In the soft candlelight, the girl seemed but one more shadow among a roomful of dancing shadows.
But then the man beckoned to her and she approached, for to hesitate for a second would bring the most dreadful punishments down upon her.
Even so, even with her immediate, willing obedience, she knew that she was about to be whipped, fiercely. Whipped in ways that no decent person could imagine ... that would have been totally beyond her comprehension but three months previous.
Three months: they might as well have been three lifetimes, three millennia. Nothing of her former self remained. They'd separated her from that persona, forcibly, and replaced it with this willing slave, gladly willing to submit to the most degrading of treatment, at the hands of men accustomed to getting their own way, for whom the casual, often careless exercise of power was a commonplace event. Who, in their ordinary, day-to-day activities, thought of most people as mere pawns to be moved on boards of their own devising.
How appropriate, then, that they should have a resort such as this, where the metaphor could become real, the figurative turn concrete. Where power flowed from the sizzling tip of a whip, cane, paddle ... where submission was real and the pain measured in welts and screams of helpless captives ...
Helpless captives such as herself.
He watched her as she approached him. In the darkness she couldn't make out his features, but she knew who he was. Already he'd been here several times, and this was the second time he'd requested her. Beyond the confines of this place, he was known as an international statesman, a man of vast power, a former U.S. Secretary of State, a man whose opinions were widely sought, and for which a heavy price was paid.
Here, he was a monster.
"You were somewhat reticent in approaching me," he said, the thick accent simply enhancing his aura of menace.
"I was a prompt as I could-" she began.
He slapped her face. "Shut up, slut."
Her outfit left her totally exposed to him. A small white skirt, there was no top as such, simple a camisole with the front opened, exposing her breasts. She wore nothing under the skirt, and the material was slit up to her waist in front and in back. Any part of her body was instantly available to him, whenever he desired. Yet, it wasn't enough.
"Remove the garment," he told her. "I am in a mood to practice a little punishment."
Fingers trembling, she unfastened the catches on the side and the material fell away.
He studied her closely, then reached for her breasts, playing with them, then slapping them, hard enough to sting her nipples.
She jerked.
"No ... do not move. You will accept what I give you passively. Is that clear?"
"I will try, master," she said. She failed to keep a faint quiver out of her voice.
He slapped her breasts again, then he held one with his left hand and positioned it so that he could hit it with his right with particular force and focus.
She couldn't help herself. She cried out and her legs gave out for a moment.
"I see," he said. "Turn around, and grab your ankles."
She did as he told her. She remembered her first client. She remembered the anger and defiance that had surfaced, that they hadn't been able to beat out of her during her training ... of the punishment that had followed ...
She wouldn't ... couldn't go through that again. She would accept anything he forced her to accept, rather than face the punishment given out by The Cardinal.
She grabbed her ankles.
"No, spread your legs farther apart," he told her.
She did so. Her pussy lips were wide apart now, her ass-hole was fully revealed.
She watched between her legs as he crossed to the table and selected a thin, flexible reed cane. Her heart sank. Her welts would be days healing.
He walked back to her. He ran the cane up the inside of her thighs, over her naked clitoris, and prodded the tip against her nipples. A couple of quick swats at her breasts, then back to her cunt, slowly sliding the cane through her cunt slit.
"I will administer twenty strokes to various sensitive parts of your body. You will remain in this position. Should you at any time release either of your ankles, it will mean an additional ten strokes.
Is that understood?"
"Y-yes, master," she said. She would hold on. She would not let go.
The cane whistled through the air as he brought it down across her left buttock.
The pain was instant, fierce and deep.
She gasped and wobbled, but she kept her grip.
He swung again.
SWAT!
Across her right buttock. Two more to each cheek.
She was crying now, though he did not seem to mind.
She still hadn't released her grip.
Then he moved to the side of her body, and gave her two stern strokes on the underside of her breasts. Another stroke whipped directly over the tip of her left nipple.
She nearly let go that time.
But still, somehow, she managed to hold on.
He moved back around behind her and she braced herself for the next one.
It surprised her.
Instead of her ass, he brought the cane up between her legs with terrible force, burying it right in wet sloshing trench of her cunt.
She screamed and fell forward, letting go of both ankles, of course.
He chuckled. "I see we're going to be in for a long, long weekend ... "
one
Even relaxed, all his muscles were taut, all his reflexes were fine-tuned to a hair trigger edge.
Debbie Pauley noticed that fact as she rubbed his naked back. She'd noticed it the first night they met and she'd noticed it every night thereafter.
"You should try to relax more."
"This is as relaxed as I get."
"I'm not convinced."
"Trust me."
She said, "I can feel every one of your muscles. They feel like thick rope under your skin." There was a touch of professional pride here, for one thing. She was a trained masseuse (the genuine article, not a massage-parlor bimbo), and her job was relaxing muscles and easing stress. There seemed to be nothing she could do to ease his, however. She'd tried. Many times in the past two months, she'd tried.
She'd had no more luck trying to break through his placid, unemotional exterior within which he concealed his true personality.
She'd learned almost nothing about him, even though he'd been virtually living with her from the first week.
As usual, the muscle on his body that was least relaxed was the thick slab of meat between his legs. Lying on his stomach as he now was, his cock would have punctured the mattress had he not rearranged it. It was pointing straight downward, and from her angle of vision she saw, as if in receding layers of a perspective sketch, the firm curve of each ass-cheek, the descending valley of his thighs, the spongy hair mass of his balls, and the purple, bulbous tip of his cock like a secret missile poised for launching.
She ached for him. Two small round scars looked up from the small of his back at her like eyes on a corpse. She'd asked once about them. "Hunting accident," had been his reply. She'd sensed that further inquiry would be unacceptable. She'd never mentioned the long slash across his right forearm, either. But she'd studied his scars until she was intimate with them, following that same reflex that led the ancients to seek constellations in a puzzling and unexplained sky. But no unifying pictures rose from the separate data points that confronted her, no explanatory myth, no evidence of a higher realm.
She untied her robe and leaned forward until her breasts were touching the back of his neck.
A small moan of approval encouraged her to continue. He didn't always want sex. At times, she felt, he found it an inconvenience, or a distraction, as though he had to be reminded to allow pleasure into his sphere of experience.
No such reticence tonight. He lazily rolled over ... she couldn't avoid a glimpse of the deep indentation, icy white, twisted and gnarled, on his side-another marker to a past that remained obscured, covered.
His cock, now unfettered, jutted straight up. She loved watching it, loved the several thick blue veins that wrapped ivy-like around it, the network of smaller tributaries splitting off of them, the flaring, mushroom shape of the head, the thick trunk, the hairy base, his balls, huge and sensitive.
"Nature's balance," she'd commented once, referring to his balls, such a vulnerable area on an otherwise strong, sturdy creature. "Gods's warped sense of humor," was how he'd described it.
They mystified her, as always. The whole piece of equipment was fairly bewitching, actually. The miracle of the erection, often following it's own logic, with it's own priorities, the balls, like a part of the job unfinished-shouldn't they have been tucked up safe and sound some where? No, that defined a woman, and her need for safety and security. Men were always exposed, vulnerable, hanging out there, flapping in the wind . ... And of course, the orgasm ... that perhaps was most mysterious of all. She understood her own, that inward edge over which she spilled, the downward spiral in freefall, the plunge into madness-it was all so comfortably psychological. Even the physical part was somehow neat and tidy. A little juice, a quick wipe of the thighs and pubic hair when all was said and done, maybe, but all that remained each time of the violent contortions of her muscles was a pleasant memory, a certainty that there were other dimensions opened to us, could we but find the path ...
But men! A man coming was like a Mike Tyson fight. All prep for-what? A seven second show. It must be a wild seven seconds, is all she could see, because it kept them coming back for more and more and more for the rest of their lives. And of course, men had to leave a mess. And what a mess.
Thick sticky globs of it, sometimes to be scraped off cheeks, sometimes to coax somewhat unwillingly down a reluctant throat, sometimes to be wiped off breasts, washed from pubic hair, cleaned off (drying and sticky by this time) of buttocks, thighs, all the while, it seemed, more and more still waiting up inside to dribble back out ...
She touched her tongue to his cock now. He arched his back and began to drive the head of his cock forward, against her waiting lips. She opened them slightly, allowing the thick head to pass between them before running up against her teeth. He held back when his cock touched her teeth, contenting himself with the soft cushion her lips provided him. In and out, for long moments, while the blood pumped the interior tissues of his cock with even greater pressure, were that possible. Each vein stood out now, etched in perfect relief, like a tree-trunk covered with vines.
She played with his balls, let the two mushy glands move back and forth between her fingers. At first she'd been afraid to touch them, knowing how vulnerable they were, but he'd never shown any discomfort or reluctance whenever she'd gone near them, and gradually she'd come to realize that there were some things you could do with balls without damaging the guy for life. (Well, when you're a little girl, all you know about are the times you've seen boys get hit there, and it leaves a rather profound impression).
Drake was game, however, more so than a lot of men she'd seen. He seemed to love it when she started to jiggle his scrotum, pulling on the loose folds of flesh, shaking them back and forth gently while letting her mouth sink lower now on his shaft.
She bobbed her head up and down several times, making sure as she did so that she was providing him with plenty of lubrication from her mouth.
She loved giving blow jobs to Drake, mainly because he was so easy to get up, and he always stayed up, and always blew a big load. She sometimes thought he preferred blowjobs to fucking, possibly because he could remain detached, separate, an observer ... That was how she thought of him, even in their relationship-an observer, watching, gathering information ... waiting ...
But tonight, she didn't want to suck him all the way to orgasm. She was thinking of other things, things she didn't want to think about, thinking of falling in love when she heard warning bells going off all around her ... tonight she wanted a touch, a penetration, a connection-if the spirit was unavailable, she'd settle for the flesh.
Debbie leaned forward a little until her breasts dangled on either side of his cock.
She pushed them together, letting the big floppy mounds of flesh suck his hard shaft right up.
She had already worked up a bit of a sweat and their surface was slightly oily, but she wanted more so she reached for the bottle of baby oil on the dresser next to the bed.
"Uh-oh," said Drake, "bringing out the heavy artillery."
"You ain't seen nothing yet, lover."
She poured some of the clear liquid in her hand and slowly began to rub it over the jiggling surface of her breasts, pausing to play with one nipple, then the other, pinching the dark nubs of flesh, pulling on them, slapping them a couple of times, flicking the surface with her fingers so that they stood out, hard and firm.
"Allow me," said Drake as he reached for her.
He placed his hands over her breasts now, pressing against her body so that they flattened out. He squeezed as well, not hard, but enough that she could feel his fingertips pressing into the surface. He continued to increase the pressure until he started to distort the shape of each breast, until the pain began to rise through her flesh, until a faint spark of fear flared in her soul-she never knew about him. He was an unknown. In two months he'd never done a thing to hurt her. Still, she never could shake the feeling that he was capable of anything, even with her, that he was a man who knew no limits beyond those which he arbitrarily imposed on himself. And if he should one day grow tired of the limits and throw them aside ... ?
He pulled on her nipples now. Pulled hard.
Pulled to stretch her breasts, pulled so that she cried out and shook, and then he released them, took the oil from her and began massaging them himself, coating them in a layer of clear, frictionless liquid that glistened in the light.
He pushed her over onto her back now, reached between her legs ... yes ... yes ... oh yes, there ... right there ...
He knew exactly how to touch her and where to touch her and he proceeded to do just that.
His fingers sought out her clit and began to massage it beneath the folds of her outer cunt lips. He pressed against her vaginal mound, pressed directly agains the space where her clit would absorb the sensation, but until she was more aroused he would avoid direct pressure, knowing that her clit was far too sensitive to withstand it at the outset.
He was patient with her, allowing her heat to rise at its own pace, never pushing her, never fucking her before she was fully ready to receive him.
"That's wonderful, she moaned, her voice hoarse, nearly a whisper. "I love the way you touch me."
"Yeah? Do you like this as well?"
He moved on top of her and touched his cock to the outside of her cunt.
Just left the head nuzzled against her cunt slit.
She cried out.
"God, yes, yes, yes, put it in, fuck me, fuck me." He said nothing.
She thrust her hips toward his cock and for a brief instant the head pushed against her clit and sent an electric sensation rippling through her body.
She stiffened, but then he pulled back, waiting, teasing her, letting the pressure mount within her.
She once more sought out his cock but he'd removed it to a safe distance so that all she accomplished was to grind her naked ass against the mattress.
"Spread your legs," he said to her. "Wide."
She immediately did as he told her.
Her cunt was wide opened.
And she waited.
And waited ...
And waited ...
She moaned softly. A small sound, concealing a vast reservoir of passion that was building up inside her body.
And still she waited. He lay on top of her, patient, calm, letting her moan, letting her hips roll around beneath him now. And then he struck.
It was a fierce blow, all the more so because she couldn't know precisely when it would come.
He shoved his hips forward and drove his cock into her cunt, all the way in, in a single savage thrust.
His aim was perfect, the head passed exactly between her lips, and into the inner regions of her body, filling her totally.
It felt like she was coming apart.
He left his cock there a while, letting her get used to it, then pulled back out.
Except for the head. That, he left there, just inside her hole, moving it slightly, letting it rub back and forth over the constricting membranes of her cunt hole, massaging the flesh and exciting her even more.
Then another driving thrust filled once more. He didn't wait this time, just pulled back and completely removed his cock from her pussy.
He pushed back in, all the way, pulled back out, all the way, and thus began the steady driving, manic thrusts to which she'd become so addicted. No one fucked her like him. No one else she'd ever been to bed with would have bothered to think of fucking like this (it wasn't his only style, just the one that got the biggest orgasm out of her), and even the ones who might have tried would have come quickly from such forceful, stimulating thrusts.
Not Drake.
He could hold back for hours, and he had done just that on several marathon occasions when it became clear that she was on a roll and would keep coming as long as he kept fucking ... and so he'd fucked her into oblivion, literally. Did she want that tonight? She couldn't tell. It didn't matter. It was impossible not to come, and not to feel satisfied and fulfilled after fucking Drake. Impossible.
His cock was deep in her now, but he was trying to push farther into her, trying to stretch her as much as possible. She felt the head of his massive log shoved hard against the bottom wall of her cunt chamber. It hurt, but somehow was delicious at the same time. It made her feel alive.
He started the same fucking rhythm again, but this time he increased the speed with each thrust, driving harder and harder ... harder and harder ... harder and harder ...
She felt the pit opening within her. A vast emptiness ... a nothingness ... primal nothingness, out of which all had exploded.
Was that it? Was that why fucking always had such violent metaphors associated with it? Banging. Drilling. 'Blew her eyes out.' Was this bang a reenactment of the primal bang that started everything-from nothing, something? She was reversing the process, then, because the something that was her was rapidly spilling backwards into the primordial soup, regressing ... yes, she could feel her brain stopping, feel her intelligence dribbling away, until she was left with nothing more than pure awareness. Not awareness of something, just awareness. Awareness of nothing.
The pit opened fully and swallowed her.
She screamed, he told her later. He told her that her body went stiff, her muscles captured in a moment of spasm that seemed to stop time for her.
And all the while the mad delirious pounding of his cock, the rising heat as their bodies mingled, and then the hot flooding of her cunt with his cum as it splashed from the mouth of his cock. She perhaps was dimly aware that he was coming inside her, not so much that she could identify it, with a name and a conscious association, but that something had occurred, yes, she knew that. It was one more sensation, absorbed into a brain already hopeless overflowing with sensation.
Later, her breathing returned to normal and her heartbeat and blood pressure back away from the brink, jism oozing from her cunt, she said to him, "Are you relaxed now?"
He chuckled. "As much as I can ever relax."
"Why can't you relax?"
"It's not ... it's not what I do best."
What was that she felt? An opening? Usually after fucking, he was closed up sphinx-like, available, but not accessible. This was different, a sense that he would be willing to engage in that rarest of pastimes, a conversation.
"I keep trying. You can't blame a girl for trying."
"I don't blame you." A pause. "I spent a long time getting myself in this condition. I can't just stop. It's not that easy. You don't stop a speeding locomotive just because suddenly there are no tracks."
"Yeah ... but it'll do a lot of damage."
"I know."
"Are you afraid you'll do damage?" She wanted to ask him again what he did for a living. What he was keeping himself in such a state of readiness for. What contingency could require a man to keep himself this prepared? It seemed to be his only occupation-to stay prepared.
"No ... I've worked on discipline along with the conditioning."
