Chapter 88 The Korean Cross
The bare-chested Scorpion's eyes lit up with virile pleasure. The
ripe-breasted, back-stabbing courtesan was definitely going to get the full
treatment. He flattered himself that Feng's absence had not even been commented
upon. But it was becoming increasingly difficult to restrain himself from
assaulting their sweet-assed prisoner and burying his rock-hard cockstaff right
where that crotch-rope fit the tightest.
His reply, of course, did not mention such insubordinate possibilities.
"Aye, sire -- that'll loosen her tongue!"
Noticing Chiang Chan's inquiring glance, Richard Chan turned in his
direction, clearly in a bad temper. "General Wang left to confer with his
staff, when we reached a sticking point in our negotiations. Your father,"
Richard Chan snapped irritably, as he strolled slowly around Ming-tsu's naked
body, while Dao and Lin labored to free her from the ankle cords, "meanwhile,
has gone to Madame Wong's in search of a new concubine."
Ming-tsu remembered General Wang from George Chan's account of the banquet
during which her erstwhile oar-slave, Erika Weiss, had been coerced into playing
the role of an odalisque, or harem slave, to Wang and his cruel and licentious
colleagues. Clearly the Chans' parley with the domineering General had not gone
well; Richard Chan seemed to be upset with both Wang and his brother. But they
were no longer here to endure his wrath. Ming-tsu's heart began pounding even
harder in her chest as she realized that in all likelihood it would be her body
that would bear the brunt of Richard Chan's ire and frustration.
The Master of the Black Pagoda went on, his eyes drinking in Ming-tsu's
voluptuous form. "Very tempting," he mused as he reached toward the needle
hilts that protruded from both sides of the kneeling beauty's right breast. "I
congratulate you on the cleverness of your game, nephew. But I take it the
whore has not yet told us what we need to know?"
Chiang Chan rather shamefacedly shook his head, 'no.' Like nearly everyone
else, Chiang was frequently intimidated by his uncle's domineering manner. Never
more so than now, when his uncle seemed to be upset with his father.
"Well, then, we must rectify that state of affairs, musn't we?" snapped the
Lord of the Scorpions as he gave the pair of breast-impaling needle-hilts a
vicious quarter turn.
"Nnnnnggghhhh!!" Ming-tsu tossed her ebony hair from side-to-side in agony.
"Bah! You try my patience, wench! Why do you continue this ridiculous
charade? These four and yourself are the only survivors of the Night of the
Tiger. We know they didn't take the jewels. Obviously you must have. There is
no point in protecting Luk Yee at this point. His precious wife will probably
lead us to him. But even if she does not, the long tail of the Scorpions shall
find him, I assure you, no matter where he flees, where he hides. Now, I ask
you again. WHERE ARE THE CURSED JEWELS?"
When Ming-tsu merely shrugged her shoulders helplessly, Richard Chan gave
the breast-hilts another vicious wrench.
"AAAAEAAHHHHHH!!" Ming-tsu's forlorn cry echoed off the cold stone walls of
the dungeon.
Richard Chan continued to glower down at his bound prisoner in obvious
frustration. Talking as much to himself as the others, he went on. "Even the
wisdom of the Master himself could not fathom the foolish stubborness of this
woman. She seemed enterprising, clever and beautiful. And yet, this girl of
humble birth, after having had the good joss of catching the eye of my brother,
one of the Lords of Shanghai, cast her fate to the winds and gambled all."
His reference to Confucius having surprised himself as much as his
audience, Rchard Chan turned to face the squadron of Scorpions. "And look what
she has won." The tyrant of Shanghai waved a silken sleeve expansively in a
broad arc which seemed to take in the four dark and dreadful corners of the
dungeon, which harbored cruelties as yet undreamt.
Dao and Lin had freed Ming-tzu's ankles first, and then her wrists. Her
outstretched arms at last released from their long confinenent, fell, bereft of
strength, to her sides. When at last, the knots that choked her supple thighs
came undone, the fresh flow of blood surging through the bruised area caused
Ming-tsu to moan softly in pain.
But Ming-tsu's reprieve was to be one of very short duration.
"Uncle, perhaps we might use the tit-straps?" Chiang Chan suggested rather
nervously, a little displeased with himself for sounding so tentative in front
of his squadron of Scorpions. "I think that they would look most becoming on a
girl mounted on the Cross."
Richard Chan thought for a moment and then nodded his head grimly. "I am
pleased to see you displaying some imagination, nephew. Yes, yes. A fine idea,
particularly on such a shapely young nymph. They will complement the needles
nicely, very nicely indeed. It shall be as you suggest," he said, as he nodded
his approval to Dao.
