hell, while his sex-crazed shipmates had lashed her fore and aft, targeting her creamy thighs, her rounded buttocks, her trim, tapering belly and her luscious, proud-nippled breasts. 

 

Deng's imaginative contraption, the Wooden Lady, had been a great success as well. How the delectable young blonde had squirmed when he and Deng had impaled her on the twin-phalluses at the base of the device!  What a sensation of masculine mastery he had felt when he had rammed the third wooden phallus halfway down her throat!  How arousing it had been to watch as Erika's superb breast-melons, bound and bulging, had been stretched to their limits with every torturous turn of the crank.

 

The punishment for the third count, the whipping with the cat o' nine tails had cost him a bundle, it's true.  Somehow Tranh and Lucky had found a way to inform the deceitful wench about the bet and she had cheated him of all his earnings in the Bird Cage.  But it had almost been worth it to see Erika's nude body writhing against the metal grating as the general had delivered lash after lash to her lovely body.

 

Best of all, the sentence for the fourth count, which had only just begun, promised to be the most entertaining at all.  The general had wielded the cat so skillfully that every inch of Erika's back and backside was deliciously rosy – primed  for further punishment.  And there were still thirty-three strokes to be administered – beginning with three with the thorn-switch.

 

"Cheng Lao, Kai Pu, Orang!"  An icy chill ran down Erika's body as the captain called out the names of the three men whose names he had drawn.  For it would be this trio of men who would wield the thorn-switch.

 

By a strange coincidence, Cheng and Kai were the two men who had been manning Erika's wrist-ropes.  As they beckoned to a couple of  comrades to relieve them while they did their manly duty, Erika arched her neck upwards and followed the path of the guy-ropes as they wound their way through the rings in the corners of the gibbet's cantilevered crosspiece before wending their way back downward toward the waiting arms of Cheng and Kai.

 

When the ropes were safely handed off, Cheng and Kai, clad in ragged shirts and sooty leggings, approached the taut-stretched prisoner, their almond-shaped eyes drinking in the lush curves of her body as they moved past her toward the rack of implements.  Erika had not noticed it before, but while Cheng was taller and a few years older, the two seamen were as alike as brothers; no wonder they had found it easy to work together to jerk her bonds, orchestrating the movements of her naked body like satanic puppet masters.

 

Deng-shan muttered something to Cheng and the latter nodded grimly and removed the thorn-switch from the hook.  As he turned it over in his hands, Erika got her first good look at the ghastly instrument of discipline.

 

In truth the thorn-switch was not really a switch at all, but rather a two-foot length of inch-thick bamboo which had been cut from a young shoot which had not fully hardened.  Some anonymous, well-gloved soul had wound several long strands of sharp-thorned rose stems around the bamboo in spiral fashion, so that many of the thorns were firmly lodged in the spongy bamboo.  But so numerous were the braided rose stems and so tightly packed were they, that the bamboo itself was scarcely visible.  Even more alarming was the fact that dozens of   outward-facing thorns were poised to wreak havoc on anything they touched.   Roughly six inches at one end of the bamboo baton had been left bare and wrapped in tough leather to form a makeshift handle, so that the dreadful weapon was one a schoolboy could grip safely, but wield with fearful effect.

 

And the three sailors whose names Andrew McMahon had called  were hardly schoolboys.  Like the other seamen of the Yang-tze Dragon, they were steeped in lust and villainy.

 

Cheng Lao rotated the handle of the thorn-switch in his hand, still not quite believing the length and sharpness of its spines, some of which reached half an inch in length.  Suitably impressed, he turned his gaze back to Erika.  The gusty winds of the China Sea which caused her long golden air to dance lightly on her shoulders had long since dried the brine which had soaked her body not so long ago.  But now her succulent flesh was bathed in a fear-sweat that positively glistened on her lovely skin. 

 

Cheng's dark eyes, narrow-slitted but brimming with virile ardor, swept upward over Erika's bare thighs, lingering briefly on the enticing feminine treasure at their juncture, before journeying upward toward the appealing indentation of her navel and the mouthwatering perfection of her jutting, sweat-moistened breasts.

 

Despite the constant upward pressure the chains were putting on her aching nipples, Erika was grateful that the 'Mermaid's Necklace' provided her tender breasts with some slight defense against the thorn-switch.  Cheng eyed her majestic love-gourds hungrily for a long moment, mesmerized by the sight of her ripe young pleasure-mounds struggling against the fiendish grip of the Mermaid's Necklace.  Cheng's dark eyes narrowed as he focused on the taut, quivering buds themselves, once such an appealing shade of pinkish-brown.  Now, after being crimped and crushed by the wire links, they were the color of toasted cinnamon.

 

Erika was almost paralyzed with fear as Cheng stared fixedly at her swollen nipples.  But finally, after a beckoning word from Kai Pu, Cheng seemed to abandon the enticing notion of whipping the thorn-switch into her throbbing breasts and he slipped around behind her.  Erika exhaled a short-lived sigh of relief.  Short-lived because now she was face to face with Orang, the third man to have won the honor of wielding the thorn-switch.