"Maybe some day you'll tell me what you do for a living?"
"You know what I do. I'm a librarian."
"I know that's where you work. Is that where you got all those muscles."
"Sure. You ever see some of those old volumes ... OED, Atlases, concordances . ... Christ, you could break your back lifting them. Dunno how little old ladies do it."
She playfully swatted him on the buttocks and let out a long sigh of exasperation. "I'm falling in love with you, Drake. I really am. I don't want to, because I know you're going to leave me and I probably won't see you again."
She felt him tense. "What makes you say that?"
"Because. You're waiting for it. Whatever it is that will take you away. It's all you do is wait."
He rolled over and propped himself up on one arm. "You've been good to me, Debbie. These two months have been wonderful." He paused. "I don't want them to end."
"But ... "
"What do you mean?"
"Well ... there was an implied 'but' there in that statement. You don't want them to end ... but they're going to. And probably much sooner than I think."
He turned away. "I don't know. I honestly don't." He faced her again. "But you have to believe me-I don't want to lose you. I want ... I want you ... "
"Yes ... ? "
"I want you to be here when I come back."
"Come back from where?"
"I don't know. I never know."
It was the most he'd revealed to her since she'd known him. She held her breath.
"I go where I'm told, do what I'm told to do. If I'm lucky, I come back. But I never had something to come back to before."
She said, "You're with the CIA, aren't you?"
He chuckled. "No. I'm not."
"But you're some kind of agent?"
He turned her, his face close to hers. He held both her wrists in a tight grip. "Listen to me. You'll have to know some of it, but you can't know all of it. Ever! It's not possible. Your life would be in danger if you did."
"Drake ... you're hurting me. What are you talking about?" '
"You don't want to ask questions about me. About my work. And more important: You don't want to talk about my work. To anyone!"
He was so intense. She'd never seen him this way before.
"I won't ... " she managed, and then he was holding her, tightly, more tightly than she could remember. And was that a trembling she felt? Yes ... his strong, firm muscles, trembling. "I love you," he said and then he fell silent.
He'd always been a complete cipher, a blank slate. These two months had been fun, and it was true she was already hopelessly in love ... but beyond the pleasantries of the moment, there'd been mostly the silence ... a void. He was a man with no past, no present beyond what she herself saw, and no future. He never spoke of plans, there seemed to be no place he had to be and no one who was expecting him when he got there. There were times she wondered if he didn't cease to exist those times when he was out of her sight, if perhaps she'd simply conjured him up to relieve the loneliness and monotony of her own life. But the scars on his body proved that theory wrong. She couldn't have created such cruel slash marks with her imagination.
They had to be real, and, thus, so did he.
And now, he was going to leave. She'd been thinking it more and more the past few days, and tonight she'd become certain of it. Nothing he said or did led her to that conclusion, but he too seemed to sense that it was simply time. And so he waited ... waited for what, she couldn't have said. Probably, he couldn't have either.
A sign ... a new constellation in the sky ...
*****
Myra Pauley worked her way through a mountain of paperwork. She had the evening shift tonight and she didn't like it. Jeb Johnson, Sheriffs deputy was on with her tonight. The steady munch, munch, munch as he consumed corn chips played in her ears like a demented Muzak score. She was so sick of corn chips, she thought she'd puke if she saw another one.
Nothing was going on, which was a little strange for this town. Not yet large enough to inherit all the problems of a typical urban center, it nonetheless was growing fast, and had a large enough population that even the small percentage that kept getting into trouble constituted a sizeable crowd. On nights when whole bunches of them decided to act up, things could get pretty ornery.
But tonight, all was calm. Myra didn't like it.
"How's your sister doing these, days," Jeb asked her, idly.
"Debbie? She's just fine. Just fine."
"Yeah? What's she up to?"
Myra giggled. "Well ... she's been getting laid pretty regular, you want to know the truth."
"Naw ... Debbie? Lord, there goes my last best chance ... unless you'd like to-"
"No, I wouldn't."
"Who's the lucky fellah? Someone I know?"
"Maybe. He's been working over at the library with Mable Jameson. Debbie's real secretive about him. Doesn't tell me much. I met him once. He seems real nice."
"Yeah ... I've seen him. He ain't from around here, is he?"
"Nope. Don't know where he's from."
"How long has he been in town?"
"Couple of months."
"Yeah ... what's his name?"
"Drake." Myra watched Jeb flipping back through the Rolodex in his mind, seeking a cross-reference or two that would provide him with a little more of a context. "Librarian, huh?"
"Mmmmm hmmm."
"Come to think of it, when I saw him, I was surprised to hear he was working at the library.
Didn't seem to fit."
"Oh, I think he's a rugged outdoors type, for sure. Got him a nasty scar on his arm."
That was the connection. His eyes lit up for just a second. "Ring a bell?" Myra asked.
"Yeah ... not sure why. Two months, huh."
"Yeah ... Jeb, what do you have on your mind."
"Nothing, darling, don't you worry none about it. I'm just trying to do my job."
"Well damn it, my sister hasn't had a decent man in her life since Charley got squashed by that girder, and I don't want you messing around where there ain't no need to be messing."
"Don't you worry none, honey. I just want to make sure I know what's going on in my town."
"Yeah ... you probably still think you can get into Debbie's pants."
"Nah. Gave up on that idea years ago." Just then a call came in. "Hey, Myra," hollered Roy Flagg, tonight's dispatcher, "got some kids setting a cat on fire over by Old Bainbridge Road. Wanna check it out?"
Myra sighed. Oh hell, she thought, it beat paperwork. "Jeb," she said on her way out, "you leave Debbie alone, you hear?"
Jeb just smiled an amiable grin that Myra found not the least bit friendly.
As soon as she was gone Jeb picked up the phone and called the library. "Mabel? Hi, it's Jeb Johnson over here at the Sheriffs office . ... Yeah, just fine ... just fine . ... Yeah ... she's just fine, just fine . ... Oh yeah ... they're all just fine too. Say Mabel, that new feller you got working over there with you, Drake's his name ... when did he start with you?"
He wrote the date on his note pad. Nine weeks ago.
"Where'd he come from? ... You don't say? Library of Congress? You checked him out? ... You don't say . ... They said that, did they. How come he's here? ... Uh-hunh ... change of pace, hey. Well, he'll sure get it here. Frostbite Falls ain't quite the same as Washington, D.C., is it? Okay, Mabel, thanks a lot, and say, Mabel, don't say nothing about this phone call. Don't want folks getting the wrong idea about him. I'm just doing my job, keeping tabs on the populace."
Jeb wasn't sure.
He had a feeling, is all ... and he'd learned to trust his feelings, no matter how weird they seemed to be.
He pondered the situation a moment. No reason, really, to not trust the guy. But that business of a scar across his arm ... that rang a bell. He thought about it ... shuffled through the FBI wanted flyers, but knew that's not where he'd seen it ... He was getting a picture.
It was a sheet of plain white paper, no letterhead. . .
He'd seen it on the Sheriffs desk one afternoon. That was it! He remembered now because he'd thought at the time he wasn't supposed to be seeing this, and he wondered where the hell it had come from.
He walked into Sheriff Bob Taylor's office and flipped on the light and started to go through his desk drawer, but he knew he wouldn't find anything. Sheriff Bob had probably cussed himself when he saw the paper lying out. Jeb couldn't quite recall why, but he'd had a feeling about that paper ... that it came from somewhere they didn't want to advertise themselves. Somewhere no one would ever be-likely to look.
Maybe tomorrow, he'd just mention to Sheriff Bob about that new librarian and how he was sticking it to old Debbie Shannon. Yeah ... Sheriff Bob had always been kind of partial to Debbie. He'd get a charge out of it. Especially when he heard about that scar across the guy's forearm.
two
All around lights, chrome, glass and glitter.
Music pumped excruciating decibels onto the dance floor, packed with the young and restless breed that prowled the clubs of Manhattan's night scene.
This particular club was named "Sector Ten" and the interior decor was a surrealistic impression of a futuristic, heavily-authoritarian society. Waiters wore black uniforms with strange insignia, reminiscent of SS storm troopers filtered through George Orwell. Everywhere were large concrete slabs, like walls to fortresses, institutions, and prisons. Barbed wire swung gracefully from pylon to pylon throughout the club.
"Shoes for Industry, Comrade," said a spacy young man in black, blonde hair closely cropped on sides and back feathering out to an explosion on top, pasty white skin and dark glasses.
"Shoes for the Dead," muttered Karen Shannon as she looked at her roommate, Crystal Glasse. They both giggled.
Crystal leaned over to him, showing ample portions of her firm round breasts as she did so and said, seriously, "Just think-if you lived here, you'd be home already," effecting the kind of over-drugged, non-intellectual speech patterns of the affluent burn-outs of whom he seemed to be typical.
He stood there a moment; what was he waiting for, Karen wondered. Was that supposed to be a come-on? Was one of them now supposed to follow him to the dance floor and then proceed to give him a blow-job?
Karen had seen precisely that activity taking place at odd moments through the evening, but it wasn't for her. Her roommate, Crystal, was probably a little more game than she, would, in fact, probably return alone at a future date and indulge herself in the full spectrum of experiences here ... but for tonight she, like Karen, was an observer, an outsider, mildly amused, sometimes shocked, always a little frightened by the untamed decadence. Is this what money did for you? Is this the product of our civilization? Men and women separated so totally from their roots and origins, they'd lost all connection with what it meant to be truly human?
Crystal leaned over to the male figure still hovering in front of her and pulled him towards her.
"Your fly's down." she said sweetly in his ear.
Now there was something he understood, something that bored it way through the layers of fog and apparent confusion. His eyes widened and he quickly glanced at his crotch, fingers already racing to salvage whatever they could of his shattered dignity--!
"Hey, wait a minute," he said, in what Karen took to be his real voice. "My fly's not down."
With a smooth, effortless movement, Crystal lowered his zipper with a quick jerk.
"It is now."
He backed away, slowly, as if in a dream, shook his head once as though not yet certain that he'd stepped into a nest of vipers, but already heading a survival reflex to haul ass out of there! while he still had a faint chance. He was clumsily pulling at his fly as he turned and fled.
"Un-fucking-real," Crystal said, and they both giggled againl.
"I don't know about you, but I think I've seen enough of the glitter scene to last me the rest of the semester."
"Yeah," said Crystal, "I've got a big test tomorrow in my finance class. I don't want to fall asleep in the middle of it."
They finished their drinks and made their way towards the door. As they pushed through the throng, Karen managed to pick out Charlie Sheen. At the door, accompanied by a massive entourage, Keith Richards and Mick Jagger were shaking hands with the manager. She shook her head in amazement. She felt like such a tourist in this town. This was where the stars lived.' Mick Jagger had an apartment on Central Park West. People she'd only read about walked the streets here.
Too much for a young coed to cope with.
Out on the street, they looked for a cab. Karen felt many eyes on the two of them. With good reason. They were dressed hot. Black low-cut miniskirts, high-heels, hair fixed in a casual riot that looked like they'd just finished fucking, which was the point.
Two blocks down, a cab turned the corner onto Broadway.
"There," said Crystal, holding up her arm. "I hate waiting for these guys."
"No, he's off duty," said Karen. She'd learned that much since coming here a month ago.
"Damn," muttered Crystal.
The cab stopped at the traffic light a half-block down from them. He could clearly see them now. Suddenly the "Off-Duty" light went out, and as soon as the light turned green, he veered over towards them.
"Hey, how about that for luck," said Crystal.
"Probably thinks he'll get laid," said Karen.
"Well ... let's see if he's cute," Crystal teased, but Karen knew she was half-serious. Already her roommate had been making strong efforts to change Karen's outlook on life, particularly in regards to having fun. "I'm going to make a party-girl out of you yet, Karen," she would say.
Maybe. Karen wished at times she could be a little more carefree, that she could bring a more casual abandon to her lifestyle. She was sooo ... bookish. She always had been. The girl who always knew the answer in class. Straight As for as long as she could remember. Studying wasn't something she did, it was simply a part of her lifestyle, organically woven into her routine, like taking a shower and eating dinner. She was never conscious of it, as something she had to force herself to do, like other students.
The downside was that at clubs like this one, she was an observer, never a participant. She didn't know how to participate. She'd tried and always failed. She was still a virgin, something she'd been afraid to confess to Crystal.
They got in the cab and found, as Karen suspected they would, that not only was he not good looking, he could scarcely speak English and had a name that was mostly consonants.
"We're going to Barnard," said Crystal. "Broadway and 115th."
He picked up the microphone and spoke softly into it. They heard a reply come back: twenty-five, five, six.
And then they were driving north through the darkened streets of Manhattan, which, actually were never totally dark, nor totally devoid of life. You could sense it even when there was nothing to be seen, a feeling that hunters in the forest call "eyes of trees", an awareness that there were other minds, other creatures, other intentions around you, vying with you for some kind of control. Always ... always ... one was never totally alone in Manhattan. Karen found it the most frightening thing she'd ever experienced. In Iowa, isolation was effortless, and as close as your back door. In a cornfield, you sensed only the presence of God, if you were so inclined, but you could spend days without an unwanted presence interfering.
Here, you could never escape them.
They were on Sixth Avenue now, up through the Village, past fourteenth, sixteenth ... twentieth ...
At twenty-fifth he turned left, towards fifth avenue.
Crystal paid no attention, but Karen felt a sudden stab of uncertainty. Sixth was an established cab path for moving uptown. Why was he turning. The words from the two-way radio echoed in her brain--twenty-five, five, six ... there was a connection ... !
She was about to say something when she looked ahead and saw that they were pulling up beside a van. The street was quite dark; she saw no lights in any of the windows towering above them.
"This is wrong," she said, and Crystal looked at her, puzzled.
"What is ... ? "
Both back doors opened at the same time and rough, coarse hands grabbed Karen by the shoulders and forced her down onto the seat. She started to cry out but before much of a sound could escape a piece of duct tape was placed over her mouth. Her wrists were clamped together and more tape wound around them. Within a span of less than ten seconds, she'd been rendered helpless! She sensed strenuous activity on the seat beside her and knew that Crystal had met the same fate.
"Come on, let's move it," said a voice, and she was lifted out of the cab. The side door of the van slid open and she was dumped unceremoniously onto the floor. Fortunately there was a thick carpet, and while she felt bruised, she suffered no permanent damage.
They dumped Crystal on top of her, slammed the door shut and the van coughed to life. Grinding gears, it sped down the street, turned back south on Firth Avenue, and escaped into the night.
It had taken twenty seconds, tops.
*****
They were speaking in a strange language as they drove. Karen wasn't sure how many of them there were, two at least, possibly as many as four or five. As soon as the van has started to move, one of them came back and tied her arms and legs with strong nylon cord. He left the tape over her mouth, but added a blindfold over her eyes.
Then they'd gone on a wild spree through Manhattan streets, turning as many corners as possible to make certain she had no idea where she was. She could have saved them the trouble. Hey, guys, I'm one month in town. I'm used to corn fields. I don't understand space where everything is packed in this close. I'm lost two blocks from my room.
The fear hadn't fully settled in yet-she was still too angry This sort of thing didn't happen to her! Did they know who her father was? Did they know what they were getting into? The vast network of law enforcement that would be set into motion as soon as she was declared missing?
But even with her built-in defiance, there was a flicker of uncertainty that, come to think of it, was a lot more than a flicker, and what she was doing was trying hard as she could to ignore it because the minute she turned to face it full out, she'd go off the deep end. Right off the deep end.
Soon she sensed the van tilting, as though they were driving up an incline. Sounds of heavy traffic filtered in through the sides of the van so she knew they were still in the city. Probably they were driving over one of the bridges leading off the island. That meant they were heading for Queens or Brooklyn, because they hadn't been driving long enough to be crossing the George Washington Bridge into Jersey.
Great.
She knew even less about Queens and Brooklyn than she did about Manhattan. In the unlikely event she did manage to escape, she wouldn't have the faintest idea where she was, or how to get Co anyplace where there would be a friendly face ...
There was movement beside her.
A coarse, low laugh, shuffling, moans from Crystal, a gasp for breath and then, "CHRIST, YOU FUCKERS, LET US OUT OF HERE.'? "
Good ole Crystal. She had spunk. Another coarse laugh, and then a terrible, harsh smacking sound, as if an open hand striking a face. Crystal gasped in total shock.
"You will please to be silencing," said the voice. "Nothing more what do you say?"
