Allegiance Torn

For weeks newly turned 18 year old Aria, the most coveted of young available women across all of Europe, had been closeted off from all humankind, (not counting the tight lipped robotic like servants), awaiting an unwanted and quite unexpected marriage to a duke. One of ill reputation and shrouded in rumors based solely upon his own elusiveness and drunken exploits. How did she get here you ask? Well, it started three weeks ago. Let me bring you up to speed.

Her current position: September 19, 1764

Having been kidnapped from her own coming of age party two weeks prior, well bet as a prize in a poker match that her father lost dreadfully. The duke's top right hand man, who had a royal flush to her fathers full house, rose silently, tossed her over his shoulder and strode out unchallenged by the stunned men frozen at the table. His heavy gait not slowing until he tossed her body into inside his massive carriage, locked the door, and signaled the driver to go. The terror she felt during that ride paled compared to the fear she was overwhelmed with when her kidnapper carried her limp body into the room dumping her unceremoniously on the floor then locking the door behind him as he left.

She had never so much as left her father's estate let alone be esposed to strangers until the night of her debut party. The sips of wine, the dim lighting in the ballroom, the freedom to flirt and tease such exciteable young men all gave her a sense of power. The slight brush of manly hands sliding down to cup her firm full bottom in a darkened corner and lustfull stares at her full bossom elicited an excitement within her breasts and loins while the night raced on filled with dancing with every young eligible bachelor. Oh how she was so innocent and privileged and unaware of the arousing danger she was stirring in the room. The entire night had been a dream, even better.

Well, until the last guest to leave that night at least broke that illusion.

Floating on air, she had entered her fathers study to wish him a good night. She knew he had a gambling addiction and would spend the night tucked away in this room, but this one night was about her and she just didn't care how much of a purse he lost in his poker match. She didn't notice the solemness of the dark smoke filled room or the angry mood her drunk father clearly was in. She also didn't notice the man in the shadows behind her until he was right behind her grasping her body and pressing a hand across her face. He lifted her so easily, tossing her stunned body over his shoulder, and carried her swiftly to his carriage. Those few paralyzing moments had shattered her illusion of safety as she slipped into the darkness caused by the night of drinking, losing her fight as the rocking from the horses trotting her away to God knows where; fading as the sleep took over.

The following day:

Arias' head was pounding as sunlight streamed across her waking, woozy and still slightly drugged face. She was in a bed wearing an indecent nightgown unfamiliar to her. Remants of the night before flashed across her dazed mind, and panicking, she bolted upright and out of the bed to find the door locked as flashes of her abduction filled her mind. After beating on the hard wooden door and screaming for a solid ten minutes, she turned, pressing her back against the door, sliding down to sit on the cold floor, knowing there was no resue coming. Her eyes scanned the room to find an exit. The overwhelming sense of her new reality set in. She knew this room wasn't a bedroom for her as a woman or person. It most certainly was not a sanctuary for a tender woman of status to escape to at the end of long days. Nor was it a room that boasts of comforts afforded to women carrying the title of Duchess. She knew if she couldn't escape, she would be in pure hell the rest of her life here.

Whomever designed this room did so to put her in her place right away. Everything screamed that she would merely be another servant. This room was to make sure she knew her new husband saw her as a possession. She wasn't being wed off to a partner that would view her as an equal as her father had promised her. No, she acknowledged as her eyes scanned the room, her soon to be husband was of the class of males that viewed women as unable to have valid opinions on anything more tedious than raising babies and warming beds. In the silence, the cracking of burning logs echoed across the room. The firelight danced across the walls and shelving, all adorned with terrifying artifacts that she knew was mainly used in whorehouses by women sickened with a disease causing their morals to fall to the lusts of their flesh. At least her maids had shared stories with her of these items being used in those manners by crazed men on those poor sexually driven, afflicted women.

Aria, in her youth, had at least held the hope that if her potential mate was of that same affliction, that he would only visit her bedchamber for brief matings and that he would save his disturbing lusts for the whorehouse. She even prayed that if she was unequally yoked that her forced matings would consist of darkness hiding the stranger that would enter, pull up her gown waist high, do the deed, and exit without having to converse a solitary word with her. She then could at least pretend it wasn't happening for those few moments. In the present, though, she knew she had to get away. This room was a warning, a declaration, a statement that she was in no way in charge anymore, not any status higher than a paid slut, even if she gets to carry his name. This room was set up specifically for her arrival. It was not designed to be her sanctuary or reading room. There was no wall full of feminine books or knick knacks. Every place her eyes happened to pause on in the room, overwhelmed and scarred her impressionable innocent mind. Every item adorning every shelf and hook and tabletop, down to the glistening shine of the dark stained flooring, was declaring that carrying his name had expectations attached. Pushing herself back up, she remembered the stranger mouthing upon her arrival that "her" bedroom had been set up and made ready for her. This room was not a ladies room, it was in no way anything other than an extension of her soon to be husband's rooms.

