~Subject: Repost: HORSEWOMEN # 2
~From: an438434@anon.penet.fi (Umbra)
~Date: Thu, 21 Dec 1995 00:18:56 UTC
~Newsgroups: alt.sex.bondage,alt.sex.femdom,alt.sex.stories
NOTE: this story is for adults only.  As will be evident, all
   characters and settings and all action are entirely fictitious. 

===========================================

   THE HORSEWOMEN a Love Story by Jeanne de Stein

   Nine parts posted separately.  This is # 2

   2.  THE CAMP

   They struggled up from the bed of the brook, he with a real effort. 
Women, girls and hags gathered around them as they entered among the tents.
The women of the camp greeted Sarissa and Atossa with embraces.  One of
them, a girl of fifteen or sixteen, showed more emotion than the others;
she reached out and touched Atossa briefly and the woman spoke softly to
her in passing.  All the onlookers were very curious about the prisoner;
the skewers gave rise to lively comment.  A few hands reached out and
touched him, but Atossa growled and the fingering ceased abruptly.

   He observed the horsewomen intently but fearful of appearing to ogle
them.  The young girls were still not tattooed and fairly light of
complexion; they went completely naked except for some kind of charm on a
narrow string around their necks.  The adult women were much like the ones
he already knew.  Here around camp, they did not wear boots however, but
half-high moccasins.  It struck him suddenly that the difference in looks
between Sarissa and Atossa was not simply caused by the difference of age:
young or old, all the horsewomen he could see belonged to two obvious
groups, one that mostly looked like Atossa and one that had more in common
with Sarissa.  The two groups had differently patterned tattoos, too; but
what all this might mean he did not know, and he was not of a mind to be
bothered about that just now.  The hags were incredibly wrinkled and
weatherbeaten, but straight and proud; their teeth were remarkably sound,
though yellowed like animal tusks.  But in their eyes, he discerned a glint
of cruelty that worried him.

   It gave him a nasty shock to discover that a discussion had broken out,
and that he was the subject.  Some of the women made gestures that could
not be misunderstood, one or two even had their knives out.  They were
looking forward to entertainment, and one of them became quite insistent.
But Sarissa and Atossa stood their ground.  Especially the older woman
spoke forcefully and with authority.  In order to underline her point, she
pulled the prisoner forward by the bag-strap (it had been put on again
early that morning), squeezed his arm muscles, slapped his buttocks and
finished by pulling his member.  She raised her palms, quite a distance
from each other, and there was general laughter.  He did not bother to
produce more than a tired grimace of a smile.  But one of the women---he
knew not which of them---cried aloud, fallou, fallou!  And though he did
not know it then, this was to become his slave-name.

   Now one of the oldest hags spoke up.  She seemed to be a person of
authority, though she wore no outer sign of it.  Everyone listened
respectfully, and when she was finished, all nodded assent and indicated
that they had accepted her verdict.  Atossa and Sarissa looked relieved. 
He felt gratitude mingled with a strange warmth.  They had defended him,
energetically and successfully, and that old witch had saved him.  When he
had time to think of just what she had saved him from, he felt sick and his
knees trembled.

   He got no time to nurse his fear.  Now he was marched toward of one of
the tents.  His owners---obviously he had to call them that---had a lively
conversation with one or two of the other women; some of them were looking
appreciatively at him, whispering between them.  The recent decision was
clearly not unpopular.  Dogs ran after them and they sniffed him
suspiciously.  Now he also saw two or three males that stared back at him.
One was a boy that had not yet reached puberty, the others were grown men.
They looked sleek and healthy enough, but they seemed shy and they kept
meekly out of the way of the women, who ignored them.  Except for the boy,
they wore thin golden rings through their nipples; so this was why Atossa
had pierced him!  One of the males stepped clumsily aside, and he wore
leg-irons, riveted in place with a short chain joining them; leather rags
around his ankles protected them from chafing.  Had he done something
improper to deserve this punishment?  Or was this just an example of wanton
cruelty?

   Bending over, the prisoner entered the tent they had led him to.  His
eyes, blinded by the strong noonday light, perceived at first only a
darkness inside.  There was a smell of sun-scorched canvas and hay. 
Stumbling, he was brought to a resting-place and pushed down on it; furs
tickled his skin.  At last the strap around his sex was removed, but he was
not relieved of the one around his wrists.  Atossa spoke sternly to him,
and he understood that he must remain here.  Then he was left alone.

