Ariana's Scandal, Part Four: The Ceremony

WARNING: Hot male bodies. Lusty women with zero impulse control. Implements that hurt. Adults only.

ADDITIONAL WARNING: S/M. I'm *so* not kidding in this chapter. For real. Be warned. Get out of here if these things make you squeamish.

FINAL WARNING: Caution, filling is HOT.


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Our story so far:
Fictional Foundation
And So It Begins
Ariana's Scandal Part One: The Guidance
Ariana's Scandal Part Two: The Meeting
Ariana's Scandal Part Three: The Preparations

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Nolan's hands were bound over his head. His feet touched the ground, so his arms didn't strain to hold his weight, they just stretched above him, locked securely with chains attached to the leather cuffs upon his wrist. Nolan had been locked this way, in a room full of busy men, for an hour. Weight bearing or not, his arm muscles had begun to ache.

Below him, his legs were spread, held apart by a metal bar decorated with symbols from an ancient past. His ankles were cuffed to the bar, his feet bare, as was the rest of his naked body. Nolan had been cleansed and scrubbed, inside and out. His body hair had been freshly removed, his skin oiled. This left Nolan smooth and silky, glistening in the early afternoon light that filled the room.

Nolan was being prepared.


Having studied every step of the ceremony rituals didn't make Nolan as ready, so far, as he'd imagined it would. Who could mentally prepare for the humiliation of so many hands upon his body, Nolan bound helpless to defend himself even as instinct demanded he resist their touch. Nolan understood, intellectually, the process he was being taken through, but when the man hands spread his ass, inserting oiled digits, before invading his body with a smooth glass cylindrical object meant to fill him for the entire day, Nolan cried out, "Enough!".

Nolan's unedited outburst was met with a sharp crop against his back. Men that he would lead tomorrow, today, were in charge of every part of his body. A voice hissed, "Honor Ariana with your bravery, " and then three more crop strokes bit into Nolan's flesh.

The after sting of the strokes was little, mostly, Nolan felt cold. The early afternoon breeze on his naked flesh was crisp; the glass inside him had been chilled before placement. Nolan gritted his teeth as the glass object was fastened into thin leather straps meant to hold it in place for the rest of the day. Nolan's body temperature warmed the glass and slowly his muscles relaxed and accepted the invader.

Mind, Nolan was no anal virgin. No man his age was unless he had specifically been kept that way to bring a high price. There were markets for such virgin curiosities within the province and also in the city. Many women enjoyed the thought of a man on all fours, head low, ass high, waiting in fear of the unknown. Some women could afford to purchase the first penetration experience over and over again.

Nolan wasn't a curiosity. He had been trained adequately to submit his ass to either a woman's whim or a ceremonial requirement. Nolan had been taken by any number of objects of different materials over the years. He had felt the pain and at times felt the pleasure, pleasure intended or not. All of Nolan's training, though, had been done by women. The sensations weren't unfamiliar to him, the hands of men upon him were. It had never occurred to Nolan how different the feel would be at the rough hands of men. Unconsciously, Nolan tried to push the smooth glass object out of himself, but the object held firm in place, going nowhere.

The hands moved next to Nolan's cock and balls. Nolan no longer attempted to follow the men's movements with his eyes, closing his eyes, preferring to think of Ariana. Nolan tried to imagine Ariana's hands, instead of these men, as his balls were separated, his shaft manipulated to fit inside metal jewelry meant to keep his erections hard and make Nolan visually pleasing to these women who demanded beauty. Nolan had worn cock rings before, but only during certain parts of his training.

Daily, this kind of jewelry was meant only for sex slaves, men designated to fill women's sexual desires and little else. That first males also were required to wear the jewelry spoke to all that was required of the first male position. Brains and beauty, the brokers laughed, these women want brains and beauty in one man, there's a find. His broker had encouraged Nolan to quickly acquire trained sex slaves for Ariana's bed before Ariana caught on, in the broker's words, that Nolan was skewed heavily towards brains and not so much sex. "I don't want to find you on my doorstep as a return and a reject and a big chunk out of my bank account as a result."

A man hand tugged Nolan's cock, encouraging erection so the fit of the jewelry could be checked. The hand stroked roughly, clinically, mechanically. Nolan stopped being able to think of Ariana. He could see only himself, tied, spread and stripped, helpless in a room filled with men. The hand stroked on. Nolan's cock hardened and in a burst, shot out away from his body, fully erect as required. The hand abruptly stopped stroking him, moving into examination mode, turning Nolan's cock gently to one side, then the other, then tilting it slightly upwards. Through closed eyes, Nolan heard murmurs of male approval. The fit of the jewelry was declared perfect, one more check box ticked on the to do list for the day.

