Chapter 24 The Gathering Storm and the Unfolding Lotus
Chapter 24 The Gathering Storm and the Unfolding Lotus
A short time later the rain began to fall, first in a light mist, and then
in droplets that seemed to grow larger and come down faster with each minute
that passed. Luckily Ming-tsu had worn a raincoat, and had brought along an
umbrella with a silken canopy depicting two dragons in combat. Luckily by the
time the rain had begun to intensify she was nearly at her destination -- the
splendid estate of George Chan.
When she knocked at the door, the housemaid, Miss Teng, greeted her
impassively. It was nothing out of the ordinary for George Chan to have
assignations with beautiful young women. Miss Teng showed Ming-tsu into
George's study, where she found the co-master of the Black Scorpions using a
ruler to draw dark lines below the columns of numbers in one of his
leather-bound ledger books. George looked up from his work and upon seeing his
beautiful guest, he dismissed the pretty young maid, locking the door behind her
so that he and Ming-tsu would not be disturbed by the servants.
George Chan, never the most patient of men, was almost beside himself. It
had been a number of days since Erika Weiss's disappearance, and he had not
found time to visit Madame Wong's since the following evening -- the night he
had broken in his devilish new set of nipple clamps on the hapless Peony. As a
result of this unusual stretch of abstinence, he was as randy as a Manchurian
mink.
He had barely closed and locked the door behind the maid, when he turned to
face his guest and growled through his familiar frozen smile, "On the desk! The
unfolding lotus -- and be quick about it!"
'Of course, Master," Ming-tsu replied coolly, seemingly unmoved by his
impatience. "But would you be so good as to take my coat first?"
George frowned and moved to help Ming-tsu slip out of her dripping raincoat
and put it and her wet umbrella in the very closet where Professor Leung had
found the coat for Erika. As she shrugged out of the coat George thought that
he detected a familiar faint clicking sound. She had remembered, he thought to
himself.
Beneath the raincoat the beautiful courtesan wore an elegant
high-buttoned tunic of crimson and gold, and a skirt of shimmering black silk
that was slit up to the hip on one side. A slender gold chain hung from her
neck, and matched the delicate earrings she wore. Earrings intricately
fashioned into tiny scorpions.
George pushed an assortment of ledgers and other papers to the side of the
Louis XV desk with a quick motion of his arm, and then took his accustomed seat
behind it. He was flushed, Ming-tsu noticed. Men were such fools, she thought.
When they were in such a state they were putty in her hands.
Ming-tsu's fingers leisurely opened the top button of the tunic, while
George Chan drummed impatiently on the arm of his chair.
"I have good news for you, Master," Ming-tsu purred. "About Li Chang."
"There will be plenty of time to speak of that later," the barrel-chested
Lord of the Scorpions responded impatiently. As always George was entranced by
the richness of her dark brown eyes; there was something in those inviting eyes
that seemed always to say him, 'I am yours.' Or rather, 'My body is yours; -
but my spirit is free. Seize it if you dare!'
"It has been weeks since I have been with you, Ming-tsu. I have missed
you."
Ming-tsu's fingers played teasingly over the second button on her blouse as
she slid into George's ample lap. "Master, you can have hardly been lonely,"
she chided him. "Did I not train your "golden girl" so that she would please
your," she paused, searching for the right word, "special tastes?" Her lips
formed themselves into an attractive pout. "And surely you have not forsworn
the delights of the house of Madame Wong?"
As if to emphasize those delights Ming-tsu crossed one leg over the other,
seemingly heedless of the way the slit skirt fell away from one satiny golden
thigh. But George knew that Ming-tsu's 'heedlessness' was as theatrical, - and
as charming - as the stage manner of Ellen Terry, the diva of the Victorian
stage. He had seen the young Terry once, on a post-university return to
London, at Sir Henry Irving's Lyceum Theatre; he had marveled at how she made
the most practiced gesture seem the most natural. She had been (and still was)
a woman of infinite grace and beauty. Ming-tsu, with nary an hour of formal
training, had the same gift for cloaking a carefully orchestrated gesture -
like the crossing of a slim, sensual, Asiatic leg - in the seductive guise of
improvisation.
