“Those beautiful golden eyes!” The sights and sounds of the Hilshor bazaar came in such quantity, in such depth and vibrancy that it should have been an impossible task for any particular one of them to be seen or heard apart from all the rest. Only a child or stranger could stumble through the overcrowded alleyways and even notice a man swallowing a sword just a pace to their right, or pay any attention at all to a twirler of flames, dancing and juggling just an arm length away. A lifetime of staring into the sun would dull any eye, and in such a spirit the senses of any market regular lulled into deafness once they entered the city’s bazaar. It took a cunning tongue to whip a word that could strangle and reel back an otherwise well guarded ear, yet there existed in plenty such masters of speakership, and so too existed at least one pair of ears caught entirely off balance.
All it took was a glance and Jata knew she had made a terrible mistake.
“You must see riches with those pretty eyes! Look here, you’ll find exactly that, I promise.” He was an exceptionally heavyset man, this clever tongued merchant, whose hair was the only thing darker than his skin. A coat of furry curls crowned his head from top to bottom, and there seemed to be no difference where his locks ended and his beard began, nor did his beard ever end as it crept down his chest beyond a purple shirt and collar, as there on his forearms that exact same coat covered him still.
Gemmed and jeweled rings sparkled as he spread and pointed his fingers to his right, his expression so impressed with that which he revealed that Jata naturally followed his insistence to see that wonder for herself, and though what she saw was well outside all of her desires, the slave he presented intrigued her nonetheless.
There existed no greater contrast than that between the merchant and slave. Such a mass of a man made appear even smaller the low, diminutive woman, whose feminine proofs were as bare as the rest of the skin above her waist. A soft yet distinctive pink hue gave her flesh, and herself as a whole, it’s particular curiosity, as if she were yesterday as white as wool yet left an hour too long beneath a candy sun. She was foreign, and in a place half foreign to itself she was somehow uniquely so, made doubly clear by the anxious back and forth of her overstimulated eyes, dancing in a panic down the cascade of potential customers until her vision came to sense and lock with Jata’s. Of all the things in the bazaar, it was jarring to her finally to be noticed so directly, and almost immediately her state of near nudity began to bother her. She curled her arms around her chest, covering herself, yet likewise holding, and protecting, herself.
But the merchant was in no mood for uncooperative goods. He hastily pushed at her elbow and swat her arms away, a bit of uncharacteristic nervousness seeping through his smile, yet there was not a sale he could not make, nor deal he could not redeem. His eyes on Jata, he blindly groped at the slave woman until he held the closest of her breasts in his hand, and once his fingers wrapped to cup her tit from below, he gave it a vigorous jiggling.
“I would say some might be blind to this lovely creature,” the merchant said, “but even the blind can use their hands to feel all of this value. The brothels would bury me in silver if I could bear to see her live that life, but for four, you and I can promise her better.”
“Oh no,” Jata said, tilting her head in apology, “I can’t,” but a bump of a passing man’s shoulder put a stumble in her words, a stumble just broad enough for a sharp tongue to slip between.
“Can’t afford?” The merchant asked quickly, twisting his head to jut an ear her way, brow and lips both pursed in confusion and Jata found herself taking a step forward, urged by convention to break through the noise and clarify, but she realized too late that he had never misheard her at all.
“I shouldn’t spend on,” now standing at the counter of his roadside stand, Jata shook her head and turned up her empty palms, hoping to tie her refusal onto greater forces. “On… I’m just here to buy food.”
“All you have to do is shake your pockets and you’ll hear the sound of a brilliant opportunity!” He watched Jata consider the slave girl, watched as she peered behind herself for a chance to slip back into the flow of the crowd.
“I’m very sorry,” she began to mumble, letting her voice slip into the air in just the same way she hoped to slip off herself. “He would hate if I, I just can’t.” The merchant leaned into the counter to peer down at Jata’s feet, and when he saw them turning he knew he had to act quickly, and boldly, to win her focus back.
“He who? Your husband? Master?” The merchant reached out again for the woman, though this time he took her by the chin, pulling through her innitial resistance and forcing her closer by a step. She nearly relaxed until he took both hands to her face and pried her mouth apart, and while she leaned away in vain, she hooked her tongue to hide as far fron his thumb as she could get it.
“Think of him, then. You know a man can’t spend the night alone. Imagine,” he spoke to Jata over his shoulder, showing off the woman’s open mouth, “an evening all for yourself, for a book if you’ve an eye for letters, or the night to relax and put another braid in your lovely hair.” Jata watched the man once again, running her fingers through an unworked section of her hair.
“Save your jaw from soreness,” he said, finally letting the slave go, “let your sheets stay clean! Three silver royals, nothing less you’ll ever find, and come next spring he’d have spent double and again for her at the Noble Silkhouse. Look at her,” the slave woman had only just stepped away, yet to her flinching surprise the merchant snapped his grubby hand right back to her breast again, giving her an even more thorough jostle and groping this time around, and though she made no struggle, neither did she hide her displeasure. “You know it’s true. But why rent what you could own? Why work when you could relax?” As the merchant leaned towards her, Jata’s breath grew heavier, the twinkling of his golden tooth distracting as his wolfish smile drew closer.
It was another hour before Jata had stepped far enough away for the bustle of the marketplace to dull into a distant and ignorable hum, and it was only there that she became conscious of the coin that slapped against her thigh with each step. An embarrassment swept over her when she realized how silent her steps had become now that her coin was all alone.
“Don’t you drop anything,” she said to her slave, pink arms packed full with a trio of bread loaves and a basket of fruits. The woman quite clearly did not speak the language, something Jata immediately was thankful for, though the frustration she had allowed to fuel her voice made her drop her eyes to the ground. She wanted to give an appology, though thought better of tossing even more words at one who couldn’t speak them. She looked at the slave woman, who looked back with something set between indifference and uncertainty, a look that Jata felt was rather adequate for a woman who might not even know she was a slave.
Source: reddit.com/r/eroticliterature/comments/lnbr3c/a_deal_at_the_hilshor_bazaar