The hands of the men next moved up Nolan's body, to his nipples. Nolan willed himself to not so much as flinch, even as his nipples were tweaked and pinched to hardness, all the ready for the clips of the next set of jewelry he was to wear.

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"And now, your Grandmother's necklace."

Ariana gasped. Ariana wasn't one to be taken by stones this way or that, but her Grandmother's necklace, the one her father was presenting to her this moment, had a beauty that left even Ariana speechless. Diamonds, but not any diamonds, the finest grade natural diamonds of each color known -- yellow, red, pink, green, purple, and shades in between, set in a fine platinum design that could have only come from the hands of The Sons, no matter what provenience was claimed.

Ariana reached to hold the necklace. "For the day?" The morning light played the colors of the stones onto the wall.

Evander smiled at Ariana's near childlike wonder. "No, for good. It's your mother's gift to you today. Forever."

Ariana threw herself into her father's arms, squealing. "I can't believe it. It is so beautiful. Thank you!"

Evander hugged his daughter. "Be sure you thank your mother."

"She could have brought the necklace herself."

Evander touched Ariana's hair. "Vera insisted you would enjoy the necklace more, coming from my hands."

In a small voice, Ariana replied, "She's wrong, you know."

"I know, " Evander responded, "but such is the way of women." His voice deep and dramatic, Evander was teasing Ariana with a common male expression of resignation and complaint, not normally intended for female ears.

Ariana laughed, pulling back to look at her father full face. "Not this woman." She stuck her tongue out at her father and together they both laughed.

"Yes, my darling daughter, you have your own way. Now turn around and let me get this necklace on you. The guests are all settled and we're down to minutes before you must appear."

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The weather of the day of Ariana's twenty-first birthday celebration could not have been more perfect. A combination of warm sun and a cool, dry breeze made for complete comfort, no matter the temperature preference of an individual guest. There was music in the air, tables laden with the finest food, good wine and handsome men everywhere. The women were dressed in silk and chiffon, the men dressed just barely. The city guests noted that the best part of ruling class events was the more formal occasion, the fewer clothes the men were allowed to wear.

"I wonder," whispered one slightly drunken city guest to another, "if they have figured out how to get these men less than naked yet." This was said directly after an enormously well endowed sex slave had his loin cloth caught in an upward breeze directly at the guests' eye level.

Her companion responded. "I'm sure they have. We working women just have to figure out how to get invited to that less-than-naked event."

Surreptitiously, some of the city guests scribbled notes. There was a hunger for all things ruling class. Details would have a pay off.

By all accounts, city and other, Ariana was lovely on her day.

When The Sons recounted, they spent an entire chapter on Ariana's dress alone. Her color choice, pink and orange, had given the dressmakers fits. Finding a pink and an orange that blended well together was hard, selecting shades that enhanced Ariana's near alabaster skin was almost, but not quite, impossible. "Orange is a color for women of darker skin please, Ariana, I beg you, " Vera's dressmaker had implored but of course Ariana would have none of it; Ariana would have orange or she would have death. There was seemingly endless drapings in fabric lengths of every hue. At one point, Ariana mock threatened the old dressmaker, she'd known since birth, with a Sunday flogging in the town square if he said "just one more draping", one more time.

In the end, Ariana stood stunning in a pink and orange silk dress with a shirred bodice and full gathered skirt that fell not completely to the ground, allowing for both elegance and comfort of movement. The bodice was fitted past Ariana's waist, defining her maturing hourglass shape.

Ariana had insisted that her hair not be up-swept completely, so the hairdressers had created a design with Ariana's dark hair swept up in parts and hanging long and wavy in other parts. Her near curls danced on this shoulder or that one, depending on which direction she turned her head or how animatedly she moved in conversation. Quietly, artists sat to the side, making sketches to be turned into oil paintings and wood cuts on later days.

The strapless and backless design of Ariana's gown caused some whispers. Seldom were women as uncovered on public occasions as Ariana was on her day. More guests whispered about how beautiful Ariana was, her back turned, than whispered "ought not be", though, so if part of Ariana had been hoping to stir a little scandal with so much skin, that part was disappointed. All agreed Ariana shone.