A sharp knock had her scurrying across the room back to the bed. Then the door swung opened by a mousy looking maid balancing with a large tray filled with an assortment of various food. She hurriedly set the heavy tray down and scuttled out. In her haste she forgot to lock the door behind her. Aria waited a few moments and then carefully pulled the door open just a few inches. After listening and accepting she was alone, she slipped out quietly to explore and try to find a way of escape. Room after room, all grossly neglected in modernization, all displayed a history of not hosting a womanly presence or touch. The entire wing had outdated drapery and peeling wallpaper in dreary coloring, designed decades ago for a singular purpose to appeal to only the man of the home. Admitting defeat, Aria trudged back to her room, the only one semi updated. There was no other place for her here. This one room, her prison, was where her role as "wife" would be throughly taken advantage of, and it screamed that her body was nothing more than a tool, the final sexual object needed to bring the design of the room to a close. She finally took a slow tour of her space, stopping at each shelf to visualize the objects purpose. Every device displayed unashamedly that she encountered was a stark reminder that she was to be the recipient of its purpose, whether willingly or forcefully. Most she had never seen or could even imagine its purpose, though she tried.

Her eyes couldnt help but go back and linger on the lit shelves in the corner. Her imagination creating all types of images of the items there being used to bring her hours of pain and torture. Forcing herself to think of a way out, she decided to bathe. She hurried through her chamber, filled the tub and added a scoop of freshly crushed lavender, then stripped naked and sank into the hot water. She forced her mind to think of happy times as a youth, being raised to be strong and smart and a helpmate. That did wonders to lock in her decision. She would escape or die trying. Drying herself, she downed the entire decanter of wine and drowsily sank into the large bed as the orange light of the sun sitting shown through the windows casting a warm glow across the room. She acknowledged the nakedness of her body sliding into the sleek sheets, too drunk from the wine to care enough to rise and slip into a nightgown.

When her eyes closed that night, her subconscious weaved her dreams of immense pleasure and feelings of flying in the clouds, completely safe and protected. And when she woke the next morning, her loins ached with an unfamiliar wetness, warmth and tingling, and a burning desire, for what she knew not. The feeling of loss she endured that morning though outweighed her fear and anger at captivity, at least until she fully awakened.

For the following weeks, while refusing to consciously dwell on her predicament and drinking herself into oblivion each night, something deep inside her during the day kept randomly reminding her the inevitable night was coming and it was going to determine her entire future.

That night she would no longer be able to pretend that her future marriage, or first time intimacy, was any one of the imagined scenarios she had grown up fantasizing her wedding night would be.

Fully awake this morning, 2 weeks in, she couldn't face the thought of bearing her body to him, this stranger that would soon own her. Days and weeks had passed and her fear had subsided while determination and anger grew in it's place. But during those drunken nights, the dreams had started feeling more and more real. Sometimes she had even woke swearing someone was just with her.

Then the day happened. Yesterday. No wine was left with her dinner. She forced herself to sleep that night but woke constantly. A little past midnight she awoken and her eyes instantly focused on the dark corner by the door. The shadows she could've sworn concealed the retreat of a dark black outline. She laid there staring for what felt like hours until she convinced herself there was nothing there. Slipping back into sleep, her mind filled with black and white partial impressions of a naked man entering her dark room and quietly walking to stand poised inches from her sleeping naked body flirted with her consciousness. The looming, large, dark shadow fell across her body while she lay naked and paralyzed, her breasts rising and falling to the beat of her breath, her legs spread with moonlight spotlighting her auburn mound of curls. Paralyzed in a semi sleep state, she could only focus on the fire building as she felt his touches across her frozen body. Her eyes refusing to open despite her trying. His hand sliding up her one bare leg, across her thigh, and then gently pulling back the sheer covering of her sheet that was draped across her other leg.

Her subconscious knew she couldn't move but her whole focus was on those fingers that were now tracing up and down the outside folds of her untouched pussy. She prayed, if it had been real, he couldn't feel how badly she was shivering. Then one finger slid right between her lips, and she knew her dream man knew she was soaking wet.

That couldn't have been what really had happened past night, right? Was her fear driving her to insanity? Or was her future even more in trouble?