As she struggled and kicked, Kush giggled into her face, holding her easily. "I have waited many years for this, my little harlot. I knew that one day you would place yourself in my power. You were always too bold and headstrong."

"Leave me!" she screamed. "Put me down."

"No," Kush replied. "Now you are mine. Never again will you flout my rules. The other women will listen to your screams and they will quail in their beds, and think about the price of sin.

"No, my little one, from now on you belong to Kush alone."

Kush carried her to the little cell beside the cemetery, in the rear of the gardens, screened from the rest of the zenana by a hedge of flowering thorns. Two of his assistants were waiting there, eunuchs also, big men, gone to fat, but powerful. They had performed this punishment many times before, and they had made all the preparations.

Kush laid Yasmini on the hard wooden frame and while his assistants held her down, carefully removed her clothing. All three were grinning with anticipation, stripped to loincloths, but already sweating in the small hot cell. They touched her body as it was revealed, stroking her smooth limbs, sniffing her hair, pinching her small glossy breasts while she writhed and whimpered in their grasp. Then, when she was naked, they strapped her wrists and ankles with leather thongs until she lay spreadeagled and pinioned.  Kush stood between her legs and smiled down on her, in an almost avuncular fashion, as she struggled against her bindings.

"You have been taken in harlotry.  We know the man, but it spites me that he has grown too powerful to bring to justice.  His punishment will be to hear of your fate.  The rest of the world beyond these walls will hear that you died of a fever.  However, I will make certain that your lover has the truth whispered in his ear.  For the rest of his life, he will live with the knowledge that he was responsible for your slow terrible death."

Still smiling he leaned forward and placed his fat hand on her private parts, gently stroking the soft nest of fine dark hair between her thighs.  She tried to pull away from the fingers that probed inside her but she was helpless against the thongs that bound her ankles and held her thighs spread wide. "I am sure you have heard what happens to all the bad girls who come to this room. But, in case you are uncertain, I will explain it to you as we go along."

He nodded to one of the other eunuchs, who came to stand beside Kush holding a wooden tray.  On it lay two small packets.  They were wrapped in fine rice-paper, fish-shaped, as long as a finger and tapered at both ends.  They gleamed in the lamplight, for they had been heavily greased with sheep fat.

"These each contain five ounces of chili powder. I grow the pods myself in my little garden. They are of the fiercest variety. The juice from my fruit will burn the skin and flesh from the mouth of a Mogul, fed all his life on the strongest curries. I have to wear gloves of dogskin to protect my hands when I grind the powder."

Suddenly he thrust his fat forefinger deep into her. "One for this pretty perfumed little hole in the front." He grinned down as she screamed with shock, pain, and humiliation. Then he pulled out his finger and thrust it in again further back. "And the second packet for this other, darker cavern at the rear." He withdrew his finger, sniffed it, wrinkled his nose and pulled a face at the other two eunuchs. They tittered with delight.

He picked up one of the packets from the tray. Yasmini stared at it in horror began to struggle desperately against the leather thongs. "Hold her legs," he grunted at the other two. One of them forced her knees as far apart as possible. Kush spread the silky fur and the soft lips of her pussy. Then, with the expertise bred of practice, he slipped the greased packet into her body.

"See how al-Amhara has oped the way for me and made my task easier," he said, then stood back and wiped his fingers on his loincloth.  "The front is done.  Now for the rear," he said and picked up the other packed. His assistant reached under Yasmini's body and took one of her small round buttocks in each hand and drew them rudely apart.

She was gnawing her lips and her teeth were stained pink with her own blood. She whipped her head back and forth and arched her lithe golden body against the frame as far as her bonds would allow, and tears ran back into her long black hair.

With his free hand, Kush groped between her buttocks. "Open it wider!" he told the other eunuch. "Yes, that's better. So sweet and tight."

Yasmini's sobs ended with a sharp high squeal of pain and fear. "Ah yes," Kush gloated. "Yes, that's it. All the way. As far as I can reach."