The lovely Chinese temptress felt George's hand slide aggressively between
the panels of her skirt to explore her thighflesh as she recalled that during
her months as his concubine, George had arranged occasional house calls by the
Madame's pleasure girls; it had been in this very room, under this same quartet
of erotic paintings, that Ming-tsu had first begun to explore the darker side
of her own sexuality. She could still remember the first time that she had
held a whip in her small hand...
At George's insistence, she had used it, tentatively at first, and then
with more and more confidence, on the sweet young buttocks of Binh, an exquisite
girl from the Mekong Valley in Cochin-China far to the south. Binh's pretty
ankles had been lashed to the front legs of George's intricately carved rococo
desk and her naked eighteen-year-old body had been bent in half by the silken
scarves that tied her wide-spread wrists to the front legs. For her first
venture into his dark world, George had offered her a feminine-looking whip with
silken tails. But those innocent-seeming silken strands were tipped with sturdy
silken knots... Ming-tsu had come quite quickly to love the soft cries of pain,
the plaintive pleas for mercy... Fifty strokes of the whip had left Binh's
nubile, honey-gold buttocks a blushing red. When she was done George had
separated those pretty cheeks and plundered the Vietnamese beauty's inflamed
bottom until the gleaming wood of his magnificent desk was damp with her sweat
and tears....
From that experience Ming-tsu's taste for the pleasures of dominance had
blossomed steadily; over time, silken lashes had evolved into sharp-cracking
leather whips and punishing rattan canes. She had felt them often herself, too.
George Chan was fond of her in his own way, but he was hardly a patient man ...
George Chan's smile darkened and his hand tightened on her upper thigh when
Ming-tsu mentioned the German girl. "Yes, you and your handsome district leader
trained her well. Her stamina was as remarkable as her body was beautiful."
"Was?" Ming-tsu's almond eyes widened with interest at this news.
"Have you not heard that she disappeared several days ago?"
"Ah! A great shame, surely, after the trouble we took to prepare her for
you. And you have no idea where she is, Master?"
"No, but when I find her," George fumed, "I'll make her night with those
interfering bastards from Peking seem like a garden party."
Ming-tsu looked at him inquiringly; neither had she heard about the
"entertainment" that George had mentioned briefly to Richard Chan. She shifted
her weight slightly to allow herself better access to the huge bulge beneath his
pin-striped trousers. George, unlike his brother who preferred Chinese attire,
frequently affected the sartorial style of a member of a posh English club.
Another echo from his years in Britain.
"Mmmmm," George mumbled as her hand brushed lightly across his erection.
Recovering his train of thought, he went on. "Ah! I had forgotten, my little
jewel -- "I have not seen you, have I, since she was the piece de resistance at
the banquet I hosted for the legation from the Forbidden City? Or perhaps I
should say, she was the post-prandial entertainment."
Ming-tsu raised an elegant eyebrow. The Chans, it seemed, were on the verge
of becoming national figures in China, if they were entertaining guests from the
seat of the empire. She had played her cards well, she thought, as she
unbuttoned another button on the tunic; her breasts were so high and firm that
she needed no undergarments to enhance their shape. With three buttons undone
now she felt George's ardent gaze warming the upper slopes of her succulent
breasts, even as his hand stroked her thigh.
"Tell me about the banquet, Master." She knew that George fancied himself a
brilliant raconteur, and indeed, his stories had aroused her on more than one
occasion. "Have I not told you often enough that your exploits ... excite me?"
She gave him her most provocative smile, and opened one of the buttons on his
fly.
George licked his lips as his eyes feasted on her half-revealed breasts and
his hands climbed closer to the secret place between her legs. Should he take
her now or later? He had been waiting impatiently for her for some time; on the
other hand every attempt he had ever made to stimulate Ming-tsu sexually had
been well recompensed by her subsequent ardor. After considering briefly he
continued his story in his usual expansive manner.