The Sons spent most of their dress pages on a subtle part of the dress design no guest could appreciate without a closer view of Ariana's body than socially acceptable. Ariana's bodice was covered in tonal embroidery, filled with symbols of the past of the women, symbols of the line of the Queen, symbols of Vera's House, and symbols of Ariana's House.

There were other symbols, The Sons claimed, symbols hidden under symbols, symbols created by combinations of other symbols, which viewed by a critical eye, told the whole story of the events yet to come.

Ariana's Scandal, the Sons said, was plainly foretold within the bodice of the dress Ariana wore on her day.

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In between toasts and speeches, and more toasts and speeches, Ariana moved from table to table, greeting guests as she was required to do. Ariana felt happy and almost compliant as she said one polite thing after another to guests she either didn't know or didn't care about. She'd allowed herself to think of Nolan in only brief moments the entire day, fearing longer thoughts would make each minute until he was completely hers drag impossibly long.

Ariana drank little, with most of the women around her making up for any lack of consumption on Ariana's part. As evening came, the women drank more, and everyone anticipated the ceremony about to begin.

The city guests were mesmerized by the change the combination of hour and alcohol made in the ruling class women, usually so controlled. Night fell. The lanterns and torches were lit. Illuminated by fire, the women one after another, began stripping their men of whatever little clothing the men were wearing to begin with. The music had stopped. The women made the men stand, or in some cases bend, in any one of a number of ritual positions for final clothing removal. Crops and whips appeared from almost nowhere. Men who were considered to have not held a position in just a right way, or having gotten into position quite fast enough on command were immediately punished. The night air was filled with soft or sharp sounds of a crop hitting flesh here, a male grunt there, more hitting, soft male apologies, requests for mercy, and an occasional plaintive cry out.

The hour had come. The women were hungry.

Ariana was escorted to the top of a platform, just a few feet above ground, for her place in the ceremony. Ariana stood flanked by slaves from her mother's house, her stomach suddenly nervous, her eyes alert for the appearance of her man. Other slaves removed a long gold carpet in front of the platform, revealing a dirt pathway that had been cut and smoothed during the preparations. The path was now lined in torches. On invisible cue, the women grabbed some of their slaves, by whatever handle they chose, and together they stood on the side of the long path, forming a wall one hundred women long on each side, with the men to their backs. The city guests were versed enough to know what came next, but not entirely clear on where to stand themselves. The city people hung on the outskirts of the ruling class women and waited.

Everyone waited, heads turned to the beginning of the path, opposite from where Ariana stood at path's end.

Nolan appeared from the darkness, pushed along by several men on either side. Nolan wasn't fully illuminated until he reached his place at the start of the dirt path, drenched in the fire light of the torches.

As prepared, Nolan was naked with his hands bound behind him. Nolan still held the glass object inside him, the fullness over hours becoming part of his own body. Nolan's nipples were clamped and gently weighted, weighted enough to send a shot of pain or two through his body every time he was pushed roughly forward. He'd been gagged for some time in waiting, with a gag that filled his whole mouth the same way the glass object filled him inside.

A slave grabbed Nolan by the hair, yanking Nolan's head backward, turning Nolan's body this way and that for the crowd to approve. The women cheered.

Ariana found the composure to not let her mouth drop open at the sight of Nolan. In the fire, he looked so little like the sweet, soft man she'd claimed her own two weeks before and looked every bit the captured wild man the stories told of. Ariana's mouth was dry, but she had lines to speak, and did so loudly.

"Slaves, make this man crawl to me. My women friends, I implore you, have this man earn every inch of progress so that he may earn the right to be called my first male."

The women cheered again, long and with ferocity. The men behind Nolan shoved Nolan to his knees quickly, also pushing Nolan's face on the dirt path, grinding, until Nolan could taste the earth mixed with his own drool, as the combination seeped through the corners of his gagged mouth. One man unbound Nolan's hands, deftly working each hand to return full blood flow as quickly as possible, while two other men removed the metal spreader bar from between Nolan's ankles. The bar was replaced by not small round weights attached to each ankle, specifically designed to slow Nolan's progress as he crawled toward Ariana.

A hand pulled the gag from Nolan's mouth. Another hand offered Nolan water, which Nolan drank hungrily and quickly. Nolan spat once on the ground to clear his taste of dirt and then drank more.

As Nolan was fully positioned to begin his trek, the slaves drew back. Nolan was on all fours, head facing forward. One man, Nolan couldn't see which, whispered kindly behind Nolan's ear. "It's almost over. You can do this. You are strong." And then Nolan was conscious the men were behind him no more.

