The Mammoth Book of Erotica presents The Best of Thomas S. Roche Page 7

  But the king’s many public works projects had begun to take a toll on his health; he became angry, dyspeptic and volatile. Embarrassed on several occasions by public outbursts of displeasure, he elected to isolate himself more and more, to disappear within his household of eunuchs. Some years later, a historian would comment that the great Rāja probably had the world’s worst case of sexual deprivation, but Rik would have furiously rejected this assertion.

  Shortly before his death, King Lashrim, having heard rumours of the odd proclivities of Punjabi women, conceived a most inventive way to pursue a little kama, and sent for a courtesan named Parvati from his friend the king of Punjab. In Punjab, women are renowned for making congress with each other using their mouths, which makes Punjabi men famously nervous, but they don’t mind so much as long as they get to watch.

  Parvati was named after the Devi of Love, and she met this calling with great enthusiasm, showing uncommon ardour. Unfortunately for King Lashrim, he never got a chance to try out his hypothesis that the legendary act of Punjabi love could also be performed on a man. Parvati had never met with the king, and was unknown to men. But she was what we, today, would call “popular” among the other courtesans.

  Secreted in their modest harem far from the new Rāja’s eyes, Parvati had already taught most of the former courtesans the ways of the Punjab women, with the result that none were wanting for pleasures, and few felt embittered by their banishment from the Rāja’s household.

  Except one. Her name was Salimari and she was a woman who had held the first place in the Rāja’s bed since his wife’s death. She was a haughty, proud woman, and could not live without luxury, influence and power.

  Salimari called Parvati to her one night after the Punjab woman had extracted the dew of creation from a large number of the courtesans. Salimari invited Parvati to extract her dew, and Parvati complied with bored, mechanical efficiency.

  “Your skills are truly great, beautiful one,” said Salimari with succulent grace.

  “Thanks,” said Parvati suspiciously. Her tongue was beginning to hurt.

  “They would find better appreciation if we dwelt in the house of the Rāja, beautiful one,” said Salimari.

  Parvati sighed patiently, for Salimari had been working on her for weeks. “But we do not dwell in the house of the Rāja, Most Delicious-Loined Mother,” she said.

  “Perhaps we could,” said Salimari cunningly. “If the king could be tempted to embrace kama as did his father, surely he would welcome all of us back into the household and times would be as they were back in ’06.”

  Parvati’s eyes narrowed, for she had heard the many tales of the decadent sixth year of the king’s reign.

  “Aren’t you getting a little old for orgies?” asked Parvati.

  “One is never too old for orgies,” said Salimari innocently.

  “Nevertheless,” said Parvati, “is it not well known that the Rāja has embraced first dharma, living virtuously, and thereafter artha, enriching his subjects? Only after he has provided for the material wealth of all his people will the King embrace kama.”

  “But perhaps that would change if he could be tempted by one as beautiful as you,” purred Salimari. “And one as skilled.”

  “My skills do not extend to congress with men; as you know, Great Succulent Mother, I am a virgin.”

  “But could the congress you enjoy with the woman’s dew of creation not also be worked upon a man?”

  Except for the late King, this idea had not yet occurred to the people of Alaritramishi, though more than one Punjabi man had thought about it while watching the congress of Punjabi women. Parvati, however, was innocent of such ways, and she was repelled.

  “Are you mad, Mother Whose Delicious Thighs So Tempt Me? It is natural for women to seek such pleasures with each other when a lingam is not around, but why should a man submit to such pleasures, when a woman has a perfectly good yoni to please him?” Here Parvati betrayed her own preferences, for she’d grown desperately bored of congress with her fellow courtesans and no longer understood what the fuss was all about, especially since no one ever thought to perform such congress upon her, which she really would have appreciated.

  Salimari caressed Parvati’s face. “Indeed no man would waste time inviting that pretty mouth of yours to perform its magic on his lingam,” she cooed. “But do not Punjabi eunuchs engage in such practices?”

  Parvati made a disgusted sound.

  “That, Great Mother With Delicious Dew, is just weird.”

