Much as he hated to do it, he turned back to the bar, hunched his shoulders and stared down into his martini. Titsa laughed softly and ran a fingertip down his spine. He shuddered.

  The plane leveled off and began its run over Meknes, Fez, the Cape des Trois Fourches and the Mediterranean Sea. The motors hummed steadily, making a droning noise inside the cabin.

  Titsa came over and sank down beside me. Her face was flushed, she was excited. She had forgotten all about her fear. She glanced up from her stiffened nipples as the Spanish girl spoke to her.

  "My name is Josefa Bahamonde. We will probably never seen one another after this trip. So let us enjoy ourselves."

  She stood up and began unbuttoning her kaftan.

  The Italian girl smiled lazily. "I'm Caterina Gallina. I think what you say is a good idea. I think we should tease that bastard Arab until he wets his pants."

  She looked at me. I nodded and said, "I'm with you, girls. This trip's going to take about ten hours. We ought to be able to get in a few licks in that time."

  Josefa was pushing her garments down to the floor, lifting a shapely white leg to step out of them. She had a real good body, with ample hips and breasts like gourds. She stood naked and ran her palms up and down her body, slowly.

  "Hey, tough man,” she called.

  The little man turned. His eyes went wide at sight of her nudity and then they began to bulge. His eyes weren't the only things bulging on him. He made a choking sound in his throat.

  “You can't do that!" he shouted. “You’re supposed to behave yourselves! Get dressed. Put your clothes back on!”

  Josefa hooted. Caterina was lifting her kaftan off over her shoulders, together with her blouse. All she wore now were thin selwar trousers. Extending her slim bare arms out as far as they would go, she began a wicked shimmy.

  Bantam-boy gurgled and took three steps from the bar, arms and hands stretched out as if to beat these roguish rebels into some semblance of obedience. The fourth step found his legs tangled up with an ankle that Titsa extended. He went down on his hands and knees.

  Josefa and Caterina hurled themselves on his back. They tried to reach his arms to hold him helpless, but the little man was strong and mean. He put an elbow in the Spaniard’s belly and was turning to slap Caterina when I dove.

  My hand chopped down against the back of his neck in a karate blow. I hit him with the edge of the hand; I did not hit him hard, just enough to stun. As he collapsed, Titsa came off the couch to catch him.

  "Give me a hand,” she panted. "Let's tie him down on the bar, then gag him. Eve, Caterina, Josefa—help me!"

  We got him to his feet, dragged him to the bar and managed to get him up onto it. We extended his legs out straight. Caterina slipped out of her harem trousers and used them to fasten his ankles together. She ran one silken leg under the edge of the bar, the other over it, then knotted them together.

  We dragged his arms down on either side of the bar, using Josefa’s selwar to tie one wrist to the brass rail and the other wrist to a beer-tap. Banty-boy was absolutely helpless.

  Josefa began undoing his clothes while Titsa slipped out of her own garments. Within seconds, the little man was stark naked and absolutely helpless on the bar-top. Josefa slapped his bare belly with the palm of her hand and said what I assumed was a naughty word in Greek.

  Titsa bent over, pushing down her selwar. Her black eyes gleamed up at me gleefully. "What about you? Aren't you going to join us?"

  I started to lift my mini-skirt but other hands were there ahead of me. Josefa on one side and Caterina on the other lifted it up, baring the Drum stockinged legs and thighs and garter-belted middle. Then the mini-skirted skirt-dress was gone and I was right out there in the cabin air in a matching Accentuette bra and garter-belt, with Cantreece stockings of spun black nylon.

  "Oooooh,” said Josefa.

  "Mmmmmm,” murmured Titsa.

  “Wheee,” giggled Caterina. "Show tough boy."

  I got on the bar and stood with my legs apart. Caterina filled a glass with water and dribbled it slowly down his face. Bantam boy opened his eyes and stared up at the ceiling, or where the ceiling might have been if I hadn't been standing in between. I let my hips revolve slowly.

  Tough Stuff gurgled deep in his throat. His face went a royal scarlet, the veins standing out in his throat and forehead. He realized after a moment that he had been stripped and tied down on the bar. He looked from me to the other girls, and his flesh reacted.