Then another SMACK.', and Crystal was already over the edge. Crying, babbling, begging, pleading. No dignity, that was for sure. Somehow, frightened as she was, Karen gained strength listening to Crystal fall apart. Someone had to keep it together, if they were to have any hopes of getting out of this.
Now harsh hands were on her. Her blindfold came off, and she was held in a solid grip. "You watch, eh, then you get your turn."
There were two of them. One held Karen tightly, forcing her to watch.
The other proceeded to totally violate her roommate.
He'd already removed her blindfold and the tape at her mouth. Karen supposed they liked hearing her scream, and God knows, if that was the case, she was providing well enough.
Her arms were tied behind her and available for support only in an awkward, inefficient manner.
She was leaning back, legs carelessly splayed, skit riding up to her waist now. Frilly lace showed between her thighs.
The two men were swarthy, unshaven and their language was incoherent. For all Karen knew they could have been Greek, Arab, Lithuanian or Serbo-Croatian. On the other hand, maybe they were natives of New Jersey.
They scarcely spoke.
The one holding Karen had permitted only a quick look at his face, and in the darkened van, that had been worthless.
Now he stayed out of sight, behind her. She knew, without testing the assumption, that it would be useless trying to fight. His arms felt like steel girders.
His partner produced a knife.
"Jesus," burbled Crystal, squirming away from him, much as she was able. "Please ... don't ... don't ... "
He was on her, and then the knife was at her throat, sharp edge actually pushing against the skin, pressing it in ... would he cut her? Would he?
No.
He pulled the knife away, but it had left another mark, this one on her brain. Something about cold steel honed to a razor's edge that calms a person right down. Makes time move much more slowly. Allows careful deliberation of each minute movement.
He pulled the front of her dress out away from her body and made a single slashing motion down the front.
From where Karen sat it seemed he couldn't have avoided slicing her left breast like a ripe melon
Crystal shrieked and Karen closed her eyes, but when the horrible sounds of suffering failed to follow, she peeked. Crystal's blouse was wide open, and now her flimsy lace bra was sliced away as well, but Crystal's two gorgeous breasts were intact, unscarred, and fully exposed.
"Remember," said the driver, "no marks." Then a series of guttural sounds were exchanged, their language, Karen assumed, though how anything coherent could be bundled up in that mess of grunts and babble, she couldn't have said.
Next it was the rest of Crystal's dress. Karen winced. It had cost her $400, and hadn't, Karen was sure, been worth the price, but now that was a moot point, said dress having been reduced to ribbons.
Clearly, that's what was intended. Crystal's legs were free. Why didn't she fight back? Karen had seen several missed opportunities to plant a foot right up the bastard's crotch. She shifted position, ot tried to, but found her captor's arms to be as unyielding as she'd suspected.
Now Crystal's torment began.
The thug held the knife over her body, pointing it straight down, and let it gently swing back and forth ... back and forth ...
Crystal's eyes Widened as she stared at the point, probably calculating the speed with which it would fall, imagining that moment when the point touched her skin, penetrating it ...
"Oh ... " she whimpered, "no ... "
He moved the knife down now;. , closer ... closer ...
Crystal started to squirm away again but he brought the knife down directly into her nipple. Just the point, poised at the dark rounded bud of flesh, point just touching.
She froze. "Hey ... you liking that, eh?"
"Mmramra ... ummm-mmm ... ? "
His hand went to her crotch now, rubbing up and down between her legs.
She was starting to lose control completely now.
Karen wanted to cry out, tell her to keep it together, hold on, this wouldn't last. But she was unable to make more than muffled moans herself.
Crystal was starting to jerk spasmodically from fear and the overwhelming tension.
The man slapped her face again, then slapped her breasts, and finally slapped her cunt, hard.
She splattered, emotionally, anyway.
Hysterical screaming, hysterical sobbing, mindless pleas, begging for her life, for anything, promising to do anything, to give anything ... did they know who her father was? Well, she could guarantee them millions and millions, if only they would--!
He slapped her again.
"Hey, careful. No marks."
The man turned around, contemptuously. He spoke something unintelligible and turned back to Crystal. He slid the knife between her legs and sliced the crotch to her panties, then sliced the band around each thigh, and finally cut them completely off her.
He immediately stuck a finger up her cunt and worked it around a minute or two.
Each time Crystal tried to move away from him he slapped her breasts. They jiggled wildly from each blow, and at times he seemed so taken by the sight the he hit her three or four more times, just to watch them shake and jiggle again.
He turned to the man holding Karen, smirked and said something at which they both laughed.
He pulled down his pants. They were all wearing jogging suits, so this was a simple task. Underneath he wore nothing.
Karen was shocked at the size of his cock.
The thing was huge, even in its semi-flaccid state. He turned his back to her, and ... oh my God, he wasn't ... yes, he was ... he was lowered his ass right into her face.
Crystal gasped and gagged and then started to cough.
He pulled his cheeks apart and lowered his open ass-hole right down onto her mouth. "Come, baby, you use tongue, huh?" Uproarious laughter at that.
"Hey! I mean what I say. You lick my ass-hole clean, or you be sorry."
"Nooooo ... " Her voice was virtually without hope now.
"Come on," said the thug, and he slapped her cunt again. From this position he was able bring his open palm down right on top of her Venus mound ... and what little resistance she had remaining, flittered away into the night.
She succumbed, finally.
Karen tried to avert her eyes, but the whole perverse scene was far too compelling. Crystal's tongue slipping from her mouth, stretching out ... disappearing between his ass cheeks ...
Observing sex can be a terribly boring pastime.
For the participants there is no sensation of time at all, and, thus, no boredom possible. But watching Crystal lick his ass-hole, then his balls, knowing that, once she got past the humiliation of this particular context, she was essentially on familiar ground, there wasn't much to see.
When the man finally raised up off her face, she was totally subdued. She'd done the worst imaginable. What was left that they could surprise her with?
He turned around now and grasped his cock in his hand, knelt in front of her cunt and guided the full ten inches of erect, alien flesh to the spread opening of her cunt slit.
He pushed it in, and she gasped. There was a kind of numb expression on her face now. She was only half aware of what was going on.
He pushed harder, and again Karen found herself utterly captivated by the sight, horrifying though it may have been. She'd never seen this in pictures, let alone live! His cock entered her almost silently. The only identifiable sound was the moans emanating from deep with Crystal's throat.
Once inside, he began to fuck her, and it was brutal.
No effort to make certain he was lubricated, or that she was ready, or any of the other things that were hinted at in the romance novels that had, until this night, constituted Karen's sole sexual experience.
Only a mad power drive into her roommate's cunt and back out again.
Hard driving thrusts, buttocks contracting and compressing as he pulled back with his hips, then pushed forward again. , This one's for you, thought Karen. But don't worry, you'll get a lot more than you bargained for.
He started to fuck her faster now, harder, moving up to his orgasm.
What would it be like?
Would he cry out, would he gasp, would he freeze?
All those things happened in her novels, but she somehow had alway suspected that the real world would be different.
"Ahh, ahhh, ahhh ahhhhhhAHHHHW he groaned.
Then, suddenly, he pulled out of her cunt, completely, moved up her body with his cock firmly gripped in his hand, and then, stroking it fiercely with his fist, he unloaded a massive glob of white sticky stuff right into Crystal's face.
And another.
"Open mouth," he muttered, and Crystal, now too numb to resist, complied with his request. He filled her. Karen was spellbound.
This, certainly, had never been described in her novels, had scarcely been hinted at.
He kept stroking his cock, and the white juice kept flowing from the tip.
Karen couldn't believe that there was so much.
Splotches of it covered one of Crystal's eyes, some ran off her nose, a bunch was glued to her left cheek, and her mouth was filled with it. It was flowing down the side of her lips.
He reached behind and grabbed a fistful of her pubic hair and pulled hard.
"No ... you swallow. All of it."
"Reluctantly, but without resistance or defiance, Crystal gulped the whole load down.
Then the thug moved his cock to her face and pushed more of his cum into her mouth, and made her swallow that as well.
When he was done he said, "Now clean," pushing his cock to her mouth.
She slowly, carefully, licked any residue of jism off his cock head, then moved her tongue up and down the shaft several times.
When he finally moved away from her, she collapsed, all muscles pushed past the point of exhaustion, her spirit broken, at least for the moment.
Karen didn't know, of course, what the experience she just witnessed was like, but she felt that Crystal would need a bit more starch in her constitution if she was going to come out of this still standing on her own two feet.
Karen, for one, intended to do just that.
But then the hands holding her began to move down to her breasts, gripping them with fierce pressure, fingers digging into them, and as the pain began to shoot through them she heard, "That was nothing, what happened to you friend. You, you will need to be truly broken, before you are of any use to us."
And then he began to tear her clothes, and then his fingers were on her body, exploring, prodding, pressing, pulling, squeezing, stretching ...
"You, hold her down," the man said.
And at that moment, the ogre of fear that had been lurking in the background all this time at last broke free and began trampling through Karen's brain.
The last coherent thought that she would be able to remember later was "So this is what it feels like to lose control ... "
three
"YOU fucking pigs!! " screamed Crystal as she was dragged kicking and screaming from the van, not even a blanket to hide her naked body. She turned around behind her and for a brief instant the blindfold lifted from her eyes and she saw them pulling Karen out.
"Karen--! " she screamed.
"Shut your mouth, fucking capitalist pig bitch!" The voice came from behind her, but the hand that slapped her viciously across the mouth came from in front. She never saw who did it, however, because as the explosion of pain shot through her brain, the blindfold was once again lowered.
Doors opened, closed.
Footsteps on hardwood floors.
Voices speaking low in a language she could not understand.
And then they threw her to the floor and a door slammed shut.
She ripped the blindfold off.
She looked up from where she lay and saw nothing. There was no light. No faint glow from a window. No pale yellow glow trickling under the door.
Nothing.
She stood up and felt a wall behind her.
She reached out and felt a wall in front of her.
She moved her hands around her and with but a few steps in either direction felt walls on either side of her.
She was in a large closet of some kind.
Suddenly the combination of rage and fear exploded inside her and she began to pound wildly on the door.
"Let me out you fuckers! You fucking pigs, let me out of here!! "
She screamed at the top of her lungs, pounded as hard as she could on the door, but there was no response from the other side. But the fact that she seemed to be functioning in a vacuum only prompted her to try harder, to scream louder, and to push her level of panic a bit higher each time her fist fell futilely against the door.
Finally her throat started hurting too bad and she was forced to stop, if only to give herself a chance to recover.
She was going to make them pay. Somehow, some way, she was going to get herself and Karen out of this.
Fucking wogs!
*****
They left her there just long enough for her to be no longer certain about the length of elapsed time. Just long enough for her confusion to begin to offset her anger.
The door opened and a muscular male figure stood outlined in the dim light. She could make out nothing of the room beyond the door.
"You piece of shit!" she shouted, and suddenly she was at him, fingernails reaching for his eyes, or, failing that, anything exposed at all. He held her back with effortless ease. He chuckled, one meaty fist clutching her arm tightly, so tightly he hurt her.
She lashed out with her feet, one after the other, trying to kick him in the balls.
Finally he said, "You have much to learn." He slapped her face four times, hard, in rapid succession.
She gasped but the full force of the blows didn't sink in right away, and she continued to struggle, albeit with far less vigor.
And then she simply collapsed and he held her up to keep her from falling.
She wasn't unconscious, perceived that he was dragging her from the closet.
He threw her onto a sheetless mattress and fell on her.
She wanted to resist but had neither the physical nor mental recourses to do so.
He forced her legs open and then pulled his cock from his pants.
He pulled her hand down to his crotch and let her feel the thing. It was, of course, enormous (of course), but not even the threat of this impending violation seemed to truly penetrate the fog that had descended over her brain.
And then the head of his cock was at her cunt, already tender and sore from the treatment she'd gotten in the van.
"No ... " she moaned, starting to cry, but there was no hope for her. This was going to happen, and she could resist or acquiesce, but it really made no difference in the outcome. She surrendered.
He pushed his cock into her and the hot burning pain seared her insides. His cock was too big for her, experience though her cunt might be. Nothing prepared her for this.
Christ, did they breed these clowns? she wondered. Special stud farms?
He wasted no time, simply forced his cock into her cunt and let it sink to the deepest level that she could possibly manage.
She was crying now uncontrollably, and that seemed only to make him more aroused, more erect, if that were possible.
He dug in cock in for one final thrust, then pulled it out and started to fuck her.
His hips rocked back and forth in a steady rhythm, driving his cock like a steam piston, pumping steadily in and out of her cunt.
She gasped with every thrust, cried out, but her cunt had no relief. He continued with the same fierce intensity with which he had started.
Her cunt was still sloshy and wet from her previous rape in the van, so fortunately lubrication wasn't a problem. But she'd already been brutally fucked; this only made the situation worse. Her cunt membranes were aching, raw and hopeless sore. And they were going to get worse.
He continued fucking her for about ten minutes, never wavering, never varying his strokes and rhythm.
And then she felt an increase in his speed. He was getting ready to come, she could tell. Everything shifted in him, the tension in his body, the speed of his fucking strokes, the sense she had of him.
The moment was near ... he started, she felt him, he was spilling over ...
And that is when she reached down and grabbed his balls and squeezed them as hard as she possibly could.
"Ahhhh!" he cried out at the peak of his orgasm. His body shook wildly and his cock pulled out of her cunt.
Thick wads of his jism spurted over her pubic hair, thighs and stomach.
She tried to reach for his balls again, but he was on her pinning her arms down against the mattress. His breath was hot against her face.
"You fucking little cunt," he growled, "you will pay for that--! "
A voice came from behind them both. "No. You will pay." It was a quiet voice. A steady, methodical voice.
Crystal looked over the man's shoulder and saw a form outlined in the light.
Christ ... was it possible ... ? Yes, he was cloaked in a hooded robe ... like robes worn by a medieval monk.
He moved into the room and reached for Crystal's attacker. "Out," he said in that same voice. Calm, yet tolerating no disagreement.
The man rose, cock still hanging out of his pants, jism drooling from the tip, and skulked out like a chastened dog.
Crystal could make out only the dim contours of a face deep in the shadows of the hood that covered his head.
She'd never felt so totally frightened. A cold breeze seemed to emanate from the depths of his soul, touch an icy finger to the depths of her own soul.
She pushed herself back a ways but knew there was no place for her to go.
"You have much training to undergo. That was not part of it."
"I ... I want to go home. There's been a mistake."
"Yes ... and you are the one who has made it. You will be punished in the morning."
"What mistake? What ... What's going on here!"
"That's another mistake. You shall be punished for that as well."
"But ... "
"Do not add more punishment. You may well push yourself beyond your own level of tolerance. Have you ever seen the effect on someone who is forced beyond their tolerance level? Think of glass that bends too far. Ask yourself, would you like that to happen to you? To your body? To your mind? I suggest you spend the rest of the evening resting and clearing your mind. It makes the punishment easier."
"Oh God ... "she cried in a small voice. "I ... I-" But he was gone.
four
Ten o'clock in the morning and the campus was a bustle of activity as undergraduates hurried to classes for which they were invariably late. Graduate students took a more leisurely pace, though with no less urgency. But they had learned a higher set of priorities, finally. Professors were the least hurried of all. The pressure on those without tenure was of a far more subtle kind, and would not be relieved by anything they could accomplish in their classrooms, and those with tenure were essentially guaranteed a "No-show" job for the rest of their lives.
Ah ... but what's this? A professor, surely, for who else on a college campus would wear the blue suit (cut to a classic style, yet looking slightly out of date, from a different time), and carry a briefcase such as this, and walk with that air of distinction that only professors can effect, thick white hair waving in the breeze, craggy face with deep lines etched in it?
Well ... truth is, he wasn't a professor, and there was a decided urgency in his gait. That would have been the first clue, had there been anyone paying enough attention to notice, but no one did notice, and that was fine with him, because he cared to answer no questions.
No one ever paid the slightest attention to him, or any of his staff. All bore the unmistakable look of the Eastern Establishment Academic, and on this campus, such types were always coming and going, for one purpose or another. No one ever really knew all the various studies and committees and fellowships and think-tanks that were associated with the college.
He turned down a shady path and entered a door to a small, non-descript building next to the School of Business.
Again, had anyone paid any attention, they would have thought nothing of it. Just another ivy-covered red-brick building on a campus of ivy-covered red-brick buildings.