   For a moment, he thought of escape.  But he knew too little about his
situation and its possibilities as yet, and his back-bound hands were a
difficult obstacle anyway.  Later, he would think that he had abandoned his
escape plans with suspicious haste.  Now when he knew that he would live,
and that the rumours had told the truth about the horsewomen's use of their
man-slaves, the need to escape did not seem so urgent any more.  Anyway, he
would be safe from En-Tor here.  He made himself as comfortable as possible
and reclined, listening to the sounds outside---the yelping of dogs, the
clanking of metal vessels, voices, someone who was cutting firewood and a
horse neighing in the far distance.

   The darkness lifted by and by and he could take a look around.  The tent
was furnished with furs, painted iron-bound travelling chests and
variegated textiles from the coast peoples.  Ornate fittings of iron and
bronze and a hanging lamp of brass indicated a certain prosperity.  He
sighed and tried to doze.  He did not dare sleep, and he was too excited
anyway.

   His solitude did not continue for long.  The entrance darkened and a
girl entered and squatted down beside him.  She would be twelve or
thirteen, and though her lack of tattoos indicated that she had not yet
been taken into the circle of women, she had several animal teeth in her
necklace.  She looked faintly like Sarissa, a very young Sarissa.  The girl
scrutinized him without embarrassment for some time, and then she started a
lively but for the moment somewhat one-sided conversation.

   Her name was Niki.  Like Atossa and Sarissa, she was not the least
interested in his name, but she ferreted out where he came from.  As far as
he could understand, she was the daughter of someone called Lykomaki.  Then
she began teaching him the names of various body parts, and she laughed
with a gleam of white teeth when he made a fool of himself.  After some
time she tired of the language lesson, fell silent and regarded him
pensively.  She felt the skewers.  He did not dare show that she was
hurting him: that might have led her thoughts in the wrong direction.  The
children were probably no less savage than the adults.  Come to think of
it, children were often more cruel than adults.  She moved her attention to
his sex and she took a hard grip on his member.  He did not dare but let
her have her way; that much did he understand, that he had no will of his
own anymore, and that every horsewoman must be obeyed.

   Still, he worried.  What would happen if they were discovered?  The girl
was not sexually mature, and he belonged to Atossa and Sarissa anyway
(mostly to Sarissa, he hoped).  What if one of them returned?  Slaves were
usually punished for the wrongdoing of the freemen, and he understood that
his position in the Sisterhood was still insecure.  But he could not stop
himself from growing randy, and from showing it.

   Niki grew noticeably interested.  She was obviously enjoying the
impression she was making on him.  At the same time, she was showing signs
of excitement herself.  That children too are erotic beings was an insight
that was suppressed among his own people, but the years at En-Tor's court
had disabused him of his innocence, and he was not surprised now.  His
apprehension increased, however.  What was this girl-child going to do with
him?

   She sat astride him.  But surely she would not ...  But she contented
herself with rubbing her hairless vulva against the underside of his
member. She looked down on him with moist eyes and panting, half-open
mouth. His back-bound hands made his position very uncomfortable, still he
found himself moving his hips rhythmically.  Soon he had to concentrate on
not letting his rising excitement run away with him.  Now Niki leant over
him and presented her nipples; she had no breasts yet.  He kissed them
obediently, and when she pressed herself against him he sucked them
cautiously.  Slowly, the pleasure ache receded in his abandoned sex.  Her
panting increased.  She rose, and for a moment she was standing on all
fours over him.

   He knew beforehand what she would do.  She sat down on his face and
pressed her sex against his mouth.  This was only the second time in his
life that he had been forced to do the cunnilingus (at En-Tor's house,
where women were objects of pleasure, fellatio was the thing) but he
responded bravely.  The sooner the girl was satisfied and left him alone,
the better.  But as he could concentrate on the act this time, he learnt
more.  Niki showed him clearly what she wanted and what she enjoyed.  He
kissed her clitoris, ran his tongue along her smooth labia and stuck it
into the opening of her tight little vagina to the accompaniment of her
encouraging squeaks and gasps.  She tasted of salt; she must have urinated
since she bathed last.  All the time she kept a hard grip on his hair.  At
last she came.  She jerked convulsively and she fell forward.  This was
exactly the moment when he discovered that Atossa was in the tent.  His
heart froze.