Everything lay ahead. There was only the long path of women and Ariana at the end.

The wild men weren't trained before the ceremony, it was said. The men were beaten during capture, beaten during preparations, but never trained or tamed, kept every bit as wild as on capture when their knees and face hit the dirt as Nolan's just had. The ceremony was the first step in changing the free man to slave, subjugated to the entire community of women. The community claimed the man first, as he crawled toward the one woman who would own him.

Not all wild men made the whole path, legend said, some were too willful, some were too weak. The weak ones, who dropped mid path from fatigue were killed as useless. The willful ones who refused to submit to the length of the pathway were castrated for control, eventually soft and docile and all too willing to fetch a whip for anyone's punishment, including their own. The wild men who reached the end of the path, those were the conquered men and the forefathers of all men. They were heroes revered in history, studied by all young people in every part of the land.

The first male ceremony honored the sacrifice of the wild men as precisely as the women of this age were able to create.

Nolan began to crawl. The women cheered more loudly, ringing in his ears. Nolan kept his head low, as ceremony proscribed, and also in some vain hope for aerodynamic progress as quickly as possible. The length of time the trek took was in direct relation to the amount of pain taken along the trip.

The first blows hit Nolan as soon as his body reached the edge of the women. Nolan counted off mentally - crop, strap, whip, two more crop hits, distracting himself from reacting verbally to each strike. Silence was his strategy for crowd appeasement but as a strategy it was just a guess. There was no way of knowing if calling out would incite the women to hit him harder, or if lack of outward pain expression egged the crowd to more.

For many feet, the women didn't seem to care where they hit, as long as they hit the mark of Nolan. Nolan felt every part of him take on stripes, especially his back and his ass because they were such an easy reach from the sidelines.

Nolan didn't cry out until somewhere around the halfway point. Several of the women had drunkenly yelled out that the back of Nolan's legs were too white. Nolan tried not to hear their words but could not miss the woman who commanded, "Stop the man in his path."

Suddenly, male slaves stood in Nolan's path not letting him progress. A handful of women quickly gathered behind Nolan, beating the back of his legs with leather straps. Nolan could feel the fire of each stroke and finally he called out in pain. As Nolan feared, the women liked his cries, hitting him harder to hear more. The men pulled Nolan upright, allowing the women access to Nolan's stomach and chest. Nolan's cries came now with every breath, not every stroke, as there were more strokes on his body than breaths for him to take.

"Beg to pass!" One of the women shouted, hitting him over and over again until, Nolan begged.

"Please."

"Louder!", another woman's voice demanded.

"Please! Please let me pass! I beg you, let me pass", Nolan shouted with the voice that was left in him.

The blows stopped. The men in his path parted and Nolan crawled on.

Nolan was obviously weakened now. The next man who stepped in his path did so to give Nolan water. Nolan felt anger that anything held his progress but drank the water greedily even as light blows hit his back. Another measure of water was poured over him, and then one more, providing Nolan the smallest relief and a clearing of his head.

Nolan allowed himself to look up to see that just a quarter of the path remained. At the end stood Ariana, looking distressed, not happy, pained not pleasured. The expression on Ariana's face hurt Nolan's heart.

Nolan had no crowd management strategy left, just a goal -- get to Ariana as quickly as possible. Back to crawling, Nolan moved his legs and arms faster in the last quarter than they had moved in the first quarter, even though he ached so from the weights he had been dragging and the pain that filled his body.

Whether there were now fewer blows or whether Nolan had become immune to feeling the blows, Nolan not only couldn't say but didn't think to consider. Reaching Ariana was all that mattered.

The last feet were crawled. Nolan had arrived at the bottom of the platform where Ariana stood. Four men surrounded Nolan quickly, gathering him up in their arms, carrying him up the steps and placing him at Ariana's feet.

According to ceremony, Nolan should have been kneeling in front of Ariana, upright with his head bowed, but there was no strength left in his body. Nolan lay crumpled in a pile at Ariana's feet, thinking oddly to himself that the white carpet of the platform was very soft and it was a shame that the carpet would be dirtied by all of the dust and blood from his body.

The crowd cheered raucously at Nolan's platform ascension, roaring on until the cheer turned into a collective gasp at what happened next.

Ariana dropped to her own knees, next to Nolan, and then underneath Nolan, taking his head in her lap.

Vera clutched Evander's arm so hard, she broke skin with her nails. "What is that child doing now?"