But were that mythical observer to inquire among his or her friends, they would have found that none of them had ever been in that building, and while it was a good guess that it was part of the School of Business, it would rapidly become apparent that no one could be found to actually verify that fact.
Actually, no one would be found who knew a thing about the building, and that was as it should be. Questions were not welcome there, and scrutiny was even less so. Once, during the late sixties or early seventies, when a particularly tenacious editor of the school paper began an investigation into government funded activities on campus, certain questions had been asked, and thus answers had been invented. They had been good answers, and they had provided the added benefit of being answers that didn't necessarily show the school in the best light, and so the editor had gone back to his typewriter (those being the days before computers made "word-processing" a common-place concept among students) and banged out an article or two that made everyone happy.
The fact that the answers bore no relation to reality served the man and his staff just fine, and made them quite satisfied.
The fact that the editor made it part of the public record provided them with a continuing cover, one which made few upset in these days of new conservatism and Reagan/Bush mythology.
A business-study group, determining the best ways to interface national needs with those of the multinational corporations that seemed to hold the balance of power in the world.
Why not? It sounded no different than any of the other semi-private study groups on campus.
Of course, the man thought, as he passed through the second door and stood before a camera, which scanned him up and down and recorded his infra-red body imprint for comparison in the data banks, such a group would have no need for this level of security. A buzzer sounded and he passed through another door. This time he placed the tips of his fingers against a dull gray rectangle approximately 8" x 9" inches. His fingerprints were being read, electronically.
Finally convinced that he was who he was supposed to be and not some cleverly disguised assassin, he was admitted into the inner chamber.
They were waiting already, a group of five, three men and two women, all specialists in their field.
Introductions were unnecessary, "Let's go to work," he said. "Summary."
A blonde man to his left spoke. "The incident appears to have taken place about twenty minutes after I in the morning. An eyewitness isn't sure ... he was getting a blowjob at the time. He saw two females removed from a cab and loaded into a van. Managed to write down the license number of the cab, and part of the van's number as well. The women fit the description."
"Suspects?"
"The cab driver is still in police custody but hasn't said anything yet. Police are letting him stew until we figure out what to do."
"Do we know for certain that it was his daughter?"
"Certainty is approachable, never attainable."
"You know what I mean."
"Occam's Razor says yes. We have two women abducted, we have two women missing."
"And we don't know where he is, do we?"
"Not since his last debriefing in February. We've had feelers out for the past 7 weeks. We're looking."
"We'd best be the ones to inform him of this. If he finds out from any other source ... " said the old man, his voice trailing off into the unpredictable nature of the person in question.
"The question to answer now is whether this was planned, or a random event."
One of the women spoke up. "I don't see that we can afford to assume anything other than that it was premeditated, and directed at him."
"Which mean ... Pomegranate."
"Correct."
"It fits the same pattern as in Paris, London, Los
Angeles," agreed the other woman, a gorgeous redhead who had been listening until this moment. Outside of this room she was Blaire Kinnen, a highly successful fashion model in New York City. In here, she was Dr. Brenda Kennedy, one of the most brilliant historical analysts in the country.
"Find him," said the old man. "Bring him in. Nothing will keep him under control once he learns of this, but he may be willing to tell us what he knows now." He remembered the last debriefing, the absolute certainty that the man wasn't telling all he knew ... that there was unfinished business he meant to handle on his own, outside the boundaries of any organization or established protocol. "We have to maintain some control over him ... " He sounded plaintive, almost, like a child wishing for some toy that could never be his. The man could never be controlled. Only persuaded to cooperate.
"If he's still working for us," said the red-headed woman, voicing the deepest fear of those gathered. "Perhaps this is all a ruse to throw us off track.
"In which case our game is over and all this becomes irrelevant," the old man replied, testily. "Therefore we might as well assume that he's still on our side. It is the only workable course open to us."
The man represented the most crucial link in a puzzle that they, for most of this past decade, had been trying to put pieces together ... trying to form a pattern out of seemingly random events. Connections appearing where there should be no connections. Forces of energy flowing into channels that should be denied.
No one paid any attention to conspiracy theories of history, notions of shadow governments, of puppet masters organizing events behind the scenes. But it was precisely such extreme theories that his group existed to take seriously. Just in case. They were the ultimate extreme contingency think tank, the one charged with the most outlandish "What ifs?" in the business. What if Kennedy realty survived the assassination and was a vegetable in a Switzerland sanitarium? What if Nixon and Howard Huges planned Watergate, complete with his 'feigned' resignation? What if Gorbachev was a CIA mole? What if Jimmy Carter was a KGB mole? What if ... what if ...
The man stood, indicating an end to the meeting. "Keep those feelers out there, he said. "I want him found."
What if an international network existed, linking various power centers, forming, essentially, a super-government with its own agenda and its own priorities What if this organization managed to place people in key positions in national governments around the world? What if this organization's avowed intentions truly were malignant ... evil ...
And what if one man had managed to penetrate the secret citadels of such an organization? He could break them ... or negotiate for unimaginable rewards. He would be in a position of awesome power. He would have to be a very special breed to handle it properly.
He was the best agent who had ever served this country. The old man hoped he was still working for them.
*****
They came for Crystal early.
A woman entered her room and knelt beside her, gently awakening her. She'd spent the night on the mattress.
As Crystal's eyes fluttered open, she started to speak.
"Shhh ... " said the woman, eyes darting around the room, frightened. "Come," she whispered, then said no more.
"Where are you taking-"
The woman shook her head violently, frightened, it seemed, for herself as well as for Crystal. Then she leaned close to Crystal and whispered, "You must have dignity. It will be best for you in the long run."
Crystal nodded, as if she understood, but she didn't have the faintest idea what the woman was talking about. Crystal noticed that the woman wore a loosely fitting white garment, short, low cut, material draping itself provocatively around the ample contours of her body.
She held out a similar robe and indicated that Crystal was to wear it. Crystal threaded herself into it, grateful to have something on her body. Anything on her body. It was made of delicate, finely woven silk, and felt exquisite against her skin.
"You have to tell me-what are they going to do to me?"
The woman glanced around again-were the rooms bugged ?-and said, "You are to be punished."
"I know, they told me. But for what?"
"It matters not. The punishment is the point. Truly, it isn't as bad as you think. The fear and the anticipation are the worst part. Soon, you find it's ... somewhat pleasant."
Then, as if she'd heard something-Crystal heard nothing-the woman shut her mouth and would say no more.
Now she held out a black leather collar, simple, but to Crystal's mind, disgusting.
"Absolutely not!"
"You must. It is forbidden to resist."
"No!"
"Please ... it will go badly for me if you don't."
"Hey, sorry about that but ... "
But fear was so forcefully etched on the woman's face that Crystal couldn't help but feel a kind of kinship with her (we're in this together, aren't we?) and finally she said, "All right ... do it," gritting her teeth all the while.
The collar was quickly fastened around her neck.
"What is this about?" she asked. "You people are insane."
"Shhhh! Please!"
Panic now on the woman's face. Crystal noticed, as the women stood in the light from the opened door, that she was quite beautiful. Stunningly beautiful, in fact. Trim, rounded breasts, jiggling gently each time she moved.
Long silky blonde hair, lusciously curled around her shoulders.
Sensuous, bee-stung lips.
What, Crystal wondered, was she doing in this place?
Now she fastened a small golden chain to a hook at the front of the collar and said, "Follow me," leading Crystal by a ... by a leash. She felt like a dog. But it was all play acting. Wasn't it? People didn't recall do these things, did they?
They passed down a long hallway with several closed doors on either side, then up a stairway, and finally down another hallway and through a door.
The room they entered was large, and virtually barren, except for a frame at the center. To Crystal it appeared to be a large rectangular door-frame, except that there was no door.
"Come, I must prepare you," said the woman.
Crystal pulled back.
"Do not resist! I am serious. It will go much, much worse for you if you do. You cannot overcome them. Do not try."
"Sorry, lady, but this game has gone on long enough." Crystal began to unbuckle the collar at her neck. She threw it on the floor and prepared to fight. The woman, however, made no move to stop her. Crystal looked around, saw that the way they'd entered seemed to be the only exit, and began walking toward the door.
"There is no place for you to go," said the woman.
Crystal ignored her.
Driven by a heady mix of anger and fear, she moved with determination, a determination that, to be honest, she did not quite feel.
She reached the doorway, and suddenly another woman stood before her.
Another magnificently built vision of pure sexuality, gorgeous face, wearing the same outfit. She entered the room and was followed by another, and another, and another.
The first woman moved up behind Crystal and placed a hand on her shoulder. "Do not resist any more. Give yourself over ... it is not as you believe it to be."
"What I believe it to be is the sickest bunch of shit I've ever seen!"
She made a break for the door but they were on her, holding her, pulling her back.
"Let me go you stupid cunts! You have no right. You can't do this to me."
She struggled, kicked out violently with her feet, strained to dig her fingernails into their flesh ... all to no avail.
She was held helpless, while they did nothing overt to harm her. They simply prevented her from doing what she wanted to do.
They pulled her back towards the center of the room now ... toward the frame.
She began to scream.
"You can't do this. NO! God no!"
Crystal didn't know what was going to happen, but she knew it wouldn't be good. Punishment, they'd said. Punishment was something she could do without.
Despite her strenuous efforts, they fastened her spread eagle to the frame.
Then, with the unfastening of a couple of well-placed buttons, her robe fell open.
They stood back, silent, waiting.
Crystals screams, exhortations, curses and pleas went unanswered, even unacknowledged. They might have been deaf, for all the response she managed to provoke.
Then there was movement at the door. A shadow ...
And across the women's faces the same emotion registered for a fleeting second. Panic. Mindless, blind panic, and as a unit they all seemed to fall back ... to shrink, actually ...
He entered the room, to Crystal's eye the same man who'd spoken to her the previous evening. He wore the same robes, like a monk, and the reaction she felt in her guts was the same sense that ... that ... that all hope was gone.
He approached and she sensed that icy wind crossing over her soul, a clammy finger, like death, touching her, numbing her . ...
From the depths of his hood he stared at her, face no more than shadows, with two gleaming points of light like hot coals.
Now he reached his hand out to her, touched her ... she instinctively flinched.
It was cold. Lifeless.
He ran his hand over her breasts, gently, carefully, down to her cunt, pressing against the moist folds of flesh ...
Then he stood back.
"Is she prepared for punishment?"
"Yes, master," said the woman who had led Crystal here. Her eyes were cast downward. Crystal noted that none of the women looked at him.
He said to Crystal, "You are here to learn, and to be trained. You have much before you, and the speed with which you absorb what is required is up to you."
"You piece of shit.' You will regret this!"
She saw a grim smile flicker under the hood. "Indeed?"
He turned to the women, snapped his fingers and one of them quickly went to the other side of the room and opened a cabinet that stood against one of the walls.
"Oh my God ... " Crystal moaned.
Inside the cabinet was the most horrifying array of torture devices she'd ever laid her young eyes upon. Some, such as the whips, canes, paddles, ankle and wrist bracelets, and the like, she could easily identify, both their form and function. But others ... Oddly shaped instruments sporting bizarre protrusions extending at oblique and obtuse angles ... harness, straps ... pincers, pokers ... sharp things-
Her legs weakened.
Panic finally began overwhelming her and taking control, both of her mind and her body.
She knew it was futile, yet began to thrash about wildly, pulling hard against her restraints ... wasting energy, yet unable to stop.
The monk walked over to the cabinet and after careful deliberation, selected a thin cane, a small cat-nine-tails, and a two-inch wide leather strap with wooden handle. He handed each item to the woman who awaited his instructions.
Then he returned, standing in front of Crystal.
Crystal stared at him, shuddering, breath coming in short jerky spasms. "No ... no ... no ... " she moaned.
He ran his hands over her body again.
"Oh, yes, yes, yes," he said in a voice dripping with irony. "Yes thousand times."
He slapped her on her ass, and though her silk robe still covered her tender buttocks, the pain stung sharply.
She reflexively pulled in both arms and legs, and found no room for movement at all. She screamed, of course, but that was hardly enough to compensate.
He raised the material now, rubbed he buttocks carefully, almost sensually, and then slapped them again.
She cried out.
He hit her a third time with a determined Smack!
And a fourth. That was all, just four times. But the pain was excruciating. He was frightfully strong and spared her not one iota.
He turned to the woman standing beside him, patiently waiting for him to select his first implement. The punishment had not really begun yet. This was simply a warm-up, like priming a pump.
"Strip her."
Her robe was rapidly unfastened and taken from her.
Spread wide, totally naked and exposed, Crystal comprehended (one her last acts of rational comprehension for some time) that control of her life had passed from her hands and now rested with other forces, that the stings moving her were pulled by hands clearly opposed to her well-being.
And the hopelessness gripping her became total, and overwhelming, and the despair that she felt was more overpowering than anything she had ever experienced in her life.
The monk chose the thin cane.
He whipped it through the air a couple of times, making a sharp whistling sound as he did so.
Then, without warning, he brought it down sharply across her buttocks.
The crack generated a fierce blast of pain that exceeded anything she had ever felt. Hot, heavy, penetrating pain ripping through her nerves and send spasms coursing through all her muscles.
"Yes ... " the monk murmured, satisfied. "Notice the red welt that it leaves."
And now he began in earnest, delivering a steady series of strokes to the beleaguered girl's buttocks, carefully applied so make certain, as much as was possible, that the entire surface of each cheek was covered before he began repeating strokes to a given area of ass-flesh. This caused the nerves to recover somewhat from the numbness provoked by the force of each blow, before receiving another one.
Crystal was in total torment. She screamed and cried out continually, but there were none to help her and none who cared about her agony.
Time, in situations such as this, or at least the perception of its passage, stops for the person set squarely in the midst of the experience.
Each moment is an eternity, each present instant the only instant, the only present, and there is nothing but the present. No past from which one is spawn and which might, upon reflection, give meaning to the incomprehensible present, no future to which one might look for salvation.
Only the now, unending ... unrelenting ... a hideous dream from which waking is denied, despite all efforts to the contrary.
And so she hung there, writhing, both victim and cross, praying for divine intervention. When at last he stopped the torment, she scarcely noticed.
"Let it be understood," said the monk, in his soft, deadly voice, soft like the hiss of a snake, "this is your lot in life, now. Pain shall be your lover. Helpless subjugation is the role chosen for you, and you will learn to accept, then embrace, and finally crave its sharp touch."
Gasping for breath, scarcely able to comprehend his words, defiance nonetheless still burned fiercely within Crystal's being, and now she managed a faint, faltering "Fuck you, dickhead."
An audible gasp of dismay rose from the women.
The monk chuckled.
"I see you choose not to take this seriously. Fine. There are methods that will break through your steely facade. Some, and apparently you belong to this class, require intensive treatment before they truly learn to acquiesce. Fortunately, we have the means which you require."
He gave back the strap and selected the thin cane. It extended from his hand to a length of slightly over two feet. It's thickness was no more than one quarter of an inch, narrowing slightly as one approached the end.
"You'll find this a slightly different sensation. The strap is a good all-purpose instrument, best used in preparation for more specific approaches. I think of a leather strap as analogous to shelling the beaches before an invasion. A general softening up. Now, however, it is time for the selective treatment that a more precise instrument allows."
And with that, he sliced the cane through the air, bringing it down sharply against her left buttock. Still stinging from the heat of the strapping, the nerves beneath her flesh has nevertheless begun to revive and sensation had begun returning to the surface of her skin. This recovery now worked against her.
The pain was shocking, so hot and finely focused was it, as though a laser had beamed across her buttocks, burning her flesh in a thin band from one side to the other.
The monk quickly followed with five more strokes, each one seemingly more intense and painful than the last.
Crytal cried uncontrollably now, making no effort to maintain neither dignity nor composure. Hard wracking sobs issued from her throat, overwhelming her with their force so that for long moments she was simply silent, like a three-dimensional photograph of a moment of torture, captured, frozen, preserved for posterity.
But then her breath would once again come, a rush of air as she exhaled and then inhaled, then exhaled again ...
The monk moved around in front of her. She peered at him through tear-blurred eyes.
"Why ... ? " she finally asked.
He said to her, "You have no right to ask anything of me." And he slashed the cane across the tops of her naked breasts. "You have no right to speak." Another stroke, this time front-on, catching both her nipples. "You have no right to look me in the eyes." An upper cut, catching her breasts on the tender underside. "You are a slave." CRACK! against her left thigh. "You have no status." CRACK.' back to her breasts. "You will speak no words unless spoken to, and only then if a response is required. You will look no on in the eys. You will wait until you are given commands, and then you will instantly carry them out with no hesitation, confusion or argument on you part. Is that understood?"