   Niki looked ashamed.  Where Atossa was standing, dark against the light
from the tent door, he could not see her countenance.  He sent her a
pleading glance.  But she gave her attention mostly to Niki.  She spoke to
the girl with a sternness which the listening slave suddenly discovered to
be feigned.  The child was sent out of the tent with a slap, and Atossa
stood above him, looking down at him.

   He was not punished.  Instead, she leaned down and smoothed his hair,
tousled by Niki.  She regarded him for a moment; her face was immobile but
she breathed heavily.  Then she untied her breech-clout and took the girl's
place.  Without demur, he started all over again.  By the bones of Hurri,
he thought, I do hope they do not prefer this kind of pleasure all of them
all the time!

   But Atossa withdrew before reaching her climax.  She left him after
releasing his hands.  He did not think of escape anymore, and she seemed to
understand it.  That evening he rested very quietly on a thin bed near the
opening of the tent, covered head to toe with a black sheet which he did
not dare throw off; but he heard how the two women made love long and
intensely.  Atossa cried out aloud from the crest of her ecstasy.  Then the
two rested together for some time, talking.  They seemed to have forgotten
him, and finally he went to sleep, still under the sheet.  He woke up in
the middle of the night, half suffocated and sweating, and pushed it away.
The moon was up, and in the faint light that reached the interior of the
tent, he could barely make out the sleeping figures of Sarissa and Atossa.
The older woman's arm was thrown across the shoulders of her lover.  He
rested long, looking at them, without being able to untangle his emotions;
but at last he went to sleep again and slept like dead until the morning.

   Thus began his life among the horsewomen.  His two owners kept him under
strict surveillance, and he was constantly in their company, except when
one of them was out hunting.  Now and then, the two women were briefly
joined by the very young but fully tattooed girl who had greeted Atossa
with such affection on her arrival back in camp.  And he gathered that she
was Atossa's daughter, and that Halanna was her name, but where in the camp
she lived and with whom he did not know.  She visited her mother in her
tent occasionally, but obviously she slept somewhere else.

   His early weeks in the camp shaped up into something that he soon
understood to be a kind of obedience training.  He was constantly in the
presence of one or both of his mistresses, and gradually, his entire
conscious mind came to be centred on them.  Never was he left to his own
devices; instead, the two women were constantly forcing their will on him,
and with less and less effort.  This did not mean that their demands on him
grew less.  He was not only required to attend his mistresses and do chores
such as fetching water and grinding grain, but was also burdened with tasks
that were unpleasant and seemingly meaningless, such as being led, on a
leash and on all fours like a dog, around the camp among amused women and
giggling little girls, or lying immobile on his back on sharp stones.

   Staring into the deep blue sky, he more sensed than saw his
surroundings. The stones soon grew painful, digging into his back, but he
was also uncomfortable because of the way his back was arched and his head
was slumped down on the other side of the heap.  His legs were slightly
parted and his arms were thrown out to the sides; he did not dare move a
finger, for Sarissa was standing guard, and she looked implacable.  To his
annoyance, he had an erection, and, again to his annoyance, both Sarissa
and three or four other women noticed it.  Damn it, why did these things
stimulate him?  He was not born a slave.  Submission should not come
natural to him, even less be pleasurable.  But the fact was
incontrovertible: he did enjoy it.  Yes, he did enjoy it even
though the stones were hurting him like hell, for he knew that this was
part of the whole, of his entire relationship with these two women, and

that relationship revolved around the moments of closeness and pleasure he
experienced with them, in spite of the fact that they did not grant him
sexual release.  His celibacy was a mortification of the body, not of the
soul.

   It dawned on him that Atossa's methods (for it was mostly she that
handled the dressage) were subtle enough.  The obvious uselessness of the
things they forced him to do made obedience itself the main object.  And he
obeyed.  Attentively, he tried to read the gestures, faces and words of his
two owners.  His reward was that they encouraged him more and more often.
He frequently gave them pleasure with lips and tongue, but he was always
himself denied it, and his pent-up desire for the two women grew
constantly. But this too was clearly part of Atossa's intentions.  His
fantasies about what he would do to them, given a chance, changed with time
into expectation mixed with fear of what they would do to him next.  He
knew that he was not just any slave.  He was a manslave, a tongue-slave and
a penis-slave, and the power and the glory of his two mistresses was his
also.  If they had tried to whip him into submission, he would have
resisted or at least thought of escape, but games like these were something
else, and he felt himself slowly being drawn into an implicit understanding
with the two.  The games were his too to play, and he played them.  As long
as Atossa and Sarissa continued to play by these rules, he would stay with
them.

