text: Osei had just finished entertaining a customer. He lay on her, his two swords tossed carelessly in a corner while his sword of flesh shrank into a morsel and was expelled from her tight hole. One of her legs was extended while the other was bent over his ass, the sole of her foot stroking his sweaty flesh. His mouth was occupied by her breasts as he sucked first one nipple then the other, his teeth painfully pleasing to the erect nubbly flesh.
  
  He soon rose to go and she helped him dress, performing the appropriate functions and handing him his sword. He left reluctantly, and she knew that he would be back soon, as soon as his purse and balls were full again. Elder Sister Osatsuki would be pleased. Not at the profit, though that too was not negligible, but because steady customers were the best proof of a courtesan's worth.
  
  There was a discreet scratching at the door to her room. The shoji panel was slid aside and the elderly woman who acted as maidservant, messenger, and occasionally procurer for Osei ushered herself in, knelt on the floor, closed the shoji again, then bowed to Osei.
  
  "Osei-sama. There is a messenger for you."
  
  Osei sighed. She was rather bored with business. Elder Sister Satsuki, her mentor and senior partner, had decided to go on pilgrimage to the shrine of Benten near Hiroshima, and here she was holding the fort with almost no one to talk to.
  
  "He is from a good house," the maid whispered excitedly.
  
  Osei rose as gracefully as she could--all of Satsuki's teachings had not yet penetrated--and swayed over to peek down at the entryway to the house. The man who had brought the message, though no samurai, was obviously the servant of an upper-class household. Excitement mingled with apprehension gripped her. She was more accustomed than before to going among the great and the rich, yet this was the first time she would have to do it on her own ...
  
  "Do you know who he is from?" she whispered.
  
  "No. He handed me this." The maid handed a small lacquered box to Osei. She opened it and her hand flew to her mouth in consternation.
  
  "Send him away," she whispered urgently. "Say ... say I'll be following immediately. Then get me a palanquin and come back to help me dress. Hurry!" The maid scuttled out of the room, and Osei started preparing herself to go out. Her whitened hands were trembling slightly as she applied the rice-flour powder to her face.
  
  Osei's plain hired palanquin stopped in front of the gate of Miura's small house. She stepped out and paid the bearers hurriedly and rushed inside. Satsuki would not approve of the unseemly haste, a small inner voice cautioned her. "Excuse my interruption!" she called out in a timorous voice as she stepped into the genkan, the pounded-earth entryway to the house. There was no answer and she was so agitated that she paid no attention to courtesy. She slipped out of her lacquered clogs, stepped onto the polished house platform, and opened the shoji sliding door, then passed through the room to another shoji and threw it open. She squeaked with terror and dropped to her knees. The woman facing her relaxed and her hand dropped to her naked thigh. A small throwing shaken spike disappeared in the covers. Of the three swords the man under her was wielding, two were lowered. The third still thrust boldly into the damp thicket of heart-shaped black hairs between the woman's thighs.
  
  "Why Midori, whatever is the matter?" Okiku made as if to rise to come to Osei's aid.
  
  "Not now!" Okiku's mate's rumbling voice came from behind her and his large hands pulled at her muscular waist. "Not ... now!" His back arched and from her position on the floor Osei could see the massive shaft ram deeply into her friend's cunt. The thick column jerked convulsively and a froth of white cream spread from the juncture of the diminutive woman's lower lips and the thick pillar of the man's erection. He fell back and his hands relaxed. "Why don't you come here instead?" He asked conversationally.
  
  "Can't you see she's upset?" Okiku scolded.
  
  "No. Not at all. Okiku-san, forgive me for intruding. I am embarrassed ..."
  
  Okiku laughed. "You've seen us at more than this. And joined us too. What is the matter, dear Midori? Or should I call you by your professional name?"
  
  Osei-Midori crawled closer and began to sniff. Okiku wrapped her hands around her and rocked back and forth. She grinned over her shoulder at Jiro, who seemed to enjoy the movement. It was not entirely for Midori's benefit.
  
  "I have been called to attend to the Matsudaira Konnosuke, the Governor!" she said in alarm.
  
  Jiro laughed. "I knew he fancied you!"
  
  Okiku took Midori's face in her hands and said seriously, "So why are you worried? You know him."
  
  "Yes, but ... but. But not as the Governor," Midori finally whispered. "It is ... it is frightening. An official summons ..."
  