She waited a moment too long before answering. The monk moved around in front of her, and before she knew what was happening and could prepare herself, he brought the cane up between her legs and buried the awful rod in the crack between her cunt lips.
That was the last thing Crystal remembered for some time.
five
The darkness stretched forever.
The silence was oppressive.
Karen lay on a soft surface, hands bound, feet bound, immobile, naked, alone.
The temperature was perfectly set to neither require clothing or blankets, nor to feel particularly warm. She sat on a soft carpeted floor, her wrists secured to the wall behind her. The wall was covered with the same soft carpeted material as the floor.
Her abduction was already blending into a broad tapestry of half-remembered events, as though all this were a dream from which she might still awaken.
They'd refrained from raping her. Fingers had explored the inside of her cunt, and then an animated conversation had ensued, during which, she assumed, they were discussing the possibility that she was a virgin. The other man put his fingers inside her as well, and pushed until it hurt.
Apparently they'd agreed that she was indeed a virgin, though why that was important she could not have said. They'd abandoned their plans to rape her however (saving her for a more gruesome fate?) and instead made her suck their cocks.
That alone had been a terrible shock to her psyche, forced to take those disgusting, smelly tubes of flesh into her mouth ... forced to lick them, forced to do it right or suffer the consequences, which were dealt out fast and hard.
Forced to swallow that vile white juice coming out of them ... God, it was awful.
Then they'd reached their destination, the blindfolds were returned and she'd been carried inside ... somewhere.
And here she'd been since then. She had no idea how much time had passed. There was no way of measuring. No sounds ... nothing.
It was eerie, actually, like being suspended in a tank of warm amniotic fluid.
She was, of course, unable to think rationally by this time. Shock and fear had scrambled those circuits hopelessly. At this moment, all vile results seemed possible, all primal fears valid, and any thoughts of rescue hopelessly beyond the pale.
But her mind worked, nonetheless.
She didn't realize it, but she was experiencing the standard reactions of sensory deprivation, though the usual experiments cited were all conducted in benign environments with lab technicians standing by to bring things to a halt should it be necessary.
No such luck for Karen. She was cast adrift in a sea of her own uncertainty and fear, lost inside the depths of her own mind.
She'd learned that they would not speak to her, that it was useless to try to engage them. The first time she spoke, she'd been slapped across the face. Hard. She'd cried out and was slapped once again. She'd cried out even harder and once more she was slapped. This time she made no sound and the slapping stopped. Lesson one had been most effectively learned.
The blindfold was never removed and there was no actual physical contact with another person.
Food was brought to her at irregular intervals. The first couple of times she'd refused to eat and they had immediately left her cell, returning her to the awesome silence and emptiness. She'd feared that they were never going to return, so hungry did she get. Finally, they returned with a piece of bread and held it to her mouth. She ate, greedily, gratefully.
After that, food seemed to come to her at regular intervals and the fear of of hunger receded, but lesson two had been absorbed.
At the first, they'd given her water, but left her secured to the wall. As was inevitable, her bladder filled. Panic seized her. Tormented minutes stretched on and on in the darkness ... she couldn't piss on herself. She couldn't!
Of course, she did, and she eventually shit on herself too. They let her fester in her filth for a while, until she felt utterly degraded and debased, and then she was taken to another cell (identical to the first), cleaned up, and provided with regular breaks (not as many as she would have liked, of course). But the lesson three had been successfully mastered.
Thus, within a short time, perhaps a day, two days, three at the most, she had been broken down to the most essential of existences-eating, eliminating, sleeping. Totally dependent for everything ... needs reduced to virtually an infantile state.
They fed her, periodically cleaned her, helped her with her toilet needs ...
And ... most important ... she already experienced relief and gratitude every time they came to her. Every morsel of food, every trip to the toilet became one more unit of dependency affirmed and validated. These people were the source of her survival ... these people would provide for her ... would protect her ... these people were her people ...
*****
The second phase began simply enough.
The door opened (as usual, there were no accompanying sounds filtering in from other parts of the building), her hands were unclasped from the wall and she was moved to another part of the cell ... more of a mattress, or a futon, is how it felt. She was laid out, her arms pulled back over her head and clasped again to the wall.
She waited.
It no longer occurred to her to seek conversation, or any response whatsoever. The rules of this game, she was learning quickly. She lay and waited ...
She lay there, unthinking, simply noting the tactile experience, waiting.
Fear remained a constant presence, though now it was starting to become such a norm, she no longer noticed it.
Her body responded to this touch, the first direct contact she'd had, other than bathroom breaks, since she'd arrived.
Part of her wanted to resist, although she'd already let go of that reflex as a simple matter of survival. Another part, grateful for the gentleness, for the reprieve for yet another indeterminate period of the doom she knew to hover over her, actually responded, found the sensations pleasurable.
The hands moved over her stomach, up over her breasts, touching but not lingering on her nipples, then back down her body, past her pubic mound, down over her thighs.
Muscles far too tense for comfort relaxed slowly under the gentle manipulations.
The massage and stimulation continued for a long, long time. And then it was over, she was left on the mattress and she heard the door close.
She wanted the blindfold off. She wanted to see who she was dealing with.
*****
The next encounter took her farther.
This time, after the massage and gentle rub-down such as she'd already experienced, the fingers began persistently pinching her nipples, not hard, but the intention was definitely to arouse them, make them hard.
It worked.
She found the nerves in her body following their own program, quite apart from anything her mind might contribute. Arousal proceeded to seep back through her, filling first the soft flesh of her breast (making them ache for more direct, firmer attention), and then back through her entire body, centering finally in her cunt.
She lay there, feeling the fingers on her nipples, feeling them pull, press, pinch, stretch, twist and otherwise gently abuse her nipples ... It was good. She hated to admit it. But it was a delicious sensation.
Now hands cupped her breasts. Pressing. Pulling and squeezing, always gently. Always gently.
So far, there'd been no effort to hurt her at all. No effort to duplicate the horrors of the kidnapping, the van ...
Yes ... perhaps that grisly episode had been a mistake ... an aberration. This was the true way ... pleasure, security ... this warm womb-like environment in which all was provided, even sensual gratification. . .
Rubbing her breasts ... raising her body heat, slowly place all her nerves on edge ...
The hands moved down to her ankles and pulled her legs apart ... far apart.
Then finger were at her pubic bush, tickling the coarse, kinky hairs ... moving down along the sides of her cunt lips ... pulling on her lips ... tracing a continuing pattern around the outside of her cunt.
Then they moved away, just as her clit was reaching its fullest arousal and was beginning to truly ache for direct stimulation. They pulled away and left her ... and she wanted more.
"Oh ... no," she moaned, "don't stop."
The reaction was immediate.
They slapped her cunt, hard. A forceful direct strike with an opened palm, brought down lengthwise across her cunt slit.
Yes, her clit received direct stimulation, but somewhat more forceful than she would have wanted.
She screamed. "OH GOD NO!" And received another smack, in exactly the same place. "Okay! Okay! I won't! Another slap.
And two more, one to each breast.
She was sobbing uncontrollably now, but apparently they didn't mind those sounds.
Through the pain and aching disappointment (she truly had been aroused) she heard the door close, and suddenly she felt more alone than she'd ever felt in her entire life.
*****
After that they didn't come to her, except to feed her and help to the toilet. She knew better than to speak.
She'd learned, actually, another lesson, though it was felt more than comprehended-the first lesson would be simple, and learning it would be rather painless. The next time, it would be much more costly to have to learn the lesson ... She would take them very seriously from now on.
*****
Finally they came to her again, to resume her conditioning. Once more the door opened. Her wrists were unclasped and she was led to the mattress and laid out on her back, whereupon her wrists were once more clasped to the wall.
Then the hands were on her again ... the entire process repeated itself, first the gentle massage, then the fingers on her nipples, then hands cupping her breasts, kneading them, working them over deeply ... then the fingers were at her cunt once more, and this time she knew enough to let them set the pace. They would any way. All she could do was delay them, and cause herself considerable pain as well.
Fingers at her cunt slit. Tracing a lazy ellipse around the top, moving ever closer to her clit, yet never actually touching.
She arched her back in a spontaneous reaction. She wanted this. In her world of drastically reduced stimuli and experience, suddenly this loomed as the most significant event in her life. Sexual stimulation became the most utterly desired of goals. Everything seemed to depend on it.
And still they withheld it from her.
All they did was tease her. All they did was play with her, but not once did those maddening fingers actually touch her clit ... and she wanted it. Wanted to scream "Now! Do it now!" but dared not.
Up one side of her cunt ... down the other ...
Lips squeezed together now and gently played with, sending delicious sensations indirectly to her clit ... but she wanted it direct. Her clit was totally engorged with blood and hard as a small pebble, and she needed to have it worked over, needed to have it licked, and squeezed and pinched and bitten, scraped ... whatever one had done to one's clit, this whole thing being rather new and unfamiliar to her.
Fingers at the opening to her cunt now ... playing with her ... tickling her, sending more and more intense electric sensations into the depths of her soul ...
She writhed on the mattress as the slowly building sensations mounted higher and higher.
They touched her clit!
Direct, lingering ... delicious.
She cried out, writhing ever more forcefully.
Slow gentle massaging motions back and forth now, over the surface of the throbbing nerve-bud. Karen's body gradually filled with a combination of sexual energy and tension, arousal and fear, a powerful combination.
She'd tasted a bit of their pain ... she'd experienced the forcefulness with which they carried out their agenda for her ... and now she tasted the other side of the coin and, somehow, in her frightened, impaired state, it all formed a logical whole. It felt complete. A unity within herself. Yes ...
Fingers inside her pussy now, pressing at the inner lips, running around the tightness of her cunt hole, but leaving her maidenhead intact.
And now a new sensation, more than mere arousal, coursed through her, rising out of the fiery pit of her cunt and spreading rapidly to all parts of her body, a sensation of movement, actually, a feeling that every cell in her body had become part of a flow ... a flow of energy that had, she could see now, been there all along, rushing through dimensional pathways never guessed at in her day-to-day existence ...
And what was it that she felt to be in motion? Some part of herself, some intangible essence, not her body, nothing physical? However she viewed it, she was indeed slipping away from the reality of the physical realm, opening up higher channels, allowing herself to fill spaces that had previously been unrecognized and thus empty.
Fingers inside her ...
Fingers on her clit ...
Steady, insistent ...
Her body writhing ...
Her mind flowing off onto some cosmic plane, from where it could view the proceedings from a safely detached perspective.
An ache within her, never before acknowledge, suddenly set loose with no restraints, an ache, quite simply, for more. For a satiation of what had suddenly become insatiable. A lust craving, utterly simple and utterly compelling.
Now an open palm lay across her pubic mound, cupping, literally, her cunt, squeezing it, pressing against it, rubbing it ... rubbing it harder ... and harder. . .
Pressure again on her clit, though not so intense as the tip of a finger.
Rubbing faster ... faster ... oh god ... oh god this was it ...
Opening up before her (or was it within her?) a vast blackness, a lack ... a void ... a woman's ultimate terror, the final tumbling down, spilling off the edge, helpless, clutched by a force sent from somewhere else, terrifying and delicious ...
And Karen spilled over.
It was like light, though she could not see.
It was like electricity, though she could not feel.
It was a sudden, irrevocable suspension of time, a displacement of space, casting her adrift in a river of pure force, pure lust ...
Yes, she would later think, this is the force that drives the universe, yes ...
The stimulation at her cunt never wavered. Never ceased, though the whole of her orgasmic release.
Fingers gently tickling her clit ... that was all that was required to sustain her through two, three, four, then five and six successive waves of orgasmic ecstasy, one flowing rapidly on the heels of another until there seemed to be no line of demarcation. No release, no reprieve.
Finally, the fingers ceased their stimulation dance over her clitoris, simply held in place, touching her, allowing the natural movements of her body to provide the sensations. Slowly the force driving her ebbed, then dwindled away altogether.
She pulled her arms, instinctively, was reminded of her helpless state ...
They were leaving ...
The were abandoning her again ... but they'd provided her with something precious ... something she'd never believed possible ...
Prisoner, victim, helpless child ... she felt, nonetheless, an odd emotion: gratitude.
six
Drake Saw the man at once.
It was 8:30 in the morning, he was walking to his job at the library, and across the street, in an automobile distinguished by its total lack of any distinguishing features (most people would have been unable to identify the make--one of those Japanese things ... a compact, you know"-or even the color--kind of tan, beige ... maybe an off-yellow, or something."
It didn't belong there.
He knew it instinctively, knew it from long years of learning to recognize inconsistencies, things out of place ...
A newspaper set at a slightly different angle on the table than he'd left it, a person looking at objects with an interest that wasn't warranted, a face unnecessarily familiar, a car you'd seen in your rear-view mirror earlier in the day ...
And then, there were those things that simply triggered a warning.
He immediately crossed the street and walked past the car, casually strolling with no particular urgency, plenty of time to get to work ... oops! What's this ... forgot something important, didn't I? Best check in the old shoulder-bag here, rummaging through this and that, looking for this obviously important item ... nope, too bad, must've left it back in the apartment ... ah well, have to turn around and head back for it ...
He studied the car and the face, though he saw it was partially concealed behind a newspaper. Dark hair, estimated about 190 lbs., unless his legs were terribly stunted or abnormally long, probably six feet tall, possibly an inch or two more ... eyebrows not evident under the dark glasses, that meant that they were thin, which probably meant that he wasn't a particularly hairy type anywhere on his body. He'd be looking for him.
He picked up the license plate number as he crossed the street going towards Debbie's apartment.
Once upstairs, he pulled out a small black box, about I foot by two and a half, opened it up to reveal a screen and keyboard.
He unplugged the cord from the telephone and slipped it into the phone jack in the back of the machine, then turned it on.
It was one of the latest laptops, a screaming monster with a 386 chip and enough memory to eat half the library he worked at.
He called up the communications program and entered a phone number.
LOG ON: Please enter access code....
He typed in a password he knew would provide him with top clearance, and then entered the license plate number.
In less than thirty seconds, his screen filled with pertinent data.
Name of party to whom the car was registered.
Address.
Occupation.
He chuckled. They were clumsier than he'd given them credit for being.
The address was Washington D.C.
The name was possibly a real person, most likely an elaborate fiction. Whoever had traced him, they had already gotten close enough. They would regret their next move, whatever it would be. And he knew there would be a next move.
He went to the window and looked out.
The cat was gone.
Poor Debbie. She hadn't know how rapidly her prediction would come true.
*****
The old man studied the report.
"You're certain he didn't make us?"
"Fairly certain. You can't be sure with someone like him."
"And he's working as a librarian?"
"It was one of the legends prepared for him."
A legend is a profile on a non-existent person, complete with paper trails leading back at least ten years. A good legend should contain at minimum valid driver's license, passport and Social Security Number, job history with references for a decade, income-tax returns, medical history that was verifiable, a college record and, in the most extreme cases, high school records as well.
"All right. Make contact with him. Be careful. He's going to be skittish still. You'll have difficulty convincing him you're the teal thing."
"Isn't there someone he knows, someone he'd be willing to trust?"
"Considering the depth of betrayal he experienced, I'd say that he'd be least-likely to trust someone he knew. If we wanted to kill him, that's who we'd send to do it. No, it's best that we plod along in our normally clumsy manner, from his point of view. Send the man who made the ID. I want him here by tonight."
seven
He smoked another cigarette and waited. He was good at waiting. Most things happened in random cycles impossible to predict the frequency of. The only way to guarantee one-hundred percent success was to be willing to wait long enough to catch the ending of a cycle and the beginning of another.
Sooner or later, cycles would shift, transposing one into the other.
At that moment, "things" happened, and he wanted always to be present at that moment. Miss it, and you could never catch back up. You were always running a step or two out of synch from the real pace of events.
Catch it, and you were in control.
And so he smoked another cigarette and waited.
She was inside. He'd trailed her here from her apartment. It was a photographer's studio and she was inside posing for another one of her shoots.
Drake knew that it was her cover, but nonetheless, he wasn't fooled. Brenda Kennedy preferred the persona she'd created to the person that she was. Much preferred Blaire Kinnen, sexy model, to the stodgy academic she was perceived as being around "The Group", as he liked to think of them.
He finished his cigarette, stomped it out, then lit another one.