   Already the day after his arrival in the camp, he had been pushed down
on his back and tied, and then Atossa had pulled out the skewers.  She had
replaced them with short studs.  It hurt and some blood came, but he was
still relieved.  The skewers had been far more inconvenient.  His nipples
healed rapidly around the studs, helped by Atossa's salve, and they were
now permanently pierced.

   He ate the same food as the women.  By this time of the year it was
frugal but satisfactory, consisting mostly of wild herbs, roots and seeds,
with some dried meat or pemmican.  He knew enough about the grasslands to
understand that the game had dispersed over enormous areas now at the end
of the dry season, and that large-scale hunting was impossible.  Groups of
women went out every morning to gather foodstuffs, each accompanied by one
or several man-slaves.  Even the chained man was relieved of his leg-irons
in order to participate in the labour.  The threatening behaviour of the
women made it clear that the prisoner had made an attempt at escape, had
been captured and had been forced to wear irons as a punishment.

   He was himself taken out to forage several times.  He was kept to hard
work, but Sarissa and Niki taught him to recognize and name many edible
plants.  But he was frequently left in camp while his two owners were out
hunting.  The first time this happened, they led him to a stake in the
centre of the camp and tied him to it so thoroughly that he could not move
a hand.  Chest and hips, arms and legs were bound separately with
crisscrossing straps.  He was terrified though he did not dare show it; he
thought that the women had changed their minds and would kill him slowly
for their own entertainment, as was notoriously the habit of these people.
His relief was great when Sarissa patted his cheek and rubbed her face
against his before leaving him.  Obviously, this was just--just!---part of
the training he was undergoing.

   Several other women had looked on with interest from a distance, but
they left him alone for the moment.  The straps were firmly but not
brutally tightened, and apart from the burning sunshine, which had already
tanned his constantly naked body a dark brown, standing at the stake was no
great suffering.  After some hours though, his immobility was growing
intolerable, and he smiled again inwardly when he understood the cunning of
the women.  No pain, no threats and no excitement drew his attention away
from the bonds themselves, which were instead constantly present in his
consciousness and underlined his helplessness.  He longed for the return of
the two women, and he found himself hoping that they would use their hands
on him before releasing him.  The sexual fantasies which were now occupying
all of his free time and which the combination of celibacy and constant
stimulation made ever more torrid, had actually grown more and more cruel
too.  His experiences made it difficult for him to imagine himself as the
active party in a love-game with Sarissa (not to speak of the savage
Atossa).  Being used by them meant being raped by them, and they would give
him pain as a matter of course.  He did not fear it---well, not too much,
anyway.

   He was dwelling on thoughts like these when he discovered that two other
women were looking at him.  They saw that he had an incipient erection---he
had not himself been aware of it until then---and they smiled sardonically.
They were Niki's mother Lykomaki and an old woman called Timesse.  Both had
been among the women who had demanded to be allowed to torture him; he
hoped that his fear did not show.

   But this was obviously not the kind of entertainment they had in mind.
They felt his straps and then they let their hands slide across his body.
They continued by rubbing themselves against him with increasing
excitement. Half against his will, he felt his own mounting randiness. 
Lykomaki clutched the skin at the back of his neck with one hand, and with
the other she gripped his member.  Her nails bored into its soft underside.
Timesse put her claws into his bag and squeezed his testicles.  She
increased the pressure slowly.  Lykomaki massaged him brutally, but the
pleasure was counteracted by the increasing pain from the balls.  Finally,
he had to groan.  They squeezed with all their might, their eyes shining
with lust.  He barely kept himself from screaming, but his pain was there
nevertheless for them to enjoy.  Then they drew away.  The pain died away,
but he felt sick.  He felt no pleasure anymore, and he understood that he
had lost his hard-on.  Niki stood at a distance, looking delighted.