  Josefa clapped her hands at sight of his manhood. “He will be a lot of fun,” she cried. “We will tease him until he bursts a blood vessel—or this.”

  She flicked him with a fingertip.

  "The Chinese used to have a special kind of torture," I found myself saying. “Octave Mirabeau wrote about it. It's the death of a thousand caresses. Why not go oriental, girls?"

  “Magnificent!” cried Titsa.

  Caterina ran a soft palm up the little man's thigh and paused to tickle him. The Arab opened his mouth to scream for help but Josefa was there with a torn strip off her blouse to ram it between his lips. There was a ripping sound where Titsa was tearing off a length of her kaftan. With it she tied the gag down tight in his mouth.

  I bent my legs, I squatted down to give Bantam-boy a better look. He could have closed his eyes, I guess, but he kept them open while Caterina and Josefa and Titsa began stroking his naked zubb with their fingernails, scratching lightly, then caressing with their soft palms and fingertips.

  He was moaning deep in his throat, his body trembling.

  The play went on until Caterina cried out sharply. "No more! No More!" The girls stepped back away from the table, leaving the tough guy weeping with frustration, as big tears rolled down his cheeks and his body arched and quivered in the pleasure which had become acute agony.

  Josefa put up her hand. I caught it and stepped down of the bar. I said, "Let him relax, girls. I'll mix us a few drinks in the meantime."

  I played bartender, whipping up four martinis on the rocks. I had no way of knowing the capacities of my companions, but I figured I'd start things of right. I handed the martinis out with a cautioning word that they should sip them and not play Chug-a-lug.

  Tough Stuff was struggling to free himself all this while, but he was getting nowhere. Nor was he crying any more. His face looked grim, fierce with the desire to escape this pleasure-pain routine. A vein throbbed steadily in his temple as if a miniature snake were trying to get free.

  I leaned an elbow on the bar and said confidentially, “You know, you're really pretty lucky, fella. We could try out the Chinese kittee on you—by putting the bar lemon-squeezer to your fingers or toes or even to your genitals. I doubt that you'd want us to choose kittee for a nasty bastard such as you."

  I took a sip from the martini. "Or we could use the mazzatello which—"

  Caterina yelped delightedly. "I know that one. You hit a man over the head with a mallet and—skkkttt—you slice his throat open!” Her finger ran past her pretty neck and she laughed.

  "In old China,” I went on conversationally, "women were hired to jerk a man to death. What begins so pleasantly, ends up in awful pain, I am told.”

  Bantam-boy was sweating profusely by this time.

  Titsa shivered and rubbed her hardened breasts against my arm. Her nipples were so stiff they almost scratched. She ran her soft palm down my back and fondled my buttocks while moving her groin against my thigh. I saw Bantam-boy look at her and then at me, in something akin to horror.

  Josefa saw the look and shouted, "Go on, Titsa. Put on a show for our jailer. I'll make sure he watches.”

  I said, "Now wait, girls! Let's not go overboard with—"

  Titsa was kissing my throat while Josefa undid the clasps of my brassiere. As soon as she pushed it down, the Greek girl was nibbling on my nipples. I was too weak to fight her lips, so I just gave a little moan and sank down to the floor.

  "Hey, he can't see you down there," Caterina shouted. “You’ve got to stand up. Or go over to the sofa."

  Her hands held his head so that his cheek was flat against the top of the bar. The sight of all our female nudity would have been enough by itself to arouse him, and when he saw Titsa crouched over me kissing my breasts, while Josefa knelt between my thighs which her hands held open and began the lisaun-fee-gubb, he came damn near dying.

  Tough Guy moaned. Caterina gurgled laughter, crying out, "Oh, girls—you’re better than a shot of imsak! Is he ever—wow!"

  I heard a steady moaning from the bar. I glanced over and saw Caterina holding his face flat on the bar-top facing us while with her other hand she was slapping him in an extremely sensitive part of his anatomy.

  This was when the knock sounded on the cabin door.

  Chapter FOUR

  We froze like op art plaster manikins.