Hey, anyone could quit smoking; it takes a man to face cancer.
*****
Soft lights. Soft new-age music in the background with a steady, slightly African beat. Scott Jalor's soft steady voice, directing her from pose to pose ...
"Good ... love it." Click! "Now lean forward some ... come on ... a little more, show some cleavage, don't be shy ... good, good." Click! Click! Click! "Now turn sideways, nice, oh yeah, stick them out like you're proud of them ... yes." Click! Click.'
Blaire Kinnen, a.k.a. Brenda Kennedy, moved effortlessly through her poses, shifting moods and facial expressions with the polished poise of a true professional.
"All right, nice, now let's try some of these, shall we?" suggested Scott.
He handed her some frail, sheer lingerie. "These go together," he said, indicating bra and panties, "and these two, of course, and then we'll try this ... "
"Be tight back."
It amused her when she left the room to change. When she returned, she'd be guided through the most provocative poses Scott could imagine. It would turn her on, provide that dimension of raw passion for which she was noted, and it would turn him on as well. Perhaps, they'd make love. It had happened once before, even though their relationship remained scrupulously professional. She seldom allowed herself to get involved with photographers, but Scott had managed to bring out a depth of passion in her that other's had missed. You can't just turn that off when the shoot's over.
She slipped out of the blouse and slacks she wore and glanced at herself in the mirror as her bra came off, her red hair drifting down over her shoulders in a riot of thick, wavy curls.
She was gorgeous and she knew it, reveled in it, in fact.
She'd graced more than one top-tier fashion magazine in the past two years, was the model of choice whenever an ad required that flaming unpredictability redheads always offered, and had already been offered $400,000 to pose in Penthouse, which she'd gleefully turned down. Why should she give it all away in one shot, when she could give the men of America a steady tease over a much longer period of time?
What would they say, those careful, buttoned down men and women in the ivy-covered building, as they plotted their global networks, their conspiracies, formulated their game plans and calculated the odds on this or that scheme coming to fruition? Would they respect her any less, seeing her in a sheer, virtually see-through teddy, carefully shaved cunt lips easing provocatively out of the sides of the material over her crotch, full, swelling breasts bouncing merrily beneath the bodice? Would they wonder at her mounting passion as Scott directed her through first sexy, then lewd poses, most of which would never be shown to the client, would go instead into his private, collection. Would they shake their heads with a disdainful tsk, tsk as they smelled the rich aroma of her cunt rising from between her thighs? Would they respect her opinion any less, knowing the lust she was capable of putting on display?
And Scott ... what would he think if he knew of her other life? Her classified existence was, of course, a secret, and that fact gave her an added thrill. Call it psychological leverage ... something ...
She rubbed her breasts. Her nipples were hard. Her hand instinctively went to her cunt and she pushed the material slightly into her slit. Her clit throbbed with desire. She was ready.
*****
"Over now ... up on your knees, let's see your ass ... nice, more ... more ... no, dear, pull the material off your cheeks ... like this ... "
Scott moved over to her and adjusted the material, pulling the flimsy stuff off her buttocks and towards her ass crack.
Then several more camera clicks, "Now look back at me, yes, that's good ... " moving around her now, "Just follow the camera, look mean, look like you haven't been fucked in ... what, say two hours, and you're starting to need it really bad ... yes, that's good, say 'fuck me,' and mean it ... "
"Fuck me," said Blaire, knowing it was theatre, yet, like all good actors, feeling the truth of the words in their speaking. "Come on, big boy," she continued, "use that stiff rod on me ... hmmm? How about it? Wouldn't you like to feel a nice wet cunt wrapped around that hot fuck stick?"
His camera clicked relentlessly. She felt the heat rising. "Come on," she said, do fuck me, teally."
"I may," he said, "if you're a good girl and give me the pictures I want."
"Oh dear," she pouted, "I afraid I'm going to have a problem being a good girl. I don't know how to be a good girl ... "
Click.' Click.' Click.'
Her breath coming harder now. Crawling over the bed, starting to growl, like the bitch in heat that she was.
"Put that fucking camera down, you stupid wimp, and come here and fuck me."
"Ah, nice ... nice ... I like that anger ... that danger ... more, more ... "
"More, more," she mimicked. "I'm tired of this. I want to fuck."
"Good ... good ... go with that."
Blaire was getting annoyed, much to her surprise. She didn't usually cross the line this fat, this fast. Why now? What was there in the air tonight? What added presence?
"Oh damn," said Scott.
"What's wrong?"
"Out of film. Don't move, I have to get some from the other room."
She sighed. Left high and dry. She knew she wouldn't be in the mood when he returned. Damn him. He couldn't tell that she'd been serious. What was it about some men, they couldn't get the message, no matter how forcefully you presented it to them.
She lay on the bed, waiting.
Hmmm ... maybe she'd try to keep the mood alive with a little artificial intervention ...
Fingers to her crotch, nothing blatant, understand, just contact with her clit ... ah, there it is ... now a steady rubbing, thighs clamped down around her hand, increasing the pressure, more ... more ... oh yes ... this is nice ...
Harder now ...
She lay on the bed like that, steady stimulation continuing against her clit. Scott? Fuck him. Who needed him? A woman's fingers were her best friend ...
She began to move the material back and forth directly on top of her clitoris. Harder ... harder ...
The silky sensations as they rubbed across her juice lubed clit sent a delicious tickling sensation back up through her body. She began to drift away into the sensation of it ... where was Scott, he'd have to come back soon ... wouldn't he? Oh ... yes ... nice ... rub harder, now pinch it a little, pull it, flick the tip of the index finger over it ...
God, it felt good.
Her cunt was oozing more juice now and she slid her fingers under the material to run them through her mushy slit.
Up inside her hole now ... not a cock, but not bad.
In and out ... in and out ... harder ... harder ...
Forgetting all about Scott now.
Forgetting all about the group ... all about her job, all about everything. No name, no dual identity, no past or future, just now, and her fingers and her cunt, aching for more and more with every stimulating stroke.
God, yes ... yes ... it was delicious. Two fingers now ... three ... four ...
Four?
Sure, why not? Why not push herself to the limit? Fingernail on clit now ... scraping, pressing in, digging, hurting ...
She moaned.
She writhed over the bed and squirmed in agony, a fine agony over which she had total control.
Close now. Getting really close.
Steam rising from her crotch in a pungent cloud. Clit vibrating. Cunt aching. More ... more ...
Opening up now, not just her cunt, but her soul, all walls and barriers down; for the moment, totally, utterly exposed, naked.
A soft cry in the pillow, a gasp and a nervous shudder as her body spilled over into the mindlessness of orgasm. How long? A second, a minute? Her finger moved with blinding speed back and forth across the exposed tip of her clit. She felt she could hold herself at the peak as long as she continued ...
But finally, it began to wane, the sensation slowed, and pressure within her relaxed.
She gasped again ... and slowly began to regain consciousness.
Where was Scott? Was he back yet? Christ, how long had she been--?
She heard a noise.
"Scott--? " she said, turning around.
It wasn't Scott. For a second, she thought she was going to die. She knew at the very least, she'd be raped. The fact that he didn't belong there, that he wasn't Scott, never really registered, at least not on her conscious mind. He was danger, that's all. Danger!
"Oh my God."
He smiled.
"I hope I didn't interrupt anything."
Mind a little clearer now. Then she recognized him. Of course. It made sense, in a twisted sort of way.
"What are you doing here?"
"I assumed you were trying to get in touch with me. I thought a response of some sort was appropriate.
"How did you get in ... where's Scott."
"Relax. When he wakes up he won't remember a thing."
She lept from the bed, then realized she had no idea where she was going.
She carefully arranged her clothing, such as it was. "How long were you there?"
"Long enough."
"What's that mean?"
The awkwardness of the situation was overwhelming. She knew this man as a cold, callous killer who worked for hire. She'd never actually spoken to him in her life. Suddenly she was afraid.
Then she said, "Why me? Why come to me? Here?"
"Because you're better looking than the old man. I'd have hated to bust in on him when he was doing what you were doing."
Blaire's cheeks began to tingle.
He studied her brazenly, eyes moving up and down her scantily clad form.
"What do you want?" she asked, fighting off a move to cover herself, rightly supposing it would suggest weakness, fear, discomfort.
"Actually, I was going to ask the same of you. Someone's gone to a lot of trouble to locate me. I'd like to know how you found me, in fact. I was pretty deep under cover."
"We've been looking for you for two months. No one knew ... knows ... if you're still working for us."
He chuckled. "Don't you wonder?"
She said, "There's something you need to know."
"Okay. Tell me."
She said, "Let me change. We'll have to leave now. We can be at Central Control before midnight. Are you sure Scott's going to be all right?"
"Yes. But I'm not going anywhere until I know what's happening. Especially not there."
She picked up her clothes. This was going to be difficult. "Can I change first?"
"No."
"All right. It's your daughter. She's been taken."
His face went totally blank. Then, after a pause, he started to ask a question.
"I don't have the answers. They're at Control."
He didn't believe her or trust her. "If you're lying, I'll kill you."
She laughed. "Great. You do that. Can I change now?"
He calmly turned around and walked to the door which was partially opened. She saw it coming and started to protest but knew it would make no difference anyway.
He lashed out with his foot in a mindless ventilation of anger. A large jagged hole appeared where there had been a door knob. Another kick and the bottom hinges ripped off the door frame. He pulled on the now sagging door and kicked at the upper hinges at the same time. The door separated from the frame. He threw it across the room. Then he turned to her.
"Let's get moving," he said. "I'm getting impatient."
Blaire wondered how she was going to explain all this to Scott. She also wondered if she was going to make it through the next few hours alive.
eight
The heavy metal lock clanked open, echoing up and down through the halls.
Crystal opened her eyes, looked around, momentarily forgetting where she was. It was that way every morning, a brief instant, no more than two or three seconds in duration, of freedom. A release from the memory of what went on the day before, and the day before that, and the day before that, and the week before ...
How long had she been there?
She had no way of knowing. All sense of time was utterly warped and skewed. It was all she could do to keep track of the passing of each day--morning ... noon ... evening ...
Only when mealtimes approached she have any reference points at all to follow. She seldom experienced hunger, however. For all the horror of her plight, they took good care of her. The food was expertly prepared and there was always plenty of it. It was delivered to her cell three times a day, with monotonous punctuality.
And her health was carefully attended as well. After a particularly severe beating, some time back, she been taking to a special room, the vicious welts that had opened on her back cleansed, bathed, dressed and bandaged with expert ... even loving ... care.
She had been left alone after that, until she was healed.
And for all her resistance, she was changing, unaware though she may have been of the fact.
The door to her cell creaked open now and Monique entered her cell. Monique, more than any other, was charged with Crystal's care. It was Monique who led Crystal to her punishment sessions, it was Monique who personally trained her in the mannerisms expected of her here.
And, on occasion, it was Monique herself who administered the punishment, although the monk most often bore that responsibility.
"Hurry, my child," said Monique, urgency in her voice. "You must prepare quickly."
"What ... what do you mean."
"You are leaving us today. This very morning, in fact. You must prepare yourself. Come."
Crystal rose to her feet, no longer self-conscious in her nakedness. She'd worn no clothes at all since that first vicious caning. From that moment, she'd lived in this cell, and been taken to her training and her punishments ... and that was all. No conversation with anyone, save the few words that Monique granted her, and those only when Monique spoke first. For anyone else she encoun-teted here, even to make eye-contact was forbidden, an offense punishable by the whip.
Monique quickly unfastened the chain from her collar, then removed the collar itself. The band of skin just beneath the leather strap felt suddenly cool, as though a film of water lay upon it evaporating. Crystal instinctively wiped her hand across her neck, but the sensation remained.
"Now," said Monique, "put these on. You must be ready in half an hour."
"Where am I going?" asked Crystal, unable to keep the question back.
Monique stared at her coldly, but said nothing. Crystal averted her eyes and mumbled a hasty apology. "Hurry," said Monique, crisply, and left the cell closing the door behind her.
Crystal fought back the panic welling up inside her. It had been just a small infraction, hadn't it? Surely, surely, given the circumstances, she wouldn't be punished for something so slight, would she?
Well ... there was no point in dwelling on it now. Whatever they intended to do had already been determined, and no pain or confusion on her part would change things.
As Crystal examined the articles of clothing that Monique had left for her, she tried to isolate the feeling that something was not right ... some pattern to which she'd grown accustomed had been shifted ...
Before her were a pair of bikini-cut panties, quite brief and mostly lace, and a matching lace bra that, while containing her breasts, would do so just barely.
The skirt was short, quite short, and the blouse was white, made of fine silk, loosely fitting, so that the contours of her body would show beneath with just a hint, the merest suggestion of the full riches there.
Knee-socks and black patent-leather shoes finished the outfit.
She would look like a depraved school-girl. Why?
And then, she knew what it was that had felt missing a few minutes before. She looked up at the cell door and realized that she hadn't heard it's hard metallic latch falling back into place.
Could it be? Had Monique gone off and left the door opened?
She tiptoed to the door, even though in this thickly carpeted cell no sound of footsteps would ever be heard.
She pulled slightly on the door ... and it gave! Monique had neglected to shut it tight! What could that mean?
She pulled the door open and stuck her head out, heart beating crazily in her breast as she did so. It was a sure measure of the extent to which she'd already become conditioned by the rules and procedures of this place that she reacted so strongly. She was deathly afraid and totally unable to control herself.
She saw no one in the hall. Heard nothing. It was too much to hope for. Too much to expect. A trap, perhaps?
She wasn't even going to think about that now. Instead she raced back into the cell and began to put on the clothes left for her.
Panties over crotch ... bra cupping breasts, God, how strange it felt, no clothes for so long, then skirt and blouse, socks, shoes ...
There! She was dressed, and the prison gates had been left open for her.
Opened the cell door again, and stepped out into the hallway.
She'd only been to the right, every time they'd taken her from her cell. In that direction lay the punishment cells and the training rooms.
She turned left and raced to the end of the hallway. Her options were once more left or right. To the right the hallway ended in a closed door, and she had no desire to find out what lurked on the other side.
She turned left again, and passed two more closed doorways until she came to a small stairway.
She took it, and began to climb the stairs.
After about twenty-five or thirty steps the stairs took a sharp turn to the left, continuing up. Again, after another twenty-five or thirty, they turned once more to the left, spiraling in this way higher and higher. There were no windows anywhere, and the light, such as it was, grew more and more dim.
At last she came to a landing, a musty dark place in which she could barely make out shapes and forms, like pieces of old furniture draped with sheets.
Towards the far end of the room she noticed a light, however, and now she walked toward it, but before she came within thirty feet of the light, which she could now see was flickering like a torch, it vanished. Extinguished in a quick puff of breath.
The room was now totally dark.
She turned around, looking to see the way she'd come, but inky blackness surrounded her.
And then suddenly a swishing sound. In front, to the fight, to her left, behind her ...
And light.
Intense light, flaring up on all sides ... fire, flames ... hideous, probing, revealing flames ...
The walls held flaming torches suddenly, and the room was filled with white-robbed figures, all hooded.
They stood surrounding her, and in front were three wearing black robes also with hoods, seated at a table.
"Oh my ... "
A voice from behind one of the hoods spoke. "The subject has shown herself to be thoroughly unworthy, utterly recalcitrant and with no redeeming qualities. Her training to this point has been for naught. We must reconsider all that has gone before."
And then another voice spoke. She recognized the calm, studied, patient tones of the monk. "Prepare the bitch for punishment," he said.
*****
Karen moved through the room slowly, gliding carefully from one side to the other, taking great pains to call no attention to herself. To be ego-less. That was the key. To serve with no ego, no attachment to results, to simply make oneself available, to be prepared to do whatever was called for, to be willing to go any distance to fulfill her commitment ... that was the secret, and one which she was learning with greater and greater alacrity with each passing day.
Oddly, she even was developing a strange fascination and attachment to the whip.
True, that had been the most difficult to accept, at first. Eventually she'd been able to willing accept her punishments, when infractions of the rules were obvious and undisputable. But it was the whip, administered purely for its own sake, for no cause, randomly, that had given her the most trouble.
She waited now next to a table on which a pitcher of cold spring water had been placed. She poured herself a glass of water and drank it, then placed the glass out of sight. Across the room she sensed that one of the guests watching her. She had learned, in the past two weeks, that sensing a guest's intentions was most important, both to the proper performance of her job, and to her own continued well-being.