"Make yourselves useful, you two, while I lower the bar," Dao exclaimed a
few moments later. He tossed his comrades a pair of black leather straps chosen
from among those that had been hanging on the wall of implements. By now the Ox
had lifted Ming-tsu bodily off the pedestal and had pinned her arms behind her
while Lin attempted to hook the two ends of the upper breast-strap together.
Lin tried time and again to clasp the ends of the first tit-strap together,
while Zheng held the struggling Ming-tsu, but Dao's well-trained eye had
intentionally chosen a set of straps that was a size too small and Lin was
unable to join the two metal clasps.
"Let a man do it!" the Ox said with exasperation after a few minutes.
"Hold her, boy! I'll show you how it's done." He pushed Ming-tsu forward at
Lin who, who quickly seized her wrists, pressed them together, and lifted them
up over her head.
"No ... can't you see ... it's too tight" Ming-tsu pleaded with her
over-sized captor.
"I'll make it fit, wench. You'll see!" From behind her, even the mighty
Ox had to use every bit of his prodigious strength to unite the two ends of the
too-small breast strap. Holding an end of the strap in each paw, he reached
around and enveloped her in a painful bear hug until the two ends of the upper
strap finally clicked into place high on his prisoner's breastbone. Ming-tsu
felt as if a metal band had been drawn crushingly tight across her chest.
"Now for the other one, sweetie. Take a deep breath!"
Ming-tsu took a painful breath while the Ox wrapped his beefy arms around
her chest, just under her proud breasts. Then, using the backs of his hands to
lift Ming-tsu's love-globes a little, he pulled the stubborn ends of the lower
strap together. It took a few biceps-bulging moments, but soon the ends of the
under-breast strap were joined, fitting snugly against Ming-tsu's chest,
partially obscured by the undercurves of Ming-tsu's sweat-slick man-pleasers.
"See how it's done, boy?" Zheng said, with a childlike pride in his
accomplisment.
The tit-straps were typically more ornamental than punitive, in that they
were designed to encircle a woman's chest just above and below her breasts. But
most women, even women ensnared in the toils of the Black Pagoda, don't have
needles embedded in their breasts, and the lower edge of the inch-wide upper
strap pressed painfully against the hilts of the twelve o'clock needles.
Meanwhile the upper edge of the lower breast strap not only gave Ming-tsu's
splendid pleasure-melons an eye-pleasing bit of added lift, it pressed firmly
and painfully against the hilt of the six o'clock needle that was embedded in
her right breast.
While Zheng and Lin had been wrestling with the breast straps, Dao had been
lowering a yard-wide cylindrical wooden bar from its location high above them.
Despite its innocuous appearance, Chiang Chan knew the Korean Cross to be a
daunting device. As his uncle had reminded him on many occasions, it was
imagination, not complexity, which determined the effectiveness of a torture
device. And the Cross had proven itself time and again....
********
Dao had heard Feng boast often of how the Cross had broken even the bravest
of young women, forcing the most virtuous of virgins to promise him the most
shameful of embraces to escape its terrors.
Pledges which Feng had collected without fail. As he had told Dao over
drinks at one of the Chans' gambling dens one night, there was nothing like the
thrill of offering one's hairy, lust-swollen cock to a pretty, girlish face that
had hardly ever felt the touch of a man's lips, much less endured a steady
battering by a pair of heavy, sperm-laden testicles... And if the girl's lips
and tongue were less than enthusiastic, if her soft warm throat was less than
welcoming, a second painful stint on the Cross usually served to elicit
enthusiasm from reluctance.
********
At first Ming-tsu was not unduly alarmed when Zheng pushed her toward the
bar. For the Korean Cross seemed to be nothing more than a horizontal wooden
bar suspended by heavy ropes ropes from the stout rafters of the dungeon
ceiling. Dao had adjusted the height of the suspended bar so that it fit
squarely against her back just under her shoulderblades. It was only when Dao
lifted her arms and pulled them back over the two-inch-thick cylindrical bar
and then pulled her arms down painfully so that her wrists crossed at about the
midpoint of her buttocks, that she began to realize the nature of the Korean
Cross.
For despite its name, the Korean Cross was nothing more than the crossbar
under her arms; her own body would form the upright.
Using rope of a virginal white, Dao quickly lashed the grimacing girl's
wrists together and then took another rope and encircled each forearm several
times before cinching her elbows tightly together behind her. Then he coiled a
third cord around each of Ming-tsu's upper arms, and carefully constructed a
labryinth of rope which secured her arms to the Crossbar and to each other.
Within moments the tender skin under her arms felt the pressure of the bar. A
fourth rope was quickly pulled tight around her narrow waist. Dao then
interlaced a fifth rope between her wrist-ropes and then pulled it down between
her legs, and then back up again, making sure that it rubbed against her
clitoris, before looping the rope twice around her waist-rope and tying it off.