   Timesse departed and was away for some time.  Lykomaki's hands were soft
again, and slowly he regained his virility.  She made reassuring sounds and
he managed a smile.  He would do well to ingratiate himself with these two
women!  When Timesse returned, she was carrying a long, soft thorn-vine. 
She knotted the large end around his sex.  Handling the vine with heavy
palm-gloves, she wound it as tightly as she could, turn after turn, around
the bag and his member, while Lykomaki egged her on.  The thorns stung and
burned his skin.  The thin end of the vine Timesse tied carefully around
the tip of his penis; his foreskin had been pulled back as far as it would
go.

   It hurt like the very devil.  All living and moving things of the
grasslands avoided the thornvine with its thousands of sharp needles. 
Timesse and Lykomaki stepped back, cocked their heads and enjoyed the
effect, cackling merrily.  Then they departed, their arms around each
other's shoulders.

   Niki remained.  With his eyes and with pleading sounds he tried to move
her to relieve him of the vine, but without success.  She was too obviously
delighted with the experiment and was in no mood to interrupt it.  Instead,
she came up and tested the vine by pulling it.  His pain increased and he
grimaced.  Niki found this a wonderful new game.  She pushed a stick under
the vine and twisted; while doing it, she looked at him attentively in
order to ascertain his reaction.  He begged her to stop it.  She did not
understand what he was saying, of course, but she understood very well what
he wanted to say, and his entreaties had rather the opposite effect of the
intended one.

   At last she tired of the game, let go of the stick and skipped away,
clearly thinking of something entirely different.  His eyes followed her.
In spite of her childishness, she was entirely a horsewoman, and a sexual
being; he wondered what she would be like in a year or two?  In spite of
the pain, or perhaps because of it, he was now nearly desperately randy. 
He actually found himself wishing that Niki would come back to him, or even
her mother.

   Nobody else took pity on him.  The women that walked past looked at him
and smiled but did not come to his aid.  He remained standing thus the
whole afternoon; slowly, the acute pain changed into an ache that with time
became intolerable, mostly because he could do absolutely nothing about it.
Very clever of them!  He invented complicated forms of revenge: the two
hags themselves deserved to be tied with thornvines around their crotch and
breasts (Lykomaki was only Atossa's age and attractive in her way, but for
the moment he had no eye for her advantages).  His owners returned at last,
but they just laughed at him.  They did release him from the stake after
quite some time, but they prohibited him with threatening grimaces from
touching his sex.

   He had to wear the damn vine until nightfall.  He was still wearing it
when Atossa pushed him over on his face and impaled him on the horn-member
again.  This was nearly too much.  The training in self-restraint that the
women had given him, perhaps unintentionally, helped him to endure in stoic
silence however, which obviously made some impression on his owners.  They
played with him speaking with mild voices, and their hands were tender.

   They pushed him over on his back after a while and bound him in the same
way as that first evening, when they had just captured him.  He suspected
that he would now collect the reward for his obedience.  Again the women
caressed each other, and he could now look at them with as little shame as
they were showing themselves; he had learnt to accept that the horsewomen,
all of them and not only Atossa and Sarissa, lived in loving relationships
which were both intense and lasting.  Their use of males seemed to be an
entirely different matter; males were tools of their physical lust only (a
fact which did not exclude an attachment of the kind we feel for pets).

   It was Sarissa's turn to be served by his tongue.  While Atossa was
ridding him of the vine at last, Sarissa sat astride his face.  In the dim
light he saw her supple body above himself in a violently foreshortened
perspective, which was at the same time peculiarly attractive; he wished
intensively that he would have been able to caress her with his hands.  She
took her time, and Atossa was now relieving the stinging sensation in his
member by holding it in her warm hand.  Sarissa seemed several times to be
balancing on the brink of orgasm, only to retreat from it again.  When she
came at last, with the tongue of her slave pushed as far inside her vagina
as he was capable of, he felt a curious satisfaction, the cause of which he
was unable to understand rightly; for his own lust was still a torture
inside him.

   Sarissa dismounted, still panting.  It was Atossa, not him that she
kissed gratefully, but he was nevertheless given a smile and an
appreciative smoothing of his hair.  Now it was Atossa who sat across his
hips and looked searchingly at him.

   What would she do with him?  The last time around, she had caused him
the most cruel suffering he had yet experienced, more cruel (though not
more brutal) than any that he had expected from the minions of En-Tor, and
still his member was stiffer than ever.  But Atossa grasped it, and it slid
slowly into her while she let herself sink downward.