  "There is nothing to worry about." Okiku kissed Midori gently, and the courtesan responded hungrily. "Don't worry. He's not a different person. He merely wears different clothes ..."
  
  Jiro was sitting up and he leaned over his wife's smooth shoulder. "And you can always have him take them off you know. I'm sure he'll like that ..."
  
  Midori smiled through her tears. "It was rather foolish. But I am of the mean people and he is such an august personage ... I am so sorry I interfered in your fun."
  
  "Interfered?" Okiku asked, a glint in her eye. "I wouldn't say that."
  
  Midori smiled shyly back. "May I be of assistance?" she asked softly.
  
  "This time I will pay," Jiro joshed her, reminding her of their first meeting in the mountains of Yoshino.
  
  "There is no need, Jiro-san. You have paid in full."
  
  She knelt between their legs and applied her face to the soft fragrant bush of Okiku's pussy. Her tongue licked out and she touched the area of the clitoris, then lowered her face and laved the length of Jiro's sticky column.
  
  Okiku leaned back full length on her man. His large root joined them at the loins. He jerked upwards as she forced her neat ass down on him. Midori rocked back on her heels and examined the view. The entire length of Okiku's cunt was exposed. The male root too, was visible for whatever part of it stuck out the slit. The delicate lips were parted over the angry insertion and clasped the shaft as if reluctant to lose even the smallest morsel. Jiro and Okiku continued rocking while they waited for Midori to make up her mind. She took her time.
  
  Finally she leaned forward again. She flattened her tongue and laved the length of the joined organs, collecting the dew off the ensemble. She matched her motions to those of the couple, and both of them started trembling with the pleasure of her busy tongue. She smiled and changed her tactics. Using her warm oral digit as a finger she touched the folds of Okiku's lovely cunt. Okiku started jerking wildly, her head tossing from side to side. Jiro assisted Midori by clutching at Okiku's little breasts, squeezing and moulding them with his large hands. Okiku yowled and jerked her hips in a frantic rhythm and her salty juices flooded Midori's tongue.
  
  They rested to breath for a moment, then Okiku slipped off Jiro and urged Midori over to him. Midori replaced her. The sensation of Jiro's monster cock inside her was wonderful. He shafted her energetically and she could feel Okiku's mouth and hands working her up to an orgasm. She came delicately, her insides squeezing his cock, trying to maintain her decorum. Jiro's face was red and it was clear he was ready to explode. Okiku smiled and remounted the rampant prick and Midori applied her lips again to the beautiful combination of male and female parts. Jiro was rough and impatient this time. His teeth were clenched and he pulled Okiku to him, holding her hips in a painful grasp. At the right moment, as his cock started pulsing, Midori applied her mouth to his balls, sucking them into her mouth. One of her fingers dug deeply into Okiku's cunt, following the cock almost to its tip. Another dug delicately into the man's ass. Jiro jerked off the bedding and his balls constricted in rough and uncontrollable spasms. Midori sucked hard at the juncture of man and womanflesh. The foam of white thick liquid was laved away by her attentive ministrations, and she felt her own insides wet with sympathy and pleasure with her friends.
  
  They reached the governor's mansion in plain palanquins and requested an audience. While they waited they knelt at the entrance to a room guarded by two fully-armed samurai. The guards knew both Miura Jiro and his lady by sight, but nonetheless subjected Jiro and Okiku to keen-eyed scrutiny. The other, the courtesan, they did not know and filed her face away for future reference.
  
  The man and two women were bid enter and the samurai slid open the painted sliding fusuma doors and announced Jiro.
  
  "Mr. Miura Jiro and escort."
  
  Jiro bowed, then was bid enter. He rose and the two women rose with him. They entered the room and the fusuma was slid shut. They knelt again and bowed deeply. Facing them, on a low tatami-matted dais, sat Matsudaira. His semi-formal clothes were of rich silk. His sharp face was topped by a knife-thin topknot that streaked across a shining shaven pate. His face--the high cheekbones, piercing eyes and hawk nose--hinted at intelligence mixed with a touch of sensuality.
  
  "You are Miura Jiro, ronin."
  
  Jiro rumbled an assent.
  
  "And the women with you, Miura Okiku and the courtesan Osei?"
  
  Jiro bowed again and gave the affirmative.
  