Finally, Feng's successor reached down and seized Ming-tsu's pretty feet
and jerked them cruelly upward behind her, bending them as far as they would go
before entwining her ankles with one white cord that he secured to the crossbar.
He then took two lengths of twine-sized cord, looped them securely around
Ming-tsu's big toes and then tied them, too, to the cylindrical crossbar.
Dao stepped back to admire his handiwork. Hanging from the bar in a
faux-kneeling position as she was, the muscles in Ming-tsu's thighs were taut
from the strain; the tension on her pulled-back shoulders and arms gave a
beautiful definition to the delicate double curvature of her rib cage.
But it was the curvature of breasts, not rib-bones, that this bondage was
designed to emphasize and it did so to cock-throbbing satisfaction. Ming-tsu's
wrist and arm bondage thrust her lust-melons forward deliciously, and the
fiendishly tight black leather tit-straps drew her voyeurs' rapacious eyes to
her ripe-nippled breasts like iron shavings to a powerful magnet. Just as the
Bondage of the Seven Cords had posed her tempting buttocks in the most delicious
manner imaginable, the Korean Cross, coupled with the artistic touch of the
tight-fitting tit-straps) presented Ming-tsu's sumptuously dark-nippled breasts
to her captors in all of their breathtaking splendor.
Ming-tsu, supremely conscious of the provocative jut of her breasts,
expected the Scorpions to attack them immediately.
But after a subtle gesture from the silver-robed figure who continued to
watch silently, her tormentors attacked her supple, slightly-spread thighs, with
an extended series of stinging lashes. Chiang and Dao stood on her right and
dealt the gasping concubine one withering forehand after another, while the Ox
and Lin on her left administered backhand after wicked backhand to her velvety
thigh-flesh.
Richard Chan nodded his approval as the foursome started at her knees,
beginning with strokes of only moderate force and slowly worked their way up
Ming-tsu's gleaming, golden thighs, swinging their stinging whips harder and
harder as they inched their way upward with every fierce stroke. After a dozen
punishing blows they had reached the mid-point of her thighs and then, as if
they had taken a secret ballot, they all seemed to re-double their efforts,
lashing at the well-toned contours of her amber thighs like madmen, the blows
falling faster and faster. At last, Lin the Drooler scored the point when his
flail bit into the tender groove where her leg and groin became one, and
Ming-tsu let out the anguished cry of a wounded animal.
"Ready for another one of my pretty golden needles, bitch? This one's
bigger and longer than the last one. I had to press hard to make the last one
go in. How about if I make it easier on you this time?"
"Please, yes, anything," the despairing beauty replied, not understanding
his meaning.
"It should go in much easier if I just heat it up a little - like a hot
knife through butter, as they say. Watch this, honey!" And with a sadistic
smirk, Lin removed one of the torches from its holder and held it sideways so
that he could heat the gold-studded needle. After the pin's entire length had
basked in the candle's flame for nearly a minute, Lin gleefully touched the long
edge of the heated needle to the underside of a crinkly brown nipple. When
Ming-tsu reacted satisfactorily to the searing pain by shuddering in agony, the
gangly, slobbering teenager wiped at his mouth and admonished her to watch him
as he brutally forced the heated needle into the yielding undercurve of her left
breast. When Ming-tsu involuntarily closed her lovely brown eyes in response to
the shock of the piercing pain, Lin bristled. "I warned you, slut! I told you to
watch!"
As her punishment for not following instructions, Lin then pulled the
needle back out roughly, re-heated it and then reinserted its sizzling length
back into Ming-tsu's agonized breastflesh only a millimeter or so away from its
first entry point. The Oriental temptress watched dutifully this time, her
unblinking, almond-shaped eyes following the terrible piercing of her breast
most carefully indeed. It felt as if her poor love-globe was being cooked on a
tiny spit.
Once more, Ming-tsu resolved not to cry out again - the first round of
needles had been bad enough; now things were going from bad to worse. But would
she be able to keep her vow?
Chiang Chan then wheeled his ominous cart over to the Cross and offered his
men a new selection of weapons. Among them were nightstick-long lengths of
hard but hollow rubber hose -- perfect instruments for inflicting pain on
stomach, ribcage, and pouting breasts from close quarters. Dao and Zheng opted
for the lengths of hose, while Lin took a yard-long length of flexible,
latex-covered cord, and Chiang himself selected a nasty looking inch-wide strap.
Ming-tsu's dark eyes looked at her re-armed tormentors imploringly.
The gaptoothed dungeonmaster turned her tear-streaked face toward his and
stared meaningfully into her beautiful brown eyes. "Think you've had a rough
time, so far, girl? Baby, we're just getting started. Last chance. Where are
the pearls?"