  I looked at Josefa, and down at Titsa. They were ashen with fear. A voice shouted something in Arabic. I put a hand on Josefa and a hand on Titsa and pushed them away. Then I leaped for the bar.

  I snatched up a sharp knife, the kind used to slice lemon peels for cocktails. I held it to the Arab manhood that was standing at attention.

  “Tell him everything's A okay, Or you won't be a man any longer!" I let the sharp edge of the knife touch him a little harder.

  Caterina let out a long breath, and grinned with renewed courage. Quickly her hand undid the gag that choked him. She pinched his arm.

  "You understand, beast?” she hissed.

  Bantam-boy was no fool. He liked being a man. He wanted to go on being one. He nodded, saying in French, "Tres bien! Very well. I agree. But be careful of the knife."

  He shouted something at the door. There was a muttered reply, and then the sound of footsteps moving back to the cockpit. The little man leaned back and drew deep gulps of air. His chest rose and well swiftly.

  I dropped the knife behind the bar, and patted his leg. "Good boy, Abdul. You get to stay the way you are."

  "No more," he whispered. "Please."

  I nodded. "All right, no more. We'll make a truce."

  Caterina whispered, "I'm hot. We can't just cut this off." She kept looking at the man-part of the bantam-boy.

  Josefa and Titsa were standing beside me. Josefa nodded her head, saying, "They made me into a nympho, back there in Marrakesh. I'm too excited to call a halt to the proceedings."

  Titsa whispered, "Don't let him go free. Keep him like that."

  She put a foot on a chair and got up onto the bar, straddling his loins. Abdul licked his lips, watching her. He protested he would be killed if anybody discovered what he was doing.

  He reminded me of Tamar. I told him, "If we don't tell and you don't tell, who's to know?" Like Tamar he thought about it, but not for very long because Titsa was an impatient girl. She just let herself sink downward.

  The plane droned on.

  I wondered as I watched Titsa slip of the bar exhausted and saw Caterina take her place, how many people below us, on ships or walking around islands like Malta and Cypress, could possibly have suspected what was taking place a couple of miles over their heads.

  "If only I had a little bhang,” Abdul whimpered once, his body convulsing. The three girls really took it out of him. By the time it was my turn, he was useless.

  Once I heard Abdul croak, "They will wrap me inside the body of a dead donkey and put me in the desert to die, for this. When they see how tired you all are, I will be a dead man."

  After a moment he added, in the manner of a man pronouncing a diabolical curse, "I hope the shaykh Habib ibn Masrak buy all four of you. I hope he puts you on his pussycat plaything. I hope he selects all four of you to decorate his bedchamber bed for four nights of love."

  I didn't think anything of his curse, at the time. I was too busy enjoying the attention of my fellow slave girls.

  When the bottom dropped away from the cabin, I knew the plane was beginning its long run for the Beirut airport. I slapped a naked haunch.

  “Enough's enough, already. Besides, we’ll be landing in about twenty minutes. Get dressed. De pechez-vous! Hurry it up!”

  They scrambled into shreds of torn selwar and blouses and kaftans. We worked fast, we made ourselves presentable.

  Abdul still looked worried, so I told him, "Look, if anybody says anything, tell them the girls lost their passion they were so frightened of their first plane trip."

  He looked relieved. I wanted to laugh. His gratitude was almost pathetic. When he saw the girls and how well they looked—the stains and strains of their erotic exercises were well hidden under some of my Germaine Monteil make-up-he actually beamed.

  The wheels touched ground, the plane bumped.

  We were all sitting there in chairs or on the sofa like good girls when the plane door opened and Lebanese sunlight came into the cabin, followed by two men in uniform. Abdul stood with shoulders thrown back, he almost saluted as the men walked around the cabin, staring at the new candidates for the slave souk.

  Lebanon is not quite as open about its slave markets as are the rest of the Arab countries. They are illicit, but nobody does anything about them, even though everybody and his uncle Ahmed knows where and when the auction will take place. I imagine a few palms are greased.