 

Shirtless, his skin nut-brown and matted with dense body hair, the muscular Malayan's brown eyes were ablaze with lust as he ogled Erika's sweat-sheened nudity.  Erika remembered how the beast-man had wrapped his long hairy arms around her in the Bird Cage and squeezed her breasts with the ferocity of the jungle-dweller he once had been.

 

Meanwhile the two kinsmen had positioned themselves behind her.  The Chinese sailors were in no hurry to rush their moment of virile mastery.  Erika winced in pain as Kai traced his fingertips across  the lurid marks the general's lash had left on the planes and hollows of her tapering back.  Cheng, for his part, could not restrain himself from running a filthy hand over the curves of her rosy, deep-clefted buttocks and sliding his fingertips into the shadowy cleavage between them.

 

Encouraged by the boldness of the two Chinese, Orang moved closer, until his face was only inches from hers and Erika could almost taste the foulness of his breath.  He threw a furtive glance toward the hatchway through which the general had retreated.  Seeing no sign of the brooding warlord, Orang held up a hairy hand, letting a thick-knuckled middle finger spring free from his clenched fist.  Erika could not help but stare at the repulsive digit, which was proportionate to her tormentor's ape-like arms in length and thickness.  Orang gave his helpless prisoner a gloating grin and then he lowered his hand.  An instant later Erika felt that fat finger between her legs, driving inward and upward as if her cervix was the Holy Grail.

 

Erika squirmed on her blocks, trying to repel the probing fingers of Cheng and Orang, while Kai Pu continued to search for an unblemished expanse of naked flesh on which he and his cousin could leave their savage imprint.

 

Finally Kai Pu drew his kinsman's attention to the soft, sensitive crease where Erika's upper thighs melded so sweetly into her shapely backside.

 

Cheng grunted with obscene pleasure, nodded and signaled to the men holding Erika's wrist-ropes to relax their grip slightly so that her nude body would be free to twist and turn in response to his blow.  The crowd of sailors held their breath as one as Cheng slowly drew the thorn-switch back.  One could have heard a pin drop on the deck of the Yang-tze Dragon as the Chinese sailor paused imperceptibly at the top of his backswing, giving Orang an opportunity to thrust his invading digit even deeper into the musky moistness of Erika's love canal.  Just as he did so, Cheng  swung the thorn-switch with a windmill motion that brought it down low before sweeping it upward into Erika's creamy thigh-flesh.

 

THWUCKK!! 

 

"Aaagghhhh!!"

 

"Haahhhhhh!!!"

 

The three sounds – the thorn-stick savaging Erika's naked flesh, her anguished cry of agony, and the bloodthirsty roar of approval from the crewmen – followed upon each other in rapid-fire succession, each one drowning out its predecessor.

 

Erika groaned loudly as she lurched sideways, the impact of the blow twisting her lovely nude body into a delicious contrapposto.   Only the choking grip of her neck-noose and her impalement on Orang's rude finger prevented her from losing her footing altogether and falling off the foot-blocks.

 

Cheng tried to pull the thick-handled weapon back, but had some difficulty in doing so, because a number of the piercing spines had embedded themselves deep in Erika's burning flesh. In the end the pigtailed sailor had to give the weapon a sudden jerk to free it.  Upon doing so he held the barbed thorn-switch aloft, allowing his cohorts to see that some of the thorns on one face of the prickly baton bat were tinged with scarlet.

 

Many of the rest were still imbedded deep in Erika's creamy flesh.

 

Buoyed by his comrades' cheers of approbation,  Cheng Lao bowed and  proffered the thorn-baton to his kinsman.  Kai bowed ceremoniously in return and, seizing the bloody baton,  took up a position on Erika's other flank.  The sailors were still buzzing from the impact of the first blow when Kai delivered the second, using a long, sweeping backhand stroke that propelled the bristling spines of the thorn-stick into the soft flesh at the apex of Erika's right thigh. 

 

THWUCKKK!!

 

"AAUGHHHH!!"  Once again, Erika's torso reacted to the impact of the inside-out swing by twisting salaciously to the extent her neck-noose would permit. As her upper body torqued on its axis, pivoting on Orang's thrusting finger,  the Mermaid's Necklace tightened its grip on her nipples.  Erika gave a second gasp again as darts of pain shot through her imprisoned breast-nuggets even as the spiny thorns bit into her upper thighs.

 

The two kinsmen backed away from Erika's writhing body, letting their fellow-sailors have a clear view of the brown, broken-off thorns that remained embedded in Erika's freshly-bloodied flesh.