"Don't you think I'd tell you if I knew? Please, no more, please!" Her
plaintive voice trailed away into a soft sob.
"Sorry, honey, we're just street thugs, remember? You wouldn't expect
street thugs to go easy on you now, would you?"
"Please ... I'm sorry ... I'm so sorry."
"Yes you are, bitch. But not as sorry as you're going to be. C'mon boys, I
don't think she's learned her lesson in manners yet!"
After yet another subtle gesture from the silent figure in silver, the
foursome began anew with a barrage to Ming-tsu's stomach, subjecting her trim,
swimmer's midsection to a punishing assault. Dao and the Ox slammed their
hollow hose lengths into her vulnerable solar plexus, while the other two men
coiled their longer, more flexible weapons around her slender waist and torso
with unfailing accuracy. The area around her navel was ruddy from the four-way
flogging before her tormentors moved on, with Dao limiting his attack on her
vulnerable kidneys to a single painful stroke each while he and the Ox worked
their pain-dealing hose-lengths slowly up the torso and ribcage of their
helpless victim, painting her flesh crimson as they did so.
It was only when every inch of her abdomen from her pubic triangle to the
lower tit-strap was a glowing, blushing reddish-gold that Richard Chan held up
his hand to stop the beating and stepped forward once again.
Now, only Ming-tsu's heaving breasts remained unscathed, save for the
brightly-colored pinheads that accentuated their pristine, unblemished curves.
But the pain-wracked concubine was stricken by a sense of foreboding that her
tender treasures would not remain unmarked for long.
Ming-tsu's head hung down, her chest rising and falling rapidly from her
exertions. Her beautiful hair, her beautiful face, her beautiful body, all were
bathed in a sea of perspiration. Her thoughts returned to her dreadful dream of
a few nights ago, a dream so horrifying that she had found comfort afterwards
only by assuring herself that 'it was only a dream'.
But the reality of her stay in the Black Pagoda had proved little better
than the dream. Most alarming of all, each quarter-hour in the Scorpions' lair
seemed worse than the one before. And the next, almost surely, would be worse
than the last, which had been all but unendurable. But, she reasoned, as long
as she had her wits and her looks there was hope.
Even in her beleaguered state Ming-tsu had noted that while the Scorpions
had threatened her with the hot irons they had refrained from using them --
presumably because her body had value to them. So she did not think that they
would mutilate her or kill her. But it was certainly within their power to make
her wish for death ...
Ming-tsu glanced up as a slender shadow darkened her field of vision.
Richard Chan approached her, having picked up the twenty-seven-tailed triple
hydra along the way. Like Chiang Chan, she too had sensed that there was
friction today between the twin pillars of the Black Scorpion. And that there
was an uneasiness as well between Richard Chan and his nephew.
Trying to put her pain aside for a moment, Ming-tsu searched Richard
Chan's forbidding demeanor thoughtfully for a long moment looking for a clue to
his nature. Was his autocratic nature, his wickedness, due in part to his lack
of a son? To the Chinese, a man without a son is, in some sense, only half a
man. Was their jealousy or latent bitterness between the brothers on this
account -- that it would be George's son who would one day succeed to the
lordship of Shanghai?
Richard Chan was standing directly in front of her now. He draped the
attenuated thongs over Ming-tsu's golden pleasure-mounds, smiling as she
recoiled with a brief shiver.
How, she wondered, could she turn the friction among the Chans against
them? She had always prided herself on her resourcefulness, but today her life
depended on it. There would be more suffering, she knew, as she glanced in
turn at the five malevolent faces which surrounded here, perhaps a great deal
more. But if she could keep her head clear while her body suffered, there
remained a scintilla of hope.
Ming-tsu tried to twist away from Richard Chan's whip, but the Lord of the
Scorpions persisted, letting the numerous tails of the whip tease the soft
rounded curves of her breasts. She was a magnificent young animal, he thought,
a match for his own Mai-Lee. Her firm, uptilted breasts seemed to spring upward
and outward from the tit-straps which framed them with all of the voluptuous
vigor of young womanhood. For a moment the evil mandarin played the whip over
Ming-tsu's reddish-brown nipples, watching with a thin smile as Ming-tsu's
pebbly pellets of pleasure stiffened proudly at his touch.
"My brother has told me, Ming-tsu," Richard intoned in his familiar stately
cadence, as he continued to tease her bronzed love-buds with the strands of hs
whip, "how sensitive your lovely breasts are. How quickly they respond to the
pleasure of a kiss, a caress."
Ming-tsu tried to suppress a violent shudder that swept through her entire
body and threatened to turn her churning stomach inside out; she had little
doubt where this train of thought was headed.
" Unfortunately, my dear, you leave me no choice but to explore how they
will respond to the whip..."