  “Hear me out, Parvati. Could not the king be convinced that such a thing did not violate his vow to forego kama?”

  Parvati swallowed nervously.

  She said weakly, “But there is no Punjabi eunuch in Alaritramishi, O Mother With Creamy—”

  “My little Parvati,” said Salimari. “Always co-operative.”

  She pulled out her shears.

  Not one day later, Parvati found herself miserably shorn, her lustrous black hair cut close in the manner of the King’s eunuch attendants, her ample breasts cinched tight to her body with bandages so that even were she to be mostly undressed, her female beauty was not evident. This was important, for the eunuchs lived communally.

  Salimari had bribed the chief steward of the Rāja’s house so that Parvati could fill the position of body servant to the Rāja. From the first moment Parvati laid eyes on Rik, she desired him; how could a trained courtesan not desire her King? More importantly, Parvati, well into the prime of her desires, had a fierce case of sexual deprivation herself.

  As the Rāja’s body servant, Parvati helped him bathe, dress and do many other intimate things, which did not help her swiftly growing attachment to him, nor her desire. Worst of all was the fact that the eunuchs’ communal living and bathing made it virtually impossible for the wretched girl to touch herself. She had grown quite accustomed to multiple daily partnerships with her fellow courtesans, and within a few weeks was out of her mind, ravenously desirous of Punjabi congress, or for that matter any other sort of congress, with the Rāja or any other random stranger, eunuch, female or male – she wasn’t particular.

  Witnessing the frequent erections the Rāja suffered when he bathed was no help, and her own growing tendency to let her hand linger down there while she washed him contributed to stiffening tension between them.

  “I could take care of that for you, sir,” she said huskily one day when she had elicited such an erection by spending quite a time with saffron oils on those parts of his body inclined towards erection. Upon doing this, she had thought to herself “This is a very, very bad idea,” and had done it anyway, unable to resist the draw of taking the King’s growing member in her hand.

  Inflamed, the Rāja raised his hand to strike her and would have done so had he not recalled suddenly his vow to seek dharma. He took a deep breath and firmly removed Parvati’s hand from his lingam. “Bah! How could a eunuch relieve me?”

  “Here,” said Parvati, returning her hand to his erection. “I’ll show you.”

  “What are you doing?”

  “I am Punjab, great King, and there the eunuchs, we practise . . . a technique that’ll take your mind off kama. Should help with those headaches you’ve been having, too.”

  Rik frowned. “How can the temptations of kama be relieved without succumbing to – oh.” That was the last word he said for quite a time, for Parvati had begun to move her hand.

  Parvati’s voice was as rich as the sweets enjoyed in great quantities by Rik’s father. “Surely, King, the Great Thinkers who proscribed kama until dharma and artha could be achieved – did they not also say that youth is when kama should be enjoyed?”

  “That’s sacrilege,” said the King hoarsely. “Or a great idea . . . I can’t decide.” He gulped.

  “Then don’t decide,” she whispered, moving her hand more quickly and insistently. “Let me decide for you, great Rājan-Gopa-Samrat.” She used the term that means “King-Protector-Supreme Ruler,” mostly because she�
�d been about to say, “You stupid fool.”

  The king let out a cry of pleasure, and his own dew ejected forcefully into the air and hit the oil lamp hanging far overhead, sizzling as it landed.

  Parvati had never really had any interest in furthering Salimari’s plot; now she just wanted to lie with the King. She felt tormented, however, for in addition to being hungry for him, she had started to fall in love. She had no wish to tempt the King into compromising his morals for the sake of Salimari’s ambition. But she wouldn’t have minded a little compromise in the service of her aching sex.

  Each night when the King bathed before bed, Parvati used her hand to anoint his member, which in turn anointed her hand (and often the lamp). After months of this, Parvati’s mouth watered more and more as she serviced the King; finally, she said breathlessly, “Great Rājan-Gopa-Samrat, if you wouldn’t mind getting out of this bath, I could finish this job properly.”