She crossed the room and took her position next to his chair, carefully avoiding any hint of eye-contact, as was fitting and proper. She was wearing the standard outfit for the lounge-a white dress, so short it scarcely covered the tops of her thighs. The front of the skirt was slit up to her waist so that by simply pulling aside the material her cunt was exposed and available. She, of course, wore nothing underneath. Her breasts too, were equally available. The material was soft and elastic and could be pulled aside effortlessly. Her role was to be available. To anyone who chose to use her ... for whatevet they chose to do with her. A leather collar was fastened around her neck. In the front, a small golden eye, through which the end of a chain could be hooked.
She couldn't help but overhear the conversation in which he was engaged, but fortunately it meant nothing to her. Talk of percentages, ratios, the like. In fact, it sounded as though they were plotting military strategy, now that she listened.
One man was saying, "It will need to be done quite quickly. No more than a half-hour tolerance. You understand that, don't you?"
"Certainly. You over-estimate the stability of the existing social structure. The glue is far weaker than you suspect."
"I do not dispute you, only your assessment of the implications." With a sudden start, Karen realized that she recognized that voice. Could it be ... ? "This hammer must fall with irrevocable force, and it must strike dead-center. All systems must be neutralized at the same time." Yes ... it was him! "Let me emphasize that word once more--ALL.' Do you understand me?"
"Certainly, my good friend. The planning has been impeccable. You worry needlessly."
That voice, or rather, that accent, could belong to only one man ...
Karen understood at once that she was in the presence of power, true power, the kind that bends the course of history books and alters the lives of whole populations. Very different from the power to which she'd been exposed, which simply concerned itself with the utter dominance of her body, mind and soul. This was different.
She carefully, surreptitiously raised her eyes, ever so slightly, letting them creep up the form of the man in the chair beside her. She knew that she was violating the most cardinal rule of the place ... one that she'd been whipped for violating inadvertently. What fate would befall her should she be caught violating it intentionally.
Still, she couldn't help herself. She had to know. Up ... up ...
Yes! His face. It was Gerald Erlichman! The face, name and voice conjured up vast images, even for one so young, of power and politics! He had, at one time, been the most powerful man in the country, Secretary of State at a time when America was forging new alliances, changing directions, creating a network that would extend into the next century ... and he had been the architect! The press had been universal in its praise of his achievements ... leaders around the world had showered him with accolades ...
And then, he'd resigned.
Strangely, mysteriously, simply gave it all up, and disappeared ...
There'd been little or no mention of him for the past five years, other than an occasional appearance on some news commentary program, the stray item in the PEOPLE section of the NY Post, or Time or Newsweek.
And here he was, sitting beside her ... his hand now reaching for her. She moved closer and his hand touched her thigh, lightly, and began rubbing. They continued their conversation. The topic was one that mystified Karen, even though she could make out fairly well what they were talking about.
Law enforcement agencies ... public utilities ... television networks ... transportation ... they were discussion all these in terms of their ability to continue functioning in the face of national catastrophe. Erlichman talked about previous natural disasters and used them as examples of what could be expected from the populace as a whole.
His partner disagreed with his assessments, and used the example of Europe ... during the German Blitzkrieg. "There's where you'll find the corollary, my friend. See how Poland, France, Belgium, responded. That's what we can expect.
"What about England? Hmm?"
"And if Hitler had had the V2 in 1939, instead of 1944; what about England then?"
Erlichman waved him off. "Not relevant. I simply suggest that you should not overlook the counter-reaction. "
They continued back and forth like that for a while longer, all the while with Erlichman's hand moving over the front of Karen's body. Up to her cunt now, spreading apart the skirt, fingers idly playing among the soft moist hairs.
And now her body responded, totally apart from her mind-that was what they had done to her. The first touch to her cunt, and waves of longing, wanton, passionate longing began to wash over her, filling her body with a kind of mindless determination.
Hours in darkness, with nothing to relate to but the gentle sexual arousal they'd provided, had transformed Karen's body into the body of a stranger, one she scarcely knew. It craved the touch, the arousal. Her clit could never be stimulated enough, and, sensing correctly that, if left alone, she would indulge herself in endless hours of masturbation, they made certain that her hands were properly restrained when she was returned to her cell at night. This meant that her arousal could be satisfied only at moments like this. Only when the hands of a stranger were on her, probing her ... seeking her out ...
Sliding up to her clit, playing with it ... pressing it between thumb and forefinger, manipulating it gently, twisting, pulling, pushing, pressing it ...
She sucked in her breath a little.
They stopped their conversation and glanced at her, as if noticing her for the first time. Erlichman said, "This will keep. Meanwhile, what do you think of her?"
"Quite nice, I must say."
"Yes ... I've been told her preparation went quite well-she's new since I was here last-would you care to try her out?"
"Well ... "
Erlichman laughed. "No need for discomfort. It's quite common here."
He waved his hand around the large room.
At the other end, a distinguished gentleman sat in a chair while a gorgeous redhead gyrated manically in his lap, fucking him. Closer by, a dark young thing was laid across a table, sucking a cock in front of her, taking another from behind.
Of course. That was the reason this place (for she still had no name for it, no terms of recognition, no idea where it was located) existed. The reason these men came here.
"Well then," said Erlichman's companion, "I suppose ... "
"Of course, should you prefer something a bit more private ... or specialized ... that too can be arranged easily enough."
"Oh." A pause. "Such as?" Erlichman leaned close. "Anything your mind can imagine."
"Anything?"
"Erlichman chuckled. "You don't quite understand, do you my friend?"
He turned to Karen, whose eyes remained down. "You. Look at me."
She did so, for to refuse a direct command was the most serious violation of the rules, and compliance was the first priority.
He placed his hand under her chin and turned her head to the left, then to the right, like he was examining an expensive bitch dog for his kennel. "Look at that form ... that face. Perfection."
He opened the front of her dress and cupped her breasts, then squeezed them ... harder ... harder ... harder ...
The tips of his fingers were sinking into her soft flesh. Deeper and deeper.
The pain turned hot and real.
Her legs weakened, she became dizzy.
She finally made a small sound of pain.
He released her breasts and said, "Bend over towards, me." She did so, and he indicated that she was to stand back a bit so that her breasts, rather than hanging directly in his face as she'd thought he wanted, would be a ways in front of him, though still within easy reach ...
"Now watch," he said to his companion. His hand caressed the side of her right breast, gently, soothingly, almost tickling her full mound ... and then without warning he slapped it as hard as he could. He followed with an equally hard blow with his other hand to her left breasts. Both pillowy bags of flesh shuddered.
Karen sucked in her breath and let out a small cry of shock and pain, but she held her position and kept her breasts available should he wish to repeat the act.
Erlichman chuckled. "There ... you see? No protest. Nothing. They've been trained well."
"My God ... "
"And you thought, when I invited you to my "club", we were going to sit around a play chess, eh?"
"My God, man ... this is ... it's ... why, it's ... "
"Yes ... yes ... it's most likely all those things. But so what? Who is there to stop us?"
Their eyes met.
"You see ... it's all the same. You and me ... those like us . ... We're not like ordinary people. We can do what we want, for no other reason than it pleases us, n'est'ce pas?"
"But ... "
Erlichman looked down at the man's groin. "Tell me that erection appeared solely out of your disapproval and disdain."
"God, man ... " He was embarrassed now.
"Here ... take her. That door over there, take her into that room. I've already reserved it for you. You'll find anything you like in there. I think you will discover it quite well personalized."
"What do you mean?"
"You know exactly what I mean. You think there's anything we don't know about you? You are an open book, my friend, and I've read you from cover to cover. Now let us stop this silly discussion and cut to the chase, shall we?"
He took Karen's hand and gave it to his companion. "Go. Do yourself a favor. We have much to discuss and I need your mind clear."
He turned and signaled across the room, whereupon a girl appeared with a drink which she immediately brought to him. "Wait," was all he said to her, and she took her position next to him, eyes down, of course.
Erlichman picked opened a drawer in the table next them, removed a thin golden chain and hooked it to Karen's collar. He placed the other end in his companion's hand.
"Go," he said one last time, and this time his voice offered no option for discussion ... or disagreement.
nine
"Why is it, my friend, that I feel you holding something back from us? You wouldn't do that, would you?"
"Of course not. Wouldn't be polite, eh?"
Drake sat in the room and faced them, the group for whom he worked, and with whom he enjoyed such a complex and often antagonistic relationship.
He and Blaire Kinnen, who now, he supposed, was once again Brenda Kennedy, had arrived early in the morning, and found everyone assembled and waiting (didn't these people ever sleep?).
The old man said, "Can we get down to cases, then? What is it you discovered, before you dropped out of sight?"
"Nothing that we can prove yet. But the links are there. Pomegranate is a viable theory. In Paris, the important men are the Ministers of Defense and Justice. In Bonn, a couple of Deputy Premiers ... "
"That was all in your report. Why did you vanish?"
"Because I decided I couldn't trust anyone in this country."
"That's a rather sweeping indictment."
"Maybe. Maybe not. My daughter's been kidnapped. You may tell me that it was a random act, but I don't believe it for a second."
"Why did you discover that frightened you?"
He looked around the room, from face to face. The old man said, "If this group has been penetrated, then it follows automatically that there is no further purpose to resistance anyway. Therefore, unless you choose to do nothing, the only logical course open to you is to trust us."
Drake took a deep breath. "There's a ninety-five percent chance that Gerald Erlichman is one of them."
"What? That's impossible."
"No. There's a direct link between some of the organizations who use his consulting firm, and operations that we've definitely ladled as Pomegranate-influenced. I don't subscribe to the notion of coincidence, particularly several in a row. I don't think you do either."
"How do we know you haven't been turned, yourself?" asked Harry Simpson, The Group's economic analyst.
"Oh, shut up!" snapped Drake. "Same thing the old man just said: If I've turned, you're all dead meat anyway and there's nothing you can do about it. So if you want to proceed, trust me."
He looked around the room.
"Now, folks, if you've finished with me, I want to know everything you have about my daughter.
*****
"As I told you, some time ago, your training would be difficult, or it would be easy, depending on your own attitude. I must say, you have not made things easy on yourself."
"I ... I ... " Crystal stammered, "I don't know what came over me-"
"Silence!"
She fell mute.
"Take her to the swing."
She had never heard of the swing before, but she knew that it must be worse than anything she'd endured so far.
Two women approached her from either side and, holding her arms tightly, led her from the room.
She felt her legs going weak. She said, "Please ... you know this is sick ... you're women too ... have you no feelings left."
"You mustn't resist. You will come to see that there is wisdom in this method.
"I think you're out of your mind."
"Shh! Please. We don't want you to suffer needlessly."
"I see ... you only approve of the suffering that I need, right?"
"If you persist, there will be nothing we can do to protect you."
"What the fuck have you done to protect me anyway? What has anyone done?"
They said nothing, simply walked back down the stairs and through a long hallway, until at last they came to a door which one of the women opened with a key that was suspended around her neck.
They opened the door and entered. Crystal expected to see some medieval torture device, but instead saw only a several thick straps of leather hanging from a chain in the center of the room. The chain was fastened to a heavy bar which was then fastened to a rope extended through a block and tackle assembly. The block and tackle the ceiling by thick bolts sunk into a heavy wooden mount. Obviously designed to support a weight--hers, perhaps? Closer now.
Crystal noted the design: at the base of the chain was a small wooden cross bar, perhaps two feet long, fastened securely to the chain. From the crossbar extended a thick piece of leather, also two feet in width, but which immediately separated into two separate lengths. These both hung down from the crossbar to a length of approximately four feet.
At the end of each length of leather was a hook. At the top of the piece of leather were loops for fastening the hooks, although Crystal could still not determine the manner in which this device was intended to function.
"Disrobe the wench," came the cry from behind her. She turned and saw him standing there, the monk, hood back now, eyes piercing her through to her soul.
She trembled, she shuddered and she felt her legs weakening.
Her clothes were quickly removed from her body and once more she stood naked before them, strangers all, caring nothing for her, only for the demented deeds which drove them, somehow gave them meaning in their lives. No civilized people could act this way. No truly human people. This was no place on earth, she had decided. This was hell.
They affixed leather bracelets around each wrist, then lifted her off the floor and hooked each bracelet to loops on each end of the crossbar.
But rather than leave her to dangle by her arms, she now saw how the swing worked.
The two lengths of leather dangled behind her. Now the ends of each were brought under her thighs and up in front of her, then the ends were pulled up to the cross bar and fastened there.
The supporting hands released her now.
Her body's full weight came down onto the two leather straps around her thighs.
Surprisingly, she was perfectly balanced, and except for some unfamiliar pressure against her thighs, was fairly comfortable.
But the natural construction of the device served to pull her legs as far apart as they could be stretched, and it was her body weight that was providing the force that separated them.
Her cunt was fully exposed and opened wide, between her parted thighs. Her ass cheeks as well were totally exposed. And, of course, her breasts.
Her hands were secured, and so she could do nothing to protect herself. The monk approached, holding something thin and menacing in his hand. As he drew nearer, she could see that it was a finely crafted leather riding crop, a vicious looking implement by any standards. Used in it's intended manner it was a cruel device. Used as he planned to use it, on her unprotected flesh, it was unthinkable.
She'd learned, eventually, to stop pleading. Nothing would defer or deflect a punishment. The only course of action opened to one in such a predicament was to surrender to the inevitable and hope that next time's moment of decision would carry one down a more productive pathway.
"You have consistently refused to listen, to understand, and to learn. Why?"
She kept her eyes down.
She said nothing.
"You have been asked a question. Answer."
"I have no answer that would satisfy."
A hand pressed against her chin, forcing her to raise her head.
He said, "What did you say?"
"I have nothing to say that would satisfy, you ... master."
The last word came grudgingly, but it came. She knew that it would go even harder on her if she attempted to continue her defiance.
He snapped back. "I would like an explanation. Your behavior make no sense. It conforms to no logic. You know you have no power, you know what it is we desire and require of you, yet you continue on a course that produces unspeakable pain and punishment. When will you learn?"
"When will you let me go?" said Crystal, softly.
He reached out the tip of the riding crop. "Ah, yes ... that delicious lust for freedom. They all get over it." He turned to the women standing around the swing. "Don't you?"
There was no immediate response and so he swung the riding crop hard and brought it down onto the buttocks of the woman nearest him. "Don't you?"
"Yes, master," she said at once, her eyes pinched with pain. He turned back to Crystal. "You, too, will outgrow your desire to leave us. Of that I can assure you. Eventually, even you will be permitted to move to the next level of servitude. But that time will be determined only by yourself, and by your willingness to surrender."
He touched her breasts with the riding crop, ran the tip over her left nipple, then her right, then back to her left again.
She held her breath, waiting. It would come, now or later, she couldn't be sure when, but come it would and when it did it would be hot and fierce and intense and it would burn her flesh in its most private places.
He flicked it against her nipple, quickly, just barely touching the tip of her brown nub of flesh. "Oh!" cried Crystal, but in truth it scarcely hurt, not compared to some of the beatings she'd endured in the past several weeks. She was already becoming seasoned. She was tough. It took more than a mere flick against her nipple to get through to her.
She said nothing more, made no further gesture of discomfort.
He smiled, a cold, lifeless smile, and then struck her nipple with a solid THWACK.'
That got through her.
Her entire body jerked and shook, as she cried out in agony.
He then struck her other nipple, just as hard as the first. And again.
The pain was blinding, and he'd only delivered three strokes.
"I fear scarring her beyond usefulness, were I to punish her to the extent she deserves, using only this tool." He handed the riding to the woman beside him, then snapped his fingers and held out his hand, into which was immediately placed a small cat-o-nine-tails. The leather tongs were no more than a foot and a half long, and the handle, carved and polished wood, fit neatly in his hand.
He turned to Crystal and at once began to administer steady, heavy, slashing strokes across both her breasts, relentlessly, without stopping ot easing the pace to catch his breath.
She screamed, of course, but there was nothing to help her now, no one to come to her aid, nothing to protect her from the violence being done to her body.
He continued for some time, so much so that she lost count of how many times he'd hit her breasts.
Truth was, he only gave her ten strokes to each breast, but it is fairly easy to lose count when one is pushed so frightfully beyond one's limits, yet forced to continue enduring the pain and agony.
At last, however, it stopped.
Crystal whimpered softly from her perch. Her breasts were on fire, and had turned a bright crimson color from the force of his blows.
But the respite was a ruse.