"My brother was in Hong Kong attending to some business, when I received
word that the imperial councillors were en route. They were coming to Shanghai
- the corrupt swine -- because of some do-gooders' complaints about our methods.
It was necessary to win their favor, you see, because they report to the emperor
himself."
The younger Chan was obviously pleased with the way he had handled the
situation, Ming-tsu realized. She had the second button of his fly open now.
"So, let me understand you, Master. You used the girl to "win the favor"
of these visiting dignitaries?"
His smile grew broader as he warmed to his story. "Yes, and I must
confess that I was quite pleased with the result of your training methods. The
girl was superb." He winked at her slyly before adding, "Under most difficult
circumstances."
Ming-tsu pressed closer to George's barrel-chested body, letting him feel
the soft weight of her breasts. "It would be hard to imagine that her
circumstances could have been more difficult than my training had prepared her
to endure."
"Perhaps; one day you must tell me more about her training. I still regret
that you and I could not have shared that pleasure... But you asked about the
banquet... I had begun by training Erika to serve the drinks, which she did
very nicely. But, ahh! -- you should have seen her costume!
"How so?" The third and last button of his fly fell victim to her
intrusive fingers.
"Mmmmm, don't stop....I had her dressed in seven veils -- like the Salome
of the Christian Bible."
Seeing that this meant nothing to Ming-tsu, he went on even as she reached
inside the vent in his underwear. "Do you remember Madame Wong's Arab girl,
Fatima?"
"Of course; she is lovely. When she dances her feet seem never to touch
the ground." Ming-tsu recalled that a Javanese rug-merchant had found the
shapely, silken-haired dancer at a slave market in Samarkand, and, knowing
Madame Wong's interest in fresh and exotic talent, had bought her and brought
her back to Shanghai. There, the rug merchant had bartered the girl, along with
several Persian tapestries destined for Madame Wong's Harem Room, to the brothel
in exchange for a new sampan.
On one memorable night George had commissioned Fatima to perform a belly
dance for Ming-tsu and himself that had aroused them both to a fever pitch. But
the scantily-clad dancer's only reward for her efforts was that her luscious
legs and athletic abdomen had been subjected to a blistering belly and
thigh-switching. By the time they had delivered forty strokes -- one for each
of Ali Baba's thieves, George had joked -- Ming-tsu and George had reduced a
pair of hard-nubbed birch switches - from one of the stately trees on George's
estate - to scarlet-stained shreds.
Fatima had been directed to remove the rest of her scanty garments then,
revealing a tantalizing pair of dusky, dark-nippled breasts, and a swarthy
triangle of curly pubic tendrils that embellished her private parts most
attractively. George Chan had plundered that youthfully tight young pussy then,
while Ming-tsu had offered him her delicious breasts to kiss and bite, as she
stroked herself in time with his every vigorous thrust.
After George had consummated his lust, Ming-tsu had squatted above the face
of the recumbent dark-eyed dancer. When the young houri had balked at inserting
her tongue into Ming-tsu's sensitive slit, Ming-tsu had stepped aside while
George ordered the recalcitrant young beauty to pull her marvelously flexible
legs up and back onto the wide pillow on which her flowing dark hair rested.
Then, while Fatima had held onto her ankles (under threat of additional
strokes), George and Ming-tsu had armed themselves with a pair of whippy canes
cut from the tough bamboo that grew along the banks of the Yangtze. And they had
taken turns applying the punishing rods to the delightfully uptilted buttocks
and well-toned thighs of the young dancing girl, until she had screamed her
readiness to comply with any of Ming-tsu's carnal desires, no matter how
perverse.
"She was defiant at first, as I recall... but a fast learner," Ming-tsu
added. In the end, Fatima's tongue had pleased her well.
"Yes; I shouldn't have thought that you would have forgotten her. In any
event, I recalled that Fatima had an assortment of veils in various shades of
blue and green. Thinking that they would suit your blue-eyed ..." George
shifted his weight slightly so that Ming-tsu could pull his erect, purple-veined
penis throught the opening in his fly. "Mmmmm... yes, that's it ... protege.