  The King looked suspicious. “You wouldn’t be suggesting I forsake—”

  Parvati had quite lost her patience with the King, and interrupted him irritably: “Hand or mouth, what does it matter to you? The only difference is whether I enjoy myself.” Testily, she added, “O Great Rājan-Gopa-Samrat,” with great emphasis on the plosives.

  The king gulped. “Mouth?” “What was your name again?” asked the King nervously.

  Parvati had been using a variety of them around the castle, which didn’t help her cover much. Now, she said the first thing that was on her mind: “Auparishtaka,” which means “mouth congress,” and really isn’t a very commonly used name, for obvious reasons.

  “Auparishtaka?” blurted the King. “My dear sweet eunuch, that is a very strange name.”

  “Perhaps, great King, you’ll feel differently in ten minutes,” snapped Parvati. “Get on the bed.”

  The King was not accustomed to being spoken to in this manner, but he was quite close to completion and therefore more inclined to be forgiving of the beautiful eunuch about to provide it. The King rose and allowed Parvati to dry him, then to guide him onto the edge of the bed, where he sat with legs parted while she knelt before him. Her lips and tongue suckled wetly up and down his shaft, and the King gasped. She slurped her way onto his tip and coaxed a low moan from the great Rāja’s mouth.

  “By the Great Teachers,” the king murmured. “Auparishtaka, are you sure this doesn’t violate my – oh!”

  Finally having a shaft in her mouth, Parvati was not in the mood to argue with words, nor would she have been equipped to do so.

  She convinced the King the way her followers would convince kings and brigands for thousands of years to follow: she swallowed his shaft.

  The king’s eyes rolled well back into his head. Parvati withdrew just long enough to sweep the Rāja’s legs out from under him and spread him over the edge of his enormous bed. She climbed on top of him and continued to apply her mouth to his shaft hungrily, resisting only with profound effort the urge to hump his leg. The King’s hands began to rove on their own, groping for her body; Parvati deftly eluded them and, when they came too close, slapped them away. The King was not accustomed to having his hand slapped.

  “Auparishtaka, I must touch you!” growled the maddened King.

  Parvati came off the king’s shaft with a drooly gasp, thinking fast.

  “To do so would be to violate your oath, great King,” she murmured, “and you wouldn’t want that, would you?”

  The King frowned, but Parvati’s logic was fairly unassailable. His hands gripped the bed covers as Parvati’s mouth returned to his shaft and her head bobbed up and down enthusiastically.

  Tricked into surrendering to kama, the young King had found his virtuous mind quite out of control. His eyes roved over Parvati’s beautiful face as she continued to lavish his shaft with affection.

  The thoughts he had then surely reflected his growing madness, for was it not unthinkable for a man to love a eunuch the way one loved a woman?

  The King came with a bleat not unlike a dying lamb, and Parvati tasted his dew, previously unshared by mortals. He lay there under her writhing as she eagerly licked his dwindling shaft, then wept softly as Parvati’s skilled mouth caressed him. It had been a long three years.

  Parvati found the crying more than a little creepy, but she forgave the King; after three years without release, she felt he was entitled to be a little emotional.

  After the first dozen or so times, the King was no longer reticent at receiving Parvati’s oral attentions; on the contrary, he began to demand them with great frequency. Moreover, Parvati became quite aware of the King’s sultry, lustful glances cast towards her whenever they would cross paths. The day came when the King did not allow her to conduct mouth congress with him after she undressed him for bed. Instead, he took her chin in his hand when she sought to do so, bent forward and hungrily pressed his mouth to hers; she melted into his kiss, shuddering with her want for the King.

  “Return to your quarters,” he said. “Allow the other servants to see you taking to bed. Come back in an hour. Auparishtaka, tonight you are to share my bed.”

  “My King,” said Parvati, “I mustn’t. Such a thing will draw you into the web of kama, when your vow—”

  “I’ve had enough dharma and artha for the time being,” growled the King demandingly. “I wish to enjoy kama with you, in its fullest forms.”

  “My King,” said Parvati, tears in her eyes. “I mustn’t.”

  “You must,” said the King, who clearly wasn’t taking no for an answer.

