“The dog whip,” Bianca said sweetly.
“My lord, you cannot allow this!” Nudara protested.
“How dare you question your master, girl!” Bianca snapped at her. She took the little whip her husband handed her. “Lie upon the bed with your bottom raised for me.”
“My lord!” Nudara threw herself at Sebastiano Rovere’s feet.
With a wicked smile he dragged the girl up and flung her facedown upon the bed, smacking her buttocks as he did so. “Up! Up, wench. Your mistress will now attend your punishment and I believe she is right. You are much too pert.”
She couldn’t do it. She just couldn’t do it, Bianca thought. But then she saw the avid and eager look in her husband’s eye. Joining him in his depravity would bind him closer to her, and she had not yet seen her mother. The whip descended upon the hapless Nudara’s bared flesh several times. She was careful not to break the girl’s skin, but her blows were hard enough to give pain and caused the girl to shriek loudly.
Sebastiano was practically drooling with his excitement. His cock had risen quickly with each blow, and the slave’s cries. When Bianca ceased after several blows, he moved behind the slave, grasping her hips and began to thrust into her. It was not her sheath, however, that took his cock. Unable to help herself, Bianca cried out, “What are you doing, Sebastiano?”
“There are several ways to fuck a woman,cara mia,” he told her. “We shall do this eventually together. Give yourself to me, Nudara,” he groaned as he pushed himself into her. “Give yourself!”
“Ohhh yes, master! I love it when you put yourself there!” Nudara cried out, and her pretty face was filled with dark lust. “Do it! Do it!” she begged him.
Madredi Dios!Bianca thought. What more is there to this horror?
“Tickle his balls, mistress,” Nudara called out to her. “It will increase his pleasure tenfold.”
“Take her instruction,cara mia,” her husband commanded Bianca.
I am his whore. I must obey, and pretend I am enjoying it. Her fingers began stroking the hairy, pendulous sac that hung free and ready for her touch. “Is this pleasing,caro mio?” she asked him. “Am I giving you pleasure?”
And so the depravity and lust continued throughout the night, and for the next two nights. There was nothing that Sebastiano Rovere proposed in the privacy of his bedchamber that Bianca did not comply with until she thought she would go mad. But her mother was coming! She had sent back a verbal message with Antonio that she would come, and that was all that mattered to Bianca. Her mother would know how to help her escape this hell on earth that she had been forced into. And if she could not escape, Bianca planned on taking her own life, for she did not know how much longer she could keep up this charade with her husband and his slave girl. Last night he had taken pleasure in watching the two women, instructing them to kiss, and suck, lick, and rub each other’s bodies. And when he had sated himself he told them of a man who raised miniature donkeys that were trained to mount women and service them. He was thinking of buying one.
Nudara, of course, had clapped her hands at his suggestion, asking him if had seen the size of a little donkey cock, and curious if it was big. Sebastiano Rovere had laughed knowingly, and assured her the donkey’s cock was big enough to satisfy even her greedy maw. Then he made the slave girl don a false manhood made of leather, and watched while Nudara fucked Bianca with it. Bianca disappointed her husband when she could not seem to gain any pleasure from it, but she quickly redeemed herself by saying that only his magnificent cock was capable of giving her pleasure. He had then delivered what she claimed to desire, her apparently genuine cries delighting him.
Bianca shuddered with the memory of it. She bathed, and dressed, and had Agata dress her dark hair simply. Then she sent her servingwoman to await her mother’s arrival. Her husband had gone off to the courts this morning, preparing to argue an important case. He was in an excellent mood, and fully prepared to win. She would be free of his interference. Agata returned, bringing Orianna Pietro d’Angelo with her. The two women fell into each other’s arms.
Orianna was shocked by her eldest daughter’s appearance. She was unnaturally pale. There were dark circles beneath her eyes. Her ebony hair, while beautifully dressed, looked faded, and she had lost weight. “What has happened to you, Bianca?” she cried.
At the sound of her mother’s familiar voice, Bianca burst into tears. “Madre!Madre!You must take me from this house before he kills me with his excesses! I can bear no more! I have tried for my father’s sake, for my brother’s sake, but I will die if I cannot escape this man. You must help me!You must!” And she pressed herself into her mother’s arms, continuing to weep.
Orianna turned to Agata. “What has happened to my daughter?” she asked the servingwoman.
“Mistress, I do not know,” Agata said. “She will not speak on it, but I believe she is being cruelly abused by her husband when in his bed. There is a sly Moorish slave girl in the house, and Antonio has told me he brings her into the marital bedchamber. Andhenever comes to my young mistress’s apartment. She is always sent for to go to him.”
“Bianca,” Orianna said gently, “you must tell me everything that has happened. I cannot help you if you do not. Do you understand me?” She tilted her daughter’s tearstained face up so their eyes might meet.“Everything.”
“I am so ashamed,” Bianca whispered. “I did not know that people could do such things to each other,Madre. He has not even allowed me a priest so I might make my confession and at least relieve myself of this guilt. Oh,Madre! I do not believe you have ever known of the things he has done to me. It began on our wedding night.” And then the younger woman explained to her mother in careful detail everything that had happened in the dark bedchamber of Sebastiano Rovere.
Both Orianna and Agata listened, each with a growing degree of horror as Bianca spoke. The mother pressed her lips together to contain her cries at the evil suffered by her child. The servingwoman wept silently, wishing Bianca had confided in her so she might have informed the Pietro d’Angelos of the wicked abuse being suffered by her young mistress. After an hour had passed, Bianca finally stopped speaking.
“Fetch my daughter’s cloak,” Orianna said sharply.
Agata jumped up to quickly obey, bringing the required item and wrapping it about Bianca’s thin shoulders. Then she looked to Orianna. “Where are we going, mistress?” she asked the older woman.
“From this house,” Orianna said. “You will never return to that man, Bianca. I swear it! I shall not let him ever touch you again.”
“My father...” Bianca said softly.
“I am hiding you in the convent of Santa Maria del Fiore, just outside the city’s walls,” Orianna said. “Your father shall not know where you are until I can make him see reason, my child. You will have sanctuary and the protection of the Mother Superior, who is my distant kinswoman. Come now!” She took Bianca’s arm.
“I am his wife,” Bianca said despairingly. “His possession. He can do what he wants with me,Madre. He has told me a thousand times since our wedding day. If he finds me, he will surely kill me.”
“He will not find you,” Orianna assured her child. “Now let us hurry. Agata, come, for you must be hidden too.”