Her eyes were closed, but then suddenly she felt something between her legs.
She opened her eyes and looked down ... he was letting the straps of the whip dangle between her thighs.
Her legs were stretched wide, and her-cunt lips were a gaping pink slash between her carefully trimmed triangle of pubic hair.
The tips of the whip were touching her clit, dancing over the surface of the throbbing shaft of nerve-packed flesh. Dancing ever-so-lightly, tips of the leather touching the tip of her clit.
Her cunt was wide open to him, as she hung there, supported only by the leather bands wrapped around her thighs. His angle was perfect. There were no obstructions at all. Nothing was in his way.
He finally delivered the blow that she'd known was coming.
He brought his arm up with a sharp jerk, whipping the leather tongs across her fully exposed cunt slit.
The whip slapped against her lips, pubic mound, clitoris, and exposed inner membranes as well.
Crystal screamed. It was a deep, penetrating scream, ripped from the depths of her soul. "Say 'thank you,'" he told her. She said nothing. He whipped her pussy again. "Say 'thank you, master', " he instructed her. She still refused.
He brought the whip directly across her cunt three times in succession, whipping her harder each time.
At least this time she cried out. She wasn't a total automaton, after all.
She cried, and she squirmed, but she would not say what he wanted her to say. She would not thank him.
He whipped her cunt again, and again, and again. "Say it," he instructed her coldly, after each stroke. "Say it." WHIP.' "Say it." WHIP.' "Say it." WHIP.' "Say it." WHIP!
"Say it."
She refused, though by now she felt as though her body was coming apart.
He turned to the women finally, and he said, "She is possessed of a defiance that confounds me. We must go further"
He snapped his fingers and two women approached Crystal. He said, "Bring the instruments."
A wooden cabinet was opened and Crystal gasped. Within rested the most dizzyingly horrifying array of implements of torment she'd ever imagined, and many she'd never dared imagine. Most she could only guess at their function, but several were dreadfully clear.
"Bind her breasts," her tormentor instructed.
The woman nearest her began wrapping thin nylon cord around the base of her ample breasts, starting with her right breast. She lifted the fleshy mound in her hands, encircled it with her fingers and pressed back against Crystal's body, at the same time squeezing hard. This forced the tissues to the front, almost as though squeezing a toothpaste tube.
She then pulled the cord tight, and repeated the process, squeezing, then pulling on the cord. She pulled so tight Crystal felt certain the cord would simply sheer her breast from her body in a clean, razor-like stroke. But miraculously, this did not happen.
Instead, the mound continued to grow more and more tightly squeezed, and the base simply grew thinner and thinner. The surface of her breasts grew an ever deeper and deeper shade of red, turning to brick, and finally, a dark purple. They looked, actually, like two large blue light bulbs attached to her body. Long lengths of cord remained hanging from each breast after they were bound.
The pain was unrelenting.
"Now, you will be tested harshly," said her masked tormentor.
What was this, if not already harsh? she wondered, dazed by the pain.
Now the ends of the nylon cord were each pulled through small hooks at the top of the crossbar. Each woman took one of the cords, which were each attached to her bound breasts. The continued to pull. And pull. And pull.
She realized finally what was happening.
The weight of her body was shifting from her thighs, which were supported by the leather bands upon which she was sitting, and instead focusing on the point at which each nylon cord wrapped around the base of her tortured breasts;
Her breasts were supporting the whole of her body weight!
She raised up off the leather bands only an inch or two, but it was sufficient to cause her breasts to beat the full load.
Instinctively she pulled her arms toward her body. They were fastened securely to the crossbar themselves, but they at least were able to take some of her weight.
But in order to relieve her breasts, she had to pull herself higher, and then maintain that position.
And, of course, the women continued to pull on the cords, raising the tension on her breasts back to exceed the support her arms were providing--forcing her to pull herself higher and higher with her arms.
"Unfasten her arms', " the women were instructed. They did so.
"Rebind them behind her back."
"No ... " she moaned, scarcely able to speak.
"Yes ... " he said, smirking. "You will no discover what it means to be pushed past your limits."
She was hanging from her breasts only. Arms behind her back. No hope of relieving the pressure and pain.
She glanced at him and once again her despair was total.
He held a long, narrow, thin wooden paddle in his hands.
He reached out to her and touched the surface of her breast, rubbing it over her horrendously sensitive nipple. The slightest contact was excruciating.
"We are now going to begin."
He struck her breast with the wooded surface. The crack seemed to echo in the room for eons ... but no, it was only the sound of own screams instantly picking up and continuing ... long ... gut-wrenching ... desperate ...
ten
Karen waited. The man turned to her, once they were in the private chamber. He studied the golden chain in his hand, still seemingly amazed that it was even happening to him.
"So ... you're a real slave, huh?"
She kept her eyes down and answered "Yes."
"So ... tell me, what's that mean, to me I mean? What's allowed here."
She still kept her eyes down.
He stared at her, disbelieving. Tenuously he reached out to her body and ran his hands over the sheer material that scarcely covered her. His fingers trembled slightly.
After a moment he said, "Raise your arms and clasp your hands behind your head."
She did so. Her muscles tightened, raising her breasts up and firming them, so that they jutted straight out in front of her.
"Look at me," he said, and she obeyed, finally allowing herself to study his face. If he was a man of power, his role and position was much less public than that of his companion. She had never seen him in her life. There was nothing remarkable about him at all. He might have been an accountant, a lawyer for some faceless corporation, a government functionary ...
In truth he was Under Secretary of Defense, on the surface a rather insignificant position, but, considering the men with whom he associated on a clandestine level, one that carried considerable clout.
But, as with so many of his breeding and station, public, political power was often won at the cost of personal power in relationships ... with friends and with lovers. Which was why he now stood uncertainly before this incomparable vision, uncertain what he should do next.
Not that the vision of possibilities didn't fill his head. Far from it. He'd spent his lifetime fantasizing this very situation ... a gorgeous woman who would, finally, submit to every debased desire that he could cram into his twisted little brain ... and as the years of personal ineffectuality wore on, the visions grew more and more debased, until by now he wanted to take revenge for an entire lifetime of failure, and he wanted to take it out on her.
The THWACK of Erlichman's open palm against her gorgeous breasts still echoed in his ears. In that instant his mind had gone blank, and in its place, rising up through the years of careful training and correct breeding, like a dank, dark creature from a swamp, a hideous passion appeared, one before which he was utterly powerless, for which there was no concept of civilization ... of decency ...
Only abuse.
Only revenge.
Only the galling, bile-like residue from every helpless encounter with every vicious bitch who'd spurned him ... who'd humiliated him ... who'd degraded him . ...
His wife, who'd dressed him in her panties and then forced him to masturbate all over himself ...
His mistress who'd openly fucked his friends ...
His mother ...
Christ! That cunt ... that worthless cunt ... And now, Karen's breasts loomed before him, inviting ... wanton ... willing ... the symbol of all that had made his wretched life what it was ...
He approached her, touched them both, felt the spongy softness beneath his fingers ... and then slapped them, one at a time.
She made a small noise.
It wasn't enough!
Anger began seeping from it's protective cell to which he'd banished it for years slowly now into the open, rising within him, filling his vision. No, it wasn't enough! He wanted to hear her scream!
He slapped her again, harder this time. She still made only a small sound, no more than an acknowledgment, really, that she'd felt him. But not a reaction. Not the reaction that he wanted. That he needed.
He said, "Lean forward." As she did so, he pulled aside the material covering them and marveled for a moment at their perfection. Swaying pendulously, obeying gravity, it seemed, only in this position.
He slid the flat of his palms over her nipples and felt them to be already stiff. Christ, she liked this. Well ... he'd push her places she'd never gone before.
He balled up his fingers into a fist and punched her tits, one at a time, hard as he could. They seemed to splatter against her body for a moment and then quivered a long while in spasms enhanced by the shuddering spasms of the rest of her body.
Yes ... this was becoming something he could enjoy.
He looked around the room, noticed that there were several implements and devices that might well serve him. But where to begin. When you've been starving all your life, finding yourself before the King's banquet table can be meaningless. There simply is no context into which you can place the data of your senses, to order it, to make it real for you.
He felt that way now. A pillar with rings strategically placed ... a frame ... a bench, crotch high ... large rings on the walls ... a cabinet, within which he had no doubt he would find a Pandora's Box of demonic devices ...
Ah, but where to begin?
Where else ... but at that vortex of his torment ... the intersection of her precious thighs ... her soft, wet ... disgustingly wet ... delicious cunt.'
YES.'
Breath coming in shorter bursts now ... gasping almost ...
Heart pounding ... blood rushing through his body, pressure rising ... a pounding in his ears, a dizziness behind his eyeballs ... scarcely daring to think ...
"Straighten up."
She obeyed.
He took her arm and led her to the bench, indicating that she was to sit on it, facing him. She did so. Her long legs hung over the edge.
He studied the bench for a moment or two. Some kind of attachment seemed to be affixed to the edge over which her shapely legs dangled ... Ah yes, it was a bar which ran along the bottom edge of the bench and then, turning at right-angles, up the sides, about a third of the way. At this point, on each side, the bar was fastened to the bench itself by a rotating joint so that the entire thing cold be rotated up till it stood at a 90 degree angle to the rest of the bench.
But why? He was painfully conscious of his ignorance in these matters. And then he saw it, of course! She was meant to lie on the bench with her legs bent at the knees right on the edge so that as the bat rotated upwards, her legs were pulled along with it, pushing her knees back towards her head, raising her pelvis up as they went.
Okay ... so far, so good. But what then? He studied it more closely and saw that there were, on either side of the bar assembly, two eyes, each just waiting for something to hook itself through them. Such as ... ankle cuffs?
He walked to the closet and opened the doors and there a cornucopia of bizarre devices awaited him ... including leather bracelets of all sizes. He selected six, two for her wrists, two for her ankles and two others, much larger, which he intended to fasten around her lower thighs.
"Let your legs hang over the end," he instructed her. She did as she was told. Between his legs a rising heat was growing all but impossible to ignore. His dick was throbbing and he feared that he might come in his pants before he could get into the pleasure of the experience.
But so what? He was here for an extended weekend, and she clearly wasn't going any place.
Trembling hands notwithstanding, he pulled up on the bar and raised her legs with it. Up, up, until it was at a right angle to the bench and her legs were bent around it. Then he quickly fastened the leather bracelets around each ankle, spreading her legs in order to connect each one to the side of the bar. Then he fastened the larger bracelets around her thighs and once more spread her legs, this time at the knees, and again hooked her to the bar. The bar, in this position was self locking, and he saw that it was the tension provided by her body and her legs which was keeping it in place.
He then fastened her wrists to either side of the table.
His hands were trembling now.
His breath was coming in shorter and shorter bits. His heart was pounding. It was too good to be true ... this vision of beauty and perfection, helpless in front of him ... his to do with as he pleased.
His cock was already stiff and throbbing.
He stared down at her open pussy slit, lips pulled apart by the tension of her splayed legs, pink membranes glistening with the moisture flowing from within, clit peeking up from the center, hard and throbbing.
He reached for it, touched it, rolled it around between his finger and thumb.
It was hard, rubbery, stiff yet yielding to pressure.
And now it was pressure that he applied. He squeezed it between thumb and forefinger and immediately her body began to shudder, not in pain, but in pleasure.
Christ, what did they do to these girls? How did they get them to behave like this ... to respond like this ... to ... like this?
He cocked his forefinger behind his thumb, then flicked the tip harshly across her clit. And again. And again. And yet another time.
Each time she shook, and by the fourth time she was beginning to moan. Her eyes were closed and her face was an emotional blank, as though whatever truth there was to her had withdrawn inward to the safety that all women knew inside them, too deep for men to perceive.
What secrets did she hide, he wondered, what tormented emotional responses was this display simply the tip of?
He had progressed from using simply his finger now to the whole of his palm, slapping her cunt mound with several hard, sharp cracks. His fingers fell wetly into her cunt slit with each slap and as he continued, he noticed that the level of moisture was increasing each time. She was getting wetter the more he slapped her!
What manner of woman was this?
Five ... ten ... twenty hard smacks. Still she showed no sign of displeasure, of discomfort ...
Yet she had to feel pain, didn't she? Surely there was a way to make her cry out ... to beg him to stop ... to no longer exercise his total power over her, was there not?
He returned to the cabinet and after much deliberation finally selected a small cat-o-nine-tails, and a fierce-looking riding crop.
He immediately gave ten strokes each to her breasts with the cat, watching them shiver deliciously, listening to her moan.
Then he returned to her cunt, determined that this attack on the core of her femininity would shatter that egg-like self-sufficiency, that calm exterior that said, "Do what you wish ... I am beyond you."
Her pelvis was arched to the perfect angle, so that her cunt was actually parallel to the flat of the bench upon which she was restrained. As the whip descended, the angle of contact was such that maximum force was applied to the soft, fragile membranes.
He brought the whip down hard on her. It made a soft splosh as it connected. She gasped and her entire body jerked.
"Open your eyes," he instructed her. Immediately she obeyed.
"I want you to watch me. I want you to see me," He told her, dimly aware that he was starting to experience an intensity that he had never before known in his life. As to whether or not such intensity, in this context, was good or bad, healthy or ill, did not occur to him as a viable issue in his life.' But he did know that all senses were alert, all muscles taut, all inward sensations heightened.
He swung the whip again. "I'm going to whip your cunt, bitch, until you beg me to stop."
"I won't beg you to stop," she said. "If you wish to whip me, that is your privilege."
"Oh yes, I'll make you beg," he said, grinding his teeth as he did so. He swung again. She shook. He realized that he was trying his best to hurt her now, really wanting to fuck her up. He swung again, always bringing the whip down between her legs to that vortex of pleasure ... and pain ...
Again.
And again.
And again!
He stopped pausing between strokes, simply began to lay them on one after another, again and again, whipping her cunt and the surrounding membranes and flesh until her entire pubic region was a fiery red. Her clit seemed to have grown twice its normal size. The strands of the whip were oily from her goo, which had been smeared all over her thighs and through her pubic hair.
He continued, seemingly unable now to stop. He'd locked himself into a loop from which he was powerless to extricate himself. Harder and harder.
Somehow, now, holding the riding crop instead of the cat, yet still whipping her cunt with a manic ferocity. Back to her tits for a few strokes, each leaving a bright, flaming red welt, but returning always to her cunt.
The beating was brutal and harsh. At some point he got his wish. She did indeed begin screaming. Begging him to stop. But he couldn't. Not now. Now when he was finally, after all those years, paying them back!! Those bitches!! Those lying, cheating, manipulating, scheming fucking cunts!! His mother! His first wife! The girls in high school. In college. The women in his department! All of them, cunts, cunts, cunts!!
Did he stop on his own, or did they finally come and forcibly restrain him? He couldn't tell. He knew only that he woke up in his room, with a terrible headache, with the session but a strange memory.
When he saw Erlichman that morning, nothing was said, nor even implied. No one gave him strange looks, nor suggested that he was anything less than a welcomed, honored guest.
But he knew. He'd crossed a line. One that he'd never known existed. He'd crossed it, and now, he knew that he'd never be able to truly go back. Not now.
He looked at the girl bringing their breakfast. She had fuller breasts than the girl the previous evening, if that was possible. Yes ... they'd look beautiful, all tied up ... epilogue
Drake Shannon closed his eyes and rested. It was hard for him to sleep on a transatlantic flight, but he knew that the jet lag would catch up with him if he didn't and once he landed in Paris, he didn't want to be hindered in the slightest.
He was angry ... ready ... hungry. The hunter was on the prowl and the trail was still warm.
He'd traced them to Paris. He'd been unable to find anything further of the cretins who'd kidnapped his daughter ... they'd been low-level functionaries in any event. So he went at it from the other direction.
Gerald Erlichman. He had told the committee nothing of what he'd learned, but he knew that the man was going to be in Europe this week, and that, by coincidence, certain other power-brokers in the country would be in the same vicinity! Andrew Stewart, President of Amalgamated Steel, Howard Vincent, Chairman of the Board of International DataLink, two or three senators, the Secretary of Defense and the secretary of state (each visiting a different dignitary in a different country. Still ...
He knew what they were doing. He knew that sooner or later they would all wind up at the same place.
And now ... he knew that, most likely, that was the place where he would find his daughter. There would be hell to pay.
*****
Don't miss the continuing saga of Drake Shannon as he confronts the global forces of evil, in future books from STAR DISTRIBUTORS.