  Parvati returned to the servants’ quarters and removed her outer clothes, remaining in the snug undergarments she always wore to disguise her sex. The other eunuchs always slept nude, but Parvati had been able to explain away her modesty as a strange Punjabi custom. The explanation caused the Alaritramishi eunuchs to nod knowingly as if they’d heard of it.

  All night Parvati tossed and turned, deeply desiring to go to the Rāja but unwilling to do so lest he discover her deception. What would he do? By the Great Teachers, she’d better not think about that. She pushed her thighs very tightly together, and tried to think of aged holy women.

  Parvati arrived at her master’s chambers early the next morning red-eyed and pasty-faced. He, too, had not slept, but where Parvati was merely troubled by that, the Rāja was greatly angered, as evidenced by the armed guards flanking him.

  “I waited all night for you,” he growled.

  “Perhaps a little mouth congress, great King?” said Parvati weakly.

  “Seize him,” snapped the Rāja, and Parvati was grabbed by the palace guards and taken to the dungeon of the palace, where she was placed in a cell.

  A week passed, and with every new day Parvati’s despair deepened. She expected every morning to hear of her impending execution, but to her surprise, after a week the door of her cell was opened and the Rāja arrived.

  His eyes were red, much redder than on the day he had banished her. She also noticed that he was walking in a funny way.

  “Auparishtaka,” said the King meekly, “my imprisonment of you violates my oath of virtuous living. I had no right to demand of you what I did. I pray you will accept my apology. I . . . I have no right to know the pleasures you offer. From now on you’ll work in the kitchen, Auparishtaka.”

  “The kitchen, my King?” said Parvati peevishly. She smiled vaguely and licked her lips, which caused King Rik’s eyes to widen and his throat to tremble as he gulped nervously.

  “Yes,” said the proud King, and left her there to find her own way out of the dungeons and back to the servants’ quarters.

  After a week in the dungeon, Parvati was badly in need of a bath, and her enjoyment of one greatly inflamed her own desires. This, perhaps, guided her imprudent actions that night. After an hour spent tossing and turning in her gender-shrouding garments, she slipped out of bed. “This is a terrible idea,” she thought to herself, but did it anyway.

  Though the King’s bedroom, as always, was guarded by m
en with spears, Parvati knew the back entrance and silently made her way into it.

  She discovered him tossing and turning. He sat up in bed as soon as she entered his chambers.

  “Auparishtaka?” he asked.

  The room was quite dark, and Parvati did not answer. Instead she approached the bed while the Rāja protested meekly into the darkness.

  “You mustn’t come to me, Auparishtaka,” he said. “I am a wretched, wretched king. I have let myself be tempted, and in tempting me you have received my wrath. I am a bad, bad king, Auparishtaka. You must go.”

  Parvati pulled back the covers. She found the King erect and began to administer the mouth congress to him. His protests were punctuated with rapturous moans, until Parvati knew that his dew was soon to be hers; after a week’s denial, she was hungry for it.

  In an instant, as he thundered towards his climax, the Rāja’s tone changed. “Come to me,” said the King. “Remove your clothes. I want to feel you against me.”

  Parvati drew back, her mouth slick with spittle and with the King’s steadily leaking dew. “No, King – I mustn’t! Please, let’s just enjoy the mouth congress.”

  “I must have you, Auparishtaka,” cooed the King, seizing Parvati and drawing her insistently onto the bed. She twisted and writhed under him, her craving so great it was agony, but knowing that if she allowed him to undress her then her secret would be revealed.

  “No, King,” she blurted as she struggled with him. “Your vow! Dharma must go before—”

  The Rāja’s desire, dammed for so long, was not to be denied. He uttered soothing sounds to Parvati, who struggled as he tore at her clothes – until they came free and he realized, suddenly, Parvati’s awful secret.

  That was just before she saw her opening, and kicked the Rāja in his private parts.

  “Vixen!” he choked in the instant before her knee made contact; thereafter, he was not saying much of anything, though if “GGGGGGGggggGGGGGG” was a word in Alaritramishi, he would have said it.