   He froze.  The initial sensation of penetration was intensive, and he
felt as if his own member was being pierced lengthwise.  His eyes half
closed and his face stiffened.  Atossa seemed herself to notice his
situation; the tattooed body of the she-savage, the face with the burning
eyes, the waving plume of hair---she did not wear it in a bun today---all
was still.  Then she came down carefully in position on top of him.

   She was quiet for a long time before she began to move like a reptile on
top his body.  Her face was only a couple of inches above his.  Again his
lust was rising in him.  He raised his hips and met her, and his maltreated
member ached inside her.  He had to get a grip on himself---he had to
continue to be useful to her until she came.  He closed his eyes, for the
sight of her face was making him lose control of himself, and as a
diversion, he tried to recall to his memory the details of her back
tattoos, but he found to his horror that the very thought of her backside
was stimulating him; he began counting the horses of the Sisterhood
instead. Atossa seemed to sense his predicament and reined herself in
again.

   The ecstasy subsided, changed its countenance and was transformed from a
threat into pleasure.  Now he felt that he could let himself be fucked
forever without losing either his self-control or his ability.

   He moved his hips, and the muscular female body on top of him responded
rhythmically.  Atossa was still piercing him with her eyes.  In a state of
intensive concentration, he felt his pleasure slowly intensifying and
approaching the threshold of pain.  Atossa noticed it too and quickened her
pace.  She gripped his shoulders mercilessly, and her breath came in bursts
from her throat while she threw herself violently up and down as if she
were trying to tear his member off his body.  His anus contracted in cramps
around the tool that had penetrated it.  The horsewoman cried out like a
bird of prey.  He came.  After weeks of abstinence, the orgasm was so
brutal that it hurt physically; for a moment he thought that Atossa had
harmed him.

   She remained long on top of him, warm and heavy, until she had calmed
down.  Then she raised her head again and looked at him, until she rolled
away and left him.  When they freed him much later, he was granted an
unexampled privilege: he was permitted to sleep by the feet of the two
women.

   There was no doubt that he belonged to Atossa and Sarissa (mostly to
Atossa, and now he found this quite natural and even right).  But it soon
dawned upon him that this ownership was more of a prior claim than a
monopoly.  It was obvious that they had no exclusive rights to him, and
they in turn found it natural that he had to serve nearly every
postpubertal woman of the Sisterhood, one after the other, from half-grown
girls of fifteen to wrinkled witches with breasts like pieces of leather.
Atossa's and Sarissa's permission was always sought, but clearly only as a
matter of form; the permission was always given.

   Without exception he had to lie bound on his back while the women rode
him.  Several of them kept their knives hanging between their breasts
during the ride, some wore their whips wound and knotted around their
waists; but there was no need to chastise him and they all seemed to find
him satisfactory.  Remarkably enough, Lykomaki gave him one of his most
satisfying experiences, and he wondered after it if the memory of the pain
she had given him, and his fear of her, had not contributed.  He had
worried about his ability to be useful to the old witches, but was soon
relieved of his fear.  They preferred to make their rides at night, in the
darkness of their tents, and in its cover their vitality and their clever
hands made him forget their looks.

   Afterwards, it was the common experience he remembered, and he was
beginning to see their bodies as the worn sheaths of powerful, fascinating
personalities.  It was nevertheless these women who, next to the very young
girls, showed the least consideration of his own feelings, and they often
left him physically un-released.  No matter.  To be allowed to satisfy
them, and to receive proof that they were pleased with him in their
reserved way, was a distinction.  He found himself admiring these old
women, queenly like greying old lionesses and the unquestioned mothers and
leaders of their pride.

   He found the girls touching like pups.  Among the most interesting was
Aryana, Hakki's daughter.  She was still light of skin under her tattoos,
which she must have received recently, just like Halanna; she was clearly
proud of them and of her position as a full horsewoman.  She was
deliberately hard on her prisoner---she was actually the only one to
deliberately give him pain.  She had given him several lashes with a short
scourge, while standing astride him on her knees.  But he suspected that
she had held herself back, that she wished to be a merciless and cruel
brave, and again and again, the hard mask fell away momentarily and
afforded him glimpses of another Aryana, merry and girlishly tender.  He
often found himself thinking of Niki.

   Was this what she was going to be?  He remembered the vine and how she
had tightened it around his sex, and he thought, no; but then he saw her in
his mind visiting him in the tent, on his first day in camp, and changed
his opinion.