And so I had the dancer swathe that German slut in seven veils -- one veil for
each year of the general's term in office." As Ming-tsu adjusted her position
slightly, he heard that faint clicking noise again, and smiled to himself.
"First, of course we had many toasts. Then a banquet worthy of
Lucullus..."
Ming-tsu looked blankly at him, but George continued with a rush of words.
"When the banquet was concluded, and the dishes cleared, the real
festivities began. Oooh... yes... don't stop... The councillors began
removing the veils, while Erika knelt on a carousel in the middle of the table."
"A most clever idea, master," Ming-tsu purred, as she stroked her lover.
"The removal of the fifth veil left her long golden legs bare. When the
removal of the sixth veil uncovered her big breasts, the foolish slut tried to
hide them with her hands. But the drunken counsellors were in no mood for that;
I had to tie her wrists behind her, so that they could all get a good look at
her tits. They were still flaking a bit, you know, from the sunburn she got
during her stay in the mountains."
The thought of Erika's spectacular breasts induced George to slide a hand
up under Ming-tsu's tunic, in order to fondle his concubine's pleasure mounds.
"You'd have thought they'd never seen a woman before, those animals, the
way they carried on. After the seventh spin she ended up facing General Wang
again; after her last veil came off, he motioned for her to lean forward. I
could see that he had his eyes on those big breasts of hers. He bowed to me as
if to say, " 'You permit'?"
Then George proceeded to describe, with titillating thoroughtness, the
blows the councillors had given Erika's superb breasts, the details of the
dripping wax and the intruding chopsticks, and how the six men had ended the
endless evening by raped Erika's pretty mouth, one after the other. As he told
his story, he felt Ming-tsu grow damp between her thighs even as she continued
to stroke him into a towering erection.
When at last his strange tale was complete, he lifted her off his lap, his
inflamed penis protruding garishly from his unbuttoned trousers. There was a
new look in his eye, a look that Ming-tu recognized at once. Telling the tale
of Erika's ravishment had stimulated the sadistic side to his nature, one which
was never far from the surface.
"When you first arrived here Ming-tsu, I told you that I wanted to see the
'unfolding lotus'; but you tried to change the subject, with your talk of Li
Chang and the blonde." He reached out and picked up the wooden ruler he had
been using earlier on his ledger-book. "The lotus, Ming-tsu. Now!"
Ming-tsu was not unaccustomed to George's swift mood swings but this was
unusual even for him. She reached for the fastener on her skirt.
"No. The blouse first."
"Yes, master. As you wish." She had undone the top three golden buttons of
the scarlet tunic earlier knowing that they would give George a nice glimpse
into the shadowy cleavage between her high, close-set breasts. Now she lowered
her hands to the bottom of the blouse and began undoing the lower buttons.
When there was only one button left to undo, a small circle of bleached
whalebone nipple-high between her breasts, she slid both of her hands under the
tunic and cupped her ripe breasts cross-handed, teasing George by lifting the
sheer, silken fabric and showing him her pretty lust-globes still half-screened
by her slender, crimson-tipped fingers. Her blood-red nails slid scrapingly
across the pouting nipples which poked through the digital lattice.
George could stand it no longer. He inserted the sturdy ruler up under the
blouse until it was positioned behind the sole remaining button, and with a
quick jerk he sent the small scrimshaw disk spinning across the floor. "Now the
skirt, woman! Quickly," George bellowed as he ripped the blouse off of her with
his powerful hands and threw the tattered scrap of fabric to the floor.
Ming-tsu, frightened by his outburst, reached for the clasp on her skirt;
when she lowered her arms to do so she gave George his first good look in weeks
at the succulent breasts which never ceased to delight him. And at the
luscious, tempting nipples that he had once told her were the color of a
teaspoon of dark chocolate enriched by three drops of blood.
"What happened to you?"
Ming-tsu didn't understand at first and looked up vacantly at him as she
slid her skirt softly to the ground.