Evander was as shaken as Vera, but held out hope. "Give them a minute. This might turn around."

After the collective crowd gasp there was collective silence, waiting for the next moves.

Ariana stayed on her knees, stroking Nolan's head. She whispered in Nolan's ear. "I shall stop it now, we won't go on. I can't go on. My heart is going to break." Ariana turned Nolan's head so she could look directly in his eyes. At first Nolan's eyes were glazed and dazed, but his stare cleared the longer he was locked on Ariana's resolve and compassion.

Nolan smiled up at Ariana from the comfort of her lap. Again Ariana said softly, "I shall stop it now."

The smile didn't leave Nolan's lips as he whispered back to her, "You will do nothing of the kind. We're finishing the ceremony. You will not hold back on me. And," his whisper now urgent, "for god's sake, get off of your knees, woman, what are you thinking?"

Nolan's bossiness in the midst of everything around them made Ariana burst out laughing. She kissed Nolan lightly on the head, to another crowd gasp, and then stood her full height. The male slaves behind him held Nolan upright on his knees.

"My House's apology for the interruption in ceremony, " Ariana addressed the crowd. "It's been a long day. I'm afraid I felt weak in my knees and needed some moments to recover. My slave-to-be here was a great comfort and source of strength for me. We're ready to continue."

The Sons said that this day was the only time in the history of women that the final portion of the first male ceremony was performed with the woman and the slave looking directly in each others eyes with no break, save the breaks necessary due to physical circumstances.

Ariana spoke the ancient words loudly.

"Man, in the community of my fellow women, I claim you as my own."

Ariana drew her arm back, slapping Nolan full across the face as the ceremony required, holding nothing back from her blow. Ariana and Nolan's eyes parted as Nolan's head moved with the impact.

Ariana waited to speak, waited until Nolan's head had been righted and he could hold her gaze again. Imperceptibly to others, Nolan nodded to Ariana for her second line.

"Every part of you belongs to me, to do with as I will."

Again, Ariana drew her arm back, this time striking the other side of Nolan's face with her back hand. And again, Ariana waited to speak until Nolan's head was clear and he could nod to her for her third line.

"Your obedience belongs to me, as does your pain."

Nolan was struck once more, once more Ariana waited for him. This ceremony moved more slowly than any ceremony had before, but no one in the crowd complained. Everyone was mesmerized by seeing something they had never seen before.

After the ten required lines were completed, Nolan's face was marked with the print of Ariana's hand all over. Ariana had caught the corner of Nolan's mouth with one of her blows. His lip had cracked, showing the smallest amount of blood. With her eyes, Ariana promised Nolan that she'd soon kiss away all of the blood and all of the pain, everywhere.

Nolan had but one ancient line, but it was his line to close the ceremony.

"Ariana, I am yours won. I beg your mercy for the rest of the days I may live. Have mercy upon me, your slave, Nolan."

The crowd applauded, softly at first and then haltingly and then they stopped clapping all together. The men gathered Nolan to be taken off and cared for, as proscribed, but instead of standing in victory, as the woman was supposed to do at ceremony's end, Ariana hunched her shoulders, gathered her shawl and left, following directly behind the men who carried off Nolan.

The platform was empty.

The women were silent for a moment. Then, as if a giant ball of crystal was shattered by a single blow, the women's collective voice burst, falling into hundreds of separate high pitched speculations about what on earth they had all just witnessed.

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So, The Sons claimed they found all of Ariana's tale told in hidden symbols on the bodice of the gown Ariana wore that day. They said that when the symbol of Ariana was combined with symbol of Nolan and overlaid with the symbol of the first male ceremony, the three together created a single ancient symbol, a symbol of endless, unsatisfiable hunger or, depending on the interpreter, the symbol of a yawning pit with no bottom.

The Sons' version of the story, of course, relies on the hand embroiderers of Ariana's dress to be both mystics and scholars as well as craftsmen. More likely, the embroidered symbols touched randomly and The Sons read the bodice as they wanted, after the fact.

From that day on, though, tongues wagged about Ariana non-stop. Anyone who attended Ariana's twenty-first birthday had her or his own guess about what might happen next. Some speculators came close to being right on at least a portion of the path Ariana soon took. These women and men weren't mystic; they merely understood that trouble follows closely the affairs of the heart.

Never before had a woman made her love for a slave so clear, no less in the front of the entire company of women, the women's most important slaves, city guests and, of course, the ever present spies of The Sons.

The roots of Ariana's Scandal had taken hold.