"John Norman - Gor 22 - Dancer of Gor " - читать интересную книгу автора (Norman John)

had spun wool in Crete or cast nets, her robes tied to her waist, off
the coast of Asia Minor; better she had broken her dolls and put
them in the temple of Vesta; better she had been a silken girl
breathless behind the wooden screens of the seraglio or a ragged slut
on her knees desperately licking and kissing for coins in the sunlit,
dusty streets below; better she had been bartered for a thousand
horses in Scythia or led to Jerusalem tied by the hair to a CrusaderтАЩs
stirrup; better to have been a high-born Spanish lady forced to beg
to be the bride of a pirate; better to have been an Irish prostitute, her
face slashed by Puritans for following the troops of Charles; better
to have been a delicate lady of the Regency carried into Turkish
slavery; better to have been a Colonial dame spinning in Ohio,
looking up to see her first red master. I put down my head, and
shook it. Such thoughts must be put from my mind, I told myself.
But the girl stood there, still stood there, in the mirror. She had not
left, or fled. How bold she was, or how deep were her needs! I
shuddered. How many times I had awakened from sleep, moving
against the coarse, narrow cords which had held me down, above
and below my breasts and crossed between



9
them, leaving their cruel marks on my body! How many times had I
awakened, seeming still to feel the tight bite of cruel shackles on my
wrists and ankles. How many times had I, bound at their mercy,
looked up at them? How many times had I recoiled from the blows
of their whips, only to crawl then to their feet, piteous and contrite,
begging to please them? I was a females. Not looking in the mirror I
drew off the nightgown and held it clenched in my hand. I then
crouched down and put it gently on the rug, beside the bit of silk. I
hesitated. Then I picked up the bit of silk and, standing, not looking
in the mirror, I drew it on. It was on me! I closed my eyes. I felt on
my skin its silken presence, almost nothing, little more than a
whisper or a mockery. I drew it at the hem down more against my
body, perhaps defensively, that I might feel it on me the more, that I
might assure myself, I told myself, the more of its presence, that I
was truly garmented, but this, too, of course, merely confirmed upon
me not uncertainly the insidious disturbing subtlety of its slightness,
the so undeniable, so insistent, scandalous feel of its slightness, its
shameful, mocking silken caress, and, too, as I drew it down, it
clung more closely about me, it seemed that it would then, almost as
though scornfully, imperiously, in amusement, given its nature,
respond to my efforts at modesty only by producing a further and
yet greater revelation and betrayal of my beauty. I stood there, the
garment on. I turned then to the mirror, and opened my eyes.
Suddenly I gasped and was giddy. For a moment it seemed
blackness swam about me, and I fought for breath. My knees almost
buckled. I struggled to retain consciousness. I looked in the mirror.
Never had I seen myself thusly. I was terrified. In the mirror there