He stepped back. "Shabash!  It is done.  Bind her ankles and her knees together tightly so that she cannot expel the sweetmeats." They worked swiftly then stepped back and surveyed their handiwork with satisfaction.

"Now go out and finish digging the whore's grave," They went into the cemetery, and soon there came the sound of their spades biting into the sandy earth and their jovial banter, as they worked.

Kush came to Yasmini's side. He stared down at the helpless naked beauty. "Your bier is ready, and the sheet to cover you when we lower you into the earth." He pointed them out to her against the far wall. "And see, I have even carved your headboard with my own loving hands." He held it up for her to read. "It has the date of your death, and tells the world you died of fever."

Yasmini was silent now, her body rigid. Her eyes wide and glistening with tears were fastened on his face as he bent over her.

"You see, the chili powder is so virulent that it will eat its way through the rice-paper, while from the outside the juices of your own body will moisten and weaken it further. Soon the packet will dissolve and the powder will be released into your secret places.

He stroked her hair back from her forehead, then with his thumb wiped her tears from her cheeks with feminine gentleness.  Yasmini groaned at these deceitful gestures of kindness from a man who had just prepared her for a long slow death by horrible torture. "At first you will feel a tiny stinging, which will grow into a fire, a raging fire that will make you long for the lesser heat of hell. I have watched many whores die upon this wooden bed, but I do not think there are words to describe their suffering.  It will eat out your womb and your bowels like a hundred rats burrowing into your softness, and your screams of agony will carry to every woman in the zenana.  They will remember those screams and your torture when they are tempted to sin."

He was breathing heavily now, and his expression was rapt, deeply aroused by the picture of suffering he was painting. "When will it begin?" he asked rhetorically. "We cannot be sure. In an hour, or two, or even longer, there is no way of telling.  What I can tell you is the waiting is a torture itself.  How long will it last?  I cannot tell you.  I have seen the weak ones die in a day, and the strong ones last four days, screaming to the very end. I think you are one of the strong ones, but we will see."

He went to the doorway and called to the men who were digging the grave. "Are you not finished yet? You cannot come and watch the fun until you are finished."

"Soon." One paused and leaned on his spade. Only the top of his shaved head was visible above the rim of the excavation. "We will be finished before the first packet bursts open."

Kush went back into the hut and settled his bulk comfortably on the bench against the far wall. "The waiting is the interesting part," he told Yasmini. "Some beg for mercy, but I know you are too proud for that. Sometimes the brave ones try to conceal from me the moment the paper breaks open. They try to deny me my enjoyment, but not for long." He giggled. "Not for very long."

He folded his arms across his soft, womanly breasts, and leaned back against the wall.  "I will be beside you to the end, Yasmini, to share each exquisite moment with you. And I shall probably shed a tear at your graveside, for I am a man of sentiment and soft-hearted."

Yasmini lay securely bound to the torture frame, her only movement the heaving of her stretched breasts on her rib cage as she sobbed softly through tightly closed eyes.  She thought for a moment to struggle against her fetters, to tighten the muscles in her belly, to speed the release of the burning powder and end the unbearable torment of the waiting for her inevitable torture.  But she couldn't force herself to bring on that terrible agony.

Perhaps if she begged for mercy Kush would relent.  That would never happen; he would just giggle and clap his hands.  And the slim hope of rescue was all but gone.  There was nothing she could do other than wait.

But could it be as horrible as Kush had promised? Was Yasmini fooling herself in thinking she could survive without begging or screaming? Then, just as she was beginning to believe she could withstand whatever pain the eunuch was to deliver, she felt a grain of powder emerge from the first tiny hole in the rice-paper, and a second later the pain as it dissolved into the flesh of her vagina. It was as though a red hot needle had pierced her flesh. Her eyes flew open and she gasped more in fright than pain. Kush laughed and cried out loud, "It's starting!"

Moments later, all thoughts of resistance gone, Yasmini was screaming uncontrollably as she would for the next three days.