 

As the sailors cheered, Kai extended the thorn-switch to Orang and then he and Cheng returned to their posts and took the guyropes attached to Erika's wrists from the man who had relieved them.  Their substitutes pounded them on the back, applauding their labors.  Cheng bowed in appreciation again and then winked at his kinsman.  With perfect timing, the two men gave Erika's wrist-ropes rope a powerful jerk that once again stretched her still-shuddering body tall and taut.

 

There was a half-crazed look on Orang's face as he brandished the thorn-switch.  The sailors edged closer, waiting to see how the brutish refugee from the Malayan jungles would deal with the fair-skinned beauty.

 

Orang began by raking the thorn-switch back lightly down Erika's back in a swirling motion,  allowing the sharp spines to scrape  at the livid lacerations left by the general's whip. That pleasant circuit accomplished, the shirtless Malayan slowly slid the thorn-switch down through the shadowy crease bisecting Erika's luscious backside, making certain that the spiny barbs caught and grabbed at her sensitive inner cheeks.

 

After raking the barbed baton through Erika's nether groove, the hairy Malayan dragged the thorn switch across the base of her buttocks, irritating the bloodied pinpricks left by the two Chinese.

 

"Du schwein!" Erika hissed audibly, as the thorns tore at her flesh.

 

Orang was hardly a linguist, but there was no mistaking the venom in Erika's voice.

 

Seizing his opportunity, Jasper Slegg threw fuel on the flames of Orang's sadistic lust. "She called you a pig, mate," Jasper Slegg said in a voice loud enough to challenge the brute's manhood.  Slegg knew that Orang, like nearly all of the Malayans on board, was from a locale where Islam was the principal faith.  To be likened to a swine was a supreme insult.  "A dirty, filthy pig."

 

Orang's ears perked up at those words and his lips formed themselves into an ugly scowl.   His long left arm reached toward the back of Erika's neck and he seized the Mermaid's Necklace and gave it a vicious twist that sent flames of agony shooting through Erika's beleaguered nipples.

 

Slegg, who had positioned himself so that he could see every contortion of pain work its way across Erika's lovely face, felt his man-shaft thicken in his trousers as the Necklace put excruciating tension on Erika's uplifted breasts.  Then he leaned forward, straining to confirm what he thought he had seen.

 

For Orang, enraged by Erika's insult, had inserted the thorn-switch lengthwise into the inverted V formed by her slightly parted legs.  The hairy Malayan growled and gave Erika's breast-chains another hellacious jerk and at precisely the same moment he ripped the thorn-switch backward, dragging the spiny barbs through the wisps of golden floss that adorned Erika's feminine treasure.

 

          Erika's agonized cry of protest was almost drowned out by the lust-crazed tumult that swept across the deck of the Yang-tze Dragon.  The seamen, astounded by Orang's boldness and brutality, edged closer, hoping to get a glimpse of the traces of crimson that dotted Erika's tempting love-nook.  The muscular Malayan, meanwhile, re-gripped the thorn-switch and fastened his gaze on Erika's whip-ravaged demi-ovals.  He drew the thorn-stick back, extending his long hairy arm to its fullest, and then swung it forward viciously,  targeting the ripe, rosy curves of Erika's huddling bottom-globes.

 

          "Aaaaghh!!" Erika screamed again as the force of the blow threw her body forward, and this time she lost her balance altogether and slipped off the footblocks.  Her cry died away into an ugly choking gurgle as the noose tightened around her throat. She hung there, strangling, her bare legs flailing helplessly, for some seconds until Andrew McMahon signaled Slegg to step forward and help her regain her footing on the blocks.

 

          "Did ye think we was going to let you strangle, luv?" Slegg muttered to her venomously, as he leaned into her swaying body and lifted her until her bare feet were positioned awkwardly on the blocks.  "Not a bit of it.  The boys and I are 'avin' too much fun for that, ain't we lads?"

 

          The sailors roared their agreement as Erika struggled to right herself and to catch her breath,  Cheng and Kai quickly punctuated Slegg's dire warning by giving Erika's wrist-ropes a violent jerk that lifted her tortured body back into position.  She hung there, bathed in pain and perspiration, a vision of erotic beauty that no man aboard the Yang-tze Dragon would ever forget, her proud breasts still tugged upwards by the links of chain that crimped her swollen nipples.  The brisk sea breeze whipped the silken tresses of her blonde hair around her shoulders even as it began to dry the teardrops of scarlet between her legs.  And even the violent convulsion of her body when she had fallen off the blocks had failed to dislodge all of the thorns which fought for purchase in her shapely thighs, her ripe-rounded buttocks and in the supremely delicate tissue of her vulva.

 

          The third stroke of the three bells delivered,  the men of the Yang-tze Dragon reluctantly turned their backs on their lust-arousing  prisoner, so temptingly daubed with blood and sweat, and returned to their labors.  Erica, gasping for breath, was grateful that she would have a few minutes to regain her strength.  But she was fearful, too, for before too many minutes had elapsed the ship's bell would toll once again and a fourth round of suffering would begin.

 

 


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