  Lebanon is not a large country, it is only slightly less than four thousand square miles of mountain, plus a flat coastal plain bordering the Mediterranean Sea. Its flag appropriately enough, since it was the cedars of Lebanon which first made it known throughout the world, is a cedar tree. And since it is such mountainous country, many of its farms are terraced on those hilly slopes.

  Beirut is its largest city. And we were in Beirut, to be sold.

  We adjusted our veils, we bent our heads and followed

  Abdul down the steps and onto the flying strip. A big black limousine, its curtains drawn, waited there for us. It looked like a converted hearse to me, but maybe I was in a blue mood.

  Sitting thigh to thigh between Josefa and Titsa, with Caterina perched on a collapsible chair fitted into a recess behind the front seat, I let that blue mood sweep over me. I told myself I would never win free of the clutches of these white slavers. Some brute of an Arab Sheikh would buy me body and soul. And then—so long, world!

  I sighed. My lips quivered. I wanted to cry.

  The car hit a bump in the tanbark and my head went up against the top of the car. It hurt like hell. It made me mad.

  "Goddamn idiot bastards," I screamed. "Take it easy!" The glass partition slid back. A thin, dark face under a military-type cap was poked into the tonneau. "What was that, màmselle?

  I told him out in spades. I cursed his mother and his father, I cursed the goddamn driver of the goddamn car sitting alongside him. I told him I would like to meet him in a dark alleyway some night when I would take great pleasure in sacrificing his zubb and his baydzetan to Allah! He sat mesmerized as I castigated his habits, his physical appearance and his manhood. His mouth hung open while I rambled on about his being a disgrace to Allah and to Mohammad who was his Prophet. I cursed him up and down and sideways.

  By the time I was done his right hand held a Luger automatic trained on my left breast. "You will be quiet," he ordered. "Quiet, do you hear? Quiet—or I shall shoot you full of holes."

  "You wouldn't dare, you goddamn lousy coward!" I screeched back. "Go on. I dare you, you foul offal of a she-donkey! Do you know how much I'm worth? Do you, you simpering simpleton?"

  His eyes blinked. He knew, all right.

  I put my face right up against his and yelled, "I'm a real natural blonde, you two—bit bluff artist! I'll fill the treasury with a hundred thousand dinhars if I draw a cent. Are you worth that much? If anything happens to me, they'll put you in a dead donkey and sew the skin up around your neck and throw you out on the goddamn desert to rot!”

  He went pale, hearing that. I guess it was some sort of ritual execution for harming any of the slave girls. I owed Abdul a nod of thanks.

  “Please, ma'amselle!” he begged. "I—Jelal el Amal—beg you to moderate your voice. Just what is it you want?"

  "Tell the goddamn drive to slow it up,” I snarled.

  The glass panel was slammed shut, but not before I heard angry words from the men up front. The car slowed, all right. To a crawl. We went like that through the streets of Beirut and along the main drag. We speeded up when we reached the city outskirts. Beirut is a very westernized city, cars travel back and forth in its business section, and the stone buildings look much like those in European cities.

  The car stopped at long last on the edge of an estate, in front of a small brickwork building which was of obviously modern vintage. A man in a uniform came out of the door, bowed at sight of our car, and waved us on. The car lurched forward and moved at its snail's pace along a curving, graveled driveway, beneath some towering cedar trees.

  Off to our left stretched a vista of green grass and clipped box hedges, beautiful paved walks and groupings of several gardens. In the far distance we could make out a house which was like something out of the Arabian Nights. It was one of several great estates in Beirut of the type of Lebanese name wakf. It was festooned with horseshoe arches and latticed windows and its dome glittered like alabaster in the Lebanese sunlight. Tile roofs and overhangs added a touch of scarlet to the white stonework. A boubba or shrine—like a perfect jewel with its white pillars and domed roof-stood in a stretch of lush lawn, off to one side.

  The car slid in under a tiled overhang and stopped.

  The door opened. The man with the Luger in his belted holster stood there, bowing slightly. "Please to come out,” he muttered, glancing darkly at me.

  We entered by a side door into a big hall covered with lush Oriental carpets. On either side of the doorway were two life-size statutes, both carved with superlative craftsmanship. One statute was that of a naked woman in chains, the other a naked man.

 

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