  "Please follow me," Matsudaira Konnosuke, Governor of the Imperial City of Miyako rose smoothly to his feet, dismissed his page, and strode regally into the inner rooms behind his seat. The page slid the fusuma closed behind the last of the two women.
  
  Matsudaira flopped down on a cushion, slipping off his silk haori coat as he did so. He moved his shoulders and reached for a large ceramic bottle of sake warming in the kettle over the firepit.
  
  "I hate those formalities," he growled.
  
  Jiro flopped down beside his friend and laughed softly. "You chose to be the governor. You should have stayed an itinerant doctor."
  
  "Duty," the young governor shrugged.
  
  Midori was hovering uncertainly in the corner of the room. Matsudaira smiled at her. "Do you still remember me?" he asked pleasantly.
  
  She nodded dumbly. Matsudaira was struck by the unusual cast of her hair. It was brown and soft, almost wavy. So unlike that of most Japanese. He wondered how she had come by it. Perhaps she was the by-blow of some visiting Southern Barbarian. Jiro's father was one such, and the giant bore traces of his Barbarian ancestry in the shape of lighter hair and complexion.
  
  "I won't bite you girl, ..." he said gently.
  
  "Maybe you should, Goemon. I think she'd like that," Okiku said.
  
  Matsudaira laughed. As Goemon, a wandering doctor, he had bitten Midori quite often. "I think I should ..."
  
  "Absolutely," a new voice joined the conversation from behind a shoji screen. "As a matter of fact, I will too ..."
  
  Midori's face lit up at the sound. The shoji slid open and Rosamund knelt there, looking at her friends joyfully. Midori looked at her and wondered if she would ever get used to Rosamund's looks. Waves of yellow hair the color of spun gold. Pale, pale complexion almost like that of cherry blossoms in bloom. Full red lips and fuller breasts that rose firmly under the loosely-tied sleeping robe. Formally she was Matsudaira Konnosuke's prisoner, actually she ruled his household and him with a will of iron and a touch of the whip.
  
  "Goemon, make Midori comfortable," Rosamund said in her accented Japanese.
  
  Goemon rose and poured sake for Midori with his own hands.
  
  "The problem is," he said when he had resumed his seat, and had described Ito's request for an interview, "that I can't just pull him in and question him. He's a retired retainer of the Mito elector clan, and a man with many ties, right up to the Presence himself. For all we know he might have been the tutor of the future Presence. I've heard some peculiar things about the goings-on in his household, and I'd like more information. That's where you come in, Midori. May I ask you to do something extraordinary? Not risky, I believe."
  
  "Of course!" she said sincerely. "I would be honored."
  
  "Ito is supposed to have some ... well ... peculiar sexual tastes ["So do you," interjected his consort]. I want you to enter his household and spy on him for a few weeks."
  
  "Of course I will do it," she said, and blushed. They all knew she, a simple country girl, was overwhelmed by the company she found herself in. Okiku laughed and made a coarse pun, and even Midori had to giggle.
  
  "What am I to look for?" she asked.
  
  "Anything out of the ordinary. I don't know what. All I know is that he wrote of a terrible problem he wants to talk to me about when he can. Until he makes up his mind, I want to know more about what goes on there."
  
  "I'll have to find a way to get in there, ..." Osei said thoughtfully.
  
  "That shouldn't be too difficult," Goemon said. "I gather he fancies women, and often selects passing women for his pleasure ..."
  
  "By force?" asked Okiku, raising a shapely eyebrow.
  
  "No. Not like that at all. He pays well. Just fancies commoners. I'd think that all you'd have to do is present yourself and make yourself, ah ... indispensable as it were."
  
  "I didn't ask my question idly," Okiku interjected. She told them about the attempted kidnapping. Goemon's face grew grim.
  
  "I will institute inquiries. It is intolerable that anyone should engage in such a violation of the social order. That is a heinous offense. It disturbs the commoners and they are likely to make disturbances."
  
  "And the women don't care for it either," added Okiku acidly. Goemon was apt to turn pompous in matters relating to his office.
  
  Goemon stared at her, trying to decide whether she was joking or not, then nodded his head in the affirmative. In truth, he had not thought of it in those terms.
  
  "I will sniff around this Ito mansion. Just in case. And I'll also be able to convey any messages needed to the City Office."
  
  "Thank you, Elder Sister Okiku." Osei was clearly relieved. She knelt and bowed formally, ready to take her leave.