Chapter 1

 

I was totally fooled.

I suppose I could be forgiven for my foolishness of course. Everyone else, including my parents and even my uncle, the Duke himself, all said what a charming man Juan was.

He was, too. Physically, he was the epitome of the white, South American aristocrat: tall and lean but obviously well-built; handsome to a tee with a tanned skin, a flashing smile that revealed perfect white teeth and dark eyes that seemed to smile even more than his mouth.

But, good looks and that obviously fine body aside, he also seemed to be the essence of a gentleman as well. He should have been, of course. His family was one of the oldest of aristocratic Spanish families in Argentina but what none of us knew was that he was its black sheep.

The head of the family had exiled him to Chandrixsa, a little known Independent State situated at the headwaters of the Amazon, and was forbidden to enter Argentina at all. Of course he didn't tell my family or me any of this and he truly swept me off my feet, proposing to me and marrying me at our family church.

Oh, my name is Marion Russell and I too have an aristocratic background, coming from one of the oldest families in England. Our line has been in existence for a long, long time and has spawned many leaders of note. The present Duke, as you may have gathered already, my uncle.

What Juan also didn't tell us was that he had come to England with the express purpose of finding an aristocratic young woman to marry so that his legitimate line might be carried on. He specifically wanted an English girl, for it seemed he had a thing about the English aristocracy. I suited him down to the ground.

I am slim, fair, and have blue eyes - all requirements for his ideal, apparently. I am also reasonably pretty, although I would not qualify as a model; I am well aware of that.

I say his legitimate line for, when we arrived at his small domain in Chandrixsa, I was to discover he had dozens of little bastards running around.

I was also to discover, to my horror, that he was a fiend of the very worst kind and the place to which I had journeyed with such high hopes was, in fact, 'The Plantation from Hell.

 

He explained our transhipment to Chandrixsa instead of staying in Argentina by indicating that he wished to visit his plantation there. I had been quite surprised that his family was not there to meet us at the airport at Buenos Aires, but he explained that by saying I would meet them soon - when we returned. I believed him, of course. Why wouldn't I?

In contrast to our lonely stopover in Buenos Aires, however, our arrival at Chandrixsa was spectacular, to say the least. Of course I knew nothing of South American politics and especially not of Chandrixsa, which I soon found out was one of the worst of repressive dictatorships. Juan was one of the president's favourites, however, and the Minister of State of Security, no less, was there to welcome us home.

I disliked this man immediately. He was oily and I didn't like the way his eyes darted up and down my body as if mentally undressing me - speculating what I would look like nude. Oh he was handsome enough, in a flashy sort of way but I shuddered as I thought of him touching me.

We had to stay a day or so in the capital; meet the President and outfit me for my days at the plantation etc. So far, Juan had not told me what we would be doing with our days. He had said we had to visit his plantation - but then I assumed we would be returning to Argentina to the usual round of parties, dances, etc. I still didn't suspect anything was amiss; not even the amount of clothes he said I would need for the plantation.

"I just want you to have everything you might need, my darling," he said in his usual charming manner. I was fooled.

The President was also charming and since Juan had apparently apprised him of the situation, he didn't let on that my stay in his country might be anything more than a week or so. Nor did the others around him. Yes, I was completely taken in.

In a day or so we boarded Juan's very smart river yacht for the trip up to the plantation. Chandrixsa straddles one of the branches of the Amazon and this part of the river was quite wide and deep enough to take us all the way up. The vessel was designed for rivers and was shallow in draught yet quite big enough to accommodate us comfortably. We had our own cabin and there was a saloon, galley and crew quarters, as well as a very pleasant after deck where we could relax.

I haven't mentioned Juan's lovemaking and I have to say he was an expert. Like most girls, I wasn't a virgin but I hadn't had very much experience of men. When he first made love to me, I realised my few earlier experiences had been nothing. Absolutely zilch! It was like chalk and cheese. I hadn't realised it of course since the boys had brought me to orgasm - once each ... What Juan did - every single time we made love - was to bring me to what seemed like countless climaxes, one after the other. He was also an expert in judging his partner's libido. He knew exactly when to make it soft and gentle and when to go all out in a raging torrent of violent lovemaking.

Suffice to say, these occasions made me love him all the more - I thought.

The journey up river took three days. Until then, I hadn't realised how isolated the plantation was and, as we moved further and further into the jungle, I began to feel more and more nervous. I'm sure the Amazon jungle has that effect on most strangers to its dark and impenetrable jungle wall. I imagined all the huge and poisonous snakes and other nasties in there as we motored up the at-first broad expanse of the river and then later into small and smaller tributaries, all the while watching the mysterious green curtain pass slowly by.

But it was when we arrived that my heart went thud. It really did. I stared up at the people standing on the wharf waiting to tie up the yacht and take our luggage - and I wondered what on Earth I had come to.

We had arrived, God help us, at the Plantation from Hell!

They were stark naked. All of them - or at least all of them except the overseers from the plantation and the traders who made up the tiny village that served Juan's plantation as well as the other ones he had set up for his friends and allies - all of which were based on the same premise: slavery.

Yes. It's true! Not that I realised it at the time. How could I know that these naked people were really slaves? What I did see, however, was poverty, misery and suffering. Each and every one of the naked, toiling young people looked utterly wretched and bereft of any kind of spirit.

"What on earth...?" I began, but Juan just smiled down at me, shushing me with a finger against my mouth as he led me up off the yacht and on to the wharf so I could see the village more clearly. I wasn't the village I was looking at, however. I just couldn't take my eyes off the rows of stark naked young people - of both sexes, the girls with their naked vaginas and the males sporting stark naked penises and testicles.

The nakedness was all the more apparent for none of them had any hair on their bodies. Oh, they still had hair on their heads, their eyebrows and eyelashes, but from the face down, they were quite denuded.

"What...?" I began again but Juan interrupted me.

"These are our slaves, Marion. They are here to see to our every want. Beautiful, are they not?"

"Slaves?" I expostulated. "But there aren't slaves anymore!"

Juan laughed shortly. "Oh yes there are, at least here in the backwoods of Chandrixsa, there are. And we have the finest of them, wouldn't you say?"

"But they look so wretched," I said.

He grinned. "And so they should. If they didn't, I would be questioning whether my overseers were doing their job."

"But why are they naked? And why so totally naked ... they don't even have any hair on their bodies!"

"No, they don't. To answer your first question; it's because I like them naked. As for the second, I dislike hair on a slave's body. Without it, they look like real slaves. My very good friend, Antonio Verez, has developed a spray that removes body hair permanently. We may even try it on you, my dear..."

I stared at him in horror and from him to the rows of naked slaves on the wharf. Then, as my gaze shifted to the little town, I could see yet more naked young people performing various tasks. Some were engaged in sweeping the streets, some lugged massive water buckets on the ends of a yoke over their shoulders. There were even a couple of well-muscled, naked males with some kind of saddles on their backs. One carried a man, the other a woman rider. My heart leapt into my mouth as I noticed that both these males were also carrying massive erections. Looking closer, I could see that both sported thick steel rings tightly enclosing both penis and testicles; presumably an aid to maintaining this oh so evident, engorgement.

These human ponies, too, had been depilated so that their sexual organs were even more openly displayed than if they had simply been without clothing.