CRACK! The ruler landed sharply on her left breast. "Ouwwh!"
"I said, what happened to you? There are marks on your breasts."
"Li Chang ... last night ... he was very rough and ...
CRACK! George Chan, his eyes dark with anger snapped the hard wooden slat
down on the lush upper curve of her right breast. "Aaaahh! Master... why...?"
"It was careless of you to come before me with the marks of another on your
breasts, Ming-tsu." CRACCKK! George slammed the ruler down again, delivering a
crisp, cutting stroke across a perky brown nipple.
"But I let him do it so that he would...."
CRAACKK!! George let her have another one, squarely across her right
breast. "Have you forgotten in our weeks apart that I have little patience with
impudent young women who attempt to dispute with me?"
"Of course not, Mast..."
"On the desk. The Lotus."
Ming-tsu, now wearing only the golden necklace, the scorpion earrings and
four vivid rectangular marks across her burning breasts, obediently slid her
naked bottom up on the Louis XV desk. She leaned back so that the weight of
her upper body rested on her elbows and then she lifted her long, lithe legs up
and out, spreading them high and wide. It was this shameless pose that George
Chan called 'the unfolding lotus'.
CRACK! The ruler bit into the inside of her left thigh. "Higher!"
Ming-tsu strained to stretch her sleek, slender legs higher into the air.
CRACK! Ming-tsu felt the smarting sting of the ruler high on her other
thigh. "Aaah!"
"Wider!'
Ming-tsu's legs were angled into a boldly erotic upright Vee, which spread
her womanood apart so that George Chan could inspect it with gynecological
thoroughness were he so inclined.
"Have I not told you to point your toes when you take this position?"
CRACKK!! George stung her dark-tendriled mons with yet another slash of the
ruler.
"I'm ...AAaahh! ... sorry, Master." And Ming-tsu proceeded to extend her
toes in the fashion of the ballerinas George had seen in Europe, thus giving
added line and definition to her lovely legs.
"Very nice; very nice. You are improving." George touched the sharp
corner of the ruler to her delicate pussy lips and poked and prodded her. "And
such a lovely fragrance."
"It is made from papaya nectar, Master . Do you like it?
"Ah -- the scent of green papaya -- very stimulating indeed. Your treasure
is beautiful, Ming-tsu ... so pink... so moist that it glistens. Tell me, lotus
flower, did you remember to bring them?'
"Yes, master. Of course."
"Both pairs?"
"Yes...both."
"Show me."
Ming-tsu shifted her position slightly. CRACKK! Another dark stripe to her
inner thigh, no more than two inches from the alluring folds of her gaping
woman-slit. "Keep your legs extended, my dear, and your toes pointed. That's
better... Now -- show me."
Ming-tsu's body tensed with concentration as the muscles of her legs and
abdomen tightened; a moment later a small gold-plated sphere, perhaps a half
inch in diameter, popped out of her dainty anal opening and rolled across the
desk, until George caught it.
"Excellent, my dear, excellent. And now the other one."
A moment later, using only her pubococchygeal muscle, Ming-tsu produced the
other. "Splendid, Ming-tsu, splendid. Since you have begun to use the ben wa
balls your pc muscle is becoming most accomplished; it will bring great pleasure
to us both, I promise you. Now, you will continue to keep your legs aloft and
your toes pointed. Oh, and clean these off, so that they will be fresh for
their next usage." George held one of the ben-wa balls up to Ming-tsu's lips.
Knowing the course of events the afternoon was likely to take, she had purified
herself as best she could, before inserting the golden balls, but even so...
She demurred at first, from taking the anal orbs into her mouth, but two swift
ruler CRACK's to her tender quim led her to conclude that she had little choice.
George directed her to stick her pretty pink tongue out, and he placed the
first little ball on the end of her tongue and then flicked it firmly so that it
rolled down her tongue and into her mouth; Ming-tsu had to be careful that she
didn't swallow it. She tucked the strong-tasting ball into the hollow of one
cheek, while George repeated the process with second ball. Then she was obliged
to hold the two spheroids in her mouth while she continued to strain to keep her
well-toned legs as high and as wide as possible.
But that was not the end of her problems. Once the balls were safely in
her mouth, George stepped between her widely splayed legs and posititoned his
rigid, purple-headed cock at the portal of her womanhood. Then he grabbed
Ming-tsu by the hips and pulled her pelvis toward him even as he thrust forward,
burying his blood-engorged manhood deep in her vagina, where a second, larger
set of ben wa balls was lodged. George loved to hear the clicking of the balls
as he thrust into her, fucking her as if he were trying to drive the spherical
playthings through the too-small opening of her cervix. George plowed into her
again and again, filling her love nest with his potent weapon. For minute after
tireless minute he pounded away; but throughout his masculine onslaught,
Ming-tsu was obliged to keep her legs pointing skyward; the least relaxation of
a gracefully pointed foot earning her a fresh rap across a naked thigh.
When at last the Lord of Shanghai climaxed he fell forward across her body,
allowing her to relax her legs so that they dangled lazily across his shoulders.
After a minute or two of depleted exhaustion, George wiped his dripping
manhood dry on Ming-tsu's nicely trimmed pubic hair, straightened his dapper
attire, bathed his face and hands in a nearby basin and combed his hair. When
the flushed-face Lothario had once again metamorphosed back into the urbane
"businessman", he fell back into his eighteenth century chair and watched his
concubine dress. Her top was in rags, allowing her ivory-gold breast-flesh to
peek through various rents in the fabric; but her raincoat would suffice to see
her home safely.
When she was done, his dark eyes met hers with a smoldering determination.
"Now, what do you have to tell me about Li Chang?" Then and only then was
Ming-tsu permitted to remove the ben wa balls from her mouth.
And Ming-tsu, her breathing still ragged from the trying sexual encounter,
proceeded to tell him the details of Li Chang's past life, as he had related
them to her.
When she mentioned Wen-chi, George Chan sat bolt upright in his chair. "So
our young lieutenant was raised by that old fool," George sneered, remembering
how the old man had opposed the Chans' hegemony so many years ago.
Then he opened the center drawer of the desk and pulled out a small oblong
box. "You have done well, Ming-tsu; the Chans reward those who serve them
loyally." Ming-tsu regarded the parcel with covetous eyes.
"Open it."
Ming-tsu opened the silk-lined box to reveal a stunning jade pendant She
strung it through the golden chain around her neck delightedly and spun around,
admiring the play of light on the gemstone in the image she saw reflected in a
wall mirror.
Pleased with her present, Ming-tsu thanked her Master profusely, pulled her
coat on, and stepped outside to brave the worsening storm.
A moment later George dispatched a courier to the Black Pagoda with a
message to his brother, saying that he needed to see him about a matter of great
importance and would call in an hour's time.
Once she was gone, George Chan thought that he detected a movement in the
golden curtain, which separated his den from the room where the Professor had
had his encounter with Erika. As he drew nearer to the curtain, his son Chiang
Chan stepped forward with a broad grin on his face.
"Well, father. So this was the famous Ming-tsu of whom you have spoken so
highly?"
George, angry at being spied on, snapped, "How much did you see?"
"I saw it ALL, father. I can't say that I blame you for being smitten by
her. When she spread her legs for you, I almost jumped out from behind the
curtain to knock you out of the way, so I could fuck that sweet little -- what
did you call it?" Chiang Chan's brow furrowed, and then he brightened. "Her
sweet little lotus myself!" Chiang Chan picked up the wooden ruler and slapped
it against his open palm, enjoying the loud smacking noise it made. "And I
wouldn't have minded giving those juicy tits of hers a nice working over
either."
George looked at his son sternly. "She's mine boy, until I decide
differently. See that you remember that!"
Then George looked at the clock on the wall and said, "Have the carriage
come around in forty minutes; I must go to the Black Pagoda to see Richard.
Within a few hours we will know if my suspicions about Li Chang are correct!"
